Touring Programs
Wallace Nutting's Old America
The newest work of Pontine Theatre, “Wallace Nutting’s Old America,” evokes the millennial nostalgia of the early 20th century with a fascinating look at the romantic notions, eccentric characters and homespun pride that sparked the Colonial Revival Movement.
The pioneers of historic preservation in New England, reacting against the excesses of Victorian tastes and the rise of urbanism and industrialization, looked to Colonial architecture and artifacts as priceless symbols of American virtue — as well as valuable commodities to draw in cultural tourists.
Wallace Nutting became a prominent figure in the preservation movement when, in the years just before W.W.I, he opened his “Colonial Chain of Picture Houses,” a group of five fully restored and furnished Colonial homes in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, including the Wentworth-Gardner House in Portsmouth, still operating as a historic house museum under the guidance of the Wentworth-Gardner and Tobias Lear Houses Association.
Wallace Nutting began his career as a preacher and when, after a nervous breakdown, he left the ministry of God, he took to preaching “the Gospel of beauty,” which he saw enshrined in the works of the Pilgrim ancestors. “I love the earliest forms,” he wrote, “ because they embody the strength and beauty in the character of the leaders of American settlement.”
The houses in his “Colonial Chain” also formed backgrounds for a wildly popular series of hand-tinted photographs of young ladies in period dress posed by the hearth, or the spinning wheel, or the spinet. Nutting sold his photographs through stores and catalogues throughout the country and, by his own estimation, had over 10 million pictures hanging in American homes. He established factories producing reproduction furniture, ironware and textiles. Known as an authority on authentic Colonial furniture, his personal collection now occupies an entire gallery of the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford. Nutting was also a prolific writer and publisher of furniture catalogues, photography books, travel guides – his “States Beautiful” series – and an entertainingly eccentric autobiography.
Wallace Nutting’s correspondence, autobiography and published writings form the centerpiece of Pontine Theatre’s new play. His stay in Portsmouth and his efforts to establish the Wentworth Gardner house as a regional attraction are detailed in newspaper accounts and correspondence with William Sumner Appleton, founder of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. In slide collages, Nutting’s own meticulous photographs of rural landscapes and period interiors lusciously illustrate the many facets of his life and work.
To give a broader sense of the spirit of the times, Pontine’s play also includes portraits of a number of other preservation projects of the early 20th century in Portsmouth, including the dedication of the Thomas Bailey Aldrich Memorial, in honor of Portsmouth’s most famous author (the memorial is now part of Strawbery Banke Museum), and the establishment of the Portsmouth Historical Society at the John Paul Jones House.
Pontine’s Co-artistic Directors M. Marguerite Mathews and Greg Gathers have also woven in stories by area authors that evoke the Colonial Revival spirit. The first is from “The Codfish Ghost” by Elizabeth Perkins of York, Maine. Miss Perkins was a wealthy socialite who summered in York and cherished its sense of antiquity. She and her mother are largely responsible for preserving the buildings of the Old York Historical Society. Her house, its furnishings and her copious writings are now in the collection of the Historical Society. Written as an imaginative and romantic history of the house over four centuries, “The Codfish Ghost” includes a charming account, now given new life in Pontine’s production, of its new owner’s renovations and her remarkable discovery of the house’s many secrets.
“Wallace Nutting’s Old America” also includes writings by South Berwick author, Sarah Orne Jewett. “River Driftwood” is a guide to South Berwick, from a water perspective, and includes a charming portrait of the Hamilton House, which Jewett was instrumental in saving and which is now operated by Historic New England. “The Tory Lover” is Jewett’s historical romance about Captain John Paul Johns and his adventures on “The Ranger,” built in Portsmouth. The scene included in Pontine’s play is the last meeting of Capt. Jones with the lovely Mary Hamilton at a gala ball given in his honor at the Hamilton House.