Part 28
Our last diplomatic scandal relates to Victoria’s new protégé, the English “envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary,” the Hon. Lionel Sackville-West. If he were not Victoria’s “Knight of the Garter,” it would not be so sad. Now it appears that when Lionel went to Spain as a young attaché he became desperately enamored with a ballet-dancer. “He loved not wisely, but too well.” The proud Sackville-Wests would have none of it. They declare to this day that Lionel is a bachelor Simon pure, and so he is inscribed on the awful book of the peerage. It is not understood whether the ballet-dancer has put on angel plumage, but it is known that she left a brood of little chick Sackville-Wests, which the Honorable Lionel is willing to gather under his wings as a hen doth her chickens. His eldest daughter is with him--his acknowledged child--and here lies all the trouble. If he would only ignore her, or wait, as the Peruvian minister did, till he hears the toot of the last trump, Victoria and “Washington society” would wink at his little “escapades.” But the British minister shows that he has a will of his own and a mind of his own, with the Prince of Wales to stand between him and his virtuous sovereign. The capital is becoming alive with men who manage to elude the snares of matrimony, whilst the foreign legations--words fail not because the source is exhausted, but newspaper articles must come to an end.
OLIVIA.
CLOSING SCENES IN THE HOUSE.
PEN PICTURES OF BLACKBURN, GARFIELD, RANDALL AND LESSER LIGHTS.
WASHINGTON, _March 4, 1879_.
Prematurely crushed before half its most important work was performed, the Forty-fifth Congress of the Republic has ceased to live. Its dying hours were marked with scenes of almost riotous confusion, reminding one of the exciting days of “secession times.” It is only when each great party has almost an equal number of combatants in Congress that a hand-to-hand battle takes place. To-day the men whose official career ends for the present in the House were the plumed leaders in the strife. In the advance were Foster, of Ohio; Hale, of Maine, and Durham, of Kentucky. To carry out the idea of death, flowers were strewn on the desks of departing members, and on the Speaker’s table uprose a pyramid of floral display. Not an inch of standing room was visible. Even the diplomatic gallery contained an unusual number of distinguished foreigners, whilst that part designated as the “members’ gallery” was crowded to overflowing by the acknowledged leaders of the social world of which politics make a part.
On a front seat in a central position sat Mrs. Hayes, conspicuous among the silks, satins, and jewels by the extreme simplicity of her attire, and lack of pretense of all that pertains to the aristocratic and exclusive. The black and shining bands of hair were drawn close and prim over the temples; the large gray eyes that warm or freeze according to the will of the possessor; the shapely nose above the cold, thin lips, finished with a chin indicating strong points of character.
Neither natural roses nor lilies bloomed in the members’ gallery. Pale, sallow, worn-out women came who proved to the lookers-on what a season of fashionable folly will do if permitted to have matters all its own way. But if real charms were lacking, the loss was fortunately replaced by wise manipulations of the artist. The “paint pots” so vividly pictured by the immortal Vicar of Wakefield had been brought into requisition, and Olivia and Sophie were as well prepared as ever for future triumph and conquest. The diplomatic gallery was graced by the Brazilian, Dutch and Belgian ministers, and by the pretty, modest daughters of Secretary Evarts, attended by some of the handsome officials of the Department of State. Asia was represented, half and half, in the person of Yung Wing, of China, and his American wife. What a strange pair? He is a genuine son of the land of Confucius, with his dark-yellow skin drawn smooth like parchment over his dome of thought; inky hair and eyes, and with all those strange hieroglyphic signs of mystery stamped on his sphinx-like face. Madame Yung Wing seemed to enjoy her novel position, as she leaned back enveloped in all that finery which her marital captivity enables her to wear. This mingling of the races, to the honor of American women let it be recorded, happens only in the extremes of our social system--among the very highest or lowest--the diamonds or the dirt.
The gallery to the right of the Speaker is a study for the artist. Every part of this broad land is represented. The Boston girl is there, with a voice that reminds you of the higher notes of Ole Bull’s supernatural violin. The most beautiful women of the continent spring from the land of the setting sun, descendants of the belles of the “blue grass region,” grown and ripened under the cool sun and peculiar atmosphere of Colorado and California. There they sit, mothers and daughters, as luscious to the eye as a basket of their own inimitable pears and transparent grapes. The women of the Sunny South were there. Slender, willowy creations, that remind you of Damascus blades. As full of passion as a fagot of wood with sticks, each one carries an invisible goad to prod the statesman if he even thinks of “compromise.” Stronger than ever are the women entrenched in the rulings of the House. Opposite the Speaker might have been seen Africa--reflected from the seats in all tints, from ebony to “Alderney cream.” Ever since the gallery doors were thrown open to this race the space is occupied. The cushioned seats have been removed, but day after day of the session sees the same row, as though the House were a great school in which the spectators are pupils. Few colored women are to be seen, and the crowd seemed made up of those who have no employment, but who go to Congress to bask in the artificial heat and enjoy the tropical magnificence to be felt on every side.
The gavel falls on the Speaker’s table like the blacksmith’s blows on the forge. A muttering silence follows. General Butler has left the Republican side and rolls over to the Democratic. He glances down on the diminutive figure of Aleck Stevens in his rolling chair, pauses a moment as though he were going to speak, apparently changes his mind, passes on, then sinks into a chair with a staunch Democrat on either side.
The semi-silence is broken, and the Honorable Charles Foster, of Ohio, is on his feet. His face is very white, but his black eyes burn like the wolf’s in the cave when it was pursued by General Israel Putnam. No man in the House commands more respect than the one who has the floor. “Hear! hear!” In a moment the House was made to understand that Charley, as usual, had a political panacea to apply to the blistered situation; but his plan is hurled back by Atkins, of Tennessee, and then the struggle to fasten the responsibility of an extra session begins.
Rapidly the hour hand describes the passage which marks the circle lying between 11 o’clock and 12. “Only a moment,” begs Atkins, “to put myself right before the country!” Hale, of Maine, intercedes for a moment in which he “may set the Republican party all right, and fix the responsibility for all the calamities which may follow future Democratic legislation.” Anxious eyes glance at the clock. Only twenty-five minutes left. A voice is heard pleading that the crowd of ladies, composed largely of those who include members in the “family,” be permitted to occupy the floor. Speaker Randall asks if there is any objection. None being raised, in an instant the doors become sluiceways through which pour a flood of feminine humanity. This element spills itself in every direction; sinks into crevices made vacant by retreating forms of members. In vain Speaker Randall asserts “the ladies are not to occupy the chairs within the circle.” The timid ones slink back, but a few charming ones stick, and strange to say the members seem to like it. Conger, of Michigan, beckoned his pretty daughter Florence to a seat beside him. In an instant the vinegar and aggressive spleen disappeared from his countenance, proving that the ugly face he wears in Congress is only a mask. One aged sinner, at least one old enough to know better, slipped his arm around the back of a chair, and though no apparent damage was done it was enough to prove the crookedness of the legislative mind. The flirtations on the floor occupied very little time, and divided the space consumed in receiving messages from the Senate. All at once a tall man rises in the gallery, and says audibly to the people around: “A half dozen men on each side do the business; all the rest are drummers!” After this mercantile speech, the stranger subsides. In the midst of the excitement a burly form is seen entering a doorway, and a face lights up the surroundings as a beacon flame flings its beams far out on a turbulent sea. Haul down the canvas; let go the pumps; it is ex-Secretary Robeson, at last safely beached. Republican sympathy clings to him because he has no money, and thought it his duty to repair our war vessels so long as the port holes showed no signs of decay.
Leaning carelessly back, but in an attitude of inimitable grace stands Joe Blackburn of Kentucky, the “blue grass” boy who will be entered in the coming session for the Speaker’s race. Possessed of remarkable points of physical beauty, few men in Congress in this respect can be called his peers. Tall and slender, made up entirely of bone, nerve and muscle, he seems the embodiment of life’s fiercest forces. The energy of his mind is in keeping with the casket, and his chances for the Speakership at the present time seem best of all.
General Garfield disturbs the stifling air by offering a resolution of thanks to Speaker Randall, who receives it with that becoming modesty he knows so well how to assume. In a voice tremulous with emotion, in a few well chosen words, Honorable Sam. Randall announces his labor and his arduous duties done; and for the last time the gavel descended, the curtain fell, whilst the Forty-fifth Congress entered that silent bourn from whence no traveler returns.
OLIVIA.
A MATRIMONIAL REGISTER.
LIST OF ELIGIBLES OF THE SENATE AND CABINET.
WASHINGTON, _December 24, 1879_.
“They don’t propose! They won’t propose! For fear perhaps I’d say yes! Just let ’em try it, for heaven knows I’m tired of single blessedness!”
At the moment of writing the waters of social life are becalmed in Washington. Very little is doing in matrimonial business and mothers with marriageable daughters are advised to hold on to the stock in hand (unless there is danger of spoiling), as an advance is expected as soon as a batch of single Congressmen arrive, and this interesting event will probably happen soon after the holidays. General Ben Butler is already here, and though he has shed his late Congressional skin and is no longer interesting on this account, he still has the chance to be governor of Massachusetts; but aside from this honor, any respectable matrimonial agency would give him a clean bill of sale the moment the right kind of a purchaser can be found. It is said the gallant General has a “blind eye,” but even with this fact in a woman’s favor it will be necessary to approach him as carefully as though he were gunpowder or an “infernal machine,” and be well prepared for the explosion which would be sure to follow. But it must be remembered that all the valuable things of the earth are obtained at great personal sacrifice and often with loss of life. Just as the biggest pearls are fished from the deepest waters, the greatest men are brought to the right point with a corresponding loss of female vitality.
Senator Sharon! “Lo! the conquering hero comes” on the breath of the wind, at the same time hitched behind a fiery locomotive. He is already done up in broad-cloth and fine linen, and is probably at this hour sleeping in his own “special car” as he rushes over the steel roadway with which dear old Oakes Ames spanned the continent. What a picture of Oriental magnificence, with his almond-eyed, dark-haired daughter at his side! What a flutter among the dames of the grand West End! In his presence a small bore of the Army and Navy, a “swell” of an upper clerk, or even an obscure Congressman pales as the stars are wiped out by the effulgence of a full-blown sun! “But he ain’t handsome!” Shut up, you ill-bred child! Handsome is that handsome does! Didn’t Senator Sharon spend $40,000 on the Grant reception, and owns a house so large that people get lost in it? It takes as long to explore it as it does the Mammoth Cave! “What does he come here for, mamma?” “Why, to show his heathen Chinee, and see if his glass shoe will fit any Cinderella at the capital.” “They pared their heels and they pared their toes,” but the special car goes back to the Pacific slope empty and tenantless, in one sense, as it came. The ripple subsides, to rise at each approach of the “special car,” and so the play goes on.
Senator Booth, of California, is another matrimonial venture worth looking after, but he has already been toughened by several winter campaigns in Washington, until it is declared by those that ought to know that a sigh drawn fresh and pure from the deepest and most capacious female bosom and applied to the right place will have no more effect than a Holman liver pad administered for lockjaw, whilst a glance from the most brilliant eye falls like a sunbeam on an alligator’s back. Managing mammas have given up whist parties on his account, because he is far more “whist” than the count. But the Senator is in a tolerable state of preservation, considering the number of sieges he has endured, and bids fair to return to the sand lots of California no worse for the tender wear and tear to which he has been so cruelly subjected.
If there are any tears to shed, prepare to shed them now! Step softly! blind your eyes! This is Senator Ferry, of Michigan, he who has convulsed the heart of woman, lo! these many years. Mothers have plotted, widows intrigued, girls have cried for him, all to no purpose. It has taken subtle cunning to elude the snares spread for his gentle, trusting being, but Senator Ferry has been equal to the trial and has come out of the fiery flames handsome and jubilant as ever. Whilst the years come and go and at the same time snatch the hairs from his brother Senators’ heads, leaving crowsfeet all along the track, Senator Ferry defies the “Old Man of the Sickle,” and is just as capable of cracking a young girl’s heart to-day as when in the morning of his manly strength, before the stars sang together. As soon as Congress assembles a committee will be appointed to investigate the source of his mighty power, as it is not intended that one red-bearded Senator shall get more than his share. As Senator Ferry usually buys up all newspapers which print advertisements of him, this is intended as a cheap way to get rid of a solid edition of _The Times_, but the article will only call for the usual liberal rate which it pays to its most valued correspondents.
The next names registered on the books of the matrimonial register come under the head of “twins,” and such a pair of twins have never been seen since Gemini and Pollux took their places in the heavens in order to chase the “big bear” around the polar star. Possibly Senators Burnside and Anthony have been condensed into twins, because Rhode Island is too small a State to hold them singly and apart. At one time Senator Burnside came very near scaring off all the girls by wearing a gray night-cap in the daytime, but he immediately rallied and gave a lunch party and explained to the “wee darlin’s” there wasn’t the slightest danger in it. The girls remonstrated, but without avail, until Senator Anthony declared that he wouldn’t be twin to a night-cap, even though it was the color of the side-whiskers, unless the gender could be changed. There is always an incipient battle going on between the two, similar in object and manner as those in which the late Siamese twins indulged, but this is done simply to amuse each other and at the same time keep the thoughts of the female sirens out of their united minds; besides it takes Senator Anthony all his spare time to keep Senator Burnside out of mischief. Since the Senatorial night-cap has been laid aside all sorts of mental eggs have been hatching in his brain, and some time ago one of these eggs turned into an immense black horse and two-wheeled vehicle, adorned by a real tiger skin. This chariot was driven by a Jehu black as the wings of night, and had not Senator Burnside sat by the sable driver the people of the capital would have believed that the whole contrivance was a phantom, such as Washington Irving used to paint with his magic pen. “I told him,” said Charlie Foster, “that he must not drive so fast. That his black beast was a dray horse and not a ‘roadster.’” But the immense black animal, the two black wheels, the sable driver, with the tiger skin flying, thundered up and down the Avenue, a target for the witty Stilson Hutchins, whose paragraphs on the subject were looked for in the _Post_ with keener relish than the most aromatic coffee. Thin-skinned Anthony could stand it no longer and the black horse disappeared from Congressional history. It has never been ascertained whether it was a real horse or one of those uncanny creations “conjured” by means of the “black art,” but as everything about it was black and all in the highest style of art, it is safe to pronounce it black art until a better word can be invented. Just as long as Senator Burnside is in the Senate Senator Anthony will have his hands full. In the meantime matrimonial schemes will be laid over as unfinished business, and this is peculiarly trying, for the loss to some fair woman in not being allowed to cling to Senator Anthony is more painful than pen can describe.
As altogether too much space of this valuable paper has been given to the irreclaimable old single-tops of the Senate, it is high time the gay and festive “House” should be reached; but, alas! if this is done, the “catchables” of the Cabinet will be overlooked, and what will Mrs. Hayes say? The writer knows very little about General Devens, but it has been ascertained that he was not imported from England, but belongs to an entirely different breed, whilst President Hayes claims all the honor of original discovery. At any rate, it is well known that he was picked up on the codfish shores of Massachusetts in a remarkable state of preservation. General Devens is blue-blooded to the last degree, and it is claimed that a large portion of the fluid that runs in his veins was imported in the _Mayflower_, and this accounts for the small quantity of it. Whilst there is enough for all Cabinet purposes and to occasionally amuse Mrs. Hayes, the illuminating power seems to require some such tinker as the hero of Menlo Park to bring it to the required point of perfection. Like Edison’s electric light, though it “shines,” there is very little heat, and a girl complains that in his presence she always has a cold nose, but it is declared that he shall not go out of the Cabinet on this account, and the probabilities are that he has come to stay.
Listen to the mocking-bird! Trills, quavers, semi-quavers, demi-semi-quavers, a flute, a flageolet, a dulcimer! It is only the voice of Carl Schurz, but it is a whole opera concealed in his throat. Creation has contrived a few voices whose intonation in speech is the highest and most triumphant music. Such sounds come out of the mouth of a shell. It is heard in the patter of a fairy cascade. It is the hissing ring of the rain as it kisses the bosom of the dimpled deep. Nature’s pure, sweet, unadulterated chimes--not spoiled by “foreign master” or any other training. Born in a castle, the son of a gamekeeper; half aristocrat, half peasant; haughty as a king; humble as the lowliest who seek his favor; least understood because his intellect includes both large and small gifts culled from the whole vast domain which governs the law of humanity--daughters admire him, mothers fear him, fathers hate him. Why? Because he is not only a man, but somewhat more! During office hours he attends to business precisely like other Cabinet officers, with even more accuracy and attention, but, his work done, the uncanny orgie begins. He has the power to draw the most weird and unearthly music out of his piano. The yells of the cats before they were made into “strings” are revived with added ferocity. All the sounds of nature are imitated. He is never weary and never lies down, but he has been seen to uncoil, throw his head back, open his lips and show his white, glistening fangs. Then somebody is sure to get hurt. When Mother Nature begins to pull the string to let down the curtain of night, a dark, slender horse, bearing upon its back a tall, sinuous form, may be seen flying in a northeasterly direction. Nothing more solemn and ghoul-like can be imagined. To the awful northeast lies “Edgewood,” most sentimental of earthly pilgrimages. Cemeteries here and there blot the highway. The lonely road stretches on, unlit by flash except a “Jack o’ lantern,” which leads the way for the dark horse of the smoking flank. Once Senator Conkling was taking an airing in this direction for his poor health’s sake and met the “horseman.” It was more than his nerves could bear. Edgewood is now deserted, the cemeteries are all quiet, and the “vision” is left to its own mad career. Any woman who meditates “designs” on Carl Schurz should first cultivate a love for sulphur and practice with an electric battery every day.
The House may safely be called an ocean of matrimonial possibilities. When mothers say “there are as good fish in the sea as ever were caught,” they have direct reference to the House, the lurking-place of so much that is sweet, shy and forbidding. Here, at almost any hour of the Congressional day, may be seen “sporting” a whole shoal of bachelor Greenbackers; but their backs are no more green than their fellow members, unless the verdant tint may be noticed with which all Congressmen are more or less afflicted. Here bachelor Le Fevre spouts like a great sperm whale; and one speculates on the quantity of oil he would “turn out,” and feels sad to think he was not discovered before the coal oil regions, for in that case he would have proved of vast service to the world. At present he is ostensibly engaged in storming the departments to find places for his constituents, but the real truth shows that he is only exhibiting his handsome person to the Treasury girls as a target, and each one is allowed a given number of shots at the mark. As the space allotted by _The Times_ to its most valued correspondents has been filled to the brim and just a little slopped over, it is announced that the next article will take up dear, precious Charley O’Neill. It will treat of the sentimental damage wrought at the capital by this “broth of a boy,” for if all his “doin’s” could be made visible to mortal eye, the old Keystone State would blot out the memory of its late Centennial glory and at the same time give General Grant a rest.
OLIVIA.
BACHELORS AND WIDOWERS.
CONGRESSMEN SPEER, CLYMER, ACKLEY AND O’NEILL.
WASHINGTON, _January 15, 1880_.
“Birdie, oh, come and live with me; You shall be happy--you shall be free.”