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Civil War Harper's Weekly, April 16, 1864

Harper's Weekly served as the primary source of information for people at the time of the Civil War. The newspaper had in depth coverage of the key events of the day, including stunning illustrations created by artists in the field who witnessed the battles and events depicted.

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Great Fair

Great Fair

Pay of Colored Troops

Equal Pay for Colored Troops

Indianola Evacuated

General Andrew Smith

Owen Lovejoy

Owen Lovejoy

Old Advertisements

Old Ads from the 1800's

 

 

Fourteenth Street in New York

Fourteenth Street in New York

Fire Department

New York Fire Department at Fair

Fourteenth Street Fair in New York

New Jersey

New Jersey Department of the New York Fair

 

 

APRIL 16, 1864.]

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

251

" Not so fast. I know your capacity for absorbing money. A hundred or a thousand pounds would slip with equal facility down that pretty swan-like throat. It is not the first time that I have been your bailleur de fends. Certain conditions, not very hard ones, are attached to this advance. We, that is monsieur," he was respectful to the dandy even in his absence," must not be annoyed for six months."

" And you offer a miserable hundred pounds. C'est peu."

It is all we can give. Business has not been prosperous. Times are very hard with us ; and this hundred pounds even can be ill-spared."

"I dare say. Times also are very hard with me. But tell me, Monsieur l'Ambassadeur, has my precious husband any funds of his own ?"

" Not a son. He ate up his patrimony years ago."

" Have you ? I can understand the other."

Constant shrugged his shoulders. " What can a poor domestique a gages be worth ?" he replied.

" C'est done de l'argent vole. You have stolen this hundred pounds then. Keep it. . Je n'en veux pas."

" Hypocrite! Your mouth is watering for it, and you only wish that it were ten times as much. No, madame, it is not money stolen ; it is money won."

" By cheating."

As you please. I have it here, in five-pound notes."

" Give it me, then. I don't think my husband has yet devoted himself to forgery. He has not application enough. You may tell him from me that I shall not trouble him again for six months. Milord, lui, n'est pas dans la debine."

" What are you going to do with your milord?" the valet asked, with a darkling look.

" C'est mon affaire. I don't ask you with what little lingeres you are en bonne fortune. If you must know what I mean to do with milord, then by Debonnair it is to bleed him for the good of his constitution. Il a trop de sang, ce moutardl'a."

" He is not of age."

"The usurers are kind to him."

"Do you love him ?"

"Did I ever love any body, Jean Baptiste Constant ?" asked the woman, with candid contempt.

" I don't think you did. It will be your lot some clay to love, and to be spurned as you have spurned—never mind whom."

" Connu," replied madame.

" Qui que tu sois to vois ton maitre, Qui est, qui fut, ou le doit etre."—Who e'er thou art, thy master see, Who is, or was, or is to be.

"A charming sentiment, more charmingly expressed, although I never believed in it for one moment. Love is no master of mine, never was and never will be. But the couplet is exquisite. It is Voltaire, is it not? A charming writer, Voltaire. It is growing very Iate. I think you had better give me the money and let me go to bed."

"Here are your wages, Harpy," muttered Constant, and he handed her a packet of notes.

" Thank you. C'est pas grand' chose, mais c'est du numeraire tout de men. I have almost forgiven milord. He will come tomorrow and be on his knees."

" Good-night, Valerie."

" Hun," quoth the wild animal, with a look of simulated surprise, but profound disdain. Since when, Monsieur qui brosse les habits de mon mari ?"

" Good-night, Mrs. Blunt, then."

"The Honorable Lady Blunt you mean, faquin !" but this last she said in mockery.

" Bah ! that will do for France, but in England it is absurd."

" Au revoir, done, under any circumstances. Be sure you give my love to my husband."

" I will give him as much love as you send him ; and shall not, I should say, waste much breath. Again good-night."

" Bonsoir, mon ours."

He had never taken a seat during the entire interview, but had half stood, half lounged against the console on which he had placed his hat. He now advanced, bent over her as she sat, swimming in her jewels and her satin, on a sofa, and putting his face close to hers, said in French, and I will quote his very words.

" Tu es une creature sans coeur et sans moeurs, digne d'etre fouettee et fletrie en plein Chatelet."

" So I have no heart, and no manners, and ought to be whipped, eh? Thank you, my complimentary professor of moral philosophy. Au revoir et a bientot."

Constant did not care to renew the colloquy, and without directing another glance toward her left the room. His face had turned livid, and he was trembling all over. But he had great command over his emotions, and by the time he reached the salle a manger again his countenance was as unruffled as ever.

Rataplan had gone to bed. Constant, however, was an old habitue of the house, and made himself comfortable with the female night-porter, La Miss Thomas. He was no smoker ; but she brewed him a silver timbale full of mulled claret, of which he partook in moderation. And so remained, after a game or two at dominoes with the mahogany-colored sentinel, until past four in the morning. His conversation was mainly about the " countess" and her temper ; to which the old woman's general response—she agreed, however, perfectly in what he said—was "fichtre." Many of the lodgers at the Hotel Rataplan were very late night-birds indeed ; and it was four in the morning before Monsieur Constant left Leicester Place. Often, during his vigil, his eyes sought the smoke - begrimed ceiling, as though they could pierce through the joists and planking, the laths and plaster, and light once

more upon the beautiful woman with the bare neck and arms, and the black satin dress.
   ass--   

CHAPTER XIII.

TO GAMRIDGE'S.

GAMRIDGE'S Hotel was in Pump Street, Regent Street. Gamridge's was much frequented by the junior members of the aristocracy, and by officers bearing his Majesty's commission. Gam-ridge's was the legitimate and lineal successor of the old Slaughter's Coffee-house in St. Mar-tin's Lane, of whose ancient waiter and young military frequenters Thackeray's " Vanity Fair" discourses delightfully. Gamridge's, in 1836, was at the apogee of its popularity and renown; but a few years afterward—such is the mutability of human affairs—Gamridge's was destined to be eclipsed by the Rag and Famish.

Why" Rag" and why " Famish ?" I, as a poor slouching civilian, am not, I hope, bound to know. The Rag and Famish seems to me a most palatial edifice, superb in all its exterior appointments. I have heard that its inner chambers are decorated in the most lavish style of Oriental splendor ; that its smoking-room vies in gorgeousness with the Court of the Lions at the Alhambra; that, in its drawing-rooms, the genius of the most eminent upholsterers in London has run riot. Nobody can be in rags, nobody can possibly be famished, at the R. and F. The cuisine, I have heard, is exquisite, the wines and liquors are beyond compare. The lightest-vested and brightest-buttoned foot-pages in the parish of St. James's gambol and grin behind the plate-glass doors. The most majestic and the longest-mustached military bricks puff their cigars on the steps. There are always half a dozen Hansoms in waiting before the portal. On the Derby Day drags by the score start from the Rag. The prizes in the race sweeps at the Rag are said to be enormous.

Let me see, what is the pay of a subaltern in the Line? Some seventy or eighty pounds a year, I believe. What is the half-pay of a general officer ? Not many hundreds per annum, I am afraid. It strikes me that the establishment, not only of the Rag, but of the Senior and Junior United Service Clubs, must have been an inestimable boon to the young warriors who are ready to fight their country's battles, and to the old braves who have fought them, and retired to grass, and whose helmets are now hives for bees. To live like a fighting-cock, and to be housed like a prince ; to have all the newspapers and periodicals, and a first-rate library : billiard and smoking rooms, baths and lavatories, lounging and elbow-resting room ; a numerous staff of silent, civil, and deferential servants in imposing liveries, and as much stationery as ever you want ; these are joys familiar to the members of the Rag, and of other cognate mansions. The young fellow on active service can rum up from Chatham or Aldershot, and have the free range of a Venetian palace till his leave is out. The battered half-pay has but to provide himself with a bedroom at half a guinea a week in Jermyn Street, or St. Alban's Place, and, from nine of the clock on one morning till two or three of the clock on the next, he may live as luxuriously as a Sultan of Cathay. The annual subscription is moderate. The table-money is inconsiderable. Beer, bread, and pickles are dispensed gratuitously. The cigars are foreign. The provisions and wines are supplied at rates very little exceeding cost price.

Whereas, I can't see what a civilian wants with a club at all. He has a home, which the soldier and sailor, as a rule, have not. He has a cook at home. He may refect himself in a decorous dining-room at home. If he wants books, let him subscribe to the London Library, or ask Mr. Panizzi for a ticket for the Museum Reading-room. He needs no smoking-room. Civilians have no right to smoke. He needs no billiard-room. Civilians should be men of business, and men of business have no right to play billiards. " Clubs," says Solomon Buck, in one of his wisest apophthegms, "are weapons of offense, wielded by savages for the purpose of keeping off the white women." S. B. is right. Clubs, for your dashing, rollicking, harum-scarum soldiers and sailors, are all very well. The gallant fellows need a little relaxation after the irksome restraints of barracks or ship-board ; but clubs, to the unworthy civilian class, are merely the meanest pretexts for selfishness and self-indulgence.

Having, I flatter myself, in the preceding paragraph, set myself right with the ladies (whom I am always trying to conciliate, and always unsuccessfully), I will proceed to the consideration of Gamridge's. Social clubs of the palatial or-der were rare in 1836. St. James's had its exclusive political reunions — White's, Brooks's, Boodle's, and the like ; but none save the elect of the elect could obtain admission to them. Crockford's was very fashionable, but it was a gaming-house. The Carlton wasn't built. The Athenaeum and the Reform were arrogant with the flush of the March of Intellect, and looked down upon the men of the sword. The members of the now defunct Alfred were quarreling among themselves. The United Service only admitted officers of high grade. What remained, then, for the young or middle-aged warriors but Gamridge's.

Gamridge's was not a club ; its coffee-room was open to all comers ; yet the character of its frequenters was so strongly marked that an outsider rarely, if ever, ventured to set foot within the mysterious precincts. A bagman who presumed to enter Gamridge's would have had a bad time of it. There would have been wailing in Lancashire if a Manchester man had so far forgotten himself as to intrude, uninvited, on the Gamridgean exclusiveness. In its distinctive typification, and its invisible but impassable barriers, Gamridge's resembled one of the old cof

fee-houses of the preceding century. They, too, were open to all ; yet you seldom found any but merchants at Garraway's or Jonathan's, soldiers at the Crown in Whitehall, gamesters at Sam's St. James's Street, country squires at the Star and Garter in Pall Mall, Jacobites at the Harp at Cornhill, booksellers' hacks at the Devil in Fleet Street, lawyers at the Cock, and publishers at the Ball in Long Acre.

There had never, in the memory of the oldest inhabitant of the parish, been a Gamridge. Who he was, if ever he were at all, there is no knowing. In '36 the landlord—landlady, rather—was Mrs. Vash : a handsome, portly widow, who wore bishop's sleeves, and a multitude of ribbons in her cap. She had many daughters, whom she kept scrupulously at boarding-school to pre-serve them from the perils of Gamridge's ; for, if the "wild prince" was dead" Poins" was about, wilder than ever. Mrs. Vash was a woman of the world. A few, a very few, of her oldest customers—old gentlemen who had been so long and so consistently raking about town that they seemed, on the principle of extremes meeting, almost steady—were sometimes admitted to the luxurious privacy of Mrs. Vash's bar-parlor. She was an excellent judge of port-wine, and, being a generous hostess, would occasionally treat some of her prime favorites to a bottle with a peculiar tawny seal. In the coffee-room Mrs. Vash tolerated cigars, and carefully charged ninepence apiece for them. She was equally careful to charge exorbitant prices for every article consumed. You might give a dinner nowadays at the Rag for what a breakfast cost at Gamridge's.

The politics of Gamridge's were High Tory in tone. The true-blue patrician class had lost much power and influence by Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill, and threw themselves for a change into dissipation. Liberal Conservatives had not yet perked up into existence. Among the Whigs and Radicals it was held to be the orthodox thing, just then, to be steady and sober, to bring in moral acts of parliament, to attend lectures at the Royal Institution. The Tories sneered contemptuously at education and morality. They were stanch churchmen, but in the "flying buttress" sense, like Lord Eldon, supporting the sacred edifice from the outside. They called the London University " Stinkomalee," or the " Gower Street Pig and Whistle." They held schools where the birch was not in daily use as the vilest hot-beds of sedition, and were careful to send their children to seminaries where they knew they would have plenty of flogging in the good old Tory style. The society at Gamridge's was a permanent protest against the Penny Magazine, and the steam-engine, and the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, and the educational whimseys of your Broughams, Benthams, Faradays, De Morgans, and compeers. Nothing useful, save eating and drinking, was ever attempted at Gamridge's; and even those elementary functions were performed in the manner most calculated to confer the least amount of benefit on the human frame. The guests breakfasted at three in the afternoon, and dined at midnight. Gas blazed in the coffee-room at noon, and knocked-up roues went to bed at tea-time. There were many white-faced waiters who never seemed to go to bed at all, and to like this perpetual insomnolence. Pale ale was unknown in England then, but the popping of corks from bottles of mineral-waters was audible all day long. Dice, only, Mrs. Vash rigidly refused to wink at. " If gentlemen, who were gentlemen," she remarked, " wanted to call a main, they must do it in the parish of St. James's, and not in the parish of St. George's." Mrs. Vash was one of the old school, and liked to see things done in their proper places.

It was a vicious time, and yet somewhat of the patriarchal element remained. Plebeian dissipation was confined to the youngsters. The old gentlemen went to the Deuce, mounted on steady ambling cobs. A new race of rakes drove them gradually from the coffee-room at Gam-ridge's, and Mrs. Vash's back-parlor, where they piped disparagement of the rapscallion age over their port with the tawny seal. Thence, by slow degrees, they subsided into Pump Street, and to Bath, and Cheltenham, and Fogydom, and went home to bed, and fell paralytic, and so died.

Mr. Francis Blunt walked into Gamridge's at about a quarter to one in the morning, with a light, tight-fitting over-coat buttoned over him, swinging his cane, and looking, on the whole, " as fresh as paint." The coarseness of the simile may find an excuse in its literal fidelity. A fresh pair of lemon-colored kid gloves decorated his hands, the many rings bulging from beneath the soft leather. His whiskers had been rearranged—perhaps those ornaments and his hair were not strangers to a recent touch from the curling-irons, for there were hair-dressers in the Quadrant who kept open till past midnight for the behoof of exquisites such as he—his clothes had been brushed, his whole exterior spruced and polished up. He had passed a hard day, but he was ready to begin a night as hard.

There was nothing particular about the exterior of Gamridge's. It was a George-the-Second mansion of sad-colored brick with stone dressings, and the lamp before the door was generally in a state of compound fracture from the exuberant playfulness of late-returning guests. "Lamp-glass broken, one pound five," was a common item in Mrs. Vash's long bills. When the late-returning lodgers didn't smash the lamp, they smashed the fan-light, or the soda-water tumblers, or the coffee-room panels, or the waiters' heads. They were always breaking something, and every thing was charged in the bill. You entered Gamridge's by a long, low, oblique passage, seemingly specially designed for the benefit of gentlemen who came home late, over-taken with liquor, and swerved in their gait. They could not well tumble down in their progress along that sporting passage. The coffee-

room was almost devoid of decoration. Had it been papered the gentlemen would have torn the paper off; had there been a pier-glass somebody would have smashed it, but as pier-glasses then cost twenty pounds the item might have been subject to inconvenient dispute in the bill. So, to be on the safe side, Mrs. Vash provided her guests with a thick circular mirror in a nubbly frame, which defied even a poker. En revanche, the gallant youths who frequented the coffee-room had scratched their names on it, as well as on the window-panes, in a hundred places, with their diamond rings.

There was an immense dumb-waiter. The tables were of mahogany, brightly polished; wax candlesticks, in silver sconces, were always used, to the disdainful exclusion of gas—and with one of those same candlesticks many a tall fellow had been laid low—but the floor was sanded, and triangular spittoons were dispersed about. It was the oddest combination of luxury and coarseness, of a club-room and a pot-house.

In this room a dozen of the greatest dandies in England were assembled. Some had fifty thousand a year, and some had nothing, and owed thrice fifty thousand pounds ; but, poor or rich, all were fashionable. It was a congregation of prodigal sons and prodigal fathers, but fathers and sons were both accustomed to sit in the high places, and to have room made for them.

GEN. ANDREW JACKSON SMITH.

GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON SMITH, whose portrait we give on page 253, and who has recently come prominently before the public as commander of the Red River Expedition, was born in Pennsylvania, and graduated at West Point in 1838, in the same class with BEAUREGARD and HARDEE, of the rebel army, and Generals BARRY, M'D0WELL, and other officers in the Federal service. For seven years he was Second Lieutenant in the First Dragoons, with whom he served during most of that time in the Territories. In 1847 he was made Captain, and served against the Indians in South Oregon. In 1861 he was appointed Colonel of the Second California Cavalry, and in March, 1862, was made Brigadier-General of Volunteers. In October of that year he was placed at the head of the First Division of General GRANGER'S army in Kentucky; but subsequently was attached to General GRANT'S army, as commander of the Tenth Division of the Thirteenth Corps. General SMITH led the right .division in the attack on Vicksburg in December of that year, and afterward commanded the Second Division of the Thirteenth Corps at the battle and capture of Fort Hindman, Arkansas Post, in January, 1863. After the return of this part of the army to the vicinity of Vicksburg, General SMITH was placed in command of the district of Corinth, from which post he was removed to take charge of the post of Columbus, Kentucky, in order to keep open the communications along the Mississippi River with General GRANT'S command, near the rebel strong-hold. Having cleared that part of Kentucky of guerrillas, General SMITH was, on January 24, 1864, relieved of his post command, and ordered to lead the Third Division of the Sixteenth Corps in the Sherman expedition through Central Mississippi. After the return of the forces under General SHERMAN to the Mississippi River, General SMITH was placed in command of the Red River Expedition, which he has so far led to victory.

HON. OWEN LOVEJOY.

HON. OWEN LOVEJOY, whose death was recorded last week, was born in Albion, Maine, on the 11th of January, 1811. His father was Rev. Dr. DANIEL LOVEJOY. Until eighteen years of age his time was spent on a farm. He then fitted for college, and worked his way through Bowdoin by his own exertions. He studied for the ministry, and in 1837 was in Alton, Illinois, when his oldest brother, Rev. ELIJAH P. LOVEJOY, fell, as JOHN QUENCY ADAMS said, "the first American martyr to the freedom of the press and the freedom of the slave." Over his dead body OWEN, at the age of twenty-six, vowed a life-long hostility to the system of American slavery. The same year he became pastor of the Congregational Church at Princeton, Illinois, and held that relation until 1854, constantly maintaining resolute anti-slavery ground, leading his church to exclude slaveholders and apologists for slavery from its communion, and the community at large to protect all fugitive bondsmen seeking shelter on free soil. As the conflict with slavery deepened, Mr. LOVEJOY was selected to represent the people in the Legislature, and subsequently, in 1858, was sent to Congress, where be at once took a commanding position, and became known, throughout the whole country, as an unconditional and courageous advocate of Liberty. He was emphatically a man who could not be put down, and even the enemies of his principles soon learned to respect his character and worth. In Congress, during the present war, he was one of the pillars of the Administration, taking such an intense interest in public measures that once, when unable from sickness to be present, he sent his views in writing to be read before the House. The Chicago Tribune, summing up the features of Mr. LOVEJOY'S character, says : " In public as well as in private life Mr. LOVEJOY was a sincere, upright, thoroughly honest man. It is not believed that any man living or dead ever accused him of departing from the principles of strict integrity.

" At home, of late years, he has been a large and successful farmer, with fine improved breeds of cattle and fertile fields.

" In the bosom of his large family he was the idol of their affections, the most exemplary of husbands, the most indulgent of fathers. A widow and nine children are left to cherish his name and his virtues as a rich legacy, and to mourn what seems to them and to the world his untimely departure." Two brothers and one sister of Mr. LOVEJOY are still living.


 

 

  

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