| “One hundred years ago and something more, In Queen Street, Portsmouth, at her tavern door,”— |
is the way the poem opens. Queen Street was the old name for State Street, and the tavern was the old Earl of Halifax before Master Stavers carried the sign over to the new house in Court Street. It has long since disappeared. It was before this house that the barefooted and ragged little beauty, Martha Hilton, was rebuked by Dame Stavers for appearing on the street half-dressed and looking so shabby, to which she quickly replied:—
| “No matter how I look: I yet shall ride In my own chariot, ma’am.” |
The house to which she did drive in her own chariot, many a time in later days, as the wife of Governor Wentworth, is one of the most pleasantly situated of all the houses in Portsmouth. It is at Little Harbor, on one of the many peninsulas that jut out into the Piscataqua, below the town, and commands a fine view of the beautiful river and its many islands. The house is a large wooden building containing forty-five rooms, though originally it had fifty-two. Architecturally it is unattractive, external beauty of design having been sacrificed to utility.
| “Within, unwonted splendors met the eye, Panels and floors of oak, and tapestry; Carved chimney pieces, where on brazen dogs Reveled and roared the Christmas fires of logs.” |
The historic building, with its great Chamber where the Governor and his Council met for their deliberations, still remains in almost its original state.
One could spend many days in Portsmouth investigating its connection with the history of the country, from the early explorations in 1603 of Martin Pring and the visit in 1614 of Captain John Smith, down through the settlements of David Thomson and Captain John Mason, the Indian wars and massacres, the incidents of the Revolution, and the rise and fall of the town’s commerce, and find plenty of old landmarks to give zest to the pursuit. But our search, at present, is for literary landmarks. We, therefore, take passage on the little steamer that plies to and from the Isles of Shoals for a pilgrimage to the Island Garden of Celia Thaxter.
IV
THE ISLES OF SHOALS
It is a pleasant sail down the Piscataqua, past the old “slumberous” wharves, where “the sunshine seems to lie a foot deep in the planks”; past the long bridges; the numerous clusters of islands; the white sails of the yacht club, hovering like gulls about the huge battleships, moored to the docks of the navy yard; the ruins of Fort Constitution, formerly Fort William and Mary, famed in history, but more interesting to us as the place where Prudence Palfrey came near surrendering her heart to the infamous Dillingham; the ancient town of Newcastle with its old-fashioned dwellings mingling with pretty new summer cottages, the whole dominated by the white walls of a huge hotel; Kittery Point, birthplace of Sir William Pepperell, the famous Governor and Indian fighter: and at last, the broad Atlantic, stretching to the eastward with nothing to obstruct the view save a few tiny specks, dimly visible in the distance. These are the Isles of Shoals, looking so small that they seem to be only rocks jutting a few feet above the sea, upon which it would be impossible to land.