Another of the original proprietors is remembered with honor by the islanders. Peter Folger was looked up to as a superior sort of man. He was so well versed in the Indian tongue that his name is often found on the deeds from the natives. The mother of Benjamin Franklin was the daughter of Folger. They do not forget it. The name of Peter Folger is still continued, and family relics of interest are preserved by the descendants of the first Peter.
Any account of Nantucket must be incomplete that omits mention of Sir Isaac Coffin. Sir Isaac was a Bostonian. His family were out-and-out Tories in the Revolution, with more talent than in general falls to the share of one household. He was descended from an ancient family in the northern part of Devonshire, England. In 1773 Isaac Coffin was taken to sea by Lieutenant Hunter, of the Gaspee, at the recommendation of Admiral John Montague. His commanding officer said he never knew any young man acquire so much nautical knowledge in so short a time. After reaching the grade of post-captain, Coffin, for a breach of the regulations of the service, was deprived of his vessel, and Earl Howe struck his name from the list of post-captains. This act being illegal, he was reinstated in 1790. In 1804 he was made a baronet, and in 1814 became a full admiral in the British navy. One of his brothers was a British general.
On a visit to the United States, in 1826, Sir Isaac came to Nantucket. Finding that many of the inhabitants claimed descent from his own genealogical tree, he authorized the purchase of a building, and endowed it with a fund of twenty-five hundred pounds sterling, for the establishment of a school to which all descendants of Tristram Coffin, one of the first settlers, should be admitted. On one of his voyages to America the admiral suffered shipwreck.
During the war of 1812, it is related that the admiral made a visit to Dartmoor prison, for the purpose of releasing any American prisoners of his family name. Among others who presented themselves was a negro. "Ah," said the admiral, "you a Coffin too?" "Yes, massa." "How old are you?" "Me thirty years, massa." "Well, then, you are not one of the Coffins, for they never turn black until forty."
Muskeeget, Tuckanuck, Maddequet,
Sankoty, Coatue, Siasconset.
History is said to repeat itself, and why may not the whale-fishing? Now that the ships are all gone, a small whale is occasionally taken off the island, as in days of yore. While I was at Nantucket, a school of blackfish were good enough to come into the shallows not far from the harbor, and stupid enough to permit themselves to be taken. The manner of their capture was truly an example of the triumph of mind over matter.
When the school were discovered near the shore, the fishermen, getting outside of them in their dories, by hallooing, sounding of horns, and other noises, drove them, like frightened sheep, toward the beach. As soon as the hunters were in shoal water they left their boats, and jumped overboard, urging the silly fish on by outcries, splashing the water, and blows. Men, and even boys, waded boldly up to a fish, and led him ashore by a fin; or, if inclined to show fight, put their knives into him. They cuffed them, pricked them onward, filling the air with shouts, or with peals of laughter, as some pursuer, more eager than prudent, lost his footing, and became for the moment a fish. All this time the blackfish were nearing the shore, uttering sounds closely resembling groanings and lamentations. The calves kept close to the old ones, "squealing," as one of the captors told me, like young pigs. It was great sport, not wholly free from danger, for the fish can strike a powerful blow with its flukes; and the air was filled with jets of water where they had lashed it into foam. At length the whole school were landed, even to one poor calf that had wandered off, and now came back to seek its dam. The fishermen, after putting their marks upon them, went up to town to communicate their good luck. Sometimes a hundred or two are taken at once in this wise, here or on the Cape.
The oil of the blackfish is obtained in precisely the same manner as that of the whale, of which it is a pocket edition. The blubber, nearly resembling pork-fat, was stripped off and taken in dories to town. I saw the men tossing it with their pitchforks on the shore, whence it was loaded into carts, and carried to the try-house on one of the wharves. Here it was heaped in a palpitating and by no means savory mass. Men were busily engaged in trimming off the superfluous flesh, or in slicing it, with great knives resembling shingle-froes, into pieces suitable for the try-pot; and still others were tossing it into the smoking caldron.
But if whales are getting scarce round about Nantucket, the blue-fish is still plenty. This gamest and most delicious of salt-water fish is noted for its strength, voracity, and grit. He is a very pirate among fish, making prey of all alike. Cod, haddock, mackerel, or tautog, are glad to get out of his way; the smaller fry he chases among the surf-waves of the shore, much as the fishermen pursue the blackfish. Where the blue-fish abounds you need not try for other sort: he is lord high admiral of the finny tribes.
This fish has a curious history. Before the year 1763, in which the great pestilence occurred among the Indians of the island, and from the first coming of the Indians to Nantucket, a large, fat fish, called the blue-fish, thirty of which would fill a barrel, was caught in great plenty all around the island, from the 1st of July to the middle of October. It was remarked that in 1764, the year in which the sickness ended, they disappeared, and were not again seen until about fifty years ago.[248]
It was a delicious afternoon that I set sail for the "Opening," as it is called, between Nantucket and Tuckanuck,[249] an appanage of the former, and one of the five islands constituting the county of Nantucket. The tide runs with such swiftness that the boatmen do not venture through the Opening except with plenty of wind, and of the right sort. With a stiff breeze blowing, the breakers are superb, especially when wind and tide are battling with each other. With the wind blowing freshly over these shallow waters, it does not take long for the seas to assume proportions simply appalling to a lands-man. It was a magnificent sight! Great waves erected themselves into solid walls of green, advancing at first majestically, then rushing with course to crash in clouds of foam upon the opposite shore. It needs a skillful boatman at the helm. What with the big seas, the seething tide-rips, and the scanty sea-room, the sail is of itself sufficiently exciting.
But the fishing, what of that? We cast our lines over the stern, and, as the boat was going at a great pace, they were straightened out in a trice. At the end of each was a wicked-looking hook of large size, having a leaden sinker run upon the shank of it. Over this hook, called by the fishermen hereabouts a "drail," an eel-skin was drawn, though I have known the blue-fish to bite well at a simple piece of canvas or leather. Away bounded the boat, while we stood braced in the standing-room to meet her plunging. Twenty fathoms with a pound of lead at the end seems fifty, at least, with your boat rushing headlong under all she can bear. Half an acre of smooth water wholly unruffled is just ahead. "I'm going to put you right into that slick," said our helmsman. "Now look out for a big one."
I felt a dead weight at my line. At the end of it a shining object leaped clear from the water and fell, with a loud plash, a yard in advance. Now, haul in steadily; don't be flurried; but, above all, mind your line does not slacken. I lost one splendid fellow by too great precipitation. The line is as rigid as steel wire, and, if your hands are tender, cuts deep into the flesh. Ah! he is now near enough to see the boat. How he plunges and tries to turn! He makes the water boil, and the line fairly sing. I had as lief try to hold an old hunter in a steeple-chase. Ha! here you are, my captive, under the counter; and now I lift you carefully over the gunwale. I enjoin on the inexperienced to be sure they land a fish in the boat, and not lose one, as I did, by throwing him on the gunwale.
The fish shows fight after he is in the tub, shutting his jaws with a vicious snap as he is being unhooked. Look out for him; he can bite, and sharply too. The blue-fish is not unlike the salmon in looks and in action. He is furnished with a backbone of steel, and is younger brother to the shark.
I looked over my shoulder. My companion, a cool hand ordinarily, was engaged in hauling in his line with affected nonchalance; but compressed lips, stern eye, and rigid figure said otherwise. There is a quick flash in the water, and in comes the fish. "Eight-pounder," says the boatman.
These "slicks" are not the least curious feature of blue-fishing. The fish seems to have the ability to exude an oil, by which he calms the water so that he may, in a way, look about him, showing himself in this an adept in applying a well-known principle in hydrostatics. A perceptible odor arises from the slicks, so that the boatmen will often say, "I smell blue-fish."
The boatman steered among the tide-rips, where each of us soon struck a fish, or, as the phrase here is, "got fast." The monster—I believe he was a ten-pounder at least—that took my hook threw himself bodily into the air, shaking his head as if he did not mean to come on board us. And he was as good as his threat: I saw the drail skipping on the top of the wave as my line came in empty.
In two hours we had filled a barrel with fish, and it was time to shape our course harborward. We saw the smoke of the Island Home, looking at first as if rising out of the Sound; then her funnel appeared, and at length her hull rose into view; but she was come within a mile of us before I could distinguish her walking-beam. Tuckanuck and Low Water Island were soon a-lee. Maddequet Harbor opened a moment for us, but we did not enter. We rounded Eel Point with a full sail, and shot past Whale Rock and the shoal of stranded blackfish I told you of. Ever and anon we had passed one adrift, stripped of his fatty epidermis, and now food for the sharks. They were grotesque objects, though now mere carrion, above which the tierce gulls screamed noisily. Here is Brant Point, and its light-house of red brick. We stand well over for Coatue, then about with her for the home stretch. "Fast bind fast find." Our bark is moored. With stiffened joints, but light hearts, we seek our lodgings. What do they say to us? I' faith I am not sorry I went blue-fishing. Reader, are you?
Many blue-fish are caught off the beach on the south shore of the island by casting a line among the breakers, and then hauling it quickly in. This method they call "heave and haul." It takes an expert to get the sleight of it. Gathering the line in a coil and swinging it a few times around his head, an old hand will cast it to an incredible distance. The fish is also frequently taken in seines in shallow creeks and inlets, but he as often escapes through the rents he has made in the net.
I had three excursions to make before I could say I had seen Nantucket. One was to the hills and sands toward Coatue, that curved like a sickle around the harbor; another was to Siasconset; and yet another to the south side. This being done, I had not left much of the island unexplored.
It was on a raw, blustering morning that I set out for a walk around the eastern shore of the harbor. I saw the steamboat go out over the bar, now settling down in the trough, and now shaking herself and staggering onward. Dismally it looked for a day in July, but I had not the mending of it. After getting well clear of the town I found the hills assuming some size and appearance of vegetation. They were overgrown with wild-cranberry vines bearing stunted fruit, each turning a little red cheek to be kissed by the morning sun. Some beautiful flowers sprung from among the neutral patches of heather. The Indian pea, unmatched in wild beauty, displayed its sumptuous plume among the gray moss or modest daisies.
The beach grass was rooted everywhere in the hillocks next the shore, and appeared to be gradually working its way inland. I attempted to pull some of it up, but only the stalks remained in my hand. Each leaf is like a sword-blade. Pass your hand across the under-surface, and it is prickly and rough. What there formerly was of soil has been growing thinner and thinner by being blown into the sea. Unlike the buffalo-grass of the plains, the beach grass possesses little nutriment, though cattle crop the tender shoots in spring. It was formerly much used for broom-stuff.
I picked up by the shore many scallop-shells, and on the hills saw many more lying where pleasure-seekers had held, as the saying is, their "squantum" or picnic. This is a historical shell. It surmounts the cap-stone of the monument built over the Rock of the Forefathers at Plymouth. In the Dark Ages, a scallop-shell fastened to the hat was the accepted sign that the wearer had made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. We read in Parnell's "Hermit:"
"He quits his cell, the pilgrim staff he bore,
And fixed the scallop in his hat before."
Professor Gosse says there was a supposed mystical connection between the scallop-shell and St. James, the brother of the Lord, first bishop of Jerusalem. The scallop beds are usually in deep water, and the fish, therefore, can be obtained only by dredging. They are rather plentiful in Narraganset Bay. Some, of a poetic turn, have called them the "butterflies of the sea;" others a "frill," from their fancied resemblance to that once indispensable badge of gentility. As much as any thing they look like an open fan. Many other shells I found, particularly the valves of quahaugs, and a periwinkle six inches in length. Its shell is obtained by fastening a hook in the fish and suspending it by a string. In a few hours the inhabitant drops his integument. Amber is sometimes picked up on the shores, they say, but none came to my share.
Shells of the same kind as those now common to the shores of the island have been found at the depth of fifty feet, after penetrating several strata of earth and clay. In digging as deep as the sea-level, the same kind of sand is brought to the surface as now makes the beaches, and the same inclination has been observed that now exists on the shores. Mr. Adams, my landlord, told me he saw taken from a well, at the depth of sixty feet, a quantity of quahaug-shells of the size of a half-dollar. They usually have to go this depth in the sand, and then get poor, brackish water. There is an account of the finding of the bone of a whale thirty feet under-ground at Siasconset. I saw many covered wells in Nantucket streets that appeared to be the supply of their immediate neighborhoods.
The fogs that sometimes envelop Nantucket gave rise to a pleasant fiction, which smacks of the salt. A whaling ship, outward-bound, having been caught in one of unusual density in leaving the port, the captain made a peculiar mark in it with a harpoon, and on his return, after a three years' cruise, fell in with the harbor at the very same spot.
The Indian legend of the origin of Nantucket is that Mashope, the Indian giant, formed it by emptying the ashes of his pipe into the sea. This same Mashope, having in one of his excursions lighted his pipe on the island, and sat down for a comfortable smoke, caused the fogs that have since prevailed there. He probably waded across from the Vineyard, when he wanted a little distraction from domestic infelicities.
The residence of Mashope was in a cavern known as the Devil's Den, at Gay Head. Here he broiled the whale on a fire made of the largest trees, which he pulled up by the roots. After separating No Man's Land from Gay Head, metamorphosing his children into fishes, and throwing his wife on Seconnet Point, where she now lies, a misshapen rock, he broke up housekeeping and left for parts unknown.
Another Indian legend ascribed the discovery of Nantucket to the ravages made by an eagle among the children of the tribes on Cape Cod. The bird having seized a papoose, was followed by the parents in a canoe until they came to the island, where they found the bones of the child. The existence of the island was not before suspected.
Anciently, the dwellers were shepherds, living by their flocks as well as by fishing. Every inhabitant had the right to keep a certain number of sheep. One day in the year—formerly the only holiday kept on the island—every body repaired to the commons. The sheep were driven into pens and sheared. Sheep-shearing day continued the red-letter day on Nantucket well into the present century. I saw flocks browsing almost everywhere in my rambles, and thought them much more picturesque objects in the landscape than corn-fields or vegetable gardens. There is a freedom about a shepherd's life, a communion with and knowledge of nature in all her variable moods, that renders it more attractive than delving in the soil. No one is so weather-wise as a shepherd-boy. I liked to hear the tinkling of the bells, and watch the gambols of the lambs on the hill-sides.
In his day, Philip was lord and sagamore of the Nantucket Indians. He came once to the island, in pursuit of a subject who had violated savage laws by speaking the name of the dead. The culprit took refuge in the house of Thomas Macy, and Philip, by the payment of a considerable ransom, was induced to spare his life. This occurred in 1665.
The Indian prince was absolute lord on land and sea. Every thing stranded on his coasts—whales or other wreck of value found floating on the sea washing his shores—or brought and landed from any part of the sea, was no less his own. In the "Magnalia" is related an incident illustrating this absolutism of Indian sagamores. An Indian prince, with eighty well-armed attendants, came to Mr. Mayhew's house at Martha's Vineyard. Mayhew entered the room, but, being acquainted with their customs, took no notice of the visitors, it being with them a point of honor for an inferior to salute the superior. After a considerable time the chief broke silence, addressing Mr. Mayhew as sachem, a title importing only good or noble birth. The prince having preferred some request, Mayhew acceded to it, adding that he would confer with the whites to obtain their consent also. The Indian demanded why he recalled his promise, saying, "What I promise or speak is always true; but you, an English governor, can not be true, for you can not of yourself make true what you promise."
It has been observed that the island is gradually wasting away. On the east and south some hundreds of acres have been encroached upon by the sea, and, by the accounts of ancient inhabitants, as many more on the north. During some years the sea has contributed to extend the shores; in others the waste was arrested; but the result of a long series of observations shows a constant gain for the ocean. Smith's Point, now isolated from the main-land, once formed a part of it, the sea in 1786 making a clean breach through, and forming a strait half a mile wide.
I have no wish to depreciate the value of real estate upon Nantucket, but by the year 3000, according to our present calendar, I doubt if there will be more than a grease-spot remaining to mark the habitation of a race of vikings whose javelins were harpoons.
Siasconset is the paradise of the islander: not to see it would be in his eyes unpardonable. Therefore I went to Siasconset, or Sconset, as your true islander pronounces it, retaining all the kernel of the word. It is situated on the south-east shore of the island, seven miles from the town.
You may have, for your excursion, any sort of vehicle common to the main-land, but the islanders most affect a cart with high-boarded sides and a step behind, more resembling a city coal-cart than any thing else I can call to mind. Though not like an Irish jaunting-car, it is of quite as peculiar construction, and, when filled with its complement of gleeful excursionists, is no bad conveyance. For my own part, I would rather walk, but they will tell you every body rides to Sconset. Take any vehicle you will, you can have only a single horse, the road, or rather track, being so deeply rutted that, when once in it, the wheels run in grooves six to twelve inches in depth, while the horse jogs along in a sort of furrow.
I own to a rooted antipathy to carts, going much farther back than my visit to Nantucket. The one I rode in over a stony road in Maine, with a sack of hay for a cushion, put me out of conceit with carts. I would have admired the scenery, had not my time been occupied in holding on, and in catching my breath. I might have talked with the driver, had not the jolting put me under the necessity of swallowing my own words, and nobody, I fancy, quite likes to do that. What little was said came out by jerks, like the confession of a victim stretched on the rack. Henceforth I revolted against having my utterance broken on the wheel.
But when I came to be the involuntary witness of a family quarrel in a cart, I banished them altogether from the catalogue of vehicles. "You are kept so very close to it, in a cart, you see. There's thousands of couples among you getting on like sweet-ile on a whetstone, in houses five and six pairs of stairs high, that would go to the divorce court in a cart. Whether the jolting makes it worse, I don't undertake to decide, but in a cart it does come home to you, and stick to you. Wiolence in a cart is so wiolent, and aggrawation in a cart so aggrawating."
After leaving the town the way is skirted, for some distance, with scraggy, weird-looking pitch-pines, that are slowly replacing the native forest. At every mile is a stone—set at the roadside by the care of one native to this, and now an inhabitant of the most populous island in America.[250] They are painted white, and stand like sentinels by day, or ghosts by night, to point the way. In one place I noticed the bone of a shark stuck in the ground for a landmark. There are two roads to Siasconset, the old and the new. I chose the old.
A stretch of seven miles across a lonely prairie, with no other object for the eye to rest upon than a few bare hills or sunken ponds, brought us in sight of the village and of the sea.
The Siasconset of the past was neither more nor less than a collection of fishermen's huts, built of the simplest materials that would keep out wind and weather. In the beginnings of the English along our coast these little fishing-hamlets were called "stages." Other fishing-stages were at Weweeders, Peedee, Sesacacha, and Quidnet. Of these Siasconset alone has flourished. All early navigators and writers agree that the waters hereaway were abundantly stocked with the cod.
I found the village pleasantly seated along the margin of the bluff, that rises here well above the sea. Behind it the land swelled again so as to intercept the view of the town. Underneath the cliff is a terrace of sand, to which a flight of steps, eked out with a foot-path, assists the descent. Here were lying a number of dories, and one or two singular-looking fish-carts, with a cask at one end for a wheel. A fish-house, with brush flakes about it, and a pile of wreck lumber, completed what man might have a title to. This terrace pitches abruptly into the sea, with a regularity of slope like the glacis of a fortress; It would never do to call the Atlantic a ditch, yet you seem standing on a parapet of sand. The sand here appears composed of particles of granite; in other parts of the island it is like the drift at Cape Cod.
The village is an odd collection of one-story cottages, so alike that the first erected might have served as a pattern for all others. Iron cranes projected from angles of the houses, on which to hang lanterns at night-fall, in place of street-lamps. Fences, neatly whitewashed or painted, inclosed each householder's possession, and in many instances blooming flower-beds caused an involuntary glance at the window for their guardians. On many houses were the names of wrecks that had the seeming of grave-stones overlooking the sands that had entombed the ships that wore them. In one front yard was the carved figure of a woman that had been filliped by the foam of many a sea. Fresh from the loftier buildings and broader streets of the town, this seemed like one of those miniature villages that children delight in.
Looking off seaward, I could descry no sails. The last objects on the horizon line were white-crested breakers combing above the "gulf or ship-swallower" lying in wait beneath them. It is a dangerous sea, and Nantucket Shoals have obtained a terrible celebrity—unequaled, perhaps, even by the Goodwin Sands, that mariners shudder at the mention of. If a ship grounds on the Shoal she is speedily wrenched in pieces by the power of the surf. They will tell you of a brig (the Poinsett) that came ashore on the south side with her masts in her, apparently uninjured. Two days' pounding strewed the beach with her timbers. "A ship on the Shoals!" is a sound that will quicken the pulses of men familiar with danger. I suppose the calamitous boom of a minute-gun has often roused the little fishing-hamlet to exertions of which a few human lives were the guerdon. Heard amidst the accompaniments of tempest, gale, and the thunder of the breakers, it might well thrill the listener with fear; or, if unheard, the lightning flashes would tell the watchers that wood and iron still held together, and that hope was not yet extinct.
It may be that the great Nantucket South Shoal, forty-five miles in breadth, by fifty in length, tends to the preservation of the island, for which it is a breakwater. The great extent of shallows on both sides of the island, with the known physical changes, would almost justify the belief that these sands and this island once formed part of the main-land of New England.
Much is claimed, doubtless with justice, for the salubrity of Siasconset air. Many resort thither during the heats of midsummer. I found denizens of Nantucket who, it would seem, had enough of sea and shore at home, domesticated in some wee cottage. The season over, houses are shut up, and the village goes into winter-quarters. The greensward, elevation above the sea, and pure air are its credentials. I saw it on a sunny day, looking its best.
The sand is coarse-grained and very soft. There is no beach on the island firm enough for driving, or even tolerable walking. The waves that came in here projected themselves fully forty feet up the escarpment of the bank that I have spoken of. I recollect that, having chosen what I believed a safe position, I was overtaken by a wave, and had to beat a hasty retreat. Bathing here is, on account of the under-tow and quicksands, attended with hazard, and ought not to be attempted except with the aid of ropes. Willis talks of the tenth wave. I know about the third of the swell, for I have often watched it. The first and second are only forerunners of the mighty one. The dories come in on it. A breaker fell here every five seconds, by the watch.
We returned by the foreland of Sankoty Head, on which a light-house stands. From an eminence here the sea is visible on both sides of the island. When built, this light was unsurpassed in brilliancy by any on the coast, and was considered equal to the magnificent beacon of the Morro. Fishermen called it the blazing star. Its flashes are very full, vivid, and striking, and its position is one of great importance, as warning the mariner to steer wide of the great Southern Shoal. Seven miles at sea the white flash takes a reddish hue.
The following afternoon I walked across the island to the south shore at Surfside, a distance of perhaps three miles or more. A south-west gale that had prevailed for twenty-four hours led me to expect an angry and tumultuous sea; nor was I disappointed: the broad expanse between shore and horizon was a confused mass of foam and broken water. It was a mournful sea: not a sail nor a living soul was in sight. A few sand-birds and plover piped plaintively to the hoarse diapason of the billows.
Here I saw a sunset in a gale; the sun, as the sailors say, "setting up shrouds and backstays"—screened from view by a mass of dark clouds, yet pouring down from behind them through interstices upon the bounds of the sea, the rays having somewhat the appearance of golden ropes arising from the ocean and converging to an unseen point.
I seated myself in one of the dories on the beach and gazed my fill. Say what you will, there is a mighty fascination in the sea. Darkness surprised me before I had recrossed the lonely moor, and I held my way, guided by the deep cart-ruts, until the lights of the town twinkled their welcome before me. It was my last night on sea-girt Nantucket. I do not deny that I left it with reluctance.
"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.
In his "Trois Mousquetaires" Alexander Dumas makes his giant, Porthos, encounter a ludicrous adventure. The guardsman is the complacent possessor of a magnificent golden sword-belt, the envy of his comrades, until on one unlucky day it is discovered that the half concealed beneath his cloak is nothing but leather; whereupon some sword-thrusts occur. It was M. Besmeaux, afterward governor of the Bastile, who was the real hero of the sword-belt—half gold, half leather—that Dumas has hung on the shoulders of his gigantic guardsman.
Newport's ocean side is belted with modern villas, costly, showy, and ornate. They mask the town in splendid succession, as if each had been built to surpass its neighbor. This is the Newport of to-day. Behind it, old, gray, and commonplace by comparison, is the Newport of other days. The difference between the two is very marked. The old town is the effete body into which the new is infusing young blood, warming and invigorating it into new life. If the figure were permissible, we should say the Queen of Aquidneck had drunk of the elixir of life, so unexampled is the rapidity with which she transfigures herself.
I like Newport because it is old, quaint, and peculiar. Though far from insensible to its difficult feats in architecture, I did not come to see fine houses. To me they embody nothing besides the idea of wealth and luxurious ease. Many of them are as remarkable for elegance as are others for ugliness of design; yet I found it much the same as walking in Fifth Avenue or Beacon Street. They are at first bewildering, then monotonous; or, as Ruskin says of types of form, mere form, "You learn not to see them. You don't look at them."
I said Newport was commonplace, and I said it with mental reservation. It has a matchless site, glorious bay, and delicious climate, that many have been willing, perhaps a little too willing, to compare with Italy. If we have in New England any phase of climate we may safely match with that favored land,[251] I frankly concede Newport possesses it. The Gulf Stream approaches near enough to temper in summer the harshness of sea-breezes, and the rigor of cold northern winds in winter. The only faults I had to find with the summer and autumn aspects of Newport climate were the fogs and humidity of the nights. The pavements are frequently wet as if by light showers. This condition of the atmosphere is the plague of laundresses and hair-dressers at the great houses: the ringlets you see in Newport are natural.
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. Isles and promontories, frowning with batteries, shield it from danger or insult. The verdure of the shores is of the most brilliant green, and grows quite to the water's edge, or to the verge of the cliffs. In a calm day, when the water is ruffled only by light airs, the tints of sea and sky are scarcely different: then the bay really looks like
"Un pezzo di cielo caduto in terra."
In approaching Newport from sea, after weathering much-dreaded Point Judith,[252] we shall fall in with the light-vessel anchored off Brenton's Reef, the extreme south-west point of the island of Rhode Island. At the same time the light-house on Beaver Tail[253] flashes greeting, and we may now enter the port with confidence. Passing beside the "Dumplings" and the old round tower, perched on a projecting and almost insulated rock, we steer under the walls of Fort Adams.[254] Sleepy fishing-boats, coming in with the morning's flood, are sent, with rattling blocks, and sails idly flapping, reeling and rocking on big waves caused by the majestic onward march of our great steamer; the beat of the paddles comes audibly back from rocks washed for a moment by our attendant wave. As we round the fortress the bugles play. A ball goes quickly up to the very top of the flag-staff; there is a flash, and a roar of the morning gun; and when the smoke drifts slowly before the breeze, we see the dear old flag blowing out clear, with every stripe still there, and never a reproach in one of them. At our right, and close inshore, is Lime Rock Light, with its associations of female heroism.[255] At the left is Goat Island, long and low, with Fort Wolcott and pleasant cottages for the officers of the torpedo station.[256] Beyond, rising tier above tier, with the beautiful spire of Trinity Church in its midst, is Newport.
Newport has been compared to the Lothians and to the Isle of Wight, the British Eden. By all old travelers it was admitted to be the paradise of New England. Its beautiful and extensive bay reminds Scotsmen of the Clyde. In fact, every traveled person at once estimates it with what has hitherto impressed him most—an involuntary but sure recognition of its charms.
Previous to the Revolution, Newport was the fourth commercial town in the colonies, once having more than nine thousand inhabitants. It was at first tributary to Boston, sending its corn, pork, and tobacco to be exchanged for European goods. Its commercial recovery from the prostration in which the old war left it was again arrested by that of 1812; and this time it did not rise again. The whale-fishery was introduced and abandoned: writers of this period describe it as lifeless, with every mark of dilapidation and decay. The salubrity of the climate of Newport had long been acknowledged, and before 1820 it had become a place of resort for invalids from the Southern States and the West Indies. This one original gift has ever since been out at interest, until, where a few acres of grass once flourished, you might cover the ground with dollars before you became its owner.[257]
At Newport the visitor is challenged by past and present, each having large claims on his attention. I spent much of my time among old houses, monuments, and churches. Some of these are in public places and are easily found, while others are hidden away in forgotten corners, or screened from observation by the walls of intervening buildings. As is inevitable in such a place, the visitor will unwittingly pass by many objects that he will be curious to see, and in retracing his footsteps will have occasion to remark how much a scrap of history or tradition adds to the charm of an otherwise uninteresting structure.
The town along the water resembles Salem, except that it has neither its look of antiquity nor its dilapidation. Here the principal thoroughfare is Thames Street, long, narrow, and almost wholly built of wood. The narrowness of Thames Street has been referred to the encroachments of builders of a former time, the old houses standing at some distance back from the pavement being pointed to as evidence of the fact. I can only vouch for glimpses of some very habitable and inviting old residences in back courts and alleys opening upon the street. Here, too, old gambrel-roofed houses are plenty as blackberries in August. They have a portly, aldermanic look, with great breadth of beam, like ships of their day. When these houses that now stand end to the street had pleasant garden spots between, a walk here would have been worth the taking. When there were no sidewalks, it meant something to give the wall to your neighbor, and tact and breeding were requisite to know when to demand and when to decline it.
In Thames Street are several imperturbable notables in brick or wood. The City Hall—for as early as 1784 Newport had reached the dignity of a city—is usually first encountered. Notwithstanding they tell you it was one of Peter Harrison's[258] buildings, it is very ordinary-looking, inside and out. It was built on arches, which indicates the lower floor to have been intended as a public promenade; and shows that the architect had the Old Royal Exchange in mind. For some time it was used as a market. This house came into the little world of Newport in 1763. A word of admiration from Allston has long been treasured.
In this building I saw hanging the escutcheon of William Coddington, who, as every body at all familiar with the history of Rhode Island knows, was one of the founders of Newport, and first governor of the little body politic organized upon the Isle of Aquidneck.
We have decided to cast a glance backward, and, to know our ground, must pay our duty to this old founder. William Coddington, Esquire, came to New England in 1630 with the Boston colonists, as one of the assistants named in their charter. He was several times rechosen to this important position, became a leading merchant in Boston, and is said to have built the first brick house there.[259] The house he afterward built and lived in at Newport, of the quaint old English pattern, was standing within the recollection of many older inhabitants.
Mr. Coddington became involved in the Anne Hutchinson controversy, as did Wheelwright, the founder of Exeter. Mrs. Hutchinson was banished, and took refuge with Coddington and others on Rhode Island. In the presence of Governor Winthrop and of Dudley, his deputy; of the assistants, among whom were Endicott, Bradstreet, and Stoughton; confronted by the foremost and hardest-shelled ministers in the colony, such as Hugh Peters, Eliot, and Wilson, this woman defended herself, almost single-handed and with consummate address, against a court which had already prejudged her case, and which stubbornly refused, until the very last stage of the proceedings, to put the witnesses upon oath. As a specimen of the way in which justice was administered in the early day, and of judicial procedure, this trial is exceedingly curious.[260] Here is a specimen of brow-beating that recalls "Oliver Twist:"
Deputy-governor. "Let her witnesses be called."
Governor. "Who be they?"
Mrs. Hutchinson. "Mr. Leveret, and our teacher, and Mr. Coggeshall."
Governor. "Mr. Coggeshall was not present."
Mr. Coggeshall. "Yes, but I was, only I desired to be silent until I was called."
Governor. "Will you, Mr. Coggeshall, say that she did not say so?"
Mr. Coggeshall. "Yes, I dare say that she did not say all that which they lay against her."
Mr. Peters. "How dare you look into the court to say such a word?"
Mr. Coggeshall. "Mr. Peters takes upon him to forbid me. I shall be silent."
As the governor was about to pass sentence, Mr. Coddington arose and spoke some manly words:
Mr. Coddington. "I do think that you are going to censure, therefore I desire to speak a word."
Governor. "I pray you speak."
Mr. Coddington. "There is one thing objected against the meetings. What if she designed to edify her own family in her own meetings, may none else be present?"
Governor. "If you have nothing else to say but that, it is a pity, Mr. Coddington, that you should interrupt us in proceeding to censure."
Despite this reproof, Mr. Coddington had his say, and one of the assistants (Stoughton) insisting, the ministers were compelled to repeat their testimony under oath; which they did after much parleying and with evident reluctance. It is curious to observe that in this trial the by-standers were several times appealed to for an expression of opinion on some knotty question.[261] Had it not involved the liberty and fortunes of many more than the Hutchinsons, its ludicrous side would scarcely have been surpassed by the celebrated cause of "Bardell vs. Pickwick."
There is something inexpressibly touching in the decay of an old and honorable name—in the struggle between grinding poverty and hereditary family pride. Instead of finding the Coddingtons, as might be expected, among the princes of Newport, a native of the place would only shake his head when questioned of them.
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.[262] 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.