This troupe appeared just after the Brooks-Sumner encounter, of which the capital talked still excitedly, and the comedian did not hesitate to introduce a mild local allusion which was generally understood. Breaking in upon her as Pocahontas wept, between ear-splitting cries of woe at the bier of Captain Smith, he called out impatiently,
“What’s all this noise? Be done! Be done!
D’you think you are in Washington?”
Mr. Thackeray’s lecture on poetry was a red-letter occasion, and the simplicity of that great man of letters as he recited “Lord Lovel” and “Barbara Allen” was long afterward a criterion by which others were judged. Notable soloists now and then appeared at the capital, among them Ap Thomas, the great Welsh harpist, and Bochsa, as great a performer, whose concerts gained so much in interest by the singing of the romantic French woman, Mme. Anna Bishop. Her rendering of “On the Banks of the Gaudalquiver” made her a great favourite and gave the song a vogue. That musical prodigy, Blind Tom, also made his appearance in ante-bellum Washington, and I was one of several ladies of the capital invited by Miss Lane to hear him play at the White House. Among the guests on that occasion were Miss Phillips of Alabama and her cousin Miss Cohen of South Carolina, who were brilliant amateur players with a local reputation. They were the daughter and niece, respectively, of Mrs. Eugenia Phillips, who, less than two years afterward, was imprisoned by the Federal authorities for alleged assistance to the newly formed Confederate Government.
At the invitation of Miss Lane, the Misses Phillips and Cohen took their places at the piano and performed a brilliant and intricate duet, during which Blind Tom’s face twitched with what, it must be confessed, were horrible grimaces. He was evidently greatly excited by the music he was listening to, and was eager to reproduce it. As the piece was concluded, he shuffled about nervously. Seeing his excitement, one of the pianistes volunteered to play with him and took her seat at the instrument. Desiring to test him, however, in the second rendering, the lady cleverly, as she supposed, elided a page of the composition; when, drawing himself back angrily, this remarkable idiot exclaimed indignantly, “You cheat me! You cheat me!”
While a visit to the dentist, be he never so famous, may hardly be regarded as among the recreations of Congressional folk, yet a trip to Dr. Maynard, the fashionable operator of that day, was certainly among the luxuries of the time; as costly, for example, as a trip to New York, to hear sweet Jenny Lind. Dr. Maynard was distinctively one of Washington’s famous characters. He was not only the expert dentist of his day, being as great an element in life at the capital as was Dr. Evans in Paris, but he was also the inventor of the world-renowned three-barrelled rifle known as the Maynard. His office was like an arsenal, every inch of wall-space being taken up with glittering arms.
A peculiarity of Dr. Maynard was his dislike for the odour of the geranium, from which he shrank as from some deadly poison. Upon the occasion of one necessary visit to him, unaware of this eccentricity, I wore a sprig of that blossom upon my corsage. As I entered the office the doctor detected it.
“Pardon me, Mrs. Clay,” he said at once, “I must ask you to remove that geranium!” I was astonished, but of course the offending flower was at once detached and discarded; but so sensitive were the olfactories of the doctor, that before he could begin his operating, I was obliged to bury the spot on which the blossom had lain under several folds of napkin.
Dr. Maynard was exceedingly fond of sleight of hand, and on one occasion bought for his children an outfit which Heller had owned. In after years the Czar of Russia made tempting offers to this celebrated dentist, with a view to inducing him to take up his residence in St. Petersburg, but his Imperial allurements were unavailing, and Dr. Maynard returned again to his own orbit.
A feature of weekly recurrence, and one to which all Washington and every visitor thronged, was the concert of the Marine Band, given within the White House grounds on the green slope back of the Executive Mansion overlooking the Potomac. Strolling among the multitude, I remember often to have seen Miss Cutts, in the simplest of white muslin gowns, but conspicuous for her beauty wherever she passed. Here military uniforms glistened or glowed, as the case might be, among a crowd of black-coated sight-seers, and one was likely to meet with the President or his Cabinet, mingling democratically with the crowd of smiling citizens.