at Mr. Chew’s. I wish you had been here--the house both up and down
stairs was crowded with men, women and soldiers--and around the house.
Mrs. and two of the Miss Morris’s and myself were the only invited
ladies that sat down to Breakfast--about 16 sat down at first, and when
they had finished others took their place, and so on till I believe
nearly all the soldiers had breakfast--those that did not come in had
something in the kitchen. I heard that they eat everything they had
till at last the cook had to lock the doors.
“I was introduced to LaFayette twice and shook hands with him three
times. Ann Chew regretted M. was not there to enjoy the scene--it was
quite delightful to see anything so animated in G--pp. There was so
much noise that I could not hear a word the General said; every person
seemed so anxious to see him eat that a centinal had to keep guard at
the door with a drawn sword--it was very fine indeed. When he departed
the shouts of the multitude and the roaring of the cannon was almost
deafening. A. L. Logan said I could give you a very fine description
of it--but I told him I would have to leave it to your imagination, it
would be impossible for me to describe everything.”
Mrs. Samuel Chew is the present owner of the estate, and an
appreciative custodian of its legend. Hers are the Washington letters;
the portraits of illustrious Chews who have been eminent in the law,
medicine, and public affairs since John Chew sailed into Jamestown in
the _Charitie_ in 1621; the shot-holes, the stains of the powder-kegs
on the floor; the immaculately carved columns and stair rail of the
hallway, and the hundred other fragments of the Cliveden story.
Cliveden is hers--its story is the nation’s.
THE WENTWORTH MANSION
[Illustration:
© D.McK
THE WENTWORTH MANSION
I like to think of the house as a family group of all the
Wentworths, each little excrescence on the original nucleus
being one of the useful but obscure members posed kneeling
or sitting on the outskirts of the family as it pyramids up
to the bulk of the council-room Benning Wentworth built,
the council-room being in my mind’s eye none other than the
formidable, homely, well-fed and hard-drinking Benning himself.
]
THE WENTWORTH MANSION
“These tales you tell are one and all
Of the Old World,” the Poet said,
“Flowers gathered from a crumbling wall,
Dead leaves that rustle as they fall;
Let me present you in their stead
Something of our New England earth, ...”
--_Lady Wentworth._
It was almost as original in Colonial New Hampshire to be a Wentworth
as it is today to be a Biddle in Philadelphia. The descendants
of Samuel Wentworth, the first of his name in the province, were
conspicuously numerous in the small population of their community. As
individuals they were energetic, persevering, and not without a certain
amount of dignity. To say that they were politicians is to say that
they were business men. Individually they were better than average
citizens, collectively they contributed enough to the progress and the
story of New Hampshire to invite a glimpse into the house which is
today the chief memorial to the family.
Except for its size you might pass it by in a countryside full of
rambling buildings silvered by the weather. It has neither the warm,
open-armed welcome of Doughoregan Manor, nor the smug comfort of
Cliveden, nor the exalted location of Monticello, nor the decorative
dignity of its rival, the Pepperrell House across the harbor. A plain
man built it somewhere back in the seventeenth century, built it
close by the bright water of Little Harbor because there were codfish
there as sacred to New Hampshire revenue as any goldfish that ever
inspired faith in Massachusetts. Built it out of big timber to cut the
northeasters whipping in over the Isles of Shoals, built a sharp roof
to shed snow. Built it to live in. Another generation, with perhaps a
larger family, wanted more room, and built on. When Mark Hunking owned
it he did the same. In the south our colonies’ increased demands upon
the facilities of a growing estate were met by outbuildings set well
apart from the great house, but in this sharp climate outbuildings
raised the unpleasant prospect of wading to and fro through
shoulder-high drifts, and involved separate heating-plants and no end
of inconvenience. So gradually the house sprouted a plain ell here and
a humble jog there, a shed around the corner, and enough additions to
effect a total of nearly fifty rooms. I like to think of the house
as a family group of all the Wentworths, of each little addition to
the original nucleus as one of the useful but obscure members posed
kneeling or sitting on the outskirts of the family as it pyramids up
to the great bulk of the council-room Benning Wentworth built, the
council-room being in my mind’s eye none other than the formidable,
homely, well-fed and hard-drinking Benning himself.
To paint for yourself the picture of the prime of the house you
must recall certain facts about the Portsmouth of the beginning of
the eighteenth century. Twenty miles inland Indians scalped white
men and women, and white men scalped Indians. As many miles to the
eastward, and more, the men of Portsmouth sailed in ships for fish and
returned with a catch to pay the storekeeper’s bill for groceries and
clothing--a bill which always seemed just out of reach, and which kept
these men sailing until they died, while the merchants prospered. From
the outer world came small-pox. Over on Great Island, at the Walton
place, there were genuine witches; if you don’t believe this you may
read it in a pamphlet published in London in 1698, whose title says it
is
“an Exact and True Account of the various actions of infernal
Spirits, or (_Devils Incarnate_) Witches, or both; and the
great Disturbance and Amazement they gave to _George Walton’s_
Family at a place called _Great Island_ in the Province of
_New Hampshire_ in New England, chiefly in throwing about (by
an Invisible hand) _Stones_, _Bricks_, and _Brick-bats_ of
all sizes, with several other things, as _Hammers_, _Mauls_,
_Iron-Crows_, _Spits_, and other domestick utensils, as came
into their Hellish Minds, and this for the space of a Quarter
of a Year.”
The Province, though a royal property as distinguished from a chartered
colonial settlement, was not encouraging to the farmer, not ready for
the miller. Its governorship was for the king’s favorite candidate, and
in size and importance it was a homely stepsister of the well-to-do
colony of Massachusetts to the southward.
John Wentworth bought the lieutenant-governorship and made it
profitable until he died. From his widow, Mark Hunking’s daughter,
Benning Wentworth inherited the Mansion at Little Harbor. As a young
graduate of Harvard who had brought home a Boston bride, and as the
owner of a prosperous business and a fine house, he was popular
enough, and his path was paved into politics. The Assembly applauded
his protests against the Governor of Massachusetts who also governed
New Hampshire. As a member of the council his youthful oratory soon
moderated to the whisper of the boss who is learning how to do things
smoothly, for there was much to be gained if London could be persuaded
to appoint a distinct governor for New Hampshire who would not be
responsible to Massachusetts. In 1744 the opportunity came to prove his
point.
Benning Wentworth sold a cargo of lumber to an agent of the King
of Spain. When it reached Cadiz the agent had resigned, and his
successor refused the cargo. On the return voyage the ship foundered,
and Wentworth and a handful of sailors counted themselves lucky to be
rescued. He went at once to London to beg the government to enforce his
claim on Spain. With similar complaints from other British merchants
a bill was presented at Madrid which Spain honored but did not pay,
and under economic pressure England declared war upon her. At home,
meanwhile, Governor Belcher had fallen into every trap his enemies set
for him, and was removed, but not before the King had been prevailed
upon to separate Massachusetts and New Hampshire once and for all,
re-survey their boundaries, and set up a new governor not only in
Boston but in Portsmouth.
Theoretically, John Thomlinson, the agent of New Hampshire in London,
brought this about, but, as a matter of fact, it was Thomlinson’s good
aim and Benning Wentworth’s timely cartridges which shot Governor
Belcher’s support from under him. What more natural, therefore,
than that Benning Wentworth return to Portsmouth as governor of New
Hampshire. He was received with cheers, and made a hearty address to
his Assembly, suggesting that they make him a guaranteed annual grant
of salary. The Assembly replied with fulsome cordiality and said they
would grant him whatever they found themselves able to pay. It proved
to be £500 a year, and to this Thomlinson presently managed to add
the job of Surveyor of the Woods, which he bought from the previous
surveyor for two thousand pounds and turned over to Wentworth for a
consideration not mentioned. In order to accept the post the Governor
had to surrender his claims for $56,000 against the Court of Spain,
and the prospects were so bright in his new position that he was glad
enough to do it in favor of additional income of £800, and to settle
down to a smooth program of political patronage.
It happened that he was not to be allowed to forget the Court of
Spain, nor to get rich without making enemies. England’s war with
Spain dragged France in, and Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, full
of enthusiasm for his new charge, looked on a map for the nearest
French stronghold, found it to be Louisburg, on Cape Breton Island, and
shouted for money, arms, and men for an expedition. Benning Wentworth,
who liked Shirley and often asked his advice, heard the cry, and
offered New Hampshire help. Shirley took the help, and appointed a
rival merchant in Portsmouth, William Pepperrell, as general in command.
Here was a delicate situation. Shirley, having securely appointed
Pepperrell, wrote: “It would have been an infinite satisfaction to
me, and done great honor to the expedition if your limbs would have
permitted you to take the command.” Wentworth was so charmed with the
idea that he forgot his gout and volunteered! To this Shirley replied,
with more truth than tact, that “any alteration of the present command
would be attended with great risque, both with respect to the Assembly
and the soldiers being entirely disgusted.” “You was made General,”
wrote a friend to Pepperrell, “being a popular man, most likely to
raise soldiers soonest. The expedition was calculated to ESTABLISH
Shirley and make his creature Wentworth Governor of Cape Breton, which
is to be a place of refuge for him from his creditors. Beware of snakes
in the grass and mind their hissing.” About four thousand men rallied,
a fleet of a hundred vessels assembled, and the voyage began, planned
by a Governor, and commanded by a merchant, to storm a citadel called
the “Gibraltar of America.”
Contemporaries called it a “Cambridge commencement,” and without
a wild sort of undergraduate enthusiasm it must have failed. An
enthusiastic preacher gave Governor Shirley a plan for investing the
fortress which he had worked out himself. Another amateur gave him
a model of a flying bridge to be used in scaling the walls--it only
needed twelve hundred feet of rope to operate, and a thousand men
might pass over it in four minutes. Shirley took his own counsel, drew
his own beautifully-timed plans, and designed his own scaling ladders
and pikes. The men were growing restless when George Whitefield, the
eminent Newburyport counterpart of our own Billy Sunday, devised a
motto “nihil desperandum Christo duce,” and the expedition sailed like
fanatic crusaders out of Boston Harbor, unscathed by a severe epidemic
of small-pox in the port.
Every plan Shirley made went wrong. The fortress, instead of being
surprised by the fleet, woke up the morning of April 29 to see it
lying off the harbor. Yet on June 17 the well-scared commander of the
citadel hauled down the French flag. The Yankees took the city, hauled
the Tricolor up again, and lured several valuable prizes into port in
this way. Pepperrell was made a Baronet, Commodore Warren an Admiral.
England forced France to make peace, and gave Louisburg back. Do you,
perhaps, see now why they called it a Cambridge commencement?
Governor Wentworth, though not a participant, shared vicariously in the
glory of the expedition, and kept busy at home directing the fighting
in the west against French Indians who raided the frontier stockades
from the New York lakes. Gradually and thoroughly he installed his
relatives in lucrative positions of the provincial government. An
occasional quarrel with his Assembly brought forth a protest to the
King to remove him and place Pepperrell in his stead. Unruffled, he
would call his council to the mansion at Little Harbor, set out an
enormous punch-bowl on the council-room sideboard, and conduct the
affairs of state as swiftly as a governor should who wants to move on
to the card-rooms for a friendly game.
From his office above he could keep a weather eye on the ships out for
the West Indies with lumber and livestock and fish and oil, and could
tick off those inward-bound with molasses and coffee and rum. Toward
town he could glimpse the stocks where more ships were building to tie
his wilderness province, with its twenty miles of seacoast, to the
outside world. If the Assembly lost its manners and had to be attended
to, he stepped to the landing at the council-room door, and was
royally wafted away to town in his official barge. His aims were not
all selfish by any means. He gave a grant of land in the Connecticut
valley on which to build Dartmouth College, he drew from the Assembly a
grant of 300 pounds to restore a part of the burned library of Harvard.
If his wife and his son had been spared to him, his life would have
been very happy. But they were not spared, and thus innocently they
contribute to the story of the house its most entertaining episode.
The kindly poet in the Craigie House told it in the _Tales of a Wayside
Inn_. Shorn of its poetic embellishments, it is this: The Governor
grew lonely in the great house. He had lost his wife, his boy, his
figure. A maid of Portsmouth caught his eye, but she loved a sailor,
and would have none of the Governor and his city ways. Accordingly,
the sailor was caught by a press-gang and shipped to sea. Benning
Wentworth grew lonelier, until one day he summoned to his house a
number of guests, among them the Reverend Arthur Brown. After a good
dinner he fixed a firm eye upon the dominie; and said: “You are here,
sir, to marry me.” The company was astounded, and asked for the bride,
whereupon the Governor turned and introduced as his blushing betrothed
a maid-of-all-work in the house, Martha Hilton. And so, as so often
happens, they were married.
“The rector read the service loud and clear:
‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered here,’
And so on to the end. At his command
On the fourth finger of her fair left hand
The Governor placed the ring; and that was all:
Martha was Lady Wentworth of the Hall!”
The son of the present owner of the house, Mr. J. Templeman Coolidge,
tells me that marrying Martha did not necessarily indicate a loss
of caste on the Governor’s part, for it was customary in those days
for girls of good families to work in the households of other good
families. Further, there are none of the poet’s “stacks of chimneys
rising high in air,” nor oaken panels and tapestries. Further still, it
is doubtful whether Martha, as a barefoot child about the streets of
Portsmouth, ever resolved that some day she would marry the
“... portly person with three-cornered hat,
A crimson velvet coat, head high in air,
Gold-headed cane, and nicely powdered hair
And diamond buckles sparkling at his knees,
Dignified, stately, florid, much at ease.”
But so many inaccurate legends have been edited to make dull facts that
it is a real pleasure to concede the Hall to Martha, and Martha to her
husband.
It was a fine house, there is no gainsaying that. Its fifty rooms must
have pleased her, for they outranked in number any house in the whole
countryside. There were queer proportions to them, and unexpected
turns, one went up two steps into this room, and down three into that.
A secret staircase led from the main portion of the house down to the
water, which may have been built so that the Governor could escape
an angry populace, or not, as you prefer. There was a big pantry to
warm any woman’s heart, and a still to make rum to warm any man’s. It
is a temptation to visualize the interior as filled with an oriental
profusion of decorative objects, but the probability is that although
Benning Wentworth had a florid taste for the creature comforts, and
the ships handy to import them, he was still a native of New Hampshire
and restrained in his notions of decoration. A guess--and it must be a
guess, for no record exists--is that the house has much the same aspect
today, with good portraits, like Copley’s of Dorothy Quincy, good
Windsor chairs, good Sheraton, good china, good wall-paper--and not
too much of any ingredient to leave you surfeited. In the council-room
we know that there was a heavily carved mantel which was strong and
handsome, for it is so today; that the guns of the governor’s guard
were racked there, for they are there still; that there were paneled
doors and wainscoating fit for a room in which to entertain Washington,
as Martha Hilton Wentworth did entertain him here in 1789.
In 1766 Benning Wentworth resigned the governorship. He had seen
the Stamp Act committed and repealed, and although he had treated
with political daintiness the unpopular measures which were breeding
trouble, he had held office longer than any other provincial governor,
and had served his people in a way which encouraged their commercial
growth. The office passed to his nephew, John Wentworth. In 1770
Benning Wentworth died, leaving Martha to marry Colonel Michael
Wentworth, and a daughter, Martha, whom Governor John Wentworth married.
Five years later the storm broke at Lexington. The news sped to
Portsmouth and every man armed himself and began drilling. Governor
John was powerless to resist the tendency. He tried to pack the
Assembly with favorable delegates from new towns, and the Assembly
angrily threw them out. When one of them insulted the Assembly, the
Assembly chased him until, breathless, he slammed the three-inch
door of the Wentworth mansion in their faces. The crowd brought a
field-piece, pointed it at the door and demanded his surrender. He
gave himself up, and the Governor, outraged at the affront, fled to
the fort. His last official act was to prorogue the Assembly. Royal
government in New Hampshire came to an end, and in John Wentworth
the people lost a leader who had been energetic in the extension of
learning, in the building of good roads, and in the development of
agriculture. He lived on at Little Harbor until Martha Hilton died in
1805, and then went to England, and the house passed out of the family.
Its history for the past century has not been eventful. A critic
who has traveled over certain of New Hampshire’s roads may suggest
that Governor John Wentworth was the last man who improved them, but
that is neither here nor there, and such comment is only likely to
call down upon the scoffer’s head one of the ghosts without which no
American colonial mansion is properly furnished. Jack Coolidge, as a
boy, used to lie up in the loft and moan like a regulation ghost when
disagreeable tourists asked to be shown about the house, and any one
of them will tell you that the place is haunted. Infrequent ships
still pass the house like phantoms from the great days, outward bound
in lumber, and pass in with coffee and molasses. But no rum, and if
Benning Wentworth knows, he is where he cares not. There is still some
codfish--but it is dry, and salty.
When Washington came to Portsmouth he was of course entertained and
fully instructed on the resources of the section. A part of the
ceremonial of his reception was a fishing expedition. In his diary
he complains of his luck. A band was blaring in his honor, and every
fish in that portion of the Atlantic had retreated beyond the Isles of
Shoals. A rod and line was handed to the general, and instantly he felt
a tug. Up came twelve pounds of glittering cod. Huzzas from the crowd,
congratulations for the chief, uproar from the band.
A canny fisherman, before yielding the rod to Washington, had quietly
attached the fish to the hook. Was there ever nicer hospitality?
THE PRINGLE HOUSE
[Illustration:
© D.McK
THE PRINGLE HOUSE
Royal governors have visited here; invading generals have made
the house headquarters in two wars; it was twice besieged; a
famous beauty left its doors and was lost at sea; and even
Josiah Quincy was impressed by its hospitality. But there are
new roses every springtime on the garden wall....
]
THE PRINGLE HOUSE
If tradition has any influence upon its own children, your true
Charlestonian should be a violently proud person, who votes with a
flourish, as a Signer would vote; who looks aloft--not at the sun--but
at the spires of St. Michael’s and St. Philip’s, and seeing them in
their proper places in Charleston’s profile, knows that the world again
revolves; who makes horrid faces regularly in the direction of Fort
Sumter; who cheers “Huzza!” at the lightest mention of General Francis
Marion; in short, who conducts himself generally in an extremely
historic manner.
He has none of these gestures. He dines at mid-afternoon, goes amiably
about his affairs, is aristocratic to a degree and in the same degree
is gracefully hospitable. In the center of one of our country’s most
fertile areas of dramatic action he is not theatrical. It bothers
you, for example, if he happens to be a Prioleau and you are passing
the Huguenot church which a Prioleau founded in 1685, that he has no
appropriate expression of Seventeenth Century piety.
If Charleston really knew what was expected of her in dramatic ritual
she would do all those things. Happily Charleston does not know, or she
might exploit and become odious. Instead she watches the cloth-of-gold
roses climb the courtyard wall and is much more concerned with the
forthcoming blossoms than with the ancestor who planted the roots.
She has a back-drop as glorious as an old tapestry, but it is hung
where it belongs--back. She attends St. Michael’s and St. Philip’s
for today’s devotions and tomorrow’s salvation, which are the richer
for yesterday’s haunting footsteps. And only Charleston can truly
appreciate--though the rest of the nation may admire and cherish--the
old square house in King Street whose red-brick walls and shining white
portico are framed by ancient trees at the curbing; the house Miles
Brewton built; the house Charleston knows as the “Pringle House.”
Miles Brewton was not primarily a soldier. His father and his
grandfather had been for forty years custodians of gunpowder in Charles
Town, but the colony’s preliminary fighting had mostly been done by
that time. When the combined forces of the Kings of France and Spain
were driven out of the harbor forever in 1706, the colonists settled
back to a half-century of peaceful commerce. The powder magazine on
Cumberland Street was not often called upon to repel the invader,
and the powder receiver’s duties, though honorable service, were not
over-exacting.
So Miles came into the dual inheritance of a quiescent military
tradition and an active fortune. Naturally enough, since he had just
married Miss Mary Izard, his thoughts turned on building a house; his
taste suggested a beautiful house; his wealth permitted a house which
Josiah Quincy described as “superb, ... said to have cost him 18,000
sterling.”