Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast

Touching the northern limits of Newport is a placid little basin called Coddington's Cove. It is a remembrancer of the old governor. The last Coddington inherited an ample estate, upon the principal of which, like Heine's monkey, who boiled and ate his own tail, he lived, until there was no more left. The Cossacks have a proverb: "He eats both ends of his candle at once." Having dissipated his ancestral patrimony to the last farthing, the thriftless and degenerate Coddington descended all the steps from shabby gentility to actual destitution; yet, through all these reverses, he maintained the bearing of a fine gentleman. One day he was offered a new suit of clothes – his own had the threadbare gloss of long application of the brush – for the Coddington escutcheon that had descended to him. Drawing himself up with the old look and air, he indignantly exclaimed, "What, sell the coat of arms of a Coddington!" Nevertheless, he at last became an inmate of the poor-house at Coddington's Cove; and that is the way the family escutcheon came to be hanging in the City Hall. I tell you the story as it was told to me.

The Wanton House, still pointed out in Thames Street, may be known by its ornamented cornice and general air of superior condition. It stands within a stone's-throw of the City Hall. The Wantons, like the Malbones, Godfreys, Brentons, Wickhams, Cranstons, and other high-sounding Newport names, were merchants. Like the Wentworths of New Hampshire, this was a family, I might almost say a dynasty, of governors. When one Wanton went out, another came in. It was the house of Wanton, governing, with few intervals, from 1732, until swept from place by the Revolution.[259 - This was called an appeal to the country. A judge would hardly, at the present day, permit such an expression in court.] As the king never dies, at the exit of a Wanton the sheriff should have announced, "The governor is dead. Long live the governor!"

Joseph Wanton, the last governor of Rhode Island under the crown, was the son of William. He was a Harvard man, amiable, wealthy, of elegant manners, and handsome person. In the description of his outward appearance we are told that he "wore a large white wig with three curls, one falling down his back, and one forward on each shoulder." I have nowhere met with an earlier claimant of the fashion so recently in vogue among young ladies who had hearts to lose.

Turning out of narrow and noisy Thames Street into the broader and quieter avenues ascending the hill, we find ourselves on the Parade before the State-house. Broad Street, which enters it on one side, was the old Boston high-road; Touro Street, debouching at the other, loses its identity ere long in Bellevue Avenue, and is, beyond comparison, the pleasantest walk in Newport.

The Parade, also called Washington Square, is the delta into which the main avenues of Newport flow. It is, therefore, admirably calculated as a starting-point for those street rambles that every visitor has enjoyed in anticipation. On this ground I saw some companies of the Newport Artillery going through their evolutions with the steadiness of old soldiers. Their organization goes back to 1741, and is maintained with an esprit de corps that a people not long since engaged in war ought to know how to estimate at its true value. A custom of the corps, as I have heard, was to fire a feu de joie under the windows of a newly married comrade; if a commissioned officer, a field-piece.

At the right of the Parade, and a little above the hotel of his name, stands the house purchased by Commodore Perry after the battle of Lake Erie; in Clarke Street, near-by, is the church in which Dr. Stiles, afterward president of Yale, preached, built in 1733; and next beyond is the gun-house of the Newport Artillery.

The State-house is a pleasing, though not imposing, building, known to all evening promenaders in Newport by the illuminated clock in the pediment of the façade. It is in the style of colonial architecture of the middle of the last century, having two stories, with a wooden balustrade surmounting the roof. The pediment of the front is topped by a cupola, and underneath is a balcony, from which proclamations, with "God save the king" at the end of them, have been read to assembled colonists; as in these latter days, on the last Tuesday of May, which is the annual election in Rhode Island, after a good deal of parading about the streets, the officials elect are here introduced by the high sheriff with a flourish of words: "Hear ye! Take notice that his Excellency, Governor – , of Dashville, is elected governor, commander-in-chief, and captain-general of Rhode Island for the year ensuing. God save the State of Rhode Island, and Providence Plantations!" The candidate smiles, bows, and withdraws, and the populace, as in duty bound, cheers itself hoarse. It loves the old forms, though some of them seem cumbrous for "Little Rhody." Sometimes a sheriff has been known to get his formula "out of joint," and to tack the words "for the year ensuing" at the end of the invocation.

During the Revolution the State-house was used as a hospital by British and French, and of course much abused. In the restoration some little savor of its ancient quaintness is missed. The interior has paneled wainscoting, carved balusters, and wood-work in the old style of elegance. The walls of the Senate chamber are sheathed quite up to the ceiling, in beautiful paneling, relieved by a massive cornice. Stuart's full-length portrait of Washington, in the well-known black velvet and ruffles, is here. I have somewhere seen that the French "desecrated," as some would say, the building by raising an altar on which to say mass for the sick and dying. In the garret I saw a section of the old pillory that formerly stood in the vacant space before the building. Many think the restoration of stocks, whipping-post, and pillory would do more to-day to suppress petty crimes than months of imprisonment. They still cling in Delaware to their whipping-post. There, they assert, the dread of public exposure tends to lessen crime.

The pillory, which a few living persons remember, was usually on a movable platform, which the sheriff could turn at pleasure, making the culprit front the different points of the compass it was the custom to insert in the sentence. Whipping at the cart's tail was also practiced.

One of the finest old characters Rhode Island has produced was Tristram Burgess, who administered to that dried-up bundle of malignity, John Randolph, a rebuke so scathing that the Virginian was for the time completely silenced. Having roused the Rhode Islander by his Satanic sneering at Northern character and thrift, his merciless criticism, and incomparably bitter sarcasm, Burgess dealt him this sentence on the floor of Congress: "Moral monsters can not propagate; we rejoice that the father of lies can never become the father of liars."

It was at first intended to place the State-house with its front toward what was then known as "the swamp," in the direction of Farewell Street. In 1743 it was completed. Rhode Island may with advantage follow the lead of Connecticut in abolishing one of its seats of government. At present its constitution provides that the Assembly shall meet and organize at Newport, and hold an adjourned session at Providence.[260 - William Wanton, 1732 to 1734; John Wanton, 1734 to 1741; Gideon Wanton, 1745 to 1746, and from 1747 to 1748; Joseph Wanton, from 1769 to 1775. The last named left Newport with the British, in 1780, and died in New York. His son Joseph, junior, commanded the regiment of loyalists raised on the island.]

Walking onward and upward in Touro Street, the visitor sees at its junction with Kay Street what he might easily mistake for a pretty and well-tended garden, but for the mortuary emblems sculptured on the gate-way. The chaste and beautiful design of this portal, even to the inverted flambeaux, is a counterpart of that of the Old Granary ground at Boston. This is the Jewish Cemetery.

"How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair sea-port town.
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down!

"And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,
That pave with level flags their burial-place,
Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down
And broken by Moses at the mountain's base."

Close at hand is the synagogue, in which services are no longer held, though, like the cemetery, it is scrupulously cared for.[261 - One of the most curious chapters of Rhode Island's political history was the "Dorr Rebellion" of 1842, growing out of a partial and limited franchise under the old charter.] The silence and mystery which brood over each are deepened by this reverent guardianship of unseen hands. In 1762 the synagogue was dedicated with the solemnities of Jewish religious usage. It was then distinguished as the best building of its kind in the country. The interior was rich and elegant. Over the reading-desk hung a large brass chandelier; in the centre, and at proper distances around it, four others. On the front of the desk stood a pair of highly ornamented brass candlesticks, and at the entrance on the east side were four others of the same size and workmanship. As usual, there was for the women a gallery, screened with carved net-work, resting on columns. Over this gallery another rank of columns supported the roof. It was the commonly received opinion that the lamp hanging above the altar was never extinguished.

The Hebrews began to settle on the island before 1677. The deed of their ancient burial-place is dated in this year. They first worshiped in a private house. Accessions came to them from Spain, from Portugal, and from Holland, with such names as Lopez, Riveriera, Seixas, and Touro, until the congregation numbered as many as three hundred families. The stranger becomes familiar with the name of Touro, which at first he would have Truro, from the street and park, no less than the respect with which it is pronounced by all old residents. The Hebrews of old Newport seem to have fulfilled the destiny of their race, becoming scattered, and finally extinct. Moses Lopez is said to have been the last resident Jew, though, unless I mistake, the Hebrew physiognomy met me more than once in Newport. This fraction formed one of the curious constituents of Newport society. Its history is ended, and "Finis" might be written above the entrances of synagogue and cemetery.

Lord Chesterfield once told Lady Shirley, in a serious conversation on the evidences of Christianity, that there was one which he thought to be invincible, namely, the present state of the Jews – a fact to be accounted for on no human principle. The Hebrew customs have remained inviolate amidst all the strange mutations which time has brought. The Sabbath by which Shylock registered his wicked oath is still the Christian's Saturday. In the Jewish burial rite the grave was filled in by the nearest of kin.

In no other cemetery in New England have I been so impressed with the sanctity, the inviolability of the last resting-place of the dead, as here among the graves of a despised people. The idea of eternal rest seemed really present. Not long since I heard the people of a thriving suburb discussing the removal of their old burial-place, bodily – I mean no play upon the word – to the skirts of the town. Being done, it was thought the land would pay for the removal, and prove a profitable speculation. Since Abraham gave four hundred shekels of silver for the field of Ephron, the Israelites have reverenced the sepulchres wherein they bury their dead. Here is religion without ostentation. In our great mausoleums is plenty of ostentation, but little religion.

The visitor here may note another distinctive custom of this ancient people. The inscription above the gate reads, "Erected 5603, from a bequest made by Abraham Touro."[262 - A fund bequeathed by Abraham Touro, who died in Boston in 1822, secures this object.] They compute the passage of time from the creation.

An hour, or many hours, may be well spent in the Redwood Library, founded by Abraham Redwood,[263 - It was incorporated 1747: the same year Mr. Redwood gave five hundred pounds sterling, in books, or about thirteen hundred volumes. The lot was the gift of Henry Collins, in 1748; building erected 1748-'50; enlarged in 1758; and now (1875) a new building is erecting. Abraham Redwood was a native of Antigua. When the library sent its committee to Stuart, with a commission to paint a full-length portrait of Mr. Redwood, Stuart refused, for reasons of his own, to execute it.] one of the Quaker magnates of old Newport. His fine and kindly face has been carefully reproduced in the engraving. The library building is in the pure yet severe style of a Greek temple. The painter Stuart considered it classical and refined. It has a cool and secluded look, standing back from the street and shaded by trees, that is inviting to the appreciative visitor. This is one of the institutions of Newport which all may praise without stint. It has grown with its growth; yet, after repeated enlargements, the increased collections in art and literature of this store-house of thought have demanded greater space.

Another benefactor worthy to be ranked with Abraham Redwood was Charles Bird King, whose portrait is hanging in the hall. At his death he made a munificent bequest of real estate, yielding nine thousand dollars, his valuable library, engravings, and more than two hundred of the paintings which now adorn the walls.

Among other portraits here are those of Bishop Berkeley in canonicals, and of Governor Joseph Wanton, in scarlet coat and periwig, his face looking as if he and good living were no strangers to each other; of William Coddington, and of a long catalogue of soldiers and statesmen, many being copies by Mr. King. The library suffered from pilfering during the British occupation: it now numbers something in excess of twenty thousand volumes.[264 - Dr. Ezra Stiles was librarian for twenty years.]

I admit the first object in Newport I went to see was the Old Stone Mill. I went directly to it, and should not venture to conduct the reader by any route that did not lead to it. I returned often, and could only wonder at the seeming indifference of people constantly passing, but never looking at it.

The Old Stone Mill stands within the pleasant inclosure of Touro Park, a place as fitting as any in Newport for the beginning of a sentimental journey. It is a pretty sight on a summer's evening, this green spot, dotted with moving figures sauntering up and down under the grim shadow of this picturesque ruin.[265 - The discovery of any portion of the coast of New England by Northmen belongs to the realms of conjecture. It is not unreasonable to suppose that they may have fallen in with the continent; but what should have brought them so far south as Rhode Island, when Nova Scotia must have appeared to their eyes a paradise? The vine grows there. Champlain called Richmond's Island Isle de Bacchus, on account of its grapes.] By moonlight it is superb.

No structure in America is probably so familiar to the great mass of the people as this ruined mill. The frequency of pictorial representation has fixed its general form and character until there is probably not a school-boy in his teens who would not be able to make a rude sketch of it on the blackboard. For years it has been the toughest historical pièce de resistance our antiquaries have had to deal with, and by many it was supposed to embody a secret as impenetrable as that of Stonehenge.

The Old Mill was dozing quietly away on this hill, when, in 1836, the Society of Northern Antiquaries, of Copenhagen, declared it to be evidence of the discovery and occupation of Newport by Northmen, in the eleventh century. An historical chain was immediately sought to be established between Dighton Rock, an exhumed skeleton at Fall River, and this tower, of which the inscription at Monhegan Island was believed to be another link.

Common opinion, prior to the declaration of the Danish antiquaries, was that the tower was the remains of a windmill, and nothing more. In a gazetteer of Rhode Island, printed in 1819, is the following paragraph: "In this town (Newport) there is now standing an ancient stone mill, the erection of which is beyond the date of its earliest records; but it is supposed to have been erected by the first settlers, about one hundred-and eighty years ago. It is an interesting monument of antiquity."

About this time Timothy Dwight, formerly president of Yale, was in Newport. In his letters, published in 1822, he has something to say of the Old Stone Mill: "On a skirt of this town is the foundation of a windmill erected some time in the seventeenth century. The cement of this work, formed of shell-lime and beach gravel, has all the firmness of Roman mortar, and when broken off frequently brings with it part of the stone. Time has made no impression on it, except to increase its firmness. It would be an improvement in the art of building in this country, if mortar made in the same manner were to be generally employed."[266 - "Travels in New England and New York: " New Haven, 1822, vol. iii., p. 56.]

All readers of early New England history know that nothing was too trivial, in the opinion of those old chroniclers, to be recorded. Winthrop mentions the digging-up of a French coin at Dorchester in 1643. It is pertinent to inquire why Roger Williams, Hubbard, Mather, the antiquary, and correspondent of the Royal Society, Prince, Hutchinson, and others, have wholly ignored the presence of an old ruin antedating the English occupation of Rhode Island? Would not Canonicus have led the white men to the spot, and there recounted the traditions of his people? No spot of ground in New England has had more learned and observing annalists. Where were Bishop Berkeley, Rochambeau, Chastellux, Lauzun, Abbé Robin, Ségur, Dumas, and Deux-Pouts, that they make no mention, in their writings or memoirs, of the remarkable archæological remains at Newport? Yet, on the report of the Danish Society, nearly or quite all our American historians have admitted their theory of the origin of the Old Stone Mill to their pages. With this leading, and the ready credence the marvelous always obtains, the public rested satisfied.[267 - Among the records of Newport was found one of 1740, in which Edward Pelham bequeathed to his daughter eight acres of land, "with an Old Stone Wind Mill thereon standing and being, and commonly called and known as the Mill Field." The lane now called Mill Street appears to have been so named from its conducting up the hill to the mill. The wife of Pelham was granddaughter of Governor Benedict Arnold. In the governor's will, dated in 1677, he gives direction for his burial in a piece of ground "being and lying in my land in or near y

line or path from my dwelling-house, leading to my stone-built Wind Mill in y

town of Newport above mentioned."]

The windmill was an object of the first necessity to the settlers. More of them may be seen on Rhode Island to-day than in all the rest of New England. That this mill should have been built of stone is in no way surprising, considering that the surface of the ground must have been bestrewed with stones of proper size and shape ready to the builders' hands.[268 - I incline to the opinion that the Indians had here, as at Plymouth, cleared a considerable area. There the carpenters had to go an eighth of a mile for timber suitable for building.] I saw these flat stones of which the tower is built turned up by the plowshare in the roads. Throughout the island the walls are composed of them.[269 - Within five miles of Boston is standing an ancient stone windmill, erected about 1710. It had been so long used as a powder-magazine that no tradition remained in the neighborhood that it had ever been a windmill. They still call it the Old Powder-house.]

The cut on the preceding page represents the Old Stone Mill, with the moon's radiance illuminating its arches. It is a cylindrical tower, resting on eight rude columns, also circular. The arches have no proper key-stone,[270 - The keys are compound, and, though rude, are tolerably defined. No two are alike; they are generally of a hard gray stone, instead of the slate used in the structure.] and two of them appear broader than the others, as if designed for the entrance of some kind of vehicle. One column is so placed as to show an inner projection, an evident fault of workmanship. Two stages are also apparent, and there are two windows and a fire-place. On the inside the haunches are cut to receive the timbers of the first-floor, just at the turn of the arch. Some cement is still seen adhering to the interior walls. The whole tower I estimated to be twenty-five feet high, with an inside diameter of twenty feet. This was probably nearly or quite its original height. For the rude materials, it is a remarkable specimen of masonry.[271 - This building may have been mentioned by Church in his account of Philip's War, when, after some display of aversion on the part of a certain captain to a dangerous enterprise, he was advised by the Indian fighter to lead his men "to the windmill on Rhode Island, where they would be out of danger."]

I could see that even some of the best-informed Newporters with whom I talked were reluctant to let go the traditional antiquity of their Old Stone Mill. It is more interesting when tinged with the romance of Norse vikings than as the prosaic handiwork of English colonists, who had corn to grind, though American antiquaries have ceased to attribute to it any other origin. I confess to a feeling of remorse in aiding to destroy the illusion which has so long made the Old Mill a tower of strength to Newport. Its beauty, when seen draped in ivy and woodbine, clustering so thickly as to screen its gray walls from view, is at least not apocryphal.

CHAPTER XXIII.

PICTURESQUE NEWPORT

"Don't you see the silvery wave?
Don't you hear the voice of God?"

    Kirke White.
There is a walk of singular beauty along the sea-bluffs that terminate the reverse of the hills on which Newport is built. It is known as the Cliff Walk. Every body walks there. A broken wall of rock overhanging or retreating from its base, but always rising high above the water, is bordered by a foot-path with pleasant windings and elastic turf. The face of the cliff is studded with stony pimples; its formation being the conglomerate, or pudding-stone, intermingled with schists. Color excepted, these rocks really look like the artificial cement used in laying the foundations of ponderous structures. They appear to resist the action of the sea with less power than the granite of the north coast. Masses of fallen rock are grouped along the beach underneath the cliff, around which the rising waves seethe and foam and hiss.

A persistent pedestrian, having reached the shore at Easton's Beach, may pass around the southern limb of the island to Fort Adams. He may then make his way back to town by the Fort Road, or take the little ferry-boat plying between Newport and Jamestown, on Canonicut. This ramble has been much, yet not undeservingly, praised.

My first walk here was on one of those rare October days that are to the New England climate what the bloom is to the peach. The air, after the sun had swept aside the vapors arising from the ocean, was intoxicating; it was so light and crystal, it seemed as if it might put new life into the most confirmed valetudinarian. On one side the sea glittered like silvery scales on fine armor. The intruding promontories of Sachuest and Seconnet bathed their feet in tranquil waves; and as the eye roved along the horizon it lodged an instant on the island known as Cormorant Rock, betrayed by the whitening foam around it. In the farthest sea-board a dark cloud of brooding vapor prolonged the land in seeming, and veiled the approach of ships.

Along the verge of the cliff where I walked the dash of the surf frequently tossed a shower of fine spray as high as the shelf itself, drenching the grass, and immeshing for an instant among its myriad drops the fleeting hues of the rainbow. The rocks had a prevailing purple mass of color, fringed at the edge with green grass, that sometimes crept down the face of the cliff and toyed with its wrinkles.

These rocks, constantly varnished by sea-spray, sparkle with glancing lights that relieve the hardness of their angular lineaments. As you walk on, they are always presenting new profiles of grotesque resemblances. Yet not a sphinx of them all would tell how long the sea had been battering at their rugged features, or of the fire that had baked their tooth-defying pudding – Old Ocean's daily repast. Now and then, when standing on the brink of some table-rock, the plunge of a billow underneath caused a sensible tremor. At various points the descent of the cliffs is facilitated by steps, and at proper stages of the tide the outlying rocks are the favorite resort of anglers for tautog, bass, and perch. The Forty Steps are of note as conducting to Conrad's Cave, a favorite haunt of lovers who have heart secrets they may no longer keep. The ways of such people are past finding out. At Niagara vows are whispered at the brink of the cataract. Perchance there is a savor of romance about these old sea caverns which plain matter-of-fact folk may not fathom.

Turning away from the sea, the rambler perceives the long line of cottages, villas, and country houses, Swiss, Italian, English, or nondescript, to which these territories pertain.[272 - Many of these so-called cottages cost from $50,000 to $200,000. For the season, $2000 is considered a moderate rental, and $5000 is frequently paid.] These houses represent the best and at the same time the most rational feature of a semi-residence at the sea-side. People are really at home, and may enjoy the natural beauties of their situation without the disadvantages inseparable from hotel life. To be sure, at Newport it is only Murray Hill or Beacon Hill transplanted. The social system revolves with much the same regularity as the planetary, and with no abatement of its exclusive privileges. But home life or cottage life at the sea-side is within the means of all those possessing moderate incomes, who are content to dispense with luxury or more house-room than they know what to do with; and it is remarkable how little may serve one's turn where outdoor life is the desideratum. Those who are content to leave all the surplusage at home, whether of frivolity or luggage, and honestly mean to enjoy the shore for itself, come where they may forget the world, the flesh, and money-getting. To this sort of life – a hint borrowed of English sea-side customs – Newport has led the way. At Oak Bluffs a city has sprung into existence on this plan, and the shores of New England are dotted with little red-roofed cottages.

If he has come to the cliffs by the Bath road, the visitor sees, almost at the beginning of his ramble, the summer cottage of Charlotte Cushman, whose career has some resemblance to that of the gifted Mrs. Siddons. Both were poor girls at the outset of their professional lives. The Englishwoman, even after she became famous, usually refused invitations to the houses of the great or opulent, excusing herself from accepting them on the ground that all her time was due to the public, whose continued favor she wished to merit by unremitting application to her studies.

Whatever money or taste or art has been able to do toward the embellishment of the grounds along the cliffs – and in this category are included Bellevue and other favored avenues – has not been omitted. A horticulturist would see something to notice everywhere. 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.

In the angle formed by the meeting of Ocean and Carroll avenues is Lily Pond, where knights of the rod love to loiter and cast a line. If still pursuing the cliffs, you pass by Gooseberry Island, whither the old-time magnates were wont to wend for fishing, bathing, and drinking-bouts. Spouting Rock, where, in gales, inrolling seas are forced high in air, lies this way. Bass Rock, of piscatory renown, and Brenton's Reef, the place of wrecks, show their jagged sides. Point Judith and Block Island are visible from Castle Hill, where in former times a watch-tower stood. No other day of the seven in Newport is quite equal to Fort Day. Then the very long line of equipages directs itself upon the point where Fort Adams is located. On this gala-day the commandant keeps open house, with colors flying, music playing, and gates opened wide. The procession winds around the parade, a very moving picture of peace in the lap of war. Gay scarfs instead of battle-flags wave, jewels instead of steel, and dog-carts instead of ammunition-carts flash and rumble. The crash, glitter, and animation are reminders of Hyde Park Corner or the Bois de Boulogne. The soldiers I saw were much improved in appearance since the war, and now seemed really proud of the dress they wore. They paced the jetty and rampart in jaunty shakos, white gloves, and well-fitting uniforms, as men not ashamed of themselves, and of whom Uncle Sam need not be ashamed.