Throughout HBO The golden ageCurrently broadcasting its third season, there are frequent references to Newport, Rhode Island. For the rich worldly in New York, Newport was popular summer vacation, and in the show, we see several characters meeting for tennis matches, card games and sumptuous holidays in their holiday homes.
The last episode of The golden ageEntitled “Love is never easy”, visits Newport again when Peggy Scott (Dené Benton), an ambitious writer and secretary of Mondaine Agnes Van Rhijn, goes to Newport with her parents to stay with a cousin as she recovers after a long illness. Peggy ends up being courted by the doctor who treats her and learns that his family is in sight in the black community of Newport.
Here’s what you need to know about the history of this popular seaside city and its residents.
How Newport has become a summer destination for the rich
From the 18th century, rich southerners headed north towards Newport to escape malaria and yellow fever epidemics in plantations. The third season of The golden age Takes up in 1884, that is to say when Newport “began to become the ultimate summer destination of the rich New York”, according to Nicole Jeri Williams, conservative of the Society of Newport County preservation collections.
The spectacle depicts a singular period in time. At the time, “very rapid industrial growth created the immense fortune of thieves’ barons,” explains Williams. “There was also a lack of surveillance and regulation of the government – a truly leaving economic environment. And there was no federal income tax, so all this produced the massive industrial fortunes of the deceased age. Many of these people finish the summer in Newport. ”
During the golden age, elite New Yorkers who made a fortune in the railways, mining, steam ships and finances were attracted to major Newport properties overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
Ward Mallister (played by Nathan Lane in the show) was one of the social referees who helped start the holiday trend in Newport. He charmed the worldly with his accent of Georgia, travel tales in Europe, and overall “lived as a professional snob”, as Williams says. He was an “acolyte” by Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, who decided who was “in” and who “went out” in society, and spent a lot of time in his Newport Beechwood manor. But he started to fall with the worlds when he started to flee stories about them in the press, and fully lost their confidence after having published his Tell-Tout in 1890 Society as I found it.
Mamie Fish (Ashlie Atkinson) is another worldly that has welcomed some of the most legendary events in Newport. She was known for organizing themed festivals, like the one in which the participants disguised themselves as nursery characters. Sometimes participants had to speak in “Baby Talk”. And she even organized a dog dinner, dealing with the chiage dogs of socialities at a meal prepared just for them. There was so much food that a teckel passed out to eat too much, and the party became ridiculed in the press as an example of excess gilded age and extravagance.
Then and now, The Cliff Walk, a rocky path that extends alongside the luxurious residences, provided the opportunity to erase the houses and was also a “social world” that is its own, according to Williams. The servants went down to the cliff for swimming, consumption and dance.
Even if they did not have houses in Newport, Elite New York made a duty to visit the city of Seaport in summer. For example, JP Morgan did not have a summer house in Newport, but he would take his yacht there and make fishing.
Newport flourishing community of black Americans
African heritage people have lived in Newport since the 17th century. Newport also houses the oldest American cemetery for enslaved Africans.
In 1884, the Rhode Island schools had been de -registered for almost two decades. “We have tried to show, through our characters this season, that there is a long story of free black life in New England and specifically in Rhode Island,” explains Erica Dunbar, historian and co-executive producer of The golden age. “Remember, slavery has been gradually dismantled through New England, the States of the Middle-England, at the beginning of the 19th century, so that when we struck the years 1880, we have generations of free people-up to 40 years of free dark life in a place like Newport.”
Keith Stokes, winner of the Rhode Island historian, is a descendant of the real person who inspired the pastor in THE Golden agewhose Doctor Son continues Peggy Scott. The Reverend Mahlon van Horne – who inspired Frederick Kirkland in the show and played by Brian Stokes Mitchell – was a pastor of the Church of the Congregation of Newport Colored. He boasted of many first, while the first person of color elected to the Newport School Board and the first black member of the General Assembly of Rhode Island, where he participated in the success of civil rights legislation. During the Spanish-American war, President McKinley appointed Van Horne as a special lawyer for the Danish West Indies. Dunbar says that Van Horne’s political career reflects a broader trend of black elected officials serving during reconstruction after the civil war.
“He is the forerunner of Martin Luther King and the black ministers of the 20th century that mix religion and social justice in equal rights,” explains Stokes. “He is one of the most important African-American leaders in America here at that time.”
As summer vacationers increased, commercial opportunities for black entrepreneurs have done so. Bellevue Avenue has transport companies, inhabitants, hairstyle and hairstyles, catering services and support for lady-replacement.
Mary Dickerson, who appears in the last episode of the season, created a dress establishment in Bellevue Avenue, which was addressed to the residents of the summer. In the show, she helps Peggy Scott’s mother Dorothy Scott (Audra McDonald) tries a dress for a ball. The real Mary Dickerson was also active in the causes of women’s rights. In 1895, she helped found the Women’s Newport League, which created a daycare in the city. In 1896, she was a founding member of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, and in 1903, she created the first federation of African-American women’s clubs in Rhode Island.
There were also three African heritage professionals in Newport at the golden age. Although Dr. Kirkland is not technically based on a real historic figure, Stokes considers him as a composite of notable black health care providers in Newport. Alonzo Van Horne, the great-back-cele of Stokes, was the first dentist of the African heritage in the Rhode Island. And Marcus Wheatland, known as the Doctor of Houles, was a doctor and a pioneer of radiographs as a diagnostic tool.
Through Newport’s black characters in season 3 of The golden age, Dunbar hopes that viewers will have a better idea of ”generations of free blacks who live and thrive”. The diversity of the characters provides “a rich and textured understanding of black America at this time”.
