* * * * *
The experience of arrival in Annapolis, delightful in any weather and at
any time of year, gives one a satisfaction almost ecstatic after a cold,
windy automobile ride such as we had suffered. To ache for the shelter
of almost any town, or any sort of building, and, with such yearnings,
to arrive in this dreamy city, whose mild air seems to be compounded
from fresh winds off a glittering blue sea, arrested by the barricade of
ancient hospitable-looking houses, warmed by the glow of their sun-baked
red brick, and freighted with a ghostly fragrance, as from the phantoms
of the rose gardens of a century or two ago--to arrive, frigid and
forlorn in such a haven, to drink a cup of tea in the old Paca house
(now a hotel), is to experience heaven after purgatory. For there is no
town that I know whose very house fronts hold out to the stranger that
warm, old-fashioned welcome that Annapolis seems to give.
The Paca house, which as a hotel has acquired the name Carvel Hall, is
the house that Winston Churchill had in mind as the Manners house, of
his novel "Richard Carvel." A good idea of the house, as it was, may be
obtained by visiting the Brice house, next door, for the two are almost
twins. When Mr. Churchill was a cadet at Annapolis, before the modern
part of the Carvel Hall hotel was built, there were the remains of
terraced gardens back of the old mansion, stepping down to an old spring
house, and a rivulet which flowed through the grounds was full of
watercress.
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