At the foot of the Capitol, itself beautiful even then, were desolate waste lands being reserved for some ultimate Botanical Gardens, and a few miserable shack-like boarding-houses.[22] “Everybody knows that Washington has a capitol,” wrote a satirical English observer, “but the misfortune is that the capitol wants a city. There it stands, reminding you of a general without an army, only surrounded and followed by a parcel of ragged little dirty boys; for such is the appearance of the dirty, straggling, ill-built houses which lie at the foot of it.”[23] Where the Smithsonian Institution has long stood were innumerable quagmires reeking with miasma.[24] About the President’s Mansion, a few pretentious houses, several still handsome homes after almost a century, had been built, and in this section, and in Georgetown, lived the people of fashion and the diplomats. “The Co’t end,” it was called. At the four corners of the Mansion of the Presidents stood the plain brick buildings occupied by the State, Treasury, War, and Navy Departments. On Capitol Hill a few good houses had been erected, especially on North A and New Jersey Avenue, South. Other than these, and those west of the White House, there was little but pastures and enclosed fields in the eastern, southeastern, and northeastern sections of the town.[25] East of Fourteenth Street, on the north side, but few houses had been built beyond F Street, and the “country home” of William H. Crawford, at the northeast corner of Fourteenth Street and Massachusetts Avenue, was still considered as remote from town as on that winter day after his defeat for the Presidency when no callers were expected because of the heavy snow.[26]
Looking down upon the little town from the skylight of the Capitol, Harriet Martineau could plainly discern the “seven theoretical avenues,” but with the exception of Pennsylvania, all were “bare and forlorn,” and the city which has become one of the most beautiful and impressive in the world could then present to the naked eye only “a few mean houses dotted about, the sheds of the navy yard on one bank of the Potomac, and three or four villas on the other.”[27] With the streets full of ruts, the sidewalks dotted with pools of muddy water, or in places overgrown with grass, with cows pasturing on many of the streets now lined with elegant homes, and challenging the right of way with Marshall or Clay or Jackson, it is not surprising that foreigners, even as late as the Thirties, were moved to imitate the sarcasm of Tom Moore. The difficulties of locomotion kept the pedestrian’s eyes upon the ground, and the inconveniences, in making calls, of crossing ditches and stiles, and walking alternately upon grass and pavement, and striking across fields to reach a street, were more noticeable than the noble trees that lined the avenues.[28] Wretched enough in the daytime, the poorly lighted streets at night were utterly impossible. “As for lights,” wrote a contemporary, “if the pedestrian did not provide and carry his own, he was in danger of discovering every mud-hole and sounding its depths.”[29] More nearly possible to the fastidious were the narrower streets of Georgetown, with its more imposing and interesting houses, and more select society, where many of the statesmen lived, and not a few of the Government clerks, who rode horseback to the departments in the morning.
Even in the Thirties there were many beautiful drives and walks in the vicinity of Washington, and a few houses that were impressive to even the most critical English visitor. Visible for many miles, and easily seen from the town, loomed the pillared white mansion of Arlington, then the home of George Washington Custis, to which many of the aristocrats of the capital frequently found their way. There, during the Jacksonian period, Robert E. Lee, standing in the room, whence, across the river, he could see the Capitol building, was united in marriage to the daughter of the house.[30] Within the city the most imposing mansions were those of John Tayloe, at Eighteenth Street and New York Avenue, designed by Thornton, and even then rich in political and social memories,[31] and the handsome residence of John Van Ness, the work of Latrobe, built at a cost of sixty thousand dollars to make a fit setting for the charm and beauty of Marcia Burns, at the foot of Seventeenth Street, on the banks of the Potomac. From the doorstep the master and his guests could watch the ships from across the sea mooring to the docks of Alexandria, and the merchantmen, bound for the port of Georgetown, laden with the riches of the West Indies.
The tourist in the Washington of the Thirties did not have the opportunity for sight-seeing that means so much to the capital visitor of to-day. Aside from the Capitol and the White House, there were no public buildings of architectural distinction. The churches had “nothing about them to attract attention,” and while St. John’s on Lafayette Square was then summoning to worship, it did not at that time have the virtue of quaintness or the mellowness of historical memories. A visit to the Patent Office was customarily made, and most tourists found something to interest them in the museum of the State Department, with its portraits of the Indian chiefs who had visited Washington.[32] Occasionally the venturesome would ascend to the skylight of the Capitol to survey the straggling and dreary town from the height.[33] But always there was the dignified and stately white building of the lawmakers and of the Supreme Court, and thither tourists and citizens, men and women, daily found their way for the entertainment that never failed. Surrounded by its terraces, its well-kept lawns, its profusion of shrubbery, the visitor reached the entrance over its “beautifully gravelled walks,”[34] and entered the rotunda with its four Trumbull paintings of Revolutionary scenes, to be more impressed with the vacant spaces for four more, and the explanation that “Congress cannot decide on what artist to confer the honor.”[35] He would not fail to be delighted with the classic little Senate Chamber, redolent of the genius of Latrobe, and with the ease with which he might ignore the tiny gallery to find a hearty welcome on the floor. If a foreigner, he would be surprised to find a constant stream of fashionable ladies entering the chamber, crowding the Senators, accepting their seats, and attracting attention with their “waving plumes glittering with all the colors of the rainbow, and causing no little bustle.”[36] There he would see Van Buren or Calhoun in the chair, and on the floor he would want to have Webster, Clay, Benton, Forsyth, Preston, and Ewing pointed out. And perhaps, like Miss Martineau, he would leave with the impression that he had “seen no assembly of chosen men and no company of the high born, invested with the antique dignities of an antique realm, half so imposing to the imagination as this collection of stout-souled, full-grown, original men brought together on the ground of their supposed sufficiency, to work out the will of their diverse constituencies.”[37]
Having seen the Senate, he would seek the House of Representatives. Inquiring his way to the Strangers’ Gallery from the rotunda, he would be directed to a narrow stairs, and, on ascending, would find himself in a large room of many columns, the work of the architect of the Senate, looking down upon the seats of members arranged in concentric rows. Thence he would look down upon the bald head of the venerable Adams, the anæmic figure of Polk, the handsome form of Binney, and the ludicrous conglomeration of garbs representing the diverse tastes of the tailors of New York and the wilderness. If acquainted with one of the members, the visitor might be invited to the corridor behind the Speaker’s desk, fitted with seats and sofas drawn about the fireplace at either end, where members and their guests were wont to lounge and smoke.[38] Having satisfied himself with the chambers of the lawmakers, the visitor would want to see the tribunal of interpretation, said by some to have more power in determining the law of the land than the members of Congress, and to observe the famous Marshall on the Supreme Bench. Descending to the basement of the Capitol, immediately under the Senate, he would be shown into a small plain room with low ceiling, and “a certain cellar-like aspect which is not pleasant,”[39] and would probably be a little shocked at the figure of Justice, “a wooden figure with the eyes unfilleted, and grasping the scales like a groceress.”[40] On cushioned sofas, on either side of the room, he might, if a favorite orator were making an argument, see gayly dressed ladies—for, like the Senate Chamber, the court was one of the fashionable resorts of the Thirties. But there, he would find dignity and quiet and decorum, in striking contrast with most of the American courts of that generation.[41] If fortunate, he might listen to the reading of a decision by Marshall, and observe Butler, the Attorney-General, “his fingers playing among his papers, his thick black eyes and thin, tremulous lips for once fixed, his small face pale with thought,” contrasting with the more composed countenances of Clay and Webster.[42]
In the days of Jackson, comparatively few families had a permanent residence in Washington, and to an English visitor the town had the appearance of a watering-place.[43] Many Senators and Representatives considered it so impossible that they left their families at home.[44] Attorney-General Butler at first refused to consider a position in the Cabinet because “Mrs. Butler did not like the idea of bringing her daughters up here.”[45] When the wives and daughters did accompany the statesmen to the capital, it was the custom, with such as could afford to maintain an establishment, to take a house. These usually purchased, albeit many of the more desirable residences that could be leased were not for sale. An establishment could be maintained at a surprisingly low cost. Houses “suitable for the purposes of genteel people” could be had for from $50 to $300 a year, and even the large mansions, many of them standing and still occupied by fashionable families after almost a century, could be had for from $500 to $800 a year.[46] The servant problem did not exist, for domestics could be employed in abundance for $4 a month.[47] The Southerners, bringing their slaves with them, or buying them in the slave market at Alexandria, were able to entertain with a lavish display which set the pace socially, and made the Southern dominance easy. Foreigners were impressed, after hearing a senatorial orator rhapsodize in the Senate over the blessings of American liberty, to see him driven from the Capitol after his oration by one of his family slaves.[48] Others, not wishing to be burdened with a house, lived in the hotels, where other people’s slaves waited upon them. In these, too, the cost of living was low, the leading hostelries taking guests at $1.75 a day, $10 a week, or $35 a month. Transients sat down to tables fairly groaning with food, and with decanters of brandy and whiskey at their elbows, free at these prices. The guest, in his room, could order real Madeira for $3 a bottle, sherry, brandy, and gin for $1.50, and Jamaica rum for $1. The statesman, leaving his hotel quarters for the Senate or the House, could, if he wished, pause at the bar of the hostelry for a toddy of unadulterated liquor and lump sugar for twelve and a half cents.[49] But the greater part of the public men lived in boarding-houses, and the “Intelligencer,” the “Globe,” and the “Telegraph” filled columns, at the beginning of congressional sessions, with the enticing advertisements of the landladies. Some few of these houses, such as Dawson’s, associated with celebrities, live in history, but the majority were small, shabby, and uncomfortable. In these, however, romances sometimes blossomed, and the barmaid of one presided for a time over the establishment of a Cabinet member, and the landlady of another over the household of a Senator who aspired to the Presidency.[50]
Out of this life in hotels and boarding-houses, during the Jacksonian period, came the custom of statesmen forming themselves and families into “messes,” each “mess” having a table to itself and contracting with the landlady or landlord for a caterer. In this way the lawgivers were socially grouped according to their intellectual and financial standing, and some of these “messes” were famous in their day. Friendships were formed that survived all the vicissitudes of time and political change. One of these, known as the “Woodbury mess,” consisted of such a notable coterie of brilliancy and genius as Calhoun, John Randolph, Tazewell, Burges, and Verplanck. About the table many celebrated measures were conceived and the strategy of many a fight was planned.[51] According to the law of the “mess” a member might invite a guest only with the consent of all the others, and it was understood that a failure to get unanimous consent should not be resented. Occasionally the guests were permitted to contribute something to the usual outlay. Daniel Webster was glad enough to pay his way on such occasions. The venerable Adams, who had a comfortable home on F Street[52] and was not considered a notably social animal, delighted to join his most interesting colleagues at the boarding-house or hotel table. “I dined with John C. Calhoun at Dawson’s,” he recorded. “Mr. Preston, the other Senator from South Carolina, and his wife were there, and Mangum, Southard, Sprague of Maine. Company sat late at table and the conversation was chiefly upon politics. The company was, at this time, adversaries of the present Administration—most of them were adversaries to the last.”[53] Three days later: “Dined with Benj. Gorham and Edward Everett. Calhoun, Preston, Clay, and others were there.”[54] The next evening: “Dined with Colonel Robert B. Campbell of S.C. at his lodgings at Gadsby’s”; thirty people, including Calhoun and Preston, in attendance.[55]
It was inevitable that in a little city of twenty thousand, consisting in part of the cleverest men and women in the Republic, and devoted wholly to politics and society, celebrated sojourners should be fêted and lionized. Foreigners visiting America in the Thirties, and recording their impressions, have all paid tribute to the hospitality and brilliance of the capital, as compared with other and larger cities. The most famous of the visitors was Harriet Martineau, who arrived in the summer of 1834, in her thirty-second year, and in the full flush of her literary fame. Introduced to the President and the Senate leaders by the British Minister, it was the rumor at the time that six hundred people called upon her the day after her arrival.[56] “The drollest part of the whole,” wrote a lady of fashion, “is that these crowds, at least in Washington, go to see the lion and nothing else. I have not met with an individual, except Mrs. Seaton and her mother,[57] who have read any of her works, or know for what she is celebrated. Our most fashionable exclusive,[58] Mrs. Tayloe, said she intended to call, and asked what were the novels she had written, and if they were pretty. The gentlemen laugh at a woman’s writing on political economy. Not one of them has the least idea of her work.”[59] But the fluency of the lioness captivated the men. Among her constant visitors were Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Preston, and Justice Story. When she entered the Senate Chamber or the Supreme Court room, the leading men of the Nation left their seats to pay her homage. Calhoun’s “mess” gave her a dinner. Clay insisted that at Lexington she should occupy his house at Ashland, and that she should be the guest of his daughter in New Orleans. Calhoun assured her triumph in Charleston through letters to his friends. “No stranger except Lafayette ever received such universal and marked testimonies of regard,” wrote a sympathetic observer of her reception.[60] When Thomas Hamilton, the English writer, author of “Men and Manners in America,” reached Washington, a member of Congress escorted him, uninvited, to a ball on the evening of his arrival, with the assurance that the “intrusion would be welcome.” After passing “through a formidable array of introductions to distinguished persons, and after four hours of almost unbroken conversation, much of which could not be carried on without considerable expenditure of thought,” the weary tourist, at three o’clock in the morning, rejoiced to find himself “stretched in a comfortable bed at Gadsby’s.”[61] The experiences of Hamilton and Miss Martineau were not exceptional.
Nor were American literary celebrities left in doubt as to the cordiality of their welcome in the best social circles of the capital. The winter of 1833 found Washington Irving in Washington, where he was not unfamiliar with the leading houses, living “in the neighborhood of the McLanes” and making “use of a quiet corner and a little interval of leisure to exercise a long neglected pen.”[62] Despite the flood of invitations, he found time to report to Van Buren the attitude of McLane, and the hostilities, in select circles, to Kendall. “Washington Irving is here now,” wrote John Tyler to his daughter. “He stands at the head of our literati. His productions are numerous and well spoken of in Europe.”[63] Nor did society in those days lack their chronicler, for the first society letters from Washington were those of Nathaniel P. Willis written for the “New York Mirror.” At that time he was “a foppish, slender young man, with a profusion of curly light hair, and was always dressed in the height of fashion.”[64] The doors of the most exclusive homes were thrown open to this elegant youth, who, having traveled in Europe, affected a contempt for the masses. He became the faithful Pepys of the period, describing society people and events with liveliness and fancy, and imparting a strange interest to the most insignificant occurrences through the art of the telling. It was during this period, too, that the political letters of Washington correspondents were introduced into American journalism. Matthew L. Davis, famous as the “Genevese Traveller” of the London “Times,” and as the capital correspondent of the “New York Courier and Enquirer,” was for years the confidant and companion of Senators, Justices, and Presidents. And James Gordon Bennett, young and clever, appeared upon the scene to give a new and spicy touch to reporting with his Walpolean letters of wit, sarcasm, and personalities, for the New York paper of James Watson Webb. Along with the democratization of politics in the Thirties went a popularization of the methods of the press.
The amusements of the Washington of this time were, for the most part, crude. The theater featured players scarcely celebrated in their own day, and most of the plays presented have happily been long since forgotten. Even these were interspersed with songs and farce acts. In 1820 the Washington Theater had been built, and hither, at long intervals, came celebrated artists, but they came “like angels, few and far between.” From his rustic retreat in Maryland the elder Booth, half mad, all genius, occasionally emerged to curdle the blood of the statesmen and their families with his intense interpretations of the Shakesperian tragedies. From a Booth night Jackson was seldom absent. But of all the artists who played in the capital none created such a furor as Fanny Kemble. The elder statesmen were captivated by her art and charm. John Marshall and Justice Story were regular attendants, and the Chief Justice was lustily cheered as he entered the box. When she played Mrs. Haller in “The Stranger,” and the audience was moved to tears, “the Chief Justice shed them in common with the younger eyes.”[65] Inspiring audiences—those of the Thirties, with Marshall, Jackson, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun in the boxes or the pit. Great, not only in genius, but in their fresh capacity to enjoy, and when one of the most learned Justices of the Supreme Court could be moved to poesy in paying tribute to an actress’s art.[66]