Washington In 1867

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Title:     Washington In 1867
Author: George William Curtis [More Titles by Curtis]

The gay young European diplomatist, accustomed to the charms of the great foreign capitals--London, Paris, Vienna, Rome, and the scores of small but delightful cities--probably regards an attachment to the embassy of his country in the United States as a Boeotian exile. But when, eagerly curious to see the capital of this remote region, he is dumped in the railroad-shed at Washington, and emerges upon the depthless mud or blinding dust of the city, upon its hackmen and porters, greedy of his last penny, and upon its general hopelessness of aspect, it is not difficult to imagine how his heart sinks and how bitter the exile seems.

To the independent native of the country, however, Washington as a city is simply exasperating and ridiculous. Its one truly magnificent building, the Capitol, seems to have absorbed everything else. Like a huge wen, it has apparently sucked up all the life of the other buildings. Feeble, shapeless, ineffective, they huddle along the sides of the vast avenues, and, however closely they stand, give nothing but the impression of a straggling and clumsy village. Then there is the eternal absurdity of the plan. It is not only a straggling and clumsy village, but it is utterly dislocated. Washington is laid out upon the plan of cart-wheels within cart-wheels. The stranger is always going wrong. You meet him, say, near the junction of some avenue with some Fourth and a Half Street north. He has the expression of a long-confirmed but mild lunatic; and after gazing at you blandly and inquiringly for a moment, he says, "I am trying to find the corner of Ninth and Fifteenth streets." Of course he is; we all are in Washington. The folly would be evident elsewhere, but in Washington it is the most natural effort possible. There is but one reply to the candid and inquiring fellow-maniac: "My dear sir, I have not the remotest conception where I am, or where anything is." There is a fond delusion that the city radiates from the Capitol. Nothing is more fallacious. Washington is a system of hubs, and a consequent combination of radiations.

The depression arising from arrival and the problem of streets is hardly relieved by arrival at Willard's. The entrance to that hotel is a cigar-shop, a newspaper-stand, and a loafing-room. You press through to the office. But what is man that an American landlord should regard him? The house is full, has been full, will be full. A few crisp words inform you that by-and-by, some time, perhaps, possibly, you may be stowed away in the seventh story, and allowed to pay four or five dollars a day. The moderation of the landlords is always a subject of wonder and gratitude. It seems a matter of mere grace and good-will that they do not charge twenty dollars a night, with the privilege of making your own bed.

"Whew!" cried Don Giovanni when, arriving at the capital of this country, he was made to undergo these initiatory steps, "will you please to tell me one single particular in which travel in Europe is not incomparably more agreeable and comfortable than in this country?" And he went on to compare the universal comfort and courtesy of foreign travel, sadly to the disadvantage of the home of the brave. "Certainly there is no country in which the guest upon reaching his hotel is treated with such laughable condescension as in this. A wretched hole of a room, shabbily furnished, the dirty walls and a suspicious bed, with a quart of water and a pocket-handkerchief of a towel, for which he is to pay four or five dollars or more daily, is awarded to the humbly expectant visitor as a high favor. A great American hotel is a penitentiary for travellers, and the gentlemen at the office are the lofty turnkeys and lord high-constables. A self-respecting man will travel here as little as possible."

"There is no doubt that much travel at home is a discipline," replied the Easy Chair.

"Yes," continued the indignant Don. "If you are known personally to the gentlemanly gentleman who dispenses chambers you may be tolerably quartered. But if you are merely one of the herd who have the temerity to arrive by steamer or car, you may thank your stars if you are graciously permitted to leave your luggage in the hall and to have a room by-and-by."

Now the Easy Chair humbly hopes that all gentlemanly gentlemen concerned will not understand him as making these remarks. They all proceeded from the person named, who is alone responsible. The Easy Chair has not quite come to the end of his travels; and would he malign the gentlemanly and accommodating? He desires to state distinctly that if he could not open the window of his room, it was merely because he had a foolish wish for fresh air; and if he could not turn round, it was because of the inordinate size of his trunk; and if his fingers went through the towel, it was because his manner was rude towards a chamber ornament so delicate and small; and if the sheets of the bed were not wholly fresh, it was because the gentlemanly and accomplished chamber-maiden lady was of a nobly economical turn of mind; and if the bell would not ring, it was because some former guest had been so little able to restrain himself as to pull it down. Indeed, there was nothing which did not admit of the fullest explanation. It is only the unreasonable who would complain of paying four or five dollars a day for such accommodations. "Let me tell you, sir," whispered the gentlemanly gentleman at a certain office to a bewildered person who had been ordered up to a burrow in the seventh story, "you are very lucky to get in at all." But the bewildered traveller's face, it is asserted, was not so humbly grateful as circumstances demanded.

Washington itself merely multiplies the impression of Willard's. Everything is feverish and transitory. The fine houses are rented by senators, by representatives, by foreign ministers, by army and navy officers, by families from other cities. They are taken for a season. Those who occupy them have no permanent interest in the city. The rule is almost universal. The Capitol, the White House, the departments, the public buildings are all full of men who came yesterday and are going to-morrow. Washington is a huge perch. All this tumult of twittering is from birds upon the wing, who have lighted for a moment only. Even the noisiest crows, the most solemn owls, are but for a day, or for two years, or four years, or for six years.

There is a certain permanent population of the military and naval bureaus, over whose heads the storms of fashion and politics roar and break like tempests that toss the surface of the sea far above the placid monsters and coral insects of the deep. And there are a few memorial office-holders--quiet men, who have grown old in certain ruts in which they can run with a facility that is absolutely essential. They feel that they have become part of the government. The very oldest senators and representatives excite in their breasts a kind of compassionate sympathy as mere boys and tyros. And like heirs of old royal lines long since superseded, who cherish a secret conviction that modern times are a mere delusion and progress an absurd infatuation, and who are sure that some day the world will discover what a huge mistake it made in not continuing to be governed by the extinct line, and so return to its allegiance, the faithful plodders in the official ruts do still believe that the party, whatever it was, which appointed them is the Heaven-appointed ruler of the country, and that when the froth of the present moment is blown away, the clear, deep, sound good old times will be again discerned. The droll old Jacobites! They drink to the king over the water. They might as well drink to the king with his head off!

[The end]
George William Curtis's essay: Washington In 1867

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