Читать книгу The Olivia Letters - Emily Edson Briggs - Страница 22

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Mrs. Kate Chase Sprague and Mrs. Oakes Ames.

Washington, April 23, 1868.

Like a rolling avalanche, impeachment gathers in size and velocity as it rushes on to its final resting place. The testimony has all been taken; the arguments have already commenced. Manager Boutwell occupied many hours yesterday in reading his arguments. This able effort will soon find its way into every household in the land, there to be weighed and judged discriminately; but Manager Boutwell is no wizard or brownie, and therefore cannot go himself where his words will fly. How does he look, and what could he see if he should take his eyes off the printed page and glance hither and yon, to the right, to the left, or, with both at once, make a grand Balaklava charge? Is it possible for a man to get to that point in his life when the mind’s fruit hangs in clustered perfection, like the juicy purple grape of mid-autumn?

Manager Boutwell is in the zenith of life, rather under the medium size and compact, and when tested gives the true ring of the genuine coin, or a perfect piece of porcelain, handsome enough for all the practical uses of life, but nothing startling or electrical about him, like Benjamin Butler; and it would seem as if wily Massachusetts was wide awake, as she has furnished two managers. But in case General Butler should exhaust himself like fiery Vesuvius, behold there is Boutwell, cool, solemn, eternal as the glacier-crowned Alps.

Mr. Boutwell is a good speaker, but his reading seems wearisome, and yet the galleries listen with attention; at least it is very quiet in there—not a breath of air to spare.

There is a faint odor of exquisite perfume exhaling from hundreds of snowy, cob-web handkerchiefs; dainty women scattered here and there, everywhere. Paris has Eugenie; Washington has Mrs. Senator Sprague, the acknowledged queen of fashion and good taste. She occupies a seat at the left of the reader. Her costume is just as perfect as the lily or the rose. She is a lilac blossom to-day. Not a particle of jewelry is visible upon her person. She has copied her bonnet from the pansy or wood violet. A single flower, of lilac tinge, large enough for the “new style,” rests upon her head, and is fastened to its place by lilac tulle so filmy that it must have been stolen from the purple mists of the morning. An exquisite walking dress of pale lilac silk has trimmings a shade darker, whilst lilac gloves conceal a hand that might belong to the queen of fairies. Is she a woman or a flower, to be nipped by the frost; to be pressed between the leaves of adversity; or, alas! to grow old and wither? Impossible! She is a flower of immortality; not perfect, it is true, as other letter-writers say, but she happens to be placed in a sphere where perfection is expected, and she is mortal like the rest of us. She shrinks from the hard and lowly task of visiting the wretched hut, the sick, and the afflicted. So do Victoria and Eugenie, whose fame is wafted to us across the great water.

To the left of the queen sits another woman distinguished in Washington society. It is the wife of a millionaire—Mrs. Oakes Ames of Massachusetts. She is a handsome matron, in the early autumn of life. She has no desire to shine in the fashionable world, and her smiling face would only come out the brighter after an eclipse of that kind. Her elegant parlors are headquarters for old-fashioned hospitality, and to those who possess the “open sesame” she is always at home. But it is in Massachusetts that she finds her true sphere. There she is the wife of the baronet, the “Lady Bountiful of the neighborhood,” surrounded by her husband’s tenantry or working people. It is the “squire’s wife” who visits the lowly cottage, bringing sunshine and temporal relief. It is the “squire” who pays the clergyman his salary, that his people may be saved through no loss of spiritual grace, and instead of going to London for the winter they come to Washington. What! Gossips, you say; but it is an admitted fact.

Olivia.