If in a country town we find an Inn called New, it is a sure sign of
ancientry. The fresh and fragrant name survives the passing centuries.
It clings to the falling house long after it has ceased to have an
intelligible meaning. Taverns with a nobler sign and more arrogant
aspect obscure its simpler merits. But there is a pride in its name, a
dignity in its age, which a changing fashion will never destroy. And as
it is with Inns, so it is with countries. New is an epithet redolent
of antiquity. The province which once was, and is still called, New
England, is very old America. It cannot be judged by the standards which
are esteemed in New York or Chicago. The broad stream of what is called
progress has left it undisturbed in its patient backwater. It recks as
little of sky-scrapers as of transportation. Its towns are not ashamed
of being villages, and the vanity which it guards is not the vanity of
shapeless size, but the rarer vanity of a quiet and decent life.
No sooner does the English traveller leave Boston for the north than
he enters what seems a familiar country. The towns which he passes,
the rivers which he crosses, bear names, as I have said, to prove the
faithful devotion the old adventurers felt for their native land. If
they sought their fortune across the ocean, they piously preserved the
memories of other days. Austere as were the early Puritans, bitterly as
they smarted under what they supposed a political grievance, they did
not regard the country of their origin with the fierce hatred which
has sometimes inspired their descendants. The love of the New did not
extinguish the love of the Old England. In Appledore and Portsmouth,
in London and Manchester, in Newcastle and Dover, the ancient sentiment
lives and breathes. And the New Englanders, once proud of their source,
still cherish a pride in their blood, which they have kept pure from the
contamination of the foreigner. Fortunately for itself, New England has
fallen behind in the march of progress. There is nothing in its peaceful
recesses to tempt the cosmopolitan horde which throngs the great cities
of America. The hope of gain is there as small as the opportunity of
gambling. A quiet folk, devoted to fishery and agriculture, is not worth
plundering.
So it is there, if anywhere, that you may surprise the true-born
American, and when you have surprised him, he very much resembles your
own compatriot. His type and gesture are as familiar to you as his
surroundings. Slow of speech and movement, he has not yet acquired the
exhausting, purposeless love of speed which devours the more modern
cities. He goes about his work with a perfect consciousness that there
are four-and-twenty hours in the day. And as he is not the victim of an
undue haste, he has leisure for a gracious civility. It is not for him
to address a stranger with the familiarity characteristic of New York or
Chicago. Though he know it not, and perhaps would resent it if he knew
it, he is profoundly influenced by his origin. He has not lost the high
seriousness, the quiet gravity, which distinguished his ancestors.
His towns, in aspect and sentiment, closely resemble himself.
Portsmouth, for instance, which has not the same reason for
self-consciousness as Salem or Concord, has retained the authentic
features of the mother-land. You might easily match it in Kent or Essex.
The open space in the centre of the town, the Athenæum--in style, name,
and purpose, alike English--are of another age and country than their
own. There is a look of trim elegance everywhere, which refreshes the
eye; and over the streets there broods an immemorial peace, which even
the echoing clangour of the Navy Yard cannot dispel. The houses, some
of wood, built after the Colonial manner, others of red brick, and of a
grave design, are in perfect harmony with their surroundings. Nothing
is awry: nothing is out of place. And so severely consistent is the
impression of age, that down on the sunlit quay, flanked by the lofty
warehouses, the slope of whose roofs is masked by corbie-steps, you are
surprised not to see riding at anchor the high-prowed galleons of the
seventeenth century.
And, best of all, there is the quiet, simple Church of St John's,
English in feeling as in origin. Though rebuilt a hundred years ago, on
the site of an earlier church, it has remained loyal to its history, and
is the true child of the eighteenth century. Is it not fitting that the
communion-plate presented by Queen Caroline should be treasured here?
That the sexton should still show you, even with a cold indifference,
the stately prayer-books which once contained prayers for the king? That
a bell, captured at Louisburg by Sir William Pepperell, should summon
to the worship of God a people long forgetful of that proud achievement?
Such are the evidences of an innate conservatism which has kept alive
the old traditions of New England.
Thus for three hundred years Portsmouth has lived the happy life of
a country town, and its historian sadly notes that until 1900 its
population did not rise to 10,000. The historian need feel no regret: it
is not by numbers that we may measure the stateliness of a city; and the
dignity of Portsmouth is still plain for all to behold in the houses,
to cite but two examples, of Governors Wentworth and Langdon, And then
after this long spell of fortunate obscurity, Portsmouth became suddenly
the centre of universal interest. By a curious irony this little,
old-fashioned town was chosen to be the meeting-place of Russia and
Japan, and the first experiment in modern diplomacy-was made in a place
which has sacrificed nothing to a love of that intoxicant known as the
spirit of the age. It was, in truth, a strange sight that Portsmouth saw
a brief two years ago. Before its troubled eyes the stern conference
of hostile nations was turned to comedy. A hundred and twenty eager
reporters publicly put up their support for sale in exchange for
information to the highest bidder. The representative of a great country
was heard boasting to the gentlemen of the press of his own prowess.
"The Japanese could not read in my face," said M. Witte, "what was
passing in my heart." Isn't it wonderful? Would not the diplomatists of
another age be ashamed of their _confrère_ could they hear him brag of a
rudimentary and long since dishonoured _finesse?_ But the mere fact that
M. Witte could make such a speech on American soil is a clear proof that
the New World is not the proper field of diplomacy. The congresses
of old were gay and secret. "Le congrès," said the Prince de Ligne at
Vienna, "ne marche pas; il danse." It danced, and it kept inviolate
the obligation of silence. The Congress at Portsmouth did not talk--it
chattered; and it was an open injustice to the unbroken history of New
England that President Roosevelt should have chosen this tranquil and
ancient spot for a bold experiment in diplomacy by journalism.
Across the river lies Battery, even more remote from the world of greed
and competition than Portsmouth. Here at last you discover what so often
eludes you in America--the real countryside. The rough pleasant roads
like English lanes, the beautiful wooden houses half hidden amid
towering trees, and the gardens (or yards as they are called) not
trim, like our English gardens, but of an unkempt beauty all their
own,--these, with the memory of a gracious hospitality, will never fade
from my mind. At Kittery, as at Portsmouth, you live in the past.
There is nothing save an electric trolley and the motor engines of the
fishing-boats to recall the bustle of to-day. Here is Fort M'Clary,
a block-house built two centuries ago to stay the incursion of the
Indians. There is the house of Pepperell, the hero of Louis-burg. Thus,
rich in old associations, happy in its present seclusion, Kittery has a
kind of personal charm, which is intensified by an obvious and striking
contrast.
It was from Newport that I went to Kittery, and passed in a few hours
from the modern to the ancient world. Not even New York gives a more
vivid impression of the inappropriateness which is America's besetting
sin, than Newport, whose gay inhabitants are determined, at all costs,
to put themselves at variance with time and place. The mansions, called
"cottages" in proud humility, are entirely out of proportion to
their site and purpose. On the one hand you see a house as large as
Chatsworth, bleak and treeless, with nothing to separate it from its
ambitious neighbours but a wooden palisade. It suggests nothing so much
as that it has lost its park, and mislaid its lodges. On the other, you
see a massive pile, whose castellated summit resembles nothing else than
a county jail. And nowhere is there a possibility of ambush, nowhere a
frail hint of secrecy. The people of Newport, moreover, is resolved to
live up to its inappropriate environment. As it rejoices in the wrong
kind of house, so it delights in the wrong sort of costume. The vain
luxury of the place is expressed in a thousand strange antics. A new
excitement is added to seabathing by the ladies, who face the waves in
all the bravery of Parisian hats. To return unsullied from the encounter
is a proof of the highest skill. Is it not better to preserve a
deftly-poised hat from the mere contact of the waves than to be a
tireless and intrepid swimmer?
Newport, in fact, has been haunted by a sort of ill-luck. It has never
been able to make the best of itself. There was a time when its harbour
bade fair to rival the harbour of New York, and when its inhabitants
fondly believed that all the great ships of the world would find refuge
under the splendid shadow of Rhode Island. And when this hope was
disappointed for ever, Newport still possessed in herself all the
elements of beauty. Whatever exquisite colour and perfect situation
could give, was hers. What more can the eyes of man desire than green
lawns and an incomparable sea? And there lies the old town to link the
prosperity of to-day with the romance of yesterday. And there grow in
wild profusion the scented hedges of honeysuckle and roses. And all of
no avail. The early comers to Newport, it is true, understood that a
real cottage of wood was in harmony with the place. They built their
houses to the just scale of the landscape, and had they kept their
own way how happy would have been the result! But beauty gave way to
fashion; wealth usurped the sovereignty of taste; size was mistaken for
grandeur,--in a word, the millionaire disfigured Newport to his whim.
And so it ceased to be a real place. It became a mere collection of
opposing mansions and quarrelsome styles. If the vast "cottages," which
raise their heads higher and higher in foolish rivalry, were swept away,
no harm would be done. They are there by accident, and they will last
only so long as a wayward fashion tolerates their presence. Battery,
on the other hand, cannot be abolished by a caprice of taste. It is a
village which has its roots in the past, and whose growth neither wealth
nor progress has obscured. Above all, it possesses the virtue, great
in towns as in men, of sincerity. It has not cut itself loose from
its beginnings; its houses belong harmoniously to itself; and it has
retained through two centuries the character of the old colonial days.
Nor is it without an historical importance. Great names cling about it.
The men of Battery fought on many a hard-won field against French and
Indians, and, retired though it be from the broad stream of commerce and
progress, it cannot dissipate the memory of loyal devotion to the crown
and of military glory.
Its hero is Sir William Pepperell, soldier and merchant, whose thrift
and prowess were alike remarkable. The son of a Tavistock fisherman, who
pursued fortune in the New World with equal energy and success, he still
further advanced his house in wealth and circumstance. Accustomed from
boyhood to the dangers of Indian warfare, he was as apt for arms as
for arts, and it is characteristic of the time and place that this
prosperous merchant should be known to fame as the commander of a
triumphant expedition. It was in 1745 that his chance came. For many
years Louis-burg had afforded harbourage to French privateers, who
had harried the coast of New England and captured rich cargoes of
merchandise. At last Governor Shirley of Massachusetts resolved to
attack it, and we may judge of the esteem in which Pepperell was held,
by the fact that he was appointed to lead an expedition against a
fortress deemed impregnable by the French, and known as the Dunkirk of
America. His selection was a tribute not merely to his courage but
to his tact. No man of his time was better fitted to control the
conflicting tempers of the colonial militia, and he set forth at the
head of his 4000 men under the best auspices. Being a Puritan in command
of Puritans, he quickened the bravery of his comrades by a show of
religious zeal. He made it plain that he was engaged in a war against
papistry, and he asked George White-field, then in America, for a motto.
"Nil desperandum, Christo duce," said the preacher; and thus heartened,
the little fleet set sail on its triumphant journey. At first sight
the contest seemed unequal. On one side was Duchambon, an experienced
soldier, defending a fortress which had long been thought invincible.
On the other was a plain merchant in command of no more than 4000
militiamen. But the very simplicity of Pepperell's attack ensured its
success. He sailed into the harbour without warning and without fear, in
the very eye of the French artillery, landed his men, and began a siege
which resulted, after six weeks, in the reduction of Louisburg. It was a
gallant feat of arms, marred only by the fact that a foolish Government
declined to take advantage of a colonial victory. Three years later
Louisburg was wickedly restored to France in exchange for certain
advantages in India, and a foolish policy obscured for a while at least
the eminent services of William Pepperell.
To-day the victor of Louisburg is not without fame--save in his own
country. Fortunately for himself, Pepperell died before the War of the
Revolution, and did not see the ruin which overtook his family. The
property which had passed into the hands of his grandchildren was
confiscated. They were guilty of loyalty to the crown and country for
which their ancestor had fought, and the third generation was saved from
the poorhouse "by the bounty of individuals on whom they had no claims
for favour." In other words, Pepperell's memory was dishonoured, because
in serving New England he had worn the king's uniform. In the eyes
of the newly emancipated, treachery was retrospective. Pepperell's
biographer explains his sin and its punishment with a perfect clarity.
"The eventful life of Sir W. Pepperell," he writes, "closed a few years
before the outbreak of the Revolution. Patriotism in his day implied
loyalty and fidelity to the King of England; but how changed the meaning
of that word in New England after the Declaration of Independence! Words
and deeds before deemed patriotic were now traitorous, and so deeply was
their moral turpitude impressed on the public mind as to have tainted
popular opinions concerning the heroic deeds of our ancestors, performed
in the King's service in the French Wars.... The War of the Revolution
absorbed and neutralised all the heroic fame of the illustrious men
that preceded, and the achievements of Pepperell, of Johnson, and of
Bradstreet are now almost forgotten." These words were written in 1855,
and they have not yet lost their truth.
For us this forgetfulness is not easily intelligible. It is our habit to
attach ourselves closely to the past. If there have been conflicts, they
have left no rancour, no bitterness. The winner has been modest, the
loser magnanimous. The centuries of civil strife which devastated
England imposed no lasting hostility. Nobody cares to-day whether his
ancestor was Cavalier or Roundhead. The keenest Royalist is willing to
acknowledge the noble prowess and the political genius of Cromwell. The
hardiest Puritan pays an eager tribute to the exalted courage of Charles
I. But the Americans have taken another view. They would, if they could,
discard the bonds which unite them with England. For the mere glamour of
independence they would sacrifice the glory of the past. They would even
assume an hostility to their ancestors because these ancestors were of
English blood. They seem to believe that if they forget their origin
persistently enough it will be transformed. The top of their
ambition would be reached if they could suppose that they were
autochthonous,--that they sprang into being fully armed upon American
soil. It irks them to think that other races have had a hand in creating
"God's own country," and they are happiest when they can convince
themselves that a man changes his heart and his mind as well as his sky
when he leaves Europe for America. And so they pursue the policy of the
ostrich. They bury the head of their past in the sandy desert of
the present, and hope that nobody will detect the trick of their
concealment.
In the Church of St John at Portsmouth there is, as I have said, an
English prayer-book from which the page containing prayers for the
king has been violently torn. This incident symbolises very aptly
the attitude of America. The country has not yet recovered from the
hostility which it once professed to George III. It assumes that a
difference of policy always implies a moral taint. The American Colonies
broke away from the mother country; therefore George III. was a knave,
whose name may not be mentioned without dishonour, and all the brave men
who served him in serving the colonies are dishonoured also. It is not
quite clear why this feeling has been kept alive so long. Perhaps
the violent rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence has aided its
survival. Perhaps, too, the sense of gravity, which always overtakes the
American public man when he considers what These States have achieved,
is not without its weight. But whatever the cause, it is certain that
shame and animosity still exist on the other side of the ocean: shame
for noble deeds accomplished by brave men; animosity against a loyal
antagonist, who long ago forgot the ancient quarrel and its consequence.
And yet the force and habit of tradition cannot forcibly be shaken off.
Though New England, in forgetting the heroes who fought under British
colours, has attempted to break the continuity of history, it is in New
England where the links in the ancient chain are most stoutly coupled.
Though all the prayer-books in the world be destroyed, the marks of its
origin will still be stamped indelibly upon the face of the country. The
very dourness which persuades these stern men to look with regret upon
their beginnings is but a part of the puritanical character which drove
them to take refuge in a foreign land. Stiff-necked and fanatical as
they were, when they left England, they did but intensify their hard
fanaticism in the new land. For there they were all of one party, and
their children grew up without the wholesome stimulant of opposition.
And if perchance one or two strayed from the fold of strict allegiance,
the majority were cruel in punishment. They became persecutors for what
they believed was righteousness' sake, and their cruelty was the more
severe because it was based, as they believed, upon a superior morality.
And so they grew, as an American historian has said, to hate the
toleration for which they once fought, to deplore the liberty of
conscience for whose sake they had been ready to face exile. What in
themselves they praised for liberty and toleration, they denounced in
others as carelessness or heresy. So they cultivated a hard habit of
thought; so they esteemed too seriously the efforts they made in
the cause of freedom; so they still exaggerate the importance of the
Revolution, which the passage of time should compel them to regard with
a cold and dispassionate eye.
But if in a certain pitilessness of character the New Englanders are
more English than the English, they still resemble the Puritans of the
seventeenth century in their love of a well-ordered life. It was in
their towns and villages that the old colonial life flourished to the
wisest purpose. The houses which they built, and which still stand, are
the perfection of elegance and comfort. The simplicity of their aspect
is matched by the beauty which confronts you when once you have crossed
the threshold. The columns which flank the porch, the pilasters which
break the monotony of the wooden walls, are but a faint indication of
the elegance within. Like the palaces of the Moors, they reserve the
best of themselves for the interior, and reveal all their beauty only to
their intimates. The light staircases, with turned rails and lyre-shaped
ends; the panelled rooms; the dainty fireplaces, adorned with Dutch
tiles; the English furniture, which has not left its first home; the
spacious apartments, of which the outside gives no warning,--these
impart a quiet dignity, a pleasant refinement, to the colonial houses
which no distance of time or space can impair. There is a house at
Kittery of which the planks were cut out there in the forest, were sent
to England to be carved and shaped, and were then returned to their
native woodland to be fashioned into a house. Thus it belongs to two
worlds, and thus it is emblematic of the New Englanders who dwell about
it, and who, owing their allegiance to a new country, yet retain the
impress of a character which was their ancestors' almost three centuries
ago.