To profess oneself disappointed with Washington in this first week of
April, 1899, would be like complaining of the gauntness of a rosebush in
December. What would you have? It is not the season, either politically
or atmospherically. Congress is gone, and spring has not come. In the
city of leafy avenues there is not a leaf to be seen, and, except the
irrepressible crocus, not a flower. A fortnight hence, as I am assured,
the capital of the Great Republic will have put on a regal robe of
magnolia and other blossoms, that will "knock spots out of" Solomon in
all his glory. In the meantime, the trees line the avenues in skeleton
rows, like a pyrotechnic set-piece before it is ignited. It is useless
to pretend, then, that I have seen Washington. The trumpet of March has
blown, the pennon of May is not yet unfurled; and even the cloudless
sunshine of the past two days has only reduplicated the skeleton trees
in skeleton shadows. Washington is not responsible for the tardiness of
the spring. It would be unjust to take umbrage at the city because one
finds none in its avenues.
Yet I cannot but feel that I have, so to speak, found Washington out. I
have chanced upon her without her make-up, and seen the real face of the
city divested of its wig of leafage and rouge of blossoms. Here, for the
first time, at any rate, I am impressed by that sense of rawness and
incompleteness which is said to be characteristic of America. Washington
will one day be a magnificent city, of that there is no doubt; but for
the present it is distinctly unfinished. The very breadth of its
avenues, contrasted with the comparative lowness of the buildings which
line them, gives it the air rather of a magnified and glorified frontier
township than of a great capital on the European scale. Here, for the
first time, I am really conscious of the newness of things. The eastern
cities--Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore--are, in effect, not a
whit newer than most English towns. Oxford and Cambridge, no doubt, and
a few cathedral cities, give one a habitual consciousness of dwelling
among the relics of the past. They are our Nuremburg or Prague, Siena or
Perugia. In most English cities, on the other hand, as in London itself,
one has no habitual sense of the antiquity of one's surroundings. Apart
from a few tourist-haunted monuments, which the resident passes with
scarcely a glance, the general run of buildings and streets, if not
palpably modern, can at most lay claim to a respectable, or
disreputable, middle-age. Now, an eminently respectable middle-age is
precisely the characteristic of the central regions of Philadelphia and
Baltimore; while in New York both reputable and disreputable middle-age
are amply represented. One may almost say that these Eastern cities are
fundamentally old-fashioned, and that all their modern mechanism of
electric cars, telephone wires, and what not, is but a thin and
transparent outer network, through which the older order of things is
everywhere peering. And from this very contrast between the old and the
new, this sense of visible time-strata in the structure of a city, there
results a very real effect of age.
Here, in Washington, one instinctively craves for something of that
uniformity which one instinctively deprecates as an ideal for New York.
The buildings on the main streets are too haphazard, like the books on
an ill-arranged shelf: folios, quartos, and duodecimos huddled pell-mell
together. But when some approach to a definite style is achieved, how
noble will be the radiating vistas of this spacious city! The plan of
the avenues and streets, as has been aptly said, suggests a cartwheel
superimposed upon a gridiron--an arrangement, by the way, which may be
studied on a small scale in Carlsruhe. The result is dire bewilderment
to the traveller; my bump of locality, usually not ill-developed, seems
to shrink into a positive indentation before the problems presented in
such formulas as "K Street, corner of 13th Street, N.E." But from the
Capitol, whence most of the avenues spread fanwise, the views they offer
are superb; and Pennsylvania Avenue, leading to the Government offices
and the White House, will one day, undoubtedly, be one of the great
streets of the world. For the present its beauty is not heightened by
the new Postal Department, a massive but somewhat forbidding structure
in grey granite, which dominates and frowns upon the whole street. From
certain points of view, it seems almost to dwarf the Washington Obelisk,
the loftiest stone structure in the world. It is a pity that this fine
monument should be placed in such a low situation, on the very shore of
the Potomac. From the central parts of the city it loses much of its
effect, but seen from the distance it stands forth impressively.
People are discontented, it would seem, with the White House, and talk
of replacing it with a larger and showier edifice. The latter change, at
any rate, would be a change for the worse. There could not be a more
appropriate and dignified residence for the Chief Magistrate of a
republic. On the other hand, one cannot but foresee a gradual enrichment
and ennoblement of the interior of the Capitol. Externally it is
magnificent, especially now that the side towards the city has been
terraced and balustraded; but internally its decorations are quite
unworthy of modern America. The floors, the doors, the cornices and
mouldings are cheap in material, dingily garish in colour. Especially
painful are the crude blue-and-yellow mosaic tiles of the corridors. The
mural decorations belong to several artistic periods, all equally
debased. On the whole, it is inconceivable that Congress should for long
content itself with an abode which, without being venerable, is simply
out of date. The main architectural proportions of the interior are
dignified enough. What is wanted is merely the transmutation of stucco
into marble, painted pine into oak, and pseudo-Italian arabesques into
American frescoes and mosaics. Why should Congress itself be more meanly
housed than its Library?
This new Library of Congress is certainly the crown and glory of the
Washington of to-day. It is an edifice and an institution of which any
nation might justly boast. It is simple in design, rich in material,
elaborate, and for the most part beautiful, in decoration. The general
effect of the entrance hall and galleries is at first garish, and some
details of the decoration will scarcely bear looking into. Yet the
building is, on the whole, in fresco, mosaic, and sculpture, a veritable
treasure-house of contemporary American art. Even in this clear Southern
climate, the effect of gaudiness will in time pass off. Fifty years
hence, perhaps, when there are no living susceptibilities to be hurt,
some of the less successful panels and medallions may be "hatched over
again, and hatched different." But many of the decorations, I am
convinced, will prove possessions for ever to the American people. As
for the Rotunda Reading Room, it is, I think, almost above criticism in
its combination of dignity with splendour. Far be it from me to
belittle that great and liberal institution, the British Museum Reading
Room. It is considerably larger than this one; it is no less imposing in
its severe simplicity; and it offers the serious student a vaster quarry
of books to draw upon, together with wider elbow-room and completer
accommodations. But the Library of Congress is still more liberal, for
it admits all the world without even the formality of applying for a
ticket; and it substitutes for the impressiveness of simplicity the
allurements of splendour. It is impossible to conceive a more brilliant
spectacle than this Rotunda when it is lighted at night by nearly
fifteen-hundred incandescent lamps. Nor is it possible for me to
describe in this place the mechanical marvels of the institution--the
huge underground boiler-house, with its sixteen boilers; the
electrician's room, clean and bright as a new dollar, with its "purring
dynamos" and its immense switch-board; the tunnel through which books
are delivered by electric trolley to the legislators in the Capitol,
within eight minutes of the time they are applied for; and, most
wonderful of all, the endless chain, with its series of baskets, whereby
books are not only brought down to the reading room, but re-delivered,
at the mere touch of a button on whatever "deck" of the nine-storied
"book-stacks" they happen to belong to. So ingenious is this triumph of
mechanism that the baskets seem positively to go through complex
processes of thought and selection. Talking of thought and selection, by
the way, every one connected with the library speaks with enthusiasm of
President McKinley's wise and public-spirited choice of the new chief
librarian. Mr. Herbert Putnam, late of the Boston Public Library, is the
ideal man for the post, and his appointment was made, not only without
suspicion of jobbery, but in the teeth of strong political influence.
Mr. McKinley's action in this matter is considered to be not only right
in itself, but an invaluable precedent.
Let me not be understood, I beg, to make light of the National Capital.
I merely say that to the outward eye it is not yet the city it is
manifestly destined to become. Its splendid potentialities do some wrong
to its eminently spacious and seemly actuality. But to the mind's eye,
to the ideal sense, it has the imperishable beauty of absolute fitness.
Omniscient Baedeker informs us that when it was founded there was some
thought of calling it "Federal City." How much finer, in its heroic and
yet human associations, is the name it bears! Since Alfred the Great,
the Anglo-Saxon race has produced no loftier or purer personality than
George Washington, and his country could not blazon on her shield a more
inspiring name. Carlyle's treatment of Washington is, perhaps, the most
unpardonable of his many similar offences. One almost wonders at the
forgiving spirit in which the decorators of the Library of Congress have
inscribed upon the walls of the new building certain maxims from the
splenetic Sage. And if the city is named with exquisite fitness, so are
its radiating avenues. Each of them takes its name from one of the
States of the Union--names which, as Stevenson long ago pointed out,
form an unrivalled array of "sweet and sonorous vocables." In its whole
conception, Washington is an ideal capital for the United States--not
least typical, perhaps, in its factitiousness, since this Republic is
not so much a product of natural development as a deliberate creation of
will and intelligence. It represents the struggle of an Idea against the
crude forces of nature and human nature. The Capitol, with its clear and
logical design, is as aptly symbolic of its history and function as are
our Houses of Parliament, with their bewildering but grandiose
agglomeration of shafts and turrets, spires and pinnacles; and the two
buildings should rank side by side in the esteem of the English-speaking
peoples, as the twin foci of our civilisation.