Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 33, December, 1873. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
From the instant that General Butler rises the discussion, however dull before, bristles into excitement, and one could hardly wish for an hour of racier enjoyment than is afforded by the debate when he desires to gain a point over able but envious opponents, who never attack him single-handed, and to meet whom, their shafts flying on every side, he brings up his subtlety of argument, his readiness, his audacity, his wit and repartee and forensic skill, till he winds them in their own toils. Perhaps while you have been observing these and other notabilities of the day, another personage has come upon the floor by prescriptive right of past membership, and has arrested your gaze. He is a gentleman of portly presence, who looks out of a pair of keen dark eyes, and still possesses some of the great personal beauty for which in his youth he was remarkable. He is the last of the old statesmen; he has had a part in many of the scenes that we call history; he was the compeer of Webster and Clay and Crittenden and Calhoun; and one would not marvel if he looked but contemptuously on the fevered measures and boyish ecstasies and advocacies of their successors. Familiar with modern languages and literatures, an encyclopædia of ancient and mediæval learning, a master of the science of government, as old as the century, and one of its conspicuous figures, perhaps but a single thing is wanting to make Mr. Cushing a chief: he does not believe in the people.
Thus it is easily seen that your life at the Federal Capital, if you possess either an eye for beauty or an interest in affairs, may be full of enjoyment and variety. Your companions are people of mark; you learn, by returning, when summer does, to the small scandals and personalities of common towns, how large is the outlook in Washington; the theatre of the world opens before you there; you feel that you assist at the making of history, if you are not yourself a part of events.
But this is one side of life. There is another and a more purely social side which is a very different thing. Into this affairs of state do not enter; with the right or wrong of vital questions it does not concern itself at all; and in fact it is doubtful if politics are not thought there mere subsidiaries to the authority of Fashion, and if the fair wives and daughters of our lawgivers do not regard the great machinery of state as something ordained solely to sustain them in their brilliant round as the wind of the juggler's fan supports his paper butterflies upon their airy flight. In this life an etiquette reigns that has no law of its being save that of vague tradition—an etiquette at variance with that of other regions, and through which the female population is resolved into what might be termed, in the parlance of the place, a committee of the whole on "calling." This etiquette rules the wives of important functionaries with a rod of iron. By some occult method of reasoning they have reached the conclusion that their husbands' popularity, and consequent lease of power, depend upon their own faithful performance of what is considered to be social duty, and they devote themselves to it with a zeal worthy of a better cause. On certain days of the week their houses are open to all who choose to come; and both residents and passing travelers, all who wish to inspect the inside of such homes among the other sights of the town, throng the doors, leave cards and partake of refreshments. Of course many strange occurrences are incidental to such occasions; and so the lady whose beauty had been made famous must have thought when unknown crowds flocked to see her, destroying daily a vase or a statuette, a photograph or a book, but always staring with all their eyes, and one day crowning their enormities with a procession of deaf-mutes from an asylum, which filed in and gazed and filed out again, in total silence of course, save now and then a crack of nimble finger-joints.
All the other days in the week the great lady is occupied in returning these visits, hunting for obscure addresses, trailing her rich garments over third-story stairs; and it is no uncommon thing for her to have the names of one or two thousand people in her visiting-book, on whom she is to call, provided she can find them. Of course the call is brief, the faces are unknown, the conversation is void, and the only satisfaction attained is in checking off that particular name as done with. Certainly this great lady's lot is not altogether enviable. In the daytime she is claimed by calls, in the night-time by balls; at nine in the morning people on business begin to clamor for her husband, at ten, if he is a Congressman, he goes to his committee, at twelve Congress meets to adjourn at five; and if after that some political dinner, at which great things are to be adjusted, does not take him to itself till nearly midnight, constituents, schemers and lobbyists do. What sort of home-life there can be where the master of the house is out all day and the mistress is out all night, remains a matter of conjecture.
But there are wheels within wheels; and all the wheels are not so thoroughly oiled as to make things run with perfect smoothness; and thus in the progress of this very "calling" sad disturbances arise. Shall the Senators' wives make the first call on the Cabinet ministers' wives? By no means: the Cabinet ministers are but creatures of a day, ephemera, who draw their breath by and with the advice and consent of the Senate: they must respect their creator. Shall the Senators' wives call first upon the wives of the justices of the Supreme Court? There is a doubt: the Supreme Court is the last resort of the law of the land, a reverend and hoary institution, and its judges, having a life-lease, will be judges still when the Senators shall have passed away; but no, again—the Senators make the justices. The Representatives shall make the first call on the Senators' wives of course; but how about the Speaker's wife? She is the third in succession from the presidency, says the new-comer: she is nothing but a Representative still, says the compelling etiquette. Finally, through some incomprehensible regulation, whose framer forgot that though democracies may be rude they must not be inhospitable, the wives of the foreign ambassadors, representatives of sovereign states, have to go the whole round and knock first at every door before being fairly accredited to Society. But once established, be it said in passing, the foreigners have a full revenge accorded them; for in vain the native youth aspire, the freshest belles hover round the titled flames, not perhaps till their wings are singed, but till successive seasons have taught them that Cleopatra's beauty is useless without Cleopatra's pearls. Meantime, to give one last discomfort to the "calling" system, the ubiquitous reporter presents himself, deliberately overturns the card-basket in the hall and notes the names there; and the lady of the house sees herself, her dress, her deportment and her guests photographed in the morning paper with startling distinctness.
But the calling is the brightest part of this social side of life. The other part is the night-life—not the night-life of gambling saloons and their kind: of that dark underground existence Society has no knowledge, though he who left it at daybreak and will go back to it at midnight clasps the last débutante in his arms and whirls with her to the sweet waltz-music—but the night-life of the Season.
A Washington season is a generic thing: women come to the place for the sake of it, as they go nowhere else. Through the system of calling just described official society is accessible to all, and the introductions obtained there to people of the more select circles, when fortified by wealth and pertinacity, open the whole charmed round of pleasure. Society in other cities is totally unlike Society in Washington. There it is an interchange of kindliness between households of friends: it is the festivity of happy anniversaries, the union of families in new ties, the cherishing of long acquaintance. But in Washington—except so far as the small number of residents is concerned—its whole purpose and meaning are anomalous: each Administration brings a new following, each Congress has a new rabble at its heels; friendships are accidents of the day, diplomacy is carried on by dining; every party has a political purpose, every civility a double meaning. Nevertheless, the sparkle of wit, the kindling of enthusiasm, are not absent from it; on the contrary, there is more of that than elsewhere, for it is sustained by the chosen intellect and beauty of the continent. You may meet admirals there who have sailed round the world, generals who have fought mighty battles, priests who may yet be popes, men and women who are figures of the century: they will tell you the romance of their travel, the heart-beat of their successes, and you will contrive to hear it for all the accompanying roar and sweep in which they are the lay figures for aspirants to measure, and the property of reporters. In such a Society of course all asperities are softened: this man's daughter dances with the son of his arch-enemy; deference is accorded to the opinion of a woman on public matters as if she already possessed her right of suffrage; there is an exhilaration in meeting and avoiding and overlooking, in the light and skillful skating over dangerous surfaces, while a rare freedom unites with a gentle even if politic courtesy, which it is delightful to meet to-night and which allures you to seek it to-morrow. Society without a conscience it is, possibly, but for all that sufficiently fascinating.
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