GAY SOCIAL LIFE IN WASHINGTON
The rolls of the Supreme Court, Senate, and House of Representatives
presented a list of great names in 1854-1860. It would seem that our
country, knowing herself to be in mortal danger, had summoned the wisest
of her sons for conference and council: Rufus Choate, Curtis, Seward,
Douglas, Jefferson Davis, Salmon Chase, Sumner, Hale, Toombs, Hunter,
Robert J. Walker, and the brilliant men of the lower House; all these
were present at the great consultation.
Of these men the most interesting, picturesque, and prominent was
undoubtedly Stephen A. Douglas. His political career is known to a
world which is still divided in opinion of him. Was his fevered life the
result of patriotism, or of personal ambition? The world still assumes
the power to read, with a magnifying glass, the inner workings of the
human mechanism, and to put its discerning finger on the spring of human
actions. Who has ever seen the heart of another? Who knows his own?
By their works ye shall know them, not by their impulses, not by their
struggles with the diverse machinery within them.
One who liked not Stephen A. Douglas has thus described him. "Erect,
compact, aggressive. A personage truly to be questioned timidly, to
be approached advisedly. Here indeed was a lion, by the very look of
him master of himself and of others. By reason of its regularity and
masculine strength, a handsome face. A man of the world to the cut of
the coat across the broad shoulders. Here was one to lift a youngster
into the realm of emulation, like a character in a play, to arouse
dreams of Washington and its Senators and great men. For this was one
to be consulted by the great alone. A figure of dignity and power with
the magnetism to compel moods. Since, when he smiled you warmed in spite
of yourself, and when he frowned the world looked grave."
This was Stephen A. Douglas. The picture is a true one. What wonder that
he should have captivated my husband and myself, scarcely more than half
his age? The warmest friendship grew up between us.
I remember well my own first interview with him in Washington. At a
crowded ball, I had found a chair outside the crush, when he approached
with a bottle of champagne and a glass in his hands. "I need no
introduction, Madam," he said. "I am sure you cannot have forgotten
the man who met you a few years ago in the little Petersburg hotel
and told you how like you are to the Empress Eugénie. No? I thought
not," laughed the judge, "and yet she isn't a priming to our own women!
Now," he added, bending down and speaking gravely, "I shall send Mrs.
Douglas to see you. I wish you to be friends. Not pasteboard friends,
with only a bit of cardboard passing between you now and then, but real
good friends, meeting often and being much together." Just here, as he
poised his bottle to fill my glass, his elbow was jostled, and down came
the foaming champagne, over my neck and shoulders and the front of my
dress. The friendship was christened—the bottle broken on the new ship!
"Don't worry about the gown! You have excuse now to buy another," said
the judge, as I gasped when the icy flood ran down my bosom.
He had lately married his second wife, the belle of Washington,
beautiful Adele Cutts; tall, stately, and fair exceedingly. She was a
great-niece of Dolley Madison. We met often, and it came to pass that
"the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David."
She did not impress one as having what we call "depth of character,"
what is commonly implied in the term "superior," not a woman to assume
to lead and teach other women—a character less lovable often than the
woman who knows herself to be of like weaknesses with ourselves. But
she was beautiful as a pearl, sunny-tempered, unselfish, warmhearted,
unaffected, sincere. She was very attentive to her "little giant." When
he made those terribly long speeches in the Senate, on the Lecompton
Constitution, on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, on popular sovereignty,
she would wait in the gallery and hurry down to wrap his overcoat
around him, as he stood in the hall dripping with perspiration. She
imbibed enough political lingo to rally and amuse him. Some workmen
having arrived to erect a platform in his ball room for musicians, she
exclaimed: "Oh, Judge Douglas! What is a platform? They are going to
bring one into this house, and we shall be flayed alive or murdered in
our beds!"
I said to her once: "You know you are not really handsomer than the rest
of us! Why do people say so?"
"Because I never trick myself out in diamonds, or have more than one
color in a gown. An artist told me once that all those things spoiled
a picture."
She would have liked the diamonds as well as the rest of us, and
once said so to her husband. "Oh, no!" he answered, "diamonds are the
consolation of old wives, a diamond for a wrinkle!"
Mrs. Douglas was the first of the Washington ladies who adopted the
fashion of closing her shutters in the early afternoon and lighting
her rooms with gas. She was delighted as a child with the effect and
indulged in a preliminary waltz with me before the company arrived.
"O dear!" she exclaimed, suddenly, "what am I to do with this _awful_
picture of Judge Douglas's? I daren't take it away because he bought
it for his first wife; and when old Mrs. Martin pounces down upon us to
see how we are spending her grandchildren's money, she will miss it, and
think I've sold it! But isn't it _awful_? Do spread out your flounces
in front of it as well as you can." The noonday lighting of her rooms
was a great success. Lord Lyons looked up and spoke of the beauty of
the starlit night, adding "and there's a fine moon out of doors." John
G. Saxe was one of the guests—and his merry hostess introduced him as
"deserving capital punishment for making people laugh themselves to
death."
I have had occasion to allude so often to the costumes of the ladies
of Mr. Buchanan's administration, that I have resolved boldly to ask
my reader to accompany me for a few minutes to Vanity Fair, as, guided
by society reports of the period, I describe the dresses worn by the
leaders of fashion. I suppose the journals of our day would not print
columns on columns describing the gowns worn at balls, unless there were
some sure to read. Costume has always interested the world. It is still
a question whether costume influences character, or _vice versa_. And
yet one regrets to treat charming women as though they were lay figures.
There will be a great deal of sorrowful record in this book. Let us
linger awhile on the flowery brink, before we reach the time when the
noise of angry waters will be too loud to be hushed by the frou-frou
of a lady's silken gown. Moreover, there are always mistakes and
misconceptions to be corrected and set right. Have I not just read
in a New York daily paper of the ugly fashions of the Washington of
the times just before the war—the "great hoops, gowns of reps, the
hideous tints of red, the Congress gaiters; how nobody wore a ball
gown costing more than $55," etc., etc.? The Congress gaiters must be
acknowledged, the hoops also, but perhaps they may all come again; and
then some beauty like the empress of the French may arise to make them
beautiful. They _were_ large! Beside them Queen Elizabeth's farthingale
was an insignificant circumstance. The belle in the fifties lived in
an expansive time. There was still plenty of room in the world. Houses
were broad and low, carriages were broad and low, furniture was massive.
Even a small pier glass was broadened by great scrolls of mahogany.
Drawing-rooms were filled with vast arm-chairs, sofas, and tables. The
legs of pianos were made as massive as possible.
Ladies wore enormous hoops, and because their heads looked like small
handles to huge bells, they widened the coiffure into broad bandeaux
and braids, loaded it with garlands of flowers, and enlarged it by
means of a wide head-dress of tulle, lace, and feathers, or crowned it
with a coal-scuttle bonnet tied under the chin with wide ribbons. In
this guise they sailed fearlessly about, with no danger of jostling a
neighbor or overturning the furniture. They had not then filled their
rooms with spider-legged chairs and tables, nor crowded the latter with
frail toys and china. Now that so many of these things are imported, now
that the world is so full of people,—in the streets, cars, theatres, at
receptions,—milady has found she must reef her sails. Breadth was the
ambition of 1854—length and slimness the supreme attainment of 1904.
What would the modern belle look like, among all these skyscrapers, in
a hoop? Like a ball—nothing more.
Finding herself with all this amplitude, milady of the fifties essayed
gorgeous decoration. She had stretched a large canvas; she now covered
it with pictures—bouquets and baskets of flowers appeared on the
woollens for house dresses; on the fine gauzes and silks one might find
excellent representations of the Lake of Geneva, with a distant view of
the Swiss mountains.
When a lady ordered a costume for a ball, her flowers arrived in a box
larger than the glazed boxes of to-day in which modistes send home our
gowns. The garniture included a wreath for the hair, with bunches at
the back from which depended trailing vines. The _bouquet de corsage_
sometimes extended to each shoulder. Bouquets were fastened on gloves
at the wrist, wreaths trailed down the skirt, wreaths looped the double
skirt in festoons. Only one kind of flower was considered in good
taste. Milady must look like a basket of shaded roses, or lilies, or
pomegranates, or violets. Ropes of wax beads were sometimes substituted
for flowers.
I once entered a milliner's shop—not my dear Madame Delarue's—and in
the centre of the room, suspended by a wire from the ceiling, was one
of these huge garnitures—all tied together and descending down to the
floor. "This, Madame," I said, "is something very _recherché_?"
"Yes, Madame! That is the rarest parure I have. There was never one like
it. There will never be another."
I scrutinized the flowers, and found nothing remarkable in any way.
"That, Madame," continued the milliner, "was purchased from me by the
wife of Senator ——! She wore it to Mrs. Gwin's ball, and returned it to
me next day. I ask no pay! I keep it for the sake of Mrs. Senator ——,
that I may have the honor of exhibiting it to my patrons."
There is no reason, because we sometimes choose to swing back into
the ghastly close-fitted skirt, or to wrap ourselves like a Tanagra
figurine, that we should despise a more spacious time. Nor is it at all
beneath us to attach enough importance to dress to describe it. Witness
the recent "Costumes of Two Centuries," by one of our most accomplished
writers. Witness the teachings of a theologian eighteen hundred or more
years ago, who condescended to illustrate his sermon by women's ways
with dress! Says Tertullian: "Let simplicity be your white, charity
your vermilion; dress your eyebrows with modesty, and your lips with
reservedness. Let instruction be your ear-rings, and a ruby cross the
front pin in your head; submission to your husband your best ornament.
Employ your hands in housewifely duties, and keep your feet within your
own doors. Let your garments be of the silk of probity, the fine linen
of sanctity, and the purple of chastity."
"How does that impress you for a nineteenth-century costume?" I asked
Agnes my bosom friend, to whom I read the passage aloud. "Well," she
replied, "I should be perfectly willing to try the ruby hairpin as a
beginning—and get Clagett to order the new brand of silk, which sounds
as if it might be a very pure article indeed and warranted to wear
well; but if you are seeking my honest opinion of Tertullian, I frankly
confess that I think our clothes and our behavior to our husbands are
none of his business."
Society letters of 1857 give us strictly accurate description of
toilettes, which may interest some of my readers:[3]—
"The wealth of the present Cabinet, and their elegant style of living,
sets the pace for Washington soirées—equal in magnificence to the
gorgeous fêtes of Versailles.
"At the Postmaster-General's the regal ball room was lined with superb
mirrors from floor to ceiling. In the drawing-rooms opposite the host,
hostess, and daughter and Miss Nerissa Saunders occupied the post of
receiving.
"Mrs. Brown was dressed in rose-colored brocade, with an exquisite
resemblance of white lace stamped in white velvet, a point lace cape,
and turban set with diamonds. Miss Brown wore a white silk tissue
embroidered in moss rosebuds, a circlet of pearls on her hair, and
natural flowers on her bosom. Lady Napier wore white brocaded satin,
with head-dress of scarlet honeysuckle. Madame de Sartige's gown was
of white embroidered crêpe, garnished with sprays of green. The wife
of Senator Slidell was costumed in black velvet, trimmed with fur. Her
head-dress was of crimson velvet, rich lace, and ostrich feathers. A
superb bandeau of pearls bound her raven hair. Miss Nerissa Saunders
was exquisite in a white silk, veiled with tulle, the skirts trimmed
with rose-colored quilling. Mrs. Senator Clay wore canary satin, covered
all over with gorgeous point lace. Mrs. John J. Crittenden was superb
in blue moire antique, with point lace trimmings. Mrs. General McQueen
of South Carolina appeared in a white silk with cherry trimmings,
her head-dress of large pearls fit for a queen. Mrs. Senator Gwin
wore superb crimson moire antique with point lace, and a head-dress
of feathers fastened with large diamonds. Mrs. Stephen A. Douglas, a
white tulle dress over white silk—the overdress looped with bunches of
violets and grass, similar bunches on breast and shoulder, and trailing
in her low coiffure. Mrs. Faulkner from Virginia was attired in blue
silk and Mechlin lace, her daughters in white illusion. Mrs. Reverdy
Johnson was superb in lemon satin and velvet pansies. Mrs. Pringle of
Charleston wore a velvet robe of lemon color; Mrs. Judge Roosevelt of
New York velvet and diamonds; Mrs. Senator Pugh of Ohio crimson velvet
with ornaments of rubies and crimson pomegranate flowers."
This last lady, Mrs. Pugh, wife of the Senator from Ohio, was _par
excellence_ the beauty of the day. To see her in this dress was enough
to "bid the rash gazer wipe his eye." Her eyes were large, dark, and
most expressive. Her hair was dark, her coloring vivid. Mrs. Douglas,
Mrs. Pugh, and Kate Chase were the three unapproached, unapproachable,
beauties of the Buchanan administration. The daughter of Senator Chase
was really too young to go to balls. She was extremely beautiful, "her
complexion was marvellously delicate, her fine features seeming to be
cut from fine bisque, her eyes, bright, soft, sweet, were of exquisite
blue, and her hair a wonderful color like the ripe corn-tassel in full
sunlight. Her teeth were perfect. Poets sang then, and still sing, of
the turn of her beautiful neck and the regal carriage of her head."
She was as intellectual as she was beautiful. From her teens she had
been initiated into political questions for which her genius and her
calm, thoughtful nature eminently fitted her. When she realized that
neither party would nominate her father for President in 1860, she
turned her energetic mind to the formation of plans and intrigues to
obtain for him the nomination of 1868! She failed in that, she failed
in everything, poor girl. She wrecked her life by a marriage with a
wealthy, uncongenial governor of Rhode Island, from whom she fled with
swift feet across the lawn of the beautiful home at Canonchet, and hand
in hand with poverty and sorrow ended her life in obscurity.
It is going to be a long time before we again visit Vanity Fair; and
lest it linger too delightfully in our memories, we must try to find
some rift in the lute, some fly in the amber—not daring, however, to
look beneath the surface.
And so we are fain to acknowledge that the evening gowns of these fair
dames were liberal only in their skirts. The bodice was _décolleté_ to
the extremest limit—as I suppose it will always be. And then, as now,—as
always,—there was no lack of wise men, usually youthful prophets, to
preach against it, to read for our instruction Solomon's disrespectful
allusions to jewels in the ears of fair women without discretion, and
St. Paul's well-known remarks upon our foibles. "The idea of quoting
Solomon as an authority on women," said my friend Agnes one day, as we
walked from church. "I _never_ quote Solomon! He knew a good many women
without discretion, some hundreds of them; but he didn't live up to his
convictions, and he changed his mind very often. He was to my thinking
not at all a nice person to know."
"But how about St. Paul?" I ventured.
"I consider it very small in St. Paul to think so much about dress
anyway! One would suppose the thorn in his own flesh would have made
him tender toward others; and Timothy must have been a poor creature
to be taken in by 'braided hair,' 'gold and pearls, and costly array.'
Now, of course, we have a few of those things, and like to wear our hair
neatly; but I don't see why they are not suitable for us so long as we
don't live for them, nor seek to entangle Timothy."
"Well," I replied, "I never can feel it is at all my affair. I hear it
often enough! But somehow St. Simeon Stylites, preaching away on his
pillar, seems a great way off, and not to know the bearings of all he
talks about. We listen to him dutifully; but I fancy if we amend our
ways we will do it of our own selves, and not because of St. Simeon."
"I wouldn't mind St. Simeon," said my irate friend (she had worked
herself up to a pitch of indignation); "probably he was old and
venerable, and to be tolerated; but it hurts me to be preached to by a
young thing like that minister to-day, as if I were a Babylonish woman!
We don't 'walk haughtily with stretched-forth necks, walking and mincing
as we go, making a tinkling with our feet.' And as to our 'changeable
suits of apparel,' and the 'crimping pins,' do we live for these things?
Our maids make a living by taking care of them while we are at church
hoping to hear of something better than crimping pins."
The lady who expressed these heretical sentiments was, as I have
remarked, my most intimate friend; and although not older than herself,
I considered it my duty to reason with her. "But you see, my dear
Agnes," I said, "we are obliged to be on the side of our young preacher,
whether we like it or not. He is the white-plumed champion riding forth
from the courts of purity and beauty of behavior. We wouldn't like to
be the sable knight who emerges from the opposite direction."
"I would!" declared my young rebel. "Infantile clergymen should keep
to the sins of their own sex. Nobody criticises men's dress. They
are exempt. They may surround their countenances with Henry VIII
ruffs, which make them look like the head of John the Baptist on a
charger,—nobody calls them ridiculous. They wear the briefest surf
costumes—nobody says they are indecent."
"But, my dear—"
"But, my dear, I know all about the matter of evening dress. I've
studied it up. It is a time-honored fashion (I can show you all about
it in my new encyclopædia). You remember I let you air your learning
and quote old Tertullian. Did I look bored?"
"Not at all. You may tell me now. You can finish before we get home."
"Well, then, the _décolleté_ bodice is not a new expression of total
depravity. It is an old fashion, appearing in 1280, with stomacher
of jewels. It reached England from Bohemia, but was then the fashion
in Italy, Poland, and Spain. Those times were not conspicuous for
sentiment, but were quite as moral as the times of the Greek chiton, or
the Roman tunic, or the Norman robe, or the Saxon gown."
"But," I interrupted, "it was out of fashion in the high-necked days of
Queen Elizabeth."
"Oh, she had her own reasons for disliking to see a suggestive bare
throat! Queen Bess was not conspicuous for purity. Don't interrupt
me—I'll prove everything by the book—lots of good women have worn
low dresses. Madame Recamier was a pretty good woman, and so were our
grandmothers, and so were the ladies of the Golden Age in Virginia who
reared the boys that won our independence."
"All of which proves nothing," I declared; but we had reached our door
on New York Avenue, and went in for our Sunday dinner. My friend did
not inflict the encyclopædia. She had already quoted it. What was the
use? We may be sure of one thing: no fashion has ever yet been discarded
because it was abused. No Damascus blade has ever been keen enough to
lop off an offending fashion.