Newport serendipities

There's a subtle kind of Newport serendipity, in which the past & present never seem to be quite finished with each other, but instead keep on combining with each other in new and unexpected ways...Or maybe it's nothing more than our own minds forging the links in this chain, I don't know.

One such link for me is that in 1860 Richard Morris Hunt, architect of Wrentham House, currently listed with us, met his wife-to-be Catherine Howland at a party at Oaklawn, also currently listed with us. Ever since learning of it, this factoid has seemed infused with an inexplicable metaphysical significance for me. But is it the facts themselves, or is it just me?

A famous 18th century Newport visitor, the philosopher Bishop George Berkeley (pronounced "Bark-lee" by the way), claimed that when we deal with the extraneous world we may THINK we're connecting with an outer reality, but we're really only connecting with our own ideas. Ever. Berkeley's position is that what we think of as "reality" doesn't even exist at all - his bottom line is that the world itself doesn't exist - and that only our perceptions & ideas have existence. He says: To be is to be perceived. In other words, the whole thing is just your basic hall of mirrors (which hardly comes as news to some of us - especially us realtors).

What Berkeley would make of this admittedly ephemeral thread connecting Wrentham House with Oaklawn by way of Lila Delman I have no idea, but astounding the thing is to me and astounding it will remain. Reality or no.