The houses hint of these things. If you have seen the best old brick
mansions of New England, and will imagine them more beautifully
proportioned, set off by balancing wings and having infinitely finer
details as to doorways, windows, porticos, and also as to wood carvings
and fixtures within--as, for instance, the beautiful silver latches and
hinges of the Chase house at Annapolis--you will gather something of the
flavor of these old Southern homes. For though such venerable mansions
as the Chase, Paca, Brice, Hammond, Ridout, and Bordley houses, in
Annapolis, are not without family resemblance to the best New England
colonial houses, the resemblance is of a kind to emphasize the
differences, not only between the mansions of the North and South, but
between the builders of them. The contrast is subtle, but marked.
Your New England house, beautiful as it is, is stamped with austere
simplicity. The man who built it was probably a scholar but he was
almost certainly a Calvinist. He habited himself in black and was served
by serving maids, instead of slaves in livery. If a woman was not
flat-chested and forlorn, he was prone to regard her as the devil
masquerading for the downfall of man--and no doubt with some justice,
too. Night and morning he presided at family prayers, the purpose of
which was to impress upon his family and servants that to have a good
time was wicked, and that to be gay in this life meant hell-fire and
damnation in the next.
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