The Great American Saloon Series/Newport's White Horse Tavern
Carnegie, M. D.
w hen architectural plans for what became the Rhode Island State House were drafted in the 1730s, Newport officials became embroiled in bitter controversy about the direction the new building should...
...A beautiful and historic seaport town full of drunken blondes is apt to be popular with l'homme sportif, and as we waded through the sea of sweatshirts from colleges I'd never heard of, she allowed as how the forms of courtship in the West appalled her—the drunken whoops, the upsetting of trash receptacles, the public profanity, the puking...
...Kuwait, my date responded, to which the man said, "Fine country," sounding as much like a Hemingway safari guide as he could...
...As they were a bit lit up, they broke custom and asked us where we came from...
...Well, there we were at the White Horse Tavern, me and Blumpy and our non-Protestant dates, one an Arab teetotaler and the other a potted Italian Catholic...
...He had just been to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE working on some large communications deal...
...Outside, a hand-painted wooden sign announces simply: Cocktails...
...she replied...
...T here were at least six licensed tav- erns operating in the town by 1691, and competition for the tippler's farthing was keen...
...There is no piped-in music, no buffalo wings or nachos supreme...
...Too many weeks without a drink, I'll say," he said, grinning warmly and applying the finishing touches to his old-fashioned...
...They are all blonde...
...I walked back out in the rain, dreaming of the blondes of summer...
...She wasn't even blonde, after all—probably not even Protestant...
...He handed it down to his son, but Mays fils was already in the midst of a staggeringly successful career as arms-dealer, rum-trader, and at-large privateer...
...In fact people come to Newport, in the summer at least, because it is full of blonde girls, heartbreakingly beautiful blonde girls...
...But the gentlemen from Texas took some pains to quell native suspicion, and in fact only two great changes have been made during their tenure...
...Blumpy was too civil ever to mention my date's not drinking, which is something of a sin on the seersucker circuit...
...I couldn't figure it out until the curator said, "I want to tell the real story, because the real story is a story of many peoples, and not just one...
...This was the very best sort of lineage, of course, but to reveal it thus was a gross error of protocol, and I felt rather ashamed suddenly...
...They are not to be trusted...
...We had a couple more rounds, and talked warmly about the sailing and the business potential in the Arab world and the jazz festival...
...It was a warm and typical summer night in Newport...
...A gentleman would never have pointed out her assumption that all poor kids are black, nor would he have been so crass as to mention that perhaps the timeless romance of a young girl's fantasy come true might actually have a wonderful effect in the child...
...I thought the White Horse would be the perfect antidote...
...I wanted some more of that tranquility in the winter, when I felt oppressed by the cold and the tinny refrains of the Christmas carols blaring from every speaker, and when I popped into the White Horse on a rainy Thursday in December, the fire was going greatblazes...
...w hen architectural plans for what became the Rhode Island State House were drafted in the 1730s, Newport officials became embroiled in bitter controversy about the direction the new building should face...
...But I said nothing, not even when, as an aside at the end of her talk, the curator allowed as how she'd purchased books to be distributed to poor kids at Christmas, and was then returning them in favor of something else...
...young Gertrude had emigrated from Germany at age three, young enough to learn accent-free English...
...The place was then acquired by Jonathan Nichols, who would become deputy-governor of Rhode Island...
...And then, of course, I knew what was wrong...
...Location counted for a great deal, as the State House architectural flap showed...
...The feeling of warm security had been supplanted by a tense air of guilt...
...Well, the old State House is now home to District Court, whence the felonious can barely catch sight of the Atlantic for all the tony harborfront shops, and nowadays Rhode Island pols are more likely to be discovered in the minimum-security wing of the state correctional facility...
...Of a summer's evening, there are more blondes in this town than in the Swedish Green party...
...But the place was empty, save a small party who were lunching with the tavern's curator...
...Imagine," she said, "if I'd given the story of Cinderella to some little black girl...
...Inside, the floors are still black and unlevel, the enormous central fireplace still roars...
...The Marquis of Granby, a competing pub, was the favored watering-hole of the Hessian soldiers in the Fusileers...
...Blumpy's Mayflower," his date blurted out as soon as he'd packed off toward the loo...
...A vocal faction of traditionalists demurred, countering that it should point at the tavern hard by, to which the General Council was in the habit of repairing, and which, at half-a-century-old, was already something of an institution itself...
...On my right sat a woman, fortyish, and to her right was her date, a stout Beau Bridges manqué sort of character with that great perturb-less visage of the well-to-do...
...The rest, as they say, is history: the Marquis of Granby closed after the war...
...Secret plans were routinely discussed there over a few steins, and the Hessians believed themselves so secure in their native tongue that they never bothered to clear the place out when talking business...
...Further conversation revealed that she was not married to him...
...I only asked what she'd buy instead...
...These were men who had spent their lives sailing and negotiating bond deals, and now they were having a few Scotches with which to wind it down...
...I was so stunned that I wasn't sure I'd heard her properly...
...It changed hands several times before being purchased by a group of Texans a decade or so ago...
...A big Tonka truck...
...maybe it was Bunny, or Bumpy, or puzzy...
...She listened to everything, then passed the information to a patron, a slave named Cudjo, who would then get word to the local patriots...
...And cultivation of the right clientele, as always, was critical...
...And, as my Palestinian date remarked on our walk to the White Horse, they are often half in the bag...
...The tavern is now also the titular Atlantic headquarters for the Fort Worth Yacht Club, and it now operates at a profit...
...there are rich heiresses with trust funds...
...We shook hands and called it a night, and when my date and I walked outside again, the frat boys had dispersed, and the stars were out...
...CI...
...That sale raised a few hackles around town, with some public hand-wringing about selling off a piece of local history, and a good deal of venting of local prejudices against Southerners...
...I felt more at peace, as if some of the tranquility of the old geezers had come to me simply by my having shared their space along the bar...
...It is the oldest continuously operating public house in our United States...
...And where was I from...
...Just yards away, after all, Ted Turner had capped off a successful defense of the America's Cup by staggering fifth-in-hand off the side of the dock, and plunging flush into the briny deep...
...But the White Horse Tavern still stands, smack where it was built in 1673...
...The avant-garde thought it should be toward the waterfront and the town's main thoroughfare, a nod to commerce at a time when Newport was one of the most important cities in the colonies...
...The first owner of the White Horse on record was the lesser-known Willie Mays...
...My date nodded knowingly, though as a faithful Muslim she has never tasted alcohol...
...Life must have seemed very fine to them, and I felt a twinge of nostalgia for the days before the World Wrestling Federation and Animal House...
...We took seats at the bar...
...Newporters like things that areold, however, especially money, and in the town where Cornelius Vanderbilt is still thought a bit of an arriviste, it is the bar at the White Horse that is the last refuge of those who make their money the old-fashioned way—by inheriting it...
...I didn't either...
...Food, of the French variety, is available in helpings inversely proportional to their expense, and the several dining rooms attract a necessarily well-financed crowd, whose cash is largely as nouvelle as the cuisine...
...We were, after all, two gentlemen who met at a bar, and that is a rare enough thing in our Republic today, indeed...
...There are German au pairs and Grosse Pointe debutantes, Manhattan photo assistants and Aussie round-the-world sailors...
...Though the thirsty can no longer fortify themselves with a dram of crank, much of the tavern has remained as it ever was...
...The White Horse stayed in the Nichols family for two hundred years...
...T here are guidebooks that will tell you people visit Newport for the fabulous mansions of the swells, but they are also the sorts of books that advise which pricey waterfront cafe serves the better eggs Florentine, and how your holiday would be incomplete without a stop at the village scrimshoner's...
...We native Newporters love being asked this question...
...And for my part I never raised the Mayflower issue...
...A s always, the patrons, nattily turned out in loafers and cranberry trousers, looked like a Cos Cob alderman's assembly...
...Anyhow, they'd never have tossed out the barmaid who served them...
...There are baronesses, tennis pros, and jewelry-designers here...
...She was lecturing the guests over their pastas primavera, and straightaway it just didn't feel, well, right...
Vol. 26 • March 1993 • No. 3
