AMERICAN DIPLOMACY IN ENGLAND
I
The Ministers and Ambassadors who have represented the United States
in England have an interest individually and as a body. So long a
line of men, mostly distinguished, is almost a dynasty. Some of them
are totally forgotten. Some are remembered faintly. Some have left
a lasting impression. I have known a round dozen of them. The
public memory is short. If I say that to Mr. Charles Francis Adams
it was permitted to do a greater service to his country abroad than
to any American since Franklin--or since his grandfather, John Adams,
who might perhaps as a diplomatist be ranked above Franklin--if I say
this, there are Americans to whom it will seem doubtful. But since
Adams's greater service consisted in a just menace of war to England
if she let loose the Alexandra, the current histories, written in
days when every act of hostility to England was applauded, right or
wrong, have done him justice. He was right, a thousand times right,
and we cannot remember it too often.
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But what Americans ought also to remember is this, that when Mr.
Adams flung his glove in Lord Russell's face it was done neither from
temper nor impulse. It was the considered act of a Minister who had
weighed all the chances, who had made up his mind that open war was
better than covert hostility, and that it belonged to him to accept
the responsibility. Whether Mr. Seward would have backed up his
Minister may be a question, had the Minister's "This means war" been
met by Lord Russell with "Then war it is." But the British
Government knew--even Lord Palmerston knew--they were in the wrong;
and they gave way. But they gave way only because Mr. Adams had put
the alternative of war before them. It was very far from being his
only service or his only triumph, but it was the greatest of all.
It is not too much to say that the diplomatic fortunes of the United
States were in the hands of the American Minister to Great Britain
from 1861 to 1863; and, indeed, to the end of the Civil War. A weak
man, or an incompetent Minister, would have brought us to the dust.
Adams, of course, was neither. He was a match for anybody in his
business as Minister. He had the intellectual qualities and he had
the personal qualities. Moreover, he was an Adams. He belonged to
the governing classes, to one of the few great American families in
whom the traditions and gifts of government are hereditary. The
philosopher who divided the population of Massachusetts into {196}
men, women, and Adamses made a strictly scientific distribution. The
Adamses were of that minority which, under one name or another and in
all countries alike, governs. It governs none the less when it sees
fit to allow the democracy to believe itself all-powerful than when
it takes command as an aristocracy.
I knew Mr. Adams. Mr. R. H. Dana, Jr., who smoothed so many paths
for me, gave me a letter to him. This was in 1867. The days of
tumult and conflict were over. His great work was done, but he
remained Minister till 1868. The legation was then in Portland
Place. Mr. Moran was Secretary of Legation; an excellent official
whose service in that position in London lasted seventeen years, and
was finally rewarded by promotion to Lisbon as Minister. He was a
good watchdog. A secretary, of whatever rank, has to be that. Like
Horatius, he has to keep the bridge, albeit, against his own
countrymen. They are the Volscians. When I asked to see Mr. Adams
Mr. Moran very properly wished to know why, and when I produced Mr.
Dana's letter Mr. Moran seemed to think it was addressed to him, and
not till I had explained that it was Mr. Dana's, who was Mr. Adams's
friend, and that I had no other business than to present this letter,
did Mr. Moran's vigilance relax. We became friends afterwards.
When I saw the Minister he departed a little from his official
manner, greeted me kindly, and said: "You have brought me a very
strong letter. What can I do for you?" When I thanked him {197} and
said I wanted nothing, he relaxed a little further, laughed a little,
and observed that most of his countrymen who called at the legation
had an object. He talked with a singular precision; his was a mind
of precision, like the modern rifle, equally good at short range and
long if you adjust the sights. But good as was his talk, what
impressed you most was the silent power of the man; the force in
reserve, the solidity and the delicate temper of the metal.
I dwell a moment on the relations between travelling Americans and
their legation or embassy--which to the untravelled may seem
unimportant--because, now as much as ever and perhaps more than ever,
the duties of a Minister, of an Ambassador, of the embassy, are so
often misunderstood by that portion of the public from America which
is intent on immediate admission to Buckingham Palace. I have known
many secretaries since Mr. Moran's time. They have been, as a rule,
willing and competent, really desirous to be of service to their
countrymen.
There is no other embassy than the American on which such demands are
made as on ours in London and in Paris, and to some extent in other
capitals. These demands are addressed first of all to the Ambassador
or Ambassadress. I will take a single instance. There is each year
a large number of Americans who desire to be presented at Court, and
who think it the duty of the Ambassador to arrange for their
presentation. Many of these applications are sent by {198} letter
well in advance of their coming. There are hundreds of such
applications--literally hundreds; four or five hundred this year from
American ladies who thought themselves, and were, worthy to appear
before the King and Queen at one of the three Courts presently to be
held. The number of presentations which the Ambassadress is entitled
to make at each of the three Courts is four. That is a rule, an
ordinance of the King who has the sole authority in such matters.
Sometimes, in some special case, upon reason assigned, the rule is
relaxed and a presentation may be made outside of it. But all such
requests are rigidly scrutinized and the margin is very narrow. The
exceptions are units.
In these circumstances, with four hundred candidates for four
presentations, what is an unhappy Ambassadress to do? The American,
used to the easy ways prevailing at the White House, supposes they
must be equally easy at Buckingham Palace; or that, upon a word from
the American Ambassador, in these days of pleasant Anglo-American
relations, all doors will fly open. If they do not, each one of the
four hundred regards hers, as a case for exceptional favour. She has
come three thousand or four or six thousand miles in order to lend
the distinction of her republican presence to these royal functions.
What is an Ambassador for if not to give effect to these good
intentions? The Lord Chamberlain stands at the door with a drawn
sword, but is an American Ambassador to be intimidated by a mere
officer of the Royal {199} Household? It is in vain to answer that
even a King has a right to say whom he can receive and whom he
cannot. _Le charbonnier est maître chez soi_, but not, they think,
the King of England.
The perplexities arising out of this American eagerness to witness
these royal splendours are innumerable. The resentment arising out
of inevitable refusals is a burden which every Ambassador has to
bear; and every secretary too. Grievances are of many kinds. It is
not so many years since an American Minister was asked by
cable--almost ordered--by a distinguished fellow-countryman to engage
lodgings for him in London. It is not many more since an eminent
statesman, arriving after Levees and Drawing-rooms were over, desired
a secretary to arrange that he and his family should take tea with
the Queen at Windsor Castle.
These are cases occurring not in musical comedy but in actual life.
There are others, relating not to royalty but to society, and to
various forms of English life. But it is already only too evident
that the diplomatic duties of an Ambassador are not his only
anxieties. The others, so far as I know anything about them, have
always been borne cheerfully. Everything has been done for the
American in London that could be done. He is taken care of to an
extent that the Briton abroad never is, nor ever expects to be. But
to all human effort there is a limit.
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II
MR. JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY
Since Mr. Adams's retirement in 1868 we have had three Ambassadors
whose ability as diplomatists entitles them to places in the front
rank. If you take account of other kinds of ability and of
Ministers, there are more than three. Mr. Motley was a brilliant
historian whose "Rise of the Dutch Republic" and "History of the
United Netherlands" gave him a lasting European reputation and added
distinction to American literature. But neither his six years of
service as Minister to Austria, 1861-7, nor his year and a half in
England, 1869-70, proved him a great diplomatist.
Austria was not then, and is not now, of the first importance from an
American point of view. We respect her wise old Emperor. We do not,
I think, agree with Mr. Gladstone in saying you can nowhere put your
finger on the map and say, "Here Austrian rule has been beneficent."
She never was a model to us and is not now. But since we like
courage, and clear-sighted decision, and the recognition of facts,
and like the men who have these gifts, we have not joined very
heartily in the European outcry against the Austrian annexation of
Bosnia and Herzegovina. We are a world-power for certain purposes
only. We stand aloof from purely European complications. They are,
as a rule, no affair of ours. We learned to our cost, or possibly
our mortification, not very {201} long ago, that Austria, "effete" or
not, was capable of giving us a lesson in diplomacy; or, at least, in
diplomatic etiquette; by which we, or our late President, may or may
not have profited.
Mr. Motley, though he wrote excellent dispatches and made no
diplomatic or social mistakes in that difficult Austrian capital, had
not the smooth temper or the patient arts which are essential to
success at critical moments. He was impetuous, explosive,
rhetorical; prone to interpret his instructions in the light of his
own wishes or convictions. Socially he was a force, even in Vienna,
because of his personal charm, his distinction of appearance and of
manner. Socially speaking, he was an aristocrat. He was the first
American Minister in London to establish himself in a house suitable
to the dignity of the post, Lord Yarborough's, in Arlington Street.
He was known to be Count Bismarck's friend. That of itself gave him
a kind of celebrity, for Count Bismarck was then a comparatively
unfamiliar personage in England, where the outlook of the average man
on the Continental horizon is not wide.
One of the first questions Count Bismarck asked me when I first
talked with him in the Wilhelmstrasse in 1866 was whether I knew
Motley.
"Yes."
"Are you going to Vienna?"
"Yes."
"Then of course you will see Motley. Be sure you give him a message
from me--a warm message. I have never forgotten our university days
{202} together at Göttingen; our friendship. He knows that, but tell
him again. And tell him I hope to see him in Berlin before he goes
home."
As he spoke, there came into the eyes of the Iron Chancellor a look I
had not seen before. The steel-blue softened into the blue of the
skies; after rain, as the Chinese say. His friendship for Motley was
an affectionate friendship. Later, I talked with Motley about
Bismarck and of course delivered my message.
"Yes," said Motley, "we were boys together at Göttingen. His was a
different life from mine. I dare say you have heard the stories
about young Bismarck's exploits. In those matters he was like most
students of his time and of his class. The Prussian Junker is a
being by himself. But we became friends, and friends we have
remained. We don't meet often, but the friendship has never died out
nor decayed."
Another thing made Motley far otherwise popular in England; his
passionate Americanism. Mr. Price Collier is of opinion that
Englishmen do not like Americans. I do not agree with Mr. Collier,
but, whether they do or not, they like an American to be an American.
They liked Mr. Motley because his patriotism burst forth in all
companies and at all times. It made him, or tended to make him,
reluctant to compromise on any question where the interests of his
country were concerned. But compromise is of the essence of
diplomacy; most of all as between the greatest Powers of the World.
If nobody ever yielded {203} anything, negotiations could end only in
surrender or in war; the two things which it is the business of
diplomacy to avoid. Nothing Motley ever did in diplomacy was of such
service to his country as his two letters to _The Times_, early in
the Civil War, and his memorable outburst in the Athenæum Club. To
write the letters he violated the unwritten law of diplomacy, for he
was then Minister to Austria. To make the Athenæum speech--for it
was nothing less--he departed from the other unwritten law which
makes a club neutral ground, and makes anything like an oration
impossible.
But Motley had among other qualities the quality of courage. His
invective in the Athenæum against the very classes among whose
representatives he stood was magnificent, and it came very near being
war, or a declaration of war. He would keep no terms with the men
who were enemies of his country in such a crisis as that. If it had
been anybody but Motley who thundered against the ignorance and
prejudice of the Confederate allies who then gave the tone to English
society, I imagine the Committee of the Club might have taken notice.
But Motley fascinated while he rebuked. When he had done denouncing
them as renegades to English ideas and enemies to liberty, they liked
him the better. I can think of no incident so like this as
Plimsoll's defiance of the House of Commons, when he rushed into the
middle of the floor and charged his fellow-members with sacrificing
the lives of English {204} sailors to the cupidity of English
ship-owners, and so compelled the House to adopt the load-line.
History has taken note of Plimsoll's exploit. Motley's may never
appear in pages which aim at historical dignity. But to this day,
when near half a century has passed, Motley's is still remembered;
still spoken of; still admired. There are men living who heard him.
The English do not entirely like being reminded of their mistakes
about us at that period, but they bear no malice against the man
whose admonition did much to bring them to their senses. On the
contrary, through all these forty-odd years, you might have heard
Motley spoken of with admiring good-will.
Before all things, he loved his own country. Next to his own
country, _longo intervallo_, he loved England, and it may be doubted
whether we have ever sent a Minister, or anybody else to England whom
the English themselves have loved as they loved Motley. His deep
blue eyes shine starlike across all that interval of years. He
carried his head high. His stature was well above the usual stature
of men. In all companies he was conspicuous for beauty and for his
bearing. And from the confusion and forgetfulness of that crowded
period he still emerges, a living force, a brilliant memory; an
American, as Dean Stanley said of him, "in whom the aspirations of
America and the ancient culture of Europe were united."
There is supposed to be still a mystery about his recall by President
Grant. But it is an open-air {205} mystery. Grant struck at Sumner
through Motley. Any weapon was thought good enough to beat Sumner
with. Motley was his friend, Sumner had made him Minister. It was
deemed possible to humiliate Sumner and to teach him a lesson. The
interests of the country were not allowed to stand in the way of this
high purpose, and so Motley went. Or rather, he did not go. Asked
to resign in July, 1870, he disregarded that request. Grant
hesitated; or perhaps Mr. Fish, then Secretary of State, hesitated.
But in November of the same year, Motley was recalled; an act without
precedent and happily never repeated. No charges were made. There
were none to make. Motley's diplomatic record, his personal
character, were spotless. The childish scandal started at Vienna
never had a rag of evidence to support it; nor anything behind it but
anonymous personal animosity. His departure from England left no
stain upon anybody except upon President Grant, and upon such
officers and Ministers of his as stooped to be the instruments of his
ill-will.
III
TWO MINISTERS AND TWO AMBASSADORS
Mr. Lowell may be compared with Mr. Motley as an example of our
American method of appointing Ministers who not only are not--for
they could not be--trained diplomats, but whose character is
essentially undiplomatic. Mr. Motley was, however, so much more a
man of the world {206} than Mr. Lowell that they cannot be bracketed.
There is a similarity but no identity. Until Lowell came to London
he was a recluse. Motley had never been that. Lowell had been a
professor in Harvard University. Motley, though a student and
historian, was not what the English call "Donnish," whereas Lowell
had often the air of lecturing the company, as if a company of
pupils. Delightful as his talk was, the touch of the pedagogue was
there. Indeed, it may be doubted whether life in a university, which
is a world by itself, is ever a good training for diplomacy. An
Ambassador ought to be a man of the world--it is perhaps the first
and highest of his qualifications--but not a man of a world. A
thorough knowledge of the Greek aorist or of the proceedings of
Antigonus in Asia Minor is not needed in the conduct of delicate
negotiations; nor did Lowell find his familiarity with Spanish
literature of much use at the Foreign Office, or in that larger
foreign office known as English Society.
Society was to Lowell in the beginning of his English experiences a
stumbling-block; and to the end he only too often made a misstep. He
was liked all the same. The English are a people who can make
allowances, nor do they expect a non-Englishman to be cast in an
English mould. They recognized his positive merits. They did not
dwell on what they thought defects. I suppose I have before now told
what I always thought a characteristic saying of an English host, as
Lowell drove away from his door:
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"I need not tell you how much I like Lowell and how delighted I am to
have him here as often as he will come. But from the moment he
enters my house till he is gone I am in a panic."
The panic into which this genial host fell was due to Lowell's
fighting spirit; surely not the spirit of a diplomatist. To that and
to a passion for accuracy which he allowed to become pedantic and
aggressive. He left behind him a path strewn with victims; a renown
for brilliancy; a just repute for many amiable and delightful traits.
But the qualities essential to a Minister were not among them.
Mr. E. J. Phelps, who came after him, was a lawyer, and a lawyer may
perhaps be expected to be more combative than a professor; but it was
not so. Mr. Phelps took Mr. Lowell's house in Lowndes Square; a
respectable dwelling in a very good square, but by no means an ideal
legation. When Mr. Phelps became its tenant the atmosphere changed;
the climate was a softer climate. The amelioration was due, in part,
to Mrs. Phelps, who was beloved. Mrs. Lowell had been an invalid.
Her husband used to say: "My wife has no acquaintance and I have no
invention"--as an excuse for social shortcomings. But Mrs. Phelps
knew a great many people and charmed those whom she knew.
It is doubtful whether an abler man than Mr. Phelps ever came from
the United States to London as Minister. He was hailed at once as a
brother by his brethren of the Bar; and they put {208} him on a level
with their best. His simplicity of character, his humour, his
truthfulness, were evident to everybody. Intellectually he was
anybody's equal. As Minister he had, like all his predecessors, his
trade to learn. But he soon learned what was essential; learned
diplomacy as if it were a new cause he had to master for a great
trial. His mind was judicial. He ought to have been Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court of the United States.
With the promise of a nomination to that great post in his pocket, he
went home; but he returned. The will of Mr. Pat Collins, of
Boston--hating Phelps because he would not, as Minister, be the
instrument of Irish ill-will to England--had proved stronger than the
will or the word of the President. Mr. Cleveland's surrender, no
doubt under strong political pressure, deprived us of Mr. Phelps's
services as Chief Justice and he became a law lecturer at Yale. He
was a jurist who would have adorned either place. He was also an
orator who leaped into fame by a single speech, at the farewell
dinner given him in London; although, indeed, his speech at a dinner
of welcome on his arrival was scarcely less felicitous. "A
masterpiece of oratory dignified, eloquent, and pathetic," said Lord
Rosebery, a judge of oratory if there be one.
We have sent to England so many different kinds of Ministers and
Ambassadors that they must be praised--and, happily, most of them can
be praised--with discrimination, and also with brevity, for I cannot
go on for ever writing on a {209} single topic. I pass to Mr. Hay.
The mansion Mr. Hay leased in Carlton House Terrace was, like all
those on the south side of that short street looking on St. James's
Park, adequate and even imposing. It was like unto the larger one on
the corner, formerly Lord Ardilaun's, now Lord Ridley's. When Mr.
Blaine entered it one evening at a concert he said to the friend who
was with him: "This is the first really palatial house to which you
have brought me." Not a palace, but palatial.
Mr. Hay knew as well as any American then living, or better, what a
part social influences could be made to play in diplomatic life. He
played that part with distinction. He was born for it. He had
cultivated his natural gifts in half a dozen European capitals. He
had such a knowledge of England and the English people that it has
always seemed a pity he did not write a book about them. But he left
a record as Ambassador which tells the story. He was a man who
carried his point without a collision. He loved England and was
beloved. When President McKinley sent for him to come home and be
Secretary of State Hay said: "I am a soldier and must obey orders.
But all my fun in life is over."
As it turned out it was not over. A still greater career opened
before him, and he was the first American Secretary of State to make
an imaginative use of his opportunities, and a great name in Europe
and Asia alike. He was the first American Secretary of State to take
the lead in a {210} world-embracing policy; to unite the European
Powers in support of it; to extract a binding pledge even from
Russia; to bring Japan, not very willingly, into this charmed circle;
and to lay the foundations of American influence in China broad and
deep. We often talk of America as a world-power. We have a right
to, and whatever be the more recent, and perhaps in some cases rather
doubtful, extensions of our authority, we owe what is best and most
lasting in our position abroad to Hay.
None of all this could Hay foresee when he quitted London for
Washington. What he knew was that he was relinquishing a place for
which he had proved his fitness, and embarking upon the unknown.
This sorrow at leaving England was genuine, and the sorrow of his
English friends, and--if ever there be such a thing as a general
sorrow--of the English public, was not less.
The late Queen said of Hay: "He is the most interesting of all the
Ambassadors I have known." If the authority for this is wanted, it
was said by the Queen to Lord Pauncefote, then British Ambassador to
the United States; and Lord Pauncefote repeated it to me, with leave
to repeat it to others, as I now do; by no means for the first time.
To Mr. Hay succeeded Mr. Choate. I hope it will be taken as a
compliment if I say Mr. Choate was better liked the longer he stayed.
He had, when he arrived, a frankness of speech which is sometimes
called American; and is, no doubt, characteristic of certain
individual Americans. {211} There is in Mr. Henry James's
_Bostonians_ an American banker settled in England to whom his son,
provoked by a remark of the father to a noble lord who was his guest,
observes:
"Well, father, you have lived here a long time, and you have learned
some of the things they say, but you haven't learnt the things they
don't say."
It is inevitable. In new social circumstances, time is of the
essence. It is no reproach to Mr. Choate that he found it so. He
had, and has, an exuberant wit; one somewhat contemptuous of
conventions and established forms. He poured it out in floods. He
gave free scope to its caprices. When it had become chastened by
experience, the English delighted in it; as we Americans have long
delighted in it. But time was needed on both sides. The English and
Mr. Choate had to become accustomed to each other. In the end they
did. A beautiful harmony grew up, and before Mr. Choate went home he
was an accepted figure in the society which at first had sometimes a
questioning spirit. He, too, lived as an Ambassador ought to live;
and in Carlton House Terrace, like Mr. Hay. From the beginning the
Foreign Office had found in him, in Bismarck's phrase, a man with
whom it was possible to do business. For he had a kind of
preternatural rapidity in mastering great affairs, and a marked skill
in the composition of public addresses.
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