St. Clement's, or the Taylor Estate, was an extensive manorial pile in Portland, Connecticut. No one has probably ever exerted themselves so much to build anything important in Portland.
The location is on a high bluff above the Connecticut River. The River flows mostly due south out of New Hampshire, and at Middletown, turns east for about three miles, and then passes its last 20 miles flowing fairly straight to the Sound, in a south by southwest direction. The bluff of St Clement's is above that second turn, and, when the trees do not obscure, the house commands a view down the river.
The Taylors had a son, as I recall, who died in WWI. Leaving them without heir to pass their fortune to, they invested their money in this grand architectural gesture. (Although perhaps there was a collateral line.) I happen to have a Greek lexicon that was owned by the son when he was in college, (although how I came by it I do not know).
So the house was built in the 1920's, mostly modelled on a small monastery in France the family had seen on a tour of that country.
The family retained the property until the 1970's, when having run out of Taylors, the estate was given to Wesleyan. (Who, as it turns out, had little use for it.)
I remember one of the first floor bedrooms has been remodelled with cheap materials from the 1960's, so the family had been keeping it up somewhat until that time. I assume it was Mrs. Taylor who was so long lived.
But one curious feature of the gift to Wesleyan was that it came with two men; the Taylor family butler and chauffeur. There were servants quarters on the north or west side of the house, and these two old gentlemen had lived their lives there. Presumably, Wesleyan got the property on the condition that the men be allowed to live out their days there. When I met them they were in their early eighties, and so were born with that century. How many decades of service to the Taylors they had given, I have no idea.
One or both of them were Scots. And Wesleyan no longer expected them to carry out their duties, and with the Taylors gone, there was very little butlering and chauffering to do anyway. So the two spent their time playing high stakes poker games. They weren't worried about their money, and they had lots of time.
I met them when one of them had called in about a broken window latch, and we were dispatched by Wesleyan to go look at it. And then we spent an hour or so catching up on the latest poker arguments, (apparently they both cheated like mad and then argued about it all the time).
Eventually, the two passed, and Wesleyan sold the property to a company that built a hall the size of an airplane hanger on one side, and paved the croquet grounds, and now stages wedding banquets there.
But I like to remember the Taylors and the house they built to assuage and commemorate the loss of their son.
And the butler and the chauffeur. How the world must have seemed to them. They started out at that house in the 20's or 30's, with Dusenbergs and phaetons and towncars serenely navigating the long gravel driveway, and there would have been gowns and satin lapels, and the Taylors living the highlife through the 40's and 50's, but then time passed, and even the great Taylors were gone, but the two servants were still there, virtual possessors of the slowly deteriorating estate. Puttering, chain smoking, with the tv on, and half-empty glasses of stale whiskey on the table. Sic transit, & c.
They had their way in the end, and that pleased them.
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