American Adventures: A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'. Julian Street
I believe that it is true, for it seems to me likely that though Mr. Carroll used the subscription "of Carrollton" in conducting his affairs at home, where there was chance for confusion between his son Charles, his cousin Charles, and himself, he might well have been inclined to omit it from a public document, as to the signers of which there could be no confusion. Further, the fact that he never told the story to Latrobe does not invalidate it, for as every man (and every man's wife) knows, men do not remember to tell everything to their wives, and it is still less likely that they tell everything to their biographers. Further still, Mr. Winthrop visited Mr. Carroll just before the latter's death, and as he certainly did not invent the story it seems probable that he got it from "the Signer" himself. Last, I like the story and intend to believe it anyway—which, it occurs to me, is the best reason of all, and the one most resembling my reason for being more or less Episcopalian and Republican.
Latrobe tells us that Mr. Carroll was, in his old age, "a small, attenuated old man, with a prominent nose and somewhat receding chin, and small eyes that sparkled when he was interested in conversation. His head was small and his hair white, rather long and silky, while his face and forehead were seamed with wrinkles."
From the same source, and others, we glean the information that he was a charming and courteous gentleman, that he practised early rising and early retiring, was regular at meals, and at morning and evening prayer in the chapel, that he took cold baths and rode horseback, and that for several hours each day he read the Greek, Latin, English, or French classics.
At the age of eighty-three he rode a horse in a procession in Baltimore, carrying in one hand a copy of the Declaration of Independence; and six years later, when by that strange freak of chance ex-Presidents Adams and Jefferson died simultaneously on July 4, leaving Mr. Carroll the last surviving signer of the Declaration, he took part in a memorial parade and service in their memory. In 1826, at the age of eighty-nine, he was elected a director of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, and at the age of ninety he laid the foundation stone marking the commencement of that railroad—the first important one in the United States. We are told that at this time Mr. Carroll was erect in carriage and that he could see and hear as well as most men. In 1832, having lived to within five years of a full century, having been active in the Revolution, having seen the War of 1812, he died less than thirty years before the outbreak of the Civil War, and was buried in the chapel of the manor house.
This chapel, the like of which does not, so far as I know, exist in any other American house, is the burial place of a number of the Carrolls. It is used to-day, regular Sunday services being held for the people of the neighborhood. An alcove to the south of the chancel contains seats for members of the family, and has access to the main portion of the house by a passageway which passes the bedroom known as the Cardinal's room, a large chamber furnished with massive old pieces of mahogany and decorated in red. This room has been occupied by Lafayette, by John Carroll, cousin of "the Signer" and first archbishop of Baltimore, and by Cardinal Gibbons. It is on the ground floor and its windows command the series of terraces, with their plantings of old box, which slope away to gardens more than a century old.
Viewed in one light Doughoregan Manor is a monument, in another it is a treasure house of ancient portraits and furniture and silver, but above all it is a home. The beautifully proportioned dining-room, the wide hall which passes through the house from the front portico to another overlooking the terraces and gardens at the back, the old shadowy library with its tree-calf bindings, the sunny breakfast room, the spacious bedchambers with their four-posters and their cheerful chintzes, the big bright shiny pantries and kitchens, all have that pleasant, easy air which comes of being lived in, and which is never attained in a "show place" which is merely a "show place" and nothing more. No dining table at which great personages have dined in the past has the charm of one the use of which has been steadily continued; no old chair but is better for being sat in; no ancient Sheffield tea service but gains immeasurably in charm from being used for tea to-day; no old Venetian mirror but what is lovelier for reflecting the beauties of the present as it reflected those of the past; no little old-time crib but what is better for a modern baby in it. It is pleasant, therefore, to report that, like all other things the house contains, the crib at Doughoregan Manor was being used when we were there, for in it rested the baby son of the house; by name Charles, and of his line the ninth. Further, it may be observed that from his youthful parents, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bancroft Carroll, present master and mistress of the place, Master Charles seemed to have inherited certain amiable traits. Indeed, in some respects, he outdoes his parents. For example, where the father and mother were cordial, the son chewed ruminatively upon his fingers and fastened upon my companion a gaze not merely interested, but expressive of enraptured astonishment. Likewise, though his parents received us kindly, they did not crow and gurgle with delight; and though, on our departure, they said that we might come again, they neither waved their hands nor yet blew bubbles.
Though the house has been "done over" four times, and though the paneling was torn out of one room to make way for wall paper when wall paper came into style, everything has now been restored, and the place stands to-day to all intents and purposes exactly as it was. That so few changes were ever made in it, that it weathered successfully, with its contents, the disastrous period of Eastlake furniture and the American mansard roof, is a great credit to the Carroll family, and it is delightful to see such a house in the possession of those who can love it as it deserves to be loved, and preserve it as it deserves to be preserved.
Mr. Charles Bancroft Carroll, who is a graduate of Annapolis and a grandson of the late Governor John Lee Carroll of Maryland, now farms some twenty-four hundred acres of the five or six thousand which surround the manor house. He raises blooded cattle and horses, and, though he rides with the Elkridge Hunt, also keeps his own pack and is starting the Howard County Hounds, an organization that will hunt the country around the manor, which is full of foxes.
Of the innumerable family portraits contained in the house not a few are valuable and almost all are pleasing. When I remarked upon the high average of good looks among his progenitors, Mr. Carroll smiled in agreement, saying: "Yes, I'm proud of these pictures of my ancestors; most people's ancestors seem to have looked like the dickens."
Among these noteworthy family portraits I recollect one of "the Signer" as a boy, standing on the shore and watching a ship sail out to sea; one of the three beautiful Caton sisters, his granddaughters, who lived at Brooklandwood, in the Green Spring Valley, now the home of Mr. Isaac Emerson; one of Charles Carroll of Homewood, son of "the Signer"; and one of Governor John Lee Carroll, who was born at Homewood.
The Caton sisters and Charles Carroll of Homewood supply to the Carroll family archives that picturesqueness which the history of every old family should possess; the former contributing beauty, the latter dash and extravagance, those qualities so annoying in a living relative, but so delightfully suggestive in an ancestor long defunct. If anything more be needed to round out the composition, it is furnished by the ghosts of Doughoregan Manor: an old housekeeper with jingling keys, and an invisible coach, the wheels of which are heard upon the driveway before the death of any member of the family.
Of the Caton sisters there were four, but because one of them, Mrs. McTavish, stayed at home and made the life of her grandfather happy, we do not hear so much of her as of the other three, who were internationally famous for their pulchritude, and were known in England as "the Three American Graces." All three married British peers, one becoming Marchioness of Wellesley, another Duchess of Leeds, while the third became the wife of Lord Stafford, one of the noblemen embalmed in verse by Fitz-Greene Halleck:
Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
The Douglas in red herrings.
As for Charles Carroll of Homewood, he was handsome, charming,