Emily Edson Briggs

“ What pictures of the old home-life are called up like fast-dissolving [408] phantoms, but as genuine creations in the invisible world as the exquisite works of art before the mortal vision. The white, waxen eye-lid of the fair hostess droops until the long silken fringe sweeps the cheek. The spirit of hush! be quiet, falls upon the guest, which the hostess alone knows how to remove. The gulf is visible, like a hideous skull at a feast, between the days of the young millionaire wife, designing gifts for the Chief Justice, and the cold bereavements and change of fickle fortune of to-day. ”

“ Come, reader; let us leave the dusty highway of frivolity and fashion. Come into the cool, refreshing shade. You are in the presence of the woman who, in all human probability, will be the one above all others of her sex to whom the argus eyes of this great nation will soon be directed. She is in the full meridian of middle life, tall and distinguished-looking, as one would imagine a Roman matron might be in the days of Italian glory, and it would seem that she is precisely such a mate as her bluff and out-spoken husband would select for a life-long journey in double harness. ”

“ If there is one sight in this wicked world, more pitiful than another, it is to see a poor widow’s daughter, or an innocent young Treasury employee in her simple robes of muslin, apparently raised for a brief time to the social platform of wealth and power. In no place on the face of the globe can the two opposite social elements come together as at a President’s levee or a Speaker’s reception. Wealth is pitted against poverty; strength against weakness, and the result sometimes is brought forth in a fruit more deceitful, bitter, and dusty than the apples of the Dead Sea. ”

“ There is a faint, deathly odor of undying perfumes. The music sounds as though it were afar off in the heavy atmosphere. If the mansion were a prison, and the inmates therein wretches of high and low degree, could the imagination picture a more horrible situation? But let it be remembered that this medley is made up of silk, satin, lace and jewels, snowy shoulders and distinguished men. Everybody is polite and refined; wit sparkles, women laugh, and if one must be pressed to atoms, no more charming death could be devised. Did the Cabinet dame invite all these people to her hospitable mansion? ”

“ Never, even in the days of the French Revolution, have the women performed more conspicuous parts in the national play of politics than at the present time in Washington. It can truthfully be said that there is nothing so malignant and heart-rending in its effects upon a good man as the burning desire to be President. God help the man when this iron has entered his soul, for this fiery ambition drinks up every other sweet virtue, just as the July sun licks up the purling brook and precious dew drop. It is not man alone who is consumed by ambition ”

“ Nature has set her face against women as public speakers unless they have been trained for the stage, like Olive Logan. No woman’s voice can bear the tension of an hour and a quarter without becoming husky and even painful to the last degree, and the speaker of the evening was no exception to the rule. Grace Greenwood appeared upon the platform in heavy black silk, with scarlet trimmings, which well became her dark autumnal beauty. She has a face of character, like Fanny Kemble, which glows and pales according to the combustion within. ”

“ Our sacred feet press our own tufted Wiltons. We recline on our own satin and ebony. We are received graciously by our own well-dressed servants, and the people have a right to know, through the columns of The Press, the exact state of the situation. Whoever goes to a levee at the mansion becomes public property, and has no more right to complain because he has been caught in the net of a newspaper correspondent than the fish who has swallowed the hook of an honest fisherman. The time has been when a levee at the White House was like a social gathering in a modest village. ”

“ Grant, one of the most amiable and excellent of women, looks as if she meant to make everybody welcome, and she puts so much hearty good feeling into a hand-grasp that she would certainly lose caste in the fashionable world if she was not safely intrenched behind an impregnable fortress. She is clad in a heavy, pearl-colored brocade, embroidered with field flowers and modestly trimmed with point lace. Mrs. Grant has never been accused of being a beauty, and yet there may be seen in her person a great many points which help to make the handsome woman. ”

“ It is a day of indescribable excitement in the Senate, vividly recalling the stormy times of secession, Andy Johnson’s impeachment, or the famous Electoral Commission. Standing-room on the floor or in the galleries can nowhere be found. Even the vast lobbies are crowded with a struggling mass of humanity, such as rarely gathers in the national temple which glorifies Capitol Hill. A face new and strange to the Washington public surveys the throng from the Vice-President’s chair and taps with uncertain hand the official gavel. ”

“ Instead of the American gentleman at his own table, where the example of private life should be the model for the public manners of a Republic, we have just enough of the old leaven of monarchy working that any child can smell the odor after a short stay in Washington. Nothing more terrible socially can be conceived than one of these cold, formal state dinners at the White House. It is not a company made up of breathing, living men and women, but is the masculine bones of the awful Department of State, with the feminine anatomy clutched for a brief hour from the highest judicial ermine. ”

“ With a Republican administration and a Congress made up of a majority of the same element, why are not life and free expression of opinion protected everywhere? Who is to blame for murder, rapine, and violence? Who is to blame for the pall which is slowly settling down upon the forces of the late grand army of the Republic? Is it not madness to talk about universal suffrage and universal amnesty when life and property are no more safe than in the South American republics? ”

“ Though a Senator can pipe his slogan on a thousand hills at home and carries a bonanza mine in each pocket, it will not add a feather to his Senatorial strength. Men endowed with business talent, even of the highest order, can find neither congenial nor agreeable work in the Senate. Only a natural orator or debater like Blaine or a great lawyer like Edmunds find their native element in the stormy waters of the Senate; and even Blaine was far more at home in the other wing of the Capitol, where his talents at all times shone as a star of the first magnitude. ”

“ Belknap, as she receives the host of dignitaries who have come to pay their respects to the great war power represented by her husband, is just as refreshing as pure water at the hillside. The bride of a year, a newcomer to the capital, she has not had time to be spoiled by adulation. The genuine, kind ways of private life she bears unspotted to her high social position, and the graceful manners which she brings with her from her Kentucky home remind us of the days of Mrs. Crittenden, when the distinguished women of that State were the fixed stars of society in Washington. ”

“ The fashionable wife of a Senator has not time to rest her corporeal frame before a fresh demand is made upon her nervous and vital forces. In other cities of the Union the mansions of the opulent and hospitable are thrown open because the host and hostess desire to see their guests. In Washington this order of things is reversed. Entertainments are official instead of social, and the magnificent card reception of a Cabinet minister is as cold and formal as a President’s levee. Receptions of every kind seem to be cast in the same cruel and relentless mould. ”

“ These women, these wives of members of Congress, are not known to the fashionable world; they dare to live within their husband’s means, and have been known to appear at a full dress reception in plain black silk dress, and without the usual quantity of false hair. In the veins of such women runs the blue blood of the Republic, and their presence is as sweet as violets.
The arrival of Prince Arthur in Washington has created very little excitement, probably for the reason that every boy knows that he has a far better chance of being President than the royal scion has of being king. ”

“ The interior of the dome from the floor to the rotunda requires the pen of a genius to do justice to the so-called works of art found scattered in all directions. It is a long mathematical calculation to find out how many square inches of canvas have been ruined. A plaster caricature of our beloved Lincoln occupies the center of the floor, made by the tender hands of a youth of 17 summers. The fruit of genius, in all stages of the ripening process, its maturity forever arrested, lies gently decaying. It is enough to make the cheek of an American blush, if the spectacle were not so pitiful. ”

“ Senator Carpenter has a way of tying his collar, crushing down his hat, and bounding into the Senate with the same kind of abandon which resembles the action of a boy, while his laugh has all the music of youthful glee. His life has been a prolonged enjoyment of the admiration of women, because in him all ages, from romping girl to icy age, find something to adore. A handsome man when in perfect health is Senator Carpenter, but at present he is a good deal of a shadow as compared to his former self. ”

“ Suppose a crowd does gather in the Capitol, the most perfect order prevails, and there are so many police on duty that it is very easy to protect the Senate and push back the waves of humanity. The grocer’s wife, the humblest citizen, has just as much right to hear the impeachment trial as the wife or the friend of a Congressman; and when the galleries are properly filled, what hinders the police from meeting the late comers and turning their unwilling footsteps away? Anything that smacks of aristocracy or exclusiveness should instantly be put under the feet of every American citizen. ”

“ What a glorious casket! Away with the cane! The pallor of his countenance is a part of the uncanny mockery of the night. There is no better speaker on the floor of the Senate. His thoughts flow fresh, clear, sparkling, like water from a hill-side spring. It is true, Indiana is a benighted State, morally defective, as seen by her divorces; her territory swampy, with fever and ague a yearly crop. But which is the best harvest a State can yield? Why men, to be sure, and when this fact is considered Indiana need not feel ashamed of herself. ”

“ Never within memory, not even during the extravagance of the late war, have so many costly costumes adorned the persons of our American women as the present winter in Washington. And the Capitol, with its oriental luxuriance, seems a fitting place for the grand display. A handsome blonde, enveloped in royal purple velvet, without being relieved by so much as a shadow of any other color or material, brings the words of the Psalmist to all thoughtful minds: “They toil not, neither do they spin (or write) , yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” ”

“ It is true the Senate chamber could not hold the masses, but the national square contains room enough for all, and is it not time these old relics [97] of another age were packed in the dust, like so many small clothes outgrown by the country? It is the royal people who are the sovereigns, and who has the right at any time to push them from their own marble temples with glittering bayonets? Soldiers are machinery to be used in time of war, and not engines of power in days of peace to thrust the cold steel into the breasts of loyal citizens. ”

“ And now I come to the ladies who grace and honor with their presence the national Capitol. How shall I describe these beautiful human butterflies in glaring hoops and gig-top bonnets, curls and perfumery? If the eyes of the traveler ache to behold in a solid mass the different strata of American society, let him visit the national Capitol when Ben Wade is going to make a speech. Nobody from the White House! These ladies have a good old-fashioned way of staying at home. (Wonder if they dry their clothes in the East Room as good queen Abigail used to do?) ”

“ Just at this magic hour when the light and the darkness were quarreling for supremacy we might have been found in the presence of one of our own countrywomen, a woman born in the great State of New York, educated, beautiful, elegantly attired, and yet there seemed to be no common platform upon which we could meet and converse, for our ideas ran in grooves as far apart as thought can separate. ”

“ They sail into the gentlemen’s gallery like a real “man of war,” shake out the silken, feathery crinoline, rub their little gloved hands in an ecstasy of delight, and while perching their heads significantly on one side, gaze sorrowfully at the few forlorn men stranded amongst their number, either through accident or to prove to the world that the genus man under the most trying circumstances is not extinct. As the Senate clock points to the hour of 1, Senator Wade leaves the chair, and Chief Justice Chase, robed in his judicial drapery, enters at a side door and takes the vacant seat. ”

“ Have they forgotten the fact that they have a Southern President? Andrew Johnson is a man. Andrew Johnson is human. This is proved by his wise and decorous behavior on inauguration day, by his kindness of heart to the down-trodden, and by his willingness to grant pardons to those who humble themselves so much as to ask it. Isn’t his adopted State shivering out in the cold, and his own flesh and blood by marriage denied admittance to Congress—said flesh and blood holding credentials in his hands the genuineness of which cannot for a moment be doubted? ”

“ Tall and broad, both round and square, a quivering mass of concentrated sensuality, bold enough to appear in public with the scarlet woman on his arm, a heroism which daunts the courage of the vilest of his own sex, not content with his already princely gains he now seeks, like the late Jim Fisk, to lay a whole continent under his avaricious tribute. Said a member of Congress: “He can draw his check for hundreds of thousands of dollars; everything which is in the market he can buy.” During his life the time is too short for the people to learn how to checkmate him. ”

“ The dreamy twilight which envelops the city during every recess of Congress has settled upon Washington. During the small hours of the morning the tardy Senators have folded their tents and to-day they are stealing away. Spring, clean and fresh as a mermaid, trips daintily along our broad highways. The flowers are opening their pretty eyes; the zephyrs greet us sweet as the breath of love, and all nature conspires to lead the mind into the luxurious revels of an Oriental extravaganza. The modern Caliph, Brigham Young, of Utah, has sent his beloved Zobedie to Washington, and to-day at 11 a. ”

“ History is full of martyred women who have been used to crush obnoxious men. When Katharine Chase Sprague was the daughter of the Chief Justice and the wife of a United States Senator she appeared in the social heavens with the calmness and precision of a fixed star. Sunshine friends have deserted her, but the star does not waver in its course. It is the same haughty Katharine, despoiled of her throne, as true a woman to-day as when surrounded by her fawning flatterers. It is the flatterers of the Tuileries that have changed, and not the Empress Eugenie. ”

“ A large lobby is engaged to get Congress to build a new White House, because the present one is not large enough “to entertain.” Could we build a house large enough for this purpose, for why should the few be invited and the great mass of voters left out in the cold? Each State is asked to build houses and furnish them for their Senators in order that these gentlemen may “entertain.” Who will pay for the oyster patties, the porcelain and champagne when the great new White House dots Meridian Hill, and the States enter into competition for the grandeur of the Senatorial castle? ”