Waverly

I first saw Waverly on a Governor's School field trip during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school.  I took two classes there, but the class that took me to Waverly was Architectural History.  I still remember the first time I stood in the center of the house and looked up at the huge plaster medallion with its acanthus leaves three floors above me, felt the somehow cool air in the midst of a Mississippi summer being pulled through the house up through the cantilevered balconies to the windows in the cupola, a perfectly designed system of ventilation, a house that breathed.

Everything about Waverly is perfect, really.  The aforementioned cantilevered balconies?  There are three of them, octagonal and perfectly supported by the weight of the house, not one single column needed  to hold them up as they soar like sheltering wings over the main hall.  The house is an architectural masterpiece.  I remember studying that portion of its building during Governor's School, how far ahead of its time the design was.  The house was designed also to have gas that was made onsite to light it, a two-story ice house outback to preserve its foods, and it has its own river landing close at hand.  It is in every way well-thought and self-sufficient.

And then there is the story, the story of the house that was abandoned for fifty years after squabbling heirs walked away, the house inhabited by bats, goats, and bales of hay.  The house used by drunken frat pledges, hunting parties, and God knows how many young lovers trysting.  It became the "spook house," the house of ghosts, the abandoned house in a jungle of brush with the huge magnolia out front waiting, waiting, patient for its resurrection, for the people who would be brave enough to find it and love it and remove the last of the baby squirrels from its light fixtures, who would stand on ladders and scrape off the dirt dobber nests from the dental moldings, who would plaster and paint over the limericks and love songs of those who had written on her walls, who would live without plumbing and without electricity until such time as their restoration efforts permitted it....  It's like a fairy tale, really.   I've been in love with the story of Waverly for years, with the story of the house who waited and the people who gave up everything to be her family.

Seeing Waverly again today, time folded in on itself in an odd fashion.  So much of it was exactly as I remembered.  As with anything that is from the long past, I had forgotten many things.  Too, there were things that had changed and fallen into disrepair.  The maintenance on an old house of any size is a constant chore.  My house needs diligent care and more money than I have at all times.  How much more then does something like a plantation house demand?

As I walked up the drive, the first thing that struck me was how tattered her exterior looked.  I've seen this before in historic homes, especially the white ones for some reason, and indeed, as we sat on the back porch during a portion of the tour, Ms. Snow, one of the owners talked about the incredible cost of repainting.  The painting cost alone is almost equal to what I still owe on my small mortgage.  Then there will be the cost for a new roof in the new future as well...

The great houses of the cotton plantations were built lavishly because there was lavish wealth to maintain them.  Cotton was King, and it was always going to keep coming in.  They were the mansions of millionaires.  They were built with the most modern technology and engineering of their time, in some cases to experiment, in some cases to show off, but in every case to give a bastion of comfort and culture to their families in a place where those things were decidedly lacking, little castles on the frontier. Could their owners ever have looked down through the corridors of time to see a period when they would be museums as well as houses, when they would be not the self-sufficient suns of their own tiny cosmoses, but tiny minor satellites with erratic orbits that no longer see the solar rays often at all?  Could they have foreseen a time when trying to keep the plaster-walled palaces upright would be an ongoing challenge?

Mississippi is full of historic houses, most of them private residences, that are facing these challenges.  Many of them have been restored as ongoing labors of love, couples reclaiming them and pulling them back from the brink of doom slowly over the years, polishing away years of neglect until they shine again.  Some of the houses are owned by charitable foundations.  There are two such houses near me, and they make me terribly sad.  They are in desperate need of serious care.  I think it's better when somebody actually lives in the house, actually invests in it that way, sort of draws that line in the sand and says, "I'm digging in, for better or for worse.  This is where we stand or fall."  When people can lock the door and walk away from it, maybe it's easier to tell yourself that something can wait another day....

Waverly is lucky.  She will shine again.  It made me sad to see her so faded, but I know "her people" will take care of her.  I want to go back and see her when she is repainted, see her be that jewel once more.  But still, I worry.  As money gets tighter and tighter for everyone everywhere, not every place like her will be as fortunate.  And, of course, one always hopes that her own luck, that grace that has kept her and sheltered her through the years of emptiness and goats, the years of pledges and parties, will not run out.....