The Game Of Newport

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Title:     The Game Of Newport
Author: George William Curtis [More Titles by Curtis]

There is nothing more delightful than the gravity with which the game of Newport is played. To assist at one of the solemn "functions" like a coach parade is not unlike attendance upon a function of the ancient Church in Rome. On a true Newport afternoon, as soft and sweet and luminous an air as can be breathed, Newport, in every kind of stately and comfortable and light and graceful carriage, with the finest horses and the most loftily disdainful of coachmen, proceeds down the avenue to behold the stately procession along the ocean drive.

Of its kind there is no more beautiful drive in the world. The shore winds among rocks which are massed, a shrewd-eyed traveller said, as on the shores of Greece. The bold character of the coast of Rhode Island and its picturesque effects are wholly unknown upon its neighbor Long Island. The endless reach of sand and the monotony of the vast level land on Long Island have a certain vague charm as of a sea-shore becoming or about to become picturesque. But that point is fully reached by its northern neighbors of the New England coast, and the ocean drive in Newport is in itself incomparable.

For its company on the day of a great social function it is quite as incomparable. Hyde Park, the Bois, the Cascine, the Prater, show no such sumptuous display. If the street boy were a philosopher, he would say, probably, as he watched the spectacle, "My eyes! money plays here for all it is worth." The American street boy of every degree is not supposed to need any stronger impression of the value of money than he already possesses. But Newport is the great school for that instruction, and it is open free to the whole world. Money elsewhere has the same instincts and desires. But in a city, in winter, its sports and effects, however splendid, are divided and hidden. In summer Newport they are concentrated under most fortunate conditions and proceed in the open air.

It is all the more striking because money has built its summer city close by and just above one of the oldest and most historic of our cities. It has improvised its magnificence and mad profusion upon the outskirts of simplicity and moderation are observant, for all their plainness. When they were asked what effect the new town produced upon the old, whether the rollicking city on the hill harmed or helped the plodding seaport, they answered: "Until Crœsus and Midas came, it was beneficial. But they have ruined Newport."

Perhaps not, however. The Newport on the hill of to-day is the legitimate offspring of the earlier summer retreat. That was a group of the select who came to Newport to enjoy themselves for the summer. They were well-to-do, some of them. But not many dwelt in cottages. The multitude lived in hotels. They danced, they dined, they drove, they sauntered. It was the green tree. It was less money enjoying itself as more money enjoys itself now. The gossip, the flirting, the display were not of another kind, they were the same as to-day, but the scale was more limited. Mrs. Candour, Mrs. Malaprop, Sir Benjamin Backbite, and the brothers Surface were already there. The standards of conduct, the ideals of honor, were not essentially different.

A generation ago Sir Benjamin bowed and danced and supped at Mrs. Malaprop's ball with all the gay world of that time, which is now in wigs, caps, turbans, or heaven; and the next day, dining with Mrs. Candour, Sir Benjamin told, with infinite relish and to the great amusement of the table, the story of his hostess's verbal trips and stumbles. It did not seem to be conduct essentially base, because this sparkling summer realm by the sea is like Charles Lamb's conception of the artificial comedy of the eighteenth century: "I confess, for myself, that, with no great delinquencies to answer for, I am glad for a season to take an airing beyond the diocese of the strict conscience--not to live always in the precincts of the law courts--but now and then, for a dream-while or so, to imagine a world with no meddling restrictions, to get into recesses whither the hunter cannot follow me--

"'Secret shades
Of wooded Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove.'"

To take permanent lodgings beyond the diocese of the strict conscience, however, is a critical enterprise. If you take a house in Capua, you must needs breathe the Capuan air. The magnetic rock in Sindbad's story drew out the nails of the ships that ventured too near. Old Mithridates fed on poisons until they "became a kind of nutriment," as Dr. Rappaccini fed his daughter, until, too late, he discovered that she was doomed. The graybeards who drive out to see the coach parade, and recall the days, before the ocean drive, when the rocks beyond Lily Pond were a glimmering land of Beulah, may prattle of the golden age of Newport as of a happy past in which the graybeards were born. But will they seriously contend that the age of Crœsus and Midas is not the golden age of Newport?

While they are gossiping, the coaches approach. They have been through the town, and are driving out by the Fort road; and as they appear, the vast throng of carriages which have driven out to meet them pull to the side of the road to allow a free course. A multitude of spectators awaiting a festal procession, which at last is coming, naturally suggests applause. But there is profound silence. There is no cheer for every spectator to catch up and pass on. The first coach is at hand, and gravely passes at a deliberate pace, and the great world in carriages gravely looks on. The second coach deliberately follows, and is surveyed with equal gravity. The next perhaps will strike a spark of applause. But the next passes deliberately amid a silence profound. One friend, perhaps, in the stately procession gravely nods to another gravely gazing from a carriage. The "function" proceeds. Far out at sea the white sails flash, and the summer surf breaks gently along the shore. Every coach rolls slowly by. The moment for cheering has not yet arrived. Indeed, it does not arrive before the pageant has passed, and the reviewing carriages are turning and following on in its wake. It is truly a solemn function. Graybeard recalls nothing like it for multitude and display in the old drives on "beach days" along the beach in what he calls the golden age. But does he doubt that old Newport would have done it gladly if it could have done it?

If the ghost of Heliogabalus haunts the villa'd shore, it is with no hope of resuming the imperial crown. His court merely makes a pretty summer spectacle when the opera ends. The coach and the stately equipage and the flashing splendor of busy idleness are the pageant which is kindly displayed gratis for the passengers in the omnibus, for the pedestrians and the nurses. They sit and stroll and stare at their ease while the gay play proceeds before their eyes. Nowhere more constantly than in the summer Newport does the remark of the little child watching the march of the soldiers recur--"Mamma, how good they are to make such a show!"

[The end]
George William Curtis's essay: Game Of Newport

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