Unfortunately, because it gets dark at noon now (well, 4:30, but still) we only had the chance to hit up one more house before everything shut down (we are planning to come back in the summer, so wait for a part II!) We decided on the Asa Stebbins house, the only all-brick home built in Deerfield. Asa Stebbins, who was super handsome (which is probably why he had 13 kids) was a rich dude who wanted to let everyone know he was rich. He did this by papering his giant house in seriously ugly French wall-paper by Joseph Dufour (depicting the voyages of Captain Cook, per the picture) and by having rooms not papered hand-painted with tacky designs instead. Well, tacky to us, but super chic and modern in 1799. He wanted his house to be worldly, like those in Boston, so he could further his stature by hobnobbing with the elite who'd come up from Hartford. The house was referred to as "the mansion" and I'm sure the folks who were living in shacks were a little miffed, but if they'd invested in cattle breeding like the attractive Mr. Stebbins, maybe they could've had their own ugly wall paper.
We stopped quickly at the museum and bookstore, which smelled like ass (not figuratively), just to see what it had to offer. Turns out what it had to offer was hilariously pretentious conversation! Lizzie and I were cutting through one room, where this dude was regaling some lady with tales of his conversations with the ambassador to India, and she rejoined with stories of transcendentalism, and it's magical impact on her. I meant to let out a soft chuckle to respond to Lizzie's eyeroll, but instead I guffawed like a creep at them. Luckily, our friends were too self-involved to notice us mocking them. I am a nerd who likes culture, but this bunch of people were just trying to one up each other with their cultural capital, and it was silly. We breezed by them again for another quick giggle, until the smell of ass drove us out, and back to the car.
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