Our Trip Blog

Events of Friday, October 15, 2010

          Most everyone has had an experience with rain, some more than others. Some rain experiences are quiet April rainstorms with just barely a drizzle, but others are vicious and destructive storms. We had heard forecasts of a storm, and were prepared for a bit of rain, but definitely not a Northeaster. Northeaster rainstorms, or, as the Maine accent pronounces it, a Nor’eastah, are created when cold Arctic winds from the Northeast collide with warmer ocean winds from the Gulf Stream. When they collide, the hot air, containing amounts of water, passes over the cold air, also containing water, and somehow everything gets mixed up and causes a big rainstorm, that often causes flooding, coastal erosion, and hurricane force winds. Our “Nor’eastah” hit in the middle of the night.

          In your house, you can hear the soft pattering of rain on the far-away roof. However, in an RV, everything is much closer to the roof, especially the bed over the cab. This happened to be my bed last night. Everywhere in an RV you can hear the pattering of the rain, but none louder than the “upstairs bed”. Being one foot away from a roof being pounded by rain is very loud. About an hour after the storm hit, I was awakened by the RV shaking. My guess was that this was being caused by the 20-50 mph winds being blown at the RV. After tossing around restlessly for a few more hours, I finally heard Daddy’s wake up call. This was the signal of a new day; a day of mansions, gusting wind, driving rain, puddles, and the fun began.

          After pulling sweatshirts on top of our pajamas for warmth we had breakfast and dressed. After that, we ace- wrapped Mom’s ankle, cleaned up camp, and hit the road. However, there was a problem that needed to be addressed first. When Daddy had woken up, he had noticed the light on our refrigerator was flashing, not a good sign. He spent most of the early morning poring over the RV manual and after breakfast put on his rain gear and ventured out in the storm to see if he could fix whatever was wrong. But he couldn’t. So as we got ready he found an RV repair place and we headed over there. As we drove the wind tried to push the RV right off the road. The rain was coming down so hard that it was hard to see. Mom made us all get in seats for safety. Finally we arrived at the shop. As Daddy went into the shop, we all prayed that the solution would be simple and inexpensive. Thank God it was. A man came out with Daddy to show him how to access something to check. When the door was opened the problem revealed itself, and a quick little twist fixed it and we were on our way.

          By now, the air had a fresh tint to it, and, although the storm was passed, a drizzle was constant. We planned to tour two houses/mansions today in Portland, Maine, starting with a Victorian mansion constructed in the Italian country villa style. After reserving six spots on a tour, we looked through the gift shop for three minutes, and then our tour began. A nice lady took us in the back door and led us through the rooms giving us the brief history of the mansion. Originally, it was owned by a family with the name Morse. Mr. Morse paid about $100,000 (in today’s dollars) for this house to be built and he had both an architect and an interior designer, which was a big deal in those times. He even hired an Italian born scenic artist Giuseppe Guidicini. Guidicini used a technique called “fool-the-eye”, which consisted of painting with shadows and using other techniques to make something seem 3-D. For example, a frame or a design on the wall looked like wood designs that stand out from the wall, but it really was flat. He also painted with a technique called fresco, painting with oils on wet plaster, and also inserted paintings on canvas into the wall.

          Each room had a theme, and everything had to do with that theme. The drawing room had a theme of romance and love, so there were love scenes painted on the wall, cupids on the ceiling, cupids on the chairs, tables, fireplace, and even on the couch! The dining room’s theme was food, which included many engraving on the walls, including an engraving for vegetables, with peas and squash, seafood, with fish and shellfish, small animals, like rabbits and quails, fruit, with pears and apples, and about any other food group that you could imagine. They had fancy sets of china, a green set and a red set, and even containers for celery, a delicacy back then. Each room had a lot of mirrors; in order reflect the dim light. They had gasaliers (gas fed chandeliers) back then, and each flame produced less than 7 watts, making the entire lighting for a room about 42 watts. This is very dim, for our dimmest light bulbs today create at least 60 watts. Because they had extremely dim light, they used a lot of the light from outdoors. The ceiling of the house was a huge stain glass window, with cupids in four different circles. Each cupid represented a season, but something was wrong here. I could clearly understand which one was spring and winter, but right next to spring, there was a cupid with barley, representing the harvest. Now, I thought that the harvest took place in fall, but if that was so, it was out of order! When I asked our guide, she didn’t know, so we debated about it for a while, but we never cleared up this matter. Maybe summer was fall back then, who knows?

          Well, overall this was a pretty fancy house, but where did you get $100,000 to build it? Mr. Morse owned many hotels throughout the country, resulting in wealth for Mr. Morse. As a hotel man, Mr. Morse brought many aspects of what made his hotels famous into his house, such as running hot and cold water, which only very rich people could do, and a smoking room. Victorian women were not allowed to smoke, be in a place where smoking was happening, or be in a room where smoking had taken place. The smoking room was a little room off the hall, in which the men could go in, close the door, bring down the gasalier by pulling a ring, use the flame to light their cigar, and have a smoke. As fancy as this entire mansion sounds, this Victoria Mansion was actually only his summer home for many years. He would come with his family to Maine to spend two weeks in their “summer country home” for their summer vacation. After Mr. Morse died, Mrs. Morse sold the house to a family named Libby. A big difference between the families was that despite Prohibition, Mr. Morse kept a fancy wooden liquor cabinet hidden in a closet off the waiting area for guests. The Libbys were part of the Temperance movement and Mrs. Libby destroyed all the bottles in Mr. Morse’s wine cellar by breaking them.  The Libbys and their four children lived in the mansion for a time, then it was empty for some time until it was bought by a philanthropist and preserved for future generations.

          After finishing our tour, we went back to the RV for lunch. After a delicious lunch of sandwiches, chips, apples, and sandwich cookies, we walked about a mile to the Longfellow home. Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow grew up in a house in Portland, Maine, from the age of six months to the age of 22. We bought tickets for the 2:00 tour, and soon we were on our way. Our tour guide stopped us briefly outside of the house to give us some history of the Longfellow family. Henry’s grandfather served in the military with George Washington. His name was General Peleg Wadsworth. Half-way through the Revolutionary War, General Washington assigned Wadsworth to an area in Maine, today known as Portland. Wadsworth built his house, and moved in with his wife and their ten children. After the Revolutionary War ended, the family continued to thrive in the little two story brick house.

          As the region became more popular, a certain lawyer became interested in the Wadsworth family – for business purposes, and because they had three girls. This lawyer’s name was Stephen Longfellow and he was very interested in marriage. He soon narrowed his options down to two of the girls, only because the third was not to his liking. This left a choice between the two girls – Eliza or Zilpah. He probably would have chosen Eliza, but she died a year later of tuberculosis. As a result, he married Zilpah and they began their family of eight five children. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of these children. After learning this small family history, we went inside the house and officially began our tour.

          First we went through the kitchen, a combination of the living room, family room, and kitchen. It was the warmest place of the house and it had many 200-300 year old plates, and a very old rocking horse. On the right side of the kitchen there was a little cove of shelves, and at the end of it was a hole that went into the dining room pantry. They would shove plates through the hole in order to keep them warm and return them the same way when the table was cleared. It also saved movements – you didn’t have to carry seven plates around to the dining room. I asked our tour guide if the children would climb through the hole for hide and seek, or just to scare their mother, but he said he didn’t know. I think they probably did, because that is just what I would do if I was a child in that house.

          After the dining room and the kitchen, we went into the front parlor and viewed more extremely old things. There was a painting of George Washington and there was a chair and a very dainty high chair that all generations had used. Our tour guide said that he was amazed that it hadn’t broken, considering that it had had all 8 Longfellow children in it. Jokingly I said, “Not at the same time – I hope.” After a good laugh, we headed upstairs and we learned a little more about Henry’s sad life. Henry had always had a passion for writing poems, and he did not listen to his to his father’s pleading to take up law. In desperation, his father finally sent him on a three year trip to Europe. He returned home and married Mary Potter, but his happiness was not to be. He took his new bride to Europe and while they were there she miscarried and died. In his grief, Longfellow went to Switzerland. While in Switzerland, he met the daughter of a wealthy textile producer, Fanny Appleton. When explaining his intentions to the girl, she made clear to him that he was below her and that she could not and definitely would not marry him. Heartbroken, he came back to America for seven years, all the time planning out how to win her love. Then he went back to Switzerland, and somehow, got the girl to marry him. He brought her back to America and lived in a yellow house in Cambridge for the rest of his days. After they had had five children, three girls and two boys, Mrs. Henry Longfellow died. She had been up in the library with her three daughters melting sealing wax when her dress caught on fire and she was soon engulfed in flames. Mr. Longfellow tried to put the fire out, but in the end she died from her burns. Mr. Longfellow had burns on his face and hands from trying to save her, so he grew a beard to cover his burns. The rest of the house wasn’t very remarkable. It was just old and not very well lit, but the stories of the families that lived there were fascinating.