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��THE HOME OF LADY WENTWORTH.
��have looked in their infancy upon the pomps and pageants of the vice regal proprietor.
Despite its air of grandeur the house is an architectural freak. It is seldom that one will find so large a house that is as irregular and straggling as this one is. The rambling old pile looks as if it had been put together at different peri- ods, and each portion the unhappy afterthought of the architect who de- signed it. It is simply an extension of wing upon wing, and this whimsical ar- rangement is followed up in the interior. The chambers are curiously connected by unlooked-for steps and capricious lit- tle passages that remind one of those mysterious ones in the old castles, cele- brated by the writers of the Anne Rad- cliffe school. Before we enter the building, however, let us glance for a moment at its founder, Gov. Benning Wentworth.
Few names hold more exalted rank in the annals of the old thirteen colo- nies than that of Wentworth. The pro- genitor of our colonial family was Wil- liam, a cousin of the ill-fated Chancel- lor of Charles the First, who arrived in New Hampshire as early as 1650. Ben- ning Wentworth was a great grandson of William. His father was John Went- worth, who was Lieutenant-Governor of New Hampshire from 171 7 till 1730. The son graduated at Harvard, and afterwards was associated with his father and uncle in the mercantile busi- ness at Portsmouth. He several times represented the town in the Provincial Assembly, was appointed a king's coun- cillor in 1734, and finally, in 1741, be- came the royal governor of the province. His life was long, active, and distin- guished, and during his career New Hampshire advanced rapidly in wealth and prosperity, though not so fast as the governor did. He laid heavy trib- ute on the province, and exacted heavy fees for grants of land. He had the right perhaps. That he was a right brave and distinguised looking cavalier, and well fitted to lead society at a provincial court, his portrait at Went- worth Hall abundantly shows. It rep- resents him dressed in the heighth of
��fashion, with a long flaxen peruke flow- ing in profuse curls to his shoulders. He has a handsome, dignified face, the lips wearing an engaging smile, and the air generally of face and figure of one who is "lord of the manor." Indeed there was everything in the career of the worthy governor to give him what in Europe used to be called the " bel air." Fortune had taken him by the hand from the very cradle, and some beneficent fairy, throughout all his life, seemed to have smoothed away all thorns in his path and scattered flowers before him. He died at the age of seventy-four, having lived as fortunate and splendid a life as any gentleman of his time in the new world.
It was in 1 749 that he commenced to build this mansion, and it was com- pleted the next year. He had been fascinated by the beauty of the place, and the magnificent structure which rose at his command was worthy of its situation. Where he obtained his plan no one knows, but perhaps the irregu- larity of the structure was compensated by the grandeur and sumptuousness of its adornments. Everything about the mansion was on a grand scale. The stables held thirty horses in time of peace. The lofty gateways were like the entrance to a castle. The offices and outhouses might have done credit to a Kenilworth or a Middleham. As it now stands, girt by its ancestral trees, looking out upon the sea, the house seems a patrician of the old regime, withdrawing itself instinctively from con- tact with its upstart neighbors. Having an existence of four generations and more, a stately, dignified, hospitable home before Washington had reached manhood, the Wentworth house may claim the respect due to a hale, hearty old age as well as that due to great- ness.
The interior of the house is as worthy of inspection as the outside premises. The broad generous hall with its stair- case railed in with the curiously wrought balusters, which the taste of the time re- quired to be different in form and de- sign, is suggestive of an old baronial castle. As I passed through it I was
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