Friday, November 28, 2014

George William Curtis to Charles Eliot Norton, August 11, 1862

Naushon Island,1 11th August, 1862.

My Dear Charles, — Here we have been for a week to-morrow, and in the salt sea air we all seem to be perfectly well. It is only about thirty miles from the southern point of Rhode Island, so I breathe my native Narragansett air and am electrified. The island is about eight miles long and one or two broad. It is beautifully broken, with superb beechwoods rising and opening into bare uplands, from which you see the ocean or Vineyard Sound, and again opening into sunny, grassy nooks and spaces with clusters of shrubs in which the deer lie or feed. Day before yesterday we started a pair of magnificent bucks. The paths and dells are endless. From the house you have a sea horizon and the entire sky, with woods almost to the horizon, and holding azure crescents of sea (as in " Maud ") in their tops. The house is immense, the life simple, the hospitality unbounded. To-day the governor and three of his suite are here, beside ourselves and three or four other visitors. There are riding, driving, rowing, sailing, shooting, fishing, billiards, dancing, — what you will. You join the doers, or you go apart and do nothing or mind your own business. Mrs. Forbes is incessantly working on preserves and comforts for the soldiers, and we all pull lint at intervals. I have been reading here Tocqueville's “Ancien Régime.” It is very calm and wise.
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1 The summer residence of Mr. John M. Forbes.

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 157-8

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