Walks about Washington

by Francis E. Leupp

We enter the building between the bronze doors designed by Randolph Rogers, commonly called the “Columbus doors” because they tell, in a series of reliefs, the life story of the discoverer. In the rotunda, the center of the building, we find ourselves surrounded by paintings and sculpture dealing with historical subjects. Hung at even intervals are eight large canvases, of which four are by John Trumbull, a portrait painter who was also an officer of the patriot army in the Revolution. For the one representing the signing of the Declaration of Independence, old John Randolph could find no better designation than “the shin piece,” because “such a collection of legs never before came together in any one picture”; but a more friendly commentator has discovered by actual count that, of the nearly fifty figures, only ten show either legs or feet, the rest being relieved by drapery or deep shadows. In another, the “Resignation of General Washington,” are the figures of two girls, which have given rise to many a discussion among sightseers because the pair seem to have five hands between them; I shall not attempt to solve the problem.

The paintings of the “Landing of Columbus,” “Discovery of the Mississippi,” “Baptism of Pocahontas,” and “Embarkation of the Pilgrims” are from the brushes of Vanderlyn, Powell, Chapman, and Weir respectively. Their subjects permit of picturesque costumes and dramatic groupings which Trumbull could not use. But whatever his limitations, we owe to him, probably more than to any other one man, the rotunda as we know it. Bulfinch had under consideration various schemes of treatment for the center of the building, but Trumbull’s foremost thought was of a good light for his pictures; and, as he was a valued friend of the architect, the pertinacity with which he urged this design won the day.

Four doors pierce the circular chamber, and over each is a rectangle of sculpture in high relief. As works of art, the quartet are little short of execrable, but as milestones on the path of esthetic development in America they have a charm of their own. All were the work of Italian sculptors, whose acquaintance with our domestic history and concerns was presumptively scant; and when the tablet showing William Penn negotiating his treaty with the Indians was first exhibited to the public, the head of the gentle Quaker was adorned with a cocked hat and military queue. It was necessary, therefore, to decapitate him and set upon his shoulders the head he now wears. All four reliefs deal with our aboriginal problem. In one, the Indians are welcoming the Pilgrim Fathers with a gift of corn; in another, they are conveying to Penn the land on which Philadelphia now stands; in a third, Pocahontas is saving the life of Captain John Smith; while in the fourth, Caucasian civilization, personified in Daniel Boone, has already killed one Indian and is engaged in bloody combat with a second. The series drew from an old chief the comment that they told the true story of the way the white race had repaid the hospitality of the red race by exterminating it; and another observer, pointing to the huddled-up body of the fallen Indian under Boone’s foot, remarked: “The white man has not left the Indian land enough even to die on!”

Running all around the circular wall and immediately under the dome opening, we note an unfinished frieze, so done in neutral tints as to convey the suggestion of relief sculpture, depicting the most notable events in the history of America from the landing of Columbus to the discovery of gold in California. Six of the fourteen scenes were painted by Constantino Brumidi, and the others after sketches left by him. It was an ambitious design, in view of the rapidity with which history is made now and the brevity of the space. Only a trifling gap is left for all that has happened in the last sixty years or so, and Congress has had more than one debate over what ought to be crowded into the record of this interval. Among the subjects considered have been the emancipation of the slaves, the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, and the freeing of Cuba; but the proposal which has met with most favor is a symbolic treatment of the Civil War, not as a breach between the sections but as the cementing of a stronger bond. This was set aside because the design outlined was a representation of Grant and Lee clasping hands under the Appomattox apple tree—the objection being based on the discovery that the apple tree existed only in fiction, and that the real meeting-place of the two commanders was too unromantic for artistic use.

From the frieze our eyes ascend to the canopy, or inner lining of the dome, which hangs above us like an

Survivals from “Before the War”

inverted bowl enclosing an elaborate fresco in colors. This, too, is from the brush of Brumidi. Although it is ostensibly allegorical, many of its sixty-three human faces are recognizable portraits, including those of Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Robert Morris, Samuel F. B. Morse, Robert Fulton, and Thomas U. Walter, who was architect of the Capitol while the work was in progress. In a group representing War, with an armed goddess of liberty for its center, are heads resembling those of Jefferson Davis, Alexander H. Stephens, Robert E. Lee, and John B. Floyd. Whether the likenesses are there by the deliberate intent of the artist, or merely by accident, no one will ever know, as Brumidi died in 1880.

The door on our left leads, through a short corridor, into what was once the Hall of Representatives. It is now known officially as the Hall of Statuary, but to irreverent critics as the National Chamber of Horrors, because of the varied assortment of marble and bronze images collected there. The room is semicircular, with a domed ceiling, a great arch and supporting pillars on its flat side, and a colonnade lining the horseshoe. During the forty years that it was used for legislative purposes, a rostrum holding the Speaker’s table and chair filled the arch, and the desks of the Representatives were arranged in concentric curves to face it. Overlooking the chamber, and following most of the rear wall, ran a narrow gallery for visitors who did not enjoy the privileges of the floor; it derived an air of comfort from curtains hung between the columns of the colonnade and looped back so as to produce the effect of a tier of opera-boxes. Stay in the room a while, and you will understand why, for many years, the complaint of its acoustic properties was so constant, and a demand for a better hall so strong: it is a wonderful whispering gallery. There are spots in the tiled pavement where you can stand and hear the slightest sound you make come back from some point before or behind you, over your head, or under your feet. Go to the place where the semicircle ends on one side of the room, and I will go to the corresponding place on the other side, and, by speaking into the vertical fissures between the wall and the pillars at the two extremities of the great arch, we can converse in the lowest tones with as much ease as if we were side by side instead of a hundred feet apart.

A vivid imagination can people this hall with ghosts. Here some of the fiercest forensic battles were fought in early days over protective tariffs, internal improvements, and, above all, negro slavery. Here it was that Randolph’s piping voice denounced the Northern “dough-faces,” and here Wilmot launched his historic proviso. Here Alexander H. Stephens made his last effort to resuscitate the moribund Whig party, while Abraham Lincoln listened to his argument from a seat on the same side of the chamber. Here John Quincy Adams drew upon himself the fire of an incensed opposition by championing the people’s right to petition Congress, and here he fell to the floor a dying paralytic. Here John Marshall, the greatest of our Chief Justices, administered the oath of office to two early Presidents. And here it was that Henry Clay, as Speaker, delivered his address of welcome to Lafayette as the guest of the nation, and listened with becoming gravity to the Marquis’s response—which, as it afterward appeared, owed its excellent English to the fact that Clay had composed it for the most part himself.