Chapter IX. Foes or Friends (1862)

The Education of Henry Adams

by Henry Adams

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 of 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 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 rhinocere!" 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 aeons.

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 after noon 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 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 betise.

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 Lawrence 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, mediaeval, 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
brook-side," and "She seemed to those that saw them meet"; and who
never 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 Proven‡al 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 moyenageux, or mediaeval 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 moyenageux. 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 a moi,
je crois en Dieu!' Silence followed. Then a woman responded as if in
deep meditation: 'Chose sublime! un Dieu qui croft 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.