The Selected Letters of Elizabeth Stoddard

Letter 27. “Gossip From Gotham”, San Francisco Bulletin, May 12, 1862

73 letter 27  “Gossip From Gotham” San Francisco Bulletin May 12, 1862 New York City, New York Gossip from Gotham. [froM a lady CorresPondent.] New York, April 11, 1862. The War Correspondent of These Days. On account of the Palmetto,1 the palmy days of the ordinary newspaper correspondent are over for the present; he cannot expect to hold his own in the face of the War Correspondent, who advances in the columns of his paper red-handed, and who makes his readers to smell the battle afar off as if it were near, and who clothes his pen with thunder, instead of the cheap steed with which his chiefs furnish him to ride afield. The War Correspondent may be called the prosetroubadour . With his “pass” he wanders everywhere, and though faithful to the proclivities of his journal, into what regions does his imagination soar when he recounts his adventures! He tells us that Mrs. Gen. McClellan2 distributes tracts to the army of the Potomac, with her name written in every one; that Mrs. Gen. Fremont3 dresses her boys in Federal uniform—that she insists upon knowing everything, and makes her exclaim that the “daughter of Benton and the wife of Fremont cannot be afraid;” that to Mrs. Gen. Lander,4 the news of her husband’s death was broken in a tender manner by Mr. Stanton;5 that Gen. Banks’s wife6 goes into camp to visit him, and that Gen. Butler’s spouse7 is a regular campaigner. He sings of the heroines he discovers at windows, pistol in hand; or in the hospital or in military offices, crying for passes. Before every battle, he divulges plans and sends diagrams of the same, with geographical localities, all wrong. After every battle he describes interviews with persons who were “eye-witnesses” on the other side. He worms into the enemy’s earthworks and sees Quaker-guns8 ad libitum. If his paper is conservative , he affirms that things are “all right”; if radical, that they are 74 “all wrong.” Notwithstanding his imaginative flights, his contributions to the history of the day are most valuable. It is to be hoped that Bancroft 9 has on file Stedman’s letter on the battle of Bull Run,10 Alcott’s first letter from Port Royal,11 the Tribune correspondent’s letter on the battle of Newbern,12 Bayard Taylor’s letter on the evacuation of Manassas,13 etc. Mentioning historians, reminds me that Charles Mackay14 is here, having been sent over by a London publishing house to write a history of the United States. He is to bring it down to the present crisis. If his friend and companion, Hiram Fuller,15 has returned from Europe, and has ceased his lectures on The Beauty of Negro Slavery—its Affabilities as an Institution—which should be sustained for the sake of its affecting picture of the paternal relation, poetically assumed by the master— we may conclude he will assist Mackay to recognize the merits of Secession. To continue the subject of correspondents, it was gratifying to me to hear from an official friend16 the other day, in the Middle Department, that Russell of the Times had applied to him for a pass to Fortress Monroe, and that it was refused.17 On the strength, however, of letters from every body, except Mr. Stanton, he started for Fortress Monroe, but was put ashore at Alexandria with his horses, carriage and portfolio. His passage is taken for England. It is expected that he will cross the main with feelings unlike those of Jupiter, when his Bull-ship ran off with Young Europa.18 The Present Writer—How the War Affects the Pursuits and Pleasures of Women. You perceive that, although this contribution to the columns of the Bulletin is offered by a person of sedentary habits—a knitter-up of odds and ends of threads which drop from the great web woven daily by the brains of men, and called Life—it contains reflections of its hues, which are martial. If, in despite of different tendencies, this, or these letters have a Joan d’Arc,19 or a Maid of Saragossa20 atmosphere about them, it is hoped that it will be overlooked. Not only the interests of the mind and heart are abstractly called out by the war, but the material issues of each are greatly controlled by it. We 75 shop for military and...