But of all such summer haunts, Newport is supposed to be in many ways the most captivating. In the first place, it is certainly the most fashionable, and, in the next place, it is said to be the most beautiful. We decided on going to Newport--led thither by the latter reputation rather than the former. As we were still in the early part of September, we expected to find the place full, but in this we were disappointed--disappointed, I say, rather than gratified, although a crowded house at such a place is certainly a nuisance. But a house which is prepared to make up six hundred beds, and which is called on to make up only twenty-five, becomes, after awhile, somewhat melancholy. The natural depression of the landlord communicates itself to his servants, and from the servants it descends to the twenty-five guests, who wander about the long passages and deserted balconies like the ghosts of those of the summer visitors, who cannot rest quietly in their graves at home.
In England we know nothing of hotels prepared for six hundred visitors, all of whom are expected to live in common. Domestic architects would be frightened at the dimensions which are needed, and at the number of apartments which are required to be clustered under one roof. We went to the Ocean Hotel at Newport, and fancied, as we first entered the hall under a veranda as high as the house, and made our way into the passage, that we had been taken to a well-arranged barrack. "Have you rooms?" I asked, as a man always does ask on first reaching his inn. "Rooms enough," the clerk said; "we have only fifty here." But that fifty dwindled down to twenty-five during the next day or two.
we were a melancholy set, the ladies appearing to be afflicted in this way worse than the gentlemen, on account of their enforced abstinence from tobacco. What can twelve ladies do scattered about a drawing-room, so called, intended for the accommodation of two hundred? The drawing-room at the Ocean Hotel, Newport, is not as big as Westminster Hall, but would, I should think, make a very good House of Commons for the British nation. Fancy the feelings of a lady when she walks into such a room, intending to spend her evening there, and finds six or seven other ladies located on various sofas at terrible distances, all strangers to her. She has come to Newport probably to enjoy herself; and as, in accordance with the customs of the place, she has dined at two, she has nothing before her for the evening but the society of that huge, furnished cavern. Her husband, if she have one, or her father, or her lover, has probably entered the room with her. But a man has never the courage to endure such a position long. He sidles out with some muttered excuse, and seeks solace with a cigar. The lady, after half an hour of contemplation, creeps silently near some companion in the desert, and suggests in a whisper that Newport does not seem to be very full at present.
We stayed there for a week, and were very melancholy; but in our melancholy we still talked of the war. Americans are said to be given to bragging, and it is a sin of which I cannot altogether acquit them. But I have constantly been surprised at hearing the Northern men speak of their own military achievements with anything but self-praise. "We've been whipped, sir; and we shall be whipped again before we've done; uncommon well whipped we shall be." "We began cowardly, and were afraid to send our own regiments through one of our own cities." This alluded to a demand that had been made on the Government that troops going to Washington should not be sent through Baltimore, because of the strong feeling for rebellion which was known to exist in that city. President Lincoln complied with this request, thinking it well to avoid a collision between the mob and the soldiers. "We began cowardly, and now we're going on cowardly, and darn't attack them. Well; when we've been whipped often enough, then we shall learn the trade." Now all this--and I heard much of such a nature--could not be called boasting. But yet with it all there was a substratum of confidence. I have heard Northern gentlemen complaining of the President, complaining of all his ministers, one after another, complaining of the contractors who were robbing the army, of the commanders who did not know how to command the army, and of the army itself, which did not know how to obey; but I do not remember that I have discussed the matter with any Northerner who would admit a doubt as to ultimate success.
We were certainly rather melancholy at Newport, and the empty house may perhaps have given its tone to the discussions on the war. Iconfess that I could not stand the drawing-room--the ladies'
drawing-room, as such like rooms are always called at the hotels--and that I basely deserted my wife. I could not stand it either here or elsewhere, and it seemed to me that other husbands--ay, and even lovers--were as hard pressed as myself. I protest that there is no spot on the earth's surface so dear to me as my own drawing-room, or rather my wife's drawing-room, at home; that I am not a man given hugely to clubs, but one rather rejoicing in the rustle of petticoats. I like to have women in the same room with me. But at these hotels I found myself driven away--propelled as it were by some unknown force--to absent myself from the feminine haunts.
Anything was more palatable than them, even "liquoring up" at a nasty bar, or smoking in a comfortless reading-room among a deluge of American newspapers. And I protest also--hoping as I do so that I may say much in this book to prove the truth of such protestation--that this comes from no fault of the American women.