Afternoon Adventure: Servant Life Tour at The Elms

I want to say something meaningful about all this horrifying news coming out of Boston, but I can't find the words. There's only so much sadness I can take in at a time, especially when it's on such a vast scale as the Marathon and a citywide manhunt. At some point I just need to turn off the news. Maybe I'm avoiding reality, but once you have the basic information, how helpful is it to dwell on tragedy that doesn't personally touch you?

Instead, I want to think about the still-beautiful things.

On Tuesday, Josh and I drove down to Newport to visit The Elms, one of the mansions on Bellevue Avenue. We listened to NPR for the first half of the trip, but after a while it got to be too much, hearing such gruesome details about limbs lost as we passed flowering trees and sparkling water. So we turned to a music station, though not without feeling a bit callous for enjoying such a beautiful day.

As we wound through the scenic downtown, stopping for pedestrians and peering at the porched and gabled houses in colorful hues, the sadness of the real world seemed to lessen. That only continued when we arrived at The Elms, the one-time summer residence of the Berwinds, who made their fortune in coal. Unlike some of the mansions in Newport (cough Marble House cough), The Elms is a tasteful spinoff of an 18th-century French chateau (but that must be an oxymoron in itself, right?). Lavish statues decorate the grounds and refined gardens, and the interior resembles a fine art museum more than a residence. But you don't get the sense that the owners were trying to show off their wealth quite as much as other Newport residents.

In the 19th century, Newport, RI became a summer playground for the wealthy of New York and Philadelphia. Families like the Vanderbilts and Astors constructed lavish mansions, which they called "summer cottages," and they spent their summers having parties and taking the sea air away from the city. They sent groups of servants to Newport a few weeks in advance to open up the houses and prepare for the summer season, and they hired summer staff to help out with the massive parties they threw almost daily. Today many of these mansions are still standing, and you can visit a lot of them thanks to the work of the Newport Preservation Society.

We've been on a number of "regular" mansion tours in Newport over the past few years, so we decided to go on the "behind the scenes" Servant Life tour. Instead of wandering through the lavish parlors and second parlors and bedrooms, we came in through the servants' entrance on the side, passing under wisteria grown specifically to mask the servants' comings and goings. We hiked up four flights of back stairs to the servants' quarters, which resembled dormitories more than anything else (and were not divided by gender, as in Downton Abbey). We went out on the roof, where the servants could take smoke breaks or hang out when off-duty, camouflaged by an immensely tall wall. And we plunged into the basement boiler room and peered at the coal delivery system, a long tunnel with its own delivery cart.

Our guide told stories of Mr. Berwind firing all 40 members of the summer staff at once for having the gall to request a full day off in the summer. Of 18-hour days when the Berwinds entertained friends and colleagues. Of Irish immigrants finding their first jobs at the mansion and moving on to bigger and better things, like working as seamstresses. The guide didn't tell as many stories as I was hoping for, but nevertheless it was a fascinating glimpse into the "downstairs" life of the Newport mansions.

As we drove back towards Providence, I could feel the solemnity of the real world creeping back in. But instead we rolled down the windows and let the wind ruffle our hair, and tried to stay in that bygone world of servants and wealth just a bit longer. Sometimes a historical afternoon adventure is just the escape you need.

Afternoon adventure: Blithewold Mansion & Gardens

One of my favorite ways to spend an afternoon (especially in the gloomy winter months) is visiting house museums. Typically these are grand old mansions that have been converted into museums for the public, like the mansions in Newport. Lissa and I grew up visiting 19th-century mansions, and we loved wandering the halls, admiring the rich furnishings and deep-piled carpets, hearing juicy stories about the houses' former inhabitants. Luckily, Rhode Island is full of these grandes dames.

One quiet afternoon in December, I drove down to Bristol to visit Blithewold Mansion & Gardens. Built in the English country manor style, it was originally owned by the Van Wickle family, namesake for the gates at Brown. The Van Wickles had their share of tragedy--patriarch Augustus died in a skeet-shooting accident--but they spent many happy summers at Blithewold, too. Now the house is open to the public, and a preservation society protects both the mansion and the extensive gardens attached.

The house was decked out for the holidays when I visited. Since daughter Marjorie Van Wickle traveled to Europe in the early 20th century, each room featured souvenirs from her travels, like picture postcards and Baedeker guidebooks. Visitors could move around the house at their own pace, and I took my time in each room, admiring the carved wooden furniture, the embellished prints and watercolors. The travel souvenirs were a special thrill--in college I wrote my senior thesis on women traveling to Europe on the Grand Tour. Deciphering the old-fashioned script on the postcards was like visiting an old friend.

Afterwards I walked around the dormant gardens and stared out to the water. There's something very peaceful about wandering the grounds of a mansion in winter. The entire estate seems muted, and when you're outside you feel like the only person in the whole world.

I was definitely in a class of my own that day--much younger than the elderly women touring the house with their friends, much older than the little girls having tea in the dining room. House museums are apparently not that popular among the twenty-something set. But the generational gap actually added to my experience.

What I love most about these visits is the feeling, however fleeting, of being transported to another era. Maybe for a moment I imagine it's 1903, and all these smiling people in photographs are still alive and well. Or maybe I get a strong memory of my grandparents and how comforting it was to visit them when I was little. For a moment I'm out of time. And when I need a break from the daily grind, there's nothing better.