WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE. AND THE PRESIDENT’S HOUSE
WE left Philadelphia by steamboat, at six o’clock one very cold morning,
and turned our faces towards Washington.
In the course of this day’s journey, as on subsequent occasions, we
encountered some Englishmen (small farmers, perhaps, or country publicans
at home) who were settled in America, and were travelling on their own
affairs. Of all grades and kinds of men that jostle one in the public
conveyances of the States, these are often the most intolerable and the
most insufferable companions. United to every disagreeable
characteristic that the worst kind of American travellers possess, these
countrymen of ours display an amount of insolent conceit and cool
assumption of superiority, quite monstrous to behold. In the coarse
familiarity of their approach, and the effrontery of their
inquisitiveness (which they are in great haste to assert, as if they
panted to revenge themselves upon the decent old restraints of home),
they surpass any native specimens that came within my range of
observation: and I often grew so patriotic when I saw and heard them,
that I would cheerfully have submitted to a reasonable fine, if I could
have given any other country in the whole world, the honour of claiming
them for its children.
As Washington may be called the head-quarters of tobacco-tinctured
saliva, the time is come when I must confess, without any disguise, that
the prevalence of those two odious practices of chewing and expectorating
began about this time to be anything but agreeable, and soon became most
offensive and sickening. In all the public places of America, this
filthy custom is recognised. In the courts of law, the judge has his
spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his; while the
jurymen and spectators are provided for, as so many men who in the course
of nature must desire to spit incessantly. In the hospitals, the
students of medicine are requested, by notices upon the wall, to eject
their tobacco juice into the boxes provided for that purpose, and not to
discolour the stairs. In public buildings, visitors are implored,
through the same agency, to squirt the essence of their quids, or
‘plugs,’ as I have heard them called by gentlemen learned in this kind of
sweetmeat, into the national spittoons, and not about the bases of the
marble columns. But in some parts, this custom is inseparably mixed up
with every meal and morning call, and with all the transactions of social
life. The stranger, who follows in the track I took myself, will find it
in its full bloom and glory, luxuriant in all its alarming recklessness,
at Washington. And let him not persuade himself (as I once did, to my
shame) that previous tourists have exaggerated its extent. The thing
itself is an exaggeration of nastiness, which cannot be outdone.
On board this steamboat, there were two young gentlemen, with
shirt-collars reversed as usual, and armed with very big walking-sticks;
who planted two seats in the middle of the deck, at a distance of some
four paces apart; took out their tobacco-boxes; and sat down opposite
each other, to chew. In less than a quarter of an hour’s time, these
hopeful youths had shed about them on the clean boards, a copious shower
of yellow rain; clearing, by that means, a kind of magic circle, within
whose limits no intruders dared to come, and which they never failed to
refresh and re-refresh before a spot was dry. This being before
breakfast, rather disposed me, I confess, to nausea; but looking
attentively at one of the expectorators, I plainly saw that he was young
in chewing, and felt inwardly uneasy, himself. A glow of delight came
over me at this discovery; and as I marked his face turn paler and paler,
and saw the ball of tobacco in his left cheek, quiver with his suppressed
agony, while yet he spat, and chewed, and spat again, in emulation of his
older friend, I could have fallen on his neck and implored him to go on
for hours.
We all sat down to a comfortable breakfast in the cabin below, where
there was no more hurry or confusion than at such a meal in England, and
where there was certainly greater politeness exhibited than at most of
our stage-coach banquets. At about nine o’clock we arrived at the
railroad station, and went on by the cars. At noon we turned out again,
to cross a wide river in another steamboat; landed at a continuation of
the railroad on the opposite shore; and went on by other cars; in which,
in the course of the next hour or so, we crossed by wooden bridges, each
a mile in length, two creeks, called respectively Great and Little
Gunpowder. The water in both was blackened with flights of canvas-backed
ducks, which are most delicious eating, and abound hereabouts at that
season of the year.
These bridges are of wood, have no parapet, and are only just wide enough
for the passage of the trains; which, in the event of the smallest
accident, wound inevitably be plunged into the river. They are startling
contrivances, and are most agreeable when passed.
We stopped to dine at Baltimore, and being now in Maryland, were waited
on, for the first time, by slaves. The sensation of exacting any service
from human creatures who are bought and sold, and being, for the time, a
party as it were to their condition, is not an enviable one. The
institution exists, perhaps, in its least repulsive and most mitigated
form in such a town as this; but it _is_ slavery; and though I was, with
respect to it, an innocent man, its presence filled me with a sense of
shame and self-reproach.
After dinner, we went down to the railroad again, and took our seats in
the cars for Washington. Being rather early, those men and boys who
happened to have nothing particular to do, and were curious in
foreigners, came (according to custom) round the carriage in which I sat;
let down all the windows; thrust in their heads and shoulders; hooked
themselves on conveniently, by their elbows; and fell to comparing notes
on the subject of my personal appearance, with as much indifference as if
I were a stuffed figure. I never gained so much uncompromising
information with reference to my own nose and eyes, and various
impressions wrought by my mouth and chin on different minds, and how my
head looks when it is viewed from behind, as on these occasions. Some
gentlemen were only satisfied by exercising their sense of touch; and the
boys (who are surprisingly precocious in America) were seldom satisfied,
even by that, but would return to the charge over and over again. Many a
budding president has walked into my room with his cap on his head and
his hands in his pockets, and stared at me for two whole hours:
occasionally refreshing himself with a tweak of his nose, or a draught
from the water-jug; or by walking to the windows and inviting other boys
in the street below, to come up and do likewise: crying, ‘Here he is!’
‘Come on!’ ‘Bring all your brothers!’ with other hospitable entreaties
of that nature.
We reached Washington at about half-past six that evening, and had upon
the way a beautiful view of the Capitol, which is a fine building of the
Corinthian order, placed upon a noble and commanding eminence. Arrived
at the hotel; I saw no more of the place that night; being very tired,
and glad to get to bed.
Breakfast over next morning, I walk about the streets for an hour or two,
and, coming home, throw up the window in the front and back, and look
out. Here is Washington, fresh in my mind and under my eye.
Take the worst parts of the City Road and Pentonville, or the straggling
outskirts of Paris, where the houses are smallest, preserving all their
oddities, but especially the small shops and dwellings, occupied in
Pentonville (but not in Washington) by furniture-brokers, keepers of poor
eating-houses, and fanciers of birds. Burn the whole down; build it up
again in wood and plaster; widen it a little; throw in part of St. John’s
Wood; put green blinds outside all the private houses, with a red curtain
and a white one in every window; plough up all the roads; plant a great
deal of coarse turf in every place where it ought _not_ to be; erect
three handsome buildings in stone and marble, anywhere, but the more
entirely out of everybody’s way the better; call one the Post Office; one
the Patent Office, and one the Treasury; make it scorching hot in the
morning, and freezing cold in the afternoon, with an occasional tornado
of wind and dust; leave a brick-field without the bricks, in all central
places where a street may naturally be expected: and that’s Washington.
The hotel in which we live, is a long row of small houses fronting on the
street, and opening at the back upon a common yard, in which hangs a
great triangle. Whenever a servant is wanted, somebody beats on this
triangle from one stroke up to seven, according to the number of the
house in which his presence is required; and as all the servants are
always being wanted, and none of them ever come, this enlivening engine
is in full performance the whole day through. Clothes are drying in the
same yard; female slaves, with cotton handkerchiefs twisted round their
heads are running to and fro on the hotel business; black waiters cross
and recross with dishes in their hands; two great dogs are playing upon a
mound of loose bricks in the centre of the little square; a pig is
turning up his stomach to the sun, and grunting ‘that’s comfortable!’;
and neither the men, nor the women, nor the dogs, nor the pig, nor any
created creature, takes the smallest notice of the triangle, which is
tingling madly all the time.
I walk to the front window, and look across the road upon a long,
straggling row of houses, one story high, terminating, nearly opposite,
but a little to the left, in a melancholy piece of waste ground with
frowzy grass, which looks like a small piece of country that has taken to
drinking, and has quite lost itself. Standing anyhow and all wrong, upon
this open space, like something meteoric that has fallen down from the
moon, is an odd, lop-sided, one-eyed kind of wooden building, that looks
like a church, with a flag-staff as long as itself sticking out of a
steeple something larger than a tea-chest. Under the window is a small
stand of coaches, whose slave-drivers are sunning themselves on the steps
of our door, and talking idly together. The three most obtrusive houses
near at hand are the three meanest. On one—a shop, which never has
anything in the window, and never has the door open—is painted in large
characters, ‘THE CITY LUNCH.’ At another, which looks like a backway to
somewhere else, but is an independent building in itself, oysters are
procurable in every style. At the third, which is a very, very little
tailor’s shop, pants are fixed to order; or in other words, pantaloons
are made to measure. And that is our street in Washington.
It is sometimes called the City of Magnificent Distances, but it might
with greater propriety be termed the City of Magnificent Intentions; for
it is only on taking a bird’s-eye view of it from the top of the Capitol,
that one can at all comprehend the vast designs of its projector, an
aspiring Frenchman. Spacious avenues, that begin in nothing, and lead
nowhere; streets, mile-long, that only want houses, roads and
inhabitants; public buildings that need but a public to be complete; and
ornaments of great thoroughfares, which only lack great thoroughfares to
ornament—are its leading features. One might fancy the season over, and
most of the houses gone out of town for ever with their masters. To the
admirers of cities it is a Barmecide Feast: a pleasant field for the
imagination to rove in; a monument raised to a deceased project, with not
even a legible inscription to record its departed greatness.
Such as it is, it is likely to remain. It was originally chosen for the
seat of Government, as a means of averting the conflicting jealousies and
interests of the different States; and very probably, too, as being
remote from mobs: a consideration not to be slighted, even in America.
It has no trade or commerce of its own: having little or no population
beyond the President and his establishment; the members of the
legislature who reside there during the session; the Government clerks
and officers employed in the various departments; the keepers of the
hotels and boarding-houses; and the tradesmen who supply their tables.
It is very unhealthy. Few people would live in Washington, I take it,
who were not obliged to reside there; and the tides of emigration and
speculation, those rapid and regardless currents, are little likely to
flow at any time towards such dull and sluggish water.
The principal features of the Capitol, are, of course, the two houses of
Assembly. But there is, besides, in the centre of the building, a fine
rotunda, ninety-six feet in diameter, and ninety-six high, whose circular
wall is divided into compartments, ornamented by historical pictures.
Four of these have for their subjects prominent events in the
revolutionary struggle. They were painted by Colonel Trumbull, himself a
member of Washington’s staff at the time of their occurrence; from which
circumstance they derive a peculiar interest of their own. In this same
hall Mr. Greenough’s large statue of Washington has been lately placed.
It has great merits of course, but it struck me as being rather strained
and violent for its subject. I could wish, however, to have seen it in a
better light than it can ever be viewed in, where it stands.
There is a very pleasant and commodious library in the Capitol; and from
a balcony in front, the bird’s-eye view, of which I have just spoken, may
be had, together with a beautiful prospect of the adjacent country. In
one of the ornamented portions of the building, there is a figure of
Justice; whereunto the Guide Book says, ‘the artist at first contemplated
giving more of nudity, but he was warned that the public sentiment in
this country would not admit of it, and in his caution he has gone,
perhaps, into the opposite extreme.’ Poor Justice! she has been made to
wear much stranger garments in America than those she pines in, in the
Capitol. Let us hope that she has changed her dress-maker since they
were fashioned, and that the public sentiment of the country did not cut
out the clothes she hides her lovely figure in, just now.
The House of Representatives is a beautiful and spacious hall, of
semicircular shape, supported by handsome pillars. One part of the
gallery is appropriated to the ladies, and there they sit in front rows,
and come in, and go out, as at a play or concert. The chair is canopied,
and raised considerably above the floor of the House; and every member
has an easy chair and a writing desk to himself: which is denounced by
some people out of doors as a most unfortunate and injudicious
arrangement, tending to long sittings and prosaic speeches. It is an
elegant chamber to look at, but a singularly bad one for all purposes of
hearing. The Senate, which is smaller, is free from this objection, and
is exceedingly well adapted to the uses for which it is designed. The
sittings, I need hardly add, take place in the day; and the parliamentary
forms are modelled on those of the old country.
I was sometimes asked, in my progress through other places, whether I had
not been very much impressed by the _heads_ of the lawmakers at
Washington; meaning not their chiefs and leaders, but literally their
individual and personal heads, whereon their hair grew, and whereby the
phrenological character of each legislator was expressed: and I almost as
often struck my questioner dumb with indignant consternation by answering
‘No, that I didn’t remember being at all overcome.’ As I must, at
whatever hazard, repeat the avowal here, I will follow it up by relating
my impressions on this subject in as few words as possible.
In the first place—it may be from some imperfect development of my organ
of veneration—I do not remember having ever fainted away, or having even
been moved to tears of joyful pride, at sight of any legislative body. I
have borne the House of Commons like a man, and have yielded to no
weakness, but slumber, in the House of Lords. I have seen elections for
borough and county, and have never been impelled (no matter which party
won) to damage my hat by throwing it up into the air in triumph, or to
crack my voice by shouting forth any reference to our Glorious
Constitution, to the noble purity of our independent voters, or, the
unimpeachable integrity of our independent members. Having withstood
such strong attacks upon my fortitude, it is possible that I may be of a
cold and insensible temperament, amounting to iciness, in such matters;
and therefore my impressions of the live pillars of the Capitol at
Washington must be received with such grains of allowance as this free
confession may seem to demand.
Did I see in this public body an assemblage of men, bound together in the
sacred names of Liberty and Freedom, and so asserting the chaste dignity
of those twin goddesses, in all their discussions, as to exalt at once
the Eternal Principles to which their names are given, and their own
character and the character of their countrymen, in the admiring eyes of
the whole world?
It was but a week, since an aged, grey-haired man, a lasting honour to
the land that gave him birth, who has done good service to his country,
as his forefathers did, and who will be remembered scores upon scores of
years after the worms bred in its corruption, are but so many grains of
dust—it was but a week, since this old man had stood for days upon his
trial before this very body, charged with having dared to assert the
infamy of that traffic, which has for its accursed merchandise men and
women, and their unborn children. Yes. And publicly exhibited in the
same city all the while; gilded, framed and glazed hung up for general
admiration; shown to strangers not with shame, but pride; its face not
turned towards the wall, itself not taken down and burned; is the
Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America, which
solemnly declares that All Men are created Equal; and are endowed by
their Creator with the Inalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the
Pursuit of Happiness!
It was not a month, since this same body had sat calmly by, and heard a
man, one of themselves, with oaths which beggars in their drink reject,
threaten to cut another’s throat from ear to ear. There he sat, among
them; not crushed by the general feeling of the assembly, but as good a
man as any.
There was but a week to come, and another of that body, for doing his
duty to those who sent him there; for claiming in a Republic the Liberty
and Freedom of expressing their sentiments, and making known their
prayer; would be tried, found guilty, and have strong censure passed upon
him by the rest. His was a grave offence indeed; for years before, he
had risen up and said, ‘A gang of male and female slaves for sale,
warranted to breed like cattle, linked to each other by iron fetters, are
passing now along the open street beneath the windows of your Temple of
Equality! Look!’ But there are many kinds of hunters engaged in the
Pursuit of Happiness, and they go variously armed. It is the Inalienable
Right of some among them, to take the field after _their_ Happiness
equipped with cat and cartwhip, stocks, and iron collar, and to shout
their view halloa! (always in praise of Liberty) to the music of clanking
chains and bloody stripes.
Where sat the many legislators of coarse threats; of words and blows such
as coalheavers deal upon each other, when they forget their breeding? On
every side. Every session had its anecdotes of that kind, and the actors
were all there.
Did I recognise in this assembly, a body of men, who, applying themselves
in a new world to correct some of the falsehoods and vices of the old,
purified the avenues to Public Life, paved the dirty ways to Place and
Power, debated and made laws for the Common Good, and had no party but
their Country?
I saw in them, the wheels that move the meanest perversion of virtuous
Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought. Despicable
trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers;
cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields,
and hired pens for daggers; shameful trucklings to mercenary knaves,
whose claim to be considered, is, that every day and week they sow new
crops of ruin with their venal types, which are the dragon’s teeth of
yore, in everything but sharpness; aidings and abettings of every bad
inclination in the popular mind, and artful suppressions of all its good
influences: such things as these, and in a word, Dishonest Faction in its
most depraved and most unblushing form, stared out from every corner of
the crowded hall.
Did I see among them, the intelligence and refinement: the true, honest,
patriotic heart of America? Here and there, were drops of its blood and
life, but they scarcely coloured the stream of desperate adventurers
which sets that way for profit and for pay. It is the game of these men,
and of their profligate organs, to make the strife of politics so fierce
and brutal, and so destructive of all self-respect in worthy men, that
sensitive and delicate-minded persons shall be kept aloof, and they, and
such as they, be left to battle out their selfish views unchecked. And
thus this lowest of all scrambling fights goes on, and they who in other
countries would, from their intelligence and station, most aspire to make
the laws, do here recoil the farthest from that degradation.
That there are, among the representatives of the people in both Houses,
and among all parties, some men of high character and great abilities, I
need not say. The foremost among those politicians who are known in
Europe, have been already described, and I see no reason to depart from
the rule I have laid down for my guidance, of abstaining from all mention
of individuals. It will be sufficient to add, that to the most
favourable accounts that have been written of them, I more than fully and
most heartily subscribe; and that personal intercourse and free
communication have bred within me, not the result predicted in the very
doubtful proverb, but increased admiration and respect. They are
striking men to look at, hard to deceive, prompt to act, lions in energy,
Crichtons in varied accomplishments, Indians in fire of eye and gesture,
Americans in strong and generous impulse; and they as well represent the
honour and wisdom of their country at home, as the distinguished
gentleman who is now its Minister at the British Court sustains its
highest character abroad.
I visited both houses nearly every day, during my stay in Washington. On
my initiatory visit to the House of Representatives, they divided against
a decision of the chair; but the chair won. The second time I went, the
member who was speaking, being interrupted by a laugh, mimicked it, as
one child would in quarrelling with another, and added, ‘that he would
make honourable gentlemen opposite, sing out a little more on the other
side of their mouths presently.’ But interruptions are rare; the speaker
being usually heard in silence. There are more quarrels than with us,
and more threatenings than gentlemen are accustomed to exchange in any
civilised society of which we have record: but farm-yard imitations have
not as yet been imported from the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The
feature in oratory which appears to be the most practised, and most
relished, is the constant repetition of the same idea or shadow of an
idea in fresh words; and the inquiry out of doors is not, ‘What did he
say?’ but, ‘How long did he speak?’ These, however, are but enlargements
of a principle which prevails elsewhere.
The Senate is a dignified and decorous body, and its proceedings are
conducted with much gravity and order. Both houses are handsomely
carpeted; but the state to which these carpets are reduced by the
universal disregard of the spittoon with which every honourable member is
accommodated, and the extraordinary improvements on the pattern which are
squirted and dabbled upon it in every direction, do not admit of being
described. I will merely observe, that I strongly recommend all
strangers not to look at the floor; and if they happen to drop anything,
though it be their purse, not to pick it up with an ungloved hand on any
account.
It is somewhat remarkable too, at first, to say the least, to see so many
honourable members with swelled faces; and it is scarcely less remarkable
to discover that this appearance is caused by the quantity of tobacco
they contrive to stow within the hollow of the cheek. It is strange
enough too, to see an honourable gentleman leaning back in his tilted
chair with his legs on the desk before him, shaping a convenient ‘plug’
with his penknife, and when it is quite ready for use, shooting the old
one from his mouth, as from a pop-gun, and clapping the new one in its
place.
I was surprised to observe that even steady old chewers of great
experience, are not always good marksmen, which has rather inclined me to
doubt that general proficiency with the rifle, of which we have heard so
much in England. Several gentlemen called upon me who, in the course of
conversation, frequently missed the spittoon at five paces; and one (but
he was certainly short-sighted) mistook the closed sash for the open
window, at three. On another occasion, when I dined out, and was sitting
with two ladies and some gentlemen round a fire before dinner, one of the
company fell short of the fireplace, six distinct times. I am disposed
to think, however, that this was occasioned by his not aiming at that
object; as there was a white marble hearth before the fender, which was
more convenient, and may have suited his purpose better.
The Patent Office at Washington, furnishes an extraordinary example of
American enterprise and ingenuity; for the immense number of models it
contains are the accumulated inventions of only five years; the whole of
the previous collection having been destroyed by fire. The elegant
structure in which they are arranged is one of design rather than
execution, for there is but one side erected out of four, though the
works are stopped. The Post Office is a very compact and very beautiful
building. In one of the departments, among a collection of rare and
curious articles, are deposited the presents which have been made from
time to time to the American ambassadors at foreign courts by the various
potentates to whom they were the accredited agents of the Republic; gifts
which by the law they are not permitted to retain. I confess that I
looked upon this as a very painful exhibition, and one by no means
flattering to the national standard of honesty and honour. That can
scarcely be a high state of moral feeling which imagines a gentleman of
repute and station, likely to be corrupted, in the discharge of his duty,
by the present of a snuff-box, or a richly-mounted sword, or an Eastern
shawl; and surely the Nation who reposes confidence in her appointed
servants, is likely to be better served, than she who makes them the
subject of such very mean and paltry suspicions.
At George Town, in the suburbs, there is a Jesuit College; delightfully
situated, and, so far as I had an opportunity of seeing, well managed.
Many persons who are not members of the Romish Church, avail themselves,
I believe, of these institutions, and of the advantageous opportunities
they afford for the education of their children. The heights of this
neighbourhood, above the Potomac River, are very picturesque: and are
free, I should conceive, from some of the insalubrities of Washington.
The air, at that elevation, was quite cool and refreshing, when in the
city it was burning hot.
The President’s mansion is more like an English club-house, both within
and without, than any other kind of establishment with which I can
compare it. The ornamental ground about it has been laid out in garden
walks; they are pretty, and agreeable to the eye; though they have that
uncomfortable air of having been made yesterday, which is far from
favourable to the display of such beauties.
My first visit to this house was on the morning after my arrival, when I
was carried thither by an official gentleman, who was so kind as to
charge himself with my presentation to the President.
We entered a large hall, and having twice or thrice rung a bell which
nobody answered, walked without further ceremony through the rooms on the
ground floor, as divers other gentlemen (mostly with their hats on, and
their hands in their pockets) were doing very leisurely. Some of these
had ladies with them, to whom they were showing the premises; others were
lounging on the chairs and sofas; others, in a perfect state of
exhaustion from listlessness, were yawning drearily. The greater portion
of this assemblage were rather asserting their supremacy than doing
anything else, as they had no particular business there, that anybody
knew of. A few were closely eyeing the movables, as if to make quite
sure that the President (who was far from popular) had not made away with
any of the furniture, or sold the fixtures for his private benefit.
After glancing at these loungers; who were scattered over a pretty
drawing-room, opening upon a terrace which commanded a beautiful prospect
of the river and the adjacent country; and who were sauntering, too,
about a larger state-room called the Eastern Drawing-room; we went
up-stairs into another chamber, where were certain visitors, waiting for
audiences. At sight of my conductor, a black in plain clothes and yellow
slippers who was gliding noiselessly about, and whispering messages in
the ears of the more impatient, made a sign of recognition, and glided
off to announce him.
We had previously looked into another chamber fitted all round with a
great, bare, wooden desk or counter, whereon lay files of newspapers, to
which sundry gentlemen were referring. But there were no such means of
beguiling the time in this apartment, which was as unpromising and
tiresome as any waiting-room in one of our public establishments, or any
physician’s dining-room during his hours of consultation at home.
There were some fifteen or twenty persons in the room. One, a tall,
wiry, muscular old man, from the west; sunburnt and swarthy; with a brown
white hat on his knees, and a giant umbrella resting between his legs;
who sat bolt upright in his chair, frowning steadily at the carpet, and
twitching the hard lines about his mouth, as if he had made up his mind
‘to fix’ the President on what he had to say, and wouldn’t bate him a
grain. Another, a Kentucky farmer, six-feet-six in height, with his hat
on, and his hands under his coat-tails, who leaned against the wall and
kicked the floor with his heel, as though he had Time’s head under his
shoe, and were literally ‘killing’ him. A third, an oval-faced,
bilious-looking man, with sleek black hair cropped close, and whiskers
and beard shaved down to blue dots, who sucked the head of a thick stick,
and from time to time took it out of his mouth, to see how it was getting
on. A fourth did nothing but whistle. A fifth did nothing but spit.
And indeed all these gentlemen were so very persevering and energetic in
this latter particular, and bestowed their favours so abundantly upon the
carpet, that I take it for granted the Presidential housemaids have high
wages, or, to speak more genteelly, an ample amount of ‘compensation:’
which is the American word for salary, in the case of all public
servants.
We had not waited in this room many minutes, before the black messenger
returned, and conducted us into another of smaller dimensions, where, at
a business-like table covered with papers, sat the President himself. He
looked somewhat worn and anxious, and well he might; being at war with
everybody—but the expression of his face was mild and pleasant, and his
manner was remarkably unaffected, gentlemanly, and agreeable. I thought
that in his whole carriage and demeanour, he became his station
singularly well.
Being advised that the sensible etiquette of the republican court
admitted of a traveller, like myself, declining, without any impropriety,
an invitation to dinner, which did not reach me until I had concluded my
arrangements for leaving Washington some days before that to which it
referred, I only returned to this house once. It was on the occasion of
one of those general assemblies which are held on certain nights, between
the hours of nine and twelve o’clock, and are called, rather oddly,
Levees.
I went, with my wife, at about ten. There was a pretty dense crowd of
carriages and people in the court-yard, and so far as I could make out,
there were no very clear regulations for the taking up or setting down of
company. There were certainly no policemen to soothe startled horses,
either by sawing at their bridles or flourishing truncheons in their
eyes; and I am ready to make oath that no inoffensive persons were
knocked violently on the head, or poked acutely in their backs or
stomachs; or brought to a standstill by any such gentle means, and then
taken into custody for not moving on. But there was no confusion or
disorder. Our carriage reached the porch in its turn, without any
blustering, swearing, shouting, backing, or other disturbance: and we
dismounted with as much ease and comfort as though we had been escorted
by the whole Metropolitan Force from A to Z inclusive.
The suite of rooms on the ground-floor were lighted up, and a military
band was playing in the hall. In the smaller drawing-room, the centre of
a circle of company, were the President and his daughter-in-law, who
acted as the lady of the mansion; and a very interesting, graceful, and
accomplished lady too. One gentleman who stood among this group,
appeared to take upon himself the functions of a master of the
ceremonies. I saw no other officers or attendants, and none were needed.
The great drawing-room, which I have already mentioned, and the other
chambers on the ground-floor, were crowded to excess. The company was
not, in our sense of the term, select, for it comprehended persons of
very many grades and classes; nor was there any great display of costly
attire: indeed, some of the costumes may have been, for aught I know,
grotesque enough. But the decorum and propriety of behaviour which
prevailed, were unbroken by any rude or disagreeable incident; and every
man, even among the miscellaneous crowd in the hall who were admitted
without any orders or tickets to look on, appeared to feel that he was a
part of the Institution, and was responsible for its preserving a
becoming character, and appearing to the best advantage.
That these visitors, too, whatever their station, were not without some
refinement of taste and appreciation of intellectual gifts, and gratitude
to those men who, by the peaceful exercise of great abilities, shed new
charms and associations upon the homes of their countrymen, and elevate
their character in other lands, was most earnestly testified by their
reception of Washington Irving, my dear friend, who had recently been
appointed Minister at the court of Spain, and who was among them that
night, in his new character, for the first and last time before going
abroad. I sincerely believe that in all the madness of American
politics, few public men would have been so earnestly, devotedly, and
affectionately caressed, as this most charming writer: and I have seldom
respected a public assembly more, than I did this eager throng, when I
saw them turning with one mind from noisy orators and officers of state,
and flocking with a generous and honest impulse round the man of quiet
pursuits: proud in his promotion as reflecting back upon their country:
and grateful to him with their whole hearts for the store of graceful
fancies he had poured out among them. Long may he dispense such
treasures with unsparing hand; and long may they remember him as
worthily!
* * * * *
The term we had assigned for the duration of our stay in Washington was
now at an end, and we were to begin to travel; for the railroad distances
we had traversed yet, in journeying among these older towns, are on that
great continent looked upon as nothing.
I had at first intended going South—to Charleston. But when I came to
consider the length of time which this journey would occupy, and the
premature heat of the season, which even at Washington had been often
very trying; and weighed moreover, in my own mind, the pain of living in
the constant contemplation of slavery, against the more than doubtful
chances of my ever seeing it, in the time I had to spare, stripped of the
disguises in which it would certainly be dressed, and so adding any item
to the host of facts already heaped together on the subject; I began to
listen to old whisperings which had often been present to me at home in
England, when I little thought of ever being here; and to dream again of
cities growing up, like palaces in fairy tales, among the wilds and
forests of the west.
The advice I received in most quarters when I began to yield to my desire
of travelling towards that point of the compass was, according to custom,
sufficiently cheerless: my companion being threatened with more perils,
dangers, and discomforts, than I can remember or would catalogue if I
could; but of which it will be sufficient to remark that blowings-up in
steamboats and breakings-down in coaches were among the least. But,
having a western route sketched out for me by the best and kindest
authority to which I could have resorted, and putting no great faith in
these discouragements, I soon determined on my plan of action.
This was to travel south, only to Richmond in Virginia; and then to turn,
and shape our course for the Far West; whither I beseech the reader’s
company, in a new chapter.