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by his lack of friends. “I can’t succeed in finding any one to introduce me among people of my own age,” he complained to his brother Charles.8 He sensed he had made a fool of himself when an acquaintance introduced him to William Howard Russell. Rather idiotically, Henry began blathering away about the pity of his returning to England. Russell looked “embarrassed” at this, and then laughed, remarking “that personally he was glad [to be home], but he regretted having lost the chance of showing his goodwill to us by describing our successes.”9 Russell ended the conversation by pointedly saying he would like to call on Henry’s father.

William Howard Russell was anxious to clear his name with Minister Adams. It was only once he arrived home that Russell realized the extent to which The Times had slanted his reports. The diarist Henry Greville, whose friendship with Fanny Kemble made him take an interest in American affairs, was shocked to learn of Russell’s belief “that the North will in the end carry all before them.” “If this be his opinion,” wrote Greville on May 10, “his correspondence must have been carefully cooked before insertion, for nothing that has appeared in it can bear this construction.”10 Delane had no use for Russell now that he was in England and stopped taking his articles on the war. The rebuke was not unduly troubling for Russell, however, since he was able to return to his job as editor of the Army and Navy Gazette. Nor did he regret his decision to leave America; less than a month after his arrival, he suffered the loss of his one-year-old son, Colin, and the total collapse of Mary, his wife. The children were now utterly dependent on him. Fortunately, Delane soon forgave Russell; “here you are and we must make the best of it,” he wrote, and The Times awarded Russell a pension of £300 a year for life.11 Delane resumed commissioning him for special assignments, but the ban on American subjects remained in place.

Charles Francis Adams now almost looked forward to his interviews with the other Russell, the foreign secretary. They were more like jousts than conversations; “about once a week,” joked Henry, “the wary Chieftain sharpens a stick down to a very sharp point, and then digs it into the excellent Russell’s ribs.”12 The foreign secretary enjoyed returning the compliment, and it was not uncommon for the meeting to conclude with an invitation to continue the argument over dinner. On May 19, all five members of the Adams family went to Pembroke Lodge for an outing with the Russells. “One year ago, yesterday,” the minister wrote in his diary, “I went over this same ground on a very chilly day.” Then, he had been nervous about meeting Lord Russell; but now, he decided, “Lord and Lady Russell are pleasanter as seen in their domestic life than elsewhere. No family is more thoroughly a home circle.”13 The harmonious relations between the legation and the Foreign Office were sufficiently encouraging for Henry to write to his brother on June 6 that the Confederate commissioner was no longer a threat to them: “I hear very little about our friend Mason.… He has little or no attention paid him except as a matter of curiosity.”

A week later, however, General Butler’s “Woman Order” became known. The British were shocked by the implication behind Butler’s promise to treat “any female” who insulted a Northern soldier as a “woman of the town plying her avocation.” The press was not appeased when Lord Russell explained, during a heated debate in the House of Lords, that Butler was probably extending a law already used to curb prostitution to include Southern women who breached the peace in other ways. Even papers that normally supported the North condemned the order. For Confederate sympathizers in Parliament, it was a gift that they shamelessly exploited. William Gregory conjured up for his fellow MPs images of women, not unlike their own wives and daughters, being thrown to the mercy of the very dregs of society. Lord Palmerston was unable to restrain himself. “Sir,” he declared, “an Englishman must blush to think