Acair Fearann

A discussion elsewhere on whether or not the e-book had conquered the book for once and all led me to contemplate this library of not inconsiderable size (around 15,000 volumes) and what it can tell us. 

 Books are multi-level artifacts.  The first level is the information within the book, the actual words as they are written down.  The second level is why the book was written and printed in the first place, this is usually bound up in the identity of the author, the edition, and the publisher, is it a reprint, if so why was it reprinted, and so forth.  The third level is the history of that particular book: the amount of wear, the marginalia, any personal  inscriptions, bookmark, sale history: who are the people buying the book, why did they buy the book, why did they read it or not read it, what did they think of it, why did they keep it.  Combined with this and the previous level is the quality of the edition: what is the quality and type of binding, is this a presentation volume or a pocket edition, what other editions of the book are printed at this time; those questions tell us about the wealth of the society, of the buyer, the level of technology, the status of books in the society.  Lastly, the fourth level: the book in relation to other books in the library, how is the library organized, what other books on that subject are there, what are the other subjects, other books of that era, are they mostly high quality bindings or standard, well read or not, written in or not? So forth.

Looking at the library as a whole can tell you a great deal.  This is more obvious with a private library, but public and even copyright libraries can yield a great deal of information simply by looking at the patterns of acquisition.  Esperanza is a case in point: the books greatly inform our understanding of the people.  I can identify several sub-collections, for example: Julie’s books are primarily literature of the 1800’s, and primarily of the Victorian morality rather than the more avant-garde of the era (no Mark Twain, but Harriet Beecher Stowe) and has a heavy emphasis on other female authors.  Most of these books are heavily used.  WWE’s sub-collection is dominated by two sub-groups: well read books on or by poets from the 1800-1930’s, mostly American; and a large number of high quality presentation volumes, most by Century company, not all of those are read, some still have uncut pages.   Lucy’s collection: mostly travel, mystery stories, literature.  Newman’s collection of science and language.  Then there are other sub-collections: travel, art, gardening, history: these subject categories cross over and can be resorted by person, time period, etc.  And so forth. 

For the historian, it is a good thing that this wasn’t all on ebooks…

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Selimus omnium imper Turcarum/ Terribilis sophim vicit ac fugavit cam/ Sonum et tomobeum multis delevit/ praeliis Aegyptu Arabiaq suo adiecit/ Imperio reversus Constantinopolim vl/ cusim renibus contraxit, quod cancris/ in morem serpens eum extinxit Ann/ Regini 7

Got that? U’s look like V’s, everything is capitalized and the right-hand side is missing a centimeter or so, where the inscription is broken off.  It is inscription Latin, which is notoriously weird.  However, a quick and dirty translation runs roughly: ‘Selim, emperor of all the Turks, of terrible wisdom, fought and conquered…with many battles added to his empire Egypt and Arabia and returned to Constantinople. He contracted a cancer of the kidney in the manner of sirpence (a skin infection of anthrax) and died in the year… the seventh of his reign.’

Selimus I was a real person: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selim_I

He also had a dubious play written about him in 1594 by Robert Greene called ‘Selimus, Emperor of the Turks’.

You are probably wondering what exactly this has to do with the house?  Well some of you may know of the dark painting lurking on the mantle, the guy in the turban?  While cleaning the other day, curiousity drove me to grab a flashlight and figure out the almost illegible writing on it.  The result is above.  Of course, none of that answers the questions of who picked it up and why? I am sort of wondering, given the literary inclinations of the house, if it has more to do with the play than with anyone’s propensity for picking up odd souvenirs of dubious quality while travelling in the Middle East in the late 1800’s.  But I simply don’t know, I do know it has been on the mantle for at least sixty years, but that doesn’t help.

Now aren’t you glad you know all that?!

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One of the interesting things when examining houses is the floorplan and what it reveals about the intended use of the house.  Usually, large houses of the nineteenth century tends towards circular traffic patterns, often with multiple circles, or semi-circles, orientated around a central focus.  This central focus is usually an entry-hall with a grand staircase.  The houses may have large amounts of outdoor access/windows but you can usually see no more than one view at a time, and people can avoid each other in the house due to the multiple circular patterns. 

Two examples more than a century apart illustrate the lasting attraction of this circular, inwards looking plan.  Gore Place in Waltham, MA was built in the late 1700’s.  An entry way has three interior options: directly ahead into the dining room, turning left past the main stairs, through a library, and into the dining room; turning right through a parlor, past the entry to the servants’ wing, and into the dining room.  Hillstead in Farmington, CT built c.1900 has a similar pattern: the large entry containing the stairs leads directly to the dining room, swing left in front of the stairs and you can make a circuit through the libraries before popping back out under the stairs in the hall again just before the dining room’s hall entrance; swing right and you make a circuit through the main drawing room and parlor before entering the dining room.

In both cases there is only one ‘public’ stairs to the second floor (Gore has another due to an addition), but other stairs from the servants’ quarters also exist.  Traffic must cross through the central hall, but the two wings of the house are utterly separate, as is the dining room/hall concept.

Which leads us to Esperanza…Circles don’t work.  Unless you are using the porches as exterior rooms, at which point you can make rings.  In fact, this was almost certainly part of the plan.  The house functions extremely well if the east porch and all four of its doors are used, even more function is gained when the four west door are used as well.  This is because the ground floor is essentially one giant hallway, only one interior circle is possible and this involves only one room. (leaving aside the butler’s pantry).  There are three ‘public’ staircases, so vertical circles are possible; a fourth staircase is something of an anomaly for the house: it runs from the kitchen (private) to what was a library (public).  In all but two rooms you can see through the house, and for most of the length you can see 270 degrees, with views to the east, west and north (actually in one spot you can also see south).

This creates a house that has no strong tendency towards division, unless you use the stairs (or outside) you cannot avoid people.  It also creates a house which lacks a central gathering spot.  There is no entry way, each room has its own access to the exterior.  The downside of all this is perennial confusion for the deliveryman, but also that the house can handle two wildly different group sizes depending on whether or not the porches are in use.  Fifty people is nothing in the summer; fifteen is crowded in the winter, not because there isn’t space (there is ample to lose fifteen or fifty) but because if a cluster forms getting out of or through a room becomes difficult.

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This house is designed to watch the sunset: nearly a solar calendar, today the sun was just a few degrees from its swing up the south hedgerow.  The summer solstice is nearly one quarter of the way up the north hedgerow.  Needless to say, I often try to watch the sunset.  It is, for me, a devotional exercise, a few minutes devoted to respectful admiration of the beauty of the world before me.  When I manage to take these few minutes, I feel that it is, an atavistic ‘backwards’ instinct I am sure, disrespectful to turn away before the sun has set, which of course leads to a mild fidget and then really observing where I am at that time. 

Today, I was in the dining room, and the sunset was a great swell of gold and then a perfect sun in the gap below grey clouds.  And I watched as the sun travelled through this gap.  The dining room has a large western window and a mirror exactly opposite, both are old glass.  Now, glass is one of the telltales when you look at an old building.  Modern windows, even those built in old patterns, have no waves and so they have correct reflections, but old glass creates distorted reflections.  The house has new storm windows, and when they are shut, as they are now, from the outside the house appears to have new windows: flat, harshly correct reflections.  But inside the light comes through the old glass, and so, as with the reflections, the light bends and twists, every wave in the glass creates a shadow or refraction.  The sun today had a double above it, and the light was banded on the walls, both east and west.  For but a minute what was Lancaster white trim became tiger’s eye gold before fading into twilight.  A gift of place and time.

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Without modern climate control systems.  Air conditioning is a rather recent invention, but the problem of how to remain comfortable in the summer is hardly new.  The obvious, major steps which the lucky few could manage all helped to create Esperanza: buy a summer house outside of the city, ideally on a hill.  (one has to wonder if the cooling benefits of being on a hill were of equal importance to the view when so many of these summer estates were selected, we assume it was  the view only…but we have the option of a/c)

Esperanza then takes the next step: add large porches, if possible all the way around, this creates shade for both those sitting outside and for the house itself.  Not only is the first story shaded, but so is the ground surrounding the basement.  The last step is the most extreme at Esperanza: orientation for sun and wind.  In a house designed for winter survival, as seen in your earliest farmhouses, the largest face faced south if at all possible.  This house disobeys that rule.  At 30 feet wide on its south/north faces and 100 feet on its east/west, the difference is unusually large.  But this configuration is ideal for the summer.  The long axis is located along the ridge of the hill, only a few degrees off true north.  What this means is the prevailing winds are almost always hitting the long west side.  It also means that with only four exceptions all the rooms on the first two floors have full cross ventilation, in some cases the rooms are the full width of the house, in others the arrangement of rooms permits the cross ventilation.

All of which is ideal for a pleasant summer time experience without the need for any sort of climate control.  It also means that on a damp, windy day such as this…I am acutely aware that we missed closing a storm window on the other side of the house.

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