the mutterings of civil revolution stirred in the air. Could Webster
have foreseen that the marble walls of the Capitol whose corner-stone he
then laid would rise amid the thunder of cannon aimed to destroy it and
the great Union of States which it crowned, to what anguish of eloquence
would his words have risen!
The Capitol fronting the east was set by an astronomical observation of
Andrew Ellicott. Its founders were as much mistaken in the direction
which the future city would take as they were in the future commerce of
the Potomac. They expected that a metropolis would spring up on Capitol
Hill, spreading on to the Navy Yard and Potomac. Land-owners made this
impossible by the price they set upon their city lots. The metropolis
defied them—went down into the valley and grew up behind the Capitol.
The north wing of the central Capitol was made ready for the first
sitting of Congress in Washington, November 17, 1800. By that time the
walls of the south wing had risen twenty feet and were covered over for
the temporary use of the House of Representatives. It sat in this room
named “the oven” from 1802, until 1804. At that time the transient roof
was removed and the wing completed under the superintendence of B. H.
Latrobe until its completion. The House occupied the room of the Library
of Congress. The south wing was finished in 1811.
The original Capitol was built of sandstone taken from an island in
Acquia Creek, Virginia. The island was purchased by the government in
1791 for $6,000 for the use of the quarry. The interior of both wings
was destroyed by fire when the British took the city in 1814, the outer
walls remaining uninjured. Latrobe, who had resigned in 1813, was
re-appointed after the fire to reconstruct the Capitol. The following
December, Congress passed an act leasing a building on the east side of
the Capitol, the building afterwards so famous as “Old Capitol Prison,”
and which was crowded with prisoners during the war of the Rebellion.
Congress held its sessions in this building till the rebuilt Capitol was
ready for occupation.
By act of Congress, September 30, 1850, provision was made for the grand
extension wings of the Capitol, to be built on such a plan as might be
approved by the President. The plan of Thomas C. Walter was accepted by
President Fillmore, June 10, 1851, and he was appointed architect of the
Capitol to carry his plan into execution. Walter was the architect of
Girard College, Philadelphia, and to him we owe the magnificent marble
wings and iron dome of the Capitol. The dome cost one million one
hundred thousand dollars. The wings cost six millions five hundred
thousand dollars. The height of the interior of the dome of the Capitol
from the floor of the rotunda is 180 feet and 3 inches. The height of
the exterior from the floor of the basement story to the top of the
crowning statue is 287 feet and 5 inches. The interior diameter is 97
feet. The exterior diameter of the drum is 108 feet. The greatest
exterior diameter is 135 feet, 5 inches. The Capitol is 751 feet, 4
inches long, 31 feet longer than St. Peter’s in Rome, and 175 feet
longer than St. Paul’s in London. The height of the interior of the dome
of St. Peter’s is 330 feet. The height of the interior of the dome of
St. Paul’s is 215 feet. The height of the exterior of St. Peter’s to the
top of lantern is 432 feet. The height of the exterior of the dome of
St. Paul’s is 215 feet.
The ground actually covered by the Capitol is 153,112 square feet or 652
square feet more than 3 ½ acres. Of these the old building covered
61,201 square feet and the new wings with connecting corridors, 91,311
square feet.
The dome of the Capitol is the highest structure in America. It is one
hundred and eight feet higher than Washington Monument in Baltimore;
sixty-eight feet higher than Bunker Hill Monument and twenty-three feet
higher than the steeple of Trinity Church, New York. Mr. Walter was
succeeded by Mr. Edward Clarke, the present architect of the Capitol.
Thus far Mr. Clarke’s work has consisted chiefly in finishing and
harmonizing the work of his varied and sometimes conflicting
predecessors. Under his supervision the dome has been completed, and
Thomas Crawford’s grand goddess of liberty, sixteen and one-half feet
high, has ascended to its summit while he has wrought out in the
interior the most harmonious room of the Capitol—the Congressional
Library.
The greatest work which he still desires to do is to put the present
front on the rear of the Capitol facing the city, and to draw forth the
old freestone fronts and rebuild it with marble, making a grand central
portico parallel with the magnificent marble wings of the Senate and
House extension. To rebuild the central front will cost two millions of
dollars. The face of the Capitol will never be worthy of itself till
this is accomplished. The grand outward defect of the Capitol is the
slightness and insignificance of the central portico compared with the
superlative Corinthian fronts of the wings. Between their outreaching
marble steps, beside their majestic monoliths the central columns shrink
to feebleness and give the impression that the great dome is sinking
down upon them to crush them out of sight. There is something soaring in
the proportions of the dome. Its summit seems to spring into the
empyrean. Its proud goddess poised in mid-air, caught in their swift
embrace, seems to sail with the fleeting clouds. Nevertheless its
tremendous base set upon that squatting roof threatens it with perpetual
annihilation.
From the very beginning the Capitol has suffered as a National Building
from the conflicting and foreign tastes of its decorators. Literally
begun in the woods by a nation in its infancy, it not only borrowed its
face from the buildings of antiquity, but it was built by men, strangers
in thought and spirit to the genius of a new Republic, and the unwrought
and unimbodied poetry of its virgin soil. Its earlier decorators, all
Italians, overlaid its walls with their florid colors and foreign
symbols; within the American Capitol, they have set the Loggia of
Raphael, the voluptuous ante-rooms of Pompeii, and the Baths of Titus.
The American plants, birds and animals, representing prodigal nature at
home, though exquisitely painted are buried in twilight passages, while
mythological bar-maids, misnamed goddesses, dance in the most
conspicuous and preposterous places. The Capitol has already survived
this era of false decorative art.
Congress in 1859 authorized a Commission of distinguished American
artists, comprising Messrs. Brown, Lumsden and Kensett, to study, the
decorations of the Capitol and report upon their abuses. Their
suggestions are beginning to be followed, and yet so carelessly, that
after the lapse of fourteen years they need reiteration. The Artist
Committee recommended an Art Commission, composed of those designated by
the united voice of America. Artists as competent to the office who
shall be the channels for the distribution of all appropriations to be
made by Congress for art purposes, and who shall secure to artists an
intelligent and unbiased adjudication upon the designs they may present
for the embellishment of the national buildings. When one remembers some
of the Congressional Committees who have decided on decorations for the
Capitol even within the last ten years, it is enough to make one cry
aloud for a Commission designated by artists, whose art-culture shall at
least be sufficient to tell a decent picture from a daub, a noble statue
from a pretense and a sham.
In conclusion the Commission of Artists said:—
“The erection of a great National Capitol seldom occurs but once in
the life of a nation. The opportunity such an event affords is an
important one for the expression of patriotic elevation, and the
perpetuation, through the arts of painting and sculpture, of that
which is high and noble and held in reverence by the people; and it
becomes them as patriots to see to it that no taint of falsity is
suffered to be transmitted to the future upon the escutcheon of our
national honor in its artistic record. A theme so noble and worthy
should interest the heart of the whole country, and whether patriot,
statesman or artist, one impulse should govern the whole in dedicating
these buildings and grounds to the national honor.”
CHAPTER IX.
INSIDE THE CAPITOL.
A Visit to the Capitol—The Lower Hall—Its Cool
Tranquillity—Artistic Treasures—The President’s and
Vice-President’s Rooms—The Marble Room—The Senate Chamber—“Men
I have Known”—Hamlin—Foote—Foster—Wade—Colfax—Wilson—The
Rotunda—Great Historical Paintings—The Old Hall of
Representatives—The New Hall—The Speaker’s Room—Native
Art—“The Star of Empire”—A National Picture.
Come with me. This is your Capitol. It is like passing from one world
into another, to leave behind the bright June day for the cool, dim
halls of the lower Capitol. No matter how fiercely the sun burns in the
heavens, his fire never penetrates the twilight of this grand hall,
whose eight hundred feet measure the length of the Capitol from end to
end.
Here, in Egyptian Colonnades, rise the mighty shafts of stone which bear
upon their tops the mightier mass of marble, and which seem strong
enough to support the world. In the summer solstice they cast long, cool
shadows, full of repose and silence. The gas-lights flickering on the
walls, send long golden rays through the dimness to light us on. We have
struck below the jar and tumult of life. The struggles of a nation may
be going on above our heads, yet so vast and visionary are these vistas
opening before us, so deep the calm which surrounds us, we seem far away
from the world that we have left, in this new world which we have found.
Every time I descend into these lower regions I get lost. In wandering
on to find our way out, we are sure to make numerous discoveries of
unimagined beauty. Here are doors after doors in almost innumerable
succession, opening into departments of commerce, agriculture, etc.,
whose every panel holds exquisite gems of illustrative painting. Birds,
flowers, fruits, landscapes, in rarest fresco and color, here reveal
themselves to us through the dim light.
It would take months to study and to learn these pictures which artists
have taken years to paint. They make a department of art in themselves,
yet thousands who think that they know the Capitol well are not aware of
their existence. At the East Senate entrance, look at these polished
pillars of Tennessee marble, their chocolate surface all flecked with
white, surrounding a staircase meet for kings. They are my delight. Look
at these foliated capitals, flowering in leaves of acanthus and tobacco.
Look up to this ceiling of stained glass, its royal roses opening wide
their crimson hearts above you; these too are my delight. I am not one
of those who can sneer at the Capitol. Its faults, like the faults of a
friend are sacred. I know them, but wish to name them not, save to the
one who only can remedy. It bears blots upon its fair face, but these
can be washed away. It wears ornaments vulgar and vain, these can be
stripped off and thrown out. Below them, beyond them all, abides the
Capitol. The surface blemish vexes, the pretentious splendor offends.
These are not the Capitol. We look deeper, we look higher, to find
beauty, to see sublimity, to see the Capitol, august and imperishable!
[Illustration:
THE MARBLE ROOM.
INSIDE THE CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.
]
The four marble staircases leading to the Senate Chamber and Hall of
Representatives, in themselves alone embody enough of grace and
magnificence to save the Capitol from cynical criticism. We slip through
the Senate corridor, you and I, to the President’s and Vice-President’s
rooms. Their furniture is sumptuous, their decoration oppressive.
Gilding, frescoes, arabesques, glitter and glow above and around. There
is not one quiet hue on which the tired sight may rest. Gazing, I feel
an indescribable desire to pluck a few of Signor Brumidi’s red legged
babies and pug-nosed cupids from their precarious perches on the lofty
ceilings, to commit them to nurses or to anybody who will smooth out
their rumpled little legs and make them look comfortable.
We are Americans, and need repose; let us, therefore, pass to the Marble
Room, which alone, of all the rooms of the Capitol, suggests it—
“The end of all, the poppied sleep.”
Its atmosphere is soft, serene, and silent. Its ceiling is of white
marble, deeply paneled, supported by fluted pillars of polished Italian
marble. Its walls are of the exquisite marble of Tennessee—a soft brown,
veined with white—set with mirrors. One whose æsthetic eyes have studied
the finest apartments of the world says that to him the most chaste and
purely beautiful of all is the Marble Room of the American Capitol.
Americans though we are, we have no time to rest, albeit we sorely need
it.
It is not for you or me to linger in marble rooms, maundering of art.
Molly, rocking her baby out on the Western prairie, wants to know all
about the Senate; baby is going to be a senator some day. Moses, on that
little rock-sown farm in New England, has his “chores all done.” He
rests in the Yankee paradise of kerosene, butternuts, apples, and cider.
Yet to make his satisfaction complete, he must know a little more about
the Capitol. Molly and Moses both expect us to see for them what they
can not come to see for themselves. So let us peep into the Senate. It
can not boast of the ampler proportions of the Hall of Representatives.
Its golden walls and emerald doors can not rescue it from
insignificance.
The ceiling of this chamber is of cast-iron, paneled with stained
glass—each pane bearing the arms of the different States, bound by most
ornate mouldings, bronzed and gilded. The gallery, which entirely
surrounds the hall, will seat one thousand persons. Over the
Vice-President’s chair, the section you see separated from the rest by a
net-work of wire, is the reporters’ gallery. The one opposite, lined
with green, is the gallery of the diplomatic corps; next are the seats
reserved for the Senators’ families. The Senators sit in three
semi-circular rows, behind small desks of polished wood, facing the
Secretary of the Senate, his assistants, the special reporters of
debates, and the Vice-President.
On a dais, raised above all, sits the Vice-President. I have seen six
men preside over the Senate. Hamlin, slow, solid, immobile, and
good-natured. Foote, silver-haired, silver-toned, the king of
parliamentarians. Foster of Connecticut, that most gentle gentleman, who
went from the Senate bearing the good will of every Senator whatever his
politics. Wade, the most positive power of all, with his high, steep
head, shaggy eyebrows, beetling perceptive brow, half roofing the
melancholy eyes, the rough-hewn nose, the dogged mouth, and broad
immovable chin. Life lines our faces according to its will and gazing on
the furrows of this one, one reads the story of the whole battle.
Looking, there was no need that its owner should tell what a warfare
life had been since the poor farmer-boy, more than half a century ago,
turned his face from the Connecticut Valley and striving with the earth
beneath his feet dug his way (on the Erie Canal) toward the West to
fortune, and to an honorable fame. Then came Schuyler Colfax, who
brought into the silent and stately Senate the habits of the bustling
noisy house. It was a hard seat for “Schuyler,” that Vice-President’s
chair, and he came at last to vacate it regularly by two o’clock that he
might write in the seclusion of the Vice-President’s room a few of those
ten thousand popular personal letters which made his chief lever of
influence with the people and which he always used to write in the
Speaker’s chair. As President of the Senate he was usually just, always
urbane, never impressive. He had not the presence which filled the seat
to the sight, nor the dignity which commanded attention, and silence.
Under his ruling the Senate changed its character perceptibly from a
grave august body to a buzzing and inattentive one. As the President of
the Senate seldom listened to a speaker, the Senators as rarely took the
trouble to listen to each other. The question discussed might be of the
gravest import to the whole nation, the speaker’s words, to himself,
might be of the most tremendous importance to the national weal, just
the same he had to empty them upon vacancy, speaking to nothing in
particular, while the Vice-President looked another way, and his
colleagues went on scribbling letters, whispering political secrets to
each other, munching apples in the aisles or smoking in the open
cloak-rooms, with feet aloft.
Vice-President Wilson, without an atom of parliamentary experience, has
already won the hearts and improved the manners of the Senate by simply
giving attention to its debates. No matter how tiresome, he steadfastly
looks and listens. The humblest speaker—seeing that he has one pair of
eyes fixed upon him, one direct immovable point toward which he may
direct his remarks—takes heart, and in spite of himself makes a better
speech than would be possible were he beating a vacuum, and speaking to
nobody in particular. Even his listening constituency and the next day’s
_Globe_ is not such an incentive to present inspiration as two steadfast
eyes and one pair of good listening ears.
We leave the Senate Chamber by the western gallery. Here in the niche at
the foot of the staircase, corresponding to Franklin’s on the opposite
side, stands the noble figure of John Hancock. The stairs are of
polished white marble and the painting above them leading to the
gentlemen’s gallery of the Senate, in its setting of maroon cloth
represents the battle of Chapultapec in all the ardor of its fiery
action. We saunter on along the breezy corridors through whose open
windows we catch delicious glimpses of the garden city, the gliding
river and the distant hills, past the Supreme Court room into the great
rotunda.
[Illustration:
THE SENATE CHAMBER.
INSIDE THE CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.
]
The rotunda is ninety-five feet in diameter, three hundred feet in
circumference and over one hundred and eighty feet in height. Its dome
contains over eight millions eight hundred thousand pounds of iron,
presenting the most finished specimen of iron architecture in the world.
The panels of the rotunda are set with paintings of life-size, painted
by Vanderlyn, Trumbull and others. The Declaration of Independence; the
surrender of Burgoyne; surrender of the British Army, commanded by Lord
Cornwallis, at Yorktown, Virginia, October 19, 1781; resignation of
General Washington at Annapolis, December 23, 1783, all by Colonel
Trumbull; the baptism of Pocahontas by Chapman; landing of Columbus by
Vanderlyn; De Soto’s discovery of the Mississippi, by Powell. Like most
works of genius these paintings have many merits and many defects.
Perhaps the favorite of all is the Embarcation of the Pilgrims in the
Speedwell at Delft Haven, by Robert W. Weir. Its figures and the fabrics
of its costumes are wonderfully painted; so, too, is the face of the
hoary Pilgrim who is giving thanks to God for their safe passage across
stormy seas to the land of deliverance; but the enchantment of the
picture is the face of Rose Standish. If I were a man, I would marry
such a face out of all the faces on the earth, for the being which it
represents. These eyes, blue as heaven and as true, would never fail
you. No matter how low _you_ might fall, you could see only in them
purity, faith, devotion, tenderness, and unutterable love—and all for
you.
The group in bas-relief over the western entrance of the rotunda was
executed by Cappelano, a pupil of Canova. It represents the preservation
of Captain Smith by Pocahontas. The design was taken from a rude
engraving of the event in the first edition of Smith’s History of
Virginia. The idea is national, but you see the execution is
preposterous. Powhatan looks like an Englishman, and Pocahontas has a
Greek face and a Grecian head-dress. The alto-relievo over the eastern
entrance of the rotunda represents the Landing of the Pilgrims. The
pilgrim, his wife and child are stepping from the prow of a boat to
receive from the hand of an Indian, kneeling on the rock before them, an
ear of corn. Good Indian. He was no relation to the Modoc! Still the
little boy evidently has no faith in him for he is tugging at his
father’s arm as if to hold him back from that ear of corn or the hand
that holds it.
Over the south door of the rotunda we have Daniel Boone and two Indians
in a forest. Boone has dispatched one Indian and is in close battle with
the other. The latter is doing his best to strike Boone with his
tomahawk, but Boone averts the blow, by his rifle in one hand, while the
other drawn back holds a long knife which he is about to run through his
foe. The action is exciting enough for the _New York Ledger_, although
rendered tangled and cramped by a too narrow space. It commemorates an
occurrence which took place in the year 1773. This, as well as the
landing of the Pilgrims, was executed by Causici, another pupil of
Canova. Over the northern door of the rotunda we have William Penn
standing under an elm, in the act of presenting a treaty to the Indians.
Penn is dressed as a Quaker, and looks as benevolent as the crude stone
out of which he is made will let him. This panel was executed by a
Frenchman named Genelot.
[Illustration:
THE HALL OF REPRESENTATIVES.
INSIDE THE CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.
]
We pass through the noblest room of the Capitol, the old Hall of
Representatives and through the open corridor directly into the new Hall
of Representatives. It occupies the precise place in the south wing
which the Senate Chamber does in the northern wing. Like the Senate
room, the light of day comes to it but dimly through the stained glass
roof overhead. Like that, also, it is entire, encircled by a corridor
opening into smoking apartments, committee rooms, the Speaker’s room,
etc., which monopolize all the out of door air, and every out of door
view. The air of the central chamber is pumped into it by a tremendous
engine at work in the depths of the Capitol and admitted through
ventilators one under each desk. You see these are covered with shining
brass plates which by a touch of the foot can be adjusted to admit a
current of fresh air, or shut it off, according to the wish of the
occupant of the chair above it. In former times these ventilators were
uncovered, and then were used to such an extent as spittoons by the
honorable gentlemen above them, and filled to such a depth with tobacco
quids and the stumps of cigars that the odor from them became unbearable
and they had to be covered up.
The Hall of Representatives is 139 feet long, 93 feet wide and 30 feet
high with a gallery running entirely around the Hall, holding seats for
1200 persons. Like the Senate, the ceiling is of iron work bronzed,
gilded and paneled with glass, each pane decorated with the arms of a
State. At the corners of these panels in gilt and bronze are rosettes of
the cotton plant in its various stages of bud and blossom. The Speaker’s
desk, splendid in proportion, is of pure white marble, while crossed
above his head are two brilliant silk flags of the United States. One of
the panels under the gallery at his left is filled with a painting in
fresco, by Brumidi.
The Speaker’s room, in the rear of his chair across the inner lobby, is
one of the most beautiful rooms in the Capitol. Its ornaments are not as
glaring as those of the President’s and Vice-President’s rooms, while
its mirrors, carved book-cases, velvet carpets and chairs, give it a
look of home comfort as well as of luxury. It has a bright outlook upon
the eastern grounds of the Capitol, and its walls are hung with
portraits of every speaker from the First Congress to the present one.
We pass through the private corridor looking from the Speaker’s room out
into the grand colonnaded vestibule opening upon the great portico of
the south extension. These twenty-four columns and forty pilasters have
blossomed from native soil. Athens, Pompeii, Rome, are left out at last,
and looking up to these flowering capitals we see corn-leaves, tobacco,
and magnolias budding and blooming from their marble crowns. Every
column, every pilaster bears a magnolia, each of a different form, all
from casts of the natural flower. And far below, beneath the
Representatives’ Hall, there is a row of monolithic columns formed of
the tobacco and thistle. It is above the marble staircase opposite,
leading to the ladies’ gallery, that we see painted on the wall covering
the entire landing, the great painting of Leutze, representing the
“Advance of Civilization;” “Westward the Star of Empire takes its
way”—is its motto. At the first glance it presents a scene of
inextricable confusion. It is an emigrant train caught and tangled in
one of the highest passes of the Rocky Mountains. Far backward spread
the Eastern Plains; far onward stretches the Beulah of promise, fading
at last in the far horizon. The great wagons struggling upward, tumbling
downward from mountain precipice into mountain gorge, hold under their
shaking covers every type of westward moving human life. Here is the
mother sitting in the wagon-front, her blue eyes gazing outward,
wistfully and far, the baby lying on her lap; one wants to touch the
baby’s head, it looks so alive and tender and shelterless in all that
dust and turmoil of travel. A man on horseback carries his wife, her
head upon his shoulder. Who that has ever seen it will forget her sick
look and the mute appeal in the suffering eyes. Here is the bold hunter
with his racoon cap, the pioneer boy on horseback, a coffee-pot and cup
dangling at his saddle, and oxen—such oxen! it seems as if their
friendly noses must touch us; they seem to be feeling out for our hand
as we pass up to the gallery. Here is the young man, the old man, and
far aloft stands the advance guard fastening on the highest and farthest
pinnacle the flag of the United States.
Confusing, disappointing perhaps, at first glance, this painting asserts
itself more and more in the soul the oftener and the longer you gaze.
Already the swift, smooth wheels of the railway, the shriek of the
whistle, and the rush of the engine have made its story history. But it
is the history of our past—the story of the heroic West. It is one of a
thousand which should line the walls of the Capitol, feeding the hearts
of the American people to the latest generation with the memory of our
forefathers, showing by what toilsome ways they followed the Star of
Empire and made the paths of civilization smooth for their children’s
feet.
CHAPTER X.
OUTSIDE THE CAPITOL.
The Famous Bronze Doors—The Capitol Grounds—Statue of Washington
Criticised—Peculiar Position for “the Father of his Country”—Horace
Greenough’s Defence of the Statue—Picturesque Scenery Around the
Capitol—The City and Suburbs—The Public Reservation—The Smithsonian
Institution—The Potomac and the Hights of Arlington.
We come back to the grand vestibule of the southern wing, to the
flowering magnolias, tobacco and corn-leaves of the marble capitals, and
pass out to the great portico. This is one of the famous bronze doors
designed by Rogers, and cast in Munich. How heavy, slow, and still, its
swing! The other opens and closes upon the central door of the north
wing, leading to the vestibule of the Senate.
Here, from the portico we look out upon the eastern grounds of the
Capitol in the unsullied panoply of a June morning, across the closely
shorn grass, the borders of roses and beds of flowers, through the vista
of maples with their green arcade of light and shadow, to the august
form of George Washington sitting in the centre of the grounds in a
lofty cerule chair mounted on a pedestal of granite twelve feet high.
This is the grandest and most criticised work of art about the Capitol.
The form being nude to the waist and the right arm outstretched, it is a
current vulgar joke that he is reaching out his hand for his clothes
which are on exhibition in a case at the Patent Office. It is true that
a sense of personal discomfort seems to emanate from the drapery—or lack
of it—and the _posé_ of this colossal figure. George Washington with his
right arm outstretched, his left forever holding up a Roman sword, half
naked, yet sitting in a chair, beneath bland summer skies, within a
veiling screen of tender leaves is a much more comfortable looking
object than when the winds and rains and snows of winter beat upon his
unsheltered head and uncovered form. This statue was designed in
imitation of the antique statue of Jupiter Tonans. The ancients made
their statues of Jupiter naked above and draped below as being visible
to the gods but invisible to men. But the average American citizen,
being accustomed to seeing the Father of his country decently attired in
small clothes, naturally receives a shock at first beholding him in next
to no clothes at all. It is impossible for him to reconcile a Jupiter in
sandals with the stately George Washington in knee-breeches and buckled
shoes. The spirit of the statue, which is ideal, militates against the
spirit of the land which is utilitarian if not commonplace.
Nevertheless, in poetry of feeling, in grandeur of conception, in
exquisite fineness of detail and in execution, Horatio Greenough’s
statue of George Washington is transcendently the greatest work in
marble yet wrought at the command of the government for the Capitol. It
is scarcely human, certainly not American, but it is godlike. The face
is a perfect portrait of Washington. The veining of a single hand, the
muscles of a single arm are triumphs of art.
Washington’s chair is twined with acanthus leaves and garlands of
flowers. The figure of Columbus leans against the back of the seat to
the left, connecting the history of America with that of Europe; an
Indian chief on the right represents the condition of the country at the
time of its discovery. The back of the seat is ornamented in
_basso-relievo_ with the rising sun, the crest of the American arms,
under which is this motto: “_Magnus ab integro sæculorum nascitur
ordo._” On the left is sculptured in _bas-relief_ the genii of North and
South America under the forms of the infant Hercules strangling the
serpent, and Iphiclus stretched on the ground shrinking in fear from the
contest. The motto is “_Incipe posse puer cui non risere parentes._” On
the back of the seat is the following motto: “_Simulacrum istud ad
magnum Libertatis exemplum. Nec sine ipsa duraturum._”
One of the greatest works of contemporary art, the masterpiece of a
master, it has been the subject of more rude and vulgar jests than any
other piece of American sculpture. The painful disparity which so often
exists between the judgment of the multitude and the inspiration of the
creator has never been more touchingly illustrated than in the following
words of Horatio Greenough, concerning this monument to his own genius
and to the Father of his country. He says: “It is the birth of my
thoughts, I have sacrificed to it the flower of my days, and the
freshness of my strength; its every lineament has been moistened with
the sweat of my toil and the tears of my exile. I would not barter away
its association with my name for the proudest fortune that avarice ever
dreamed of. In giving it up to the nation that has done me the honor to
order it at my hands, I respectfully claim for it that protection which
is the boast of civilization to afford art, and which a generous enemy
has more than once been seen to extend even to the monuments of its own
defeat.”
Retracing our steps to the rotunda, we turn westward through the main
hall of the Congressional Library to the lofty colonnade outside, from
whose balcony we look down upon the view which Humbolt declared to be
the most beautiful of its type in the whole world. Directly below us,
past the western terrace of the Capitol, with its open basin full of
gold fishes flashing in the sun, stretch the Capitol grounds. Many
varieties of trees already grown to forest hight spread their
interlacing roof of cool, green shadow over the malachite sward below.
Beds of flowers set in the grass, from the early March crocuses to the
November blooming roses, make the grounds fragrant and precious with
their presence. Here the dandelion spreads its cloth of gold in early
May. Here the chrysanthemums fringe the snow with pallid gold in white
December. Now the fountains are lapsing in dreamy tune through the long
June hours, and the seats under the trees are filled with visitors.
Nurses with children in their arms, old men and women leaning on their
staffs, lovers “billing and cooing” through the long twilight and
starlight seasons. Beyond spreads the city, every ugly outline hidden
and lost in a waving sea of greenery rippling and tossing above it. The
great avenues run and radiate in all directions. Pennsylvania Avenue
stretches straight on between its border of shade trees to its acropolis
one mile distant, the great Treasury gleaming in the sun, and the white
chimneys of the Executive Mansion peering above the trees; and still on,
till it joins the primitive streets of Georgetown. Massachusetts Avenue,
broad, straight, magnificent, spans the city from end to end unbroken.
Virginia Avenue to the left, goes on to meet Long Bridge, leading far
into the Old Dominion. Directly in front stretches the public
reservation yet to be made splendid as the Nation’s Boulevards, but
already holding the Congressional gardens and conservatories, the unique
towers, and picturesque grounds of the Smithsonian Institution, the
broad flower-banded terraces of the Agricultural Department, and the
incomplete Washington Monument. Beyond we see the wide Potomac, flecked
all over with snowy sails, far down old Alexandria, dingy on its farther
shore; opposite the Heights of Arlington, and amid its immemorial oaks;
Arlington House with the stars and stripes floating free from its
crowning summit.
CHAPTER XI.
ART TREASURES OF THE CAPITOL.
Arrival of a Solitary Lady—“The Pantheon of America”—Il
Penserosa—Milton’s Ideal—Dirty Condition of the House of
Representatives—The Goddess of Melancholy—Vinnie Ream’s Statue
of Lincoln—Its Grand Defects—Necessary Qualifications for a
Sculptor—The Bust of Lincoln by Mrs. Ames—General Greene and
Roger Williams—Barbarous Garments of Modern Times—Statues of
Jonathan Trumbull and Roger Sherman—Bust of Kosciusko—Pulling
His Nose—Alexander Hamilton—Fate of Senator Burr—Statue of
Baker—His Last Speech Prophetic—The Glory of a Patriotic
Example—The Lesson which Posterity Learns—Horatio Stone, the
Sculptor—Washington’s Statue at Richmond—Neglected Condition of
the Capitol Statuary—Curious Clock—Grotesque Plaster Image of
Liberty—Webster—Clay—Adams—The Pantheon at Rome—The French
Pantheon—Bar-Maid Goddess—Dirty Customs of M. C’s—Future Glory
of America.
A solitary lady has arrived in the old Hall of the House of
Representatives; or, as Senator Anthony eloquently calls it, “the
Pantheon of America.” “Considering her age,” (as women sweetly say of
each other,) “she looks quite young.” What her precise age may be, I am
as unable to tell you as that of any other of my friends. The daughter
of Saturn and Vesta, we may, at least, conclude that she has lived long
enough to look older than she does. Her name is “Il Penserosa,” and, “to
judge by appearances,” she seems to have flourished about twenty-five of
our mortal years. Yet Milton sung of her in his youth, before an unruly
wife and three disobedient daughters, (who perversely wished to
understand the alphabet which they read to their blind father,) had made
him crabbed and loftily sour towards women—Milton sung of this maid who
has but lately arrived in Washington:
“Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole of cypress lawn,
Over thy decent shoulders drawn;
Come, but keep thy wonted state
With even step and musing gait,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.”
Now, if this maiden can keep on holding her head up, with looks
perpetually “commercing with the skies” so that it will be impossible
for her to see all the tobacco-juice and apple-cores beneath and round
about her, it will conduce greatly to her peace of mind. I am sorry that
“the Pantheon of America” is not a cleaner looking place. It’s a pity,
as we have a Pantheon, that its shabbiness and dirt should flourish to a
degree that is absolutely melancholy. I am sure it was in obedience to
the law of fitness that the committee of the Congressional Library or
some other committee, brought the Goddess of Melancholy in here, to hold
her eyes and nose aloft, and to stand supreme queen, regnant of dust and
gloom and American “expectoration.” “Hail! divinest Melancholy.” I am
glad, judging by your face, that you are of the lymphatic temperament,
and that consequently, all this dirt will afflict you less than it does
me. But the more I look at your impassive and soulless countenance the
more I fear that, after all, you are but a feeble counterfeit of
Milton’s goddess or of the divine maiden conceived and born in,
“Woody, Ida’s inmost grove.”
In speaking of this marble, my heart will not let me forget that it was
wrought by a hand self-taught; yet no less, standing where it does, it
must be measured—somewhat, at least—by the standards of art. The figure,
diminutive even in its femininity, suffers to insignificance by being
set almost directly behind the gaunt and elongated form of Miss Ream’s
“Lincoln;” yet it is in the figure, in its _posé_ and gentle curves, its
chaste and graceful drapery, “the stole of cypress lawn, over the decent
shoulders drawn” in the firm yet delicate hand which holds it in its
place—in these only it is that the artist has caught and fastened in
stone the aspect of the “goddess, sage and holy.” The face is
meaningless. Not a line, not a curve, not an expression indicates a
capacity for melancholy, contemplation or anything else emotional or
intellectual. No mortal woman ever really meditated for a minute who did
not get her hair pushed back further from her eyes than this, but these
regulation locks run straight down the little, senseless Greek face in a
mathematical angle, indissolubly banded by a little perked up helmet,
embossed with seven stars. Why these stars? “Il Penserosa” was not
nearly enough related to “that starred Ethiop queen” Cassiope, to have
borrowed the helmet to wear even in the old Hall of the old House of
Representatives “in the United States of America.”
As for the Ream statue of Lincoln, (like many people,) the first glance
at it is the most satisfactory that you will ever have. It will never
look as well again. Some declare this very palpable lack to be in the
subject—Mr. Lincoln’s own face and form—but many others note it to be in
this representation of them. Mr. Lincoln’s living face was one of the
most interesting ever given to man. There was more than fascination in
its rugged homeliness; there was in it the deeper attraction of
suffering and sympathy. It outrayed from every line engraven there by
human pain and love and longing. But no soul can put into a statue or
painting more than it has in itself. In this statue of Mr. Lincoln we
have his rude outward image, unilluminated by one mental or spiritual
characteristic. It is mechanical, material, opaque. Mrs. Sarah Ames, in
her bust of Lincoln, which stands just behind our friend, “Il
Penserosa,” has transfixed more of the soul of Lincoln in the brow and
eyes of his face than Miss Ream has in all the weary outline of her many
feet of marble. In the bust the lower part of the face is idealized into
weakness. Without his gauntness and ruggedness Lincoln is not Lincoln.
But any one who ever saw and felt the deep, tender, sad outlook of his
living humanity must thank Mrs. Ames for having reflected and transfixed
it in the brows and eyes of this marble.
Just outside of its alcove, at the right hand of the door which enters
the New House of Representatives, stand side by side, the two statues
from Rhode Island—one of General Green, the other of Roger Williams.
That of General Green is spirited and exquisitely fine in detail; while
that of Roger Williams is the one ideal statue in our Pantheon. Both
were executed in Rome—the first by Henry R. Brown, the second by
Franklin Simmons, of Providence, Rhode Island. No portrait of Roger
Williams being in existence, Mr. Simmons has evolved from imagination
and his inner consciousness a quaint, poetic figure and a dreamlike
face, above whose lifted eyelids seems to hover a seraphic smile. Then
it is refreshing to turn from the stove-pipe hats, shingled heads and
angular garments in which the men of our generation do penance, to the
flowing locks, puckered knee-breeches, with their dainty tassels, and
the ample ruffs in which the holy apostle of liberty represents his name
and time. He holds a book in his hand, on whose cover is inscribed the
words, “Soul Liberty,” and, with open, uplifted glance and free _posé_
seems about to step forward into air, with lips just ready to open with
words of inspiration.
Opposite, on the other side of the Hall, stand together Connecticut’s
contribution—the statues of Jonathan Trumbull and Roger Sherman. They
are of heroic size and at first glance are most imposing. When you walk
nearer, and soberly survey them, you see that Roger Sherman looks solid
and stolid, and you see also (at least, I do,) that old Jonathan
Trumbull, with his down-perked head and narrow-lidded eyes, looks like a
meditative rooster—an immense human chanticleer, who had paused in his
lording career for a minute’s meditation. Mind, I don’t say but this may
be a grand statue, in its way, I only observe that it is a very
repelling one to me.
Just round the angle of the alcove on a box set on end, covered with
tattered black cambric, stands a bust of Kosciusko, by H. D. Saunders.
Poor Kosciusko! His nose always needs wiping; and what a pedestal for a
Pantheon! A candle or a soap box, probably, half covered with black
tags; then on his nose celestial, the dust alights and lodges always. It
is so provocative—the tip of it; every bumpkin who approaches it taps or
pulls it. Thus, literally, Kosciusko’s nose is seldom clean. One day it
was. Some pitying hand had washed the entire face. If you could have
seen the difference between Kosciusko clean and Kosciusko exiled, dirty
and forlorn! A few steps from this bust stands the statue of Alexander
Hamilton, by Horatio Stone—a noble figure, spirited in posture and
beautiful in countenance. No painted portrait can give so grand an idea
of the great Federalist to posterity. It is eight feet high and
represents Hamilton in the attitude of impassioned speech. It is
persuasive rather than declamatory, for the lifted hands droop, the face
presses slightly forward, the eyes look out from under their royal
arches deep and steadfast, while the sunshine pouring down the dome
lights up every lineament with the intensity of life. The execution of
the statue is exquisite, while in _posé_ and expression it is the
embodiment of majesty and power. Burr—who presided over the Senate, who
with the pride, subtlety and ambition of Lucifer, planned and executed
to live in the future amid the most exalted names of his time—sleeps
dishonored and accursed; while the great rival that he hated, whose
success he could not bear, whose life he destroyed, comes back in this
majestic semblance to abide in the Capitol. Thus we behold in this
statue not only a “triumph of art” but also a triumph of that final
retributive compensation of justice which sooner or later crushes every
wrong. This image of Hamilton looks forth from an era which, across the
gulf of our later revolution, seems already remote. It recalls
Washington the friend, Jefferson the foe, the war of Colonist and Tory,
the war of ideas between Federalist and Republican, the struggles and
successes of a splendid career; yet how far removed seem all across the
graves of the men of our own generation whom patriotism and death have
made illustrious and immortal. Thus nearer and dearer to the hearts of
to-day must be the image of “the noblest Roman of them all.” It is a
statue of Baker, also executed by Horatio Stone, in Rome, in 1863.
Hamilton stands forth in heroic size, while the statue of Baker is under
that of life, and barely suggests the grand proportions of the man. Yet
the dignity and grandeur of his mien are here, as he stands wrapped in
his cloak, his arms folded, his head thrown back, his noble face lifted
as if he saw the future—_his future_—and awaited it undaunted and with a
joyful heart. At his side is the plumed hat of a soldier, and on the
pedestal on which he stands are graven words from his last speech in the
United States Senate, when he replied to Breckenridge, “There will be
some graves reeking with blood, watered by the tears of affection. There
will be some privation. There will be some loss of luxury; there will be
somewhat more need of labor to procure the necessaries of life. When
that is said, all is said. If we have the country, the whole country,
the Union, the constitution, free government—with these will return all
the blessings of a well ordered civilization. The path of the country
will be a course of grandeur and glory such as our fathers in the olden
time foresaw in the dim visions of years to come—such as would have been
ours to-day, had it not been for the treason for which the senator too
often seeks to apologize.”
Thus to the land he loved he gave his life—a life so rich in every
quality that rounds and completes the highest manhood.
At sight of this mute marble, what memories are stirred! Again, in and
around Union Square throbs the vast human mass. Banners wave, cannons
boom, drums beat, men march. Every pulse of the air thrills with the
cry, “To Arms!” Amid all the orators of that hour, whose voice uttered
such burning words as Baker—he who left the seat of a senator for the
grave of a soldier. Thank God for our dead who yet live. No land has a
more priceless legacy. No soil was ever planted with richer blood. No
freedom ever bought with a costlier victory. Let me tell you, public
men, amid all your lavish expenditures of money wrung from the people,
never begrudge the price you pay for the fit statue of a great
character. Line the corridors of the Capitol with the images of the
noble and the good, that, by suggestion and semblance, they may arouse
to a purer purpose the emulation of the living. In these halls where
lobbyists congregate, where money-changers stand with shameless faces
offering their venal price for truth and honor, buying and selling the
integrity of manhood, give to our eyes at least the memories of high
example. If men in the rush of affairs and the absorption of their
ambitions take no time to study them, thoughtful women will pause and
ponder, and then teach the children who are to rule after us to love and
remember.
I look on these statues and think of the man who wrought them—think of
him as I saw him every day six years ago, a pale, dissatisfied, restless
man, whose hands were busy with uncongenial tasks, but whose brain was
haunted with noble ideals, to which he was powerless to give form or
substance. Opportunity, the ultimate test of all power, came to him and
at last Congress voted ten thousand dollars to Horatio Stone to execute
the statue of Alexander Hamilton in Rome. And, lo! the intangible vision
of the weary man is embodied in imperishable marble—the most majestic
statue beneath the dome of the Capitol. A little way before it is a
plaster cast, mounted high on a wooden block, of Houdin’s bronze figure
of Washington, the original of which is in the State Capitol at
Richmond, Virginia. Such a peaked-headed, idiotic-looking Washington I
never saw elsewhere. If he looked like this, it is perfectly plain why
he passed through life without ever once having done anything naughty.
But if he did look like this he was a stupid mortal to live with. Most
of the marbles of our Pantheon are poorly set. Even the seraphic apostle
of “soul liberty” stands on a box covered with cinnamon-colored cambric,
and his martial brother does likewise. Abraham Lincoln is ensconced
within an unpainted wooden fence, and the great lawgivers of Connecticut
stand in their big cloaks upon cotton covered boxes. Mrs. Ames’ bust of
“Lincoln” is poised on a handsome pedestal of Scotch granite; but, with
few exceptions, though not utterly barren of fine marbles, the present
aspect of the American Pantheon is chiefly suggestive of crudeness,
shabbiness, and—the exorbitant necessity of spittoons. Over the entrance
is a clock, having for its dial the wheels of a winged car, resting on a
globe. In this car sits a lady called History, with a scroll and pen in
hand. Oh! the story she could tell if she could tell the truth.
Opposite, twenty-four Corinthian columns of variegated Potomac marble
shoot to the roof, and shadow what was once the gallery of the Old Hall
of Representatives. In the centre stands a horrid-looking plaster image
of Liberty, modeled by Cansici; and under it the American bird, modeled
from life and cut in sandstone by Volaperti. Besides, scattered about
are portraits of Henry Clay, a mosaic portrait of Lincoln, by Signor
Salviato of Venice, of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and of Joshua
Giddings.
I have meant to pass nothing over that graces or disgraces our American
Pantheon, that you, afar, may see it as it is. In itself it is the most
majestic room in the Capitol. Set apart to enshrine the sculptured forms
of illustrious dead, already its arches and alcoves are fraught with
their living memoirs. Here Webster spoke, here Clay presided, here Adams
died.
It is modeled from the Roman Pantheon, and its roof, at least, is like
it. We have no proof that the Roman Pantheon was set apart for such a
purpose as that to which our own is dedicated; indeed, in the beginning
it was supposed to be connected with the Roman baths. To-day it is
chiefly sacred to art as the burial-place of Raphael. The French
Pantheon, also, was comparatively poor in statues, though boasting of
immense compositions in painting, by David and Gros. Herein the great
men who have illustrated France appear in the forms of Fenelon,
Malesherbes, Mirabeau, Voltaire, Rousseau, Lafayette, and others; while
at their feet, as befits their sex, sit History and Liberty, properly
employed making wreaths for the heads of these masculine heroes. From
the dome look down Clovis, Charlemagne, St. Louis, Louis XIV., XVI.,
XVII., Marie Antoinette, Madame Elizabeth, with a central glory to
represent Deity. The dome of our own rotunda is a florid imitation of
this. We have Franklin, Washington, and troops of goddesses, who look
like bar-maids; but from the focal apex we have omitted God, whose eye
is needed for such an assembly.
The magnificent facade which leads to the Houses of Parliament in
Westminster Palace is nine hundred feet long, paneled with tracery and
decorated with rows of majestic statues of the kings and queens of
England, from the conquest to the present time. Let us hope that it will
never be defiled from beginning to end, as our own magnificent
legislative halls, with tobacco-juice from the mouths of demoralized
men. The earth has never had but one absolutely perfect building, in
itself the final consummate flower of art—the Parthenon—consecrated
first to woman, the Virgin House, sacred to Athena. Beneath its pure and
perfect dome there was nothing to divert the gazer’s contemplation from
the simplicity and majesty of mass and outline. The whole building,
without and within, was filled with the most exquisite pieces of
sculpture, executed under the guidance of Phidias. The grand central
figure was the colossal statue of the Virgin Goddess, wrought by the
hand of Phidias himself. The weight of gold which she carried, says
Thucydides, was forty talents. Could a wooden fence guard so much gold
in our Christian Pantheon to-day? It was a happy thought which dedicated
this old hall of the nation to national art, but it far outleaped its
century. That which shall truly be the Pantheon of America is not for
us. The children of later generations, a far-off procession, may come up
hither to worship the diviner forms of the future, the majestic statues
of the nation’s best—its sons grand in manhood, its daughters divine in
womanhood; but, with here and there a rare exception, our eyes who live
to-day will see them not.
CHAPTER XII.
WOMEN WITH CLAIMS.
The Senate Reception Room—The People Who Haunt It—Republican “Ladies in
Waiting”—“Women with Claims”—Their Heroic Persistency—A Widow and
Children in Distress—Claim Agents—The Committee of Claims—A
Kind-hearted Senator’s Troubles—Buttonholing a Senator—A Lady of
Energy—Resolved to Win—An “Office Brokeress”—A Dragon of a Woman—A
Lady who is Feared if not Respected—Her Unfortunate Victims—Carrying
“Her Measure”—The Beautiful Petitioner—The Cloudy Side of her
Character—Her Subtle Dealings—Her Successes—How Government Prizes
are Won.
The room itself means only grace, beauty and silence. The moment had not
come for dis-illusion, thus I went forth without a word regarding its
human aspect.
To-day, dear friends, we will go in and face that. We sit down in the
shadow of this Corinthian pillar, and, looking out see the most
noticeable fact is that this lofty apartment is thronged with women. A
number are conversing with senators; others are gazing toward the doors
which lead into the Senate. Some seem to be waiting with eager eyes and
anxious faces; others are leaning back upon the sofas in attitudes of
luxurious listlessness. Do you ask why they are here? Are they studying
the stately proportions and exquisite _finesse_ of the ante-room? Not at
all. It is not devotion to the aesthetic arts nor the inspiration of
patriotism, which brings these women thither. They are a few, only a
very few, of the women—with “claims,” who, through the sessions of
Congress haunt the departments, the White House and the Capitol.
[Illustration:
THE LADIES’ RECEPTION ROOM.
INSIDE THE CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.
]
The dejected looking woman on the sofa opposite is a widow, with
numerous small children. You may be certain by the unhopeful expression
of her face that it is her own claim which, almost unaided and alone,
she is trying to “work through” Congress. Her home is far distant. She
borrowed money to come here, she borrows money to support her children,
money to pay her own board; borrows money to pay the exorbitant fees of
the claim-agent, who, constantly fanning the flame of “great
expectations,” assures her every day that Congress will pay her the
thousands which she demands for her losses—will pay her this very
session. Meantime the session is almost ended, and the widow’s claim, on
which hangs such a heavy load of debt and fear, lies hidden and
forgotten in the pigeon-hole of the Committee of Claims. While it lies
there, gathering dust, she a cheaply clad, care-faced woman, no longer
young, and never pretty, has grown to be most burdensome to Senator ——,
especially to the chairman of that committee. Irksome, not to be
desired, is the importunate presence of this forlorn woman. No less
irksome to these functionaries is the sight of her hundred sisters in
distress—more or less; poor widows, with small children, with personal
claims upon the Government. The chairman dreads the sight of this woman
and of her like. He dreads it the more that he is perfectly certain that
her case is not reached, and will not be this session. A kind-hearted
man, he is unwilling to set the seal of despair on her face by telling
her the truth. She finds it out at last, and then remembering all his
evasions, in her disappointment and hopeless poverty, she denounces him
as “deceitful and heartless,” whereas the honorable gentleman was only
trying to be kind. Meanwhile the Senate is too much interested in
immense claims involving millions, to be paid out of the National
Treasury, too much absorbed in the discussion of the universal, to be
able to come down to the small particular of a poor widow, with hungry
children, whose only heritage was lost in the war. In time, whose cycles
may be as long as those of the Circumlocution Office and the Court of
Chancery—but _some_ time, when the widow has borrowed and spent more
money than the whole claim is worth, it may be investigated, and full or
partial justice done. In either case, it will take more than she
receives to pay the many expenses which she has incurred during her long
years of waiting. Do you wonder that her face looks doleful while she
waits for Senator —— to come in to answer her card, sent into the Senate
Chamber. Here he is and we can hear what he says, “I am very sorry,
Madame; but it has grown to be too late. I fear that your case can not
be reached this session.” Poor woman. It would have been better for you
to have staid at home, kept out of debt, worked with your hands to have
supported your children. That would have been a hard life, but not so
hard as the mortification, suspense, and defeat of this, and the long
years of labor after all.
See that sharp-faced woman, with darting, prying eyes. She rushes in one
door and out of another. She hurries back. She meets a senator, and
“button-holes him,” after the fashion of men, and begins conversing in
the most importunate manner. He makes a retreat. Lo! in a moment she
attacks another, leading him triumphantly to a sofa, where we witness a
_teté-a-teté_, on the feminine side, carried on with marked emphasis and
much gesticulation. This woman not only has one claim in Congress, she
has many, and not one her own. She is a claim-agent, an
office-brokeress. She buys claims, and speculates in them as so much
stock. She takes claims on commission, deluding many a poor victim into
the belief that “my influence” and “my friends,” Senator So-and-So and
Secretary P. Policy, will insure it a triumphant passage and a
remunerative end, “without _fail_.” It is not strange, through sheer
pertinacity and by dint of endless worrying, she often succeeds. She is
purely feline in her tactics—ever alert, watchful, wary, cunning, and so
she worries her victims and wins. She is one of the world’s
disappointed, dissatisfied ones; so, more than all else, we will be
sorry for her. What God meant to be a fair life has been striven away in
one weary struggle for the worldly honor and conventional _prestige_
lying just above her reach. And to her the most pleasurable excitement
in all the claim profession is the delusion that it affords her of
personal power and of association with the great!
Pardon me, good friends, for calling a name. I _must_ call it, for it is
true. Here comes a very dragon of a woman. I am as afraid of her as if
she had horns. I was going to say that she was a man-woman, which is the
greatest monstrosity of the genus feminine. But I honor my brethren too
much for such a comparison, and so will simply say-in manners, she is a
dragon. The men whom she seizes must think so; they give her her way,
because they are afraid of her. Too well they know that, if they do not
yield her point—if they do not at least promise her their influence—if
they do not assure her that they will do all in their power to carry
“_her measure_”—that she will attack them in the street, in the
legislative lobbies, in the quiet of their lodgings, everywhere,
anywhere, till they do. She is no covert power. She proclaims aloud that
she has come to Washington to carry a measure through Congress to
establish some man in power. And she does it because her tongue is a
scourge and her presence a fear.
Leaning back in a chair, no one near her, you see a fair woman, whose
beautiful presence seems at variance with the many anxious and angular
and the few coarse women around her. The calmness of assured position,
the serene satisfaction of conscious beauty, envelop her and float from
her like an atmosphere. We feel it even here. Plumes droop above her
forehead, velvet draperies fall about her form. We catch a glimpse of
laces, the gleam of jewels. Look long into her face; its splendor of
tint and perfection of outline can bear the closest scrutiny. Look long,
and then say if a soul saintly as well as serene looks out from under
those penciled arches, through the dilating irises of those beguiling
eyes. Look, and the unveiled gaze which meets yours will tell you, as
plainly as a gaze can tell, that adulation is the life of its life, and
seduction the secret of its spell. This beauty would not blanch before
the profanest sight; it is the beauty of one who tunes her tongue to
honeyed accents, and lifts up her eyelids to lead men down to death. She
comes and goes in a showy carriage. She glides through the corridors,
haunts the galleries and the ante-rooms of the Capitol—everywhere
conspicuous in her beauty. All who behold her inquire, Who is that
beautiful woman? Nobody seems quite sure. Doubt and mystery envelop her
like a cloud. “She is a rich and beautiful widow,” “She is unmarried,”
“She is visiting the city with her husband.” Every gazer has a different
answer. There are a few, deep in the secrets of diplomacy, of
legislative venality, of governmental prostitution, who can tell you she
is one of the most subtle and most dangerous of lobbyists. She is but
one of a class always beautiful and always successful. She plays for
large stakes, but she always wins. The man who says to her, “Secure my
appointment, make sure my promotion, and I will pay you so many
thousands,” usually gets his appointment, and she her thousands. Does
she wait like a suppliant? Not at all. She sits like an empress waiting
to give audience. Will she receive her subjects in promiscuous
assemblage? No; if you wait long enough you will see her glide over
these tessellated floors, but not alone. Far from the ears of the crowd,
in rooms sumptuous enough for the Sybarites, this woman will dazzle the
sight of a half-demented and wholly bewildered magnate, and then tell
him what prize she wants. With alluring eyes and beguiling voice she
will besiege his will through the outworks of his senses, and so charm
him on to do her bidding. He promises her his influence; he promises her
his power; her favorite shall have the boon he demands, whether it be of
emolument or power.
Thus some of the highest prizes in the Government are won. Unscrupulous
men pay wily women to touch the subtlest and surest springs of
influence, and thus open a secret way to their public success. No longer
the question is: Shall women participate in politics? shall they form a
controlling element in the Government? But, as there are women who will
and do exert this power, shall it remain abject, covert, equivocal,
demoralizing, base? Or shall it be brave and pure and open as the sun?
CHAPTER XIII.
THE CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY.
Inside the Library—The Librarian—Sketch of Mr. Spofford—How
Congressional Speeches are Manufactured—“Spofford” in Congress—The
Library Building—Diagram—Dimensions of the Hall—The Iron Book
Cases—The Law Library—Five Miles of Book Shelves—Silent
Study—“Abstracting” Books—Amusing Adventure—A Senator
in a Quandary—Making Love under Difficulties—Library
Regulations—Privileged Persons—Novels and their Readers—Books of
Reference—Cataloguing the Library—The New Classification—Compared
with the British Museum—Curious Old Newspapers—Files of Domestic and
Foreign Papers—One Hundred Defunct Journals—Destruction of the
Library by English Troops—An Incident of the War of 1814—Putting it
to the Vote—“Carried Unanimously”—Wanton Destruction—Washington in
Flames—A Fearful Tempest—The Second Conflagration—35,000 Volumes
Destroyed—Treasures of Art Consumed—Congressional Grants—The New
Library—Extensive Additions—The Next Appropriation—The Grand Library
of the Nation.
The most remarkable fact of the present connected with the Congressional
Library, is its Librarian, Mr. Ainsworth R. Spofford.
Mr. Spofford was appointed Assistant Librarian by President Lincoln,
December 31, 1864, and upon the resignation of Mr. Stephenson the same
month succeeded him as Librarian. Mr. Spofford was formerly connected
with the secular press of Cincinnati, Ohio, and was also engaged in the
book trade in the same city. But neither fact accounts for his almost
unlimited practical knowledge of books of every age and in every
language. He is himself a vast library in epitome. If you wish to inform
yourself upon any subject under the sun, if you have any right or
privilege to inform Mr. Spofford of that fact, in five minutes you will
have placed before you a list, written down rapidly from memory, of the
best works extant upon the subject named, and in as few moments as it
will take to find them, and draw them forth from their dusty nests, you
will have them all heaped on a table before you, ready for your search
and research, and all the headaches they will be sure to give you.
Mr. Spofford has the credit among experts of writing many Congressional
speeches for honorable gentlemen whose verbs and nominatives by chronic
habit disagree, and whose spelling-books were left very far behind them,
but who nevertheless are under the imperative necessity of writing
learned speeches of which their dear constituents may boast and be
proud. By the way, a lady in private life in Washington,—a scholar and
caustic writer,—used to earn all her pin money, before her ship of
fortune came in, by writing, in the solitude of her room, the learned,
witty and sarcastic speeches which were thundered in Congress the next
day, by some Congressional Jupiter, who could not have launched such a
thunder-bolt to have saved his soul had it not been first forged and
electrified by a woman. The Librarian of Congress is too much absorbed
by his routine labors to have much time or strength to spare for the
writing out of Congressional speeches. But daily and almost hourly he
suggests and supplies the materials for such speeches. When a member
whose erudition is not remarkable, stands up in his seat, backing every
sentence he utters on finance, law or politics, by great authority, more
than one mentally exclaims, “Spofford!” We know where he has been. Mr.
Spofford is a slight gentleman in the prime of life, of nervous
temperament with very straight, smooth hair, classic features and a
placid countenance. Always a gentleman, his patience and urbanity are
inexhaustible, if you have the slightest claim upon his care. If you
have not, and he has no intention of being “bothered,” his “shoo fly”
capabilities are equally effectual. Like most book-people, Mr.
Spofford’s nervous life far outruns his material forces. He needs more
sunshine, air and out-of-door existence, as most Americans do. Therefore
I here cast him a crumb of sisterly counsel, born of gratitude and
selfishness. Spend more time on the Rock Creek and Piney Branch roads,
on the hills and by the sea, Mr. Spofford. Then may you live long,
prosper, and grow wiser, for the sake of my books, and everybody’s!
The halls of the Library of Congress are among the most chaste, unique
and indestructible of all the halls of the Capitol. The Library occupies
the entire central portion of the western front of the original Capitol.
The west hall extends the entire length of the western front flanked by
two other halls, one on the north the other on the south side of the
projection.
DIAGRAM OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
┌────────┐ ┌────────┐
│ │ Vestibule. │ │
│ │ │ │
│ ├─────────── Door. ────────────┤ │
│ North │ │ South │
│ Hall. │ │ Hall. │
│ │
│ West Hall of Liberty. │
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ │
└────────┴──────────────────────────────┴────────┘
The west hall which a few years since made the whole Library, is 91 feet
6 inches in length, 34 feet wide and 38 feet high, the other two halls
of the same hight are 29 feet 6 inches wide and 95 feet long. The halls
are lighted by windows looking out upon the grounds of the Capitol and
by roof lights of stained glass. The ceiling is iron and glass, and
rests on foliated iron brackets each weighing a ton. The pilasters and
panels are of iron painted a neutral hue tinged with pale green and
burnished with gold leaf. The floors are of tessellated black and white
marble. The iron book-cases on either side rise story on story, floored
with cast-iron plates, protected by railings, and traversed by light
galleries. Including the Law Library, these halls contain 26,148 feet,
or nearly five miles of book-shelving, and contain over 210,000 volumes.
The iron floors are covered with _kamptulicon_ floor cloth, a compound
of India-rubber and cork, which possesses the triple advantage of being
clean, light and cheap. The leg of every chair has a pad of solid
India-rubber under it. Nobody is allowed to speak above a whisper; thus
the stolid turning, or the light flutter of leaves make the only sound
which stirs the silence. Alcove after alcove line the halls, but with
the exception of two devoted to novels and other light reading, left
open for the ladies of members’ families, they are all securely locked
and protected by a net-work of wire, and thus the chance of pilfering
and of flirting are both shut in behind that securely fastened little
padlock.
[Illustration:
THE CENTRAL ROOM, CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY.
INSIDE THE CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.
]
Before the era of locking up, many books were “abstracted” from the
Library and never returned. And it is said that the alcoves were used
during the sessions of Congress by the belles of the Capitol for
reception rooms in which they received homage and listened to marriage
proposals. The story is told of “a wealthy Southern representative
gleaning materials for a speech in an upper section,” who was suddenly
stopped in his pursuit after knowledge above by the knowledge ascending
from below that “a penniless adventurer” was that moment persuading his
pretty daughter to elope in the alcove under him. It did not take the
parent long to descend into that alcove. The daughter did not elope.
The halls are lined with wide tables and arm-chairs provided for all who
wish to make use of the treasures of the Library. Tickets with blanks
can be filled with the name of any book desired, over the signature of
the applicant, who retains the book while remaining in the Library. On
the back of those tickets are printed the following regulations of the
Library:
1. Visitors are requested to remove their hats.
2. No loud talking is permitted.
3. No readers under sixteen years of age are permitted.
4. No book can be taken from the Library.
5. Readers are required to present tickets for all books wanted, and
to return their books and take back their tickets before leaving the
Library.
6. No reader is allowed to enter the alcoves.
No books can be taken out of the Library except on the responsibility of
a member of Congress. Till within a very few years, books were allowed
to be taken by strangers who presented a written permit to do so from a
Congressional official. This courtesy resulted in the destruction and
loss of so many valuable works, it had to be abolished and the stringent
rules of the present time established and strictly enforced. An act of
Congress provided that books can be taken out of the Library only by the
President of the United States, Members of the Cabinet, Judges of the
United States Supreme Court, Members of the Senate and House of
Representatives, Secretary of the Senate, Clerk of the House and members
of the Diplomatic Corps. This privilege of course includes the families
of these official gentlemen.
Forgetting this fact, the long list of story-books and new novels often
“charged” to these State names would be something ridiculous. Dealers in
light literature suffer somewhat from this privilege. The copyright law
and the Congressional Library together provide society and State with
all the surface literature that they want during their sojourn in
Washington. For reference the books are most extensively and thoroughly
used by all seekers after knowledge. American and foreign authors line
the tables in these quiet halls daily, and the results of their research
are usually given to the world. Legal, political, and historical works
are the ones most constantly called for and searched.
From 1815 to 1864 the Library was catalogued on the system adopted by
Mr. Jefferson according to Bacon’s Division of Science. This
classification adapted to a small library was inadequate to the
necessities of thousands of consulting readers. Mr. Spofford, on his
advent as Librarian, went to work to simplify the system. The result was
a complete catalogue of all the books in the great Library arranged
alphabetically under the heads of authors. A proof of the perfection of
this arrangement is, that any book hidden in the farthest corner of the
most distant alcove is handed to a reader at the tables within five
minutes after his application, while in the British Museum he would do
well if he got it in the space of half an hour.
Till the reign of Mr. Spofford, newspapers, as valuable documentary
history, had almost been ignored by the guardians of the Library. This
great defect Mr. Spofford has done much to eradicate and remedy. Files
of all the leading New York dailies are now regularly kept. Some
unbroken files have been secured, including those of the _New York
Evening Post_, from its beginning in 1801, the _London Gazette_ from
1665, the French _Moniteur_ (Royal, Imperial, and Republican,) from
1789, the _Illustrated London News_, the _Almanac de Gotha_ from 1776,
and a complete set of every newspaper ever published in the District of
Columbia, including over one hundred now no more. Before the last
progressive regime, even after Congress had appropriated $75,000 for the
replenishing of the Library, the entire national collection did not
contain a modern encyclopedia, or a file of a New York daily newspaper,
or of any newspaper except the venerable _Washington National
Intelligencer_. _De Bow’s Review_ was the only American magazine taken,
“but the _London Court Journal_ was regularly received, and bound at the
close of each successive year!”
The Congressional Library is the only one in the world utterly
fire-proof, without an atom of wood or of any combustible material in
its miles of shelving. Before it attained to this indestructible state
it suffered much. First from the British. On the evening of August 24,
1814, after the battle of Bladensburg, General Ross led his victorious
troops into the Federal City. As they approached the Capitol a shot was
fired by a man concealed in a house on Capitol Hill. The shot was aimed
at the British general, but only killed his horse. The enraged Britons
immediately set fire to the house which contained the sharp-shooter,
who, it is said, was a club-footed gardener-barber Irishman. The
unmanageable troops were drawn up in front of the unfinished Capitol, a
wooden scaffolding, occupying the place of the Rotunda, joining the two
wings. They first fired a volley into the windows and then entered the
building to prepare it for destruction. Admiral Cockburn ascended to the
Speaker’s chair, and derisively exclaimed:
“Shall this harbor of Yankee Democracy be burned? All for it say ‘Aye!’”
It was carried unanimously, and the torch of the Englishman applied to
the hard-earned treasures of the young Republic. The Library of
Congress, used as lighting paper, was entirely destroyed. With it, two
pictures of national value were burned; portraits of Louis XVI. and
Marie Antoinette, which, richly framed, had been sent to the United
States Government in Philadelphia, by the unfortunate French King.
While the Capitol was burning, clouds and columns of fire and smoke were
ascending from the President’s house and all the other public buildings
of the young city. The conflagration below was dulled by the
conflagration above; one of the most dreadful storms of thunder and
lightning ever known in Washington, met and lighted on the British
invaders, dimming and quenching their malicious fires.
In 1851 the magnificent new library-room of the Central Capitol, which
now held 55,000 volumes and many works of art, was discovered to be on
fire. The destruction was immense. Thirty-five thousand volumes were
destroyed. Among the valuable pictures burned at the same time were
Stuart’s paintings of the first five Presidents; an original portrait of
Columbus; a second portrait of Columbus; an original portrait of Peyton
Randolph; a portrait of Boliver; a portrait of Baron Steuben; one of
Baron de Kalb; one of Cortez, and one of Judge Hanson, of Maryland,
presented by his family. Between eleven and twelve hundred bronze medals
of the Vattemare Exchange, some of them more than two centuries old,
were destroyed; also, an Apollo in bronze, by Mills; a very superior
bronze likeness of Washington; a bust of General Taylor, by an Italian
artist; and a bust of Lafayette, by David.
The divisions of Natural History, Geography, and Travels, English and
European History, Poetry, Fiction, and the Mechanic Arts and Fine Arts
were all burned. The whole of the Law Library escaped the fire.
It indicates the intellectual vitality of the nation that an
appropriation of $10,000 was immediately made for the restoration of the
Library, and by the close of the year $75,000 more for the same purpose.
Like most beginnings, that of the Congressional Library was humble in
the extreme. The first provision for this great National collection was
made at Philadelphia by an act of the Sixth Congress, April 24, 1800,
appropriating $5,000 for a suitable apartment and the purchase of books
for the use of both Houses of Congress. The first books received were
forwarded to the new seat of Government in the trunks in which they had
been imported. President Jefferson, from its inception, an ardent friend
of the Library, called upon the Secretary of the Senate, Samuel Allyne
Otis, to make a statement on the first day of the session, December 7,
1801, respecting the books, the act of Congress having provided that the
Secretary of the Senate, with the Clerk of House of Representatives,
should be the purchasers of the books. The Congressional provision for
the Library in 1806 was $450.00.
In a report made by Doctor Samuel Latham Mitchell from New York to the
House, January 20, 1806, he says:
“Every week of the session causes additional regret that the volumes
of literature and science within the reach of the National Legislature
are not more rich and ample. The want of geographical illustration is
truly distressing, and the deficiency of historical and political
works is scarcely less severely felt.”
President Madison always exercised a fostering care over the Library and
an act approved by him, December 6, 1811, appropriates, for five
additional years, the sum of one thousand dollars annually for its use.
The whole number of books accumulated in fourteen years, from 1800 to
1814, amounted only to about three thousand volumes. The growth of the
Library may be traced in the relative sums appropriated to its benefit
by successive Congresses. In 1818, $2,000 were appropriated for the
purchase of books. From 1820 to 1823, $6,000 were voted to buy books.
In 1824, $5,000 were appropriated for the purchase of books under the
Joint Committee; also $1,546 for the purchase of furniture for the new
Library in the centre building of the Capitol.
The yearly appropriation for the increase of the Library, for many
successive years after the accession of General Jackson, was $5,000;
these were exclusive of the appropriations made for the Law Department
of the Library. In 1832 an additional appropriation of $3,000 was made
for Library furniture and repairs. In 1850 the annual appropriation of
$1,000 to purchase books for the Law Library was increased to $2,000.
Within a year of the burning of the Library in 1851, $85,000 had been
voted by Congress for the restoration of the Library and the purchase of
books.
The west hall of the New Library was completed and occupied July 1,
1853. It was designed by Thomas A. Walter, the architect of the Capitol.
The appropriation for miscellaneous books alone in the years 1865 and
1866 amounted to $16,000. In 1866, $1,500 were set apart for procuring
files of leading American newspapers, and the sum of $4,000 was voted
June 25, 1864, to purchase a complete file of selections from European
periodicals from 1861 to 1864 relating to the Rebellion in the United
States. July 23, 1866, the amount of $10,000 was voted by Congress for
furniture for the two wings of the extension. The present magnificent
halls of the Library of Congress were built at an expense of $280,500.
The main hall cost $93,500, and the other two halls $187,000. The last
two have been built under the superintendence of Mr. Edward Clark.
Beautiful and ample as these three halls are in themselves, they are
already too small to hold the rapidly accumulating treasures of the
Library.
The next appropriation will take the Congressional Library out of the
Capitol altogether into a magnificent building, built expressly for and
devoted exclusively to the uses of the Grand Library of the Nation.
CHAPTER XIV.
A VISIT TO THE NEW LAW LIBRARY.
How a Library was Offered to Congress—Mr. King’s Proposal—An Eye to
Theology—The Smithsonian Library Transferred—The Good Deeds of Peter
Force—National Documents—“American Archives”—Congress Makes a Wise
Purchase—Eliot’s Indian Bible—Literary Treasures—The Lawyers Want a
Library for Themselves—Their “Little Bill” Fails to Pass—They are
Finally Successful—The Finest Law Library in the World—First Edition
of Blackstone—Report of the Trial of Cagliostro, Rohan and La
Motte—Marie Antoinette’s Diamond Necklace—A Long Life-Service—The
Law Library Building—An Architect Buried Beneath his own
Design—“Underdone Pie-crust”—“Justice” Among the Books—Reminiscence
of Daniel Webster and the Girard Will.
A little more than a month after the burning of the Library by the
British in 1814, a letter was read in the Senate, from Thomas Jefferson
at Monticello, tendering to Congress the purchase of his library of nine
thousand volumes.
The collection of this library had been the delight of Mr. Jefferson’s
life, and, long before, he had written of it as “the best chosen
collection of its size probably in America.” Pecuniary embarrassments
had already begun to cloud his closing years, and the double hope of
relieving these, and of adding to the treasures of his beloved Republic,
impelled him to this personal sacrifice. In his letter to the Committee
he said:
“I should be willing indeed to retain a few of the books to amuse the
time I have yet to pass, which might be valued with the rest, but not
included in the sum of valuation until they should be restored at my
death, which I would cheerfully provide for.”
The sum of $23,950 in Treasury notes, of the issue ordered by the law of
March 4, 1814, was paid him. The actual number of volumes thus acquired
was 6,700. Although a Mr. King, of Massachusetts, more burdened with
zeal than knowledge, made a motion which called out a loud and long
debate, that all books of an atheistical, irreligious, and immoral
tendency should be extirpated from the Library and sent back to Mr.
Jefferson, the department of Theology in his library was found to be
large, sound, and valuable.
In 1866 the custody of the Library of the Smithsonian Institution, with
the agreement of the Regents, was transferred to the Library of
Congress. It brought forty thousand additional volumes to the
Congressional Library.
When you come to Washington, you will see in the gallery of the
Smithsonian Institution the bust of a noble man standing on a simple
plaster column, bearing the name PETER FORCE. He, during his life, did
more than any one American to rescue from oblivion the early documentary
history of the United States. He came from his native city, New York, to
Washington, as a printer, in 1815. In 1820 he began the publication of
the _National Calendar_, an annual volume of national statistics, and
also published the _National Journal_, the Administration organ during
the Presidency of John Quincy Adams. In 1833 the Government entered into
a contract with Mr. Force to prepare and publish a “Documentary History
of the American Colonies.” Nine volumes subsequently appeared under the
title of the “American Archives.” In preparing this work, Mr. Force
gathered a collection of books, manuscripts, and papers relating to
American History, unequalled by any private collection in the world. At
the request of the Joint Library Committee of the Thirty-ninth Congress,
Mr. Spofford, the Librarian, entered into a thorough examination of the
Force Library. After spending from two to three hours per day on it for
two months, he presented to Congress an exhaustive classified report of
its treasures, which resulted in the purchase of the entire Force
Library by the Joint Library Committee for the sum of one hundred
thousand dollars, the sum offered by the New York Historical Society for
the same collection. It occupies the South Hall of the Congressional
Library.
Before this purchase, the largest and most complete collection of books
relating to America was tucked away on the shelves of the British
Museum. Among the treasures of the Force Library is a perfect copy of
Eliot’s Indian Bible, the last copy of which sold brought $1,000;
forty-one different works of Cotton and Increase Mather, printed at
Boston and Cambridge, from 1671 to 1735; complete files of the leading
journals of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and other
States, from 1735 to 1800, with 245 bound volumes of American newspapers
printed prior to 1800; and these make but a small proportion of its
priceless historical wealth.
February 18, 1816, a bill was introduced in the Senate to establish a
Law Library at the Seat of Government, for the use of the Supreme Court
of the United States. It passed that body, but never went into effect,
from the non-action of the House of Representatives on the bill. July
14, 1832, [Andrew Jackson, President,] a bill was approved, entitled,
“An Act to increase and improve the Law Department of the Library of
Congress,” which, in its four sections, contained the following
provisions:
“For the present year a sum not exceeding five thousand dollars, and a
farther annual sum of one thousand dollars for the period of five
years, to be expended in the purchase of law books.”
The number of law books owned by the Library at that time was 2,011; 639
of these belonged to the Jefferson collection. From this beginning,
within forty years has grown the finest law library in the world. It
contains every volume of English, Irish and Scotch reports, besides the
American; an immense collection of case law, a complete collection of
the Statutes of all civilized countries since 1649, filling one hundred
quarto volumes. It includes the first edition of Blackstone’s
Commentaries, an original edition of the report of the trial of
Cagliostro, Rohan and La Motte, for the theft of Marie Antoinette’s
diamond necklace—that luckless bauble which fanned to such fury the
fatal flames of the Revolution. When Andrew Jackson became President, in
1829, he appointed John S. Meehan, a printer of Washington, the first
editor and publisher of the _Columbia Star_ and _United States
Telegraph_, Librarian of Congress. He continued in that office till the
accession of Mr. Lincoln—a period of thirty-two years. His son, Mr. C.
H. W. Meehan, relinquished his boy pageship under his father, in 1832,
to be transferred to the new Law Library. The lapse of forty years finds
this gentleman still the special custodian of the Law Library. In 1835
he was entrusted with the choice of all books purchased for the Library,
which trust he continues to hold. He adds another to the many faithful
and learned lives whose entire span is measured by devoted service to
the State, under the shadow of the Capitol. In December, 1860, the Law
Library was removed into the basement room of the Capitol, just vacated
by the Supreme Court. This room is unique and beautiful. Its vestibule
is supported by pillars in clusters of stalks of maize, with capitals of
bursting ears of corn, the design of Mr. Latrobe. The chamber itself is
of semi-circular form seventy-five feet in length. The arches of the
ceiling rest upon immense Doric columns. The spandrels of the arches are
filled in with solid masonry—blocks of sandstone, strong enough to
support the whole Capitol. Their tragic strength springs from the fact
that the arch above fell once, burying and killing beneath it its
designer, Mr. Lenthal. The plan of his arch in proportion to its height
was pronounced unsafe by all who examined the drawing, except himself.
To prove his own faith in his theory he tore away the scaffolding before
the ceiling was dry. It fell, and he was taken out hours after, dead and
mangled, from its fallen ruins. It will never fall again. The tremendous
masonry which now supports a very light burden makes it impossible. The
Doric columns diverge from the centre to the circumference like the
radii of a circle. From this centre diverge the alcoves lined with books
in the regulation binding, likened by Dickens to “underdone pie-crust.”
On the western wall near the ceiling is a group in plaster, representing
Justice holding the scales, and Fame crowned with the rising sun,
pointing to the Constitution of the United States, the work of Franzoni,
the sculptor of the History-winged clock, in the old Hall of
Representatives. In this room, Daniel Webster made his great speech in
the Dartmouth College case, and Horace Binney his argument in the case
of the Girard Will. The Librarian’s semi-circular mahogany desk, with
its faded green brocade draperies, once stood in the old Senate Chamber
and re-echoed to the gavel of every Vice-President who reigned in the
Senate from 1825 to 1860.
CHAPTER XV.
THE HEAVEN OF LEGAL AMBITION—THE SUPREME
COURT ROOM.
Memories of Clay, Webster and Calhoun—Legal Giants of the Past—Stately
Serenity of the Modern Court—“Wise Judgment and Wine-Dinners”—The
Supreme Court in Session—Soporific Influences—A Glimpse of the
Veritable “Bench”—The Ladies’ Gallery—The Chief Justices of the
Past—Taney Left Out in the Cold—His Apotheosis—Chief Justice
Chase—Black Robed Dignitaries—An Undignified Procession—The “Crier”
in Court—Antique Proclamation—The Consultation Room—Every Man in his
Proper Place—Gowns of Office—Reminiscence of Judge McClean—“Uncle
Henry and his Charge”—Fifty Years in Office.
One of the few rooms in the Capitol wherein harmony and beauty meet and
mingle, is the Old Senate Chamber, now the Supreme Court Room of the
United States.
Here Clay, and Webster, and Calhoun,—those giants of the past, whom
octogenarians still deplore with all their remembered and forgotten
peers,—once held high conclave. Defiance and defeat, battle and triumph,
argument and oratory, wisdom and folly once held here their court. It is
now the chamber of peace. Tangled questions concerning life, liberty and
the pursuit of personal happiness are still argued within these walls,
but never in tones which would drown the sound of a dropping pin. Every
thought is weighed, every word measured that is uttered here. The judges
who sit in silence to listen and decide, have outlived the tumult of
youth and the summer of manhood’s fiercer battles. They have earned
fruition; they have won their gowns—which, while life lasts, can never
be worn by others. Theirs is the mellow afternoon of wise judgment and
wine-dinners.
In the Court room itself we seem to have reached an atmosphere where it
is always afternoon. The door swings to and fro noiselessly, at the pull
of the usher’s string. The spectators move over a velvet carpet, which
sends back no echo, to their velvet cushioned seats ranged against the
outer-walls. A single lawyer arguing some constitutional question,
drones on within the railed inclosure of the Court; or a single judge in
measured tones mumbles over the pages of his learned decision in some
case long drawn out. Unless you are deeply interested in it you will not
stay long. The atmosphere is too soporific, you soon weary of absolute
silence and decorum, and depart. The chamber itself is semi-circular,
with snow white walls and windows crimson-curtained. It has a domed
ceiling studded with stuccoed mouldings and sky-lights. The technical
“bench” is a row of leather backed arm-chairs ranged in a row on a low
dais. Over the central chair of the Chief Justice a gilt eagle looks
down from a golden rod. Over this eagle, and parallel with the bench
below, runs a shallow gallery, from which many fine ladies of successive
administrations have looked down on the gods below. At intervals around
the white walls are set brackets on which are perched the first four
Chief Justices—John Jay, John Rutledge, Oliver Ellsworth and John
Marshall. There have been but six Chief Justices of the Supreme Court
since its beginning. Chief Justice Taney’s bust for years was left out
in the cold on a pedestal within a recess of one of the windows of the
Senate wing. It was voted in the Senate that it should there wait a
certain number of expiatory years until in the fulness of time it should
be sufficiently absolved to enter the historic heaven of its brethren.
One more is yet to be added—the grand head and face of Chief Justice
Chase. The May flowers have scarcely faded since he held high court here
alone. As ever his was the place of honor. A crown of white rose-buds
shed incense upon his head—placed there by the beautiful daughter who
crowned him in death, as in life, the first of men. Crosses, anchors and
columns of stainless blossoms were heaped high above his head. Here in
the silence of death, for one day and night, the great Chief Justice
held Supreme Court alone.
During the session of the Supreme Court, the hour of meeting is 11 A. M.
Precisely at that hour a procession of black-robed dignitaries, kicking
up their long gowns very high with their heavy boots, may be seen
wending their way from the robing-room to the Supreme Court room. They
are preceded by the Marshal, who, entering by a side-door, leads
directly to the Judges’ stand, and, pausing before the desk, exclaims:
“The Honorable the Chief Justice and Associate Justices of the Supreme
Court of the United States.”
With these words all present rise, and stand to receive the Justices
filing in. Each Justice passes to his chair. The Judges bow to the
lawyers; the lawyers bow to the Judges; then all sit down. The Crier
then opens the Court with these words:
“O, yea! O, yea! O, yea! All persons having business with the
honorable the Supreme Court of the United States are admonished to
draw near and give their attendance, as the Court is now sitting. God
save the United States and this honorable Court.”
At the close of this antique little speech, the Chief Justice motions to
the lawyer whose case is to be argued, and that gentleman rises,
advances to the front, and begins his argument.
The chairs of the Judges are all placed in the order of their date of
appointment. On either side of the Chief Justice sit the senior Judges,
while the last appointed sit at the farther ends of each row. In the
robing-room, their robes, and coats and hats, hang in the same order. In
the consultation-room, where the Judges meet on Saturday to consult
together over important cases presented, their chairs around the table
are arranged in the same order, the Chief Justice presiding at the head.
Both the robing and consultation-rooms command beautiful views from
their windows of the city, the Potomac, and the hills of Virginia. In
the former, the Judges exchange their civic dress for the high robes of
office. These are made of black silk or satin, and are almost identical
with the silk robe of an Episcopal clergyman. The gown worn by Judge
McClean still hangs upon its hook as when he hung it there for the last
time—years and years ago. The consultation-room is across the hall from
the Law Library, whose books are in constant demand by the lawyers and
Judges of the Supreme Court. This room is in charge of “Uncle Henry,” a
colored man, who has held this office for fifty years, and, at the age
of eighty, still fulfils his duties with all the alacrity and twice the
devotion of a much younger man.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE “MECCA OF THE AMERICAN.”
The Caaba of Liberty—The Centre of a Nation’s Hopes—Stirring
Reminiscences of the Capitol—History Written in Stone—Patriotic
Expression of Charles Sumner—Ruskin’s Views of Ornament—Building
“for all Time”—“This our Fathers Did for Us”—The Parthenon and the
Capitol Compared—The Interest of Humanity—A Secret Charm for a
Thoughtful Mind—An Idea of Equality—The Destiny of the Stars and
Stripes—A Mother’s Ambition—Recollections of the War—The Dying
Soldier—“The Republic will not Perish.”
The Capitol of his country should be the Mecca of the American. It is
_his_ Capitol, and his country’s, through such extreme cost, that he
should make pilgrimages hither to behold with his own eyes the Caaba of
Liberty. This august building should gather and concentrate within its
walls the holy love of country.
In our vast land the passion of nationality has become too much
diffused. It has been broken into the narrower love bestowed upon a
single State. It has been bruised by faction. It has been broken by
anarchy. But within the walls of the Capitol, every State in the Union
holds its memories, and garners its hopes. Every hall and corridor,
every arch and alcove, every painting and marble is eloquent with the
history of its past, and the prophecy of its future. The torch of
revolution flamed in sight, yet never reached this beloved Capitol. Its
unscathed walls are the trophies of victorious war; its dome is the
crown of triumphant freemen; its unfilled niches and perpetually growing
splendor foretell the grandeur of its final consummation. Remembering
this, with what serious thought and care should this great national work
progress:
“The hand that rounded Peter’s dome,
And groined the aisles of ancient Rome,
Wrought with a sad sincerity.”
Let no poor artist, no insincere spirit, assume to decorate a building
in whose walls and ornaments a great nation will embody and perpetuate
its most precious history. The brain that designs, the hand that
executes for the CAPITOL, works not for to-day, but for all time. It was
with a profound consciousness, not only of what this building is, but of
all that it must yet be to the American people, that Charles Sumner,
that profound lover of beauty, said, with so much feeling: “Surely this
edifice, so beautiful and interesting, should not be opened to the rude
experiment of untried talent. It ought not to receive, in the way of
ornamentation, anything which is not a work of art.” In every future
work added to the Capitol, let the significant words of Ruskin, the
great art critic, be remembered:
“There should not be a single ornament put upon a great civic
building, without an intellectual intention. Every human action gains
in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things
to come. There is no action nor art whose majesty we may not measure
by this test. Therefore, when we build a public building, let us think
that we build it for ever. Let us remember that a time is to come when
men will say: ‘See, this our fathers did for us.’ ”
Phidias created the Parthenon. Beneath his eyes it slowly blossomed, the
consummated flower of Hellenic art. It has never been granted to another
one man to create a perfect building which should be at once the marvel
and the model of all time. Many architects have wrought upon the
American Capitol, and there are discrepancies in its proportions wherein
we trace the conflict of their opposing idiosyncrasies. We see places
where their contending tastes met and did not mingle, where the harmony
and sublimity which each sought was lost. We see frescoed fancies and
gilded traceries which tell no story; we see paintings which mean
nothing but glare. But a human interest attaches itself to every form of
noble building. Its very defects the more endear it to us, for, above
all else, these are human. We love our Capitol, not that it is perfect,
but because, being faulty, it still is great, and worthy of our
reverence. Its wondrous possibilities, its inadequate fulfilment, its
very incompleteness, but make it nearer kin to ourselves. Like the
friend tantalizingly and delightfully faulty, its many shaded humanity
is full of varied charm. It has all the secret ways of a profound
nature. We fancy that we know it altogether, that we could never be lost
in its labyrinths; yet we are constantly finding passages that we
dreamed not of, and confronting shut and silent doors which we may not
enter. But the deeper we penetrate into its recesses, the more
positively we are pervaded by its nobleness, and the more conscious we
become of its magnitude and its magnificence.
No matter how we condemn certain proportions of the Capitol, it grows
upon the soul and imagination more and more, as does every great object
in art or nature. Beside, the Capitol is vastly more than an object of
mere personal attachment to be measured by a narrow individual standard.
To every American citizen it is the majestic symbol of the majesty of
his land. You may be lowly and poor. You may not own the cottage which
shelters you, nor the scanty acres which you till. Your power may not
cross your own door-step; yet these historic statues and paintings,
these marble corridors, these soaring walls, this mighty dome, are
yours. The highest man in the nation owns nothing here which does not
belong equally to you. The Goddess of Liberty, gazing down from her
shield, bestows no right upon the lofty which she does not extend
equally to the lowliest of her sons.
The temple of Pallas Athena, the stones of Venice, the mighty mementos
of a mightier Mexico do not tell to any human gazer one-half so grand a
story as the Capitol of America will yet proclaim to the pilgrim of
later ages. In far-off time I see it stand forth the conqueror of the
forgetfulness and the indifference of men. A solemn teacher, with stern,
watchful, yet silent sympathy, it will impart to a proud people the
profound lesson of their past. A loving mother, it will hold before her
living children the sacred faces of her dead for the emulation, the
reverence, the love, of all who came after. In its halls will stand the
sculptured forms of famed men, and of women great in goodness, great in
devotion, great in true motherhood. Through sight and sympathy, through
the inspiration of grand example, the living woman as she lays her
moulding hand upon the budding heart and tender brain of the boy-man,
will rise to the true dignity of the wife and mother of the Republic.
With psychical sight we see what the Capitol will one day be, to later
generations; by our own heart-throbs, we know what it is to ourselves.
Strength and depth are in its foundations, power and sublimity in its
dome, and these are ours. Its mighty masses of gleaming marble, all
veined with azure; its Corinthian capitals, flowering at the top like a
palm in nature; its tutelary statue of freedom, are joys to our eyes
forever. Serene Mother of our liberties, she watches always and never
wearies. When the whole land lay in shadow, when the blood of her sons
ran in rivers, when her heart was pierced nigh unto death, in moveless
calm she held her steadfast shield; and gazing into her eyes, through
the dimness of tears, we read the promise of peace. No matter where
darkness fell, she bore the sunlight upon her crest. The dying statesman
asked to be lifted up that his eyes might behold her last. The soldier,
who gave his all, to perish in her name, watched for the sight of her
from afar, and beheld her first with the shout of joy. When the slow
river bore him back wounded from battle, he strained his eyes to catch a
glimpse of Freedom on the dome, and looking up, was content to know that
he was dying for her sake.
Factions will fight and fall. Political parties will struggle and
destroy each other. The passions of men are but the waves which beat and
break on her feet. Above, beyond them all Freedom lives for evermore.
Because she lives, Truth and Justice must survive, and the Republic will
not perish.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE CAPITOL—MORNING SIGHTS AND SCENES.
The Capitol in Spring—A Magic Change—“More Beautiful than Ancient
Rome”—Arrival of Visitors—A New Race—“Billing and Cooing”—Lovers at
the Capitol—A Dream of Perpetual Spring—Spending the Honeymoon in
Washington—Charmingly “Vernal” People—New Edition of David
Copperfield and Dora—“Very Young”—Divided Affections: the New
Bride—Jonathan and Jane—Memories of a Wedding Dress—An Interview
With a Bride—“Two Happy Idiots”—A Walk in the City—Utilitarian
Projects—President Grant—The Foreign Ambassadors—“Beau” Hickman—An
Erratic Genius—Walt Whitman, the Poet—A “Loafer” of Renown—Poets at
Home—Piatt—Burroughs—Harriet Prescott Spofford—Sumner and
Chase—Foreign _Attachés_ “on the Flirt”—Tiresome Men—Lafayette
Square in the Morning—How to Love a Tree—“He Never Saw Washington.”
We rarely have spring in this latitude. Full panoplied, summer springs
from under the mail of long lingering winter. We had a fine yesterday.
From my window this morning lo! the miracle! my dear long-timed friend,
the maple across the street, amazes me once more, though I declared to
it last year I never would be amazed again. It beckons me, its myriad
little wands all aquiver with the tenderest green, and says: “There now,
you can’t help it! Again I am a beauty and a wonder!” No long waiting
and watching for slow budding blossoms here. Some night when we are all
asleep there is a silent burst of bloom; and we wake to find the trees
that we left here, when we shut our blinds on them the night before, all
tremulous with new life, and the whole city set in glowing emerald.
I invite you to the western front of the Capitol, to stand with me in
the balcony of the Congressional Library, to survey the city lying at
our feet within the amphitheatre of hills soaring beyond, the river
running its shining thread between. I am quite ready to believe what
Charles Sumner said when pleading against the mooted depot site on its
Central Avenue, that this city is more beautiful than ancient Rome. In
itself it is absolutely beautiful, and that is enough; and it grows more
and more so as the sea of greenery, which now waves and tosses about its
housetops, rises each year higher and higher. The Capitol in early
spring and summer is in no wise the Capitol of the winter. Every door
swings wide; from the doors in the under-ground corridors to the
wondrous doors, designed in Rome and cast in Munich, which open into the
rotunda. What long, cool, green vistas run out from every angle. You
stand beneath the dome; but your eyes find rest in the far shadow of the
Virginia hills.
And so many people seem to have come under the great dome to rest. You
wonder where they could all have appeared from. They are not at all the
people who crowd and hurry through the corridors in winter—the
claimants, the lobbyists, the pleasure-seekers from great cities who
come to spend the “season” in Washington. Nearly all are people from the
country, the greater proportion brides and grooms, to whom the only
“season” on earth is spring—the marriage season. Pretty pairs! They seem
to be gazing out upon life through its portal with the same mingling of
delight and wonder with which they gaze through the great doors of the
Capitol upon the unknown world beyond. Early summer always brings a
great influx of bridal pairs to Washington. Whence they all come no
mortal can tell; but they do come, and can never be mistaken. Their
clothes are as new as the spring’s, and they look charmingly vernal. The
groom often seems half to deprecate your sudden glance, as if, like
David Copperfield, he was afraid you thought him “very young.” And yet
he invites you to glance again, by his conscious air of proud
possession, which says: “Behold! I may be young—very. But I have gotten
me a wife; she is the loveliest creature upon earth.” The affections of
the lovely creature seem to be divided between her new lord and her new
clothes. She loves him, she is proud of him; but this new suit, who but
she can tell its cost. What longing, what privation, what patient toil
has gone into its mouse or fawn-like folds; for this little bride, who
regretfully drags her demi-train through the dust of the rotunda in
summer, is seldom a rich man’s daughter. You see them everywhere
repeated, these two neophytes—in the hotel-parlor, in the street-cars,
in the Congressional galleries.
When Jonathan read to Jane, in distant Mudville, the record of
Congressional proceedings in Washington, in the _Weekly Tribune_, both
imagined themselves deeply interested in the affairs of their country;
but here, on the spot, how small seem Tariff, Amnesty, Civil Rights, and
Ku-Klux bills beside the ridiculous bliss of these two egotists. They do
not even pretend to listen. But they have some photograph cards, and
seek out their prototypes below. On the whole, Jane is disappointed. She
was not prepared for so many bald heads, or for so much of bad manners.
After all, not one of these men, in her mind, can compare with the small
law-giver, the newly-found Lycurgus by her side. Before she became calm
enough to reach this judicial decision, she visited the ladies’
dressing-room and shook out her damaged plumes.
“Is Washington _always_ so dusty?” she asked, with a sigh, looking down
on her pretty mouse-colored dress, with its piping decidedly grimed.
“Nearly always,” I answered.
“Then how _can_ people live here?” she exclaimed.
When she goes home, she will tell that the dome of the Capitol is very
high; that Conkling looks thus, and Sumner so. But what she will tell
oftenest and longest—perhaps to her children’s children—will be that it
was in Washington she ruined her wedding dress.
“I was married yesterday, and see how I look!” said Jane, ruefully.