University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.
WASHINGTON IN THE SESSION.

There is a sagacity acquired by travel on the subject
of forage and quarters, which is useful in all other
cities in the world where one may happen to be a
stranger, but whicch is as inapplicable to the emergencies
of an arrival in Washington as waltzing in a shipwreck.
It is a capital whose peculiarities are as much
sui generis as those of Venice; but as those who have
become wise by a season's experience neither remain
on the spot to give warning, nor have recorded their
experiences in a book, the stranger is worse off in a
coach in Washington than in a gondola in the “city
of silver streets.”

It is well known, I believe, that when the future
city of Washington was about being laid out, there
were two large lot-buyers or land-owners, living two
miles apart, each of whom was interested in having
the public buildings upon the centre of his own domain.
Like children quarrelling for a sugar horse,
the subject of dispute was pulled in two, and one got
the head, the other the tail. The capitol stands on a
rising ground in solitary grandeur, and the president's
house and department buildings two miles off on another.
The city straddles and stretches between,
doing its best to look continuous and compact; but
the stranger soon sees that it is, after all, but a “city
of magnificent distances,” built to please nobody on
earth but a hackney-coachman.

The new-comer, when asked what hotel he will
drive to, thinks himself very safe if he chooses that
nearest the capitol—supposing, of course, that, as
Washington is purely a legislative metropolis, the
most central part will naturally be near the scene of
action. He is accordingly set down at Gadsby's, and,
at a price that would startle an English nobleman, he
engages a pigeon-hole in the seventh heaven of that
boundless caravansary. Even at Gadsby's, however,
he finds himself over half a mile from the capitol, and
wonders, for two or three days, why the dence the
hotel was not built on some of the waste lots at the
foot of Capitol hill, an improvement which might
have saved him, in rainy weather, at least five dollars
a day in hack-hire. Meantime the secretaries and
foreign ministers leave their cards, and the party and
dinner-giving people shower upon him the “small
rain” of pink billets. He sets apart the third or fourth
day to return their calls, and inquires the addresses

of his friends (which they never write on their cards,
because, if they did, it would be no guide), and is told
it is impossible to direct him, but the hackney-coachmen
all know! He calls the least ferocious-looking of the
most bullying and ragged set of tatterdemalions he has
ever seen, and delivers himself and his visiting-list into
his hands. The first thing is a straight drive two
miles away from the capitol. He passes the president's
house, and getting off the smooth road, begins
to drive and drag through cross lanes and open lots,
laid out according to no plan that his loose ideas of
geometry can comprehend, and finds his friends living
in houses that want nothing of being in the country,
but trees, garden, and fences. It looks as if it had
rained naked brick houses upon a waste plain, and
each occupant had made a street with reference to his
own front door. The much-shaken and more-astonished
victim consumes his morning and his temper,
and has made, by dinner-time, but six out of forty
calls, all imperatively due, and all scattered far and
wide with the same loose and irreconcilable geography.

A fortnight's experience satisfies the stranger that
this same journey is worse at night than at morning;
and that, as he leaves his dinner which he pays for at
home, runs the risk of his neck, passes an hour or
two on the road, and ruins himself in hack-hire, it
must be a very—yes, a very pleasant dinner-party to
compensate him. Consequently, he either sends a
“p. p. c.” to all his acquaintances, and lives incog.,
or, which is a more sensible thing, moves up to the
other settlement, and abandons the capitol.

Those who live on the other side of the president's
house are the secretaries, diplomatists, and a few
wealthy citizens. There is no hotel in this quarter,
but there are one or two boarding-houses, and (what
we have been lucky enough to secure ourselves) furnished
lodgings, in which you have everything but
board. Your dinner is sent you from a French cook's
near by, and your servant gets your breakfast—a plan
which gives you the advantage of dining at your own
hour, choosing your own society, and of having covers
for a friend or two whenever it suits your humor, and
at half an hour's warning. There are very few of
these lodgings (which combine many other advantages
over a boarding-house), but more of them would be a
good speculation to house-owners, and I wish it were
suggested, not only here, but in every city in our
country.

Aside from society, the only amusement in Washington
is frequenting the capitol. If one has a great
deal of patience and nothing better to do, this is very
well; and it is very well at any rate till one becomes
acquainted with the heads of the celebrated men in
both the chambers, with the noble architecture of the
building, and the routine of business. This done, it
is time wearily spent for a spectator. The finer orators
seldom speak, or seldom speak warmly, the floor is
oftenest occupied by prosing and very sensible gentlemen,
whose excellent ideas enter the mind more
agreeably by the eye than the ear, or, in other words,
are better delivered by the newspapers, and there is a
great deal of formula and etiquetical sparring which
is not even entertaining to the members, and which
consumes time “consumedly.” Now and then the
senate adjourns when some one of the great orators
has taken the floor, and you are sure of a great effort
the next morning. If you are there in time, and can
sit, like Atlas with a world on your back, you may enjoy
a front seat and hear oratory, unsurpassed, in my
opinion, in the world.

The society in Washington, take it all in all, is by
many degrees the best in the United States. One is
prepared, though I can not conceive why, for the contrary.
We read in books of travels, and we are told
by everybody, that the society here is promiscuous,
rough, inelegant, and even barbarous. This is an
untrue representation, or it has very much changed.

There is no city, probably no village in America,
where the female society is not refined, cultivated, and
elegant. With or without regular advantages, woman
attains the refinements and the tact necessary to polite
intercourse. No traveller ever ventured to complain
of this part of American society. The great deficiency
is that of agreeable, highly-cultivated men, whose pursuits
have been elevated, and whose minds are pliable
to the grace and changing spirit of conversation.
Every man of talents possesses these qualities naturally,
and hence the great advantage which Washington enjoys
over every other city in our country. None but
a shallow observer, or a malicious book maker, would
ever sneer at the exteriors or talk of the ill-breeding
of such men as form, in great numbers, the agreeable
society of this place—for a man of great talents never
could be vulgar; and there is a superiority about most
of these which raises them above the petty standard
which regulates the outside of a coxcomb. Even
compared with the dress and address of men of similar
positions and pursuits in Europe, however (members
of the house of commons, for example, or of the chamber
of deputies in France), it is positively the fact that
the senators and representatives of the United States
have a decided advantage. It is all very well for Mr.
Hamilton, and other scribblers whose books must be
spiced to go down, to ridicule a Washington soirée for
English readers; but if the observation of one who
has seen assemblies of legislators and diplomatists in
all the countries of Europe may be fairly placed
against his and Mrs. Trollope's, I may assert, upon
my own authority, that they will not find, out of May
Fair in England, so well-dressed and dignified a body
of men. I have seen as yet no specimen of the rough
animal described by them and others as the “western
member;” and if David Crockett (whom I was never
so fortunate as to see) was of that description, the race
must have died with him. It is a thing I have learned
since I have been in Washington, to feel a wish that
foreigners should see congress in session. We are
so humbugged, one way and another, by travellers'
lies.

I have heard the observation once or twice from
strangers since I have been here, and it struck myself
on my first arrival, that I had never seen within the
same limit before, so many of what may be called
“men of mark.” You will scarce meet a gentleman
on the sidewalk in Washington who would not attract
your notice, seen elsewhere, as an individual possessing
in his eye or general features a certain superiority.
Never having seen most of the celebrated speakers of
the senate, I busied myself for the first day or two in
examining the faces that passed me in the street, in
the hope of knowing them by the outward stamp
which, we are apt to suppose, belongs to greatness.
I gave it up at last, simply from the great number I
met who might be (for all that features had to do with
it) the remarkable men I sought.

There is a very simple reason why a congress of the
United States should be, as they certainly are, a much
more marked body of men than the English house of
commons or lords, or the chamber of peers or deputies
in France. I refer to the mere means by which, in
either case, they come by their honors. In England
and France the lords and peers are legislators by hereditary
right, and the members of the commons and
deputies from the possession of extensive property or
family influence, or some other cause, arguing, in
most cases, no great personal talent in the individual.
They are legislators, but they are devoted very often
much more heartily to other pursuits—hunting or
farming, racing, driving, and similar out-of-door passions
common to English gentlemen and lords, or the
corresponding penchants of French peers and deputies.

It is only the few great leaders and orators who devote
themselves to politics exclusively. With us every
one knows it is quite the contrary. An American
politician delivers himself, body and soul, to his pursuit.
He never sleeps, eats, walks, or dreams, but in
subservience to his aim. He can not afford to have
another passion of any kind till he has reached the
point of his ambition—and then it has become a
mordent necessity from habit. The consequence is,
that no man can be found in an elevated sphere in our
country, who has not had occasion for more than ordinary
talent to arrive there. He inherited nothing of
his distinction, and has made himself. Such ordeals
leave their marks, and they who have thought, and
watched, and struggled, and contended with the passions
of men as an American politician inevitably
must, can not well escape the traces of such work.
It usually elevates the character of the face—it always
strongly marks it.

A-propos of “men of mark;” the dress circle of the
theatre, at Power's benefit, not long since, was graced
by three Indians in full costume—the chief of the
Foxes, the chief of the Ioways, and a celebrated warrior
of the latter tribe, called the Sioux-killer. The
Fox is an old man of apparently fifty, with a heavy,
aquiline nose, a treacherous eye, sharp as an eagle's,
and a person rather small in proportion to his head
and features. He was dressed in a bright scarlet
blanket, and a crown of feathers, with an eagle's plume,
standing erect on the top of his head, all dyed in the
same deep hue. His face was painted to match, except
his lips, which looked of a most ghastly sallow,
in contrast with his fiery nose, forehead, and cheeks.
His tomahawk lay in the hollow of his arm, decked
with feathers of the same brilliant color with the rest
of his drapery. Next him sat the Sioux-killer, in a
dingy blanket, with a crown made of a great quantity
of the feathers of a pea-hen, which fell over his face,
and concealed his features almost entirely. He is
very small, but is famous for his personal feats, having,
among other things, walked one hundred and thirty
miles in thirty successive hours, and killed three Sioux
(hence his name) in one battle with that nation. He
is but twenty-three, but very compact and wiry-looking,
and his eye glowed through his veil of hen-feathers
like a coal of fire.

Next to the Sioux-killer sat “White Cloud,” the
chief of the Ioways. His face was the least warlike
of the three, and expressed a good nature and freedom
from guile, remarkable in an Indian. He is about
twenty-four, has very large features, and a fine, erect
person, with broad shoulders and chest. He was
painted less than the Fox chief, but of nearly the same
color, and carried, in the hollow of his arm, a small,
glittering tomahawk, ornamented with blue feathers.
His head was encircled by a kind of turban of silver-fringed
cloth, with some metallic pendents for earrings,
and his blanket, not particularly clean or handsome,
was partly open on the breast, and disclosed a calico
shirt, which was probably sold to him by a trader in
the west. They were all very attentive to the play,
but the Fox chief and White Cloud departed from the
traditionary dignity of Indians, and laughed a great
deal at some of Power's fun. The Sioux-killer sat
between them, as motionless and grim as a marble
knight on a tomb-stone.

The next day I had the pleasure of dining with
Mr. Power, who lived at the same hotel with the Indian
delegation; and while at dinner he received a
message from the Ioways, expressing a wish to call on
him. We were sitting over our wine when White
Cloud and the Sioux-killer came in with their interpreter.
There were several gentlemen present, one
of them in the naval undress uniform, whose face the
Sioux-killer scrutinized very sharply. They smiled
in bowing to Power, but made very grave inclinations
to the rest of us. The chief took his seat, assuming
a very erect and dignified attitude, which he preserved
immoveable during the interview; but the Sioux-killer
drew up his legs, resting them on the round of the
chair, and, with his head and body bent forward,
seemed to forget himself, and give his undivided attention
to the study of Power and his naval friend.

Tumblers of champagne were given them, which
they drank with great relish, though the Sioux-killer
provoked a little ridicule from White Cloud, by coughing
as he swallowed it. The interpreter was a halfbreed
between an Indian and a negro, and a most intelligent
fellow. He had been reared in the Ioway
tribe, but had been among the whites a great deal for
the last few years, and had picked up English very
fairly. He told us that White Cloud was the son of
old White Cloud, who died three years since, and
that the young chief had acquired entire command
over the tribe by his mildness and dignity. He had
paid the debts of the Ioways to the traders, very much
against the will of the tribe; but he commenced by
declaring firmly that he would be just, and had carried
his point. He had come to Washington to receive a
great deal of money from the sale of the lands of the
tribe, and the distribution of it lay entirely in his own
power. Only one old warrior had ventured to rise in
council and object to his measures; but when White
Cloud spoke, he had dropped his head on his bosom
and submitted. This information and that which
followed was given in English, of which neither of the
Ioways understood a word.

Mr. Power expressed a surprise that the Sioux-killer
should have known him in his citizen's dress.
The interpreter translated it, and the Indian said in
answer:—

“The dress is very different, but when I see a man's
eye I know him again.”

He then told Power that he wished, in the theatre,
to raise his war-cry and help him fight the three bad-looking
men who were his enemies (referring to the
three bailiffs in the scene in Paddy Carey). Power
asked what part of the play he liked best. He said
that part where he seized the girl in his arms and ran
off the stage with her (at the close of an Irish jig in
the same play).

The interpreter informed us that this was the first
time the Sioux-killer had come among the whites.
He had disliked them always till now, but he said he
had seen enough to keep him telling tales all the rest
of his life. Power offered them cigars, which they
refused. We expressed our surprise; and the Sioux-killer
said that the Indians who smoked gave out
soonest in the chase; and White Cloud added, very
gravely, that the young women of his tribe did not
like the breaths of the smokers. In answer to an inquiry
I made about the comparative size of Indians
and white men, the chief said that the old men of the
whites were larger than old Indians, but the young
whites were not so tall and straight as the youths of
his tribe. We were struck with the smallness of the
chief's hands and feet; but he seemed very much
mortified when the interpreter translated our remark to
him. He turned the little sallow fingers over and over,
and said that old White Cloud, his father, who had
been a great warrior, had small hands like his. The
young chief, we were told by the interpreter, has never
yet been in an engagement, and is always spared from
the heavier fatigues undergone by the rest of the
tribe.

They showed great good nature in allowing us to
look at their ornaments, tomahawks, &c. White
Cloud wore a collar of bear's claws, which marked
him for a chief; and the Sioux-killer carried a great
cluster of brass bells on the end of his tomahawk, of
which he explained the use very energetically. It
was to shake when he stood over his fallen enemy in

the fight, to let the tribe know he had killed him.
After another tumbler of champagne each, they rose
to take their leave, and White Cloud gave us his hand
gently, with a friendly nod. We were all amused,
however, with the Sioux-killer's more characteristic
adieu. He looked us in the eye like a hawk, and gave
us each a grip of his iron fist, that made the blood
tingle under our nails. He would be an awkward
customer in a fight, or his fixed lips and keen eye very
much belie him.