Alexandria Gazette

WASHINGTON LIFE-CITY ETIQUETTE

Correspondence of the N. York Express

It is Johnson, I think, who in speaking of city life, says that there is such a difference between the pursuits of men in great cities, that one part of the inhabitants live to little other purpose than to wonder at the rest. All places, I believe as well as occupations, have their peculiar rites. In Paris, they dance and sing lounge at the cafes and make themselves happy at the Restaurants. in the Opera Francaise, or on the Boulevards des Italiens. London is a solemn city. shrouded in smoke and fog. and the happiest time of day, as an Irishman would say, is after 12 o'clock at night. In Petersburg, they have snow-frolies, and have jollifications in Palaces of ice. In Rome. they frolic on the Corso, and figure in the masquerade. Every Capitol has its peculiarity, and surely, there is no reason why Washington should not have her -time for doing every thing." as well as the thousand distinguished cities over the sea.
The present season is the season of gaiety an high life at the political metropolis. To be sure, the President has choated us out of our annual Levee, and made the day usually the most pleasant in the year, the most disagreeable. New Year's day, however, is but one of the holidays, and the loss of its accustomed gaiety has only sharpened the appetites of our pleasure hunters for the succeeding festivities of the season. The beginning of the year here, as in most of the cities of the country, is the beginning of new things new fashions and new friends. new visits and new wishes. It is the season for finishing what is old, and laying a foundation for something new. Old debts are paid, and new ones contracted. Old associations resolve themselves into new ones. Old Bachelors have cut another notch upon their tree of life, and have become a year older,-and alas, too, for the old maids of the world, for they also are not only old and older, but what is worse. older than old bachelors, who are always younger than old maids.
But I am running a way from the designed subject of my letter, which is to give you a brief chapter upon Washington society, as exhibited in the private parties of public men. It has passed into a proverb, I believe, that public men are public property. Such is one of the blessings of political reputation and elevated office. It makes the possessors like the Jananites of old-servants of servants. cursed by the living world, and destined to reap a reward no better from posterity.
The Secretary of State gave his first soiree for the season on Wednesday evening, and the Secretary of the Treasury followed suit last evening. The one party in numbers and persons, was but a repetition of the other. But before I go further, I must whisper an important secret to you, especially if you are a stranger here or unacquainted with the manners and customs of Washington etiquette, for as I said before, it is necessarily unlike the etiquette of every other city in the Union. The great multitude of strangers who throng here in the winter season from every State and Territory in the Union, and from almost every town in the States and Territories-coming as they do from the Far West, the Far East. as well as from the extreme North and South; make it necessary, absolutely necessary, that most of the visiting in Washington should be done on paper and not in person.
The first business of a stranger, when he comes to Washington with the intention of taking up his abode here for the winter, or a part of the winter. is forthwith to jump into a carriage,-give directions to the driver to convey him first to the mansion of the President. thence. as the man in the play says, to "a new boarding house-white front. green door, brass knocker" of the second officer in the nation, and so on to the dwellings of each of the heads of Departments.-Foreign Ministers and Generals and Major Generals of Army and Navy. An hour will do all this, and all that you, supposing to be the visiter, have to do is merely to sit in your carriage. chartered at the rate of 1 dollar an hour for one or more persons, and there write your name and place of residence,-give it to the driver, who, at the door of each of the lions of the city. jumps from his box, rings the bell, gives your card to the servant, returns to his carriage and is off again in the cracking of a whip for another ceremonious call upon some other person. "A.P. (or who ever you may be) at Gadsby's" or "Brown's," or where you may be, sure to bring you in turn the cards of all the potentates of the city and their cards of invitation at each of their public parties. All persons. indeed. are not thus ceremonious. Many of the members of Congress, for example. give a servant some twenty or thirty cards, who, in an hour or so, upon his carriage box or upon foot, will do his master's visiting for three or six months in advance, according to the shortness or length of the session, or the time, if he be a stranger. that he remains in the city. All this is expected by the dignities of the land, and to them must be far more agreeable than the consumption of time in the lushest part of the year which it would be necessary to devote to each individual who might wish an introduction to each one -Poets that be" The introduction of the throng is thus made at once, upon a single evening. at a public party, when the Public Officers, Wives and families are prepared to see every body, shake hands with every body. and talk to every body.
Such are the only public occasions when public men throw down the barriers of party feeling and section come upon common ground, and there you may find the two Solicitors General of the two parties, who in the morning of this same evening were saying all manner of evil things against each other, and cutting the motive and action at one another, root and branch. in close and happy conversation. Such sights. I grant you are not frequent. but I have seen them and rejoiced that the actions and feelings of men did some times speak better things for them than did the expression of their own opinions
The two Soirees to which I have made allusion above were crowded together in dense masses. The annual levee of the President or the famous Green Room of the Executive at his private parties were not more crowded, crowded as they were during the last session of Congress. Every body was there and every body.'s friend. from Reuben M. Whitney up to the next President, and "we the People."
Mr. Van Buren was there of course for Mr. Van Buren goes every where, from the log cabin to the White House And how was he there? Why, as usual. shaking hands with every body-glad to see every body-asking after every body's friends and trusting that every body was well-carrying on a score or two of flirtations with a score or two of women pass and damseis, and occasionally whispering slyly and looking softly and queerly to those present, who, as the Poet has it are bound in
Matrimony
That's like a cord which binds two willing hearts."
The new Vice President was also there looking for all the world, not as the killer of Tecumseh, but as the veritable Tecumseh, himself. Any body without inquiry. who saw him knew the man; for while the Tecumseh killer is one of the best hearted men in the world -warm in his attachments and sincere in his friendship. he makes himself one of the most ill looking men in the world, and made so from his peculiar slovenly appearance. Beau Nash would have clasped Mr. Van Buren in his arms as a brother. but at the sight of the Tecumseh-killer he would have leaped a mile. Billy Button must have been his tailor, and Billy Button's Lord his teacher; and if Mr. Johnson, as President of the Senate and Vice President of the United States, does not throw away the sloven, and appear in a little more dignity than he at present possesses, the Senate Chamber will be a little Bedlam.
The rest of the lions in this national menagerie are too much like other men to deserve particular notice. Van Buren and Johnson alone are peculiar-the one for his excessive suavity of manners, and the other for his want of manners. Messrs. Calhoun, Clay. and the Ex-President are now seen at these public parties. Mr. Webster seldom goes, and the Great Sir Thomas Benton is usually expunged of his own accord; preferring, as he evidently does, rather to dwell in the tents of wickedness at home, preparing his Expunging Speeches and Specie Humbug. to the enjoyment of the pleasures of sin. in company with his friends and his foes.
But setting men aside, fashion is the great goddess of Washington-not the fashion of one State, one section of the country, or one city, but the fashions of all the world, as seen in the Foreign Minister, his Attache, the Charge des Affaires and their ill looking mustaches, and as seen in their wives of course.- as seen too in the plain dress of the back woodsman, or the dress coat of a city dandy, or the hundred and one dresses from the hundred and one milliners, who have not heard from Paris and New York, the Emporiums of Fashion. when their patrons left them. Here, for example, is a lady, at this late day, with bishop sleeves as large as the balloons of Vauxhall which, without stowing, are capable of giving a convenient shelter to some dozen or more persons -and here again. is a second lady. with arms no bigger than a drum-stick, and whose sleeves sit as tightly to them as the stockings upon her feet. And once, again. you may see, as I have seen, some widowed, toothless mother, with wrinkles upon her face, and gray hairs upon her head, and she herself hard by four score years, with ten or a dozen living grown up children-moving in the dance, with rouge upon her face, and her hoary locks covered with false hair by some French friseur of the city. who decks his mistress in diamonds. rubies. silks and satins, to cover the marks of old age. which surely in such a person has ceased to be honorable. The truth is, women appear daily at our city parties. in the strange assemblies of strangers here-sometimes, with black gauze over a white dress-sometimes with a tri-colored dress. reminding the beholder of the French flag, which but for its coarse appearance, he would conclude had been incorporated into the fashions of the day-sometimes one thing and sometimes another. Thus it ever is with fashion-(sleeves for example)-moving on from one extreme to the other: so that folly and fashion are always twin sisters -so near akin, that folly is fashion. and fashion folly. Yours, &c.
E. B.