Guy Wetmore Carryl at Shingle Blessedness

Maker unknown

Swampscott, Massachusetts, c.1900

Gelatin silver print

Satirist Guy Wetmore Carryl (1873-1904), identified by one contemporary as Sleeper’s “closest personal friend,” was likely the designer’s first love. Carryl appears here in his Swampscott, Massachusetts, home, a bachelor retreat he named Shingle Blessedness; when he attempted to save the house from fire in 1904, Carryl sustained mortal injuries. His posthumously published novel, Far From the Maddening Girls (1904), celebrates a confirmed bachelor’s project to design his own home. Carryl dedicated the book to his “dear friend and comrade” Sleeper, “in furtherance of an unfulfilled intention.”