NEW CASTLE NH -- WENTWORTH BY THE SEA HOTEL
Wentworth By the Sea Hotel – The hotel donated the accommodations to the full Japanese and Russian delegations for the 30 days on the Conference. The Ambassador’s Parlor (below) was where Witte received many public visitors, most notably Jacob Schiff and a delegation from Lowell Massachusetts, both petitioning for an end to the pogroms taking place in Russia.
Both Witte and Komura conducted informal negotiation sessions at the hotel and, famously, walked in the Rose Garden to assess each other’s approach to the peace conference. A magnolia tree now flourishes in the Wentworth garden and is reputed to have been a gift from the government of Japan.
Both Witte and Komura conducted informal negotiation sessions at the hotel and, famously, walked in the Rose Garden to assess each other’s approach to the peace conference. A magnolia tree now flourishes in the Wentworth garden and is reputed to have been a gift from the government of Japan.
Theodore Roosevelt sought the simple, country charms of a place fanned by the fresh winds of a sea breeze as the place where the Russian and Japanese diplomats 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.
Assistant Secretary Herbert Peirce had arranged for those late model Pope Toledo cars, as he had for the accommodations in the hotel. But word on the street was that the last wishes of Frank Jones, the recently deceased beer baron who had owned Wentworth, were being honored by his executor, Portsmouth’s Judge Calvin Page (left), who made suites of rooms at the hotel available 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.
The local paper reported, “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.”
The story of a mad scramble by the hotel staff to find a Japanese flag for the top of the tower to match the Russian flag already there suggests the hotel’s attempts at attention to detail and the ingenuous sincerity that ruled the entire stay.
The hotel guests were also respectful. The usual complement of a full summer house had somehow managed to expand to include the visitors. In the diningroom or in the Palm Court, hotel guests rose in respect, when the diplomats entered the room. When asked, they recalled a gregarious Witte and impassive Komura, once their curiosity won over the rustling silks and stiff-collars of the Eastern establishment in the room. Wentworth was the stage set for an extraordinary 30 days in the life of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Recent research, day by day and hour by hour, puts a lively drama to life on that stage. The pivotal events – finding a place suitable for lodging America’s first international peace conference’s diplomatic guests, manning a 24/7 telegraph service that linked Oyster Bay, St. Petersburg and Tokyo, and producing a formal banquet hosted by the Japanese on the night the peace was finally achieved – are just the surface features of the extent to which Wentworth’s hospitality added to the atmosphere of peace that pervaded Portsmouth long enough for the diplomats to achieve their task.
The back story of Wentworth and the Treaty of Portsmouth is about “spies” and supplicants, “summer girls” and swarms of newspapermen who recorded the details for readers, then and now. And while Wentworth has long been careful to explain that the Portsmouth Peace Treaty was signed on September 5th at the Shipyard. New diary readings have found that the pen strokes of the Armistice that ended the actual fighting were made in the “Ambassador’s Suite” at the hotel but the agreement ratified by both governments, ending the state of war that had existed between Russia and Japan, was signed at 3:47 pm at the Shipyard, and is now celebrated each year on Portsmouth Peace Treaty Day.
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.
Assistant Secretary Herbert Peirce had arranged for those late model Pope Toledo cars, as he had for the accommodations in the hotel. But word on the street was that the last wishes of Frank Jones, the recently deceased beer baron who had owned Wentworth, were being honored by his executor, Portsmouth’s Judge Calvin Page (left), who made suites of rooms at the hotel available 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.
The local paper reported, “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.”
The story of a mad scramble by the hotel staff to find a Japanese flag for the top of the tower to match the Russian flag already there suggests the hotel’s attempts at attention to detail and the ingenuous sincerity that ruled the entire stay.
The hotel guests were also respectful. The usual complement of a full summer house had somehow managed to expand to include the visitors. In the diningroom or in the Palm Court, hotel guests rose in respect, when the diplomats entered the room. When asked, they recalled a gregarious Witte and impassive Komura, once their curiosity won over the rustling silks and stiff-collars of the Eastern establishment in the room. Wentworth was the stage set for an extraordinary 30 days in the life of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Recent research, day by day and hour by hour, puts a lively drama to life on that stage. The pivotal events – finding a place suitable for lodging America’s first international peace conference’s diplomatic guests, manning a 24/7 telegraph service that linked Oyster Bay, St. Petersburg and Tokyo, and producing a formal banquet hosted by the Japanese on the night the peace was finally achieved – are just the surface features of the extent to which Wentworth’s hospitality added to the atmosphere of peace that pervaded Portsmouth long enough for the diplomats to achieve their task.
The back story of Wentworth and the Treaty of Portsmouth is about “spies” and supplicants, “summer girls” and swarms of newspapermen who recorded the details for readers, then and now. And while Wentworth has long been careful to explain that the Portsmouth Peace Treaty was signed on September 5th at the Shipyard. New diary readings have found that the pen strokes of the Armistice that ended the actual fighting were made in the “Ambassador’s Suite” at the hotel but the agreement ratified by both governments, ending the state of war that had existed between Russia and Japan, was signed at 3:47 pm at the Shipyard, and is now celebrated each year on Portsmouth Peace Treaty Day.
Wentworth Adjusts to the World Spotlight
Privy to the unfolding of the story that proceeded to rivet world attention, the people of Portsmouth were fully engaged. The headlines in the Portsmouth Herald kept the high-profile daily score and stakes in people’s minds. From the welcoming parade on August 8th when ordinary citizens lined the streets ten deep in their Sunday best, to the throngs at the train station to wave goodbye, this was a peace conference that both captured and expressed that peculiar Portsmouth attention to civic affairs: that ordinary people matter; they care, they get personally involved.
The social set brought out their memories of attending the Czar’s wedding and the tea they had brought back from Japan. Their daughters flitted on the Wentworth verandah for a glimpse of the celebrities, or, even better a dance with the dashing and exotic junior officers, Russian and Japanese. A magnet for those who would arrive with enough trunks and servants to last the summer season, the Wentworth was full of socialites, as well as the newspapermen and a constant flow of petitioners. Man of letters, William Dean Howells, then a correspondent for Harper's Weekly and Colliers magazines, dubbed the earnest daughters of the dowagers “the summer girls” of Wentworth. The Russians, particularly Korostovetz, were amazed at the liberty allowed to these unchaperoned young women who flocked to the diplomats. Korostovetz’ memoir of the evening that peace finally was achieved gives almost as much space to the star struck young women at Wentworth who begged to be introduced to Witte as to the triumphant reception the entourage received on returning to the hotel.
The social set brought out their memories of attending the Czar’s wedding and the tea they had brought back from Japan. Their daughters flitted on the Wentworth verandah for a glimpse of the celebrities, or, even better a dance with the dashing and exotic junior officers, Russian and Japanese. A magnet for those who would arrive with enough trunks and servants to last the summer season, the Wentworth was full of socialites, as well as the newspapermen and a constant flow of petitioners. Man of letters, William Dean Howells, then a correspondent for Harper's Weekly and Colliers magazines, dubbed the earnest daughters of the dowagers “the summer girls” of Wentworth. The Russians, particularly Korostovetz, were amazed at the liberty allowed to these unchaperoned young women who flocked to the diplomats. Korostovetz’ memoir of the evening that peace finally was achieved gives almost as much space to the star struck young women at Wentworth who begged to be introduced to Witte as to the triumphant reception the entourage received on returning to the hotel.
Since 1994, the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Forum has organized bellringing and encouraged diplomats, politicians, scholars and citizens to explore diplomatic themes “in the spirit of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty.” Participants in the Forum repeatedly note the indispensable role of citizens and the community in the Portsmouth peace that was brokered by Roosevelt. In 2006 the Forum moved its venue from Portsmouth City Council Chambers to Wentworth By the Sea for the 100th anniversary of TR’s Nobel. Now presented in the Wentworth Grand Ballroom, the room in which the Japanese delegation hosted a reception on August 29, 1905 when peace was achieved for the Russian delegation and their New Hampshire hosts, the Forum each year welcomes a diplomat or scholar to explore the historic theme through the lens of his or her recently published book. In 2006, the Forum welcomed Cathal Nolan, president of the Theodore Roosevelt Association and author of Ethics and Statecraft. In 2007, the Forum’s guest was Ambassador Dennis Ross, author of Statecraft: And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World. In 2008, the Forum guest was Samantha Power, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World. In 2009, the Forum presented a rebroadcast of the Nobel Peace Prize lecture by US President Barack Obama.
In 2010, the room was the location chosen (left) to recreate the 1905 welcome reception photograph as a symbol of the citizen diplomacy recognized in the creation of Portsmouth Peace Treaty Day. And in 2011, the Japanese Foreign Ministry presented the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette to Charles B. Doleac, Esq. in the Wentworth Grand. The award announcement noted, “When plans were announced to demolish the hotel where the delegates from both Japan and Russia stayed during the peace negotiations (Wentworth By the Sea), Mr. Doleac made great efforts to preserve this historic building. He insisted that the hotel is historically valuable and that passing it down to future generations would further strengthen the Japan-US friendship.”
niles cottage & the peirces
Local resident Edward Niles loaned the house (right) on Wild Rose Lane in New Castle, known as the Jaffrey Cottage, to 3rd Asst. Secy of State & Mrs. Herbert H. Peirce who held state dinners for both delegations. Peirce also witnessed the Treaty signing.
The Portsmouth Herald reported an account of that hospitality on August 16, 1905:
Mrs. Peirce, the wife of Assistant Secretary of State Peirce who made the arrangements for the conference is a most accomplished woman and has inaugurated a brilliant social season here. Tonight she was to have given a lawn party to the distinguished guests at the Wentworth but it was postponed on account of the weather. Tomorrow evening she will entertain the Russian suite at dinner and this will be followed later by a dinner to the Japanese suite. Mrs. Peirce who attended the public schools of Portsmouth when a girl, lived for some years in Russia and speaks the language of that country most fluently and in consequence she will make a delightful hostess to the czar’s emissaries tomorrow evening and much of the conversation about table will be carried on in Russian.”
The Portsmouth Herald reported an account of that hospitality on August 16, 1905:
Mrs. Peirce, the wife of Assistant Secretary of State Peirce who made the arrangements for the conference is a most accomplished woman and has inaugurated a brilliant social season here. Tonight she was to have given a lawn party to the distinguished guests at the Wentworth but it was postponed on account of the weather. Tomorrow evening she will entertain the Russian suite at dinner and this will be followed later by a dinner to the Japanese suite. Mrs. Peirce who attended the public schools of Portsmouth when a girl, lived for some years in Russia and speaks the language of that country most fluently and in consequence she will make a delightful hostess to the czar’s emissaries tomorrow evening and much of the conversation about table will be carried on in Russian.”