Newport

“ As the houses stand well back from the shore, the space between is laid out in bright-hued parterres, that look like Persian carpets spread on the well-kept lawns. The eye at times fairly revels in sumptuous masses of color. Yet Newport was now deserted by the fashionable world, in the month of months, when sea and shore are incomparably enticing and satisfying. ”

“ Newport is more charming even than you remember it; like everything else over here, it has improved. It is very exquisite today; it is, indeed, I think, in all the world, the only exquisite watering-place, for I detest the whole genus. The crowd has left it now, which makes it all the better, though plenty of talkers remain in these large, light, luxurious houses, which are planted with a kind of Dutch definiteness all over the green carpet of the cliff. ”

“ All the world has heard of Newport in Rhode Island as being the Brighton, and Tenby, and Scarborough of New England. And the glory of Newport is by no means confined to New England, but is shared by New York and Washington, and in ordinary years by the extreme South. It is the habit of Americans to go to some watering place every summer,—that is, to some place either of sea water or of inland waters. This is done much in England; more in Ireland than in England; but, I think, more in the States than even in Ireland. ”

“ I grant you that Bar Harbor has its points and even Bailey Harbor is not so bad—do pardon me, Archie! I forgot for the moment your unhappy memories of that place—but Newport alone is perfection gone to heaven! It would please me enormously to join you in a little excursion to Newport, by yacht preferably; but if it leaked out that we had been flying so high it would injure us with the simple-hearted comrades of the great brotherhood. You can imagine what a man like Red Leary would say if he knew we were dining at tables where the jewels run into millions. ”

“ I found out this season why many of the ladies liked Newport so well; it was because at the latter place the ladies and gentlemen were thrown more together. As there was but a small hall to promenade in at Newport, ladies, gentlemen, children, servants and all were together, while at Saratoga the ladies had two very large galleries and the gentlemen one, so they were never thrown together, except those who had families or acquaintances. ”

“ Baptists; for, under the mild fostering of Roger Williams, Newport has become a city of refuge to religious malcontents of every persuasion. All the population, however, is not of like sobriety. A “rage of finery” distinguishes the aristocracy of the island, and silk-stockinged gentlemen, with scarlet coats and swords, silver-buckled shoes and lace ruffles, may be seen in abundance, exchanging stately greetings with ladies in brocades and hoops, as they pass to and fro between the decorous gambrel-roofed houses or lift the brazen knockers of the street-doors. ”

“ The population is as variable as the breezes that blow over the ocean, for Newport has gained fame the world over as one of America's most fashionable watering places. As early as 1830 it began to attract health seekers and others wishing a brief respite from toil in the unnumbered factories in the east, and the movement has continued until the section of the island adjacent to Newport is dotted all over with cottages. villas and cheerful, luxurious homes.
One is delighted to find well paved streets and a city that is withal sunny, gay, and full of color. ”

“ But of all such summer haunts, Newport is supposed to be in many ways the most captivating. In the first place it is certainly the most fashionable, and in the next place it is said to be the most beautiful. ”

“ There is nothing grand, not even anything natural in Newport, but it is very pretty for all that. For an artificial place, destined to house the most artificial people in the world during three months of the year, it is as pleasing as it can be in a light-comedy-scenery style. ”

“ We pass over the sad fate of Newport for years following the Revolution—the misery and dilapidation that succeeded its former prosperity. We turn from the picture which a later French traveller, Brissot de Warville, draws of its poverty and desolation in 1788 to look at the renaissance, the rejuvenation that rescued this historic spot from oblivion. To-day lines of villas and stately mansions have uplifted themselves on the avenues, and gay crowds throng the streets. ”

“ The villas and "cottages," the beautiful idle women, the beautiful idle men, the brilliant pleasure-fraught days and evenings, impart, perhaps, to Newport life a faintly European expression, in so far as they suggest the somewhat alien presence of leisure—"fine old Leisure," as George Eliot calls it. Nothing, it seems to me, however, can take place in America without straightway seeming very American; and, after a week at Newport, you begin to fancy that to live for amusement simply, beyond the noise of commerce or of care, is a distinctively national trait. ”

“ NEWPORT. RHODE ISLAND.
The appearance of Newport is much less imposing, as approached by land, than when viewed from the noble harbour over which it looks. It consists of one long line of close-built, narrow streets running parallel with the water about the base of the steep hill, with many others climbing up its side. It is indifferently paved, and has a very light soil; so that upon the least land-breeze the lower town is filled with the dust, which is blown about in clouds. ”

“ I remember well that household of young people in successive summers at Newport, as [292] they grew towards maturity; how they in turn came back from school and college, each with individual tastes and gifts, full of life, singing, dancing, reciting, poetizing, and one of them, at least, with a talent for cookery which delighted all Newport; then their wooings and marriages, always happy; their lives always busy; their temperaments so varied. ”

“ But Newport is the great school for that instruction, and it is open free to the whole world. Money elsewhere has the same instincts and desires. But in a city, in winter, its sports and effects, however splendid, are divided and hidden. In summer Newport they are concentrated under most fortunate conditions and proceed in the open air. ”

“ Here at Newport we visit friends of Larry's, all of us except the nice Tom, Dick, and Harry I told you of; a Senator Collinge, Mrs. Shuster's friend; the Goodrich family, who are so large and handsome, and a family of two who are a bride and bridegroom, and Mr. Storm. He is not at Newport at all, though the others who are not at Moon Pond stay in a pretty little hotel almost like a private house. It seems odd, they do not have big hotels in this wonderful place. The rich people who have made the new part so wonderful do not like to have tourists come and stay if they can help it. ”

“ Much that is best worth seeing in Newport is never seen by a majority of the people who visit the town during "the season." In the eighteen miles length and nine miles breadth of the island are many nooks and grottos unknown to those individuals who limit their expedition to the ocean drive, and the path across the beaches. Artists know these spots and linger in them. Lovers find them out somehow instinctively. ”

“ It would seem, at the first glance, that nature had expressly fashioned the spot to anticipate the wants and to realize the wishes of the mariner. Enjoying the four great requisites of a safe and commodious haven, a placid basin, an outer harbour, and a convenient roadstead, with a clear offing, Newport appeared, to the eyes of our European ancestors, designed to shelter fleets and to nurse a race of hardy and expert seamen. ”

“ Newport, the garden-isle of Narragansett, received from some of the British officers, during its investment by their troops, the name of the "Eden of America." Those who have enjoyed its delightful scenery during the summer months, rode upon its beaches, and inhaled its balmy atmosphere, will scarcely deem these epithets exaggerated.
It is a spot to be remembered for years, with a fond desire of again beholding it. ”

“ The crowd at Newport is architecturally perfect, while the crowd at Narragansett is in the adobe stage,— that is the conspicuous difference; the one is pretentious and lives in structures more or less permanent; the other lives in trunks, and is even more pretentious. Neither, as a crowd, has more than a superficial regard for the natural charms of its surroundings. The people at both places are entirely preoccupied with themselves—and their neighbors. At Newport a reputation is like an umbrella—lost, borrowed, lent, stolen, but never returned. ”

“ Newport life furnished an excellent opportunity for summer correspondence. We lived near enough the town to enjoy something of its pleasures, yet far enough away to avoid absorption in the whirlpool of gaiety. When we were girls going into society we should have preferred to be nearer the center of things. But the six-mile trip to Newport was in reality a blessing. It enabled us to view the summer doings with a critical though friendly eye. ”

“ The first newspaper of Newport was published in 1732 by James Franklin, a brother of Benjamin Franklin, and in 1758 James Franklin's son, also named James, founded the present Newport Mercury.
Newport is best known as a fashionable resort during the summer and autumn; there are annual horse and dog shows, and fox-hunting is one of the amusements. The harbour is a rendezvous for racing- and pleasure-yachts. On Bellevue Avenue is the country club, the Casino. ”

“ Since that day she had gone far. She was on familiar terms with an English earl and two dukes; she had entertained an emperor aboard her yacht; in New York and Newport there were but two women to dispute her claims as social dictator, and one of these, through a railroad coup of her husband's, would soon be forced to her knees.
It was all in her face. Armitage could read it there in the hard shrewd lines, the cold, heartless, vindictive lines, or the softer lines which the smiles could form when smiles were necessary, which was not so often now as in former years. ”

“ When at the Isles of Shoals, we were a "thin under-waistcoat warmer" than on the main-land. Neal says it is a coat warmer in winter at Newport than at Boston. I remarked that evening promenaders in the streets there were more thinly clothed than would be considered prudent elsewhere. In Newport, according to Neal, it would lose much point to say a man was without a coat to his back. Mr. Cooper, in the "Red Rover," calls attention to the magnificent harbor of Newport in the language of the practiced seaman. It fully meets all the requisites of easy approach, safe anchorage, and quiet basin. ”

“ And Nature herself has had pity on these stones for the mirth, the heroism, the misery they have encompassed: she has propped up the tottering ramparts with forests of tall trees in the courts, balustraded the dizzy heights with a sturdy, bushy growth of ivy, and firmly bound together all the crumbling decay with a centuries-old cording of vine-stems.
A mile from Carisbrooke village lies Newport, the modern capital of the island—modern in its relation to Carisbrooke, but possessing some traces that it was formerly of Roman occupation also. ”

“ It will appear that the prisoner, John Frost, who had been for many years a linen-draper in the town of Newport, possessed extensive influence in this part of the country, the hill district of the county of Monmouth. Newport, you are aware, is the place from which the coal and iron obtained in the mines is exported. It is a considerable town, and great importance is attached to it. It is the highway from South Wales to Bristol, Gloucester, Birmingham, and the north of England. ”

“ It was my last night on sea-girt Nantucket. I do not deny that I left it with reluctance.
[Pg 356]
NEWPORT, FROM FORT ADAMS. CHAPTER XXII. NEWPORT OF AQUIDNECK.
"This castle hath a pleasant seat: the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses."—Macbeth.
Newport is an equivoque. It is old, and yet not; grave, though gay; opulent and poor; splendid and mean; populous or deserted. As the only place in New England where those who flee from one city are content to inhabit another, it is anomalous. ”

“ Newport does not lay itself out much for visitors, holding itself with dignity as the capital—a place for a resident rather than the floating population which so enriches the coast towns in the season. ”

“ When I think of you in Newport, in spite of the heat, leading an absolutely ideal life with your visits, your dinners, and your balls, I am green with envy. These are the times when life seems really almost too complicated to worry through. Or course if I were like John's sister Margaret, sort of half-crazy, who loves the real country, prefers a farmhouse to a hotel, fields and woods to a casino, I might get on well enough. ”

“ The fine harbor and bay of Newport soon attracted commerce from all nations, which heaped its wharves with riches and made princes and magnates of its merchants—a position they seemed born to sustain. The Overings, Bannisters, Malbones and Redwoods kept open house and exercised lavish hospitality—witness, as told by the Newport Herald of June 7, 1766, the story of Colonel Godfrey Malbone's feast on the lawn of his burning mansion, so fine an edifice that its cost had been a hundred thousand dollars in 1744 ”

“ NEWPORT To one who wishes to carry away something of the solemn grandeur of the sea, its vast immensity, immeasurable energy and ageless haunting mystery we would say, "go to Newport."
The authentic discovery of this harbor dates back to April, 1524, and to the French explorer, Verrazano, who anchored two weeks in the harbor and was visited by the Indians of the island. About 1726 Dean Berkley of the English Church built White Hall which still stands, much in its original condition. Trinity is claimed to be the oldest Episcopal church in the United States. ”