On the road from Warwick to Kenilworth, I thought more of poor Pierce
Gaveston than of Elizabeth and her proud earls. Edward’s gay favorite
was tried at Warwick, and beheaded on Blacklow hill, which we passed
soon after leaving the town. He was executed in June; and I looked about
on the lovely hills and valleys that surround the place of his last
moments, and figured to myself very vividly his despair at this hurried
leave-taking of this bright world in its brightest spot and hour. Poor
Gaveston! It was not in his vocation to die! He was neither soldier nor
prelate, hermit nor monk. His political sins, for which he suffered,
were no offence against good fellowship, and were ten times more venial
than those of the “black dog of Arden,” who betrayed and helped to
murder him. He was the reckless minion of a king, but he must have been
a merry and pleasant fellow; and now that the world (on _our_ side the
water at least) is grown so grave, one could go back with Old Mortality,
and freshen the epitaph of a heart that took life more gayly.
As we approached the castle of the proud Leicester, I found it easier to
people the road with the flying Amy Robsart and her faithful attendant,
with Mike Lambourne, Flibbertigibbat, Richard Varney, and the troop of
mummers and players, than with the more real characters of history. To
assist the romance, a little Italian boy, with his organ and monkey, was
fording the brook on his way to the castle, as if its old towers still
held listeners for the wandering minstrel. I tossed him a shilling from
the carriage window, and while the horses slowly forded the brook, asked
him in his own delicious tongue, where he was from.
“_Son’ di Firenze, signore!_”
“And where are you going?”
“_Li! al castello._”
Come from Florence and bound to Kenilworth! Who would not grind an organ
and sleep under a hedge, to answer the hail of the passing traveller in
terms like these? I have seen many a beggar in Italy, whose inheritance
of sunshine and leisure in that delicious clime I could have found it in
my heart to envy, even with all its concomitants of uncertainty and
want; but here was a bright-faced and inky-eyed child of the sun, with
his wardrobe and means upon his back, travelling from one land to
another, and loitering wherever there was a resort for pleasure, without
a friend or a care; and, upon my life, I could have donned his velveteen
jacket, and with his cheerful heart to button it over, have shouldered
his organ, put my trust in _i forestieri_, and kept on for Kenilworth.
There really is, I thought, as I left him behind, no profit or reward
consequent upon a life of confinement and toil; no moss ever gathered by
the unturned stone, that repays, by a thousandth part, the loss of even
this poor boy’s share of the pleasures of change. What would not the
tardy winner of fortune give to exchange his worn-out frame, his
unloveable and furrowed features, his dulled senses, and his vain
regrets, for the elastic frame, the unbroken spirits, and the redeemable
yet not oppressive poverty of this Florentine _regazzo_! The
irrecoverable gem of youth is too often dissolved, like the pearl of
Cleopatra, in a cup which thins the blood and leaves disgust upon the
lip.
The magnificent ruins of Kenilworth broke in upon my moralities, and a
crowd of halt and crippled _ciceroni_ beset the carriage-door as we
alighted at the outer tower. The neighborhood of the Spa of Leamington
makes Kenilworth a place of easy resort; and the beggars of Warwickshire
have discovered that your traveller is more liberal of his coin than
your sitter-at-home. Some dozens of pony-chaises, and small, crop
saddle-horses, clustered around the gate, assured us that we should not
muse alone amid the ruins of Elizabeth’s princely gift to her favorite.
We passed into the tilt-yard, leaving on our left the tower in which
Edward was confined, now the only habitable part of Kenilworth. It gives
a comfortable shelter to an old seneschal, who stands where the giant
probably stood, with Flibbertigibbet under his doublet for a prompter;
but it is not the tail of a rhyme that serves now for a passport.
Kenilworth, as it now stands, would probably disenchant almost any one
of the gorgeous dreams conjured up by reading Scott’s romance. Yet it is
one of the most superb ruins in the world. It would scarce be complete
to a novel-reader, naturally, without a warder at the gate, and the
flashing of a spear-point and helmet through the embrasures of the
tower. A horseman in armor should pace over the drawbridge, and a squire
be seen polishing his cuirass through the opening gate; while on the
airy bartizan should be observed a lady in hoop and farthingdale,
philandering with my lord of Leicester in silk doublet and rapier. In
the place of this, the visiter enters Kenilworth as I have already
described, and stepping out into the tilt-yard, he sees, on an elevation
before him, a fretted and ivy-covered ruin, relieved like a cloud-castle
on the sky; the bright blue plane of the western heavens shining through
window and broken wall, flecked with waving and luxuriant leaves, and
the crusted and ornamental pinnacles of tottering masonry and sculpture
just leaning to their fall, though the foundations upon which they were
laid, one would still think, might sustain the firmament. The swelling
root of a creeper has lifted that arch from its base, and the protruding
branch of a chance-sprung tree, (sown perhaps by a field-sparrow) has
unseated the keystone of the next; and so perish castles and
reputations, the masonry of the human hand, and the fabrics of human
forethought; not by the strength which they feared, but by the weakness
they despised! Little thought old John of Gaunt, when these rudely-hewn
blocks were heaved into their seat by his herculean workmen, that, after
resisting fire and foe, they would be sapped and overthrown at last by a
vine-tendril and a sparrow!
Clinging against the outer wall, on that side of the castle overlooking
the meadow, which was overflowed for the aquatic sports of Kenilworth,
stands an antique and highly ornamental fireplace, which belonged,
doubtless, to the principal hall. The windows on either side looking
forth upon the fields below, must have been those from which Elizabeth
and her train observed the feats of Arion and his dolphin; and at all
times, the large and spacious chimney-place, from the castle’s first
occupation to its last, must have been the centre of the evening
revelry, and conversation of its guests. It was a hook whereon to hang a
revery, and between the roars of vulgar laughter which assailed my ears
from a party lolling on the grass below, I contrived to figure to
myself, with some distinctness, the personages who had stood about it. A
visit to Kenilworth, without the deceptions of fancy, would be as
disconnected from our previous enthusiasm on the subject as from any
other scene with which it had no relation. The general effect at first,
in any such spot, is only to dispossess us, by a powerful violence, of
the cherished picture we had drawn of it in imagination; and it is only
after the real recollection has taken root and ripened—after months, it
may be—that we can fully bring the visionary characters we have drawn
to inhabit it. If I read Kenilworth now, I see Mike Lambourne stealing
out, not from the ruined postern which I clambered through, over heaps
of rubbish, but from a little gate that turned noiselessly on its
hinges, in the unreal castle built ten years ago in my brain.
I had wandered away from my companion, Miss Jane Porter, to climb up a
secret staircase in the wall, rather too difficult of ascent for a
female foot, and from my elevated position I caught an accidental view
of that distinguished lady through the arch of a Gothic window, with a
background of broken architecture and foliage—presenting, by chance,
perhaps the most fitting and admirable picture of the authoress of the
Scottish Chiefs, that a painter in his brightest hour could have
fancied. Miss Porter, with her tall and striking figure, her noble face
(said by Sir Martin Shee to have approached nearer in its youth to his
_beau idéal_ of the female features than any other, and still possessing
the remains of uncommon beauty,) is at all times a person whom it would
be difficult to see without a feeling of involuntary admiration. But
standing, as I saw her at that moment, motionless and erect, in the
mourning dress, with dark feathers, which she has worn since the death
of her beloved and gifted sister, her wrists folded across, her large
and still beautiful eyes fixed on a distant object in the view, and her
nobly-cast lineaments reposing in their usual calm and benevolent
tranquillity, while, around and above her, lay the material and breathed
the spirit over which she had held the first great mastery—it was a
_tableau vivant_ which I was sorry to be alone to see.
Was she thinking of the great mind that had evoked the spirits of the
ruins she stood among—a mind in which (by Sir Walter’s own confession)
she had first bared the vein of romance which breathed so freely for the
world’s delight? Were the visions which sweep with such supernatural
distinctness and rapidity through the imagination of genius—visions of
which the millionth portion is probably scarce communicated to the world
in a literary lifetime—were Elizabeth’s courtiers, Elizabeth’s
passions, secret hours, interviews with Leicester—were the imprisoned
king’s nights of loneliness and dread, his hopes, his indignant, but
unheeded thoughts—were all the possible circumstances, real or
imaginary, of which that proud castle might have been the scene,
thronging in those few moments of revery through her fancy? Or was her
heart busy with its kindly affections, and had the beauty and interest
of the scene but awakened a thought of one who was most wont to number
with her the sands of those brighter hours?
Who shall say? The very question would perhaps startle the thoughts
beyond recall—so elusive are even the most angelic of the mind’s unseen
visitants.
I have recorded here the speculations of a moment while I leaned over
the wall of Kenilworth, but as I descended by the giddy staircase, a
peal of rude laughter broke from the party in the fosse below, and I
could not but speculate on the difference between the various classes
whom curiosity draws to the spot. The distinguished mind that conceives
a romance that enchants the world, comes in the same guise and is
treated with but the same respect as theirs. The old porter makes no
distinction in his charge of half-a-crown, and the grocer’s wife who
sucks an orange on the grass, looks at the dark crape hat and plain
exterior—her only standards—and thinks herself as well-dressed, and
therefore equal or superior to the tall lady, whom she presumes is out
like herself on a day’s pleasuring. One comes and goes like the other,
and is forgotten alike by the beggars at the gate and the seneschal
within, and thus invisibly and unsuspected, before our very eyes, does
genius gather its golden fruit, and while _we_ walk in a plain and
commonplace world, with commonplace and sordid thoughts and feelings,
the gifted walk side by side with us in a world of their own—a world of
which we see distant glimpses in their after-creations, and marvel in
what unsunned mine its gems of thought were gathered!
A VISIT TO DUBLIN ABOUT THE TIME OF
THE QUEEN’S MARRIAGE.
The usual directions for costume, in the corner of the court card of
invitation, included, on the occasion of the Queen’s marriage, a wedding
favor, to be worn by ladies on the shoulder, and by gentlemen on the
left breast. This trifling addition to the dress of the individual was a
matter of considerable importance to the milliners, hatters, etc., who,
in a sale of ten or twelve hundred white cockades (price from two
dollars to five) made a very pretty profit. The power of giving a large
ball to the more expensive classes, and ordering a particular addition
to the costume—in other words, of laying a tax on the rich for the
benefit of the poor, is exercised more frequently in Ireland than in
other countries, and serves the double purpose of popularity to the Lord
Lieutenant, and benefit to any particular branch of industry that may be
suffering from the decline of a fashion.
The large quadrangular court-yard of the castle rattled with the tramp
of horses’ feet and the clatter of sabres and spurs, and in the
uncertain glare of torches and lamps, the gay colors and glittering arms
of the mounted guard of lancers had a most warlike appearance. The
procession which the guard was stationed to regulate and protect, rather
detracted from the romantic effect—the greater proportion of equipages
being the covered hack cars of the city—vehicles of the most
unmitigated and ludicrous vulgarity. A coffin for two, set on its end,
with the driver riding on the turned-down lid, would be a very near
resemblance; and the rags of the driver, and the translucent leanness of
his beast, make it altogether the most deplorable of conveyances. Here
and there a carriage with liveries, and here and there a sedan-chair
with four stout Milesian calves in blue stockings trotting under the
poles, rather served as a foil than a mitigation of the effect, and the
hour we passed in the line, edging slowly toward the castle, was far
from unfruitful in amusement. I learned afterward that even those who
have equipages in Dublin go to Court in hack cars as a matter of
economy—one of the many indications of that feeling of lost pride which
has existed in Ireland since the removal of the parliament.
A hall and staircase lined with files of soldiers is not quite as
festive an entrance to a ball as the more common one of alleys of
flowering shrubs; but with a waltz by a military band resounding from
the lofty ceiling, I am not sure that it does not temper the blood as
aptly for the spirit of the hour. It was a rainy night, and the streets
were dark, and the effect upon myself of coming suddenly into so
enchanted a scene—arms glittering on either side, and a procession of
uniforms and plumed dames winding up the spacious stairs—was thrilling,
even with the chivalric scenes of Eglinton fresh in my remembrance.
At the head of the ascent we entered a long hall, lined with the private
servants of Lord Ebrington, and the ceremony of presentation having been
achieved the week before, we left the throne-room on the right, and
passed directly to St. Patrick’s Hall, the grand scene of the evening’s
festivities. This, I have said before, is the finest ball-room I
remember in Europe. Twelve hundred people, seated, dancing, or
promenading, were within its lofty walls on the night whose festivities
I am describing; and at either end a gallery, supported by columns of
marble, contained a band of music, relieving each other with alternate
waltzes and quadrilles. On the long sides of the hall were raised tiers
of divans, filled with chaperons, veteran officers, and other
lookers-on, and at the upper end was raised a platform with a throne in
the centre, and seats on either side for the family of the Lord
Lieutenant, and the more distinguished persons of the nobility. Lord
Ebrington was rather in his character of a noble host than that of
Viceroy, and I did not observe him once seated under his canopy of
state; but with his Aids and some one of the noble ladies of his family
on his arm, he promenaded the hall conversing with his acquaintances,
and seemingly enjoying in a high degree the brilliant gayety of the
scene. His dress, by the way, was the simple diplomatic dress of most
continental courts, a blue uniform embroidered with gold, the various
orders on his breast forming its principal distinction. I seldom have
seen a man of a more calm and noble dignity of presence than the Lord
Lieutenant, and never a face that expressed more strongly the
benevolence and high purity of character for which he is distinguished.
In person, except that he is taller, he bears a remarkably close
resemblance to the Duke of Wellington.
We can scarcely conceive, in this country of black coats, the brilliant
effect of a large assembly in which there is no person out of uniform or
court-dress—every lady’s head nodding with plumes, and every gentleman
in military scarlet and gold or lace and embroidery. I may add, too,
that in this country of care-worn and pale faces, we can as little
conceive the effect of an assembly rosy with universal health,
habitually unacquainted with care, and abandoned with the apparent
child-like simplicity of high breeding, to the inspiring gayety of the
hour. The greater contrast, however, is between a nation where health is
the first care, and one in which health is never thought of till lost;
and light and shade are not more contrasted than the mere general effect
of countenance in one and in the other. A stranger travelling in our
country, once remarked to me that a party he had attended seemed like an
entertainment given in the convalescent ward of a hospital—the ladies
were so pale and fragile, and the men so unjoyous and sallow. And my own
invariable impression, in the assemblies I have first seen after leaving
my own country, was a corresponding one—that the men and women had the
rosy health and untroubled gayety of children round a May-pole. That
this is _not_ the effect of climate, I do most religiously believe. It
is _over-much care_ and _over-much carelessness_—the corroding care of
an avid temerity in business, and the carelessness of all the functions
of life till their complaints become too imperative to be disregarded.
But this is a theme out of place.
The ball was managed by the Grand Chamberlain (Sir William Leeson,) and
the aids-de-camp of the Lord Lieutenant, and except that now and then
you were reminded by the movement around you that you stood with your
back to the representative of royalty, there was little to draw your
attention from the attractions of the dance. Waltz, quadrille, and
gallop, followed each other in giddy succession, and “what do you think
of Irish beauty?” had been asked me as often as “how do you like
America?” was ever mumbled through the trumpet of Miss Martineau, when I
mounted with a friend to one of the upper divans, and tried, what is
always a difficult task, and nowhere so difficult as in Ireland, to call
in the intoxicated fancy, and anatomize the charm of the hour.
Moore’s remark has been often quoted—“there is nothing like an Irish
woman to take a man off his feet;” but whether this figure of speech was
suggested by the little bard’s common _soubriquet_ of
“Jump-up-and-kiss-me[5] Tom Moore,” or simply conveyed his idea of the
bewildering character of Irish beauty, it contains, to any one who has
ever travelled (or waltzed) in that country, a very just, as well as
realizing description. Physically, Irish women are probably the finest
race in the world—I mean, taller, better limbed and chested, larger
eyed, and with more luxuriant hair, and freer action, than any other
nation I have observed. The Phœnician and Spanish blood which has run
hundreds of years in their veins, still kindles its dark fire in their
eyes, and with the vivacity of the northern mind and the bright color of
the northern skin, these southern qualities mingle in most admirable and
superb harmony. The idea we form of Italian and Grecian beauty is never
realized in Greece and Italy, but we find it in Ireland, heightened and
exceeded. Cheeks and lips of the delicacy and bright teint of carnation,
with snowy teeth, and hair and eyebrows of jet, are what we should look
for on the palette of Apelles, could we recall the painter, and
re-animate his far-famed models; and these varied charms, united, fall
very commonly to the share of the fair Milesian of the upper classes. In
other lands of dark eyes, the rareness of a fine-grained skin, so
necessary to a brunette, makes beauty as rare—but whether it is the
damp softness of the climate or the infusion of Saxon blood, a coarse
skin is almost never seen in Ireland. I speak now only of the
better-born ranks of society, for in all my travels in Ireland I did not
chance to see even one peasant girl of any pretensions to good looks.
From north to south, they looked, to me, coarse, ill-formed, and
repulsive.
I noticed in St. Patrick’s Hall what I had remarked ever since I had
been in the country, that with all their beauty, the Irish women are
very deficient in what in England is called _style_. The men, on the
contrary, were particularly _comme il faut_, and as they are a
magnificent race (corresponding to such mothers and sisters) I
frequently observed I had never seen so many handsome and elegant men in
a day. Whenever I saw a gentleman and lady together, riding, driving, or
walking, my first impression was, almost universally, that the man was
in attendance upon a woman of an inferior class to his own. This
difference may be partly accounted for by the reduced circumstances of
the gentry of Ireland, which keeps the daughters at home, that the sons
may travel and improve; but it works differently in America, where,
spite of travel and every other advantage to the contrary, the daughters
of a family are much oftener lady-like than the sons are gentleman-like.
After wondering for some time, however, why the quick-witted women of
Ireland should be less apt than those of other countries in catching the
air of high breeding usually deemed so desirable, I began to like them
better for the deficiency, and to find a reason for it in the very
qualities which make them so attractive. Nothing could be more
captivating and delightful than the manners of Irish women, and nothing,
at the same time, could be more at war with the first principles of
English high breeding—coldness and _retenu_. The frank, almost
hilarious “how are you?” of an Irish girl, her whole-handed and cordial
grasp, as often in the day as you meet her, the perfectly un-missy-ish,
confiding, direct character of her conversation, are all traits which
would stamp her as somewhat rudely bred in England, and as desperately
vulgar in New York or Philadelphia.
Modest to a proverb, the Irish woman is as unsuspecting of an
impropriety as if it were an impossible thing, and she is as fearless
and joyous as a midshipman, and sometimes as noisy. In a ball-room she
looks ill-dressed, not because her dress was ill-put-on, but because she
dances, not glides, sits down without care, pulls her flowers to pieces,
and if her head-dress incommodes her, gives it a pull or a push—acts
which would be perfect insanity at Almack’s. If she is offended, she
asks for an explanation. If she does not understand you, she confesses
her ignorance. If she wishes to see you the next day, she tells you how
and when. She is the child of nature, and children are not “stylish.”
The niminy-piminy, eye-avoiding, finger-tipped, drawling, don’t-touch-me
manner of some of the fashionable ladies of our country, would amuse a
cold and reserved English woman sufficiently, but they would drive an
Irish girl into hysterics. I have met one of our fair country-people
abroad, whose “Grecian stoop,” and exquisitely subdued manner, was
invariably taken for a fit of indigestion.
The ball-supper was royally sumptuous, and served in a long hall thrown
open at midnight; and in the gray of the morning, I left the floor
covered with waltzers, and confessed to an Irish friend, that I never in
my life, not even at Almack’s, had seen the half as much true beauty as
had brightened St. Patrick’s Hall at the celebration of the queen’s
marriage.
-----
[5] The name of a small flower, common in Ireland.
CLOSING SCENES OF THE SESSION AT
WASHINGTON.
The paradox of “the more one does, the more one can do,” is resolved in
life at Washington with more success than I have seen it elsewhere. The
inexorable bell at the hotel or boarding-house pronounces the
irrevocable and swift transit of breakfast to all sleepers after eight.
The elastic depths of the pillow have scarcely yielded their last
feather to the sleeper’s head before the drowse is rudely shaken from
his eyelids, and with an alacrity which surprises himself, he finds his
toilet achieved, his breakfast over, and himself abroad to lounge in the
sunshine till the flag waves on the capitol. He would retire to his
chamber to read during these two or three vacant hours, but the one
chair in his pigeon-hole creaks, or has no back or bottom, or his
anthracite fire is out, or, is too hot for the size of the room; or, in
short, Washington, from whatever cause, is a place where none read
except those who stand up to a padlocked newspaper. The stars and
stripes, moving over the two wings of the capitol at eleven announce
that the two chambers of legislation are in session, and the hard
working idler makes his way to the senate or the house. He lingers in
the lobby awhile, amused with the button-hole seizers plying the
unwilling ears of members with their claims, or enters the library,
where ladies turn over prints, and enfilade, with their battery of
truant eyes the comers in at the green door. He then gropes up the dark
staircase to the senate gallery, and stifles in the pressure of a hot
gallery, forgetting, like listeners at a crowded opera, that bodily
discomfort will unlink the finest harmonies of song or oratory. Thence
he descends to the rotunda to draw breath and listen to the more
practical, but quite as earnest eloquence of candidates for patents; and
passes, after a while to the crowded gallery of the house, where, by
some acoustic phenomena in the construction of the building, the voices
of the speakers come to his ears as articulate as water from a
narrow-necked bottle. “Small blame to them!” he thinks, however; for
behind the brexia columns are grouped all the fair forms of Washington;
and in making his bow to two hundred despotic lawgivers in feathers and
velvet, he is readily consoled that the duller legislators who yield to
their sway are inaudible and forgotten. To this upper house drop in,
occasionally, the younger or gayer members of the lower, bringing, if
not political scandal, at least some slight _resumer_ of what Mr.
Somebody is beating his desk about below; and thus, crammed with the
day’s trifles or the day’s business, and fatigued from heel to eyelid,
our idler goes home at five to dress for dinner and the night’s
campaign, having been up and on his legs for ten mortal hours.
Cold water and a little silence in his own room have rather refreshed
him, and he dines at six with a party of from fifteen to twenty-five
persons. He discusses the vital interests of fourteen millions of people
over a glass of wine with the man whose vote, possibly, will decide
their destiny, and thence hurries to a ball-room crammed like a perigord
pie, where he pants, elbows, eats supper, and waltzes till three in the
morning. How human constitutions stand this, and stand it daily and
nightly, from the beginning to the end of a session, may well puzzle the
philosophy of those who rise and breakfast in comfortable leisure.
I joined the crowd on the twenty-second of February, to pay my respects
to the President, and see _the cheese_. Whatever veneration existed in
the minds of the people toward the former, their curiosity in reference
to the latter predominated, unquestionably. The circular _pavé_,
extending from the gate to the White House, was thronged with citizens
of all classes, those coming away having each a small brown paper parcel
and a very strong smell; those advancing manifesting, by shakings of the
head and frequent exclamations, that there may be too much of a good
thing, and particularly of a cheese. The beautiful portico was thronged
with boys and coach-drivers, and the odor strengthened with every step.
We forced our way over the threshold, and encountered an atmosphere, to
which the mephitic gas floating over Avernus must be faint and
innocuous. On the side of the hall hung a rough likeness of the general,
emblazoned with eagle and stars, forming a background to the huge tub in
which the cheese had been packed; and in the centre of the vestibule
stood the “fragrant gift,” surrounded with a dense crowd, who, without
crackers, or even “malt to their cheese,” had, in two hours, eaten and
purveyed away _fourteen hundred pounds_! The small segment reserved for
the President’s use counted for nothing in the abstractions.
Glad to compromise for a breath of cheeseless air, we desisted from the
struggle to obtain a sight of the table, and mingled with the crowd in
the east room. Here were diplomates in their gold coats and officers in
uniform, ladies of secretaries and other ladies, soldiers on volunteer
duty, and Indians in war-dress and paint. Bonnets, feathers, uniforms,
and all—it was rather a gay assemblage. I remembered the descriptions
in travellers’ books, and looked out for millers and blacksmiths in
their working gear, and for rudeness and vulgarity in all. The offer of
a mammoth cheese to the public was likely to attract to the presidential
mansion more of the lower class than would throng to a common levee.
Great-coats there were, and not a few of them, for the day was raw, and
unless they were hung on the palings outside, they must remain on the
owners’ shoulders; but, with a single exception (a fellow with his coat
torn down his back, possibly in getting at the cheese,) I saw no man in
a dress that was not respectable and clean of its kind, and abundantly
fit for a tradesman out of his shop. Those who were much pressed by the
crowd put their hats on; but there was a general air of decorum which
would surprise any one who had pinned his faith on travellers. An
intelligent Englishman, very much inclined to take a disgust to
mobocracy, expressed to me great surprise at the decency and proper
behavior of the people. The same experiment in England, he thought,
would result in as pretty a riot as a paragraph-monger would desire to
see.
The President was down stairs in the oval reception room, and, though
his health would not permit him to stand, he sat in his chair for two or
three hours, and received his friends with his usual bland and dignified
courtesy. By his side stood the lady of the mansion, dressed in full
court costume, and doing the honors of her place with a grace and
amenity which every one felt, and which threw a bloom over the hour.
General Jackson retired, after awhile, to his chamber, and the President
elect remained to support his relative, and present to her the still
thronging multitude, and by four o’clock the guests were gone, and the
“banquet hall” was deserted. Not to leave a wrong impression of the
cheese, I dined afterward at a table to which the President had sent a
piece of it, and found it of excellent quality. It is like many other
things, more agreeable in small qualities.
Some eccentric mechanic has presented to the President a sulkey, made
entirely (except the wheels) of rough-cut hickory, with the bark on. It
looks rough enough, but has very much the everlasting look of old
Hickory himself; and if he could be seen driving a high-stepping, bony
old iron-gray steed in it, any passer-by would see that there was as
much fitness in the whole thing as in the chariot of Bacchus and his
reeling leopards. Some curiously twisted and gnarled branches have been
very ingeniously turned into handles and whip-box, and the vehicle is
compact and strong. The President has left it to Mr. Van Buren.
In very strong contrast to the sulkey, stood close by, the elegant
phæton, made of the wood of the old frigate Constitution. It has a seat
for two, with a driver’s box, covered with a superb hammercloth, and set
up rather high in front; the wheels and body are low, and there are bars
for baggage behind; altogether, for lightness and elegance, it would be
a turn out for Long Acre. The material is excessively beautiful—a
fine-grained oak, polished to a very high degree, with its colors
delicately brought out by a coat of varnish. The wheels are very slender
and light, but strong, and, with all its finish, it looks a vehicle
capable of a great deal of service. A portrait of the Constitution,
under full sail, is painted on the panels.