Democratic Messenger

EX-GOV. SPRAGUE'S VILLA.
The Curious Mansion Overlooking the Sea Opposite Newport.
Canonchet is a woman's fancy, pictured by gables, turrets, angles, verandas, finials, blue, brown and gilt. Canonchet was the name of a chief of the Narragansett tribe of Indians. It was adopted by Mrs. Kate Chase Sprague for the famous villa that overlooks the sea opposite Newport.
When Kate Chase became Mrs. Sprague she made the old house her summer home one year, and then conceived the plan of making it into a villa. Her husband stipulated that the old building should be kept as to its roof and walls for historic associations, but gave his wife permission to go ahead with her other plans. She built one tower, and then, to better the proportions, she built another. She put on piazzas and extensions. Two more towers were found necessary to improve the outline. Work that did not please her was torn down, and repeated somewhere else. The roof became a curiosity of angles, resembling a mathematician's idea of a mountainous country. Various entrances were made, but no grand entrance was among them, so that a visitor does not know which is the front door.
The interior was rearranged. Halls were made to cross-cut each other like galleries in a mine. Sixty rooms were provided for, and after the work was done an architect was hired to make a plan of each floor. The plans were framed and hung in conspicuous places as indices to the labyrinth. When the carpenters and plasterers moved off the grounds, a colony of Italian fresco painters moved on. A Boston artist, at a large salary, was engaged to superintend the designs. A blue room, in imitation of one in the White House, was made at great expense. There was one room made for Chief Justice Chase, most elaborately decorated. The library on the second floor cost $10,000. A library on the third floor was constructed for Mrs. Sprague's own use. The frescoers were put aside for the wood carvers. Money was spent without stint. The mistress of the mansion came back from Europe full of ideas about wood carving. She brought back an old carved wood mantel that once filled the room in the Tuileries occupied by Marie Antoinette. Black oak carved pictures formed its facade. Smaller carved mantels were taken from European castles for the Rhode Island villa.
A grand staircase was projected. It leads from within the porte cochere to the top of the tower—its ending being as odd as its beginning. It cost $30,000, but it does not afford the most convenient means of reaching the upper stories. A running, unbroken line of carving extends from the top to the bottom. The newel is a marvel of carving and polishing. Two polishers were kept at work two years to give the staircase the polish that it still retains. Nothing in New York resembles it in beauty. It is doubtful whether it can be matched in this country. The steps are as smooth as glass. The stairs wind upward with such unbroken grandeur that the natural expectation that they lead to some grand salon gives way to disappointment at their abrupt termination in the tower.
On the landing at the second floor there is a wall hole surrounded with a carved oak balustrade. There is a window at each landing, and in the elaborately engraved plate glass there are exquisite little circular paintings representing Indian scenes, Rhenish landscapes, ocean views and other designs. The staircase is uniform in beauty and richness until it ends.
Carved mermaids of polished oak hold up the shelf of a mantel in the dining room with graceful, plump arms. There is a sophisticated expression in their faces, resembling that of a Washington belle, while Bacchus, with his wreath of grape leaves over his brow, seems to leer at them from the top of the carved sideboard opposite. The dining table is also elaborately carved with reminiscences of grand feasts, rich in the products of the field and the vintage. At each end of the dining hall is an elevated annex, lined and pillared with oak. One was almost made of finely engraved plate glass, through which the stretch of the ocean could be seen.
Surprises await the visitor in the house. Up in one tower where nothing is expected is a beautiful little room in Pompeian red, spangled with gold, where meals for two were served. On the first floor is the room for a page, whose duty it was to attend at the door, to keep the cards of visitors neatly arranged, and keep up a book of addresses of Mrs. Sprague's friends. Next to this was the telegraph office, where an operator was kept in summer months. Where one would expect to find the parlors is a kitchen, with a stove that cost $400, and a sink made of red marble. A dish room, next to it looked like such an apartment in a club house. It contained the most delicate and transparent china, fine Venetian glass carafes, the choicest glassware of every description, and wine glasses of the frailest sort. Further on, in an odder place, is a laundry. Everywhere, however, there is a scarcity of closets, which, had a typical New England housewife been the architect, would have preponderated. The parlors were never finished. They are not large, and are not well placed. The fresco paintings were elaborate, and the walls were hung with white satin that cost $12 a yard.
A sudden turn brings into view a gorgeous apartment, floored with polished marble, with a dismantled fountain. The design was Moorish. If a guide had said, "Here the odalisques used to sport and bathe," it would not have seemed strange, for by this time Rhode Island was forgotten, and the chimera of architecture repeatedly suggested the Orient. The apartment was, however, designed for a music room. Mrs. Sprague intended to have six grand pianos there. The fresco painters had outlined a beautiful design, illustrating the chase of a butterfly by boys, and it was partly worked out. When the financial crash came they dropped the paint pots upon the floor, and they remain there. The room is a splendid ruin.
There is scarcely a picture or a painting in the house. In the daintily finished blue and gray room designed for Chief Justice Chase is an unframed oil portrait of a pretty blonde girl with her hand on a pet dog's head. It was that of his daughter by his first marriage, who died in childhood. The house was unevenly furnished. A carved mantel of black oak that would be treasured by Sypher was in an obscure room. A massive Venetian armoire and other Venetian furniture was mixed in with Yankee household goods. A feature of the construction of the house is a false hearth in each room, beneath which is a chute for ashes and dust leading to the cellar. Electric bells were scattered through the house. There are splendid chandeliers, but no gas.
Amid these scenes of decay ex-Gov. Sprague and his boy Willie have lived for several years, in solitude broken by great excitement as the officers of the law have come about the place. Fifty guests, with thirty servants, at one time spent merry days here at the expense of the host, who keeps a loaded shotgun now resting on the carved mantel upheld by the mermaids. An occasional lady friend has, in visiting the place, put a check to the ruin and the loss by having the rich carpets moved from beneath the leaks, and securing the silverware found behind books in closets, and even in the grass on the lawn. Much of the furniture has been boxed up and sent away from Canonchet, and much remains.
One room was not opened until recently by ex-Gov. Sprague. It was the one occupied by his wife, and when she quitted Canonchet the door was locked and her husband carried the key. When she obtained a divorce, he packed up her goods and sent them to her. The room was known among visitors as the "mysterious chamber." When the ex-Governor showed the mansion to visitors he passed this closed door in silence.
Mrs. Sprague's plans were never completed. She hoped to make it the grandest villa in America, and it is said that her early ambition was to establish a political salon far from all rivals, where her entertainments would attract the men of power and influence in the land, who could help her in her design to make her father President of the United States. When this ambition was blighted, she is said to have desired to reign as social queen, and she prepared her environment accordingly.
When the first batch of work was finished on Canonchet, ex-Gov. Sprague, then a man of large affairs, was under the impression that it had cost about $40,000. One day his brother Amasa, who had had charge of the finances, asked him about insuring the place.
"Well, put $25,000 on it," said the ex-Governor.
"Twenty-five thousand!" exclaimed Amasa, "Do you know what it has cost?"
"Not over $50,000."
"Well," said Amasa, "here are bills for $600,000."
The property which was sold recently for $62,250 cost nearly if not all of a million dollars. In the whirligig of time it passes into the hands of the husband of a descendant of old Gov. Atwood, Robinson. Mr. Francis D. Moulton, it is believed, has purchased it for a speculation. It has often been talked of as a grand club house, and again as a gambling house and cafe for millionaires. The landscape about it is in its primitive state. Two hundred acres of it are made up of a salt marsh with an inlet from the sea. Mrs. Sprague expected that her husband would build ornamental stables and adorn the grounds, but he never did. There is not yet a setting for the costly and odd jewel. The future of the place is apt to be a part of the summer life at Narragansett.