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.
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