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neutrality proclamation had been issued on the day of his arrival. He considered Lord John Russell’s explanation to be spurious and self-serving. Nor did he accept Mr. Forster’s contention that “GB had done all they could to aid us.” Cunard had offered to lease twenty steamships to the Federal navy, which would have doubled its force of working steamers, until the Foreign Enlistment Act made such transactions illegal. But it was difficult for Adams to take the moral high ground when Seward seemed so intent on giving it away.

During an interview with Russell on June 12, Adams rephrased much of Seward’s dispatch and “softened as well as I could the sharp edges.” He also threw in a question about the Great Eastern, which had departed for Canada the week before with more than two thousand troops on board.53 Russell answered bluntly that it was due to Seward’s threats to seize a British vessel in Canadian waters; more regiments were on their way, he added. This was “another curse of Seward’s horseplay,” Adams recorded in irritation.54 He could easily imagine how news of the reinforcements would be received in Washington, and he consoled himself with the fact that he had not yet signed the lease for his house: Henry Adams thought they would all be home in two months.

The expectation of his recall lent an unreal cast to the London season; Charles Francis Adams attended the first drawing room of the season feeling more like an observer than a participant. In his diary he admitted that as far as aristocracies went, the English managed theirs tolerably well but the system remained deficient. “My feelings, as you know, have never been partial to the English,” he wrote to a friend.55 He resented the relatively low status accorded to him by the rules of English society. The American legation in London had none of the social and political importance enjoyed by its British counterpart in Washington, and the fact that he was the third Adams to represent America counted but little among families whose record of diplomatic service went back two or three hundred years. The feeling that “he was there to be put aside” was magnified by the English reluctance to speak to strangers. “No effort is made here to extend acquaintances,” Adams complained after the family went to a ball only to spend the entire evening in a lonely cluster.56 Yet he knew this had not been the experience of Charles Sumner, or of John Motley, and he wondered whether Sumner was poisoning his English friends against him and Seward.57

But those who did try to be friendly to Adams were often put off by his stiff manner. Five cabinet members gave dinners in his honor in June; only one, the Duke of Argyll, was prepared to repeat the experiment. “I have not yet been to a single entertainment where there was any conversation that I should care to remember,” Adams complained to Charles Francis Jr.58 The Argylls were able to look past Adams’s reserve since they regarded him more as a cause than a person. Adams unbent a little once he experienced the difference between a normal London dinner and the informal, lively gatherings at Stafford House. “The Duke and Duchess,” he recorded in his diary, “have the simplest and most engaging manners of any of the nobility I have yet seen.”59

Even Americans could find Adams difficult to approach. “He said he was very glad to see me,” recorded a visiting diplomat, “in a tone which no doubt was intended for kindness. It was certainly courteous. But there was a lack of warmth and stiffness about it which … made me feel as though the temperature of the room had dropped several degrees.”60 Adams was incapable of producing charm on demand, a serious handicap for a diplomat. “My own wish,” he wrote in his diary, “is to be silent when I have nothing to say, and not to be compelled to make conversation on topics which do not interest me.”61 Lord and Lady Macclesfield went out of their way to welcome the new minister, only to be met with suspicion. “I am at a loss to know the cause of their civility to us,” he wrote, adding, “It is always irksome to