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.
CHAPTER X
POLITICAL
MORALITY (1862)
ON Moran's promotion to be Secretary, Mr. Seward
inquired whether Minister Adams would like the place of Assistant
Secretary for his son. It was the first - and last - office ever
offered him, if indeed he could claim what was offered in fact to
his father. To them both, the change seemed useless. Any young man
could make some sort of Assistant Secretary; only one, just at that
moment, could make an Assistant Son. More than half his duties were
domestic; they sometimes required long absences; they always
required independence of the Government service. His position was
abnormal.
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