Theophilus North Read online

  We had reached the entrance to the “Y.” He stopped the car and remained still a moment, his hands on the wheel, then said, “I lost my wife five weeks ago tomorrow. . . . She thought a lot of Longfellow’s poetry.”

  He helped me carry my baggage into the hall. He put a twenty-dollar bill in my hand, nodded slightly, saying “Good day to you,” and left the building.

  Mr. Josiah Dexter was not in his garage an hour later, but his brother helped me select a “wheel,” as we generally called them in those days. I continued down Thames Street and set out on the “ten-mile drive.” I rode past the entrance of Fort Adams (“Corporal North, T.!” “Present, sir!”), past the Agassiz House (“Seldom has so great a wealth of learning been so lightly borne!”), and drew up at the sea wall before the Budlong House. The wind in my face, I gazed across the glittering sea toward Portugal.

  Not longer than six months before—in my exhaustion—I had been haranguing a fellow-master at the school: “Drive all those ideas out of your head! The sea is neither cruel nor kind. It is as mindless as the sky. It’s merely a large accumulation of H2O . . . and even the words ‘large’ and ‘small,’ ‘beautiful’ and ‘hideous’ are measures and valuations projected from the mind of a human being of average height, and the colors and forms which have taken on characteristics from what is agreeable or harmful, edible or inedible, sexually attractive, tactually pleasing, and so on. All the physical world is a blank page on which we write or erase our ever-shifting attempts to explain our consciousness of existing. Restrict your sense of wonder to a glass of water or a drop of dew—begin there: you’ll get no further.” But on this afternoon in late April all I could do was to choke on the words: “Oh, sea! . . . Oh, mighty ocean!”

  I did not complete the ten miles of the famous drive, but returned to town by a short cut. I wanted to walk some of the streets I had walked so often during my first stay in the city. In particular I wanted to see again the buildings of my favorite age—the eighteenth century—church, town hall, and mansions; and to gaze again at the glorious trees of Newport—lofty, sheltering, and varied. The climate, but not the soil, of eastern Rhode Island was favorable to the growth of large and exotic trees. It was explained that a whole generation of learned scientists had derived pleasure from planting foreign trees on this Aquidneck Island and that thereafter a generation of yachtsmen had vied with one another in bringing here examples from far places. Much labor had been involved, caravans of wagons bringing soil from the interior. I was to discover later that many residents did not know the names of the trees that beautified their property: “We think that’s a banyan or . . . or a betel nut tree,” “I think Grandfather said that one was from Patagonia . . . Ceylon . . . Japan.”

  One of my discarded ambitions had been to be an archaeologist; I had even spent the large part of a year in Rome studying its methods and progress there. But long before, like many other boys, I had been enthralled by the great Schliemann’s discovery of the site of ancient Troy—those nine cities one on top of the other. In the four and a half months that I am about to describe I found—or thought I found—that Newport, Rhode Island, presented nine cities, some superimposed, some having very little relation with the others—variously beautiful, impressive, absurd, commonplace, and one very nearly squalid.

  The FIRST CITY exhibits the vestiges of the earliest settlers, a seventeenth-century village, containing the famous stone round-tower, the subject of Longfellow’s poem “The Skeleton in Armor,” long believed to have been a relic of the roving Vikings, now generally thought to have been a mill built by the father or grandfather of Benedict Arnold.

  The SECOND CITY is the eighteenth-century town, containing some of the most beautiful public and private edifices in America. It was this town which played so important a part in the War of Independence, and from which the enthusiastic and generous French friends of our revolt, under Rochambeau and Washington, launched a sea-campaign that successfully turned the course of the War.

  The THIRD CITY contains what remains of one of New England’s most prosperous seaports, surviving into the twentieth century on the bay side of Thames Street, with its wharfs and docks and chandlers’ establishments, redolent of tar and oakum, with glimpses of drying nets and sails under repair—now largely dependent on the yachts and pleasure boats moored in the harbor; recalled above all by a series of bars and taverns of a particular squalor dear to seamen, into which a landlubber seldom ventured twice.

  The FOURTH CITY belongs to the Army and the Navy. There has long been a system of forts defending Narragansett Bay. The Naval Base and Training Station had grown to a great size during the War, a world apart.

  The FIFTH CITY was inhabited since early in the nineteenth century by a small number of highly intellectual families from New York and Cambridge and Providence, who had discovered the beauties of Newport as a summer resort. (Few Bostonians visited it; they had their North Shore and South Shore resorts.) Henry James, the Swedenborgian philosopher, brought his family here, including the young philosopher and the young novelist. In his last, unfinished novel, Henry James, Jr., returns in memory and sets the scene of The Ivory Tower among the houses and lawns edged by the Cliff Walk. Here lived to a great age Julia Ward Howe, author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” There was a cluster of Harvard professors. The house of John Louis Rudolph Agassiz that I had just passed was converted into a hotel, and is still one in 1972. At a later visit I was able to engage the pentagonal room in a turret above the house; from that magical room I could see at night the beacons of six lighthouses and hear the booming or chiming of as many sea buoys.

  Then to make the SIXTH CITY came the very rich, the empire-builders, many of them from their castles on the Hudson and their villas at Saratoga Springs, suddenly awakened to the realization that inland New York State is crushingly hot in summer. With them came fashion, competitive display, and the warming satisfaction of exclusion. This so-called “great age” was long over, but much remained.

  In a great city the vast army of servants merges into the population, but on a small island and a small part of that island, the servants constitute a SEVENTH CITY. Those who never enter the front door of the house in which they live except to wash it become conscious of their indispensable role and develop a sort of underground solidarity.

  The EIGHTH CITY (dependent like the Seventh on the Sixth) contains the population of camp-followers and parasites—prying journalists, detectives, fortune-hunters, “crashers,” half-cracked aspirants to social prominence, seers, healers, equivocal protégés and protégées—wonderful material for my Journal.

  Finally there was, and is, and long will be the NINTH CITY, the American middle-class town, buying and selling, raising its children and burying its dead, with little attention to spare for the eight cities so close to it.

  I watched and recorded them: I came to think of myself as Gulliver on the island of Aquidneck.

  On the morning following my arrival I called for advice on a person with whom I dared to presume I had a remote connection—William Wentworth, superintendent at the Casino. Ten years before this my brother, while still an undergraduate at Yale, had played there in the New England Tennis Championship Tournament and had won high place. He had told me of Mr. Wentworth’s congeniality and ever-ready helpfulness. I first strolled through the entrance and surveyed the playing area and the arrangements for spectators. The building was designed—as were other edifices in Newport—by the brilliant and ill-fated Stanford White. As in every work from his hand it was marked by distinguished design and a free play of fancy. Although it was early in the spring the famous lawn courts were already a carpet of green.

  I knocked on the superintendent’s door and was bidden to enter by a hale man of fifty who put out his hand, saying, “Good morning, sir. Sit down. What can I do for you?”

  I told him of my brother’s past in the Tournament.

  “Let me see, now. Nineteen-sixteen. Here’s his picture. And here’s his name on the an
nual cup. I remember him well, a fine fellow and a top-ranking player. Where’s he now?”

  “He’s in the ministry.”

  “Fine!” he said.

  I told him of my military service at Fort Adams. I told him of my four years of uninterrupted teaching, of my need of a change, and of a less demanding teaching schedule. I showed him the sketch for an advertisement I planned to put in the newspaper and asked him if he’d be kind enough to tack a copy on the Casino’s bulletin board. He read it and nodded.

  “Mr. North, it’s early in the season, but we always have young people, home for one reason or another, who need tutoring. Generally, they call on the masters from the nearby schools, but those masters don’t like to give the time as their term-end approaches. You’ll get some of their pupils, I hope. But we have another group that might be eager for your services. Would you be ready to read aloud to older people with poor eyesight?”

  “Yes, I would, Mr. Wentworth.”

  “Everybody calls me ‘Bill.’ I call every man over sixteen ‘Mister.’—Do you play tennis too?”

  “Not as well as my brother, of course, but I passed a lot of my boyhood in California and everybody plays it there.”

  “Do you think you could coach children between eight and fifteen?”

  “I was coached pretty intensively myself.”

  “Until ten-thirty three courts are reserved for children. The professional coach won’t arrive until the middle of June. I’ll start collecting a class for you. One dollar an hour for each youngster. You can ask two dollars an hour for the reading aloud.—Did you bring any tennis gear with you?”

  “I can get some.”

  “There’s a room back there filled with the stuff—discarded, lost, forgotten, and so on. I even keep a pile of flannels dry-cleaned so they won’t foul up. Shoes and racquets of all sizes. I’ll take you back there later.—Can you typewrite?”

  “Yes, Bill, I can.”

  “Well, you sit down at this desk here and run up your advertisement for the paper. Better rent a box at the Post Office to receive your mail. Give them the ‘Y’ for phone calls. I’ve got to go and see what my carpenters are doing.”

  Kindness is not uncommon, but imaginative kindness can give a man a shock. I could occasionally be altruistic myself—but as a form of play. It’s easier to give than to receive. I wrote:

  T. THEOPHILUS NORTH

  Yale, 1920. Master at the Raritan School in New Jersey, 1922–1926. Tutoring for school and college examinations in English, French, German, Latin, and Algebra. Mr. North is available for reading aloud in the above languages and in Italian. Terms : two dollars an hour. Address, Newport Post Office Box No.——. Temporary Telephone, Room 41, the Young Men’s Christian Association.

  I ran the advertisement in only three successive issues of the paper.

  Within four days I had pupils on the tennis courts and very enjoyable work it was. (I had played the game without much interest. At the Casino I found some dog-eared manuals. “Improve Your Tennis,” “Tennis for Beginners.” More respected callings than was mine are supported by an element of bluff.) Within a week telephone calls and letters were arriving daily. Among the first of the letters was a summons to be interviewed at “Nine Gables,” an engagement which led to complications related hereafter; another, to read aloud from the works of Edith Wharton to an old lady who had known her when Mrs. Wharton resided in Newport; and others. The responses on the telephone were more varied in character. I learned for the first time that anyone who presents himself to the general public is exposed to contacts with what is too frivolously called “the lunatic fringe.” An angry voice informed me that I was a German spy and that “we have our eyes on you.” A woman urged me to learn and teach Globo and so prepare the world for international and perpetual peace.

  Others were more challenging.

  “Mr. North? . . . This is Mrs. Denby’s secretary speaking. Mrs. Denby wishes to know if you would be able to read aloud to her children between the hours of three-thirty and six-thirty on Thursday afternoons?”

  I saw at once that this was the governess’s “afternoon off.” I was still subject to “light-headedness.” For some reason I am more outspoken and even rude over the telephone than in personal confrontations. I suspect that it has something to do with being unable to look into the speaker’s eyes.

  “May I ask the age of Mrs. Denby’s children?”

  “Why . . . why, they are six, eight, and eleven.”

  “What book does Mrs. Denby recommend that I read to them?”

  “She would leave that to you, Mr. North.”

  “Thank Mrs. Denby and tell her that it is impossible to hold one child’s attention on a book for longer than forty minutes. I suggest they be encouraged to play with matches.”

  “Oh!”

  Click.

  “Mr. North? This is Mrs. Hugh Cowperthwaite speaking. I am the daughter of Mr. Eldon Craig.”

  She paused to let me savor the richness of my privilege. I was never able to remember the sources of my employers’ wealth. I cannot now recall whether Mr. Craig was reputed to receive a half-dollar every time a refrigerator car locked its door or to receive a dime every time a butcher installed a roll of brown paper.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “My father would like to discuss with you the possibility of your reading the Bible to him. . . . Yes, the entire Bible. He has read it eleven times and he wishes to know if you are able to read rapidly. . . . You see, he would like to break his record which is, I believe, eighty-four hours.”

  “I am thinking it over, Mrs. Cowperthwaite.”

  “If you are interested, he would like to know if you would be able to make special terms for . . . for such a reading.”

  “Special terms?”

  “Well, yes—reduced terms, so to speak.”

  “I see. At my rate that would be over one hundred and fifty dollars. That’s certainly a considerable sum of money.”

  “Yes. My father wondered if you could—”

  “May I make a suggestion, ma’am? . . . I could read the Old Testament in Hebrew. There are no vowels in Hebrew; there are simply what they call ‘breathings.’ That would reduce the time by about seven hours. Fourteen dollars less!”

  “But he wouldn’t understand it, Mr. North!”

  “What has understanding got to do with it, Mrs. Cowperthwaite? Mr. Craig has already heard it eleven times. Hearing it in Hebrew he would be hearing God’s own words as He dictated them to Moses and the prophets. Moreover I could read the New Testament in Greek. Greek is full of silent digammas and enclitics and prolegomena. Not a word would be lost and my price would be reduced to one hundred and forty dollars.”

  “But my father—”

  “Moreover in the New Testament I could read Our Lord’s words in His own language, Aramaic! Very terse, very condensed. I’ve been able to read the Sermon on the Mount in four minutes, sixty-one seconds, and nothing over.”

  “But would it count in making a record?”

  “I’m sorry you don’t see it as I do, Mrs. Cowperthwaite. Your respected father’s intention is to please his maker. I am offering you a budget plan: one hundred and forty dollars!”

  “I must close this conversation, Mr. North.”

  “Let’s say ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY!”

  Click.

  So before long I was cycling up and down the Avenue like a delivery boy. Lessons. Readings. I enjoyed the work (the Fables of La Fontaine at “Deer Park,” the works of Bishop Berkeley at “Nine Gables”), but I soon ran up against the well-known truth that the rich never pay—or only occasionally. I sent bills every two weeks, but even the friendliest employers somehow overlooked them. I drew on my capital and waited; but my dream of renting my own apartment (a dream fostering other dreams, of course) seemed indefinitely postponed. Except for a few engagements to read aloud after dark, my evenings were free and I became restless. I looked into the taverns on Thames Street and on the Long Wharf, but I had
no wish to join those dim-lit and boisterous gatherings. Card-playing was permitted in the social rooms at the “Y” on condition that no money changed hands and I lose interest in card games without the incentive of gain. Finally I came upon Herman’s Billiard Parlor—two long rooms containing seven tables under powerful hanging lights and a bar dispensing licit beverages, for these were “Prohibition” days. Any strong liquor you brought in your own pocket was winked at, but most of the players and myself were contented with orders of Bevo. It was a congenial place. The walls were lined with benches on two levels for onlookers and for players awaiting their turn. The game principally played at that time was pool. Pool is a concentrated rather than a convivial sport, conducted in grunts, muted oaths, and prayers, intermittently punctuated by cries of triumph or despair. The habitués at Herman’s were handymen on the estates, chauffeurs, a few store clerks, but mostly servants of one kind or another. I was occasionally invited to take a cue. I established my identity as one who taught tennis to the beginners at the Casino. I play fairly well (long hours—in Alpha Delta Phi), but I became aware of an increasing coolness toward me. I was about to go seek another poolroom when I was rescued from ostracism by being adopted by Henry Simmons.

  What a lot I came to owe to Henry : his friendship, the introductions to his fiancée, to Edweena, the incomparable Edweena, and to Mrs. Cranston and her boardinghouse; and to all that followed from that. Henry was a lean English valet of forty. His face—long, red, and pockmarked—was brightened by dark observant eyes. His speech had been chastened by seven years in this country, but often reverted in high spirits to that of his earlier years—a speech which delighted me with its evocation of those characters of a similar background in the pages of Dickens and Thackeray. He served a well-known yachtsman and racing enthusiast whom he much admired and whom I shall call Timothy Forrester. Mr. Forrester, like others of his class and generation, lent his boat to scientific expeditions and explorations (and participated in them) where the presence of a “gentleman’s gentleman” would have seemed frivolous. So Henry was left behind in Newport for months at a time. This arrangement agreed well with him because the woman he planned to marry spent the greater part of the year there. Henry was always dressed in beautifully cut black suits; only his brightly colored vests expressed his individual taste. He was a favorite at Herman’s, to which his low-voiced banter brought an element of extravagant and exotic fancy.