was in a foreign country. The pronunciation of a few words by our host
and hostess, the dinner-table, and the inquiries of visiters were almost
all that occurred to remind me that I was not in a brother's house. At
Washington it was very different. The city itself is unlike any other
that ever was seen, straggling out hither and thither, with a small
house or two a quarter of a mile from any other; so that, in making
calls "in the city," we had to cross ditches and stiles, and walk
alternately on grass and pavements, and strike across a field to reach a
street. Then the weather was so strange; sometimes so cold that the only
way I could get any comfort was by stretching on the sofa drawn before
the fire up to the very fender (on which days every person who went in
and out of the house was sure to leave the front door wide open); then
the next morning, perhaps, if we went out muffled in furs, we had to
turn back and exchange our wraps for a light shawl. Then we were waited
upon by a slave appointed for the exclusive service of our party during
our stay. Then there were canvass-back ducks, and all manner of other
ducks on the table, in greater profusion than any single article of
food, except turkeys, that I ever saw. Then there was the society,
singularly compounded from the largest variety of elements: foreign
ambassadors, the American government, members of Congress, from Clay and
Webster down to Davy Crockett, Benton from Missouri, and Cuthbert, with
the freshest Irish brogue, from Georgia; flippant young belles, "pious"
wives dutifully attending their husbands, and groaning over the
frivolities of the place; grave judges, saucy travellers, pert newspaper
reporters, melancholy Indian chiefs, and timid New-England ladies,
trembling on the verge of the vortex; all this was wholly unlike
anything that is to be seen in any other city in the world; for all
these are mixed up together in daily intercourse, like the higher circle
of a little village, and there is nothing else. You have this or
nothing; you pass your days among these people, or you spend them alone.
It is in Washington that varieties of manners are conspicuous. There the
Southerners appear to the most advantage, and the New-Englanders to the
least; the ease and frank courtesy of the gentry of the South (with an
occasional touch of arrogance, however) contrasting favourably with the
cautious, somewhat _gauche_, and too deferential air of the members from
the North. One fancies one can tell a New-England member in the open air
by his deprecatory walk. He seems to bear in mind perpetually that he
cannot fight a duel, while other people can. The odd mortals that wander
in from the western border cannot be described as a class, for no one is
like anybody else. One has a neck like a crane, making an interval of
inches between stock and chin. Another wears no cravat, apparently
because there is no room for one. A third has his lank black hair parted
accurately down the middle, and disposed in bands in front, so that he
is taken for a woman when only the head is seen in a crowd. A fourth
puts an arm round the neck of a neighbour on either side as he stands,
seeming afraid of his tall wirehung frame dropping to pieces if he tries
to stand alone; a fifth makes something between a bow and a courtesy to
everybody who comes near, and proses with a knowing air: all having
shrewd faces, and being probably very fit for the business they come
upon.
Our way of life was so diversified that it is difficult to give an
account of our day; the only way in which one day resembled another
being that none had any privacy. We breakfasted about nine, surrounded
by the heaps of newspapers, documents, and letters which the post and
newsmen brought to the parliamentary members of our party. We amused
ourselves with the different versions given by the Globe and the
Intelligencer--the administration and opposition papers--to speeches and
proceedings at which we had been present the day before; and were kindly
made acquainted by our representative friend with the nature of much of
his business, the petitions he had to present, the dilemmas in which he
was placed by his constituents of different parties, and his hopes and
fears about favourite measures in progress. The senator happened, from a
peculiar set of circumstances, to be an idle man just now. He taught me
many things, and rallied me on my asking him so few questions, while,
in fact, my head was already so much too full with what was flowing in
upon me from all sides, that I longed for nothing so much as to go to
sleep for a week. This gentleman's peculiar and not very agreeable
position arose out of the troublesome question of Instructions to
Representatives. Senators are chosen for a term of six years, one third
of the body going out every two years; the term being made thus long in
order to ensure some stability of policy in the Senate. If the
government of the state from which the senator is sent changes its
politics during his term, he may be annoyed by instructions to vote
contrary to his principles, and, if he refuses, by a call to resign, on
the ground of his representing the opinions of the minority. This had
been the predicament of our companion; and the question of resigning or
not under such circumstances had become generally a very important and
interesting one, but one which there was no means of settling. Each
member in such a scrape must act as his own judgment and conscience
dictate under the circumstances of the particular case. Our companion
made a mistake. When the attempt to instruct him was made, he said he
appealed from the new legislature of his state to the people who chose
him. He did appeal by standing candidate for the office of governor of
the state, and was defeated. No course then remained but resigning;
which he did immediately, when his senatorial term was within half a
session of its close. He had withdrawn from the Senate Chamber, and was
winding up his political affairs at the time when we joined his party.
At a little before eleven we usually set out for the Capitol, and passed
the morning either in the Senate Chamber or the Supreme Court, unless it
was necessary to make calls, or to sit to the artist who was painting my
portrait, or to join a party on some excursion in the neighbourhood. We
avoided spending the morning at home when we could, as it was sure to be
entirely consumed with callers, and we became too much exhausted before
the fatigues of the evening began. Much amusement was picked up in the
artist's apartment in the Capitol; members and strangers dropped in, and
the news of the hour circulated; but the Senate Chamber was our
favourite resort. We returned home to dinner some time between four and
six, and the cloth was seldom removed before visiters entered. The
stream continued to flow in during the whole evening, unless we were
all going out together. We disappeared, one by one, to dress for some
ball, rout, levee, or masquerade, and went out, more or less willingly,
according as we left behind us visiters more or less pleasant. The half
hour round our drawing-room fire after our return was the pleasantest
time of the day, weary as we were. Then our foreigners' perplexities
were explained for us; we compared impressions, and made common property
of what had amused us individually; and, in some sort, set our
overcharged minds in order before we retired to rest.
Our pleasantest evenings were some spent at home in a society of the
highest order. Ladies, literary, fashionable, or domestic, would spend
an hour with us on their way from a dinner or to a ball. Members of
Congress would repose themselves by our fireside. Mr. Clay, sitting
upright on the sofa, with his snuffbox ever in his hand, would discourse
for many an hour in his even, soft, deliberate tone, on any one of the
great subjects of American policy which we might happen to start, always
amazing us with the moderation of estimate and speech which so impetuous
a nature has been able to attain. Mr. Webster, leaning back at his ease,
telling stories, cracking jokes, shaking the sofa with burst after burst
of laughter, or smoothly discoursing to the perfect felicity of the
logical part of one's constitution, would illuminate an evening now and
then. Mr. Calhoun, the cast-iron man, who looks as if he had never been
born and never could be extinguished, would come in sometimes to keep
our understandings upon a painful stretch for a short while, and leave
us to take to pieces his close, rapid, theoretical, illustrated talk,
and see what we could make of it. We found it usually more worth
retaining as a curiosity than as either very just or useful. His speech
abounds in figures, truly illustrative, if that which they illustrate
were but true also. But his theories of government (almost the only
subject on which his thoughts are employed), the squarest and compactest
that ever were made, are composed out of limited elements, and are not,
therefore, likely to stand service very well. It is at first extremely
interesting to hear Mr. Calhoun talk; and there is a never-failing
evidence of power in all he says and does which commands intellectual
reverence; but the admiration is too soon turned into regret, into
absolute melancholy. It is impossible to resist the conviction that all
this force can be at best but useless, and is but too likely to be very
mischievous. His mind has long lost all power of communicating with any
other. I know of no man who lives in such utter intellectual solitude.
He meets men, and harangues them by the fireside as in the Senate; he is
wrought like a piece of machinery, set a going vehemently by a weight,
and stops while you answer; he either passes by what you say, or twists
it into a suitability with what is in his head, and begins to lecture
again. Of course, a mind like this can have little influence in the
Senate, except by virtue, perpetually wearing out, of what it did in its
less eccentric days; but its influence at home is to be dreaded. There
is no hope that an intellect so cast in narrow theories will accommodate
itself to varying circumstances; and there is every danger that it will
break up all that it can, in order to remould the materials in its own
way. Mr. Calhoun is as full as ever of his nullification doctrines; and
those who know the force that is in him, and his utter incapacity of
modification by other minds (after having gone through as remarkable a
revolution of political opinion as perhaps any man ever experienced),
will no more expect repose and self-retention from him than from a
volcano in full force. Relaxation is no longer in the power of his will.
I never saw any one who so completely gave me the idea of possession.
Half an hour's conversation with him is enough to make a necessarian of
anybody. Accordingly, he is more complained of than blamed by his
enemies. His moments of softness in his family, and when recurring to
old college days, are hailed by all as a relief to the vehement working
of the intellectual machine; a relief equally to himself and others.
Those moments are as touching to the observer as tears on the face of a
soldier.
One incident befell during my stay which moved everybody. A
representative from South Carolina was ill, a friend of Mr. Calhoun's;
and Mr. Calhoun parted from us one day, on leaving the Capitol, to visit
this sick gentleman. The physician told Mr. Calhoun on his entrance that
his friend was dying, and could not live more than a very few hours. A
visiter, not knowing this, asked the sick man how he was. "To judge by
my own feelings," said he, "much better; but by the countenances of my
friends, not." And he begged to be told the truth. On hearing it, he
instantly beckoned Mr. Calhoun to him, and said, "I hear they are
giving you rough treatment in the Senate. Let a dying friend implore you
to guard your looks and words so as that no undue warmth may make you
appear unworthy of your principles." "This was friendship, strong
friendship," said Mr. Calhoun to me and to many others; and it had its
due effect upon him. A few days after, Colonel Benton, a fantastic
senator from Missouri, interrupted Mr. Calhoun in a speech, for the
purpose of making an attack upon him, which would have been insufferable
if it had not been too absurdly worded to be easily made anything of. He
was called to order; this was objected to; the Senate divided upon the
point of order, being dissatisfied with the decision of the chair; in
short, Mr. Calhoun sat for two full hours hearing his veracity talked
about before his speech could proceed. He sat in stern patience,
scarcely moving a muscle the whole time; and, when it was all settled in
his favour, merely observed that his friends need not fear his being
disturbed by an attack of this nature from such a quarter, and resumed
his speech at the precise point where his argument had been broken off.
It was great, and would have satisfied the "strong friendship" of his
departed comrade if he could have been there to see it.
Our active-minded, genial friend, Judge Story, found time to visit us
frequently, though he is one of the busiest men in the world; writing
half a dozen great law-books every year; having his full share of the
business of the Supreme Court upon his hands; his professorship to
attend to; the District Courts at home in Massachusetts, and a
correspondence which spreads half over the world. His talk would gush
out for hours, and there was never too much of it for us; it is so
heartfelt, so lively, so various; and his face all the while,
notwithstanding his gray hair, showing all the mobility and
ingenuousness of a child's. There is no tolerable portrait of Judge
Story, and there never will be. I should like to bring him face to face
with a person who entertains the common English idea of how an American
looks and behaves. I should like to see what such a one would make of
the quick smiles, the glistening eye, the gleeful tone, with passing
touches of sentiment; the innocent self-complacency, the confiding,
devoted affections of the great American lawyer. The preconception would
be totally at fault.
With Judge Story sometimes came the man to whom he looked up with
feelings little short of adoration--the aged Chief-justice Marshall.
There was almost too much mutual respect in our first meeting; we knew
something of his individual merits and services; and he maintained
through life, and carried to his grave, a reverence for woman as rare in
its kind as in its degree. It had all the theoretical fervour and
magnificence of Uncle Toby's, with the advantage of being grounded upon
an extensive knowledge of the sex. He was the father and the grandfather
of women; and out of this experience he brought, not only the love and
pity which their offices and position command, and the awe of purity
which they excite in the minds of the pure, but a steady conviction of
their intellectual equality with men; and, with this, a deep sense of
their social injuries. Throughout life he so invariably sustained their
cause, that no indulgent libertine dared to flatter and humour; no
skeptic, secure in the possession of power, dared to scoff at the claims
of woman in the presence of Marshall, who, made clearsighted by his
purity, knew the sex far better than either.
How delighted we were to see Judge Story bring in the tall, majestic,
brighteyed old man! old by chronology, by the lines on his composed
face, and by his services to the republic; but so dignified, so fresh,
so present to the time, that no feeling of compassionate consideration
for age dared to mix with the contemplation of him. The first evening he
asked me much about English politics, and especially whether the people
were not fast ripening for the abolition of our religious establishment;
an institution which, after a long study of it, he considered so
monstrous in principle, and so injurious to true religion in practice,
that he could not imagine that it could be upheld for anything but
political purposes. There was no prejudice here on account of American
modes being different; for he observed that the clergy were there, as
elsewhere, far from being in the van of society, and lamented the
existence of much fanaticism in the United States; but he saw the evils
of an establishment the more clearly, not the less, from being aware of
the faults in the administration of religion at home. The most animated
moment of our conversation was when I told him I was going to visit Mr.
Madison on leaving Washington. He instantly sat upright in his chair,
and with beaming eyes began to praise Mr. Madison. Madison received the
mention of Marshall's name in just the same manner; yet these men were
strongly opposed in politics, and their magnanimous appreciation of each
other underwent no slight or brief trial.
Judge Porter sometimes came, a hearty friend, and much like a
fellow-countryman, though he was a senator of the United States, and had
previously been, for fourteen years, Judge of the Supreme Court of
Louisiana. He was Irish by birth. His father was vindictively executed,
with cruel haste, under martial law, in the Irish rebellion; and the
sons were sent by their noble-minded mother to America, where Alexander,
the eldest, has thus raised himself into a station of high honour. Judge
Porter's warmth, sincerity, generosity, knowledge, and wit are the pride
of his constituents, and very ornamental to the Senate. What their charm
is by the fireside may be imagined.
Such are only a few among a multitude whose conversation filled up the
few evenings we spent at home. Among the pleasantest visits we paid were
dinners at the president's, at the houses of heads of departments, at
the British legation, and at the Southern members' congressional mess.
We highly enjoyed our dinings at the British legation, where we felt
ourselves at home among our countrymen. Once, indeed, we were invited to
help to do the honours as English ladies to the seven Judges of the
Supreme Court, and seven great lawyers besides, when we had the merriest
day that could well be. Mr. Webster fell chiefly to my share, and there
is no merrier man than he; and Judge Story would enliven a dinner-table
at Pekin. One laughable peculiarity at the British legation was the
confusion of tongues among the servants, who ask you to take fish,
flesh, and fowl in Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Irish, or French.
The foreign ambassadors are terribly plagued about servants. No American
will wear livery, and there is no reason why any American should. But
the British ambassador must have livery servants. He makes what
compromise he can, allowing his people to appear without livery out of
doors except on state occasions; but yet he is obliged to pick up his
domestics from among foreigners who are in want of a subsistence for a
short time, and are sure to go away as soon as they can find any
employment in which the wearing a livery is not requisite. The woes of
this state of things, however, were the portion of the host, not of his
guests; and the hearty hospitality with which we were ever greeted by
the minister and his attachés, combined with the attractions of the
society they brought together, made our visits to them some of the
pleasantest hours we passed in Washington.
Slight incidents were perpetually showing, in an amusing way, the
village-like character of some of the arrangements at Washington. I
remember that some of our party went one day to dine at Mr. Secretary
Cass's, and the rest of us at Mr. Secretary Woodburys'. The next morning
a lady of the Cass party asked me whether we had candied oranges at the
Woodburys'. "No." "Then," said she, "they had candied oranges at the
attorney-general's." "How do you know?" "Oh, as we were on the way, I
saw a dish carried; and as we had none at the Cass's, I knew they must
either be for the Woodburys or the attorney-general." There were candied
oranges at the attorney-general's.
When we became intimate some time afterward with some Southern friends,
with whom we now dined at their congressional mess, they gave us an
amusing account of the preparations for our dinner. They boarded (from a
really self-denying kindness) at a house where the arrangements were of
a very inferior kind. Two sessions previous to our being there they had
invited a large party of eminent persons to dinner, and had committed
the ordering of the arrangements to a gentleman of their mess, advising
him to engage a French cook in order to ensure a good dinner. The
gentleman engaged a Frenchman, concluding he must be a cook, which,
however, he was not; and the dinner turned out so unfortunately, that
the mess determined to ask no more dinner-company while they remained in
that house. When we arrived, however, it was thought necessary to ask us
to dinner. There was little hope that all would go rightly; and the two
senators of the mess were laughingly requested, in case of any blunder,
to talk nullification as fast as possible to us ladies. This was done so
efficaciously, that, when dinner was over, I could not have told a
single dish that was on the table, except that a ham stood before me,
which we were too full of nullification to attack. Our hosts informed
us, long afterward, that it was a bad dinner badly served; but it was no
matter.
At the president's I met a very large party, among whom there was more
stiffness than I saw in any other society in America. It was not the
fault of the president or his family, but of the way in which the
company was unavoidably brought together. With the exception of my
party, the name of everybody present began with J, K, or L; that is to
say, it consisted of members of Congress, who are invited
alphabetically, to ensure none being left out. This principle of
selection is not, perhaps, the best for the promotion of ease and
sociability; and well as I liked the day, I doubt whether many others
could say they enjoyed it. When we went in the president was standing in
the middle of the room to receive his guests. After speaking a few words
with me, he gave me into the charge of Major Donelson, his secretary,
who seated me, and brought up for introduction each guest as he passed
from before the president. A congressional friend of mine (whose name
began with a J) stationed himself behind my chair, and gave me an
account of each gentleman who was introduced to me; where he came from,
what his politics were, and how, if at all, he had distinguished
himself. All this was highly amusing. At dinner the president was quite
disposed for conversation. Indeed, he did nothing but talk. His health
is poor, and his diet of the sparest. We both talked freely of the
governments of England and France; I, novice in American politics as I
was, entirely forgetting that the great French question was pending, and
that the president and the King of the French were then bandying very
hard words. I was most struck and surprised with the president's
complaints of the American Senate, in which there was at that time a
small majority against the administration. He told me that I must not
judge of the body by what I saw it then, and that after the 4th of March
I should behold a Senate more worthy of the country. After the 4th of
March there was, if I remember rightly, a majority of two in favour of
the government. The ground of his complaint was, that the senators had
sacrificed their dignity by disregarding the wishes of their
constituents. The other side of the question is, that the dignity of the
Senate is best consulted by its members following their own convictions,
declining instructions for the term for which they are elected. It is a
serious difficulty, originating in the very construction of the body,
and not to be settled by dispute.
The president offered me bonbons for a child belonging to our party at
home, and told me how many children (of his nephew's and his adopted
son's) he had about him, with a mildness and kindliness which
contrasted well with his tone upon some public occasions. He did the
honours of his house with gentleness and politeness to myself, and, as
far as I saw, to every one else. About an hour after dinner he rose, and
we led the way into the drawing-room, where the whole company, gentlemen
as well as ladies, followed to take coffee; after which every one
departed, some homeward, some to make evening calls, and others, among
whom were ourselves, to a splendid ball at the other extremity of the
city.
General Jackson is extremely tall and thin, with a slight stoop,
betokening more weakness than naturally belongs to his years. He has a
profusion of stiff gray hair, which gives to his appearance whatever
there is of formidable in it. His countenance bears commonly an
expression of melancholy gravity; though, when roused, the fire of
passion flashes from his eyes, and his whole person looks then
formidable enough. His mode of speech is slow and quiet, and his
phraseology sufficiently betokens that his time has not been passed
among books. When I was at Washington albums were the fashion and the
plague of the day. I scarcely ever came home but I found an album on my
table or requests for autographs; but some ladies went much further than
petitioning a foreigner who might be supposed to have leisure. I have
actually seen them stand at the door of the Senate Chamber, and send the
doorkeeper with an album, and a request to write in it, to Mr. Webster
and other eminent members. I have seen them do worse; stand at the door
of the Supreme Court, and send in their albums to Chief-justice Marshall
while he was on the bench hearing pleadings. The poor president was
terribly persecuted; and to him it was a real nuisance, as he had no
poetical resource but Watts's hymns. I have seen verses and stanzas of a
most ominous purport from Watts, in the president's very conspicuous
handwriting, standing in the midst of the crowquill compliments and
translucent charades which are the staple of albums. Nothing was done to
repress this atrocious impertinence of the ladies. I always declined
writing more than name and date; but senators, judges, and statesmen
submitted to write gallant nonsense at the request of any woman who
would stoop to desire it.