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Perchance,amid their proper element of smoke, which eddied forth from the ill-constructedchimney, the ghosts of departed cook-maids looked wonderingly on, or peepeddown the great breadth of the flue, despising the simplicity of the projectedmeal, yet ineffectually pining to thrust their shadowy hands into each inchoatedish. The half-starved rats, at any rate, stole visibly out of theirhiding-places, and sat on their hind-legs, snuffing the fumy atmosphere, andwistfully awaiting an opportunity to nibble. It really seemed as if the battered visage of the House of the Seven Gables,black and heavy-browed as it still certainly looked, must have shown a kind ofcheerfulness glimmering through its dusky windows as Phœbe passed to and froin the interior. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain how the people of theneighborhood so soon became aware of the girl’s presence. There was agreat run of custom, setting steadily in, from about ten o’clock untiltowards noon,—relaxing, somewhat, at dinner-time, but recommencing in theafternoon, and, finally, dying away a half an hour or so before the longday’s sunset.
Governor Pyncheon
Phœbe and the fire that boiled theteakettle were equally bright, cheerful, and efficient, in their respectiveoffices. Hepzibah gazed forth from her habitual sluggishness, the necessaryresult of long solitude, as from another sphere. This naturaltunefulness made Phœbe seem like a bird in a shadowy tree; or conveyed theidea that the stream of life warbled through her heart as a brook sometimeswarbles through a pleasant little dell. It betokened the cheeriness of anactive temperament, finding joy in its activity, and, therefore, rendering itbeautiful; it was a New England trait,—the stern old stuff of Puritanismwith a gold thread in the web.
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However the flowers might have come there, it wasboth sad and sweet to observe how Nature adopted to herself this desolate,decaying, gusty, rusty old house of the Pyncheon family; and how theever-returning Summer did her best to gladden it with tender beauty, and grewmelancholy in the effort. As Holgrave finishes his story, he realizes he has hypnotized Phoebe, but his integrity prevents him from abusing his power, and he wakes her from her trance. While Phoebe is making a visit to her home in the country, Judge Pyncheon returns to the house of the seven gables and forces Hepzibah to fetch Clifford, saying he will put Clifford in an asylum if Hepzibah does not retrieve him. The Judge explains that Clifford knows the location of their late uncle’s inheritance.
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Oftener thanany other object, these glimpses illuminate the Judge’s face. Observe that silvery dance upon the upper branchesof the pear-tree, and now a little lower, and now on the whole mass of boughs,while, through their shifting intricacies, the moonbeams fall aslant into theroom. They play over the Judge’s figure and show that he has not stirredthroughout the hours of darkness. They follow the shadows, in changeful sport,across his unchanging features.
Salem's House of the Seven Gables survives - Harvard Magazine
Salem's House of the Seven Gables survives.
Posted: Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:59:50 GMT [source]
Facing south towards Salem Harbor, it was originally a two-room, 2+1⁄2-story house with a projecting front porch and a massive central chimney. Four windows of the original ground-floor room (which became a dining room) remain in the house's side wall. What began as a desire to bring higher standards to an industry that, at the time, was plagued with mediocrity, the founders of Seven Gables Real Estate had a clear purpose of doing real estate differently. “Settlement houses were places where social workers would ‘settle’ among immigrant communities, hoping to share knowledge and American culture with the aim of helping their recently-arrived and lower-income neighbors. Settlements often provided services such as daycare, education and healthcare to improve the lives of the poor,” according to the group’s website.
He was as yet invisible;the most favored of the guests had not beheld him. This sluggishness on ColonelPyncheon’s part became still more unaccountable, when the seconddignitary of the province made his appearance, and found no more ceremonious areception. The lieutenant-governor, although his visit was one of theanticipated glories of the day, had alighted from his horse, and assisted hislady from her side-saddle, and crossed the Colonel’s threshold, withoutother greeting than that of the principal domestic.
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A look inside the Historic Seven Gables house - Shelby Star
A look inside the Historic Seven Gables house.
Posted: Thu, 02 Nov 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
At last, however, with a strange kind of laugh, he inquiredwhether Mr. Pyncheon would make over to him the old wizard’shomestead-ground, together with the House of the Seven Gables, now standing onit, in requital of the documentary evidence so urgently required. But, as the sunlight left the peaks of the Seven Gables, so did the excitementfade out of Clifford’s eyes. He gazed vaguely and mournfully about him,as if he missed something precious, and missed it the more drearily for notknowing precisely what it was.
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The path which would best have suited her was the well-worn track ofordinary life; the companions in whom she would most have delighted were suchas one encounters at every turn. The mystery which enveloped Clifford, so faras it affected her at all, was an annoyance, rather than the piquant charmwhich many women might have found in it. Still, her native kindliness wasbrought strongly into play, not by what was darkly picturesque in hissituation, nor so much, even, by the finer graces of his character, as by thesimple appeal of a heart so forlorn as his to one so full of genuine sympathyas hers. She gave him an affectionate regard, because he needed so much love,and seemed to have received so little.
Had he been told of abad air, it might have moved him somewhat; but he was ready to encounter anevil spirit on his own ground. Endowed with commonsense, as massive and hard asblocks of granite, fastened together by stern rigidity of purpose, as with ironclamps, he followed out his original design, probably without so much asimagining an objection to it. On the score of delicacy, or any scrupulousnesswhich a finer sensibility might have taught him, the Colonel, like most of hisbreed and generation, was impenetrable. He therefore dug his cellar, and laidthe deep foundations of his mansion, on the square of earth whence MatthewMaule, forty years before, had first swept away the fallen leaves. It was acurious, and, as some people thought, an ominous fact, that, very soon afterthe workmen began their operations, the spring of water, above mentioned,entirely lost the deliciousness of its pristine quality. Whether its sourceswere disturbed by the depth of the new cellar, or whatever subtler cause mightlurk at the bottom, it is certain that the water of Maule’s Well, as itcontinued to be called, grew hard and brackish.
After that, the property passes into the hands of the respectable Judge Pyncheon, who lives on a country estate a few miles outside of town. That brings the story to the present generation of Pyncheons, of whom there are only a few left—besides the Judge and his son, there is Clifford (who was imprisoned for Uncle Jaffrey’s murder), Clifford’s impoverished sister, Hepzibah, and a 17-year-old country cousin, Phoebe. The house was built on ground wrongfully seized from its rightful owner, Matthew Maule, by Colonel Pyncheon, the founder of the Massachusetts branch of the family. According to legend, at the time of his death Maule laid a curse upon the Pyncheon family. During the housewarming festivities, Colonel Pyncheon was found dead in his armchair; whether he actually died from the curse or from a congenital disease is unclear. His portrait remains in the house as a symbol of its dark past and the weight of the curse upon the spirit of its inhabitants.
She went in quest of the miniature already described, and returned with it inher hand. Giving it to Phœbe, she watched her features narrowly, and with acertain jealousy as to the mode in which the girl would show herself affectedby the picture. Phœbe, it must be understood, was that one little offshoot of the Pyncheonrace to whom we have already referred, as a native of a rural part of NewEngland, where the old fashions and feelings of relationship are stillpartially kept up.
Nay, we couldalmost venture to say, further, that a daily guilt might have been acted byhim, continually renewed, and reddening forth afresh, like the miraculousblood-stain of a murder, without his necessarily and at every moment beingaware of it. The artist now turned the conversation to themes less dark than that which theyhad touched upon. He had that sense, or inward prophecy,—which a young man hadbetter never have been born than not to have, and a mature man had better dieat once than utterly to relinquish,—that we are not doomed to creep onforever in the old bad way, but that, this very now, there are the harbingersabroad of a golden era, to be accomplished in his own lifetime. It seemed toHolgrave,—as doubtless it has seemed to the hopeful of every centurysince the epoch of Adam’s grandchildren,—that in this age, morethan ever before, the moss-grown and rotten Past is to be torn down, andlifeless institutions to be thrust out of the way, and their dead corpsesburied, and everything to begin anew. It must not be supposed that the life of a personage naturally so active asPhœbe could be wholly confined within the precincts of the old Pyncheon House.Clifford’s demands upon her time were usually satisfied, in those longdays, considerably earlier than sunset. Quiet as his daily existence seemed, itnevertheless drained all the resources by which he lived.
They decide to leave the House of the Seven Gables and live on Judge Pyncheon’s country estate. In a secret recess behind Colonel Pyncheon’s portrait, Clifford and Holgrave discover the worthless deed to the old territory in Maine. Holgrave reveals that he is a descendant of the Maule family and that the location of the deed had been passed down to him through his ancestor Thomas, the carpenter, who built the recess and hid the deed there. As the Pyncheons and Holgrave depart for their new home, the ghost of Alice Pyncheon can be heard playing the harpsichord one last time before leaving the House of the Seven Gables for heaven. In the coming days, it’s evident that Phoebe is Clifford’s preferred companion.
