University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER IX
FOES OR FRIENDS (1862)

OF the year 1862 Henry Adams could never think without
a shudder. The war alone did not greatly distress him;
already in his short life he was used to seeing people wade
in blood, and he could plainly discern in history, that man from
the beginning had found his chief amusement in bloodshed; but
the ferocious joy of destruction at its best requires that one should
kill what one hates, and young Adams neither hated nor wanted
to kill his friends the rebels, while he wanted nothing so much as
to wipe England off the earth. Never could any good come from
that besotted race! He was feebly trying to save his own life.
Every day the British Government deliberately crowded him one
step further into the grave. He could see it; the Legation knew it;
no one doubted it; no one thought of questioning it. The Trent
Affair showed where Palmerston and Russell stood. The escape
of the rebel cruisers from Liverpool was not, in a young man's eyes,
the sign of hesitation, but the proof of their fixed intention to intervene.
Lord Russell's replies to Mr. Adams's notes were discourteous
in their indifference, and, to an irritable young private
secretary of twenty-four, were insolent in their disregard of truth.
Whatever forms of phrase were usual in public to modify the harshness
of invective, in private no political opponent in England, and
few political friends, hesitated to say brutally of Lord John Russell
that he lied. This was no great reproach, for, more or less, every
statesman lied, but the intensity of the private secretary's rage
sprang from his belief that Russell's form of defence covered intent
to kill. Not for an instant did the Legation draw a free breath.
The suspense was hideous and unendurable.

The Minister, no doubt, endured it, but he had support and
consideration, while his son had nothing to think about but his

friends who were mostly dying under McClellan in the swamps
about Richmond, or his enemies who were exulting in Pall Mall.
He bore it as well as he could till midsummer, but, when the
story of the second Bull Run appeared, he could bear it no longer,
and after a sleepless night, walking up and down his room without
reflecting that his father was beneath him, he announced at breakfast
his intention to go home into the army. His mother seemed
to be less impressed by the announcement than by the walking
over her head, which was so unlike her as to surprise her son. His
father, too, received the announcement quietly. No doubt they
expected it, and had taken their measures in advance. In those
days, parents got used to all sorts of announcements from their
children. Mr. Adams took his son's defection as quietly as he
took Bull Run; but his son never got the chance to go. He found
obstacles constantly rising in his path. The remonstrances of his
brother Charles, who was himself in the Army of the Potomac,
and whose opinion had always the greatest weight with Henry,
had much to do with delaying action; but he felt, of his own accord,
that if he deserted his post in London, and found the Capuan
comforts he expected in Virginia where he would have only bullets
to wound him, he would never forgive himself for leaving his father
and mother alone to be devoured by the wild beasts of the British
amphitheatre. This reflection might not have stopped him, but
his father's suggestion was decisive. The Minister pointed out
that it was too late for him to take part in the actual campaign,
and that long before next spring they would all go home together.

The young man had copied too many affidavits about rebel
cruisers to miss the point of this argument, so he sat down again
to copy some more. Consul Dudley at Liverpool provided a continuous
supply. Properly, the affidavits were no business of the
private secretary, but practically the private secretary did a
second secretary's work, and was glad to do it, if it would save
Mr. Seward the trouble of sending more secretaries of his own
selection to help the Minister. The work was nothing, and no one

ever complained of it; not even Moran, the Secretary of Legation
after the departure of Charley Wilson, though he might sit up all
night to copy. Not the work, but the play exhausted. The effort
oi facing a hostile society was bad enough, but that of facing
friends was worse. After terrific disasters like the seven days before
Richmond and the second Bull Run, friends needed support; a
tone of bluff would have been fatal, for the average mind sees
quickest through a bluff; nothing answers but candor; yet private
secretaries never feel candid, however much they feel the reverse,
and therefore they must affect candor; not always a simple act
when one is exasperated, furious, bitter, and choking with tears
over the blunders and incapacity of one's Government. If one
shed tears, they must be shed on one's pillow. Least of all, must
one throw extra strain on the Minister, who had all he could carry
without being fretted in his family. One must read one's Times
every morning over one's muffin without reading aloud—"Another
disastrous Federal Defeat"; and one might not even indulge
in harmless profanity. Self-restraint among friends required much
more effort than keeping a quiet face before enemies. Great men
were the worst blunderers. One day the private secretary smiled,
when standing with the crowd in the throne-room while the endless
procession made bows to the royal family, at hearing, behind
his shoulder, one Cabinet Minister remark gaily to another: "So
the Federals have got another licking!" The point of the remark
was its truth. Even a private secretary had learned to control his
tones and guard his features and betray no joy over the "lickings"
of an enemy—in the enemy's presence.

London was altogether beside itself on one point, in especial;
it created a nightmare of its own, and gave it the shape of Abraham
Lincoln. Behind this it placed another demon, if possible
more devilish, and called it Mr. Seward. In regard to these two
men, English society seemed demented. Defence was useless;
explanation was vain; one could only let the passion exhaust itself.
One's best friends were as unreasonable as enemies, for the belief

in poor Mr. Lincoln's brutality and Seward's ferocity became a
dogma of popular faith. The last time Henry Adams saw Thackeray,
before his sudden death at Christmas in 1863, was in entering
and the house of Sir Henry Holland for an evening reception.
Thackeray was pulling on his coat downstairs, laughing because,
in his usual blind way, he had stumbled into the wrong house and
not found it out till he shook hands with old Sir Henry, whom he
knew very well, but who was not the host he expected. Then his
tone changed as he spoke of his—and Adams's—friend, Mrs.
Frank Hampton, of South Carolina, whom he had loved as Sally
Baxter and painted as Ethel Newcome. Though he had never
quite forgiven her marriage, his warmth of feeling revived when
he heard that she had died of consumption at Columbia while
her parents and sister were refused permission to pass through
the lines to see her. In speaking of it, Thackeray's voice trembled
and his eyes filled with tears. The coarse cruelty of Lincoln and his
hirelings was notorious. He never doubted that the Federals made
a business of harrowing the tenderest feelings of women—particularly
of women—in order to punish their opponents. On quite
insufficient evidence he burst into violent reproach. Had Adams
carried in his pocket the proofs that the reproach was unjust, he
would have gained nothing by showing them. At that moment
Thackeray, and all London society with him, needed the nervous
relief of expressing emotion; for if Mr. Lincoln was not what they
said he was—what were they?

For like reason, the members of the Legation kept silence, even
in private, under the boorish Scotch jibes of Carlyle. If Carlyle
was wrong, his diatribes would give his true measure, and this
measure would be a low one, for Carlyle was not likely to be more
sincere or more sound in one thought than in another. The proof
that a philosopher does not know what he is talking about is apt
to sadden his followers before it reacts on himself. Demolition of
one's idols is painful, and Carlyle had been an idol. Doubts cast
on his stature spread far into general darkness like shadows of a

setting sun. Not merely the idols fell, but also the habit of faith.
If Carlyle, too, was a fraud, what were his scholars and school?

Society as a rule was civil, and one had no more reason to complain
than every other diplomatist has had, in like conditions, but
one's few friends in society were mere ornament. The Legation
could not dream of contesting social control. The best they could
do was to escape mortification, and by this time their relations
were good enough to save the Minister's family from that annoyance.
Now and then, the fact could not be wholly disguised that
some one had refused to meet—or to receive—the Minister; but
never an open insult, or any expression of which the Minister had
to take notice. Diplomacy served as a buffer in times of irritation,
and no diplomat who knew his business fretted at what every
diplomat—and none more commonly than the English—had to
expect; therefore Henry Adams, though not a diplomat and wholly
unprotected, went his way peacefully enough, seeing clearly that
society cared little to make his acquaintance, but seeing also no
reason why society should discover charms in him of which he was
himself unconscious. He went where he was asked; he was always
courteously received; he was, on the whole, better treated than at
Washington; and he held his tongue.

For a thousand reasons, the best diplomatic house in London
was Lord Palmerston's, while Lord John Russell's was one of the
worst. Of neither host could a private secretary expect to know
anything. He might as well have expected to know the Grand
Lama. Personally Lord Palmerston was the last man in London
that a cautious private secretary wanted to know. Other Prime
Ministers may perhaps have lived who inspired among diplomatists
as much distrust as Palmerston, and yet between Palmerston's
word and Russell's word, one hesitated to decide, and gave
years of education to deciding, whether either could be trusted,
or how far. The Queen herself in her famous memorandum of
August 12, 1850, gave her opinion of Palmerston in words that differed
little from words used by Lord John Russell, and both the

Queen and Russell said in substance only what Cobden and Bright
said in private. Every diplomatist agreed with them, yet the
diplomatic standard of trust seemed to be other than the parliamentarian.
No professional diplomatists worried about falsehoods.
Words were with them forms of expression which varied
with individuals, but falsehood was more or less necessary to all.
The worst liars were the candid. What diplomatists wanted to
know was the motive that lay beyond the expression. In the case
of Palmerston they were unanimous in warning new colleagues
that they might expect to be sacrificed by him to any momentary
personal object. Every new Minister or Ambassador at the Court
of St. James received this preliminary lesson that he must, if possible,
keep out of Palmerston's reach. The rule was not secret or
merely diplomatic. The Queen herself had emphatically expressed
the same opinion officially. If Palmerston had an object to gain,
he would go down to the House of Commons and betray or misrepresent
a foreign Minister, without concern for his victim. No
one got back on him with a blow equally mischievous—not even
the Queen—for, as old Baron Brunnow described him: "C'est
une peau de rhinocère!" Having gained his point, he laughed,
and his public laughed with him, for the usual British—or American
—public likes to be amused, and thought it very amusing
to see these beribboned and bestarred foreigners caught and
tossed and gored on the horns of this jovial, slashing, devil-may-care
British bull.

Diplomatists have no right to complain of mere lies; it is their
own fault, if, educated as they are, the lies deceive them; but they
complain bitterly of traps. Palmerston was believed to lay traps.
He was the enfant terrible of the British Government. On the other
hand, Lady Palmerston was believed to be good and loyal. All
the diplomats and their wives seemed to think so, and took their
troubles to her, believing that she would try to help them. For
this reason among others, her evenings at home—Saturday Reviews,
they were called—had great vogue. An ignorant young

American could not be expected to explain it. Cambridge House
was no better for entertaining than a score of others. Lady Palmerston
was no longer young or handsome, and could hardly at
any age have been vivacious. The people one met there were never
smart and seldom young; they were largely diplomatic, and diplomats
are commonly dull; they were largely political, and politicians
rarely decorate or beautify an evening party; they were
sprinkled with literary people, who are notoriously unfashionable;
the women were of course ill-dressed and middle-aged; the
men looked mostly bored or out of place; yet, beyond a doubt, Cambridge
House was the best, and perhaps the only political house
in London, and its success was due to Lady Palmerston, who never
seemed to make an effort beyond a friendly recognition. As a lesson
in social education, Cambridge House gave much subject for
thought. First or last, one was to know dozens of statesmen more
powerful and more agreeable than Lord Palmerston; dozens of
ladies more beautiful and more painstaking than Lady Palmerston;
but no political house so successful as Cambridge House.
The world never explains such riddles. The foreigners said only
that Lady Palmerston was "sympathique."

The small fry of the Legations were admitted there, or tolerated,
without a further effort to recognize their existence, but they
were pleased because rarely tolerated anywhere else, and there
they could at least stand in a corner and look at a bishop or even
a duke. This was the social diversion of young Adams. No one
knew him—not even the lackeys. The last Saturday evening he
ever attended, he gave his name as usual at the foot of the staircase,
and was rather disturbed to hear it shouted up as "Mr.
Handrew Hadams!" He tried to correct it, and the footman
shouted more loudly: "Mr. Hanthony Hadams!" With some
temper he repeated the correction, and was finally announced as
"Mr. Halexander Hadams," and under this name made his bow
for the last time to Lord Palmerston who certainly knew no better.

Far down the staircase one heard Lord Palmerston's laugh as

he stood at the door receiving his guests, talking probably to one
of his henchmen, Delane, Borthwick, or Hayward, who were sure
to be near. The laugh was singular, mechanical, wooden, and did
not seem to disturb his features. "Ha!... Ha!... Ha!" Each
was a slow, deliberate ejaculation, and all were in the same tone,
as though he meant to say: "Yes!. . . Yes!. . . Yes!" by way of
assurance. It was a laugh of 1810 and the Congress of Vienna.
Adams would have much liked to stop a moment and ask whether
William Pitt and the Duke of Wellington had laughed so; but
young men attached to foreign Ministers asked no questions at all
of Palmerston and their chiefs asked as few as possible. One made
the usual bow and received the usual glance of civility; then passed
on to Lady Palmerston, who was always kind in manner, but who
wasted no remarks; and so to Lady Jocelyn with her daughter,
who commonly had something friendly to say; then went through
the diplomatic corps, Brunnow, Musurus, Azeglio, Apponyi, Van
de Weyer, Bille, Tricoupi, and the rest, finally dropping into the
hands of some literary accident as strange there as one's self. The
routine varied little. There was no attempt at entertainment.
Except for the desperate isolation of these two first seasons, even
secretaries would have found the effort almost as mechanical as a
levee at St. James's Palace.

Lord Palmerston was not Foreign Secretary; he was Prime Minister,
but he loved foreign affairs and could no more resist scoring
a point in diplomacy than in whist. Ministers of foreign powers,
knowing his habits, tried to hold him at arms'-length, and, to do
this, were obliged to court the actual Foreign Secretary, Lord John
Russell, who, on July 30, 1861, was called up to the House of Lords
as an earl. By some process of personal affiliation, Minister Adams
succeeded in persuading himself that he could trust Lord Russell
more safely than Lord Palmerston. His son, being young and ill-balanced
in temper, thought there was nothing to choose. Englishmen
saw little difference between them, and Americans were
bound to follow English experience in English character. Minister

Adams had much to learn, although with him as well as with his
son, the months of education began to count as æons.

Just as Brunnow predicted, Lord Palmerston made his rush at
last, as unexpected as always, and more furiously than though
still a private secretary of twenty-four. Only a man who had been
young with the battle of Trafalgar could be fresh and jaunty to
that point, but Minister Adams was not in a position to sympathize
with octogenarian youth and found himself in a danger as
critical as that of his numerous predecessors. It was late one afternoon
in June, 1862, as the private secretary returned, with the
Minister, from some social function, that he saw his father pick up
a note from his desk and read it in silence. Then he said curtly:
"Palmerston wants a quarrel!" This was the point of the incident
as he felt it. Palmerston wanted a quarrel; he must not be
gratified; he must be stopped. The matter of quarrel was General
Butler's famous woman-order at New Orleans, but the motive was
the belief in President Lincoln's brutality that had taken such
deep root in the British mind. Knowing Palmerston's habits, the
Minister took for granted that he meant to score a diplomatic
point by producing this note in the House of Commons. If he did
this at once, the Minister was lost; the quarrel was made; and one
new victim to Palmerston's passion for popularity was sacrificed.

The moment was nervous—as far as the private secretary
knew, quite the most critical moment in the records of American
diplomacy—but the story belongs to history, not to education,
and can be read there by any one who cares to read it. As a part
of Henry Adams's education it had a value distinct from history.
That his father succeeded in muzzling Palmerston without a public
scandal, was well enough for the Minister, but was not enough
for a private secretary who liked going to Cambridge House, and
was puzzled to reconcile contradictions. That Palmerston had
wanted a quarrel was obvious; why, then, did he submit so tamely
to being made the victim of the quarrel? The correspondence that
followed his note was conducted feebly on his side, and he allowed

the United States Minister to close it by a refusal to receive further
communications from him except through Lord Russell. The step
was excessively strong, for it broke off private relations as well
as public, and cost even the private secretary his invitations to
Cambridge House. Lady Palmerston tried her best, but the two
ladies found no resource except tears. They had to do with
an American Minister perplexed in the extreme. Not that Mr.
Adams lost his temper, for he never felt such a weight of responsibility,
and was never more cool; but he could conceive no other
way of protecting his Government, not to speak of himself, than
to force Lord Russell to interpose. He believed that Palmerston's
submission and silence were due to Russell. Perhaps he was right;
at the time, his son had no doubt of it, though afterwards he felt
less sure. Palmerston wanted a quarrel; the motive seemed evident;
yet when the quarrel was made, he backed out of it; for some
reason it seemed that he did not want it—at least, not then. He
never showed resentment against Mr. Adams at the time or afterwards.
He never began another quarrel. Incredible as it seemed,
he behaved like a well-bred gentleman who felt himself in the
wrong. Possibly this change may have been due to Lord Russell's
remonstrances, but the private secretary would have felt his education
in politics more complete had he ever finally made up his
mind whether Palmerston was more angry with General Butler,
or more annoyed at himself, for committing what was in both
cases an unpardonable bêtise.

At the time, the question was hardly raised, for no one doubted
Palmerston's attitude or his plans. The season was near its end,
and Cambridge House was soon closed. The Legation had troubles
enough without caring to publish more. The tide of English
feeling ran so violently against it that one could only wait to see
whether General McClellan would bring it relief. The year 1862
was a dark spot in Henry Adams's life, and the education it gave
was mostly one that he gladly forgot. As far as he was aware, he
made no friends; he could hardly make enemies; yet towards the

close of the year he was flattered by an invitation from Monckton
Milnes to Fryston, and it was one of many acts of charity towards
the young that gave Milnes immortality. Milnes made it
his business to be kind. Other people criticised him for his manner
of doing it, but never imitated him. Naturally, a dispirited,
disheartened private secretary was exceedingly grateful, and never
forgot the kindness, but it was chiefly as education that this
first country visit had value. Commonly, country visits are much
alike, but Monckton Milnes was never like anybody, and his
country parties served his purpose of mixing strange elements.
Fryston was one of a class of houses that no one sought for its natural
beauties, and the winter mists of Yorkshire were rather more
evident for the absence of the hostess on account of them, so that
the singular guests whom Milnes collected to enliven his December
had nothing to do but astonish each other, if anything could
astonish such men. Of the five, Adams alone was tame; he alone
added nothing to the wit or humor, except as a listener; but they
needed a listener and he was useful. Of the remaining four, Milnes
was the oldest, and perhaps the sanest in spite of his superficial
eccentricities, for Yorkshire sanity was true to a standard of its
own, if not to other conventions; yet even Milnes startled a young
American whose Boston and Washington mind was still fresh.
He would not have been startled by the hard-drinking, horse-racing
Yorkshireman of whom he had read in books; but Milnes
required a knowledge of society and literature that only himself
possessed, if one were to try to keep pace with him. He had sought
contact with everybody and everything that Europe could offer.
He knew it all from several points of view, and chiefly as humorous.

The second of the party was also of a certain age; a quiet, well-mannered,
singularly agreeable gentleman of the literary class.
When Milnes showed Adams to his room to dress for dinner, he
stayed a moment to say a word about this guest, whom he called
Stirling of Keir. His sketch closed with the hint that Stirling was

violent only on one point—hatred of Napoleon III. On that
point, Adams was himself sensitive, which led him to wonder how
bad the Scotch gentleman might be. The third was a man of
thirty or thereabouts, whom Adams had already met at Lady
Palmerston's carrying his arm in a sling. His figure and bearing
were sympathetic—almost pathetic—with a certain grave and
gentle charm, a pleasant smile, and an interesting story. He
was Laurence Oliphant, just from Japan, where he had been
wounded in the fanatics' attack on the British Legation. He
seemed exceptionally sane and peculiarly suited for country
houses, where every man would enjoy his company, and every
woman would adore him. He had not then published "Piccadilly";
perhaps he was writing it; while, like all the young men
about the Foreign Office, he contributed to The Owl.

The fourth was a boy, or had the look of one, though in fact
a year older than Adams himself. He resembled in action—and
in this trait, was remotely followed, a generation later, by another
famous young man, Robert Louis Stevenson—a tropical
bird, high-crested, long-beaked, quick-moving, with rapid utterance
and screams of humor, quite unlike any English lark or nightingale.
One could hardly call him a crimson macaw among owls,
and yet no ordinary contrast availed. Milnes introduced him
as Mr. Algernon Swinburne. The name suggested nothing. Milnes
was always unearthing new coins and trying to give them currency.
He had unearthed Henry Adams who knew himself to be
worthless and not current. When Milnes lingered a moment in
Adams's room to add that Swinburne had written some poetry,
not yet published, of really extraordinary merit, Adams only
wondered what more Milnes would discover, and whether by
chance he could discover merit in a private secretary. He was
capable of it.

In due course this party of five men sat down to dinner with the
usual club manners of ladyless dinner-tables, easy and formal at
the same time. Conversation ran first to Oliphant who told his

dramatic story simply, and from him the talk drifted off into other
channels, until Milnes thought it time to bring Swinburne out.
Then, at last, if never before, Adams acquired education. What
he had "sought so long, he found; but he was none the wiser; only
the more astonished. For once, too, he felt at ease, for the others
were no less astonished than himself, and their astonishment grew
apace. For the rest of the evening Swinburne figured alone; the
end of dinner made the monologue only freer, for in 1862, even
when ladies were not in the house, smoking was forbidden, and
guests usually smoked in the stables or the kitchen; but Monckton
Milnes was a licensed libertine who let his guests smoke in
Adams's bedroom, since Adams was an American-German barbarian
ignorant of manners; and there after dinner all sat—
or lay—till far into the night, listening to the rush of Swinburne's
talk. In a long experience, before or after, no one ever approached
it; yet one had heard accounts of the best talking of the time, and
read accounts of talkers in all time, among the rest, of Voltaire,
who seemed to approach nearest the pattern.

That Swinburne was altogether new to the three types of men-of-the-world
before him; that he seemed to them quite original,
wildly eccentric, astonishingly gifted, and convulsingly droll,
Adams could see; but what more he was, even Milnes hardly
dared say. They could not believe his incredible memory and
knowledge of literature, classic, mediæval, and modern; his faculty
of reciting a play of Sophocles or a play of Shakespeare, forward
or backward, from end to beginning; or Dante, or Villon,
or Victor Hugo. They knew not what to make of his rhetorical
recitation of his own unpublished ballads—"Faustine"; the
"Four Boards of the Coffin Lid"; the "Ballad of Burdens"—
which he declaimed as though they were books of the Iliad. It
was singular that his most appreciative listener should have been
the author only of pretty verses like "We wandered by the brookside,"
and "She seemed to those that saw them meet"; and who
aever cared to write in any other tone; but Milnes took everything

into his sympathies, including Americans like young Adams whose
standards were stiffest of all, while Swinburne, though millions
of ages far from them, united them by his humor even more than
by his poetry. The story of his first day as a member of Professor
Stubbs's household was professionally clever farce, if not high
comedy, in a young man who could write a Greek ode or a Provençal
chanson as easily as an English quatrain.

Late at night when the symposium broke up, Stirling of Keir
wanted to take with him to his chamber a copy of "Queen Rosamund,"
the only volume Swinburne had then published, which
was on the library table, and Adams offered to light him down
with his solitary bedroom candle. All the way, Stirling was ejaculating
explosions of wonder, until at length, at the foot of the stairs
and at the climax of his imagination, he paused, and burst out:
"He's a cross between the devil and the Duke of Argyll!"

To appreciate the full merit of this description, a judicious
critic should have known both, and Henry Adams knew only
one—at least in person—but he understood that to a Scotchman
the likeness meant something quite portentous, beyond
English experience, supernatural, and what the French call moyenâgeux
or mediæval with a grotesque turn. That Stirling as well
as Milnes should regard Swinburne as a prodigy greatly comforted
Adams, who lost his balance of mind at first in trying to
imagine that Swinburne was a natural product of Oxford, as muffins
and pork-pies of London, at once the cause and effect of dyspepsia.
The idea that one has actually met a real genius dawns
slowly on a Boston mind, but it made entry at last.

Then came the sad reaction, not from Swinburne whose genius
never was in doubt, but from the Boston mind which, in its uttermost
flights, was never moyenâgeux. One felt the horror of Longfellow
and Emerson, the doubts of Lowell and the humor of
Holmes, at the wild Walpurgis-night of Swinburne's talk. What
could a shy young private secretary do about it? Perhaps, in his
good nature, Milnes thought that Swinburne might find a friend

in Stirling or Oliphant, but he could hardly have fancied Henry
Adams rousing in him even an interest. Adams could no more
interest Algernon Swinburne than he could interest Encke's
comet. To Swinburne he could be no more than a worm. The
quality of genius was an education almost ultimate, for one touched
there the limits of the human mind on that side; but one could
only receive; one had nothing to give—nothing even to offer.

Swinburne tested him then and there by one of his favorite
tests—Victor Hugo; for to him the test of Victor Hugo was the
surest and quickest of standards. French poetry is at best a severe
exercise for foreigners; it requires extraordinary knowledge of the
language and rare refinement of ear to appreciate even the recitation
of French verse; but unless a poet has both, he lacks something
of poetry. Adams had neither. To the end of his life he
never listened to a French recitation with pleasure, or felt a sense
of majesty in French verse; but he did not care to proclaim
his weakness, and he tried to evade Swinburne's vehement insistence
by parading an affection for Alfred de Musset. Swinburne
would have none of it; de Musset was unequal; he did not
sustain himself on the wing.

Adams would have given a world or two, if he owned one, to
sustain himself on the wing like de Musset, or even like Hugo; but
his education as well as his ear was at fault, and he succumbed.
Swinburne tried him again on Walter Savage Landor. In truth
the test was the same, for Swinburne admired in Landor's English
the qualities that he felt in Hugo's French; and Adams's
failure was equally gross, for, when forced to despair, he had to
admit that both Hugo and Landor bored him. Nothing more was
needed, One who could feel neither Hugo nor Landor was lost.

The sentence was just and Adams never appealed from it. He
knew his inferiority in taste as he might know it in smell. Keenly
mortified by the dullness of his senses and instincts, he knew he was
no companion for Swinburne; probably he could be only an annoyance;
no number of centuries could ever educate him to Swinburne's

level, even in technical appreciation; yet he often wondered
whether there was nothing he had to offer that was worth
the poet's acceptance. Certainly such mild homage as the American
insect would have been only too happy to bring, had he known
how, was hardly worth the acceptance of any one. Only in France
is the attitude of prayer possible; in England it became absurd.
Even Monckton Milnes, who felt the splendors of Hugo and
Landor, was almost as helpless as an American private secretary in
personal contact with them. Ten years afterwards Adams met him
at the Geneva Conference, fresh from Paris, bubbling with delight
at a call he had made on Hugo: "I was shown into a large
room," he said, "with women and men seated in chairs against
the walls, and Hugo at one end throned. No one spoke. At last
Hugo raised his voice solemnly, and uttered the words: 'Quant
à moi, je crois en Dieu!' Silence followed. Then a woman responded
as if in deep meditation: 'Chose sublime! un Dieu qui
croit en Dieu!'"

With the best of will, one could not do this in London; the
actors had not the instinct of the drama; and yet even a private
secretary was not wholly wanting in instinct. As soon as he
reached town he hurried to Pickering's for a copy of "Queen
Rosamund," and at that time, if Swinburne was not joking,
Pickering had sold seven copies. When the "Poems and Ballads"
came out, and met their great success and scandal, he sought one
of the first copies from Moxon. If he had sinned and doubted at
all, he wholly repented and did penance before "Atalanta in
Calydon," and would have offered Swinburne a solemn worship
as Milnes's female offered Hugo, if it would have pleased the
poet. Unfortunately it was worthless.

The three young men returned to London, and each went his
own way. Adams's interest in making friends was something
desperate, but "the London season," Milnes used to say, "is a
season for making acquaintances and losing friends"; there was
no intimate life. Of Swinburne he saw no more till Monckton

Milnes summoned his whole array of Frystonians to support him
in presiding at the dinner of the Authors' Fund, when Adams
found himself seated next to Swinburne, famous then, but no
nearer. They never met again. Oliphant he met oftener; all the
world knew and loved him; but he too disappeared in the way
that all the world knows. Stirling of Keir, after one or two efforts,
passed also from Adams's vision into Sir William Stirling-Maxwell.
The only record of his wonderful visit to Fryston may
perhaps exist still in the registers of the St. James's Club, for immediately
afterwards Milnes proposed Henry Adams for membership,
and unless his memory erred, the nomination was seconded
by Tricoupi and endorsed by Laurence Oliphant and Evelyn
Ashley. The list was a little singular for variety, but on the whole
it suggested that the private secretary was getting on.