| CHAPTER IX
| -1 | |
| FOES OR FRIENDS (1862)
| 0 | |
| 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.
| 1 | |
| 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.
| 2 | |
| 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.
| 3 | |
| 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?
| 4 | |
| 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?
| 5 | |
| 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.
| 6 | |
| 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.
| 7 | |
| 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."
| 8 | |
| 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.
| 9 | |
| Far down the staircase one heard Lord Palmerston's laugh as he
stood at the door receiving his guests, talking probably to one
| 10 | |
| 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.
| 11 | |
| 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.
| 12 | |
| 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.
| 13 | |
| 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.
| 14 | |
| 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.
| 15 | |
| 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.
| 16 | |
| 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.
| 17 | |
| 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.
| 18 | |
| 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.
| 19 | |
| 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!"
| 20 | |
| 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.
| 21 | |
| 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.
| 22 | |
| 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.
| 23 | |
| 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.
| 24 | |
| 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!"'
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| 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.
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| 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.
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