By the Bay

Beginning with George Washington, who tarried for a week in 1790 at Mrs. Almy's boardinghouse, 17 U.S. Presidents have taken their ease amid the salt air and rarefied society of Newport, R.I. So upper-crusty was Newport in the old days that, according to local legend. President Millard Fillmore was snubbed not only by the town's residents but by its footmen as well. Last week John Kennedy, enjoying the first real rest of his nine months in office, became Newport's 18th resident President.

Newport is not what it once was. Although the massive, gingerbread homes of the opulent are still there, tourism and riotous jazz festivals have distorted the old style and spirit. Yet, among the get-away-from-it-all homes that Jackie and Jack Kennedy have used since he became President (Virginia's Glen Ora. Papa Joe Kennedy's Palm Beach mansion, and the Hyannisport complex), Newport has special meaning. It was on the green-lawned, Angus-stocked, 97-acre Hammersmith Farm, owned by her stepfather and mother, Hugh and Janet Auchincloss, that Jackie spent her youthful summers. It was in the rambling, red-roofed Auchincloss manor that she made her 1947 debut. It was in Newport's St. Mary's Church that Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy were married in 1953, and on Hammersmith's spacious lawns that nearly a thousand townsmen, politicos and other out-of-towners swarmed for the reception.

Returning to Newport last week, the Kennedys went all out in their vacationing. There were daily luncheon cruises aboard the presidential yacht Honey Fitz. The Honey Fitz anchored in quiet coves while a Secret Service powerboat hove alongside to speed Jackie through aquatic variations on a single water ski. Once ex-Navy Lieutenant John Kennedy spied the Navy frigate, Willis A. Lee, steaming past, signaled it to stop so the Honey Fitz could come up for a close presidential look.

Often during the week. Jackie Kennedy, who has been taking golf lessons all summer and who now sports a good, athletic swing, slipped away to the Newport Country Club; the President, whose ailing back still keeps him off the course, takes keen interest in his wife's progress toward par.

Of course, there were presidential responsibilities. A once-a-day plane brought top-priority papers from Washington; the President considered them, a lapful at a time, while sunning on the Hammersmith Farm veranda. In the den was a telephone tied directly to the White House, permitting him to talk to any place in the world at any time. During his Newport rest, that telephone did not ring often.

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