I started on my morning walk up the island just as the clocks were striking eight. Spring comes in Newport very early and very verdant. The bloom of orchard and of lilac greeted me. At every step I crushed the perfume out of violets blossoming in the strip of greensward that bordered the broad band of road. I often looked back upon the fortunate city, mounting the green slopes and scattering itself among the quiet fields. The last point of land was visible even down to Point Judith. A faint roll of drums reached me from the fort. Good-bye to a pleasant place! I felt, in turning away, that if Damascus had been like Newport, I should have entered Damascus.
Distant about a mile from Newport is "Tonomy," or more properly Miantonimo Hill. It is the highest elevation in the southern part of the island, receiving its name as the seat of a sachem. Some remains of field-works are seen on its slopes.[301]
Near the southern foot of Miantonimo Hill is the old Malbone place, the site of a colonial mansion celebrated in its day as the finest in Newport. It was destroyed by fire rather more than a century ago. Tradition avers that Colonel Godfrey Malbone, seeing his house in flames, ordered the table removed to the lawn, and coolly finished his dinner there. It was a two-story stone-built house, which had cost the owner a hundred thousand dollars.
Many are the dark, vague, and mysterious hints let fall from time to time relative to the life of Malbone. As a merchant his ventures are said to have been lawless even for his lawless age. His corsairs preyed upon the commerce of Frenchman or Spaniard without regard for treaties. Rum and slaves were the commodities in which the Newport of his time trafficked largely. Smuggling was hardly deemed dishonorable in a merchant. As confirming this easy condition of commercial virtue, a writer mentions having seen in Malbone's garden the entrance of one of those subterranean passages leading to the shore I have so often unearthed.
During the French war of George II., Newport, from its beginning to the year 1744, had armed and sent to sea more than a score of privateers. It was called the nursery of corsairs. It was also called rich; and the French, in planning its capture, facilitated by the information of a resident French merchant, a spy, calculated on levying a heavy contribution. "Perhaps we had better burn it, as a pernicious hole, from the number of privateers there fitted out, as dangerous in peace as in war; being a sort of freebooter, who confiscates à tord et à travers," say they. These harsh expressions sound strangely unfamiliar when contrasted with French panegyric of the next generation.
Edward G. Malbone, a natural son, belonged to a collateral branch of the family.[302] Newport was the birthplace of this exquisite miniature painter and most refined of men. This refinement appears in his works, which are full of artistic grace and dainty delicacy. Little of his life was passed here, though that little is much prized by all who know his worth as a man. Allston and Malbone are said to have worked together in Newport as pupils of Samuel King, beginning thus the friendship that so long subsisted between them.
THE GLEN.
About midway of the island, on the eastern shore, is The Glen, once more frequented than at present. A line carried across the island from this point would pass near the old farmstead, which was the quarters of the British general, Prescott. It is on the west road leading by the most direct route from Newport to Bristol Ferry.