Читать книгу Ten Years in Washington: Inside Life and Scenes in Our National Capital as a Woman Sees Them - Mary Clemmer - Страница 12

Table of Contents

A Visit to the Capitol—The Lower Hall—Its Cool Tranquillity—Artistic Treasures—The President’s and Vice-President’s Rooms—The Marble Room—The Senate Chamber—“Men I have Known”—Hamlin—Foote—Foster—Wade—Colfax—Wilson—The Rotunda—Great Historical Paintings—The Old Hall of Representatives—The New Hall—The Speaker’s Room—Native Art—“The Star of Empire”—A National Picture.

Come with me. This is your Capitol. It is like passing from one world into another, to leave behind the bright June day for the cool, dim halls of the lower Capitol. No matter how fiercely the sun burns in the heavens, his fire never penetrates the twilight of this grand hall, whose eight hundred feet measure the length of the Capitol from end to end.

Here, in Egyptian Colonnades, rise the mighty shafts of stone which bear upon their tops the mightier mass of marble, and which seem strong enough to support the world. In the summer solstice they cast long, cool shadows, full of repose and silence. The gas-lights flickering on the walls, send long golden rays through the dimness to light us on. We have struck below the jar and tumult of life. The struggles of a nation may be going on above our heads, yet so vast and visionary are these vistas opening before us, so deep the calm which surrounds us, we seem far away from the world that we have left, in this new world which we have found. Every time I descend into these lower regions I get lost. In wandering on to find our way out, we are sure to make numerous discoveries of unimagined beauty. Here are doors after doors in almost innumerable succession, opening into departments of commerce, agriculture, etc., whose every panel holds exquisite gems of illustrative painting. Birds, flowers, fruits, landscapes, in rarest fresco and color, here reveal themselves to us through the dim light.

It would take months to study and to learn these pictures which artists have taken years to paint. They make a department of art in themselves, yet thousands who think that they know the Capitol well are not aware of their existence. At the East Senate entrance, look at these polished pillars of Tennessee marble, their chocolate surface all flecked with white, surrounding a staircase meet for kings. They are my delight. Look at these foliated capitals, flowering in leaves of acanthus and tobacco. Look up to this ceiling of stained glass, its royal roses opening wide their crimson hearts above you; these too are my delight. I am not one of those who can sneer at the Capitol. Its faults, like the faults of a friend are sacred. I know them, but wish to name them not, save to the one who only can remedy. It bears blots upon its fair face, but these can be washed away. It wears ornaments vulgar and vain, these can be stripped off and thrown out. Below them, beyond them all, abides the Capitol. The surface blemish vexes, the pretentious splendor offends. These are not the Capitol. We look deeper, we look higher, to find beauty, to see sublimity, to see the Capitol, august and imperishable!

THE MARBLE ROOM.

INSIDE THE CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.

The four marble staircases leading to the Senate Chamber and Hall of Representatives, in themselves alone embody enough of grace and magnificence to save the Capitol from cynical criticism. We slip through the Senate corridor, you and I, to the President’s and Vice-President’s rooms. Their furniture is sumptuous, their decoration oppressive. Gilding, frescoes, arabesques, glitter and glow above and around. There is not one quiet hue on which the tired sight may rest. Gazing, I feel an indescribable desire to pluck a few of Signor Brumidi’s red legged babies and pug-nosed cupids from their precarious perches on the lofty ceilings, to commit them to nurses or to anybody who will smooth out their rumpled little legs and make them look comfortable.

We are Americans, and need repose; let us, therefore, pass to the Marble Room, which alone, of all the rooms of the Capitol, suggests it—

“The end of all, the poppied sleep.”

Its atmosphere is soft, serene, and silent. Its ceiling is of white marble, deeply paneled, supported by fluted pillars of polished Italian marble. Its walls are of the exquisite marble of Tennessee—a soft brown, veined with white—set with mirrors. One whose æsthetic eyes have studied the finest apartments of the world says that to him the most chaste and purely beautiful of all is the Marble Room of the American Capitol. Americans though we are, we have no time to rest, albeit we sorely need it.

It is not for you or me to linger in marble rooms, maundering of art. Molly, rocking her baby out on the Western prairie, wants to know all about the Senate; baby is going to be a senator some day. Moses, on that little rock-sown farm in New England, has his “chores all done.” He rests in the Yankee paradise of kerosene, butternuts, apples, and cider. Yet to make his satisfaction complete, he must know a little more about the Capitol. Molly and Moses both expect us to see for them what they can not come to see for themselves. So let us peep into the Senate. It can not boast of the ampler proportions of the Hall of Representatives. Its golden walls and emerald doors can not rescue it from insignificance.

The ceiling of this chamber is of cast-iron, paneled with stained glass—each pane bearing the arms of the different States, bound by most ornate mouldings, bronzed and gilded. The gallery, which entirely surrounds the hall, will seat one thousand persons. Over the Vice-President’s chair, the section you see separated from the rest by a net-work of wire, is the reporters’ gallery. The one opposite, lined with green, is the gallery of the diplomatic corps; next are the seats reserved for the Senators’ families. The Senators sit in three semi-circular rows, behind small desks of polished wood, facing the Secretary of the Senate, his assistants, the special reporters of debates, and the Vice-President.

On a dais, raised above all, sits the Vice-President. I have seen six men preside over the Senate. Hamlin, slow, solid, immobile, and good-natured. Foote, silver-haired, silver-toned, the king of parliamentarians. Foster of Connecticut, that most gentle gentleman, who went from the Senate bearing the good will of every Senator whatever his politics. Wade, the most positive power of all, with his high, steep head, shaggy eyebrows, beetling perceptive brow, half roofing the melancholy eyes, the rough-hewn nose, the dogged mouth, and broad immovable chin. Life lines our faces according to its will and gazing on the furrows of this one, one reads the story of the whole battle. Looking, there was no need that its owner should tell what a warfare life had been since the poor farmer-boy, more than half a century ago, turned his face from the Connecticut Valley and striving with the earth beneath his feet dug his way (on the Erie Canal) toward the West to fortune, and to an honorable fame. Then came Schuyler Colfax, who brought into the silent and stately Senate the habits of the bustling noisy house. It was a hard seat for “Schuyler,” that Vice-President’s chair, and he came at last to vacate it regularly by two o’clock that he might write in the seclusion of the Vice-President’s room a few of those ten thousand popular personal letters which made his chief lever of influence with the people and which he always used to write in the Speaker’s chair. As President of the Senate he was usually just, always urbane, never impressive. He had not the presence which filled the seat to the sight, nor the dignity which commanded attention, and silence. Under his ruling the Senate changed its character perceptibly from a grave august body to a buzzing and inattentive one. As the President of the Senate seldom listened to a speaker, the Senators as rarely took the trouble to listen to each other. The question discussed might be of the gravest import to the whole nation, the speaker’s words, to himself, might be of the most tremendous importance to the national weal, just the same he had to empty them upon vacancy, speaking to nothing in particular, while the Vice-President looked another way, and his colleagues went on scribbling letters, whispering political secrets to each other, munching apples in the aisles or smoking in the open cloak-rooms, with feet aloft.

Vice-President Wilson, without an atom of parliamentary experience, has already won the hearts and improved the manners of the Senate by simply giving attention to its debates. No matter how tiresome, he steadfastly looks and listens. The humblest speaker—seeing that he has one pair of eyes fixed upon him, one direct immovable point toward which he may direct his remarks—takes heart, and in spite of himself makes a better speech than would be possible were he beating a vacuum, and speaking to nobody in particular. Even his listening constituency and the next day’s Globe is not such an incentive to present inspiration as two steadfast eyes and one pair of good listening ears.

We leave the Senate Chamber by the western gallery. Here in the niche at the foot of the staircase, corresponding to Franklin’s on the opposite side, stands the noble figure of John Hancock. The stairs are of polished white marble and the painting above them leading to the gentlemen’s gallery of the Senate, in its setting of maroon cloth represents the battle of Chapultapec in all the ardor of its fiery action. We saunter on along the breezy corridors through whose open windows we catch delicious glimpses of the garden city, the gliding river and the distant hills, past the Supreme Court room into the great rotunda.

THE SENATE CHAMBER.

INSIDE THE CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.

The rotunda is ninety-five feet in diameter, three hundred feet in circumference and over one hundred and eighty feet in height. Its dome contains over eight millions eight hundred thousand pounds of iron, presenting the most finished specimen of iron architecture in the world. The panels of the rotunda are set with paintings of life-size, painted by Vanderlyn, Trumbull and others. The Declaration of Independence; the surrender of Burgoyne; surrender of the British Army, commanded by Lord Cornwallis, at Yorktown, Virginia, October 19, 1781; resignation of General Washington at Annapolis, December 23, 1783, all by Colonel Trumbull; the baptism of Pocahontas by Chapman; landing of Columbus by Vanderlyn; De Soto’s discovery of the Mississippi, by Powell. Like most works of genius these paintings have many merits and many defects. Perhaps the favorite of all is the Embarcation of the Pilgrims in the Speedwell at Delft Haven, by Robert W. Weir. Its figures and the fabrics of its costumes are wonderfully painted; so, too, is the face of the hoary Pilgrim who is giving thanks to God for their safe passage across stormy seas to the land of deliverance; but the enchantment of the picture is the face of Rose Standish. If I were a man, I would marry such a face out of all the faces on the earth, for the being which it represents. These eyes, blue as heaven and as true, would never fail you. No matter how low you might fall, you could see only in them purity, faith, devotion, tenderness, and unutterable love—and all for you.

The group in bas-relief over the western entrance of the rotunda was executed by Cappelano, a pupil of Canova. It represents the preservation of Captain Smith by Pocahontas. The design was taken from a rude engraving of the event in the first edition of Smith’s History of Virginia. The idea is national, but you see the execution is preposterous. Powhatan looks like an Englishman, and Pocahontas has a Greek face and a Grecian head-dress. The alto-relievo over the eastern entrance of the rotunda represents the Landing of the Pilgrims. The pilgrim, his wife and child are stepping from the prow of a boat to receive from the hand of an Indian, kneeling on the rock before them, an ear of corn. Good Indian. He was no relation to the Modoc! Still the little boy evidently has no faith in him for he is tugging at his father’s arm as if to hold him back from that ear of corn or the hand that holds it.

Over the south door of the rotunda we have Daniel Boone and two Indians in a forest. Boone has dispatched one Indian and is in close battle with the other. The latter is doing his best to strike Boone with his tomahawk, but Boone averts the blow, by his rifle in one hand, while the other drawn back holds a long knife which he is about to run through his foe. The action is exciting enough for the New York Ledger, although rendered tangled and cramped by a too narrow space. It commemorates an occurrence which took place in the year 1773. This, as well as the landing of the Pilgrims, was executed by Causici, another pupil of Canova. Over the northern door of the rotunda we have William Penn standing under an elm, in the act of presenting a treaty to the Indians. Penn is dressed as a Quaker, and looks as benevolent as the crude stone out of which he is made will let him. This panel was executed by a Frenchman named Genelot.

THE HALL OF REPRESENTATIVES.

INSIDE THE CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.

We pass through the noblest room of the Capitol, the old Hall of Representatives and through the open corridor directly into the new Hall of Representatives. It occupies the precise place in the south wing which the Senate Chamber does in the northern wing. Like the Senate room, the light of day comes to it but dimly through the stained glass roof overhead. Like that, also, it is entire, encircled by a corridor opening into smoking apartments, committee rooms, the Speaker’s room, etc., which monopolize all the out of door air, and every out of door view. The air of the central chamber is pumped into it by a tremendous engine at work in the depths of the Capitol and admitted through ventilators one under each desk. You see these are covered with shining brass plates which by a touch of the foot can be adjusted to admit a current of fresh air, or shut it off, according to the wish of the occupant of the chair above it. In former times these ventilators were uncovered, and then were used to such an extent as spittoons by the honorable gentlemen above them, and filled to such a depth with tobacco quids and the stumps of cigars that the odor from them became unbearable and they had to be covered up.

The Hall of Representatives is 139 feet long, 93 feet wide and 30 feet high with a gallery running entirely around the Hall, holding seats for 1200 persons. Like the Senate, the ceiling is of iron work bronzed, gilded and paneled with glass, each pane decorated with the arms of a State. At the corners of these panels in gilt and bronze are rosettes of the cotton plant in its various stages of bud and blossom. The Speaker’s desk, splendid in proportion, is of pure white marble, while crossed above his head are two brilliant silk flags of the United States. One of the panels under the gallery at his left is filled with a painting in fresco, by Brumidi.

The Speaker’s room, in the rear of his chair across the inner lobby, is one of the most beautiful rooms in the Capitol. Its ornaments are not as glaring as those of the President’s and Vice-President’s rooms, while its mirrors, carved book-cases, velvet carpets and chairs, give it a look of home comfort as well as of luxury. It has a bright outlook upon the eastern grounds of the Capitol, and its walls are hung with portraits of every speaker from the First Congress to the present one.

We pass through the private corridor looking from the Speaker’s room out into the grand colonnaded vestibule opening upon the great portico of the south extension. These twenty-four columns and forty pilasters have blossomed from native soil. Athens, Pompeii, Rome, are left out at last, and looking up to these flowering capitals we see corn-leaves, tobacco, and magnolias budding and blooming from their marble crowns. Every column, every pilaster bears a magnolia, each of a different form, all from casts of the natural flower. And far below, beneath the Representatives’ Hall, there is a row of monolithic columns formed of the tobacco and thistle. It is above the marble staircase opposite, leading to the ladies’ gallery, that we see painted on the wall covering the entire landing, the great painting of Leutze, representing the “Advance of Civilization;” “Westward the Star of Empire takes its way”—is its motto. At the first glance it presents a scene of inextricable confusion. It is an emigrant train caught and tangled in one of the highest passes of the Rocky Mountains. Far backward spread the Eastern Plains; far onward stretches the Beulah of promise, fading at last in the far horizon. The great wagons struggling upward, tumbling downward from mountain precipice into mountain gorge, hold under their shaking covers every type of westward moving human life. Here is the mother sitting in the wagon-front, her blue eyes gazing outward, wistfully and far, the baby lying on her lap; one wants to touch the baby’s head, it looks so alive and tender and shelterless in all that dust and turmoil of travel. A man on horseback carries his wife, her head upon his shoulder. Who that has ever seen it will forget her sick look and the mute appeal in the suffering eyes. Here is the bold hunter with his racoon cap, the pioneer boy on horseback, a coffee-pot and cup dangling at his saddle, and oxen—such oxen! it seems as if their friendly noses must touch us; they seem to be feeling out for our hand as we pass up to the gallery. Here is the young man, the old man, and far aloft stands the advance guard fastening on the highest and farthest pinnacle the flag of the United States.

Confusing, disappointing perhaps, at first glance, this painting asserts itself more and more in the soul the oftener and the longer you gaze. Already the swift, smooth wheels of the railway, the shriek of the whistle, and the rush of the engine have made its story history. But it is the history of our past—the story of the heroic West. It is one of a thousand which should line the walls of the Capitol, feeding the hearts of the American people to the latest generation with the memory of our forefathers, showing by what toilsome ways they followed the Star of Empire and made the paths of civilization smooth for their children’s feet.