How Brazil’s Dom Pedro II Fell in Love with Newport in the Summer Polo Was Born
Long before Newport became synonymous with polo, yachts, and the glittering pageantry of the Gilded Age, it captured the imagination of an emperor.
The year was 1876.
America was celebrating its centennial. The nation was alive with optimism, invention, and ambition. In Philadelphia, crowds gathered for the grand opening of the Centennial Exposition, the first World’s Fair ever held in the United States. There, amid presidents, industrialists, inventors, and dignitaries, stood an unexpected guest: the reigning Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II.
Tall, bearded, scholarly, and endlessly curious, Dom Pedro II was unlike most monarchs of his age. He preferred books to ceremony, science to spectacle, and often traveled under the modest name “Pedro de Alcântara,” insisting he was simply a Brazilian citizen. Yet wherever he went, fascination followed.
At the Centennial Exposition, the emperor famously became one of the first people to test Alexander Graham Bell’s revolutionary new invention. Lifting the receiver to his ear, he exclaimed in astonishment, “My God, it talks!” The moment would become legend.
But it was not Philadelphia that ultimately stole his heart. It was Newport.
Following the Exposition, the emperor and empress journeyed north to Rhode Island, where Dom Pedro intended to spend a quiet portion of the summer. What he found instead was a seaside paradise poised on the threshold of greatness.
Newport in 1876 was transforming. The old colonial port was becoming America’s summer capital. Grand villas were beginning to appear along Bellevue Avenue. Society families flocked to the cool Atlantic breezes. Elegant garden parties spilled across manicured lawns overlooking the sea.
For an emperor accustomed to European courts, Newport offered something different: sophistication without stiffness, beauty without pretension, and an atmosphere of freedom that perfectly suited his independent spirit.
There was also a personal connection. Years earlier, Dom Pedro had forged a friendship with Newport resident William Hunter, the distinguished American diplomat who served as U.S. envoy to Brazil. Hunter became a trusted adviser and confidant to the young monarch, and Newport always held a special place in the emperor’s affections because of that relationship.
The emperor spent weeks exploring the city, visiting friends, attending gatherings, and enjoying the social whirl that seemed to bloom around him. Newspapers eagerly chronicled his movements. Newport society embraced the royal visitors with enthusiasm.
And as Dom Pedro wandered Newport’s avenues and harborfront, another historic story was quietly unfolding.
That same summer, a group of adventurous young sportsmen returned from England carrying unfamiliar equipment and a new sporting obsession. On the grounds of Newport, they staged the first polo matches ever played in the United States.
Neither the emperor nor the players could have known it at the time, but two enduring legacies were taking root simultaneously. One was Newport’s emergence as an international destination capable of attracting emperors, industrialists, artists, and aristocrats from around the world.
The other was polo. The sport would flourish in Newport, eventually earning the city recognition as the birthplace of American polo and home to America’s First Polo Club.
Today, 150 years later, those parallel stories converge once again. The return of Brazil to Newport Polo is more than an international sporting contest. It is a reunion with a nation whose emperor helped elevate Newport’s profile during one of the most consequential summers in its history.
In many ways, the visit of Dom Pedro II represented the first chapter in a relationship between Brazil and Newport that began long before either could imagine the global world of sport and culture that would follow.
The emperor came seeking knowledge, friendship, and discovery. What he found was Newport. And Newport, in turn, found itself on the world stage.
The summer of 1876 gave America its first polo match, Newport its first royal summer guest, and history one of its most charming coincidences: that as an emperor from Brazil fell under the spell of a city by the sea, a new sport was quietly beginning a 150-year journey that continues to this day.