CHAPTER XXVI.

RECEPTION DAY AT THE WHITE HOUSE—GLIMPSES OF LIFE.

Mrs. Grant at Home—A Reception—Feeling Good-Natured—Looking After One’s Friends—Ready to Forgive—Mr. Grant’s “Likeable Side”—The East Room on a Reception Day—“The Nation’s Parlor”—Rags and Tatters Departed—The Work of Relic-hunters—Internal Arrangements—Eight Presidents, All In a Row—“As Large as Life”—Shadows of the Departed—A Present from the Sultan of Turkey—A List of Finery—A Scene Not Easily Forgotten—How They Wept for Their Martyr—Tales which a Room Might Tell—David, Jonathan and Sir Philip Sidney Superseded—Underneath the Gold and Lace—“Into the Ear of a Foolish Girl”—“The Census of Spittoons”—“A Horror in Our Land”—An Under-bred People—“We Talk too Loud”—Preliminaries to Perfection—“More Than Shakespeare’s Women”—The Shadow of Human Nature—Two “Quizzing” Ladies—Nothing Sacred to Them—An Illogical Dame—Her “Precarious Organ”—A “Vice that Thrives Amid Christian Graces”—How some Pious People “Avenge their Defrauded Souls”—A Lady of Many Colors—“A New Woman”—A Vegetable Comparison—What “a Good Little Girl” was Allowed To Do—The Lady of the Manor—Women Who are Not Ashamed of Womanhood—Observed and Admired of All—Another “Reigning _Belle_”—Sketch of a Perfect Woman—After the Lapse of Generations—The “German”—“You Had Better Be Shut Up”—The “Withering” of Many American Women—Full Dress and No Dress—What the Princess Ghika Thinks—A Young Girl’s Dress—“That Dreadful Woman”—“_My_ Wife’s” Dress—The Resolution of a Young Man.

It is Tuesday—Mrs. Grant’s day—and all the gay world is going to the White House, besides a portion of that world which is not gay.

Mrs. Grant’s morning receptions are very popular, and deservedly so. This is not because the lady is in any sense a conversationalist, or has a fine tact in receiving, but rather, I think, because she is thoroughly good-natured, and for the time, at least, makes other people feel the same. At any rate, there was never so little formality or so much genuine sociability in the day-receptions at the White House as at the present time. General Babcock pronounces your name without startling you out of your boots by shouting it, as on such occasions is usually done. He passes it to the President, the President to Mrs. Grant, Mrs. Grant to ladies receiving with her. After exchanging salutations with each, you pass on to make room for others, and to find your own personal friends dispersed through the great rooms. They are in each of them; loitering in the Blue Room, where the receiving is going on; chatting in the Green Room; promenading in the East Room. You may go through the long corridor into the state dining-room, into the conservatories, full of flowers and fragrance, and back, if you choose, to your starting-point, where the President and Mrs. Grant are still receiving.

This is one of the pleasantest facts of these morning receptions—the informal coming down of the President to receive with Mrs. Grant. I have never been accused of over enthusiasm for him, but find myself ready to forgive in him the traits which I cannot like, when I see him, with his daughter, beside Mrs. Grant. _Then_, it is so perfectly evident that, whatever the President may or may not be, “Mr. Grant” has a very true and likeable side, with which nobody is so well acquainted as Mrs. Grant.

Here is the East Room, that you have read about so long. It never looked so well before. There are flaws in the harmony of its decorations which we might pick at; but we won’t, as we are not here to-day to find fault. Besides, it is too pleasant to see that the nation’s parlor, erst so forlorn, has absolutely taken on a look of home comfort. In proportions it is a noble room, long and lofty. It has seven windows—three in front, facing Pennsylvania avenue and Lafayette square; three looking out upon the presidential grounds and the Potomac; and a stately bay window overlooking the Treasury. It has four white marble mantel-pieces, two on each side. It has eight mirrors, filling the spaces over the mantels and between the windows. Richly wrought lace curtains have taken the place of the tatters left there a few years ago, when the curtains of the White House windows were scattered over the country in tags, taken home by relic-hunters. Over these hang draperies of crimson brocatelle, surmounted by gilt cornices, bearing the arms of the United States. The walls and ceilings are frescoed, and from the latter depend three immense chandeliers of cut glass, which, when lighted, blaze like mimic suns. On the walls hang the oil portraits, in heavy gilt frames, of eight Presidents of the United States. Opposite the door, as you enter, is the portrait of Filmore. On the other side of the mantel, that of Lincoln. Next beyond the bay window, that of Washington; all of life size. Beyond the further mantel is that of Franklin Pierce. Above the door opposite, one of John Adams. Above the next door, of Martin Van Buren; the next, of Polk; the last above the entrance door, of John Tyler.

The carpet on the East Room, last year, was presented to the United States by the Sultan of Turkey. It seemed like one immense rug, covering the entire floor, and filled the room with an atmosphere of comfort, grand, soft, and warm. The chairs and sofas are of carved wood, crimson cushioned. A handsome bronze clock ticks above one of the mantels, the others are adorned with handsome bronzes. The air is summer warm. On the whole, isn’t the people’s parlor a pleasant place? I never enter it, but comes back to me that tearful April morning when, in the centre of this floor, under the white catafalque, lay the body of Abraham Lincoln, dead. The crowd pressing in then, how different from this one! Rugged soldiers bent down and kissed his face and wept, women scattered flowers upon his breast, with their tears. Rich and poor, old and young, black and white, all crowded round his coffin, and wept for him,—one, _only one_, if the most august, of the martyrs of liberty.

Think what tales the room could tell, since the day when Abigail Adams dried her clothes from the weekly wash, in it, if it but had a tongue. Stand here, and see the stately procession move by. Believe in your own day, my dears. You need not go back to Sir Philip Sidney, to find a perfect gentleman, nor to David and Jonathan, to find faith and love between man and man, passing the love of woman, nor to the days of chivalry, to find true knights who would die for you. Here are men bearing, under all this glitter of gold and lace, bodies battered and maimed in their country’s cause. There, is a man, pouring foolish nothings into the ear of a foolish girl, who would die for the truth.

We are far from being a thorough-bred people. The census of spittoons is a horror in our land. We talk too loud, and too long; we gesticulate too much; we can not keep quiet. We need, at least, more capacity for repose, more unselfish consideration for the sensibilities of others, more of the golden rule, before we can flower into the perfection of fine breeding. Yet, no less here, are men at once strong and gentle, brave and tender, gallant and yet true. Here are all and more than Shakespeare’s women: Juliet, searching for her Romeo; Miranda, looking through her starry eyes for a “thing divine” even in the Red Room; tender Imogen; fair Titania; Portia, with hair of golden brown; and Desdemona, imprudent, fond, yet truth itself. Here is not only the beauty and the _belle_, but the sibyl, whose divining eyes beyond volition, strike below every sham and every falsehood.

Yet here, too, falls the shadow of human nature. There stand two ladies, whose supreme enjoyment here is “quizzing.” Among their thousand “dear friends” here, not one is too sacred to be ridiculed. One of these ladies, at least, would feel as if she had forfeited “her soul’s salvation,” if she were to go to the theatre, or to give countenance to a dance; but it does not occur to her, that she puts that precarious organ in the slightest peril, when she stands in a public assembly, and ridicules her friends.

These ladies are merely yielding to a vice which has grown with their years, strengthened with their strength, the vice that thrives amid Christian graces, the vice paramount of the Christian church. The most unkind people whom I have ever known, have been distinguished for an ostentatious sort of piety. The most uncharitable conclusions, the most pitiless judgments, the most merciless ridicule, that I have ever listened to, of poor human beings, I have heard from people high in the church, not from people of the so-called “world.” This, not because the normal human nature in either differs, but because the people of the world have a thousand outlets and activities which draw them away from microscopic inspection of the flaws in their neighbors; while ascetic pietists, denied legitimate amusements, shut out from innocent recreation, avenge their defrauded souls by feeding them on small vices. I offer no defence for a life of folly; there is nothing I should dread more, save a life of sin. Yet, if I were to make a choice, I would choose foolishness rather than meanness.

This lady, flashing by in many hues, represents what one sees continually in Washington—a new woman. Not new to the city merely, but new to position and honor. These are but slight external accidents to a nature that has ripened from within, drawing culture, refinement, and dignity out of the daily opportunities of retired life. But, when the public position is _all_ that gives the honor, how easy to tell it! There is all the difference in the quality of the put-on, puckering manner, and the simple dignity of real ladyhood, that there is between the quality of a persimmon and a pomegranate. All she has is new. She, herself, is new. Her bearing and her honors do not blend. There is no soft and fine shading of thought, of manner, of accent, of attire. The sun of prosperity may strike down to a rarer vein, and draw it outward, to tone down this boastful commonplace; but we must bear the glare, the smell of varnish, and the crackle of veneering, during the process.

When I was a very good little girl, I was allowed to read Mrs. Sherwood’s Lady of the Manor, on Sunday. I read, and thought that heaven on earth must be shut up in a manor house. When I grew to be a somewhat bigger girl, sailing down the Hudson, a manor house, rich in historic recollections, was pointed out to me. And here, in my summer-time, comes the lady of this manor house, drops her gentle courtesy, and gives me her hand, making more than real the enchanted story of childhood. The lady of the manor in crude Washington revives the stately graces of old days.

How quaint and rare they are! How I look and long for it; how glad I am when I find it,—that indefinable, yet ever-felt presence of fine womanliness, a thing as precious as the highest manliness,—each the rarest efflovescence of human nature. I confess to a clinging adoration for it, whether felt in the lady of the manor or in the sad-eyed woman who cleans my gloves. The womanliness that is not ashamed nor dissatisfied with womanhood, nor yet vain of it; the womanliness that gives us the gracious, blending dignity and sweetness of wisdom and humility, of self-respect and reticence, of spirituality and tenderness—that ineffable charm of femininity, which is the counterpart and crown of manhood, in very distinction equal with it, each together maintaining in equilibrium the brain and soul of the human race.

Even while I write word comes: The lady of the manor is dead. The quaint hood, the stately grace, the winning smile we shall see no more. All have gone into the darkness of death. And who was the lady of the manor, who for three winters in Washington has been the observed and admired of all who met her in the circles of society? She was Cora Livingston Barton, the reigning _belle_ of Jackson’s administration. She was the daughter of Edward Livingston, who served his country as Member of Congress and Senator from Louisiana, as Secretary of State during Jackson’s administration, and as United States Minister to France. Her father was as distinguished for goodness as he was for noble intellect and exalted public service, and her mother was one of the most remarkable women who ever graced the National Capital. She was a social queen of the rarest endowments. She was the chosen friend and dear counsellor of two persons as opposite in nature and temperament as General Jackson and Mrs. John Quincy Adams. She was a very queen of entertainers, as the wife of the Secretary of State, entertaining foreigners and Americans and political foes, with an ease, elegance and fascination of manner, which annihilated alike all prejudice and animosity. She was a classical scholar, familiar with the best ancient and modern thoughts. The chosen counsellor of her husband in the gravest affairs of State,—a self-abnegating mother,—a devout Methodist, she having chosen that communion as her own on account of the simplicity and fervor of its mode of worship.

Of this rare woman, our “lady of the manor” was the only child. “Upon her she lavished extraordinary maternal devotion, hardly ever suffering her to be out of her sight. Her daughter had hardly reached girlhood when her beautiful mother assumed the simplest matronly attire. Ever afterwards she seemed rather displeased than flattered when allusions were made to her own still remarkable appearance.”

Cora Livingston was worthy to be the child of such a mother. She was the most famous _belle_ of the Jackson administration. She married Thomas Barton, who went as Secretary of Legation with her father, the Minister to France, and who remained as _Chargé d’Affaires_ when Edward Livingston returned.

In the course of time, mother and daughter, both widows, spent their winters in New York and their summers at Montgomery Place, that grand old manor on the Hudson, of which we catch glimpses through its immemorial trees, as we sail by on the river. Here, beautiful and saintly, that mother died, October, 1860, at the age of seventy-eight.

Warned by physicians to seek a softer climate, after the lapse of generations, in the winter of 1871 the daughter returned to Washington, the scene of her childish home and early triumphs. She did not belong to things gone by. With her two stately and beautiful nieces she became at once the centre of a rare group of friends, of the attention and reverence of the first men in the State, and an object of admiring comment wherever she appeared. She appeared at many morning receptions. I see her now as I saw her the first time stepping from her carriage into the great portico of the White House, across its corridor to the Blue Room, with the light, springing step of a girl; and yet, the soft clinging black dress, the quaint hood of black silk, with its inside snowy _ruche_, all told that she made not the slightest pretence to youth. And now, in these summer days, comes the word: “While packing some books in a trunk to go to Montgomery Place, she bent down, burst a blood vessel in the head, and without warning died.”

They have all been morning receptions to which I have asked you,—the “morning” ending at 5 P. M. I cannot invite you to go to the “German,” which begins at 11 P. M. and ends at daybreak. I have too deep a care for your physical and spiritual health to ask you to do any such thing. When you read of the gay doings and bright assemblies here, perhaps you think it hard sometimes that you must stay away in a quiet place to work or study. You feel almost defrauded because you are shut out from the splendor and mirth and flattery of fashion. You long for the pomp and glory of the world, and sigh that so little of either falls on your life-path. Thus I shall seem cruel to you when I say that you had better be shut up for the next five years, even in a convent, silently growing toward a noble life in the world afterward, than to be caught and carried on by its follies now, before you have learned how to live.

Are you young? Then you should be more beautiful at twenty-five, at thirty, at thirty-five, than you are now. Not with the budding bloom of first youth, that is as evanescent as it is exquisite. What a pity that it is beauty’s only dower to so many American women. They waste it, lose it, then wilt and wither. I want you so to feed the sources of life to-day that you may grow, not wither; that you may bloom, not fade, into the perfect flower of womanhood.

Terpsichore is a sad sight to me; not because Terpsichore dances, for dancing in itself may be as innocent as a bird’s flying; not because she loves beautiful attire, for exquisite dress is a feminine fine art, as meet for a woman as the flower’s tint, or the bird’s plumage. I sigh at the sight of my pretty Terpsichore, because the first bloom of her exquisite youth is being exhaled and lost forever in a feverish, false atmosphere of being. Something of delicate sensibility, something of unconscious innocence, something of freshness of feeling, of purity of soul is wasted with the fresh young bloom of her cheeks in the midnight revel, lengthened into morning; wasted in the heated dance, in the indigestible feast, in the wild, unhealthy excitement through which she whirls night alter night. Terpsichore, in her tattered tarletan dress, creeping to bed in the gray morning, after having danced all night, is a sad sight to see to any one who can see her as she is. Terpsichore’s mother would be a sadder sight still, if she were not a vexatious one. She brought back from Europe the notion, which so many of our countrywomen think it fine to bring, that “full dress” is necessarily next to no dress. She tells you, in a supreme tone, that admits no denial, that you would not be admitted into the drawing-room of a court in Europe unless in full dress, viz., semi-nakedness. She would be nothing, if not European in style. Thus, night after night, this mother of grown-up daughters and sons appears in crowded assemblies in attire that would befit in outline a child of eight years of age. If we venture to meet her _ipse dixit_ on European style, with the assurance of the Princess Helena, Ghika, Dora D’Istria, one of the most learned and beautiful women of this world, that the conventional society dress of Europe is more immodest than any she saw while traveling over the mountains and valleys of the East, she will tell you that Princess Ghika “is not an authority on dress in Paris,” which is doubtless true.

Thus, in republican Washington, in glaring drawing-rooms, we are treated to a study of female anatomy, which is appalling. Don’t jump to the conclusion that I want every lady to go to a party in a stuff dress, drawn up to her ears; nor that I am so prudish as to think no dress can be modestly, as well as immodestly low. No matter how it be cut, the _way_ in which a dress is worn is more impressive than the dress itself. I have seen a young girl’s shoulders rise from her muslin frock as unconsciously and as innocently as the lilies in the garden; and I have come upon a wife and mother, in a public assembly, so dressed for promiscuous gaze that I have involuntarily shut my eyes with shame.

I never saw Lydia Thompson; but from what I have heard of her, have come to the conclusion that her attire is just as modest as that of many ladies whom I meet at fashionable parties. They cast up their eyes in horror at the name of poor Lydia Thompson. _They_ go to see Lydia Thompson! No, indeed! How could their eyes endure the sight of that dreadful woman? No less they themselves offer gratis, to a promiscuous company, every evening, a sight, morally, quite as dreadful. The men, who pay their money to Lydia Thompson and her _troupe_, know that their dress and their burlesque, however questionable, make at once their business and their livelihood. They cannot make the same excuse for their wives, their sisters, and their sweethearts, if they see them scarcely less modestly attired in some fashionable ball-room. Remember this; if you ever find yourself in such a place, the best men in that room, at heart, are not delighted with such displays. Being men, they will look at whatever is presented to their gaze; more, many will compliment and flatter the very woman, whose vanity at heart they pity or despise; but it will always be with the mental reservation: “_My wife_ should never dress like that!” “I don’t want to see my sister dancing round dances for hours in the arms of a man whom even I cannot think of without horror; and if —— dances with him again, I’ll not go to another ‘German;’” said a young man to his mother, this very winter.

This is perpetually the fact; and it is the danger and the shame of the round dances. Young girls guarded, from babyhood, from all contact with vice, from all knowledge of men as they exist, in their own world of clubs and dissipation, suddenly “come out” to whirl, night after night, and week after week, in the arms of men whose lightest touch is profanation. It would be long before it would dawn upon the girl to dream of the evil in that man’s heart; far longer to learn the evil of his life; yet no less, to her, innocent and young, in the very association and contact there is unconscious pollution. There is a sacredness in the very thought of the body which God created to be the human home of an immortal soul. Its very beauty should be the seal of its holiness. Every where in Scripture its sacredness is recognized and enforced. Therein we are told that our bodies are the temples of God. We are commanded to make them meet temples for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; and our very dress, in its harmony and purity, should consecrate, not desecrate, the beautiful home of the soul.