House of Orange

“ On turning to the house on the right hand, an open grove of forest trees affords a view of the orangery, which is seen as perfectly as if the trees were planted on the lawn; and when the orange trees are in flower, their fragrance is diffused over the whole lawn to the house. ”

“ In the centre of the flower garden, there are various posts with iron rods extended from them for the training of creepers. Again, at the extremity, is an artificial grass bank, considerably elevated above the flower beds, planted with the dwarf china rose, which has a very good and natural effect. The orange-house is an oblong building, of great length, with opaque roof and backwall, upright lights only in the front, completely covered with grape vines, having a very fine crop of fruit all over them. ”

“ Claremont was married he built a large and elegant mansion on a landed estate formerly the possession of one of his wife's ancestors. He laid out the grounds according to his own taste, preserving one old oak tree for its antiquity, which stood near the house. Mrs. Claremont had a great passion for orange trees, some half dozen of which were in full bloom at one time. ”

“ This passed, and then came the circle of "suburban residences," as crowded almost as the tottering tenements, but with green grass around them. Frightful spectacles these,—"Queen Anne" and colonial vagaries painted lurid colours, and frantic in their cheap elaboration. Between two affected little cottages painted orange and green and with round towers on their corners, stood a new six-story apartment-house with vulgar front of brown stone, "Romanesque" in style, but with long flat sides of cheap [Pg 6] brick. ”

“ It was built before the Revolutionary War by William Wisner, one of four sons of Captain John Wisner, Jr. William Wisner died in this house in 1803, and his son, William Roe Wisner, who succeeded to the ownership of the farm, and other property by inheritance, was born in this house and lived there continuously until his death at the age of eighty-seven years. Few men in Orange County were better known and none were more highly respected than Mr. ”

“ In many places the ground was thickly strewn with oranges, and the orange-groves were beautiful with golden fruit and silver flowers gleaming among the dark glossy green foliage. Here and there was the mansion of a wealthy planter, surrounded by whitewashed slave-cabins. The negroes at their work, and their black picaninnies rolling about on the ground, seemed an appropriate part of the landscape, so tropical in its beauty of dark colors and luxuriant growth. ”

“ The next Roman edifices of importance in descending the Rhone are found at Orange, the ancient Arausio, the capital of the Cavares. It was taken by Cæsar, and became an important Roman colony. On approaching the town by the railway, one is struck by the appearance of an immense pile of building which rears itself high above all the other structures of the place, but is at too great a distance to allow its features to be distinguished. On closer inspection this turns out to be the proscenium wall of the famous Theatre of Orange. ”

“ Near the gate, on benches, elderly men are sitting, smoking, and enjoying the sunshine. The elders sat in the gate in the Scripture times, and do now in Eastern towns, and here also, where Oriental manners still obtain. In former years this court became a great resort for the people who made a mart, or exchange, as in all ages men have been tempted to make the house of prayer a market-place, and so it often becomes a den of thieves. Now, this Court of Oranges, as it is called, is the resort of old men and children, who enjoy 87the warmth and shade and waters of the holy precincts. ”

“ It is in the evening, when the crescent moon hangs low, that the old House talks to the oaks, living over the days when it held its first young couple, rejoicing with them at the stork’s coming, caring for the little ones as they toddle about the great white-pillared porches, which shade them from too much sun, watching them grow into manhood and womanhood, and finally sending the sons to war with pride and high hope, though deploring the cruel and unnecessary strife between brothers that should have been settled without bloodshed. ”

“ In 1657 she was appointed regent on behalf of her son for the principality of Orange, but the difficulties of her position led her to implore the assistance of Louis XIV., and the French king answered by seizing Orange himself. ”

“ The Orange Garden
(Translation from the Moorish by Walter Harris of Tangier)
I
I cannot find this Orange Garden fair:
⁠The dim dishevelled grass is wet and chill.
Desolate, croaking frogs distress the air,
⁠But birds, if ever birds come here, are still.
Even the oranges have lost their light
⁠And droop forlorn beneath the sombre green. ”

“ It was of this home that Jean François now asked the history. Every child in the village knew it, for, was it not, with its mystery, its ghosts, its inviting splendor, the heart's desire of Nance and me ever since, for us, time began?
It stands in an ample yard, amid old pines, locust trees, and lilac bushes, overlooking the river. It is a great square house of the colonial type, with low wings to the right and left. The windows are large, deep-seated, and many-paned. ”

“ My Dear Almer,--We have been here three days, and are comfortably established in your singularly-named villa, the House of White Shadows. It is a perfect country residence, and the scenery around it is, I am told, charming. As you are aware, I have no eyes for the beauties of Nature; human nature and human motive alone interest me, and my impressions of the neighbourhood are derived from the descriptions of my wife, who enjoys novelty with the impulsive enjoyment of a child. ”

“ In thinking over the character of Orange, the fact that strikes one most is that his character deepened and strengthened as he grew older and in proportion to his sufferings. If he had not been tried to the very limit by misfortunes, and if he had always been rich and prosperous, the finest things in his character might have remained untried and unknown to us. ”

“ Going straight up to him, I said:
"Well, Orrin, what's this? Coming away from the house instead of going to it? I understood that you and Juliet were expecting to visit it together this afternoon."
He paused, startled, and his eyes fell as I looked him straight in the face.
"We are going to visit it," he admitted, "but I thought it would be wiser for me to inspect the place first and see if all was right. An unfinished building has so many traps in it, you know." ”

“ To one of these houses, in the suburb of Ancon, I drove in the early afternoon, and 280presented my introduction, which was honoured with true American cordiality. Once within the gauze fortification (and the door shuts behind you with a spring, lest you should inadvertently admit a casual Anopheles) you find yourself in a delightfully arranged tropical house, with dining-room and drawing-room opening off a central hall, and with the spacious verandah affording what is equivalent to another suite of rooms. ”

“ A path leads through green fields and clumps of orange-trees to the village. In some fields further south the last oranges have been gathered, and thousands of pearl-shaped buds tell that the trees before long will be covered with a glistening snow of scented blossoms. But in many the oranges still reign resplendent: on a grey day they stand out with more vivid distinctness than when the sun blurs them in a luminous haze, leaving them clearly visible only in the level light of its rising or its setting. ”

“ Despite the Italian façade beautifully allied with New Orleans’ beloved iron lace, the interior of the house adhered strictly to the Greek Revival in woodwork and ornamentation. Marvels of workmanship are the handsomely carved door and window frames and the decorated plaster cornices and ceiling centerpieces. ”

“ We are not among those who cast off, and on a sudden condemn, as out of all good taste, the time-honored white house with its green blinds, often so tastefully gleaming out from beneath the shade of summer trees; nor do we doggedly adhere to it, except when in keeping, by contrast or otherwise, with everything around it. For a century past white has been the chief color of our wooden houses, and often so of brick ones, in the United States. ”

“ But our lives are so short, we come and go so fast, no wonder at times the old House seems looking down on us with sadness; for surely the graveyard in the meadow near by tells the story of man’s short existence. The happy, merry people whose voices once made the walls of the old House ring rest there under the myrtle and boxwood, watched over by the nightingale and whip-poor-will. ”

“ She walked to and fro on the wide path beside the tennis lawn then turned into the darkness of the shrubbery, threading her way through moon-spattered arbutus and laurel till she came to a little garden-house which had been built in the reign of Queen Anne. ”

“ In the shadow of the eternal rock, with the wonderful background of mountains, surrounded by all that art can lend nature, is this delicious anachronism of a Queen Anne house, in sage-green and deep dull red, with arched balconies under pointed gables, and carved projections over mullioned windows, and trellised porches, with stained glass loopholes and an avalanche of roofs. ”

“ Chapter V We were left delightfully to ourselves in this pretentious country mansion with the soul of a villa. Frances took up her painting again, and, the weather being propitious, spent hours out of doors, sketching flowers, trees and nooks of woodland, garden, even the house itself where bits of it peered suggestively across the orchards. Mrs. Franklyn seemed always busy about something or other, and never interfered with us except to propose motoring, tea in another part of the lawn, and so forth. ”

“ It was a direct reversal of the ordinary effect in the ordinary theatre: where the play loses in realism because a current of necessarily recognized, but purposely ignored, antagonistic fact underruns the conventional illusion and compels us to perceive that the palace is but painted canvas, and (even on the largest stage) is only four or five times as high as the Prince. The palace at Orange—towering up as though it would touch the very heavens, and obviously of veritable stone—was a most peremptory reality. ”

“ It is served by the Morris & Essex Division of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railroad and by the Orange branch (of which it is a terminus) of the Erie railroad, and is connected with Newark, South Orange and Bloomfield by electric lines. The city lies at the base of the eastern slope of the first Watchung, or Orange, Mountain, and is primarily a residential suburb of New York and Newark; with East Orange, West Orange and South Orange it constitutes virtually a single community, popularly known as “the Oranges.” ”

“ My own home—bearing the tranquil name of Golden End—is an ancient manor; out of a sandy lane turns an avenue of great Scotch firs, passing the house and inclining gradually in its direction. The house is a strange medley; one part of it is an Elizabethan building, mullioned, of grey stone; one wing is weather-tiled and of simple outline. The front, added at some period of prosperity, is Georgian, thickly set with large windows; over all is a little tiled cupola where an alarm bell hangs. ”

“ The passing of the old order has a hundred conspicuous manifestations in New Orleans, perhaps because there is a legend for every old house, a tragedy for every shadow, a romantic blood-stain on every pavement. The Absinthe House takes in lodgers. The Cabildo, the ancient Spanish city hall, is a museum. ”

“ This the old House foresaw, and it opened wide its portals to welcome a Northern family. Being all-wise, it knew that all men are brothers and that between them, God’s finest handiwork, there should be no dissension. This should be left for the dwellers of the under-worlds, that are not so high on the ladder of life as is man.
Never does the old House hold its head quite so high as when the pink-coated horsemen gather with their hounds and thoroughbreds for a cross-country run. ”

“ There is something indescribable there which exhales grace, a green meadow traversed by tightly stretched lines, from which flutter rags drying in the wind, and an old market-gardener's house, built in the time of Louis XIII., with its great roof oddly pierced with dormer windows, dilapidated palisades, a little water amid poplar-trees, women, voices, laughter ”

“ I expected to see the real Southern mansion of the novelists, with enormous piazzas and Corinthian pillars and beautiful avenues; and the white-washed cabins of the negroes in the middle distance; and the planter, in a white linen suit and a wide straw hat, sitting on the piazza drinking mint juleps. Well, I don’t really think I expected the planter, but I did hope for the house. Nothing of the kind. ”

“ Orange is interesting mainly from its Roman remains. The triumphal arch is not only far finer than any other in France, but ranks third in size and importance among those still extant in Europe. Measuring 72 ft. in height, 69 ft. in width, and 26 ft. in depth, it is composed of three arches supported by Corinthian columns. ”

“ This mingling in Judge Seeger's character of the sterner and softer elements, of courage and tenderness, manliness and simplicity, firmness and forgiveness, has inspired in the people of Orange County a respect and affection such as rarely attends upon a public man. ”