Issues → November/December 2009 → Travel →

Newport, RI: 30 Days of Christmas

COMMENT

SINGLE PAGE

EMAIL

PRINT

SHARE:

(page 2 of 3)

Down by the wharf, where sailing masts pitch and sway over frigid water, we stumble upon the oddly enchanting Seamen's Chapel, a tiny room upstairs at the Seamen's Church Institute. Dim and small, like the inside of a shell, it feels exotically Byzantine, with ochre frescoes and a shell-studded shrine to the sea. Unexpected beauty, and just what we're looking for.

We leave for another date with history at the Samuel Whitehorne House. For the next hour or so, we're plunged into preparations for Christmas in 1820s Newport, a rum-soaked era when residents drank from morning to night because the water wasn't safe. The house is old (1811) and beautiful, and furnished with pieces by the great American cabinetmakers Townsend and Goddard. We end up in the kitchen talking to Samuel's second-oldest daughter, Caroline, who's making gingerbread and mince pies for Christmas. She's really 21-year-old Kara Evans, a historic preservation major at nearby Salve Regina University, but Kara's an eerily natural impersonator, with four years of experience under her sash. She answers us in character, and we're suddenly unsure which tense to use. Present? Past? Where are we, anyway? Caught between times, it would seem, because the ghosts of Newport's Christmas Past are rising up around us.

By now it's 3 p.m., teatime at The Francis Malbone House, a guesthouse-only event that we've been invited to crash. This former private home dating from 1760 offers 18 beautifully appointed rooms, many ranged around an inner garden courtyard. Afternoon tea sets the bar for tea everywhere on the planet. Innkeeper Will Dewey is a Johnson & Wales grad, and his table includes roasted garlic and potato soup, blueberry butter cakes, veggie crostini, and orange brownies. Naturally there's loose tea, coffee in a silver urn, and endless fireplaces with logs blazing and people lounging and eating. The inn burns an impressive seven cords of wood a year, and yes, Martha Stewart enjoyed her stay, thank you very much.

Before dinner we duck into the historic Redwood Library and Athenaeum. Constructed in 1750, this architectural treasure is America's oldest surviving public lending library in its original building. Celery-colored shelves soar skyward in the reading room, and tables are spread with a selection of magazines that would have stunned Newport's colonists, from Paris Match to Seahorse (international sailing). In the entryway, Dickens Christmas figures are clustered on top of the card catalogue, and that's when we realize that this library still uses a card catalogue. "It's really the most reliable," says the young man working behind the counter. "We value the old ways."

On to Astors' Beechwood Mansion. On this sparkling, frosty night, we pull up in front of a stunning palazzo, like vanilla icing rising from the snow. Lights blaze, guests stream toward the doorway ... we've time-warped to 1891. Passing through the receiving line, we slip upstairs to explore the elaborate themed guestrooms (Morocco, London ...). Downstairs in the ballroom, we feast on turkey as the family and servants put on a show. We're seated with Alison Goodrich, who once played the upstairs maid and whose aunt, Peg Kiernan, has inhabited the role of Mrs. Astor for the past 20 years. No wonder the illusion is convincing. "People get addicted and come back year after year," Alison says.