Mansion Tour
Stop 4.1: Christmas Decor
Design by Dennis Delsignore and Paul Carpentier
The Billiard Room is transformed into a garden conservatory. Orchid, fern and other various prized plant specimens are beneath glass cloches, protecting precious elements of the garden indoors, as the winter wind outdoors whips across Blithewold’s Great Lawn.
Stop 4.2: Pool Games
Pool was taken very seriously at Blithewold. Schuyler Pardee, Marjorie’s cousin, remembers that when he was a young boy Uncle Will McKee would allow him to watch the game, as long as he didn’t get in the way. The major players were William McKee, George Lyon, and Quincy Shaw, but Marjorie herself had the reputation of being able to beat ALL of them. In 1941 Marjorie’s cousin Harry Pardee Keller wrote a poem in the Guest Book about a certain game of pool, which indicates that the Billiard Room was the center of entertainment at Blithewold.
Stop 4.3: Pool Table and Wallpaper
The pool table, made of rosewood and oak with ivory inset, was built around 1900 and restored in 2006. The lamps over the table are bronze with green glass, and the oak chairs around the room are built higher than usual to give spectators a better view of the game.
The wallpaper is original. The rich patina was achieved by adding ground mica to the paper during the manufacturing process. This style of wallcovering was very popular in the early 1900s for masculine rooms — games rooms and libraries. Notice the scoring mechanism high up on the wall, near the ceiling on your right. The built-in cupboard still houses the family’s personal pool cues, with the names Van Wickle, McKee, Lyon, and Shaw engraved on them.
Stop 4.4: The Family Crest
The Van Wickle family crest hangs to the left of the fireplace. A textile conservation specialist estimated that it dates from the early 1700s. The motto “Silentio et Spe” means “Silence and Hope”, and the name ‘de Sille’ refers to the de Sille family who married into the Van Wickle family in 1725 in Somerset, New Jersey. It originally hung from a metal rod in Marjorie Van Wickle’s bedroom where it was unprotected from the elements, and was moved to the Billiard Room after undergoing significant restoration and conservation in 2008.
Stop 4.5: "Blithewold Stone" Fireplace
Notice the “Blithewold Stone” mantelpiece. In several written accounts of the fire that destroyed the first house it is mentioned that Bertie Chesebrough from the Herreshoff Boat Company dug this stone from the living room fireplace and saved it from the fire. It was stored in the Barn until it could be used again, right here, in the Billiard Room.
Blithewold is a Middle English word meaning "Happy Woodland". Blithewold was also the name of a house on the Jersey shore that the Van Wickles rented in the mid-1880s. It was there that Marjorie remembered first seeing the ocean.
Click on the ”Learn More” button below to hear about the objects in the Billiard Room. To continue the tour, exit the room and turn left to the Living Room.
Stop 4.6: The Victrola Talking Machine
Look for the Victrola cabinet immediately to your right. The Victrola was manufactured by the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1925. Victor used the new technology developed for long-distance telephone transmission to engineer a ‘perfect’ acoustical phonograph, and music lovers marveled at the full, lifelike range of orchestral sounds. Only the turntable is electrically powered. The high quality sound reproduction comes from the unique 6-foot horn speaker coiled inside the cabinet, and the aluminum diaphragm reproducer. This machine was fully restored in 1991. It plays 78 rpm records from the family’s collection and it sounds as remarkable today as it did in 1925.