Sentimental and emotional he must have been, or he
could never have persuaded a daughter of Dr. Arnold to marry him.
Pure gold, without a trace of base metal; honest, unselfish,
practical; he took up the Union cause and made himself its
champion, as a true Yorkshireman was sure to do, partly because of
his Quaker anti-slavery convictions, and partly because it gave him
a practical opening in the House. As a new member, he needed a
field.
Diffidence was not one of Forster's weaknesses. His
practical sense and his personal energy soon established him in
leadership, and made him a powerful champion, not so much for
ornament as for work. With such a manager, the friends of the Union
in England began to take heart. Minister Adams had only to look on
as his true champions, the heavy-weights, came into action, and
even the private secretary caught now and then a stray gleam of
encouragement as he saw the ring begin to clear for these burly
Yorkshiremen to stand up in a prize-fight likely to be as brutal as
ever England had known. Milnes and Forster were not exactly
light-weights, but Bright and Cobden were the hardest hitters in
England, and with them for champions the Minister could tackle even
Lord Palmerston without much fear of foul play.
In society John Bright and Richard Cobden were never
seen, and even in Parliament they had no large following. They were
classed as enemies of order, - anarchists, - and anarchists they
were if hatred of the so-called established orders made them so.
About them was no sort of political timidity. They took bluntly the
side of the Union against Palmerston whom they hated. Strangers to
London society, they were at home in the American Legation,
delightful dinner-company, talking always with reckless freedom.
Cobden was the milder and more persuasive; Bright was the more
dangerous to approach; but the private secretary delighted in both,
and nourished an ardent wish to see them talk the same language to
Lord John Russell from the gangway of the House.
With four such allies as these, Minister Adams stood
no longer quite helpless. For the second time the British Ministry
felt a little ashamed of itself after the Trent Affair, as well it
might, and disposed to wait before moving again. Little by little,
friends gathered about the Legation who were no fair-weather
companions. The old anti-slavery, Exeter Hall, Shaftesbury clique
turned out to be an annoying and troublesome enemy, but the Duke of
Argyll was one of the most valuable friends the Minister found,
both politically and socially, and the Duchess was as true as her
mother. Even the private secretary shared faintly in the social
profit of this relation, and never forgot dining one night at the
Lodge, and finding himself after dinner engaged in instructing John
Stuart Mill about the peculiar merits of an American protective
system. In spite of all the probabilities, he convinced himself
that it was not the Duke's claret which led him to this singular
form of loquacity; he insisted that it was the fault of Mr. Mill
himself who led him on by assenting to his point of view. Mr. Mill
took no apparent pleasure in dispute, and in that respect the Duke
would perhaps have done better; but the secretary had to admit that
though at other periods of life he was sufficiently and even amply
snubbed by Englishmen, he could never recall a single occasion
during this trying year, when he had to complain of rudeness.
Friendliness he found here and there, but chiefly
among his elders; not among fashionable or socially powerful
people, either men or women; although not even this rule was quite
exact, for Frederick Cavendish's kindness and intimate relations
made Devonshire House almost familiar, and Lyulph Stanley's ardent
Americanism created a certain cordiality with the Stanleys of
Alderley whose house was one of the most frequented in London.
Lorne, too, the future Argyll, was always a friend. Yet the regular
course of society led to more literary intimacies. Sir Charles
Trevelyan's house was one of the first to which young Adams was
asked, and with which his friendly relations never ceased for near
half a century, and then only when death stopped them. Sir Charles
and Lady Lyell were intimates. Tom Hughes came into close alliance.
By the time society began to reopen its doors after the death of
the Prince Consort, even the private secretary occasionally saw a
face he knew, although he made no more effort of any kind, but
silently waited the end. Whatever might be the advantages of social
relations to his father and mother, to him the whole business of
diplomacy and society was futile. He meant to go home.
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.
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