Society Without a Ruling Spirit to Take the Initiative.

Washington, February 18, 1881.

It takes the most exquisite kind of courage to paint truthful views of life as it is pictured on the social boards at Washington. If the well-known society writers would furnish the newspapers with faithful kaleidoscopes of the “day’s doings” they would be banished or, like Othello, they would “find their occupation gone.” It is the small sins of “high life” which weaken the constitution of society; lack of moral courage, love of finery, gilt and glitter, envy and jealousy, and the enjoyment of slander. When the most beautiful and accomplished leader at the capital became the shining mark at which the quivering arrows of condemnation were hurled, have any of the women who used to bask in the sunshine of her queenly hospitality said one word in her defense? One would suppose that after years of smiling and caressing this monster of society, after lavishing tens of thousands of dollars upon it, one brave, strong utterance, one loving word might come back in return. Where are the women who have smirked and basked in the shadows of the dead and dying administrations? What niche will their minds fill in history? We have railroad kings and bonanza emperors and money grabbers in place of statesmen, by the score; but where are the drawing rooms such as Lady Blessington’s, or the famous salon of Madame de Stael, which has an existence to-day far more substantial than the daily receptions at the capital. Instead of cultivating their minds the “society women” at Washington are expending the last show of vitality in the adorning of their bodies. Flitting from one “palatial mansion” to another, from “sunny morn to dewy eve,” these human butterflies make no more impression on the world at large than the moths which they so much resemble. Whilst as a general rule the society women have politicians for husbands, it does not always follow that all the politicians have “society” wives. Such accomplished women as Mrs. George F. Edmunds, of Vermont, or Mrs. Thomas F. Bayard, of Delaware, will always be found, and, like the men at the pumps, will keep the old worm-eaten hulk of Washington society from going to the bottom.

Since the retirement of the superb Katharine Chase Sprague “society,” in a blundering way, manages to get along without an acknowledged “head.” If the beautiful and accomplished woman is found, the immense wealth is lacking, for no woman can be a successful “leader” unless she has beauty, brains, and money. To a great extent beauty can be spared, because its loss can be made up by the artistic skill which the brain power will utilize. Just as a general must have the sinews of war to carry on a vigorous campaign, a society leader must be thoroughly equipped, for if the means to accomplish a certain result are somewhat different the end amounts to just about the same. The coming of the bonanza wives is watched with the most intense anxiety. The question is asked: “Has she the qualities to command or will inefficiency and cowardice consign her to the ranks?” A member of Congress was regretting his inability to be present at the Art Club reception. He said he “had reason to believe that in such an assembly he could find a relief or change from the political treadmill where he was forced to be at his post every day.” When his attention was called to the stately card receptions of almost every night, he replied: “I hate them; there is nothing there but clothes.” These were the words from no brain-distorted, dyspeptic Bostonian, but a Western man, in the full sap of existence, who would naturally be supposed to cling to the woman who could show the handsomest amount of shoulder to the square inch. Both General Garfield and Senator Blaine have declared that relief comes to the tired, over-worked brain by changing the train of thought, and not by dabbling in inanity. This proves that the doll’s occupation is gone. The woman of the nineteenth century must shake from her dormant brain the dust of ages and develop her power in precisely the same ratio as man makes the most of his. Almighty God has made the orbit of the sexes parallel, but they can never intersect.

All that which comes under the head of “formal ceremony” at the capital, such as state dinners at the White House, are faithful copies of foreign courts, or rather the tattered fragments of the manners of old baronial time under William the Conqueror, when the feudal chiefs were served first and their retainers were permitted to scramble on the floor for the bones. It is true the bones are not thrown under the White House table, for the world grows neater in its old age; but should a President entertain Victoria at dinner “etiquette” or the spirit of the old barbarians declares the President must be helped first. Instead of the American gentleman at his own table, where the example of private life should be the model for the public manners of a Republic, we have just enough of the old leaven of monarchy working that any child can smell the odor after a short stay in Washington. Nothing more terrible socially can be conceived than one of these cold, formal state dinners at the White House. It is not a company made up of breathing, living men and women, but is the masculine bones of the awful Department of State, with the feminine anatomy clutched for a brief hour from the highest judicial ermine. It is the ponderous Treasury Department, with its legs crossed under the Presidential mahogany. In preceding administrations the victims were allowed to drown their sorrows in wine, and by the time the fifth or sixth course came ’round the War and Navy Departments were prepared for the most desperate action on sea or shore. Only from twelve to nineteen inches table room is allowed a guest, and the steward of the White House, instead of the tailor, decides on the breadth of the anatomy. To the great credit of the State of New York it has been found that Secretary Evarts could be wedged in between a couple of Supreme Judges without diminishing the size of the table in the least, but he refuses to be a third party to this kind of an alliance, because there is no precedence of the kind to be found in the archives of the State Department.

The size of the White House table is perfectly prodigious, and when covered with the china dishes ordered by Mrs. Hayes the effect is paralyzing to sensitive nerves. No chance is given the poetic imagination to revel in ambrosial sips and taste the heavenly manna. If your soul is soaring to empyrean heights, you are dragged earthward by seeing pictured on the plates the ugly refuse of the dainties with which you are supposed to be tickling your palate. When one swallows an oyster, who wants to be reminded of the huge, ugly shell, a faint suggestion of a coffin? Who desires to see a shining, scaly fish, with its pink gills already to pulsate, and be made to remember that the fish died that you might roll one little sweet morsel under your tongue? Who can bear to be reminded when tasting a sweet, fresh new-laid egg, that looks as if it might have fallen from the sky, that an ungainly old hen scratching for worms was the origin of that egg? The pictures taken from the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum may be more sensual, but in no sense can they be called more earthly or barbaric. All things beautiful should be spiritually suggestive. If the new White House china was the property of private life incalculable mischief might be the result, but the crafty Cabinet ministers and aged Supreme Judges have outlived delicate and lasting impressions, and after the first slight shock no serious trouble will be apt to follow; but it would be well to let Lucretia Garfield know that if the “pitchers go to the well once too often” or a grand collision of plates and platters should take place, such a calamity would be accepted by the nation like the late war—a sore trial at the time but in the long run a blessing in disguise.

If it takes so many scratches of the pen to get over the celebrated china “designed by the highest artistic talent at home,” how shall we manage to get the reader through the three hours that it takes to manage the great state gastronomic feast? It is best told in the language of one of the guests:

“I was led out by Secretary Evarts. I don’t think he would have selected me if he could have been allowed his choice. You have to go in the order of the Cabinet. Three hours so close to the great New York criminal lawyer! I thought I should faint! I cast my eyes down the table at my husband; he was below me on the other side of the table and he looked ‘blue.’ I was just thinking what he could find to say to the strange women on each side of him, for he never talks to me, when I would be interrupted by one of Evarts’ questions that would make me feel that I was on the witness stand. I can talk fast sometimes, but I felt if I spoke except to answer him it would be sure to be wrong, and I would disgrace the Cabinet. I managed to get through some way and afterwards found out that I was liable to be taken into state dinners by Secretary Evarts as long as we were in the Cabinet. I tried to prevail on my husband to resign, to which he agreed as soon as some other good place could be found for him.”

The Cabinet dinners are modeled on the same plan as the state dinners, and the misery endured is in proportion to its size and duration. The torture consequent upon the formal dinners made a hero and a place in history for dear old Sam Ward. Of course, his dinners were as much above those of the White House as Sam exceeded the steward in brilliancy of conception of dainty cuisine. Sam’s culinary reputation rests on a ham boiled with three red clover heads, and when put into the oven to “brown” it was treated to a baptism of champagne. The three heads of red clover have been proved to be a fraud. Nothing was ever served on Sam’s table that was half as delicious as himself. He is familiar with nine different languages, three of which he spoke with all the fluency of his mother tongue. He has been seen to put his arm around a foreign minister with all the grace and affection with which a lover embraces his sweetheart. Is it strange that this man became an idol to the public men whose constitutions were impaired by the dyspeptic dinners of “high society?” Extremes meet, and overfeeding is far more disastrous in its remote results than a mild course of starvation. Sam Ward managed that his guests should never be satiated. The oyster patties, like a little woman, would be so perfect, though small, that the next course would be anxiously awaited. “Two dessert spoonfuls of soup with a thimbleful of choicest sherry, that is my foundation for a dinner,” says the immortal Sam. Only people of ability were permitted to gather around his board, and it was the brilliant conversation more than the viands that made it appear “a feast fit for the gods.” If a dinner was to be given to the Spanish minister the proper number of agreeable people who speak Spanish could always be found for a small party. Could anything be more grateful to a stranger in a strange land than to hear his home language spoken by his host with the ease and fluency of a native; to have the conversation adroitly turned to the subjects which lie nearest to the Spanish heart; to drink the blood of the grape brought all the way from Castile or Arragon? Is it a wonder with Sam’s arm around his diplomatic waist that he would feel as did Mungo Park in Africa when he heard the negro woman singing at the foot of the tree that sheltered him:

When one of the foreigners died it is said that he left Sam Ward a fortune. If his cuisine was not always perfect the host himself made up the imperfection. He had the power to throw his guests out of their shells and by this means adding any amount of heat to the social atmosphere. The last time Sam Ward was seen he was marching across the Capitol Rotunda, his short, full arm around another man’s waist, looking as much like a fat Philadelphia capon as Charlie O’Neill. His round, chubby, boyish face and duck legs bore not the slightest resemblance to the lobby. He is the brother of Julia Ward Howe, the author of the battle hymn of the Republic. The same kind of spiritual essence that enters this poem made the dinners famous, but let no man attempt the same high art. The solitary vase has been broken, but the odor is left and clings to it still.

Olivia.