Ten Years in Washington

Ten Years in Washington by Mary Clemmer

From 1866 to 1869, Ames resided in Washington, D.C. doing regular work in the way of "Women's Letters from Washington" for the New York Independent. In the spring of 1866, Ames wrote from Washington her first letter to the Independent. From then on, few weeks passed during the congressional sessions that she did not contribute to that journal. "A Woman's Letter from Washington" was significant of refined culture, strong in political characterization, and was apt to photograph pretty clearly politicians, parties, and principles for the delectation of the reading public. In brief, these letters treated topics of thought rather than the mere surfaces of things. The years that Ames passed at the national capital were to her varied, eventful, rich in experiences. Her first sustained work there comprised seven newspaper letters each week. She passed long mornings in the ladies' gallery of the Senate or of the Hall of Representatives. Nothing about her, not even a scrap of a note-book or pencil, indicated the professional listener. The letters being of an editorial rather than of a reportorial nature, did not require her to appear in the outward idle of a correspondent. Returning to her rooms, she sent the long letters and telegraphic matter by a messenger who came for them. In the evening, she held herself free to receive friends, or for social engagements. In her parlors might have been found the most eminent men of the day. The esteem in which Ames' work was held was indicated in two impromptu notes written in the Senate Chamber by Charles Sumner. One of these bears no date save that of the day of the week. Written at his desk and handed by a page to Ames in the ladies' gallery. That trust was fulfilled, and for the years following this date to that of his death the honored Massachusetts Senator and Ames were warm personal friends.In 1869, she engaged for three years' work on the Brooklyn Daily Union, and for the third year's work of that engagement, she received a salary of US$5,000, the largest sum ever paid to a newspaper woman for one year's labor up to that time. In the years since then, Ames became widely known as a poet and novelist. The decade between 1870 and 1880 were years in which Ames achieved a great amount of creative work. Journalistic correspondence, novels, poems, and Ten Years in Washington, (Hartford, 1870). This work, which in its quantity and quality was enough in itself to absorb the entire time and energies of its author, was really the achievement of a crowded life, which included the society functions of the day. In October, 1872, Ames completed, Memorial of Alice and Phebe Cary, the biography of the Cary sisters, a work which long intimacy and residence in their home had peculiarly fitted her to undertake. It is in this book that Ames pays a tribute to Alice Cary, as the one friend of her life. In this biography, and especially in depicting the life and character of Alice Cary, Ames did some of her most perfect literary work. Also, in 1872, she resumed her work on the New York Independent. Her marriage was legally annulled in 1874. In the same year, His Two Wives, which appeared first as a serial in the Boston publication, Every Saturday, was a work of unusual power. The request had been urged upon Ames to contribute a serial story to Every Saturday. Declining at first, because of the time element, she undertook the work, giving to it simply the Friday afternoon of each week, sending the chapters just as they flowed from her pen. When the story was published in book-form it was made up, simply, from the pages of Every Saturday, without revision from the author. The story, which was unique in treatment, and which set itself like a series of pictures in the memory, was rendered a remarkable production when the circumstances under which it was written were considered.