Nor were there lacking figures among the “stronger” sex as eccentric as those of our women innovators. Of these, none was more remarkable than “old Sam Houston.” Whether in the street or in his seat in the Senate, he was sure to arrest the attention of everyone. He wore a leopard-skin vest, with a voluminous scarlet neck-tie, and over his bushy grey locks rested an immense sombrero. This remarkable headgear was made, it was said, from an individual block to which the General reserved the exclusive right. It was of grey felt, with a brim seven or eight inches wide. Wrapped around his broad shoulders he wore a gaily coloured Mexican serape, in which scarlet predominated. So arrayed, his huge form, which, notwithstanding this remarkable garb, was distinguished by a kind of inborn grandeur, towered above the heads of ordinary pedestrians, and the appearance of the old warrior, whether viewed from the front or the rear, was altogether unique. Strangers stared at him, and street urchins covertly grinned, but the Senatorial Hercules received all such attentions from the public with extreme composure, not to say gratification, as a recognition to which he was entitled.
In the Senate, General Houston was an indefatigable whittler. A seemingly inexhaustible supply of soft wood was always kept in his desk and out of it he whittled stars and hearts and other fanciful shapes, while he cogitated, his brows pleated in deep vertical folds, over the grave arguments of his confrères. A great many conjectures were made as to the ultimate use of these curious devices. I can, however, explain the fate of one.
As our party entered the gallery of the Senate on one occasion, we caught the eye of the whittling Senator, who, with completest sang-froid, suspended his occupation and blew us a kiss; then with a plainly perceptible twinkle in his eye, he resumed his usual occupation. A little while afterward one of the Senate pages came up and handed me a most pretentious envelope. It was capacious enough to have contained a package of government bonds. I began to open the wrappings; they were mysteriously manifold. When at last I had removed them all, I found within a tiny, shiny, freshly whittled wooden heart, on which the roguish old hero had inscribed, “Lady! I send thee my heart! Sam Houston.”
This remarkable veteran was seldom to be seen at social gatherings, and I do not remember ever to have met him at a dinner, but he called sometimes upon me on my weekly reception days, and always in the remarkable costume I have described. He had acquired, besides the Mexican-Spanish patois, a number of Indian dialects, and nothing amused him more than to reduce to a confused silence those who surrounded him, by suddenly addressing them in all sorts of unknown words in these tongues. My own spirit was not so to be crushed, and, besides, I had a lurking doubt as to the linguistic value of the sounds he uttered. They bore many of the indicia of the newly invented, and I did not hesitate upon one occasion to enter upon a verbal contest of gibberish on my side, and possibly on his, running the gamut of emphasis throughout it; and, notwithstanding General Houston’s deprecations (in Indian dialect), sustained my part so seriously that the tall hero at last yielded the floor and, wrapping his scarlet serape about him, made his exit, laughing hilariously at his own defeat.
CHAPTER VII
The Relaxations of Congressional Folk
In that period of social activity it was no uncommon thing for society women to find themselves completely exhausted ere bedtime arrived. Often so tired was I that I have declared I couldn’t have wiggled an antennae had I numbered anything so absurd and minute among my members! For my quicker recuperation, after a day spent in the making of calls, or in entertainment, with, it may be, an hour or two in the Senate gallery, in preparation for the evening’s pleasure, my invaluable maid, Emily (for whom my husband paid $1,600), was wont to get out my “shocking-box” (for so she termed the electrical apparatus upon which I often depended), and, to a full charge of the magical current and a half-hour’s nap before dinner, I was indebted for many a happy evening.
Amid the round of dinners, and dances, and receptions, to which Congressional circles are necessarily compelled, the pleasures of the theatre were only occasionally to be enjoyed. Nor were the great artists of that day always to be heard at the capital, and resident theatre and musiclovers not infrequently made excursions to Baltimore, Philadelphia, or New York, in order to hear to advantage some particularly noted star. Before our advent in the capital it had been my good fortune, while travelling in the North, to hear Grisi and Mario, the lovely Bozio, and Jenny Lind, the incomparable Swede, whose concerts at Castle Garden were such epoch-marking events to musiclovers in America. I remember that one estimate of the audience present on the occasion of my hearing the last-named cantatrice was placed at ten thousand. Whether or not this number was approximately correct I do not know, but seats and aisles in the great hall were densely packed, and gentlemen in evening dress came with camp-stools under their arms, in the hope of finding an opportunity to place them, during a lull in the programme, where they might rest for a moment.
The wild enthusiasm of the vast crowds, the simplicity of the singer who elicited it, have been recorded by many an abler pen. Suffice to say that none have borne, I think, for a longer time, a clearer remembrance of that triumphant evening. When, at the end of the programme the fair, modest songstress came out, music in hand, to win her crowning triumph in the rendering of a familiar melody, the beauty of her marvellous art rose superior to the amusement which her broken English might have aroused, and men and women wept freely and unashamed as she sang.
“Mid bleasures and balaces,
Do we may roam,” etc.