Early the next morning I found myself safely seated in one of the huge railroad cars which leave Baltimore every morning for Washington. This railroad, I believe, is one of the worst in the United States; the travelling on it being excessively tedious, the stoppages frequent, and the rate very slow. I believe we did not go faster than seven or eight miles an hour, so that we required nearly half a day to complete a journey of about forty English miles. Nothing can be more barren than the country through which the railroad is laid; and the approach to the metropolis is anything but striking, although the entrance is by the way of the Capitol.
Washington is, indeed, a city sui generis, of which no European who has not actually seen it can form an adequate idea. Mr. Serullier, formerly minister of France, used to call it “a city of magnificent distances;” but, though this be true, I should rather call it “a city without streets.” The Capitol, a magnificent palace, situated on an eminence called Capitol-hill, and the White-house, the dwelling of the President, are the only two specimens of architecture in the whole town; the rest being mere hovels, and even the public buildings, such as the Treasury, War and Navy Departments, and the General Post-office, little superior to the most ordinary dwelling-houses in Europe. The whole town is, in fact, but an appendix to those two public buildings, a sort of ante-chamber either to the Capitol or to the house of the chief magistrate. If such a town were situated in Europe, one would imagine those buildings to be the residences of princes, and the rest the humble dwellings of their dependants.
The only thing that approaches a street in Washington is Pennsylvania Avenue, a sometimes single, sometimes double row of houses, leading from the Capitol to the White-house. In this street are the two principal hotels of the city, and a considerable number of boarding-houses. The former are two large barracks, capable of holding each from one hundred and fifty to two hundred people; the latter are, for the most part, mean insignificant-looking dens, in which a man finds the worst accommodations at the most exorbitant prices, and must often be glad to be accommodated at all.
The most aristocratic inn in Washington is Gadsby’s, though I consider this “to be a mere matter of taste;” the pretensions to aristocracy resting on four clean walls, and a triple row of galleries in the court, which render the distribution of the rooms convenient, and the rooms themselves agreeable and airy. In every other respect I found no difference between Gadsby’s and Brown’s, or even Fuller’s, which is further up towards the President’s house; and, in comparison to other first-rate hotels in the United States, the fare and accommodations in all of them are altogether beneath mediocrity. Gadsby, by the by, keeps an excellent assortment of wines, and he is himself a very gentlemanly and agreeable man.
Among the boarding-houses there is, I believe, a good deal of aristocratic classification, owing to the different sets of senators and representatives who establish their clubs in them. Some also there are whose pretensions to gentility are principally founded on the landladies being descended from some ancient family, or on their being related to some distinguished members of Congress. In short, every boarding-house marks a particular shade of aristocracy; the Southern (those for Southern members) being the most refined, and each of them, in spite of the bad living, the focus of a particular coterie.
There is also a hotel in Pennsylvania Avenue, called “The Native American;” probably for the accommodation of such members of Congress and their friends as think themselves entitled to worse fare than can be obtained at other places, for having the aristocratic preference of birth—no matter where, and of whom, in the United States,—over every unfortunate stranger directly descended from Europe. I am not disposed to quarrel with any American for enjoying his birth; though I cannot but think that the American Indians are much more entitled to be called “Native Americans” than any descendant from an English, Scotch, Irish, German, French, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, or Portuguese family that happens to be born in the Union.
The first thing that struck me in Washington was the unusual number of persons perambulating the streets without any apparent occupation, of which every other American city, with the exception of Philadelphia, seems to be entirely drained. If there be poor and idle persons walking the streets of New York, Boston, or Baltimore, it is, I am sorry to say, generally owing to some late arrival from Europe,—some of the steerage passengers being yet left without employment. Washington, however, is a city of American idlers,—a set of gentlemen of such peculiar merit as well to deserve a public comment. They live in what is called “elegant style,” rise in the morning at eight or nine, have breakfast in their own rooms, then smoke five or six cigars until twelve, at which time they dress for the Senate; few gentlemen ever honouring the House of Representatives with their presence, except just before leaving the Capitol.
The Senate of the United States is, indeed, the finest drawing-room in Washington; for it is there the young women of fashion resort for the purpose of exhibiting their attractions. The Capitol is, in point of fashion, the opera-house of the city; the House of Representatives being the crush-room. In the absence of a decent theatre, the Capitol furnishes a tolerable place of rendezvous, and is on that account frequented during the whole season—from December until April or May—by every lounger in the place, and by every belle that wishes to become the fashion.
After speaking and talking is over in the Senate, the idlers commence the regular performance of eating, which is no sort of amusement to any one in America who is obliged to dine at an ordinary. For this reason they club together in numbers from four to six, to dine at their rooms; single dinners being too expensive, and the people who have the means of entertaining in Washington being not sufficiently numerous to secure every dandy a place at a private gentleman’s table.
The routs in Washington, in spite of the small rooms and the economy of refreshments, are delightful, lasting generally from nine in the evening until two in the morning; after which the élégants, wholly exhausted from the uncommon exertion of being agreeable four or five hours in succession, repair to some cellar or beef-shop, not quite so well furnished as the common resorts of cabmen and omnibus drivers in London, but which the aristocratic taste of the young men elevates into “refectories.”