Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (85 page)

It's very likely that Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and other luminaries sat in Cadwalader's hairy-paw chairs, lounged on his hairy-paw sofas, were served tea on his hairy-paw tea tables, and perhaps even played cards at his hairy-paw card tables. Would
you
pay extra for an antique chair if you knew there was a good chance that Washington sat in it? If you said yes, trust us—you aren't alone.

But there's one more thing that makes the Cadwalader pieces interesting and among the most sought-after antiques: General and Mrs. Cadwalader saved all of their receipts.

It appears that the Cadwaladers saved every single scrap of paper associated with the remodeling and refurnishing of their home—not just receipts but also handwritten letters, bills of sale, inventory lists itemizing each piece of furniture, even day-to-day documentation of the work as it progressed. Everything. Many of these documents survive to this day and have been carefully preserved by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. How do we know that the Cadwaladers ordered two card tables, three sofas, and a huge easy chair for their front parlor? How do we know that they were made by Philadelphia cabinetmaker Thomas Affleck?

Because it says so on the bill of sale.

Saving receipts may not sound like a big deal, but it is in the world of antiques. The Cadwalader suite of furniture “is one of the few extant suites of furniture that has all its documentation in place,” says Jack L. Lindsey, curator of American decorative arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which owns a number of pieces of Cadwalader furniture. “There were probably similarly ornate and extensive suites of furniture that were produced for other Philadelphians during the time period that are presently unrecognized because all the documentation is scattered,” he says.

Any
hairy-paw furniture made in the late 18th century is rare enough to be quite valuable, something worth many thousands of dollars. So if you happen to find one at a yard sale, you're very lucky. But if the piece you find happens to be listed on Cadwalader's receipts and can be definitively linked to the family, the value
of even a single side chair soars into the
millions
of dollars.

And that's just the side chairs. In the mid-1980s, General Cadwalader's giant easy chair was discovered sitting in the library of a Delaware school, where it was on loan from the owners (who considered it too ugly to keep in their own home). Several months passed before the chair was finally authenticated, but once it was, it sold at auction at Sotheby's for $2.75 million. At the time of the sale—1987—it was the highest price ever paid at auction for a piece of furniture, shattering the record set by an antique French cabinet used at the Palace of Versailles that sold for $1.6 million in 1984.

The general's easy chair was the most valuable chair in the world.

So, would you like to find the rest of the missing furniture? It won't be easy. Mrs. Cadwalader died in 1776, not long after giving birth to her third child; General Cadwalader remarried, had two more children, and then died in 1786. His five surviving children divided his furniture among themselves and rented out his house; it was later sold and then demolished in about 1816.

Over the years the furniture was scattered far and wide as each generation of the Cadwalader family passed on, bequeathing their pieces to friends and relatives. Some pieces are still in the family but many have disappeared and some haven't been seen in more than 200 years. Because the furniture is of such high quality, there's a good chance that many of the missing pieces are still out there, hiding in plain sight, waiting to to be rediscovered. Waiting to make their discoverers rich.

The Cadwaladers' complete set of hairy-paw furniture was huge. Here's just a sample of the items that have already been found, and those that may still be in existence:

• Side chairs.
Cadwalader commissioned at least 12 side chairs and possibly as many as 20; five of them turned up in Ireland in the early 1970s, apparently having found their way there when Cadwalader's great-grandson moved to that country in 1904. The set of five chairs sold for $207,500 in 1974.

Then in 1982 a sixth side chair from the set was discovered, this time in Italy. The Cadwaladers had apparently given the chair to their neighbors the Lewises, who brought it with them to Florence, Italy, and then bequeathed it to a family maid in 1933. Still in the servant's family when it was discovered, the single chair sold at auction for $275,000 that year…and $1.4 million when it came up for auction again in 1999. (A side chair once owned by George Washington sold at the same auction for only $118,000.)

So far, seven hairy-paw side chairs have been discovered, so there may be as many as
13
more still out there.

• Card tables.
One table surfaced in Canada in 1969 and was acquired by the Philadelphia Museum, which already owned a second identical card table. A third was located at an inn in Maine in 1964, where it had been since Cadwalader's great-great-granddaughter Beatrix Jones Farrand had given it to the innkeeper years before. A collector named G. David Thompson bought it for $640; he apparently never realized what he had, because it wasn't until his widow died in 1982 that it was finally authenticated as a Cadwalader original. In 1983 it sold for $242,000 and was donated to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

• Tea tables.
One hairy-paw tea table was found in New England in the summer of 1994, when a Connecticut dealer named William Bartley bought it from an auction gallery that had mislabeled it as an English table. This table is surrounded by more mystery than other Cadwalader pieces that have surfaced. Though it matches the description of a tea table listed in the Cadwaladers' receipts, and its distinctive ribbon-and-flower carved edge is identical to that on other pieces of Cadwalader furniture, it wasn't possible to identify a definitive chain of possession leading back to the Cadwalader family. No matter—the table sold for $695,000 anyway. In 2001 a similar tea table still in the Cadwalader family sold at auction for $1.4 million.

• Sofas.
Only one of the three sofas listed on Thomas Affleck's bill of sale has been found. “There are still two sofas out there unaccounted for,” says John Hays, head of the American furniture department of Christie's auction house. “And they were the most expensive items on the bill: the pair cost Cadwalader £16, four times what the tea table did. They've still got to be out there.”

Ready for the million-dollar treasure hunt? Good luck…

We've noticed in writing this long piece about
Saturday Night Live
that it probably drops more names than any other article in the BRI's history. Here are some more. (Part IV is on page 427.)

Michaels weathered the latest storm of critical attacks and did yet another shake-up after the disastrous 1995 season. The only surviving cast member was Tim Meadows (against NBC's wishes). And the revolving door kept on bringing in new faces: Impressionist Darrell Hammond; MTV's Colin Quinn; stand-up comics Tracy Morgan and Jim Breuer; and from the Los Angeles-based improv group, The Groundlings, Cheri Oteri, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan, Ana Gasteyer, Chris Parnell, and Will Ferrell.

In the late 1990s,
SNL
entered its fourth golden age. How? By getting back to basics. Tom Shales and James Miller explain the resurgence in their book
Live from New York
:

In 1996 and again to an even greater degree in 2000,
Saturday Night Live
returned to its richest vein of humor, American politics, and in the process rejuvenated itself for the umpty-umpth time. The cast was prodigious, the writing team witty and self-confident, and the satire biting.

Will Ferrell, according to many critics and cast members, emerged as one of the funniest people in
SNL
's history. His George W. Bush, along with Darrell Hammond's Bill Clinton and Al Gore, kept the
SNL
's presidential-bashing alive and well. Even the real Al Gore studied
SNL
's send-up of the 2000 presidential debates “to help understand where he had gone wrong with his own debate performance.”

While
SNL
has been hailed for its no-holds-barred takes on politics and television, it's had less then a stellar track record when it comes to dealing with women and minorities. Many who
were there refer to the 17th floor as a “good ole' boys” organization, which is no surprise considering that most of the writers and cast have been white men. And as uneven as the comedy has been over the years, so too has been its take on racial relations.

In the 1970s, Garrett Morris's biggest complaint was that the all-white writing team only gave him stereotypically black roles (he once performed “Proud Mary” dressed as Tina Turner). “I was hired under the terms of the Token Minority Window Dressing Act of 1968,” he half-joked. “I get to play all parts darker than Tony Orlando.”

But that began to change when Eddie Murphy first got exposure as a commentator on “Weekend Update” in 1981. “There's a different kind of black man on
Saturday Night Live
now,” he announced to the world as he held up a photo of Garrett Morris. The next season, Murphy produced and starred in a short film for the show in which he was made up to look like a white man… to see how “the other half” lived. That, along with his portrayals of James Brown and Stevie Wonder, brought the show a black audience.

Damon Wayans joined as a featured player in 1985, thinking that he would take over where Murphy left off. He was wrong. Wayans wanted to improvise his in-your-face brand of racial comedy; the writers wanted him to read his “one line per skit” off of the cue cards. He protested when he purposely flubbed a skit on live television—a cardinal sin according to Michaels—and was fired that night. Wayans would soon get to showcase his talents on Fox's variety show
In Living Color,
which was a huge hit for the fledgeling network. And NBC noticed.

“I got hired because
In Living Color
was on,” said Chris Rock, who joined in 1991. “
SNL
hadn't had a black guy on in eight years, and
In Living Color
was hot, so they had to hire a black guy.” Rock fared somewhat better than Wayans, most notably with his break-out character, urban talkshow host Nat X: “This week's list—the top five reasons why white people can't dance,” he would say wearing a huge afro wig, “Why only five? Because THE MAN won't give me ten!”
That joke hit pretty close to the mark, though, as Rock watched Farley and Sandler each get in twice as many skits. Like Wayans before him, Rock didn't really get to showcase his talents until
after
he left the show.

Tim Meadows has the distinction of being on the show longer than anyone else, and though he had some popular characters (such as the Ladies' Man), the writers never gave him anything too controversial to say. Why? Meadows's heyday fell between the Rodney King riots in 1992 and the O. J. Simpson Trial in 1995—a time when race relations in the United States were tense.

In recent years, Tracy Morgan has added his brand of street comedy to
SNL
. Like Rock and Wayans before him, Morgan was heavily inspired by Eddie Murphy. And like Murphy, he's getting to speak his mind on “Weekend Update” commentaries: “Racial profiling? I'm all for it—if ya' ax me, I say, ‘Shake 'em down!'”

While there have been more women then black people on
SNL
(and only two black women, Ellen Cleghorne and Danitra Vance), very few have been given equal footing with the men—and thus very few memorable characters.

But that trend, too, has been changing. The two stand-outs in recent years: Cheri Oteri's cheerleader (with Will Ferrell) and Molly Shannon's neurotic Catholic student Mary Catherine Gallagher. And although she had no breakthrough characters, Ana Gasteyer showed as much impressionistic range and musical talent as anyone on the show since Phil Hartman—a talent that landed her in a lot of sketches.

In 1999 Tina Fey took over as head writer (the first woman to do so). She completely revamped the struggling “Weekend Update” segment by co-anchoring it with Jimmy Fallon, reminding viewers of the chemistry that Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin had back in the 1970s.
Saturday Night Live
was as funny and current as ever, but would soon face one of its most daunting tasks.

Only two weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001,
Saturday Night Live
began its 27th season on uncharted ground. Lorne Michaels knew that the words “Live from New York” would
have a greater resonance than ever before, so he planned the opening very carefully. After an emotional speech by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who was surrounded by New York firefighters, longtime
SNL
friend Paul Simon performed a soulful rendition of his song “The Boxer.” Then an unsure Lorne Michaels asked the mayor, “Can we be funny?” After a brief pause, Giuliani returned with, “Why start now?” It was perhaps the first good laugh on TV since the tragedy and a sign that life would return to normal.