Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast

Among the earliest records, I noticed one of five shillings paid for a pair of stocks; and of a gallery put up, in 1694, in the meeting-house, for the women to sit in. Any townsman entertaining a stranger above fourteen days, without acquainting the selectmen, was to be fined. What would now be thought of domiciliary visits like the following? "One householder or more to walk every day in sermon-time with the constable to every publick-house in ye town, to suppress ill orders, and, if they think convenient, to private houses also."

I found the town quiet enough, but the youngsters noisy and ill-bred. There seemed also to be an unusual number of loiterers about the village stores; I sometimes passed a row of them, squatted, like greyhounds, on their heels, in the sun. Those I noticed whittled, tossed coppers, or laughed and talked loudly. Many of the men were employed at Kittery Navy Yard.

From observation and inquiry I am well assured our Government dock-yards are, as a rule, of little benefit to the neighboring population. The Government pays a higher price for less labor than private persons find it for their interest to do. The work is intermittent; and it happens quite too frequently that the dock-yard employé is always expecting to be taken on, and will not go to work outside of the yard; he is especially unwilling at wages less than the Government ordinarily pays, upon which labor in the vicinity of the yard is usually gauged.

A charming ramble of an afternoon is to Fort Constitution, built on a protruding point of rocks washed by the tide. When I saw it the old fortress was casting its shell, lobster-like, for a stronger. The odd old foot-paths among the ledges zigzag now to the right or left, as they are thrust aside by intruding ledges. Much history is contained within the four walls of the work.[123 - The reader will do well to consult Belknap's admirable "History of New Hampshire," vol. ii.; Adams's "Annals," or Brewster's "Rambles about Portsmouth." Some sort of defense was begun here very early. In 1665 the commissioners of Charles II. attempted to fortify, but were met by a prohibition from Massachusetts. In 1700 there existed on Great Island a fort mounting thirty guns, pronounced by Earl Bellomont incapable of defending the river. Colonel Romer made the plan of a new work, and recommended a strong tower on the point of Fryer's (Gerrish's) Island, with batteries on Wood and Clark's islands. In December, 1774, John Langdon and John Sullivan committed open rebellion by leading a party to seize the powder here. The fort was then called William and Mary. Old Fort Constitution has the date of 1808 on the key-stone of the arch of the gate-way. Its walls were carried to a certain height with rough stone topped with brick. It was a parallelogram, and mounted barbette guns only. The present work is of granite, inclosing the old walls. The new earth-works on Jaffrey's Point and Gerrish's Island render it of little importance.] Adjoining is a light-house, originally erected in 1771.

While engaged in sketching the gate-way and portcullis of old Fort Constitution, I was accosted by a person, with a strong German accent, who repeated, word for word, as I should judge, a mandate of the War Office against the taking of any of its old ruins by wandering artists. He then walked away, leaving me to finish my sketch without further interruption.

On a rocky eminence overlooking the fortress is a martello tower, built during the war of 1812, to guarantee the main work against a landing on the beach at the south side. It has three embrasures, and was begun on a Sunday, while two English frigates were lying off the Isles of Shoals. Sally-port and casemates are choked with débris, the parapet grass-grown, and the whole in picturesque ruin. Many of these towers were erected on the south coast of England during the Napoleonic wars to repel the expected invasion.

Another pleasant walk is to Little Harbor, taking by the way a look at the old house near Jaffrey's Point, that is verging on two hundred years, yet seems staunch and strong. The owner believes it to be the same in which Governor Cranfield[124 - Governor of New Hampshire from 1682 to 1685. The house is the residence of Mr. Albee.] held colonial courts. This was one of the attractive sites of the island, until Government began the construction of formidable earth-works at a short distance from the farmstead. The Isles of Shoals are plainly distinguished, and with a field-glass the little church on Star Island may be made out in clear weather. I enjoyed a walk on the rampart at evening, when the lights on Whale's Back, Boon Island, White Island, and Squam were seen flashing their take-heed through the darkness.

Little Harbor, where there is a summer hotel, was the site of the first settlement on the island. At Odiorne's Point, on the opposite shore, was commenced, in 1623, the settlement of New Hampshire. It is now proposed to commemorate the event itself, and the spot on which the first house was built, by a monument.[125 - Odiorne's Point is in Rye, New Hampshire. The settlement began under the auspices of a company, in which Gorges and Mason were leading spirits. Their grant covered the territory between the Merrimac and Sagadahoc rivers. Under its authority, David Thompson and others settled at Little Harbor, and built what was subsequently known as Mason's Hall. Disliking his situation, Thompson removed the next spring to the island now bearing his name in Boston Bay. From this nucleus sprung the settlements at Great Island and Portsmouth. The settlement at Hilton's Point was nearly coincident.]

Captain John Mason is known as the founder of New Hampshire. His biography is interwoven with the times of the giant Richelieu and the pigmy Buckingham. He was treasurer and pay-master of the king's armies during the war with Spain. He was governor of Portsmouth Castle when Felton struck his knife into the duke's left side; it is said, in Mason's own house. The name of Portsmouth in New Hampshire was given by him to this outgrowth of Portsmouth in old Hampshire. At a time when all England was fermenting, it seems passing strange Gorges and Mason should have persisted in their scheme to gain a lodgment in New England.

In Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe" the following passage occurs: "The ancient forest of Sherwood lay between Sheffield and Doncaster. The remains of this extensive wood are still to be seen at the noble seat of Wentworth. * * * Here hunted of yore the fabulous Dragon of Wantley, and here were fought many of the most desperate battles during the Civil Wars of the Roses; and here also flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws whose deeds have been rendered so popular in English story."

Reginald Wentworth, lord of the manor of Wentworth, in Berks, a. d. 1066, is considered the common ancestor of the Wentworths of England and America. The unfortunate Earl of Strafford was a Wentworth. On the dissolution of the monasteries, Newstead Abbey was conferred on Sir John Byron by Henry VIII. Its site was in the midst of the fertile and interesting region once known as Sherwood Forest. Here was passed the early youth of the brilliant and gifted George, Lord Byron, and in the little church of Newstead his remains were laid. The name and title of Baroness Wentworth were in 1856 assumed by Lady Byron, whose grandfather was Sir Edward Noel, Lord Wentworth.

Another of the distinguished of this illustrious family was the Marquis of Rockingham, who voted for the repeal of the Stamp Act, and acted with Chatham against Lord North.[126 - Peace with the thirteen colonies was proposed under the administration of Rockingham, about the last official act of his life. His name is often met with in Portsmouth.] It was at him, while minister, the pasquinade was leveled,

"You had better declare, which you may without shocking 'em,
The nation's asleep and the minister Rocking'em."

The seat of the Wentworths at Little Harbor is at the mouth of Sagamore Creek, not more than two miles from town. Among a group of aged houses in the older quarter of Portsmouth, that of Samuel Wentworth is still pointed out.[127 - The house stands at the north end of Manning, formerly Wentworth Street, and is thought from its size to have been a public-house. The same house was also occupied by Lieutenant-Governor John, son of Samuel Wentworth. Samuel was the son of William, the first settler of the name. He had been an innkeeper, and had swung his sign of the "Dolphin" on Great Island. Hon. John Wentworth, of Chicago, is the biographer of his family.] His monument may also be seen in the ancient burial-place of Point of Graves. The family seem to have been statesmen by inheritance. There were three chief-magistrates of New Hampshire of the name, viz.: John, the son of Samuel; Benning, the son of John; and John, the nephew of Benning.

The exterior of the mansion does not of itself keep touch and time with the preconceived idea of colonial magnificence. Its architectural deformity would have put Ruskin beside himself. A rambling collection of buildings, seemingly the outgrowth of different periods and conditions, are incorporated into an inharmonious whole. The result is an oddity in wood. Doubtless the builder was content with it. If so, I have little disposition to be critical.

Beyond this, the visitor may not refuse his unqualified approval of the site, which is charming, of the surroundings – the mansion was embowered in blooming lilacs when I saw it – and of the general air of snugness and of comfort, rather than elegance, which seems the proper atmosphere of the Wentworth House.

Built in 1750, it commands a view up and down Little Harbor, though concealed by an eminence from the road. I had a brief glimpse of it while going on Great Island via the bridges. It is said it originally contained as many as fifty-two rooms, though by the removal of a good-sized tenement to the opposite island the number has been diminished to forty-five. There is, therefore, plenty of elbow-room. The cellar was sometimes used as a stable: it was large enough to have accommodated a troop, or, at a pinch, a squadron.

Prepared for an interior as little attractive as the outside, the conjecture of the visitor is again at fault, for this queer old bundle of joiners' patchwork contains apartments which indicate that the old beau, Benning Wentworth, cared less for the rind than the fruit.

"Within unwonted splendors met the eye,
Panels and floors of oak and tapestry;
Carved chimney-pieces where on brazen dogs
Reveled and roared the Christmas fires of logs;
Doors opening into darkness unawares,
Mysterious passages and flights of stairs;
And on the walls in heavy gilded frames,
The ancestral Wentworths with old Scripture names."

The council chamber contains a gem of a mantel, enriched with elaborate carving of busts of Indian princesses, chaplets, and garlands – a year's labor, it is said, of the workman. The wainscot is waist-high, and heavy beams divide the ceiling. As we entered we noticed the rack in which the muskets of the Governor's guard were deposited.

But what catches the eye of the visitor soonest and retains it longest, is the portraits on the walls. First is a canvas representing the Earl of Strafford[128 - His second wife was Henrietta du Roy, daughter of Frederick Charles du Roy, generalissimo to the King of Denmark.] dictating to his secretary, in the Tower, on the day before his execution. At his trial, says an eye-witness, "he was always in the same suit of black, as in doole" (mourning). When the lieutenant of the Tower offered him a coach, lest he should be torn in pieces by the mob in going to execution, he replied, "I die to please the people, and I will die in their own way."

Here is a portrait from the brush of Copley, who reveled in rich draperies and in the accessories of his portraits quite as much as in painting rounded arms, beautiful hands, and shapely figures. This one in pink satin, with over-dress of white lace, short sleeves with deep ruffles, and coquettish lace cap, is Dorothy Quincy, the greatest belle and breaker of hearts of her day. It was not, it is said, her fault that she became Mrs. Governor Hancock, instead of Mrs. Aaron Burr. When in later years, as Madam Scott, she retained all the vivacity of eighteen, she was fond of relating how the hand now seen touching rather than supporting her cheek, had been kissed by marquises, dukes, and counts, who had experienced the hospitality of the Hancock mansion; and how D'Estaing, put to bed after too much wine, had torn her best damask coverlet with the spurs he had forgotten to remove.

Other portraits are – Of Queen Christina of Sweden, who looks down with the same pitiless eyes that exulted in the murder of her equerry, Monaldeschi; one said to be Secretary Waldron, a right noble countenance and martial figure; and of Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Sheaffe.

I could be loquacious on the subject of these portraits, the fading impressions of histories varied or startling, of experiences more curious than profitable to narrate. In their presence we take a step backward into the past, that past whose lessons we will not heed. Hawthorne, standing before a wall covered with such old counterfeits, was moved to say: "Nothing gives a stronger idea of old worm-eaten aristocracy, of a family being crazy with age, and of its being time that it was extinct, than these black, dusty, faded, antique-dressed portraits."

The old furniture standing about was richly carved, and covered with faded green damask. In the billiard-room was an ancient spinet, quite as much out of tune as out of date. Doubtless, the flashing of white hands across those same yellow keys has often struck an answering chord in the breasts of colonial youth. Here are more portraits; and a buffet, a sideboard, and a sedan-chair. Punch has flowed, and laughter echoed here.

The reader knows the pretty story, so gracefully told by Mr. Longfellow, of Martha Hilton, who became the second wife of Governor Benning,[129 - Bennington, Vermont, is named from Governor Wentworth.] and thus Lady Wentworth of the Hall.

We can see her as she goes along the street, swinging the pail, a trifle heavy for her, and splashing with the water her naked feet. We hear her ringing laughter, and the saucy answer to Mistress Stavers in her furbelows, as that buxom landlady flings at her, in passing, the sharp reproof:

"O Martha Hilton! Fie! how dare you go
About the town half-dressed and looking so?"

The poet's tale is at once a history and a picture, full of pretty conceits and picturesque situations. Fancy the battered effigy of the Earl of Halifax on the innkeeper's sign falling at the feet of Mrs. Stavers to declare his passion.

But Benning Wentworth, governor though he was, was none too good for Martha Hilton.[130 - Her grandfather, Hon. Richard Hilton, of Newmarket, was grandson of Edward, the original settler of Dover, New Hampshire, and had been a justice of the Superior Court of the Province. – John Wentworth.] It was the pride of the Hiltons made her say, "I yet shall ride in my own chariot." The widowed governor was gouty, passionate, and had imbibed with his long residence in Spain the hauteur of the Spaniard. He left office in 1766 in disgrace.

The last of the colonial Wentworths was Sir John, in whose favor his uncle had been allowed to screen himself by a resignation. There are some odd coincidences in the family records of both uncle and nephew. The former's widow made a second marriage to a Wentworth; the latter married his widowed cousin, Frances Wentworth.[131 - Frances Deering Wentworth married John just two weeks after the decease of her first husband, Theodore Atkinson, also her cousin, and in the same church from which he had been buried – matter for such condolence and reproof as Talleyrand's celebrated "Ah, madame," and "Oh, madame." Benning Wentworth's widow married Colonel Michael Wentworth, said to have been a retired British officer. He was a great horseman and a free liver. Once he rode from Boston to Portsmouth between sunrise and sunset. Having run through a handsome estate, he died under suspicion of suicide, leaving his own epitaph, "I have eaten my cake." Colonel Michael was the host, at the Hall, of Washington. In 1817, the house at Little Harbor was purchased by Charles Cushing, whose widow was a daughter of Jacob Sheaffe.]

The mansion of Sir John may be seen in Pleasant Street, Portsmouth. He was the last royal governor of New Hampshire. John Adams mentions that as he was leaving his box at the theatre one night in Paris, a gentleman seized him by the hand: "'Governor Wentworth, sir,' said the gentleman. At first I was embarrassed, and knew not how to behave toward him. As my classmate and friend at college, and ever since, I could have pressed him to my bosom with most cordial affection. But we now belonged to two different nations, at war with each other, and consequently were enemies."

The king afterward gave Sir John the government of Nova Scotia. The poet Moore mentions the baronet's kind treatment of him in 1805, during his American tour. He is said to have kept sixteen horses in his stable at Portsmouth, and to have been a free-liver. A man of unquestioned ability to govern, who went down under the great revolutionary wave of 1775, but rose again to the surface and struck boldly out.

There is now in the possession of James Lenox, of New York, a portrait of the baronet's wife, by Copley, painted in his best manner. The lady was a celebrated beauty. The face has caught an expression, indescribably arch, as if its owner repressed an invincible desire to torment the artist. In it are set a pair of eyes, black and dangerous, with high-arched brows, a tempting yet mocking mouth, and nose a little retroussé. Her natural hair is decorated with pearls; a string of them encircles her throat. The corsage is very low, displaying a pair of white shoulders such as the poet imagined:

"She has a bosom as white as snow,
Take care!
She knows how much it is best to show,
Beware! beware!"

In 1777 Baron Steuben arrived in Portsmouth, in the Flamand. Franklin had snubbed him, St. Germain urged him, but Beaumarchais offered him a thousand louis-d'or.[132 - "Paul Jones shall equip his Bonne Homme Richard; weapons, military stores can be smuggled over (if the English do not seize them); wherein, once more Beaumarchais, dimly as the Giant Smuggler, becomes visible – filling his own lank pocket withal." – Carlyle, "French Revolution," vol. i., p. 43.] On the day the baron joined the army at Valley Forge his name was the watchword in all the camps.

CHAPTER XIV.

SALEM VILLAGE, AND '92

Banquo. "Were such things here as we do speak about?

Or have we eaten of the insane root,
That takes the reason prisoner?" —Macbeth.

Salem Village has a sorrowful celebrity. It would seem as if an adverse spell still hung over it, for in the changes brought by time to its neighbors it has no part, remaining, as it is likely to remain, Salem Village – that is to say, distinctively antiquated, sombre, and lifeless.

A collection of houses scattered along the old high-road from Salem to Andover, decent-looking, brown-roofed, though humble dwellings, a somewhat pretending village church, and pleasant, home-like, parsonage; old trees, partly verdant, partly withered, stretching naked boughs above the gables of houses even older than themselves, embody something of the impressions of oft-repeated walks in what is known as the "Witch Neighborhood."

The village contains one central point of paramount interest. It is an inclosed space of grass ground, a short distance from the principal and only street, reached by a well-trodden by-path. Within this now naked field once stood a house, with a garden and orchard surrounding. Of the house nothing remains except a slight depression in the soil; of the orchard and garden there is no trace; yet hard by I chanced on a bank of aromatic thyme once held of singular potency in witchcraft – as in the "Faerie Queen," the tree laments to the knight: