Property of Mrs. Charles W. Tobey, Alexandria, Virginia | architect: David H. Condon

In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways." These words from Edith Wharton's autobiography, A Backward Glance, were written on the slip of paper Mrs. Charles W. Tobey hand ed us when we asked her how she had come to build a modern house.

"That's what inspired me," said the widow of the United States Senator. "I decided to give up the old house in New Hampshire, and start a new life." Here is the house she built for it-small, flat-roofed, open through glass walls to the Virginia countryside, in contrast to the tall, gabled, closed-in homestead she left-a proud monument to the past.

Mrs. Tobey has lived on some- what closer terms with the past than most people. She has traveled extensively, collecting antiques in villages and farmhouses in France, Italy and England, at country auctions in New England. The house in New Hampshire was filled with them. But after her husband's death, she says, she began to feel like a curator.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | December 1958