The fellows gathered in this long ago Baltimore dining room apparently enjoyed a good, long night of holiday cheer. The wine decanters were empty. A chair was overturned. The remnants of a meal were scattered over the mahogany table. The candles had burned down.
This particular room is at 3400 N. Charles St., the address of the 1801 Homewood House Museum, one of Baltimore's superlative but overlooked treasures. This one-time country residence was the home of the son of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one of Maryland's signers of the Declaration of Independence. Today it sits regally atop the green bowl lawn at the main entrance to the Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus.
The Carrolls were also one of the wealthiest families in America. This home, now decorated for Christmas, reflects their position in society. A visit there provides a thoughtful exercise in how we celebrate one of the principal Christian holidays.
"People are sometimes disappointed that Christmas at Homewood is not all red ribbons, trees and bright colors," said Rosanna Moore, the guide, as she led a visitor through the gracious and handsomely outfitted period rooms.
"The Christmas tree arrived at the time of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert," she said.
A Christmas at Homewood is, by comparison with our contemporary festival of poinsettias and electric lights, a chaste and simple celebration.
These glorious parlors, drawing rooms and chambers have modest decorations -- some entwined evergreen sprigs, perhaps some boxwood at the windows, dried mistletoe hanging from above.
Visiting the house, it doesn't take much imagination to envision the coaches of holiday revelers pulling up the drive and guests pouring through the broad front door. This is a house of high-style patricians.
"All we used were the greens found right on the Homewood campus or in this general neighborhood," said Carol Geist, a Homewood volunteer who lives in the Original Northwood neighborhood.
One of the greens tucked into Oriental vases set along a mantlepiece are cryptomeria swatches, little flimsy swags of deep winter's green.
"There's a bush of it growing on Deepwood Road in this neighborhood. It is the sort of green that appears in the old RTC views of the early 19th century," Ms. Geist explained.
In the Baltimore of the first decades of the 19th century, you celebrated Christmas by visiting your friends and sharing their punch bowl and table. It was a social event.
There were simple foods given as gifts -- homemade breads, cakes and preserves. There was also a confection called shrub, a drink made of heavy sugar syrup and fruit. You added rum for a potent kick.
The curators at Homewood decided this year to make this point. They turned the period dining room into a morning after the big party.
"Just look in the room and you can imagine the men drinking and telling stories. They've pulled the wine cellarette close to the table. They are smoking clay pipes. The napkins are in disarray. The chairs are messy. There are scattered nut shells, grapes and currants," Mrs. Moore said.
And with only a room full of clues and physical objects, there is indeed a strong suggestion of a cold and humid December night in Baltimore.
Earlier this week, the house played host to a Homewood 19th century Christmas. Most of the electricity went off and the candles were lighted. (Buckets of water were also set out because of fear of fire, one of the great destroyers of old homes.)
The candles flickered in the reflecting glasses. The low levels of light drew your eyes to the home's excellent moldings and plaster details. Two non-amplified instruments -- a harp and violin -- resounded off the hard plaster walls and wood floors. The dancing taper light, the little bit of evergreen, the sound of "Greensleeves," made for an evening of Christmas enchantment in old aristocratic Baltimore.
And as your eyes work their curious way around the rooms of this monument to high living, you can't help noting the details the curators have set out to remind you of the necessities of life.
Off in the corner of the dining room, where Charles Carroll of Homewood and his male cronies were doubtless discussing and toasting the issues of the Jeffersonian era, is that most essential component of holiday social ritual, a round crockery "night jar," or chamber pot.