156 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS
Later portrayals have sometimes an unkindly touch, as the caustic diatribe of the robust Dick Taylor, no doubt in some points slightly justified : " Like other ills, feeble health has its compensations, especially for those who unite restless vanity and ambition to a feminine desire for sympathy. It has been much the habit of Mr. Stephens to date controversial epistles from *a sick chamber,' as do ladies in a delicate condition. A diplomat of the last century, the Chevalier d'Eon, by usurping the privileges of the opposite sex, inspired grave doubts concerning his own." ^
But most observers rather seem impressed with the contrast between the man's physical deficiencies and his splendid spiritual strength. At the height of his congres- sional career in Washington (1855) a keen-sighted jour- nalist noted that, in the stress of great occasions, " the poor, sickly, emaciated frame, which looks as if it must sink under the slightest physical exertion, at once grows instinct with a galvanic vitality which quickens every nerve with the energy of a new life, imparts to every feature a high, intellectual expression, makes the languid eyes glow like living coals, and diffuses a glow of re- viving animation over the pallid countenance." ^ Even more striking is another picture taken in the same place in 1872, after war and imprisonment had done their worst. "An immense cloak, a high hat, and peering somewhere out of the middle a thin, pale, sad face. How anything so small and sick and sorrowful could get here
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