These lines were never truer of any human habitation than of the White House at Washington.
The Nation’s House! The procession of families which the people have sent to inhabit it, in moving on to make place for others, have left memories behind which haunt these great rooms and fill staircase, alcove, and pictorial space with historic recollections. Here human life has been lived, enjoyed, suffered and resigned, just as it is lived every day in any house wherein human beings are born, wherein they live and die. Within its walls children have first opened their eyes upon this tantalizing life, and here children have died, leaving father and mother desolate amid all the pomp of place and state. In this room the hero Taylor laid his earthly burdens and honors down; here, by this eastern window, stood a girl-bride crowned with beautiful youth and marriage flowers. In this east room the supreme martyr of freedom, white, still and cold, received the nation who wept at his feet; in this dim chamber a woman-saint read her Bible and communed with God, while pardon crokers crept into secret door-ways, and passion and treason ran riot in the great rooms which she never entered.
The first child born in the White House was the grandson of Jefferson—James Madison Randolph; and the last child who died here was “Willie” Lincoln. Here, also, President Harrison, President Taylor, and Mrs. Tyler passed through death unto life.
THE RED ROOM.
INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE.—WASHINGTON.
The corner stone of the President’s house was laid October 13, 1792. We have seen how anxious Jefferson was that it should be modelled after some famous modern palace of Europe. The one, at last selected, was the country house of the Duke of Leinster. It was designed by James Hoban, and open, though not ready for occupancy, in the summer of 1800. The house is built of porous Virginia freestone, which accounts for the fact of its perpetual dampness, and the more expensive fact that no amount of money and white-lead can make it a dry and desirable abode. And yet it is always pleasant and restful to the sight when the eyes fall upon its Ionic columns, peering pure and softened through the sea of greenery which sways and dips around it. One front alone of Buckingham Palace, cost more than the entire White House. Yet, to behold it, the palace is a black and ugly pile, and in simplicity and purity of outline bears no comparison with the Nation’s White House. This is 170 feet broad and 86 feet deep. Its north front has a lofty portico with four Ionic columns and a projecting screen of three columns. Between these columns pass the carriages which form a perpetual line moving on and round forever through the gay season. The house is three high stories, with the rusticated basement which reaches below the Ionic ordonnance.
The portico opens upon a spacious hall forty by fifty feet. It is divided by a row of Ionic columns, through which we pass to the reception-room opposite. This is the Red Room. Its light is dim and rosy. Its form is elliptical, and its bow window in the rear looks out on the park and away to the Potomac, as do the windows of all the corner parlors. In this room the President receives foreign ministers and the officers of the republic. The space over the marble mantel is entirely occupied with a life size painting of President Grant and his family. We pass through the Red Room into the Blue Room. All is cool azure here. The chairs, the sofas, the carpet, the paper on the wall, all are tinged with the celestial hue, flushed here and there with a tint of rose. In the Blue Room the President’s wife holds her morning receptions. Here, with the daylight excluded, soft rays falling from the chandelier above, flowers in mounds and vases everywhere pouring out fragrance, surrounded by a group of ladies, chosen and invited to “assist,” decked in jewels and costly raiment. One day of each week of the season, from three to five P. M., the President’s wife receives her critic—the public.
The Blue Room opens into the Green Room, the most cosy and home-like of all the public parlors. It is vividly emerald, softly malachite, all touched and gleaming with gold. A large mirror covers the space above the mantel. Beside vases in the centre of the marble mantel-piece stands an exquisite clock of ebony and malachite; tall vases filled with fresh flowers rise from the carpet. On the centre table used to stand the immense punch-bowl, presented to the White House by the Emperor of Japan. It is now supplanted by a statue in bronze. The furniture is of rose-wood, cushioned with brocatelle of green and gold, while the same in heavy hangings are looped back from the lace curtains on the windows.
From the Green Room we enter the famous East Room, extending the entire eastern side of the house. It is eighty-six feet long, forty feet wide, and twenty-eight feet high. Three immense chandeliers hang from the ceiling. It has already taken on the mellowness, not of age but of use, and in aspect bears no kin to the unfinished “Banqueting Hall” in which Mrs. Adams dried the family linen, and Mrs. Monroe’s little daughters played. Now, on a levée night, the East Room presents a sight never to be forgotten. The enormous chandeliers seem to pour the splendor of noon upon the glittering and moving host below. Satins, velvets, diamonds, plumes and laces rise and fall, and sway beside the gleaming gold lace of American officers, and the jewelled decorations of Foreign ministers. Eight mirrors repeat the glory of the sights. Eight Presidents, from their golden frames on the wall, seem to gaze out of the past upon the feverish splendor of a new generation. The most exquisite carpet ever on the East Room was a velvet one, chosen by Mrs. Lincoln. Its ground was of pale sea green, and in effect looked as if ocean, in gleaming and transparent waves, were tossing roses at your feet.
Coming back to the Red Room, we pass into a narrow corridor, at the opposite end from which, on either side, open the family and state dining-room. The state dining-room is a staid and stately apartment, touched equally with new grace and old time grandeur. Martha Patterson, the daughter of President Johnson, redeemed it from wreck, and instead of ruin, adorned it with the harmony of her own artistic nature. The neutral-tinted walls and carpet, the green satin damask hangings on the windows, and covering of the quaint furniture, are all her choice. An antique clock and grim candlesticks, from the Madison reign, stand stiffly on the marble mantels. With the exception of a pair of modern sideboards, the furniture of this “baronial hall,” solid and sombre, has descended from the eras of Washington and Jefferson.