CHAPTER XVII.THE CAPITOL—MORNING SIGHTS AND SCENES.
The Capitol in Spring—A Magic Change—“More Beautiful than Ancient Rome”—Arrival of Visitors—A New Race—“Billing and Cooing”—Lovers at the Capitol—A Dream of Perpetual Spring—Spending the Honeymoon in Washington—Charmingly “Vernal” People—New Edition of David Copperfield and Dora—“Very Young”—Divided Affections: the New Bride—Jonathan and Jane—Memories of a Wedding Dress—An Interview With a Bride—“Two Happy Idiots”—A Walk in the City—Utilitarian Projects—President Grant—The Foreign Ambassadors—“Beau” Hickman—An Erratic Genius—Walt Whitman, the Poet—A “Loafer” of Renown—Poets at Home—Piatt—Burroughs—Harriet Prescott Spofford—Sumner and Chase—ForeignAttachés“on the Flirt”—Tiresome Men—Lafayette Square in the Morning—How to Love a Tree—“He Never Saw Washington.”
We rarely have spring in this latitude. Full panoplied, summer springs from under the mail of long lingering winter. We had a fine yesterday. From my window this morning lo! the miracle! my dear long-timed friend, the maple across the street, amazes me once more, though I declared to it last year I never would be amazed again. It beckons me, its myriad little wands all aquiver with the tenderest green, and says: “There now, you can’t help it! Again I am a beauty and a wonder!” No long waiting and watching for slow budding blossoms here. Some night when we are all asleep there is a silent burst of bloom; and we wake to find the trees that we left here, when we shut our blinds on them thenight before, all tremulous with new life, and the whole city set in glowing emerald.
I invite you to the western front of the Capitol, to stand with me in the balcony of the Congressional Library, to survey the city lying at our feet within the amphitheatre of hills soaring beyond, the river running its shining thread between. I am quite ready to believe what Charles Sumner said when pleading against the mooted depot site on its Central Avenue, that this city is more beautiful than ancient Rome. In itself it is absolutely beautiful, and that is enough; and it grows more and more so as the sea of greenery, which now waves and tosses about its housetops, rises each year higher and higher. The Capitol in early spring and summer is in no wise the Capitol of the winter. Every door swings wide; from the doors in the under-ground corridors to the wondrous doors, designed in Rome and cast in Munich, which open into the rotunda. What long, cool, green vistas run out from every angle. You stand beneath the dome; but your eyes find rest in the far shadow of the Virginia hills.
And so many people seem to have come under the great dome to rest. You wonder where they could all have appeared from. They are not at all the people who crowd and hurry through the corridors in winter—the claimants, the lobbyists, the pleasure-seekers from great cities who come to spend the “season” in Washington. Nearly all are people from the country, the greater proportion brides and grooms, to whom the only “season” on earth is spring—the marriage season. Pretty pairs! They seem to be gazing out upon life through its portal with the same mingling of delight and wonder with whichthey gaze through the great doors of the Capitol upon the unknown world beyond. Early summer always brings a great influx of bridal pairs to Washington. Whence they all come no mortal can tell; but they do come, and can never be mistaken. Their clothes are as new as the spring’s, and they look charmingly vernal. The groom often seems half to deprecate your sudden glance, as if, like David Copperfield, he was afraid you thought him “very young.” And yet he invites you to glance again, by his conscious air of proud possession, which says: “Behold! I may be young—very. But I have gotten me a wife; she is the loveliest creature upon earth.” The affections of the lovely creature seem to be divided between her new lord and her new clothes. She loves him, she is proud of him; but this new suit, who but she can tell its cost. What longing, what privation, what patient toil has gone into its mouse or fawn-like folds; for this little bride, who regretfully drags her demi-train through the dust of the rotunda in summer, is seldom a rich man’s daughter. You see them everywhere repeated, these two neophytes—in the hotel-parlor, in the street-cars, in the Congressional galleries.
When Jonathan read to Jane, in distant Mudville, the record of Congressional proceedings in Washington, in theWeekly Tribune, both imagined themselves deeply interested in the affairs of their country; but here, on the spot, how small seem Tariff, Amnesty, Civil Rights, and Ku-Klux bills beside the ridiculous bliss of these two egotists. They do not even pretend to listen. But they have some photograph cards, and seek out their prototypes below. On the whole, Jane is disappointed. She was not prepared for so many bald heads, or for so much of bad manners.After all, not one of these men, in her mind, can compare with the small law-giver, the newly-found Lycurgus by her side. Before she became calm enough to reach this judicial decision, she visited the ladies’ dressing-room and shook out her damaged plumes.
“Is Washingtonalwaysso dusty?” she asked, with a sigh, looking down on her pretty mouse-colored dress, with its piping decidedly grimed.
“Nearly always,” I answered.
“Then howcanpeople live here?” she exclaimed.
When she goes home, she will tell that the dome of the Capitol is very high; that Conkling looks thus, and Sumner so. But what she will tell oftenest and longest—perhaps to her children’s children—will be that it was in Washington she ruined her wedding dress.
“I was married yesterday, and see how I look!” said Jane, ruefully.
“You look very pretty,” I said. “It will all shake off.” Wherewith Jane proceeded to shake, to wash her face, and brush her curls over her fingers. I helped her re-drape her lace shawl, and was repaid a moment later by her gracefulposéin the front seat of the Senate Gallery, her hand in Jonathan’s. It was refreshing, in the face of such a conglomeration of doubtful wisdom, to see two happy idiots, if they did not know it. The city is full of Janes and Jonathans.
The Capitol grounds are lovely as the gardens of the blessed, these hours.
The armies of violets which swarmed its green slopes a month ago are gone, and the dandelions have gone up higher, and are now sailing all around us through the deep, still air. There is a ripple in the grass that invitesthe early mower. The fountains toss their spray into the very hearts of the old trees that bend above them, and on the easy seats beneath their shadow, sit black and white, old and young, taking rest.
These grounds, perfect in themselves, utter but one reproach to the men legislating within yonder walls, and that, because they are not larger and meet in proportion to the august Capitol which they encircle. We pass through them out into Pennsylvania avenue—this great and yet to be fulfilled expectation. Broadway cannot compare with it in magnificent proportions. It is as wide as two Broadways, and at this hour of the afternoon its turn-outs are metropolitan. Nevertheless, judged by its trees and houses, it has a rural, second-rate look. Though here and there a lonesome building shoots up above its fellows, its average shops are shabby and small, and do not compare favorably with those of Third avenue in New York. The idealistic Statesmen of Washington and Jefferson’s time modelled it to repeat theUnterdendenLindensof Berlin. As a result, the ample rows of Lombardy poplars are defunct, and the Gradgrind politicians of to-day have voted to dump down a railroad “depot” in its very centre, because Mr. Thomas Scott wants it, and because they have free railroad-passes, and a few other little perquisites in their pockets. This, of course, is very shocking to say; but then it is much more shocking to be true. Excepting Mr. Sumner, Mr. Morrill, Mr. Thurman and a few others, who really care for the future of Washington and who love this Capital, the remainder would, for a sufficient price, sell out the entire city, Capitol and all, to monopolies and corporations. But this broad thoroughfare, stretching straight for a mile betweenTreasury and Capitol, with its double drive, smooth as a floor, its borders of bloom, its gay promenades and flashing turn-outs has a certain splendor of its own, of which no monopoly can wholly rob it.
Here is the Grant carriage, with its plain brown linings, and in it Mrs. Grant and her father. A light buggy flies past, drawn by superb horses, driven by a single occupant. He is the President—small, slight, erect, smoking a cigar. The courtly equipages of the Peruvian, Argentine, Turkish and English Ministers, with liveried outriders and beautiful women occupants, with the no less elegant establishments of American Senators, Members and citizens, swell the gay cavalcade on this truly splendid Corso.
Standing on the curb-stone, gazing on it with an expression which would have made Dickens wild till he had reproduced it, stands Beau Hickman, long a character of Washington. He is an old man, long and lean, with a face corrugated like a wizened apple and a complexion like parchment or an Egyptian mummy. His aspect is a strange compound of gentility and meanness. His stove-pipe hat, which evidently has survived many a battering, is carefully brushed; his standing collar is very stiff and very high. His vest is greyish white, his coat is dingy and shiny. His faded pantaloons have been darned, and need darning again. His toes are peering through his shoes, and they are down at the heels; yet he carries a foppish cane and wears his hat in a rakish manner. Beau Hickman was born a Virginia gentleman, insomuch as he still manages to live without labor, it being the pride of his heart that he never did anything useful in his life. He ekes out a wretched existence by filching small sumsfrom friends and strangers for telling stories and relating experiences, for which he invariably demands a drink or a supper. One of the most miserable objects I ever beheld is Beau Hickman hungry, hobbling through the Senate restaurant, gazing at one table and then at another, at the comfortable people sitting by them, filling their stomachs, not one alas! asking him to partake.
Here with a sweep and swing, with head thrown back, and arms at rest, comes a man as supremely indifferent to all this show as the other is abjectly enthralled by it. This man, slowly swinging down the Avenue, is a “cosmos” in himself. Locks profuse and white, eyes big and blue, cheeks ruddy, throat bare, wide collar turned back, slouched felt hat punched in, a perfect lion apparently in muscle and vitality—this is Walt Whitman. Every sunshiny day he “loafs” and invites his soul on the Avenue, and there are other poets who do likewise. Here sometimes may be seen John James Piatt, now Librarian of the House of Representatives, with his blonde hair and brown-eyed wife, who is quite as much a poet as he is; and John Burrough the Thoreau of the Treasury Department, gentle as one of his own birds; and William O’Connor whose poetical fires burn undimmed within the same dim old walls; and, clad in mourning, Harriet Prescott Spofford, sweet poet and sweeter woman. Here of old were seen the gigantic forms of Charles Sumner and of Chief Justice Chase. When the Supreme Court is in session, at a certain hour, a company of immense gentlemen doff their long black silk gowns, and slowly and ponderously wend their way along the Avenue, in mild, dignified pursuit of exercise and dinner. Here, before the sun grows too hot, may be seen the moustached, gesticulating,voluble youngattachésof the foreign embassies with the pretty girls of the West End, who they like to flirt with but rarely marry—which is fortunate for the girls.
I cannot divorce myself long enough from this divine day to write about men. There is not a man on the face of the earth that would not be tiresome if one had to think of him, to the exclusion of this weather. To think that there are any to be written about when I want to sit in the sun and do nothing, stirs up a perfect rumpus between desire and duty. I am not so fond of my duty that I always spell it with a big “D,” or in every emergency put it foremost. I would like to put it out of sight some times. Wouldn’t you? But then I cannot. “It’s too many for me,” as poor Tulliver said of his enemy. It won’t go out of sight, much less stay there. Something clever might have come to me about tedious men if I had not reached Lafayette Square this morning. There is that in this new bloom so tender, so unsullied, which makes politicians seem paltry, and all their outcry a mockery and an impertinence. To be sure, these green arcades in their outer bound touch another world. Beyond, and above them, floats the flag on the Arlington House. Below, the windows of Charles Sumner’s home hint of art and beauty within. The abodes of famous men and of beautiful women encircle all the square. On one side the white cornices of the Executive Mansion peer above the trees.
Almost within call are men and women whose names suggest histories and prophecies, all the tangled phenomena of individual life. Yet how easy to forget them all on these seats, which Gen. Babcock has made so restful—thank him. The long summer wave in the Maygrass; the low, swaying boughs, with their deep, mysterious murmur, that seems instinct with human pleading; the tender plaint of infant leaves; the music of birds; the depth of sky; the balm, the bloom, the virginity, the peace, the consciousness of life, new yet illimitable, are all here, just as perfectly as they are yonder in God’s solitude, untouched of man. If you need help to love a tree read the diary of Maurice de Guerin. No one else, not even Thoreau, (whose nature lacked in depth and breadth of tenderness perhaps in the deepest spiritual insight,) ever came so near or drew forth with such deep feeling the very soul of inanimate Nature. He felt the soul of the tree, heard it in the moaning of its voice as it stood with its roots bound in the earth and its arms outstretched with a never-ceasing sigh towards infinity. But why do I speak of him? He lived and died and never saw Washington.