CHAPTER XVIII. WASHINGTON AFTER THE SESSION.
The leaf that is lodged in some sunny dell, after
drifting on the whirlwind—the Indian's canoe, after it
has shot the rapids—the drop of water that has struggled
out from the Phlegethon of Niagara, and sleeps
on the tranquil bosom of Ontario—are faint images
of contrast and repose, compared with a Washingtonian
after the session. I have read somewhere, in an
oriental tale, that a lover, having agreed to share his
life with his dying mistress, took her place in the
grave six months in the year. In Bagdad it might
have been a sacrifice. In Washington I could conceive
such an arrangement to make very little difference.
Nothing is done leisurely in our country; and, by
the haste with which everybody rushes to the rail-road
the morning after the rising of congress, you
would fancy that the cars, like Cinderella's coach,
would be changed into pumpkins at the stroke of
twelve. The town was evacuated in a day. On the
fifth of March a placard was sent back by the innkeepers
at Baltimore, declaring that there was not so
much as a garret to be had in that city, and imploring
gentlemen and ladies to remain quietly at Washington
for twenty-four hours. The railroad engine, twice a
day, tugged and puffed away through the hills, drawing
after it, on its sinuous course, a train of brick-colored
cars, that resembled the fabulous red dragon trailing
its slimy length through the valley of Crete. The
gentlemen who sit by the fire in the bar-room at
Gadsby's, like Theodore Hook's secretary, who could
hear his master write “Yours faithfully” in the next
room, learned to distinguish “Received payment”
from “Sundries,” by listening to the ceaseless scratch
of the bookkeeper. The ticket-office at the depot
was a scene of struggle and confusion between those
who wanted places; while, looking their last on these
vanishing paymasters, stood hundreds of tatterdemalions,
white, yellow, and black, with their hands in
their pockets, and (if sincere regret at their departure
could have wrung it forth) a tear in their eye. The
bell rang, and the six hundred departures flocked to
their places—young ladies, with long faces, leaving
the delights of Washington for the dull repose of the
country—their lovers, with longer faces, trying, in vain,
to solve the X quantity expressed by the aforesaid
“Sundries” in their bill—and members of congress
with long faces, too—for not one in twenty has “made
the impression” he expected; and he is moralizing
on the decline of the taste for eloquence, and on the
want of “golden opportunity” for the display of indignant
virtue!
Nothing but an army, or such a concourse of people
as collects to witness an inauguration, could ever make
Washington look populous. But when congress, and
its train of ten thousand casual visiters are gone, and
only the official and indigenous inhabitants remain,
Balbec, or Palmyra, with a dozen Arabs scattered
among its ruins, has less a look of desolation. The
few stragglers in the streets add to its loneliness—pro
ducing exactly the effect sometimes given to a woodland
solitude by the presence of a single bird. The
vast streets seem grown vaster and more disproportionate—
the houses seem straggling to greater distances—
the walk from the president's house to the capitol
seems twice as long—and new faces are seen here and
there, at the doors and windows—for cooks and innkeepers
that had never time to lounge, lounge now,
and their families take quiet possession of the unrented
front parlor. He who would be reminded of his departed
friends should walk down on the avenue. The
carpet, associated with so many pleasant recollections—
which has been pressed by the dainty feet of wits
and beauties—to tread on which was a privilege and
a delight—is displayed on a heap of old furniture, and
while its sacred defects are rudely scanned by the curious,
is knocked down, with all its memories, under the
hammer of the auctioneer. Tables, chairs, ottomans—
all linked with the same glowing recollections—go
for most unworthy prices; and while, humiliated with
the sight, you wonder at the artificial value given to
things by their possessors, you begin to wonder whether
your friends themselves, subjected to the same
searching valuation, would not be depreciated too!
Ten to one, if their characters were displayed like
their carpets, there would come to light defects as unsuspected!
The person to whom this desolation is the “unkindest
cut” is the hackney-coachman. “His vocation”
is emphatically gone! Gone is the dollar made
every successive half hour! Gone is the pleasant sum
in compound addition, done “in the head,” while waiting
at the doors of the public offices! Gone are the
short, but profitable, trips to the theatre! Gone the
four or five families, all taken the same evening to parties,
and each paying the item of “carriage from nine
till twelve!” Gone the absorbed politician, who would
rather give the five-dollar bill than wait for his change!
the lady who sends the driver to be paid at “the bar;”
the uplifted fingers, hither and thither, which embarrass
his choice of a fare—gone, all! The chop-fallen
coachy drives to the stand in the morning and drives
home at noon; he creeps up to Fuller's at a snailpace,
and, in very mockery of hope, asks the homeward-bound
clerk from the department if he wants a
coach! Night comes on, and his horses begin to believe
in the millenium—and the cobwebs are wove
over his whip-socket.
These changes, however, affect not unpleasantly the
diplomatic and official colony extending westward from
the president's. The inhabitants of this thin-sprinkled
settlement are away from the great thoroughfare, and
do not miss its crowds. The cessation of parties is to
them a relief from night-journeys, colds, card-leavings,
and much wear and tear of carriage-horses. They
live now in dressing-gowns and slippers, read the reviews
and the French papers, get their dinners comfortably
from the restaurateurs, and thank Heaven that
the capitol is locked up. The attachés grow fat, and
the despatches grow thin.
There are several reasons why Washington, till the
month of May, spite of all the drawbacks in the picture
delineated above, is a more agreeable residence
than the northern cities. In the first place, its climate
is at least a month earlier than that of New York, and,
in the spring, is delightful. The trees are at this moment
(the last week in March) bursting into buds;
open carriages are everywhere in use; walking in the
sun is oppressive; and for the last fortnight, this has
been a fair chronicle of the weather. Boston and
New York have been corroded with east winds, meantime,
and even so near as Baltimore, they are still
wrapped in cloaks and shawls. To those who, in
reckoning the comforts of life, agree with me in making
climate stand for nine tenths, this is powerful attraction.
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Then the country about Washington, the drives
and rides, are among the most lovely in the world,
the banks of Rock creek are a little wilderness of
beauty. More bright waters, more secluded bridlepaths,
more sunny and sheltered hill-sides, or finer
mingling of rock, hill, and valley, I never rode among.
Within a half hour's gallop, you have a sylvan retreat
of every variety of beauty, and in almost any direction;
and from this you come home (and this is not the
case with most sylvan rides) to an excellent French
dinner and agreeable society, if you like it. You have
all the seclusion of a rural town, and none of its petty
politics and scandal—all the means and appliances of
a large metropolis, and none of its exactions and limitations.
That which makes the charm of a city, and
that for which we seek the country, are equally here,
and the penalties of both are removed.
Until the reflux of population from the Rocky
mountains, I suppose Washington will never be a metropolis
of residence. But if it were an object with
the inhabitants to make it more so, the advantages I
have just enumerated, and a little outlay of capital and
enterprise, would certainly, in some degree, effect it.
People especially who come from Europe, or have
been accustomed to foreign modes of living, would be
glad to live near a society composed of such attractive
materials as the official and diplomatic persons at the
seat of government. That which keeps them away is,
principally, want of accommodation, and, in a less degree,
it is want of comfortable accommodation in the
other cities which drives them back to Europe. In
Washington you must either live at an hotel or a
boarding-house. In either case, the mode of life is
only endurable for the shortest possible period, and
the moment congress rises, every sufferer in these detestable
places is off for relief. The hotels are crowded
to suffocation; there is an utter want of privacy in
the arrangement of the suites of apartments; the service
is ill-ordered, and the prices out of all sense or
reason. You pay for that which you have not, and
you can not get by paying for it that which you want.
The boarding-house system is worse yet. To possess
but one room in privacy, and that opening on a
common passage; to be obliged to come to meals at
certain hours, with chance table companions, and no
place for a friend, and to live entirely in your bedroom
or in a public parlor, may truly be called as abominable
a routine as a gentleman could well suffer. Yet the
great majority of those who come to Washington are
in one or the other of these two categories.
The use of lodgings for strangers or transient residents
in the city does not, after all the descriptions in
books, seem at all understood in our country. This
is what Washington wants, but it is what every city in
the country wants generally. Let us describe it as if
it was never before heard of, and perhaps some enlightened
speculator may advance us half a century in
some of the cities, by creating this luxury.
Lodgings of the ordinary kind in Europe generally
consist of the apartments on one floor. The house,
we will suppose, consists of three stories above the
basement, and each floor contains a parlor, bedroom,
and dressing-room, with a small antechamber. (This
arrangement of rooms varies, of course, and a larger
family occupies two floors.) These three suites of
apartments are neatly furnished; bed-clothes, tablelinen,
and plate, if required, are found by the proprietor,
and in the basement story usually lives a man and
his wife, who attend to the service of the lodgers;
i. e., bring water, answer the door-bell, take in letters,
keep the rooms in order, make the fires, and, if it is
wished, do any little cookery in case of sickness.
These people are paid by the proprietor, but receive a
fee for extra service, and a small gratuity, at departure,
from the lodger. It should be added to this, that it is
not infra. dig. to live in the second or third story.
In connexion with lodgings, there must be of course
a cook or restaurateur within a quarter of a mile.
The stranger agrees with him for his dinner, to consist
of so many dishes, and to be sent to him at a certain
hour. He gives notice in the morning if he dines out,
buys his own wine of the wine-merchant, and thus
saves two heavy items of overcharge in the hotel or
boarding-house. His own servant makes his tea or
coffee (and for this purpose has access to the fire in
the basement), and does all personal service, such as
brushing clothes, waiting at table, going on errands,
&c., &c. The stranger comes in, in short, at a moment's
warning, brings nothing but his servant and
baggage, and finds himself in five minutes at home,
his apartments private, and every comfort and convenience
as completely about him as if he had lived
there for years.
At from ten to fourteen dollars a week, such apartments
would pay the proprietor handsomely, and afford
a reasonable luxury to the lodger. A cook would
make a good thing of sending in a plain dinner for a
dollar a head (or more if the dinner were more expensive),
and at this rate, a family of two or more persons
might have a hundred times the comfort now enjoyed
at hotels, at certainly half the cost.
We have been seduced into a very unsentimental
chapter of “ways and means,” but we trust the suggestions,
though containing nothing new, may not be
altogether without use. The want of some such thing
as we have recommended is daily and hourly felt and
complained of.
Some observer of nature offered a considerable reward
for two blades of striped grass exactly similar.
The infinite diversity, of which this is one instance,
exists in a thousand other features of nature, but in
none more strikingly than in the scenery of rivers.
What two in the world are alike! How often does
the attempt fail to compare the Hudson with the Rhine—
the two, perhaps, among celebrated rivers, which
are the nearest to a resemblance? Yet looking at the
first determination of a river's course, and the natural
operation of its search for the sea, one would suppose
that, in a thousand features, their valleys would scarce
be distinguishable.
I think, of all excitements in the world, that of the
first discovery and explanation of a noble river, must
be the most eager and enjoyable. Fancy “the bold
Englishman,” as the Dutch called Hendrich Hudson,
steering his little yacht, the Halve-Mane, for the first
time through the Highlands! Imagine his anxiety
for the channel forgotten as he gazed up at the towering
rocks, and round upon the green shores, and onward,
past point and opening bend, miles away into the
heart of the country; yet with no lessening of the
glorious stream beneath him, and no decrease of
promise in the bold and luxuriant shores! Picture
him lying at anchor below Newburgh, with the dark
pass of the “Wey-Gat” frowning behind him, the
lofty and blue Catskills beyond, and the hill-sides
around covered with the red lords of the soil, exhibiting
only less wonder than friendliness. And how
beautifully was the assurance of welcome expressed,
when the “very kind old man” brought a bunch of
arrows, and broke them before the stranger, to induce
him to partake fearlessly of his hospitality!
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The qualities of the Hudson are those most likely
to impress a stranger. It chances felicitously that the
traveller's first entrance beyond the sea-board is usually
made by the steamer to Albany. The grand and imposing
outlines of rock and horizon answer to his anticipations
of the magnificence of a new world; and if
he finds smaller rivers and softer scenery beyond, it
strikes him but as a slighter lineament of a more enlarged
design. To the great majority of tastes, this,
too, is the scenery to live among. The stronger lines
of natural beauty affect most tastes; and there are
few who would select country residence by beauty at
all, who would not sacrifice something to their preference
for the neighborhood of sublime scenery. The
quiet, the merely rural—a thread of a rivulet instead
of a broad river—a small and secluded valley, rather
than a wide extent of view, bounded by bold mountains,
is the choice of but few. The Hudson, therefore,
stands usually foremost in men's aspirations for
escape from the turmoil of cities; but to my taste,
though there are none more desirable to see, there
are sweeter rivers to live upon.
I made one of a party, very lately, bound upon a
rambling excursion up and down some of the rivercourses
of New York. We had anticipated empty
boats, and an absence of all the gay company usually
found radiating from the city in June, and had made
up our minds for once to be contented with the study
of inanimate nature. Never were wiseheads more
mistaken. Our kind friend, Captain Dean, of the
Stevens, stood by his plank when we arrived, doing his
best to save the lives of the female portion of the
crowd rushing on board; and never, in the most palmy
days of the prosperity of our country, have we seen a
greater number of people on board a boat, nor a stronger
expression of that busy and thriving haste, which
is thought to be an exponent of national industry.
How those varlets of newsboys contrive to escape in
time, or escape at all, from being crushed or carried
off; how everybody's baggage gets on board, and
everybody's wife and child; how the hawsers are
slipped, and the boat got under way, in such a crowd
and such a crush, are matters understood, I suppose,
by Providence and the captain of the Stevens—but
they are beyond the comprehension of the passenger.
Having got out of hearing of “Here's the Star!”
“Buy the old major's paper, sir?” “Here's the Express!”
“Buy the New-Ery?” “Would you like a
New-Era, sir?” “Take a Sun, miss?” and a hundred
such deafening cries, to which New York has of
late years become subject, we drew breath and comparative
silence off the green shore of Hoboken, thanking
Heaven for even the repose of a steamboat, after
the babel of a metropolis. Stillness, like all other
things, is relative.
The passage of the Hudson is doomed to be be-written,
and we will not again swell its great multitude of
describers. Bound onward, we but gave a glance, in
passing, to romantic Undercliff and Cro'-Nest, hallowed
by the sweetest poetry our country has yet committed
to immortality; gave our malison to the black
smoke of iron-works defacing the green mantle of
nature, and our benison to every dweller on the shore
who has painted his fence white, and smoothed his
lawn to the river; and sooner than we used to do by
some five or six hours (ere railroads had supplanted
the ploughing and crawling coaches to Schenectady),
we fed our eyes on the slumbering and broad valley
of the Mohawk.
How startled must be the Naiad of this lovely river
to find her willowy form embraced between railroad
and canal! one intruder on either side of the bed so
sacredly overshaded! Pity but there were a new
knight of La Mancha to avenge the hamadryads and
water-nymphs of their wrongs from wood-cutters and
contractors! Where sleep Pan and vengeful Oread,
when a Yankee settler hews me down twenty woodnymphs
of a morning! There lie their bodies, limbless
trunks, on the banks of the Mohawk, yet no Dutchman
stands sprouting into leaves near by, nor woollen
jacket turning into bark, as in the retributive olden
time! We are abandoned of these gods of Arcady!
They like not the smoke of steam funnels!
Talking of smoke reminds me of ashes. Is there
no way of frequenting railroads without the loss of
one's eyes. Must one pay for velocity as dearly as
Cacus for his oxen? Really this new invention is a
blessing—to the oculists! Ten thousand small crystals
of carbon cutting right and left among the fine vessels
and delicate membranes of the eye, and all this amid
glorious scenery, where to go bandaged (as needs
must), is to slight the master-work of nature! Either
run your railroads away from the river courses, gentlemen
contractors, or find some other place than your
passengers' eyes to bestow your waste ashes! I have
heard of “lies in smiles,” but there's a lye in tears,
that touches the sensibilities more nearly!
There is a drowsy beauty in these German flats that
seems strangely profaned by a smoky monster whisking
along twenty miles in the hour. The gentle canalboat
was more homogeneous to the scene. The hills
lay off from the river in easy and sleepy curves, and
the amber Mohawk creeps down over its shallow gravel
with a deliberateness altogether and abominably out
of tune with the iron rails. Perhaps it is the rails out
of tune with the river—but any way there is a discord.
I am content to see the Mohawk, canal, and railroad
inclusive, but once a year.
We reached the head waters of the Chenango river,
by what Miss Martineau celebrates as an “exclusive
extra,” in an afternoon's ride from Utica. The latter
thrifty and hospitable town was as redolent of red
bricks and sunshine as usual; and the streets, to my
regret, had grown no narrower. They who laid out
the future legislative capital of New York, must have
been lovers of winter's wind and summer's sun. They
forgot the troubles of the near-sighted—(it requires
spectacles to read the signs or see the shops from one
side to the other); they forgot the perils of old women
and children in the wide crossings; they forgot the
pleasures of shelter and shade, of neighborly vis-à-vis,
of comfortable-lookingness. I maintain that Utica is
not a comfortable-looking town. It affects me like the
clown in the pantomime, when he sits down without
bending his legs—by mere straddling. I would not
say anything so ungracious if it were not to suggest a
remedy—a shady mall up and down the middle! What
a beautiful town it would be—like an old-fashioned
shirt bosom, with a frill of elms! Your children
would walk safely within the rails, and your country-neighbors
would expose their “sa'ace,” and cool their
tired oxen in the shade. We felt ourselves compensated
for paying nearly double price for our “extra,”
by the remarkable alacrity with which the coach came
to the door after the bargain was concluded, and the
politeness with which the “gentleman who made out
the way-bill,” acceded to our stipulation. He bowed
us off, expressed his happiness to serve us, and away
we went.
The Chenango, one of the largest tributaries to the
Susquehannah, began to show itself, like a small brook,
some fifteen or twenty miles from Utica. Its course
lay directly south—and the new canal kept along its
bank, as deserted, but a thousand times less beautiful
in its loneliness than the river, whose rambling curves
it seemed made to straighten. We were not in the
best humor, for our double-priced “extra” turned out
to be the regular stage; and while we were delivering
and waiting for mails, and taking in passengers, the
troop of idlers at tavern-doors amused themselves with
reading the imaginative production called our “extra
way-bill,” as it was transferred, with a sagacious wink,
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from one driver's hat to the other. I thought of
Paddy's sedan-chair, with the bottom out. “If it
were not for the name of the thing,” said he, as he
trotted along with a box over his head.
I say we were not in the best of humors with our
prompt and polite friend at Utica, but even through
these bilious spectacles, the Chenango was beautiful.
Its valley is wide and wild, and the reaches of the
capricious stream through the farms and woods along
which it loiters, were among the prettiest effects of
water scenery I have ever met. There is a strange
loneliness about it; and the small towns which were
sprinkled along the hundred miles of its course, seem
rather the poineers into a western wilderness, than
settlements so near the great thoroughfare to the lakes.
It is a delicious valley to travel through, barring
“corduroy.” Tre-men-dous! exclaims the traveller,
as the coach drops into a pit between two logs, and
surges up again—Heaven only knows how. And, as
my fellow-passenger remarked, it is a wonder the road
does not echo—“tree-mend-us!”
Five miles before reaching the Susquehannah, the
road began to mend, the hills and valleys assumed the
smile of cultivation, and the scenery before us took a
bolder and broader outline. The Chenango came
down full and sunny to her junction, like the bride,
who is most lovely when just losing her virgin name,
and pouring the wealth of her whole existence into
the bosom of another; and, untroubled with his new
burden, the lordly Susquehannah kept on his majestic
way, a type of such vainly-dreaded, but easily-borne
responsibilities.
At Binghamton, we turned our course down the
Susquehannah. This delicious word, in the Indian
tongue, describes its peculiar and constant windings,
and I venture to say that on no river in the world are
the grand and beautiful in scenery so gloriously mixed.
The road to Owego follows the course of the valley
rather than of the river, but the silver curves are constantly
in view; and, from every slight elevation, the
majestic windings are seen—like the wanderings of a
vein, gleaming through green fringes of trees, and
circling the bright islands which occasionally divide
their waters. It is a swift river, and singularly living
and joyous in its expression.
At Owego there is a remarkable combination of bold
scenery and habitable plain. One of those small,
bright rivers, which are called “creeks” in this country,
comes in with its valley at right angles, to the vale
and stream of the Susquehannah, forming a star with
three rays, or a plain with three radiating valleys, or a
city (in the future, perhaps), with three magnificent
exits and entrances. The angle is a round mountain,
some four or five hundred feet in height, which kneels
fairly down at the meeting of the two streams, while
another round mountain, of an easy acclivity, lifts
gracefully from the opposite bank, as if rising from
the same act of homage to Nature. Below the town
and above it, the mountains, for the first time, give in
to the exact shape of the river's short and capricious
course; and the plain on which the town stands, is
enclosed between two amphitheatres of lofty hills,
shaped with the regularity and even edge of a coliseum,
and resembling the two halves of a leaf-lined vase,
struck apart by a twisted wand of silver.
Owego creek should have a prettier name—for its
small vale is the soul and essence of loveliness. A
meadow of a mile in breadth, fertile, soft, and sprinkled
with stately trees, furnishes a bed for its swift
windings; and from the edge of this new tempe, on
the southern side, rise three steppes, or natural terraces,
over the highest of which the forest rears its
head, and looks in upon the meeting of the rivers,
while down the sides, terrace by terrace, leap the small
streamlets from the mountain-springs, forming each
again its own smaller dimple in this loveliest face of
Nature.
There are more romantic, wilder places than this
in the world, but none on earth more habitably beautiful.
In these broad valleys, where the grain-fields,
and the meadows, and the sunny farms, are walled in
by glorious mountain sides, not obtrusively near, yet
by their noble and wondrous outlines, giving a perpetual
refreshment, and an hourly-changing feast to
the eye—in these valleys, a man's household gods
yearn for an altar. Here are mountains that, to look
on but once, “become a feeling”—a river at whose
grandeur to marvel—and a hundred streamlets to lace
about the heart. Here are fertile fields, nodding with
grain; “a thousand cattle” grazing on the hills—here
is assembled together, in one wondrous centre, a specimen
of every most loved lineament of Nature. Here
would I have a home! Give me a cottage by one of
these shining streamlets—upon one of these terraces,
that seem steps to Olympus, and let me ramble over
these mountain sides, while my flowers are growing,
and my head silvering in tranquil happiness. He
whose Penates would not root ineradicably here, has
no heart for a home, nor senses for the glory of Nature!
END OF LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL.
