Lonely House

Living in South Jersey has spoiled me terribly. As a New Englander, I knew that Groundhog Day was just a tease; there was still plenty of winter ahead. A neighbor recently asked me what New Englanders used to get rid of ice on our driveways and walks and I replied “April.” Sometimes even that was iffy.
I have learned not to have too much faith in an overweight rodent which would much rather sleep, but February to me now means winter is essentially over, no matter what Punxsutawney Phil says. That’s good news for those of us at the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts & Humanities (MAC).
As caretakers of the 1879 Emlen Physick Estate, MAC has brought the mansion back to its former glory but, in the first few weeks of the New Year, it’s a lonely house when there’s nobody around to see it. Like many of our Cape May business neighbors, we take a couple of weeks to do more of the “behind the scenes” work that’s involved in keeping this house a showpiece of the town.
January is a time for the big cleaning jobs, like rugs, furniture, walls and woodwork. It’s a time for taking inventory of the thousands of artifacts, many of them originally owned by the Physick family, that decorate the house. If you remember that the Victorian era was a time of excess where “too much” was never quite enough, you get a better idea of the number of vases and statues, lamps, books, pictures and ornaments that go into this inventory.
It’s also a time when the house, just like most of us, seems to hunker down against the cold winds that howl around the dormers. Those of us who go through the house do so quietly, used to the luxury and elegance, and I’m sure it misses the “oohs” and “ahhs” of the visitors who come through its doors the rest of the year. But it’s sort of sad that we’ve become inured to its beauty and the lifestyle it represents. In fact, these quiet months are a good time for those of us who are locals to get reacquainted. For those of us who work at MAC, it’s a good time to take a more leisurely walk through the Physick’s house, admire their possessions, and marvel at the life they lived in Cape May’s Victorian era. For other local residents, this is a good time to turn off the electronic devices and pull the potatoes off the couch and learn a little bit about the history that shaped us.
The house is open on Saturdays for tours, as well as Sunday on Presidents’ Weekend, and every day beginning in March. It’s nice and toasty warm and you can easily imagine how welcoming it would be to guests of the Physick family who did not have heated cars to travel in when they came to visit. It’s a nice time of year for a leisurely tour and you’re more apt to meet a neighbor than see a car with an out-of-state-license plate. And it’s good for your kids.
History is something that’s all too often taken for granted. We know that if something didn’t happen there we wouldn’t be here, but it’s nothing we can influence so we just accept it and relegate it to a place of relative unimportance. The very concept of “history” is also something that runs the gamut from fear to indifference to loathing in most people. I know I was certainly a lackluster student of history, which makes it all the more ironic that I now find my life revolving around it. But then, it always did, didn’t it?
Barraclough is director of publications and website at MAC.