JAMESTOWN SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE VOL. XVI AUGUST 1894 No. 2 NEWPORT By W. C. Brownell ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. S. VANDERBILT ALLEN A I BENEFICENT fairy of æsthetic predilections could not have arranged a composition containing more efficient contrast and balance than Newport presents in its combination of old and new, of the quaint and the elegant, picturesqueness and culture. Nowhere else does fashion rest with such feathery lightness on such a solid pedestal. The mundane extravagance gains immensely by being related, seemingly at least and as to ocular setting, to a background of natural beauty and grave decorum. The background gains a little, too. The people that inhabit it, addicted as they are to observant criticism of "summer visitors," nevertheless receive an electric fillip from their contact with what is gay and joyous and no doubt fleeting. In spite of their most conscientious efforts they are affected in a way that broadens their horizon in proportion as it sharpens their critical faculties. They "size up" the brilliant butterflies that but hover about the lovely town a few brief months in the year, and in rather remorseless fashion; but they are justifiably if secretly proud of their opportunities for doing so. What other city with any pretensions to be a watering-place has any such chance? The whole town is in consequence visibly braced up. The clerks in the shops along Thames Street betray the influence in their deportment. A higher standard of manners than would otherwise obtain is universally apparent. School-children, even, treat each other with noticeably more decorousness than elsewhere. The comedy of society is repeated, in fact, in infinite and often humorous trituration. But the result is pleasant. The hack-drivers are, socially considered, poseurs. They crack jokes with their fares if they divine responsiveness, but their selfrespect is still more obvious than their companionability; the "old Newporter" Copyright, 1894, by Charles Scribner's Sons. All rights reserved. is not above showing the place to a party of negro visitors whom he drives down the Avenue with conspicuous good-humor, but it is his good-humor that is the most striking element of the spectacle. Even in such extreme instances one perceives the effect of the social ideal due to the "summer visitor." On the other hand, an impartial chronicle must admit that the moral effect of a foreign body of wealth, leisure, and measurable frivolity in an environment of thrifty commonplace, such as indigenous Newport for the most part is, has its weak side. Brought up in more or less close contact with and at any rate constant sight of the attractive activities of so much irresponsible wealth, the strictly Newport people who once constituted a very honorable and peculiarly self-respecting community-have suffered a sensible demoralization. Not "hatred" nor "uncharitableness" has been the subtle influence, with the result that "Newport" has come to mean less to them and to others. The town is still and may be in the future still morean interesting place to speculate about as a New England town of excellent traditions and unequalled attractions, but unquestionably it has lost something of its once very positive character through contact with ideals and examples by no means its own. Among the shop-keepers-especially among those whom recent changes in "business methods" have rather relegated to the business background-and among the householders on the streets leading from Thames Street to what used to be called "the Hill," I am sure one would find an echo of such a judgment. At first sight and to those who take but a perfunctory view of Newport this may seem of slight importance. But to my own mind that which makes Newport what it is, is the balance hitherto result of this contact with superior maintained between a self-respecting, forces, but certainly "envy" has had a organic, and permanent community and |