Rescuing “The Ruins”

by MARILYN KEITH DALY South Berwick Site Manager

Tomorrow we are looking for some friends who mean to come down from town to look at the old house I have often told you about. …The old houses look at each other as if they said, “Good heavens! the things that we remember!”

—Sarah Orne Jewett in a letter to Sally Norton, April 1, 1898. From Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett, edited by Annie Fields, 1911. Transcription by Terry Heller, Coe College.

Above Emily Tyson and Sarah Orne Jewett in the doorway of Hamilton House in South Berwick, Maine. Tyson’s stepdaughter, Elizabeth “Elise” Tyson, took this photograph on June 30, 1895. A beloved place in jeopardy; a mission to save it.

Sarah Orne Jewett had loved Hamilton House since childhood. She had visited the house, located in her hometown of South Berwick, Maine, with her father, a country doctor. As an adult, the celebrated author found respite at Hamilton House, riding her horse, Sheila, across its fields, canoeing in its river, and walking in its woods. In 1881 Jewett wrote in a sketch titled “An October Ride” that serene Hamilton House had eluded “the destructive left hand of progress.” By 1898, however, Hamilton House had fallen into disrepair. Locals had begun calling it “The Ruins.” The owner put the property up for sale.

In Hamilton House lore, Jewett, determined to find a buyer who would restore the place, approached Boston acquaintance Emily Tyson. Tyson, the widow of a financier,

and her adult stepdaughter, Elise, were interested in acquiring a country retreat.

Recently, an 1898 letter that Jewett wrote to Tyson about purchasing Hamilton House came to light. Richard Becker, an antiques dealer in South Berwick, obtained the letter and shared its contents with Historic New England.

In the letter, Jewett wrote Tyson that should she want to buy the property, there could be a delay in closing on the sale because the owner was beset with family issues. She goes on to say that “if you should wish it, I could try to get [the seller] to employ our lawyer…and he would put matters through quickly.”

In confirming that Jewett was instrumental in the Tysons’ purchase of Hamilton House, the letter offers a vital link to the site’s history. It also exemplifies the value of primary source material for researchers. Gone are the filters of interpretation. The reader becomes first-hand witness to the moment in time. Letters from Jewett to her partner Annie Fields and to friends during the Hamilton House restoration evoke a friendship between Jewett and the Tysons deepening beyond acquaintanceship. Jewett wrote of the Tysons staying with her family during the Hamilton House restoration; of sitting in the garden with the Tysons; of going to the circus with them—and even that Emily charitably “paid in a lot of little boys [to the circus].” Jewett noted in a letter to Annie Fields: “Mrs. Tyson has gone down to the house and will not be back until late this afternoon. It is a lovely day to be out of doors and to see about her planting &c.”

Jewett was so pleased about the Tysons’ restoration of the site that she wrote The Tory Lover, a novel anachronistically set on the eve of the American Revolution at Hamilton House (the house was built c. 1785).

The Tysons were so delighted with the novel that they added interior design elements in homage to the work to their first-floor reception room. The reception room also houses a Jewett work, Betty Leicester’s Christmas with the inscription, “For little Emily and her squirrel from their affectionate friend, The Author!”

The twenty-first century visitor to Hamilton House can now use the wrought iron chairs that Jewett and Tyson may have sat in; look out on the garden, river, and fields; and perhaps glimpse a descendant of Emily’s squirrel scampering across the path. The chairs have been conserved for visitors’ enjoyment, the gardens lovingly maintained, the fields opened, and the river is home to a wide variety of birds. With Jewett’s encouragement, the Tysons preserved Hamilton House for their family’s present. Bequeathing the site to Historic New England gave it a future. .

Left Sarah Orne Jewett’s letter dated March 24, 1898, encouraging Emily Tyson to buy Hamilton House. Below Emily Tyson stands at the top step underneath an arbor in the garden at Hamilton House in September 1903.