CLIFF WALK.
Turning away from the sea, the rambler perceives the long line of cottages, villas, and country houses, Swiss, Italian, English, or nondescript, to which these territories pertain.[275] These houses represent the best and at the same time the most rational feature of a semi-residence at the sea-side. People are really at home, and may enjoy the natural beauties of their situation without the disadvantages inseparable from hotel life. To be sure, at Newport it is only Murray Hill or Beacon Hill transplanted. The social system revolves with much the same regularity as the planetary, and with no abatement of its exclusive privileges. But home life or cottage life at the sea-side is within the means of all those possessing moderate incomes, who are content to dispense with luxury or more house-room than they know what to do with; and it is remarkable how little may serve one's turn where outdoor life is the desideratum. Those who are content to leave all the surplusage at home, whether of frivolity or luggage, and honestly mean to enjoy the shore for itself, come where they may forget the world, the flesh, and money-getting. To this sort of life—a hint borrowed of English sea-side customs—Newport has led the way. At Oak Bluffs a city has sprung into existence on this plan, and the shores of New England are dotted with little red-roofed cottages.
If he has come to the cliffs by the Bath road, the visitor sees, almost at the beginning of his ramble, the summer cottage of Charlotte Cushman, whose career has some resemblance to that of the gifted Mrs. Siddons. Both were poor girls at the outset of their professional lives. The Englishwoman, even after she became famous, usually refused invitations to the houses of the great or opulent, excusing herself from accepting them on the ground that all her time was due to the public, whose continued favor she wished to merit by unremitting application to her studies.
Whatever money or taste or art has been able to do toward the embellishment of the grounds along the cliffs—and in this category are included Bellevue and other favored avenues—has not been omitted. A horticulturist would see something to notice everywhere. As the houses stand well back from the shore, the space between is laid out in bright-hued parterres, that look like Persian carpets spread on the well-kept lawns. The eye at times fairly revels in sumptuous masses of color. Yet Newport was now deserted by the fashionable world, in the month of months, when sea and shore are incomparably enticing and satisfying.
THE CLIFFS.
A NEWPORT COTTAGE.