скачать книгу бесплатно
Harvard University is America’s Cambridge. So much so that the town it is in, over the water from Boston, is actually called Cambridge.
Those who like good old-fashioned English ‘afternoon tea’, with proper sandwiches and proper cakes, and tea that isn’t the etiolated issue of a bag dangled in warm water, those who like to meet pert young students and trim graduates and twinkly, stylish professors, all congregate gratefully at the weekly teas held by Professor Peter Gomes, theologian, preacher and a natural leader of Harvard society. He dresses like a character from the pages of his favourite author. When asked to offer his list of the Hundred Best Novels in the English Language for one of those millennial surveys in 1999 he lamented, ‘But any such list will always be four short! P.G. Wodehouse only wrote ninety-six books.’
Black, gay, intensely charming, a connoisseur and an anglophile, Gomes is not what you expect of a Baptist minister, a Baptist minister furthermore who (though now a Democrat) was something of a chaplain to the Republican Party, having led prayers at the inaugurations of both Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr.
‘I was a Republican because my mother was a Republican and her mother before her. That nice President Lincoln who freed the slaves was a Republican and our family chose not to forget that fact.’
The downstairs lavatory in his beautifully furnished house is filled with portraits of Queen Victoria at various stages of her life, from young princess to elderly widow. I emerge from it murmuring praise.
‘Ah, you like my Victoria Station!’ beams Gomes, ‘I’m so happy.’
‘You’re obviously gay,’ I say to him. ‘But some people might be surprised to know that you are also openly black … no, hang on, I’ve got that the wrong way round.’
He bellows with laughter. ‘No, you got it entirely right, you naughty man.’
‘Your command of language, your love of ornament, literature and social style … is that regarded by some as a kind of betrayal?’
‘Someone once called me an Afro-Saxon,’ he says. ‘It was meant as an insult, but I take it as a compliment.’
I am sorry to leave the elegance and charm of Harvard, but there is plenty more elegance and charm awaiting me up ahead in Rhode Island.
RHODE ISLAND (#ulink_8862931c-9971-5696-b21b-0923d18784aa)
KEY FACTS
Abbreviation:
RI
Nickname:
The Ocean State
Capital:
Providence
Flower:
Violet
Tree:
Red maple
Bird:
Rhode Island red chicken
Drink:
Coffee milk
Motto:
Hope
Well-known residents and natives:
General Burnside, Dee Dee Myers, H.P. Lovecraft, S.J. Perelman, Cormac McCarthy, George M. Cohan, Nelson Eddy, Van Johnson, James Woods, the Farelly Brothers, Seth ‘Family Guy’ MacFarlane.
RHODE ISLAND
‘I do not especially mind being asked as a guest onboard a boat, so long as I do not have to do anything more than sip wine.’
Wedged between Massachusetts and Connecticut and very much the smallest state in the union, the anchor on Rhode Island’s seal and its official nickname of the ‘Ocean State’ tell you that they take nautical matters seriously here …
The Cliff Walk
From about the middle of the nineteenth century wealthy plantation families from the South began to build themselves ‘cottages’ along the clifftops of Newport, where they could escape the insufferably humid heat of the Southern summer and enjoy the relatively bracing and comfortable breezes rolling in from the Atlantic. Over the next few decades rich Northern families began to do the same as the Gilded Age of Vanderbilts and Astors reached its imponderably wealthy, stiflingly opulent and dizzyingly powerful zenith. These cottages were in fact vast mansions, some of seventy rooms or more, designed to be lived in for only a few months of the year, but all displaying the incalculable and overwhelming riches and status that the robber barons and industrialists of post-Civil-War America had heaped up in so short a time. Never in the field of human commerce, I think it is fair to say, had so much money been made so fast and by so few.
Today the cliff walk between Bellevue Avenue and the sea is a tourist destination and many of the grander cottages are owned and run, not by their original families, but by the Newport County Preservation Society and other trusts and bodies dedicated to keeping these gigantic fantasies from crumbling away.
There are still some survivors living around Bellevue Avenue, however, and I have tea with one of them, the great Oatsie Charles, a wondrous wicked twinkling grande dame of the old school. The first president she ever met was Franklin D. Roosevelt, she attended the wedding of JFK to Jacqueline Bouvier and her talk is a magnificent tour d’horizon of high-born American family life – Hugh Auchincloss, Doris Duke, Astors, Mellons, Radziwills, parties, disputed wills, feuds, marriages, divorces and scandals:
‘She was a Van Allen, of course, which made all the difference … Bunny Mellon and C.Z. Guest were there naturally … Heaven knows what he saw in her, she can’t have had more than two hundred million which these days … she married the Duke of Marlborough. Calamitous error, we all saw that it would never do …’ All spoken in a luxurious and old-style Alabama accent elegantly mixed with an international rich aristocrat’s amused drawl.
‘I can’t tell you how beautiful even ugly people looked back then.’
‘Was it quite formal?’
‘Well, we dressed for dinner every night and all the houses were formally staffed. Handsome footmen in divine livery. We certainly never saw anyone looking like you …’ Oatsie wrinkles her nose in apparent disgust at the film crew who are dressed in the standard grungey outfit of shorts, t-shirts and sandals. ‘A man’s neck can be a thing of beauty,’ she adds, rather startlingly. ‘And yours,’ she indicates the sound recordist’s, ‘has all the qualities. Even yours, darling,’ she turns to me, ‘though yours is higher than most.’
The tea has turned rapidly to claret, served by a devoted butler, whose duty is also to transport his mistress around her messuage in a golf cart, upon which entirely silly conveyance Oatsie somehow managed to bestow the air and dignity of a fabulous Oriental litter. We go next door to the Big Mansion, for Oatsie now makes do in a converted chauffeur’s house which is big and beautiful enough in its own right, being full of her paintings, furniture and exquisite knick-knacks. ‘Land’s End’, the Big Mansion, built by the novelist Edith Wharton, the supreme chronicler of the Gilded Age, has been given by Oatsie to her daughter Victoria and son-in-law Joe.
A little gilt may have come off the Age and a little guilt may have been added, but from where I stood it was pretty Gilded still.
I am Sailing
Aside from the eye-popping, jaw-dropping, bowel-shattering wealth on display along the cliff walk, there is class of a trimmer, more elegant kind still flourishing in Newport. This is a wonderful place to sail and has been a centre of regattas and races for over a hundred years.
The greatest prize in sailing is of course the America’s Cup, ‘the oldest active trophy in international sport’, the great dream, the Holy Grail – The One. It was offered as a prize by the British Royal Yacht Squadron of Cowes, Isle of Wight in 1851, and was won by a boat called America, which is how the cup gets its name, though it might just as well have been because yachts from the United States have won it so consistently and for so long …
Enormous fortunes have been poured into chasing the cup and for 132 years it remained in America, for much of that time in Newport. Poor Britain, that great sailing nation, has won the trophy precisely zero times. The United States held it for the longest winning streak in history, testament to the remarkable qualities of American seamanship, marine savvy, nautical engineering skills and sheer damned money.
Most would agree that the Golden Age of America’s Cup racing was the late forties, fifties and sixties, the days of the 12-metre class yacht. In 1962, winning by 4–1 and watched by President and Mrs Kennedy, was the graceful Weatherly. She kept the cup in Newport, where it had been since 1930 and where it would remain until Alan Bond of Perth, Australia finally broke that winning streak in 1983. The Weatherly is now one of only three surviving wooden America’s Cup defenders in the world, the only yacht to have won the cup when not newly built. She is beautiful. My, she is yare, as Grace Kelly says about her boat the True Love in the film High Society, which is set, of course, in Rhode Island. The Weatherly is as yare as they come. She is now owned by George Hill and Herb Marshall who manage to keep her in tip-top racing condition and to make money from her by charter.
George, a fit and trim fifty-year-old with silver hair and a lean, outdoors face, watches me clamber aboard, pick myself up, trip over a sticky-up thing that had no right to be there, pick myself up again and fall down in a heap, gasping.
‘Welcome aboard,’ he says.
A crew of three barefoot limber girls and a barefoot limber youth are tying knots with their toes, hauling on winches and, without trying, outdoing Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren models for looks and style. Within a few minutes sails have been unfurled and ropes uncleated and we are under way. I take up a position next to George, who is manning the wheel and calling out mysterious commands.
This is real sailing, the power, speed and excitement is hard to convey. I have always been a physical coward in sporting endeavours, sailing not excluded. Being shouted at to ‘turn about’, having to duck as great beams swing round to bang you on the head, leaning over precipitately, simply not understanding what is going on, having words like ‘tack’, ‘jib’, ‘sheet’ and ‘cleat’ hurled at you … my childhood was full of such moments, growing up as I did in a nautical county like Norfolk and I long ago decided that sailing was for Other People. I do not especially mind being asked as a guest on board a boat, so long as I do not have to do anything more than sip wine.
George has other ideas. If I am to go on board the Weatherly then I am to pay my way by crewing. He is very kind but very firm on this point as he steps aside for me to steer.
‘You’re luffing,’ he says.
‘Well, more a bark of joy at the blue sky and the crisp …’
‘No, not laughing, luffing. The canvas is flapping. Steer into the wind and keep the sail smooth.’
‘Oh right. Got you.’
George is a proud Rhode Islander. ‘Rhode Island is known to most Americans as a unit of size,’ he says. ‘You hear news stories like “an iceberg broke off Antarctica bigger than the state of Rhode Island” or “So and so’s ranch is bigger than Rhode Island”. Try to come up just a little bit. Once you’re on the breeze like this just little small slow adjustments. That’s good, just there and no higher. The Rhode Island charter of 1663 is an amazing document. It contains all of the concepts of freedom of speech and freedom of religion at a time when – you’re luffing again … when she loads up like that, just straighten her out.’
Strangely I enjoy myself. I enjoy myself very much indeed. I will go further. I have one of the most pleasurable days of the 18,330 or so I have spent thus far on this confusing and beguiling planet. The speed, the precision, the astounding power bewitched me: it was a glorious day, Newport Sound and Narragansett Bay sparkled and shimmered and glittered, the great bridges and landmarks around Newport shone in clean, clear light. You would have to be sullen and curmudgeonly indeed not to be enchanted, intoxicated and thrilled to the soles of your boat-shoes by this fabulous (and fabulously expensive) class of sailing.
Farewell, Rhode Island. Farewell too any lingering belief that America might be a classless society … I luff myself silly at such a thought.
CONNECTICUT (#ulink_ec351138-39c1-552f-9aac-eaf5997a521a)
KEY FACTS
Abbreviation:
CT
Nicknames:
The Constitution State, The Nutmeg State
Capital:
Hartford
Flower:
Mountain laurel
Tree:
Charter white oak
Bird:
American robin
Motto:
Qui transtulit sustinet (‘He who is transplanted, still sustains’ – Hm, loses in translation I suspect)
Well-known residents and natives:
Aaron Burr, Dean Acheson, George W. Bush (43rd President), Benedict Arnold, Ethan Allen, Noah Webster, Samuel Colt, P.T. Barnum, J.P. Morgan, Charles Goodyear, Charles Ives, Al Capp, Benjamin Spock, William Buckley, John Gregory Dunne, Ira Levin, E. Annie Proulx, Rosalind Russell, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Mitchum, Ernest Borgnine, Ed Begley, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Glenn Close, Meg Ryan, Christopher Walken, Christopher Lloyd, Seth McFarlane, Gene Pitney, Dave Brubeck, Karen and Richard Carpenter, Jose Feliciano, Michael Bolton, Moby.
CONNECTICUT
‘My travels so far have already taught me that Nature did not fashion Stephen Fry to serve in submarines …’
Only Delaware and neighbouring Rhode Island are smaller than the Constitution State. As it happens, the seven smallest states in mainland America are all in New England and most, like Connecticut, make up in history, wealth, population density and dazzling scenery what they lack in size.
The name derives from the Mohican word quinnitukqut, which Scrabble-winning entry apparently means ‘place of long tidal river’. This doesn’t quite satisfactorily explain the silent second ‘c’ in my opinion. Never mind. It all adds to the mystique.
The whole of Connecticut’s shoreline faces Long Island and the body of water is therefore Long Island Sound rather than open Atlantic Ocean. This geography leads to a calm and balmy climate and a strategically ideal situation for submarine pens.
My taxi and I are headed for Groton, CT, where on the River Thames in New London can be found the United States Navy’s Submarine Base, ‘the Submarine Capital of the World’.
The Springfield
I am led on board, well, shoved down a tight, clambery hatchway and here I am, in a nuclear submarine, all six foot four and a half of me.
I am shown round by Petty Officer James Poton, a shy, soft-spoken and highly intelligent young man who answers my footling questions with grace and humour.
‘And here, Stephen,’ Americans like to use first names as much as possible, ‘is the control room. This is where we dive and drive the boat from. We have a helmsman and a planesman who controls the rudder and bow planes, then over here you have the stern planes on the back of the ship.’
‘Wow. And this is the weapons station is it?’ I point at a collection of screens and controls.
‘Stephen, this is exactly where the solutions for the weapons are plotted. Fire control takes bearings from Sonar and they plot solutions on the contacts.’
‘It’s like a gaming arcade.’
‘Actually, Stephen, this weapons lodge console is a little more expensive than a typical arcade game.’
I suppose James is used to visitors asking what the various buttons and screens are for and, in particular, he must be accustomed to hearing them beg to be allowed to use the periscope. This is a big moment for me: countless films and TV series can’t prepare one for the actual feeling of that device under one’s control, with its fluid hydraulic hiss and gently insistent physical pull. I spin it around, pulling on its motorcycle throttle zoom and burbling a mixture of Royal Navy (Above Us the Waves) and US (Crimson Tide) Navy jargon. ‘Now hear this. You have the conn, Number One. Steady … steady … up ‘scope, chaps …’ and so on.
We are aboard the Springfield, a hunter-killer nuclear submarine built for the great Cold War game that was played out across the oceans of the world between the US and the USSR for more than forty years. Nowadays the Springfield is mostly deployed for … oh, I am so sorry, I am not allowed to tell you or I would have to hunt you and kill you. Let us just say there are still uses for a nuclear submarine in today’s volatile world.
Actually, PO Poton does attempt to explain to me what the strategic purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet in the post-Cold-War era is, but it seems all a bit vague and jargon-rich for me to grasp. Either that or I am too obsessed with the quotidian detail of life on one of these cramped tubes. Everywhere I bump my head. Everywhere I am in the way. There is nowhere to sit down unless you are eating or operating some fearsome communication, navigation or weaponry technology. Every single spare inch of wall and ceiling (though where one ends and the other begins is a moot point) is taken up with wiring, ducting, piping, lagging and strange snaking coils of nameless substance that terminate every now and again in a switch or control panel. For all the astounding quantities of money these babies cost, they are severely, but severely functional. Not one penny appears to have been expended in the service of aesthetics or fun. Which is, I suppose, as it should be.
The sleeping quarters or ‘racks’ are cruelly Spartan. The only concession to privacy a thin curtain, the only offering to spare time an LCD screen screwed into the rack above, fed by a Sony PlayStation, so that DVDs and games can be enjoyed lying on one’s back.
On the wall of the mess, which is in reality like a small traditional roadside diner, hangs an original Springfield Rifle, in honour of the town of Springfield, Massachusetts, even though the vessel is in fact named for Springfield, Illinois (it being a naval tradition to name submarines after state capitals) – otherwise, aside from the obligatory ketchup and hot-sauce bottles, there is not much to see. No exterior view of course, no portholes.
It seems to me inconceivable that men (and only men can be submariners in the United States Navy) could spend any length of time in one of these without being sent entirely mad. I cannot imagine myself ‘under way’ for more than two days without screaming to be let off.
‘What’s the longest tour of duty?’ I ask.
