Wentworth By the Sea and the Portsmouth Navy Yard in 1905
To Sergius Witte, the Russian negotiator to the Portsmouth peace conference, knew the glittering Imperial Russia of Faberge Easter eggs and Romanov sabres. His czar, Nicholas II, walked the precarious palaces of St. Petersburg surrounded by intrigue, ghosts of assassinated relatives and fervid revolutionaries while his wife, the dowager empress and their ducal cousins wrapped themselves in jewels that were the envy of Europe.
Jutaro Komura, Japanese plenipotentiary, knew the silence of his Emperor’s Edo Castle, the dark cavernous halls of painted dragon screens, thousand year old scrolls and wooden floors that gleamed or creaked beneath the human presence that dared to intrude upon the ancient secrets. His thankless task in Portsmouth was to balance a council of elders torn by the promise of a modern, industrialized Japan that sought to stand as equals among the other world powers after fifty years trying, and a muscular and victorious military certain of the threat posed by anything that was not Japanese.use other templates select the template button to the right of the source button above.
Theodore Roosevelt, no stranger himself to the privileged worlds of old Knickerbocker society and Harvard Brahmins, knew all that and sought the simple, country charms of a place fanned by the fresh winds of a sea breeze. His choice was a place where the protagonists might find reason as the refuge from the battlefields of the Russo-Japanese War. A place like his summer White House at Sagamore Hill. A place called Portsmouth, New Hampshire, population 10,636. And in it, the Wentworth Hotel.
This grande dame “by the sea” was everything Versailles and the hotels of Paris had not been. Open, welcoming and candid. The newsreel shows men and women excitedly crowding the verandah of the Wentworth (even squeezing those on the edges, off) as first Witte, then Komura climb into their cars for the morning round of formal negotiations at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, the formal State Department host for protocol and security.
3rd Assistant Secretary of State Herbert Peirce had arranged for the late model Pope Toledo cars, as he had for the accommodations in the hotel. And the word on the street was that Frank Jones, the recently deceased beer baron who had owned Wentworth, would have been pleased by Judge Calvin Page’s (his executor) decision to provide suites of rooms to both parties, at no charge. The local Portsmouth Herald reported the advance preparations on July 18th. When Peirce and Page called on the hotel management to ask about accommodating the diplomats, General Manager C.A. Wood replied with all the right professional courtesies, pledging everything within his power to ensure the dignitaries’ comfort to the highest standard of luxury that Wentworth could provide.
“For each individual envoy the accommodations will include parlor and bath conveniences. The servants of the two legations will be cared for in separate apartments. On their arrival, Acting Secretary of State Peirce, as the representative of President Roosevelt, will tender a dinner on different occasions to each of the embassies. The arrangements for these banquets have also been completed, and they will be the best ever served in the old Granite State...C.A. Wood of the firm of Harvey and Wood, managers of the Wentworth House, mapped out and arranged the plan of entertainment. Acting Secretary Peirce was delighted with the plan as laid out and praised the Wentworth House in unequivocal terms.”
Comments