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 inn-keepers 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 book-keeper. 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—producing 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 inn-keepers 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 snail-pace, 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 millennium—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.
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 bridle-paths, 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, table-linen, 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 doorbell, 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.
ARTICLES FROM THE JOURNAL,
OF WHICH THE AUTHOR WAS EDITOR,
PUBLISHED IN NEW YORK.
LETTERS FROM ENGLAND AND THE CONTINENT IN 1845–’46.