The gay young European diplomatist, accustomed to the charms of the
great foreign capitals--London, Paris, Vienna, Rome, and the scores of
small but delightful cities--probably regards an attachment to the
embassy of his country in the United States as a Boeotian exile. But
when, eagerly curious to see the capital of this remote region, he is
dumped in the railroad-shed at Washington, and emerges upon the
depthless mud or blinding dust of the city, upon its hackmen and
porters, greedy of his last penny, and upon its general hopelessness of
aspect, it is not difficult to imagine how his heart sinks and how
bitter the exile seems.
To the independent native of the country, however, Washington as a city
is simply exasperating and ridiculous. Its one truly magnificent
building, the Capitol, seems to have absorbed everything else. Like a
huge wen, it has apparently sucked up all the life of the other
buildings. Feeble, shapeless, ineffective, they huddle along the sides
of the vast avenues, and, however closely they stand, give nothing but
the impression of a straggling and clumsy village. Then there is the
eternal absurdity of the plan. It is not only a straggling and clumsy
village, but it is utterly dislocated. Washington is laid out upon the
plan of cart-wheels within cart-wheels. The stranger is always going
wrong. You meet him, say, near the junction of some avenue with some
Fourth and a Half Street north. He has the expression of a
long-confirmed but mild lunatic; and after gazing at you blandly and
inquiringly for a moment, he says, "I am trying to find the corner of
Ninth and Fifteenth streets." Of course he is; we all are in Washington.
The folly would be evident elsewhere, but in Washington it is the most
natural effort possible. There is but one reply to the candid and
inquiring fellow-maniac: "My dear sir, I have not the remotest
conception where I am, or where anything is." There is a fond delusion
that the city radiates from the Capitol. Nothing is more fallacious.
Washington is a system of hubs, and a consequent combination of
radiations.
The depression arising from arrival and the problem of streets is hardly
relieved by arrival at Willard's. The entrance to that hotel is a
cigar-shop, a newspaper-stand, and a loafing-room. You press through to
the office. But what is man that an American landlord should regard him?
The house is full, has been full, will be full. A few crisp words inform
you that by-and-by, some time, perhaps, possibly, you may be stowed away
in the seventh story, and allowed to pay four or five dollars a day. The
moderation of the landlords is always a subject of wonder and gratitude.
It seems a matter of mere grace and good-will that they do not charge
twenty dollars a night, with the privilege of making your own bed.
"Whew!" cried Don Giovanni when, arriving at the capital of this
country, he was made to undergo these initiatory steps, "will you please
to tell me one single particular in which travel in Europe is not
incomparably more agreeable and comfortable than in this country?" And
he went on to compare the universal comfort and courtesy of foreign
travel, sadly to the disadvantage of the home of the brave. "Certainly
there is no country in which the guest upon reaching his hotel is
treated with such laughable condescension as in this. A wretched hole of
a room, shabbily furnished, the dirty walls and a suspicious bed, with a
quart of water and a pocket-handkerchief of a towel, for which he is to
pay four or five dollars or more daily, is awarded to the humbly
expectant visitor as a high favor. A great American hotel is a
penitentiary for travellers, and the gentlemen at the office are the
lofty turnkeys and lord high-constables. A self-respecting man will
travel here as little as possible."
"There is no doubt that much travel at home is a discipline," replied
the Easy Chair.
"Yes," continued the indignant Don. "If you are known personally to the
gentlemanly gentleman who dispenses chambers you may be tolerably
quartered. But if you are merely one of the herd who have the temerity
to arrive by steamer or car, you may thank your stars if you are
graciously permitted to leave your luggage in the hall and to have a
room by-and-by."
Now the Easy Chair humbly hopes that all gentlemanly gentlemen concerned
will not understand him as making these remarks. They all proceeded from
the person named, who is alone responsible. The Easy Chair has not quite
come to the end of his travels; and would he malign the gentlemanly and
accommodating? He desires to state distinctly that if he could not open
the window of his room, it was merely because he had a foolish wish for
fresh air; and if he could not turn round, it was because of the
inordinate size of his trunk; and if his fingers went through the towel,
it was because his manner was rude towards a chamber ornament so
delicate and small; and if the sheets of the bed were not wholly fresh,
it was because the gentlemanly and accomplished chamber-maiden lady was
of a nobly economical turn of mind; and if the bell would not ring, it
was because some former guest had been so little able to restrain
himself as to pull it down. Indeed, there was nothing which did not
admit of the fullest explanation. It is only the unreasonable who would
complain of paying four or five dollars a day for such accommodations.
"Let me tell you, sir," whispered the gentlemanly gentleman at a certain
office to a bewildered person who had been ordered up to a burrow in the
seventh story, "you are very lucky to get in at all." But the bewildered
traveller's face, it is asserted, was not so humbly grateful as
circumstances demanded.
Washington itself merely multiplies the impression of Willard's.
Everything is feverish and transitory. The fine houses are rented by
senators, by representatives, by foreign ministers, by army and navy
officers, by families from other cities. They are taken for a season.
Those who occupy them have no permanent interest in the city. The rule
is almost universal. The Capitol, the White House, the departments, the
public buildings are all full of men who came yesterday and are going
to-morrow. Washington is a huge perch. All this tumult of twittering is
from birds upon the wing, who have lighted for a moment only. Even the
noisiest crows, the most solemn owls, are but for a day, or for two
years, or four years, or for six years.
There is a certain permanent population of the military and naval
bureaus, over whose heads the storms of fashion and politics roar and
break like tempests that toss the surface of the sea far above the
placid monsters and coral insects of the deep. And there are a few
memorial office-holders--quiet men, who have grown old in certain ruts
in which they can run with a facility that is absolutely essential. They
feel that they have become part of the government. The very oldest
senators and representatives excite in their breasts a kind of
compassionate sympathy as mere boys and tyros. And like heirs of old
royal lines long since superseded, who cherish a secret conviction that
modern times are a mere delusion and progress an absurd infatuation, and
who are sure that some day the world will discover what a huge mistake
it made in not continuing to be governed by the extinct line, and so
return to its allegiance, the faithful plodders in the official ruts do
still believe that the party, whatever it was, which appointed them is
the Heaven-appointed ruler of the country, and that when the froth of
the present moment is blown away, the clear, deep, sound good old times
will be again discerned. The droll old Jacobites! They drink to the king
over the water. They might as well drink to the king with his head off!