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 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:
"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 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.