AS you leave the river front behind you, and pass “up town,” the streets
grow wider, and the architecture becomes more ambitious--streets fringed
with beautiful old trees and lined with commodious private dwellings,
mostly square white houses, with spacious halls running through the
centre. Previous to the Revolution, white paint was seldom used on
houses, and the diamond-shaped window pane was almost universal. Many of
the residences stand back from the brick or flagstone sidewalk, and have
pretty gardens at the side or in the rear, made bright with dahlias and
sweet with cinnamon roses. If you chance to live in a town where the
authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed every precious tree
within their blighting reach, you will be especially charmed by the
beauty of the streets of Portsmouth. In some parts of the town, when
the chestnuts are in blossom, you would fancy yourself in a garden in
fairyland. In spring, summer, and autumn the foliage is the glory of the
fair town--her luxuriant green and golden treeses! Nothing could seem
more like the work of enchantment than the spectacle which certain
streets in Portsmouth present in the midwinter after a heavy snowstorm.
You may walk for miles under wonderful silvery arches formed by the
overhanging and interlaced boughs of the trees, festooned with a drapery
even more graceful and dazzling than springtime gives them. The numerous
elms and maples which shade the principal thoroughfares are not the
result of chance, but the ample reward of the loving care that is taken
to preserve the trees. There is a society in Portsmouth devoted to
arboriculture. It is not unusual there for persons to leave legacies
to be expended in setting out shade and ornamental trees along some
favorite walk. Richards Avenue, a long, unbuilt thoroughfare leading
from Middle Street to the South Burying-Ground, perpetuates the name of
a citizen who gave the labor of his own hands to the beautifying of that
windswept and barren road the cemetery. This fondness and care for trees
seems to be a matter of heredity. So far back as 1660 the selectmen
instituted a fine of five shillings for the cutting of timber or any
other wood from off the town common, excepting under special conditions.
In the business section of the town trees are few. The chief business
streets are Congress and Market. Market Street is the stronghold of
the dry-goods shops. There are seasons, I suppose, when these shops are
crowded, but I have never happened to be in Portsmouth at the time. I
seldom pass through the narrow cobble-paved street without wondering
where the customers are that must keep all these flourishing little
establishments going. Congress Street--a more elegant thoroughfare
than Market--is the Nevski Prospekt of Portsmouth. Among the prominent
buildings is the Athenaeum, containing a reading-room and library.
From the high roof of this building the stroller will do well to take
a glance at the surrounding country. He will naturally turn seaward
for the more picturesque aspects. If the day is clear, he will see the
famous Isle of Shoals, lying nine miles away--Appledore, Smutty-Nose,
Star Island, White Island, etc.; there are nine of them in all. On
Appledore is Laighton’s Hotel, and near it the summer cottage of Celia
Thaxter, the poet of the Isles. On the northern end of Star Island is
the quaint town of Gosport, with a tiny stone church perched like a
sea-gull on its highest rock. A mile southwest form Star Island lies
White Island, on which is a lighthouse. Mrs. Thaxter calls this the most
picturesque of the group. Perilous neighbors, O mariner! in any but
the serenest weather, these wrinkled, scarred, are storm-smitten rocks,
flanked by wicked sunken ledges that grow white at the lip with rage
when the great winds blow!
How peaceful it all looks off there, on the smooth emerald sea! and how
softly the waves seem to break on yonder point where the unfinished
fort is! That is the ancient town of Newcastle, to reach which from
Portsmouth you have to cross three bridges with the most enchanting
scenery in New Hampshire lying on either hand. At Newcastle the poet
Stedman has built for his summerings an enviable little stone chateau--a
seashell into which I fancy the sirens creep to warm themselves during
the winter months. So it is never without its singer.
Opposite Newcastle is Kittery Point, a romantic spot, where Sir William
Pepperell, the first American baronet, once lived, and where his tomb
now is, in his orchard across the road, a few hundred yards from the
“goodly mansion” he built. The knight’s tomb and the old Pepperell
House, which has been somewhat curtailed of it fair proportions, are the
objects of frequent pilgrimages to Kittery Point.
From the elevation (the roof of the Athenaeun) the navy yard, the
river with its bridges and islands, the clustered gables of Kittery and
Newcastle, the illimitable ocean beyond make a picture worth climbing
four or five flights of stairs to gaze upon. Glancing down on the town
nestled in the foliage, it seems like a town dropped by chance in the
midst of a forest. Among the prominent objects which lift themselves
above the tree tops are the belfries of the various churches, the
white façade of the custom house, and the mansard and chimneys of the
Rockingham, the principal hotel. The pilgrim will be surprised to find
in Portsmouth one of the most completely appointed hotels in the United
States. The antiquarian may lament the demolition of the old Bell
Tavern, and think regretfully of the good cheer once furnished the
wayfarer by Master Stavers at the sign of the Earl of Halifax, and by
Master Stoodley at his inn on Daniel Street; but the ordinary traveler
will thank his stars, and confess that his lines have fallen in pleasant
places, when he finds himself among the frescoes of the Rockingham.
Obliquely opposite the doorstep of the Athenaeum--we are supposed to be
on terra firma again--stands the Old North Church, a substantial wooden
building, handsomely set on what is called The Parade, a large open
space formed by the junction of Congress, Market, Daniel, and Pleasant
streets. Here in days innocent of water-works stood the town pump, which
on more than one occasion served as whipping-post.
The churches of Portsmouth are more remarkable for their number than
their architecture. With the exception of the Stone Church they are
constructed of wood or plain brick in the simplest style. St. John’s
Church is the only one likely to attract the eye of a stranger. It
is finely situated on the crest of Church Hill, overlooking the
ever-beautiful river. The present edifice was built in 1808 on the site
of what was known as Queen’s Chapel, erected in 1732, and destroyed by
fire December 24, 1806. The chapel was named in honor of Queen Caroline,
who furnished the books for the altar and pulpit, the plate, and two
solid mahogany chairs, which are still in use in St. John’s. Within the
chancel rail is a curious font of porphyry, taken by Colonel John Tufton
Mason at the capture of Senegal from the French in 1758, and presented
to the Episcopal Society on 1761. The peculiarly sweet-toned bell
which calls the parishioners of St. John’s together every Sabbath is,
I believe, the same that formerly hung in the belfry of the old Queen’s
Chapel. If so, the bell has a history of its own. It was brought from
Louisburg at the time of the reduction of that place in 1745, and given
to the church by the officers of the New Hampshire troops.
The Old South Meeting-House is not to be passed without mention. It is
among the most aged survivals of pre-revolutionary days. Neither its
architecture not its age, however, is its chief warrant for our notice.
The absurd number of windows in this battered old structure is what
strikes the passer-by. The church was erected by subscription, and
these closely set large windows are due to Henry Sherburne, one of the
wealthiest citizens of the period, who agreed to pay for whatever glass
was used. If the building could have been composed entirely of glass it
would have been done by the thrifty parishioners.
Portsmouth is rich in graveyards--they seem to be a New England
specialty--ancient and modern. Among the old burial-places the one
attached to St. John’s Church is perhaps the most interesting. It has
not been permitted to fall into ruin, like the old cemetery at the Point
of Graves. When a headstone here topples over it is kindly lifted up
and set on its pins again, and encouraged to do its duty. If it utterly
refuses, and is not shamming decrepitude, it has its face sponged, and
is allowed to rest and sun itself against the wall of the church with a
row of other exempts. The trees are kept pruned, the grass trimmed,
and here and there is a rosebush drooping with a weight of pensive pale
roses, as becomes a rosebush in a churchyard.
The place has about it an indescribable soothing atmosphere of
respectability and comfort. Here rest the remains of the principal and
loftiest in rank in their generation of the citizens of Portsmouth prior
to the Revolution--stanch, royalty-loving governors, counselors, and
secretaries of the Providence of New Hampshire, all snugly gathered
under the motherly wing of the Church of England. It is almost
impossible to walk anywhere without stepping on a governor. You grow
haughty in spirit after a while, and scorn to tread on anything less
than one of His Majesty’s colonels or secretary under the Crown. Here
are the tombs of the Atkinsons, the Jaffreys, the Sherburnes, the
Sheafes, the Marshes, the Mannings, the Gardners, and others of the
quality. All around you underfoot are tumbled-in coffins, with here and
there a rusty sword atop, and faded escutcheons, and crumbling armorial
devices. You are moving in the very best society.
This, however, is not the earliest cemetery in Portsmouth. An hour’s
walk from the Episcopal yard will bring you to the spot, already
mentioned, where the first house was built and the first grave made,
at Odiorne’s Point. The exact site of the Manor is not known, but it is
supposed to be a few rods north of an old well of still-flowing water,
at which the Tomsons and the Hiltons and their comrades slaked their
thirst more than two hundred and sixty years ago. Oriorne’s Point is
owned by Mr. Eben L. Odiorne, a lineal descendant of the worthy who held
the property in 1657. Not far from the old spring is the resting-place
of the earliest pioneers.
“This first cemetery of the white man in New Hampshire,” writes Mr.
Brewster, (1. Mr. Charles W. Brewster, for nearly fifty years the
editor of the Portsmouth Journal, and the author of two volumes of
local sketches to which the writer of these pages here acknowledges his
indebtedness.) “occupies a space of perhaps one hundred feet by ninety,
and is well walled in. The western side is now used as a burial-place
for the family, but two thirds of it is filled with perhaps forty
graves, indicated by rough head and foot stones. Who there rest no one
now living knows. But the same care is taken of their quiet beds as if
they were of the proprietor’s own family. In 1631 Mason sent over about
eighty emigrants many of whom died in a few years, and here they were
probably buried. Here too, doubtless, rest the remains of several of
those whose names stand conspicuous in our early state records.”