I’ve wanted to go to the Redwood Library for a long time. It’s a surviving eighteenth-century subscription library, founded in 1746 by a gift from Abraham Redwood, a Quaker slave owner (he inherited a plantation called ‘Cassada Garden’ in Antigua). He gave £500 ‘for purchasing a Library of all arts and sciences, whereunto the curious and impatient inquirer, after resolution of doubts, and the bewildered ignorant might freely repair for discovery and demonstration to the one, and true knowledge and satisfaction to the other’. The language of the gift admirably exemplifies early eighteenth-century free thinking, the quest for knowledge which led the citizens of Newport to greet the arrival of George Berkeley en route to establish a university in Bermuda and themselves to form a Literary and Philosophical Society in 1730. This was half a century before the foundation of literary and philosophical societies in provincial cities like Manchester (1781), Newcastle (1793), and Hull (1822).
Newport RI
I had forgotten the relentless opulence of Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, the so-called ‘cottages’ towering over the street. We drove through the drizzle admiring their oppressive grandeur, many of them still private residences. The question was, which to visit ? The Breakers or the Marble House ? We chose the Isaac Bell Jr House by McKim, Mead and White, built in the early 1880s, just after they had designed the Casino nearer the centre of town. It’s in a wonderful, over-elaborate Arts-and-Crafts style with rich shingled exterior, a bulbous roof based on a French windmill and an interior stripped of most of its furniture, but with elaborate decorative details drawn from historic French interiors, mantelpieces based on designs by E.W. Godwin, a big inglenook, and silk and rattan in the ceilings.
Mariana Cook
Before leaving Martha’s Vineyard, we called in at Mariana Cook’s forthcoming exhibition at Tanya Augoustinos’s A Gallery in Oak Bluffs (opens tomorrow). It was only half hung. I’ve previously known Mariana’s work mainly as a portrait photographer (she took the official portrait of me on the website and Chris Smith for the NPG), but her work has now diversified into semi-abstraction, including details of a black silk dress, steps, window frames in France, an interior in Santorini, light on the pavement, trees in Central Park and a door in Oak Bluffs. Some of these have been published in her book, Close at Hand.
East House
One the the pleasures of the last few days has been staying in East House, recently constructed to a design by Peter Rose, an architect who teaches at Harvard. A nicely judged, asymmetric, neo-Louis Kahn essay in concrete, wood and abstract spaces, with floors of Swiss stone from Vals, walls of douglas fir and Alaskan cedar and walls which open up to the sound of the sea.
This is the ground plan, which demonstrates how the rooms have been disaggregated from the central axis, allowing views through the centre and cross axis of the house:
Beach Plum Inn
We completed our short stay on Martha’s Vineyard wholly appropriately by attending an open-air feast in honour of Bob Daniels, a ninety-year old supplier of vegetables at the local market. The feast was organised by Chris Fischer of the Beach Plum Inn, with wine supplied by Andrew Mariani of Sonoma County in California (his parents are the main suppliers of US walnuts). This is the view of the sea from where we were eating:
This is the menu:
President Obama
Much of the discussion over the last few days has concerned the imminent arrival of the President. Will it require the closure of North Road ? How much will it inconvenience the neighbours ? Did he leave a monogrammed Presidential basketball behind by mistake ?
But some of the discussion relates to the deeper issue as to how far the President has fulfilled the hopes of his greatest supporters (Martha’s Vineyard is full of loyal democrats) ? Most people feel that he could and should have done more, but they remain sympathetic to him as a person. They know that the expectations of a President are nowadays unreasonable. They blame Congress. Some blame his closest advisors. And they recall that he has been, and still is, a great orator.
Emma Young
We visited a letterpress printer called Emma Young who makes a trade printing invitations and menu cards:
West Tisbury Farmer’s Market
In continuing our tour of Martha’s Vineyard utopian, rural pastoralism, we paid a visit to West Tisbury Farmer’s Market. It was beetling hot:
Chappaquiddick
In recording our explorations of Martha’s Vineyard, I feel that I should also record that we visited Chappaquiddick yesterday, and stood on Dike Bridge where Edward Kennedy’s car went off into the sea in July 1969. At this remove, it was hard to see how he could possibly have taken a wrong turning down an unpaved road and left Mary Jo Kopechne in the sea to drown. But at least I remember the months of news coverage of the trial. This is the so-called Chappy Ferry:
Edgartown
Edgartown is almost too good to be true. A once prosperous whaling community with grand classical mansions built by merchants in Main Street and a big, barrel-vaulted Old Whaling Church, dated 1841.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
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