The Personality of American Cities Part 10

Late in a pleasant afternoon all Washington seems to walk in F street.

The little girls come out of the matinees, the bigger girls drift out from the tea-rooms, there is a swirl of motor vehicles--gasoline and electric--but the tourist knows not of all this. The gay flammeries of Pennsylvania avenue hold him fascinated. Souvenir shops rivet him to their counters. Post-cards--grave, humorous, abominable--urge themselves upon him. But if all these fail--they have post-cards nowadays of the high schools in each of the little Arizona towns--here upon a counter are the little statuettes of pre-digested currency.

Mr. Lincoln in $10,000 of greenbacks. And yet that money today could not buy one drop of gasoline, let alone an imported touring automobile, for once it has pa.s.sed through the government's macerating machine it is only fit for the sculptor. Three thousand dollars go into a Benjamin Harrison hat, fifteen thousand into a model of the Washington Monument that looks as if it were about to melt beneath a summer sun. Twenty thousand doll--stay, there is a limit to credulity. And you refuse to buy without a signed certificate from the Treasury Department as to these valuations.

Most of the tourists do buy, however. They seem to be blindly credulous--these folk who feel their way to Washington. It was not so very many spring-times ago that a rumor worked afloat of a dull Sabbath to the effect that the Washington Monument was about to fall. That rumor slipped around the town with amazing rapidity--Washington is hardly more than a gossipy, rumor-filled village after all. Two or three thousand folk went down to the Mall to be present at the fall. No two of them could agree as to the direction in which the shaft would tumble and they all made a long and cautious line that completely encircled it--at a safe distance. After long hours of waiting they all went home. Yet no one was angry. They all seemed to think it part of the day's program.

There is another side of Washington not so funny and tourists, even of the most sedate sort, who stop at the large hotels and who ride about in dignified motor-cars, do not see it. It is the side of heart-burnings.

For in no other city of the land is the social code more sharply defined--and regulated. There are many cities in the country and we are telling of them in this book, who draw deep breaths upon exclusiveness.

But in none of these save Washington do the folk who do obtain flaunt themselves in the faces of those who do not. The fine old houses of Beacon street, in Boston, and of the Battery down at Charleston may draw themselves apart, but they do it silently and unostentatiously. In the very nature of things in Washington much modesty is quite out of the question.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The stately dome of our lovely Capitol]

For here at our Federal capital we have a strange mixture of real democracy and false aristocracy as well as real--if there be any such thing as real aristocracy. The fact that almost every person in the town works, more or less directly, for Uncle Sam makes for the democracy. And that self-same fact seems to fairly establish the aristocracy--you can frankly call much of it sn.o.bbishness--of the place. To understand the whys and wherefores of this paradox one would need, himself, to be an employe of the government, of large or small degree. They are many and they are complicated. But an ill.u.s.tration or two will suffice to show what we mean:

A rule, which no one nowadays seems very desirous of fathering, but nevertheless a rule of long standing, states that when a department chief enters an elevator in any of the department buildings it must carry him without other stops to his floor. The other pa.s.sengers in the car must wait the time and the will of the chief, no matter how urgent may be their errands or how short the time at their command. A gradual increase of this silly rule has made it include many a.s.sistants, sub-chiefs and a.s.sistants to sub-chiefs. Only the elevator man knows the rank at which a government employe becomes ent.i.tled to this peculiar privilege. But he does know, and woe be to that little stenographer who enters the Department of X---- at just three minutes of nine in the morning, with the expectation of being at her desk with that promptness which the Federal government demands of the folk in its service. The second a.s.sistant to a second a.s.sistant of a sub-chief of a sub-division may have entered. The little stenographer's desk is upon the third floor; the gentleman whose official t.i.tle spelled out reaches almost across a sheet of note paper is upon the seventh. There are folk within the crowded elevator-car for the fourth and fifth and sixth floors as well. But they have neither t.i.tle nor rank and the car shoots to the seventh floor for the benefit of the Mr. a.s.sistant Somebody. If there is another a.s.sistant Somebody there to ride down to the ground floor--and there frequently is--you can imagine the consternation of the clerks.

And yet it is part of the system under which they have to work when they work for that most democratic of employers--Uncle Samuel.

The secretary of an important department who entered the cabinet with the present administration stayed very late at his office one evening, but found the elevator man awaiting him when he stepped out into the hallway of the deserted building. It was only a short flight of stairs to the street, and the secretary--it was Mr. Bryan--asked the man why he had not gone home.

"My orders are to stay here, sir, until the secretary has gone home for the night," was the reply.

It is hardly necessary to say that right there was one order in the State department that was immediately revoked, while some twenty thousand clerks and stenographers who form the working staff of official Washington sent up little prayers of thanksgiving. These clerks and stenographers make up the every-day fiber of the town life. They go to work in the morning at nine--for a half-hour before that time you can see human streams of them pouring toward the larger departments--and they quit at half past four. The closing hour used to be five, but the clerks decided that they would have a shorter lunch-time and so they moved their afternoon session thirty minutes ahead. Half an hour is a short lunch-time and so official Washington carries its lunch to its desk, more or less cleverly disguised. The owners of popular priced downtown restaurants have long since given up in utter disgust.

But official Washington does not care. Official Washington ends its day at half-past four and official Washington is such a power that matinees, afternoon lectures and concerts of any popular sort are rarely planned to begin before that hour. And on the hot summer afternoons of the Federal capital the wisdom of such early closing is hardly to be doubted. On such afternoons, matinee or concert, a cup of tea or a walk along the shop windows of F street are all forgotten. For beyond the heat of the city, within easy reach by its really wonderful transportation system, are playgrounds of infinite variety and joy. True it is that the really fine parts of Rock Creek Park are rather rigidly held for those folk who can afford to ride in motor cars, but there is the river, innumerable picnic-grounds in every direction, fine bathing at Chesapeake beach, not far distant--and the ca.n.a.l.

Of all these the old Chesapeake and Ohio ca.n.a.l is by far the most distinctive. And how the Washington folk do love that old waterway! What fun they do have out of it with their motor boats and their canoes. If that old water-highway, almost losing its path in the stretches of thick wood and undergrowth, had been created as a plaything for the capital city, it could hardly have been better devised. The motor boats and the canoes set forth from Georgetown--on holidays and Sundays in great droves. They go all the way up to Great Falls--and even beyond--working their pa.s.sage through the old locks, exchanging repartee with the lock-tenders, loafing under the shadows of the trees, drinking in the indolence of the summer days.

But Shafer's Lock or Cabin John's Bridge is not the Chevy Chase Club and official Washington knows that. It reads in the daily papers of that other life, of the folk who wear white flannels and dawdle around great porches all day long; hears rumors brought, Lord knows how, from the gossipy Metropolitan Club; almost touches shoulders with its smart breakfasts and lunches and dinners when it comes in and out of the confectioners' and the big hotels. But it is none the less apart, hopelessly and irrevocably apart. Uncle Sam may take the office folk of his capital and give them the a.s.surance of a livelihood through long years, but that is all. He gives them no chance to step out of the comfortable rut into which they have been placed. The good positions, the positions that mean rank and t.i.tle and entrance to the hallowed places, rarely come through promotions. They are the gifts of fortune, gifts even to strange folk from Cleveland or Madison or Stockton. They are not the reward of faithful service at an unknown desk.

And so official Washington, as we have seen here, is quite helpless. The other official Washington--the official Washington of the society columns--little cares. It is not above noticing the twenty thousand, but it is mere notice and nothing more. And as for interest or graciousness or kind-heartedness--they are quite out of the question. Washington is being rebuilt, in both its physical and its social structure. The architects of its social structure are not less capable than those folk who are working out marvels in steel and marble. These first see the Washington of tomorrow, modeled closely after the structures of European capitals. Already our newly created cla.s.s of American idle rich is establishing its _habitat_ along the lovely streets of our handsomest town. That is a beginning. In some of the departments they have begun to serve tea at four of an afternoon--just as they do on the terrace of the House of Commons. That is another beginning. We are starting.

The structure of European capitals is largely built upon cla.s.s distinctions. Washington is being builded close to its models.

For ourselves, we prefer the touch of Europe as the architects work them in steel and in marble. A man who has been to Washington and who has not returned within the decade will be astonished to see the change already worked in its appearance. From the moment he steps across the threshold of the fine new station--itself a revelation after the old-time railroad terminals of the town--he will see transformation. Washington is still in growth. They are tearing down the ugly buildings and building upon their sites the beautiful, weaving in the almost gentle creations of the modern architects, a new city which after a little time will cease to be modeled upon Europe but which will serve, in itself, as a model capital for the entire world to follow.

7

THE CITY OF THE SEVEN HILLS

You can compare Richmond with Rome if you will, with an allusion upon the side to her seven hills; but, if you have even a remote desire for originality, you will not. Rather compare the old southern capital with a bit of rare lace or a stout bit of mahogany. Of the two we would prefer the mahogany, for Richmond is substantial, rather than diaphanous. And like some of the fine old tables in the dining-rooms of her great houses she has taken some hard knocks and in the long run come out of them rather well. She is scarred, but still beautiful. And she wears her scars, visible and invisible, both bravely and well.

But if a man come down from the North with any idea of the histories of that war, which is now fifty years old and almost ready to be forgotten, too sharply in his memory, and so imagines that he is to see a Richmond of 1865, with gra.s.s growing in the streets, ruins everywhere, mules and negroes in the streets, he is doomed to an awakening. There are still plenty of mules and negroes in the streets and probably will be until the end of time, but the Richmond of today boasts miles and miles of as fine modern smooth pavements as his motor car might ever wish to find.

And as for ruins, bless you, Richmond has begun to tear down some of the buildings which she built after the war so as to get building-sites for her newest skysc.r.a.pers.

Do not forget that there is a new spirit abroad in the South--and Virginia, in many ways the most poetic and dramatic of all our states, has not lagged in it. There are Boards of Trade at Roanoke and Lynchburg that are not averse to sounding the praises of those lively manufacturing towns of the up-country, and as for Norfolk--let any Norfolk man get hold of you and in two hours he will have almost convinced you that his town is going to be the greatest seaport along the North Atlantic--and that within two decades, sir. But this chapter is not written of Roanoke or Lynchburg or Norfolk. This is Richmond's chapter and in it to be writ the fact that the capital of Virginia has not lagged in enterprise or progress behind any of the other cities of the state. In the transformation she has sacrificed few of her landmarks, none of that delightful personality that makes itself apparent to those who tarry for a little time within her gates. That makes it all the better.

It is the spirit of the new South that is not only bringing such wonderful towns as Birmingham, to make a single instance, to the front, but is working the transformation of such staunch old settlements as Memphis or Atlanta--or Richmond. Not that Richmond is willing to forget the past. There is something about the Virginia spirit that seems incapable of death. There is something about the Virginian's loyalty to his native state, his blindness to her imperfections, almost every one of them the result of decades of civic poverty, that cannot escape the most calloused commercial soul that ever walked out of North or South.

And there is something about this bringing up of spirit and of loyalty with the spirit of the new America that makes a combination well-nigh irresistible.

Here, then, is the new South. The generation that liked to discuss the detail of Pickett's charge and the horrors of those days in the Wilderness is gone. The new generations are rather bored with such detail. The new generations are not less spirited, not less loyal than the old. But they are new. That, of itself, almost explains the difference. Now see it in a little closer light.

Volumes have been written of the loyalty of the old South. Richmond herself today presents more volumes, although unwritten, of that loyalty. You can read it in her streets, in her fine old square houses, in that stately building atop of Schokoe hill, which generations have known as the Capitol and which was for a little time the seat of government of a new nation. Within that Capitol stands a statue. It is the marble effigy of a great Virginian, who was, himself, the first head of a new government. The guide-books call it the Houdini statue of Washington, and keen critics have long since a.s.serted that it is not only the finest statue in the United States but one of the most notable art works of the world. It was known as such in France at the time of the Civil War. And hardly had that very dark page in our history been turned before the Louvre made overtures to Virginia for the purchase of the Houdini statue. The matter of price was not definitely fixed.

France, in the spendthrift glories of the Second Empire, was willing to pay high for a new toy for her great gallery.

Poor Virginia! She was hard pressed those days for the necessities of life, to say nothing of its ordinary comforts. Her pockets were empty.

She was bankrupt. Her mouth must have watered a bit at thought of those hundreds of thousands of French francs. But she stood firm, and if you know Virginia at all, you will say "of course she stood firm." A Southern gentleman would almost repudiate his financial obligations before he would sell one of the choice possessions of his families.

There are great plantation houses still standing in the Old Dominion, which were spared the torch of war by the mercy of G.o.d, and whose walls hold aloft the handiwork of the finest painters of England, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; rare portraits of the masters and mistresses of those old houses. In them, too, are furniture and silver whose real value is hardly to be computed, not even by the screw of a dealer in antiques. The folk in these old houses may be poor--if they come of the oldest Virginia stock they very likely are. They stand bravely, though, to the traditions of their hospitality, even though they wonder if the bacon is going to last and if it is safe for the brood to kill another chicken. But they would close their kitchen and live on berries and on herbs before they would part with even the humblest piece of silver or of furniture; while if a dealer should come down from Washington or New York and make an offer, no matter how generous, for one of the paintings, he would probably be put off the place.

Family means much to these Virginians. If you do not believe this go to Richmond, stop in one of its fine houses and make your host take you to one of the dances for which the city is famed. Almost any dance will do and from the beginning you will be charmed. The minor appointments will approach perfection, and you will find the men and women of the city worthy of its best traditions. Some places may disappoint in their well-advertised charm but the girls of Richmond never disappoint. Here is one of them. She gets you in a quiet corner of the place, meets a friend over there, and a conversation somewhat after this fashion gets under way:

"Miss Rhett, allow me to introduce my friend, Mr. Blinkins, of New York."

You bow low and ask Miss Rhett if by any chance she is related to the Rhetts of Charleston.

"Only distantly. My people are all Virginians. The Charleston Rhetts are quite another branch. My grandfather's brother married a Miss Morris, from Savannah and the Charleston Rhetts all come from them. If my papa were only here he would explain."

You say that you understand and murmur something about having met a Richard Henry Rhett at the old Colonial town of Williamsburgh a few years ago when you were down for the Jamestown exposition.

"He was a Petersburgh Rhett," the young lady explains, "son of a cousin of my father. He married Miss Virginia Tredegar last year."

You remember hearing of a Miss Virginia Tredegar of Roanoke, and you slip out that fact. But this is Miss Virginia Tredegar of Weldon and a cousin of Miss Virginia Tredegar of Roanoke. Miss Virginia Tredegar of Weldon--now Mrs. Richard Henry Rhett, of course, is a delightful girl.

The young lady who has you in the corner a.s.sures you that--and she, herself, is not lacking in charms. Mrs. Rhett was a sponsor for the state for several years, and you vaguely wonder just what that may mean as you have visions of large floats lumbering along in street parades, with really lovely girls in white standing upon them. And you also have visions of the Miss Virginia Tredegar, of Weldon, sitting in the other days upon the door-steps of an old red and white Colonial house, which faces a hot little open square, visions of her accomplishments and her beauty; of her ability to ride the roughest horse in the county, to dance seven hours without seeming fatigue, of the jealous beaux who come flocking to her feet. You find yourself idly speaking of these visions to your companion. She laughs.

"I've just the right girl for you," she says, "and she is here in this ball-room. She is all these things--and some more; the rightest, smartest girl in all our state--Miss Virginia Bauregard, daughter of Mr.

Calhoun Bauregard, of Belle Manor in King and Queen county."

Apparently they are all named Virginia in Richmond, seemingly three-quarters of these girls who live in the nicer parts of the town are thus to bespeak through their lives the affectionate loyalty of their parents to the Old Dominion.

All these folk come quite easily to the transformation that has come over the South within the decade, since she ceased to grieve over a past that could never be brought back and overcome. The young boys and the young girls turn readily from fine horses to fine motor cars, the coming of imported customs causes few shocks, it is even rumored that the newest of the new dances have invaded the sober drawing-rooms of the place. But the New South is kind to Richmond. She does not seek to eliminate the Old South. And so the old customs and the old traditions run side by side with the new. And even the old families seem to soften and many times to welcome the new.

If you wish to see the real Old South in Richmond go out to Hollywood cemetery, which is perhaps the greatest of all its landmarks. It is easy of access, very beautiful, although not in the elaborate and immaculate fashion of Greenwood, at Brooklyn, or Mount Auburn, just outside of Boston. But where man has fallen short at Hollywood, Nature has more than done her part. She rounded the lovely hills upon which Richmond might place the treasure-chest of her memories, and then she swept the finest of all Virginia rivers--the James--by those hills. Man did the rest. It was man who created the roadways and who placed the monuments.

And not the least interesting of these is the strange tomb of President James Monroe, an imposing bronze structure, in these days reminding one of an enlarged bird-cage. It is interesting perhaps because nearby there is another grave--the grave of still another man who came to the highest office of the American people. The second grave is marked by a small headstone, scarcely large enough to accommodate its two words: "John Tyler."

But more interesting than these older monuments is the group that stands alone, at the far corner of the cemetery and atop of one of those little hillocks close beside the river. The head of that family is buried beneath his effigy. It is the grave of Jefferson Davis, who stands facing the city, as if he still dreamed of the days that might have been but never were. And close beside is the grave of his little girl, "The Daughter of Confederacy." When she died, only a few years since, the South felt that the last of the living links that tied it with the days when men fought and died for the Lost Cause had been severed. It was then that it set to work to build the new out of the old.

Nowadays the Old South does not come publicly into the streets of Richmond--save on that memorable occasion in the spring of 1907 when a feeble trail of aging men--all that remained of a great gray army--limped down a triumphant path through the heart of the town. The Old South sits in her dead cities, and perhaps that is the reason why the Southerner so quickly takes the stranger within his gates to the cemetery. It is his apologies for thirty or forty years lost in the march of progress. And it is an apology that no man of breadth or generosity can refuse to accept.