A description of Richmond.
In a very delightful series of papers contributed to the
Richmond Illustrated News, entitled "the Exile in
France," by
John Mitchell, we find the following description of
Richmond:
On the first morning that we awoke in
Lyon we found the morning papers of that city on the breakfast table.
The telegraphic column announced the arrival of another mail from
America — the
Federals still working their way up the
Peninsula from
Williamsburg, still gaining, by their own account, brilliant successes over the rebels at every step, and still confident that their "Young
Napoleon" will lead them,
tambour battant, right into the "doomed city" of
Richmond.
On the other hand, we have the news that a Federal squadron steaming up the
James river, and already within sight of the spires of the same devoted town, has been beaten off and disastrously shattered by Confederate guns at a bluff called
Drewry's. So far, well: the intelligence gave me appetite for breakfast, and in a modest glass of the sparkling
St. Peray my fellow travellers pledged me the health and glory of that game Confederate city.
But what, after all, (they asked me,) is
Richmond, which has suddenly become so famous in the world?
Is it, indeed, a city or a village?
Is it on a hill?
Has it a river?
How many people, and what sort of people, live there?
Have they churches, theatres, banks, bar rooms, photograph galleries?
Are the people Christians?
Do they eat oysters?
And when thirsty, what do they drink?
Do they dance, ride, make love, pray, and evoke musical notes from instruments, whether of wind or string?
Neither of my companions, though both had been in the
United States, had ever had the fortune to see
Richmond; they had even not heard much-of it except that the
Prince of Wates did not like it, not finding it a town of such exquisite refinement as
Cincinnati, (they understood,) and, besides, they were credibly informed that the people were always flaying their slaves alive with the twisted hide of cows; and now, before issuing forth to explore
Lyon, they required me to describe the
Virginia capital in such sort that they should thereafter have a clear idea in their minds of a place which seemed about to become the scene and the prize of the fiercest strife that the
Western hemisphere has yet beheld.
Con amore, then, I made them a port allure of that jolly town, as I held it in pleasant remembrance, softened by distance, brightened by images of good men and fair women, real authentic human beings all alive, whom I had myself seen within its joyous and genial homes.
For its outward aspect, take, I said, the city of
Limerick (a place of about equal size) and lift it up from.
Its alluvial plain on the bank of the
Shannon; set it, not upon a hill, but upon seven hills, crown its highest summit with a lofty Ionic portico — which many honest
Virginians fondly but fallaciously believe to be a copy of the Corinthian gem of
Nimes — pour along its base a furious and foaming river, double the width and volume of the
Shannon, though not so limpid as that salmon-peopled stream; line its streets with shady trees, many of them ancient and vast in girth; suppress the gray cathedral, and also the beautiful stone bridge; but put in their place the hugest of flour mills, and two long, white railroad bridges striding over the rugged granite bed and the wooded islands of the rushing river; and then mount to the roof of the
capitol, and look southward over city and river; instead of the treeless expanse of wheat land, and the bare and rugged Cratloe hills beyond, you will see a glorious stretch of gently undulating plain — the tide-water country of
Virginia, still richly mantled with the primeval forest where hunted of old king Powhatan, yet sufficiently cleared and cultivated for generations to furnish the fruits of the earth in profuse abundance.
Thus I portrayed and expounded until my friends could wander in vision through those umbrageous streets, and could almost hear with their own ears the hoarse and heavy rush of the resounding river, a sound unheard through the day, being drowned by the roar of that other eddying torrent of human life, but which always awakes again in the silent evening, and with its drowsy murmur sings to sleep the whole city.
Herein is at least one peculiar charm of
Richmond, unique — so far as I know — in the world; mountain villages there are in all countries, that hear all night long the dash of some torrent stream; but the
Confederate capital is the only considerable city that goes to sleep every night to the lullaby of a grand roaring river.
By this time my companions longed to spend a few evenings in
Richmond; but when I gave them some account of the people who dwell there--(which account is here suppressed from a charming sense of delicacy)--when I described the melting oysters of the
York river and the
Chesapeake, (oysters that put to shame Carlingford and the banks of Burren,) when I learnedly explained the principles of the
jundum--especially when I dwelt with long remembrance and lyric diction upon those crystalline goblets filled half with pellucid ice and half with the glowing spirit of Cognac crowned with a delay venture breathing a perfume fragrant as the odors of all the gardens of Gul in her bloom — and then plunged into the translucent nectar, and standing up through the green mantle of dewy foliage, one single straw — for straws show the way the julep goes — they unanimously shouted that the next trip we should make together.
(after the south of
France) must be to
Virginia.
I did candidly tell them, however, that from intelligence lately conveyed to me, I found there had grown up in that once innocent and pleasant town, a race of people called extortioners and speculators; that there were also many garroters, besides professional gamblers, and young women of not uneasy virtue; also that the
Yankee nation now fishes up and devours most of our best oysters, without paying for them, and contrary to the true dogma of the
fundum; finally, that the brandy and ice are cut off and
Virginia mint now droops neglected like the rose forsaken by the nightingale.
Thus we discussed the fortunes and fate of
Richmond; and the natural inquiry suggested to my hearers was why and for what unheard of crimes it has become necessary to raze that city from the face of the earth, plough up its foundations and sow them with salt; which seems the full intention and most argent need of the
Yankee nation, as if the plain justice of the ease could be satisfied with nothing less.
Surely, they said the dwellers in that city must in secret have committed deeds as dark as those which drew down the vengeance of heaven upon the cities of the plain — must have made a trade of distilling Colchic poisons,
el quid-quid usquam concipi ur nefas--else why should an enlightened nation, their near neighbors, who know them best, he stirred up by this sudden passion to destroy them utterly — to make their place a blot and their name a hissing.
It seems a judgment of Heaven, and that fair and shady city must perish miserably, mourned only by its own hoarse river.
Whereto scorning reply, I suggest that now — deferring the whole case of
Richmond to the next mail — we attend to the town in which we now actually find ourselves.
