Читать книгу The Olivia Letters - Emily Edson Briggs - Страница 15

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His Affection for His Mother—Other Characteristics.

Washington, March 2, 1868.

The season of Lent has folded its soft, brooding wings over the weary devotees of fashion in Washington. Luxuriant wrappers, weak tea, and soft-boiled eggs have succeeded the Eugenie trains, chicken salad, and all those delicious fluids that are supposed to brace the human form divine. The penitential season of Lent is just as fashionable, in its way, as the brilliant season which preceded it. There is nothing left for the “Jenkinses” but “to fold their tents like the Arabs, and as silently steal away.”

But as hardy native flowers defy the chilly frost, so Speaker Colfax’s hospitable doors swing upon their noiseless hinges once a week, and the famous house known as the “Sickles mansion” becomes a bee-hive, swarming, overflowing with honeyed humanity; and let it be recorded that no man in Washington is socially so popular, so much beloved, as Schuyler Colfax. General Grant, the man who dwells behind a mask, is worshiped by the multitudes, who rush to his mansion as Hindoos to a Buddhist temple; but Schuyler Colfax possesses the magic quality of knowing how to leave the Speaker’s desk, and, gracefully descending to the floor, place himself amongst the masses of the American people, no longer above them, but with them, one of them—a king of hearts in his own right; a knave also, because he steals first and commands afterwards.

It is needless to say that all adjectives descriptive of fashionable life at the capital have long since been worn thread-bare. Why didn’t Jenkins tell the truth and say, instead of “warm cordiality, elegant courtesy,” pump-handle indifference and metallic smile? Why did he not tell the dear, good people at home the truth, and nothing but the truth, and say that madame the duchess practices smiles or grimaces before the glass, and serves the same up to her dear friends at her evening receptions? Why should not a smile fit as well as her corsets or kid gloves? Too much smile without dimples to cover up the defect destroys the harmonious relation of the features. Not only that, but it invites every fashionable woman’s horror. It paves the way to wrinkles, the death-blows of every belle.

“Look at my face,” says Madame B——, of Baltimore, the widow of royalty, the handsomest woman of three-score years and ten in America, addressing one who shall be nameless. “You are not half my age, and yet you have more wrinkles than I; shall I tell you why?” “To be sure, Madame B——.” “I never laugh; I never cry; I make repose my study.” Now, let it be added that this aged belle of a long-since-departed generation on every night encases her taper fingers in metallic thimbles, and has done so for the last forty years; consequently her hand retains much of its original symmetry, and the decay of her charms is as sweet and as faultless as the falling leaves of a rose.

Speaker Colfax’s receptions, in one sense of the word, are unlike all others. No prominent man in Washington receives his thousands of admirers and says to them, after an introduction, “This is my mother!” She stands by his side, with no one to separate them, bearing a strong personal resemblance to him, whilst she is only seventeen years the older. At what a tender age her love commenced for this boy Schuyler—nobody else’s boy, though he were President! She has put on the chameleon silk, and the cap with blue ribbons, to receive the multitudes that flock in masses to do homage to her son. Pride half slumbers in her bosom, but love is vigilant and wide awake. There is no metallic impression on her countenance; a genuine, heartfelt welcome is extended to all who pay their respects to her idol. So the people come and go, and wonder why Speaker Colfax’s receptions are unlike others. Only a very few stars of the first magnitude in the fashionable world shone at the Speaker’s mansion last night. The Associate Justice of the Supreme Court from Iowa was there, with his elegant, lavender-robed wife—a woman who skims over the treacherous waters of society in Washington as gracefully and safely as a swan upon its native element. David Dudley Field, of New York, was there—a tall, stalwart man, after the oak pattern; and the fine faced woman, with gold enough upon her person to suggest a return to specie payment, was said to be a new wife. Mark Twain, the delicate humorist, was present; quite a lion, as he deserves to be. Mark is a bachelor, faultless in taste, whose snowy vest is suggestive of endless quarrels with Washington washerwomen; but the heroism of Mark is settled for all time, for such purity and smoothness were never seen before. His lavender gloves might have been stolen from some Turkish harem, so delicate were they in size; but more likely—anything else were more likely than that. In form and feature he bears some resemblance to the immortal Nasby; but whilst Petroleum is brunette to the core, Twain is a golden, amber-hued, melting blonde.

Members of Congress were there. George Washington Julian was present; great, gifted, good, as he always is, proving to the world that even a great name cannot extinguish him. Nature was in one of her most generous moods when she formed him, for he towers above the people like a mountain surrounded by hills. He dwells in a higher atmosphere and sniffs a purer air than most Congressmen, and this may account for his always being found in the right place, never doubtful. People know just what George Washington Julian will do in any national crisis. So he is left alone to score the measures of his conscience, just as the earth is left to her orbit, or the magnetic needle to the pole.

Olivia.