100 THE AMERICAN IN ENGLAND good, Horatio Greenough, and Robert M. Sully, the nephew of Thomas, still continued to go abroad for study, but most of them sought the Continent rather than England. The reason for this may perhaps be found in the statement of Robert Sully, who was in England from 1824 to 1828: "The older artists I found little disposed to aid their younger brethren in art, either by advice or the loan of their pictures. I must make one exception; Mr. Leslie was not only very kind in directing my studies and criticizing my work, but in lending me many of his own studies." 11 The tradition of the tribe of Ben was still maintained, however diluted it had become. 11 Dunlap, II, 398. CHAPTER IV ENVOYS, CHIEFLY OFFICIAL The Envoy Without a Country-Recognition with Reser- I Fortunately men are not very often required to meet more difficult situations than that which confronted the American envoys at the Court of St. James during the fifty years following the Revolution. Their story, as far as its political aspects are concerned, has been told many times in terms of brilliant victory. The work that these men accomplished by honesty and fearlessness in the midst of the intricate machinery of European diplomacy has seldom been equaled in the history of nations; but their task had other than political aspects. In diplomacy, particularly of the old school, social recognition is almost as vital as official business dealings. The fight of our envoys for that recognition is a thin thread of human history which spins its way through a huge mass of diplomatic correspondence, state papers, private journals, and letters. America was not regarded in England after the Revolution as a hostile foreign power. She was not thought of as a nation at all; sometimes not even thought of. Her independence had been grudgingly granted, and the common belief was that it would be of short duration. An error had been made, an oversight which time would remedy. Meanwhile the best policy was good-natured tolerance for this handful of rebels, a patronizing calm which would show them how little their victory really harmed the great nation of England. On the other hand, America realized that recognition in England meant existence in the eyes of the rest of the world. Her envoy at London must represent a nation. The average American hated and scorned the artificiality and show of diplomatic circles, but in his heart he hungered for the recognition which that very artificiality alone betokened. The result was that the new country sent her best minds abroad. The leaders of American political life, when they were not occupying the president's chair or shaping the development of their country in Senate or Supreme Court, might usually be found at one of the courts of Europe struggling to establish her national existence abroad as well as at home. The more difficult the diplomatic task, the more accomplished the diplomatist demanded; and in the judgment of the early Americans the qualities which made for successful diplomacy were strength of mind, intelligent judgment in dealing with men and situations, and a thorough saturation with American ideas and ideals. Trickery, or the ability to make the best of a situation by a compromise of ideals to practical advantage, did not recommend a foreign representative of the United States to his countrymen. Even the bad manners of Morris were preferable to the expediency of Jay, and the open-mindedness of an Adams or a Rush, in order to find favor at home, must be tempered by an insistence on the right of an American to hold or express his opinions at will. Almost without exception these early envoys were as near to being social aristocrats as it was possible for an American of the time to become. The majority of them were from the two oldest colonies, Massachusetts and Virginia, and from the oldest families of those colonies. All were well educated, many of them in schools and universities of England and the Continent, and practically all were called to politics through the service to an ideal in times of stress rather than through any ambition to make of it a profession. The war had been fought to a conclusion on the battlefield; it remained, after 1783, for the American envoys to fight it in the mind of the English nation and in the diplomatic circles of Europe. The very foundation of their work consisted in bringing other nations to a realization that America existed politically, and to accomplish this, almost the first step was to force the representatives of these other nations to acknowledge that he himself existed socially. Many of the early American envoys realized this necessity only subconsciously and against their will, while the thought was almost wholly foreign to their countrymen at home. If any one had suggested such a thought, he would have been considered a traitor to the ideals of American democracy. The envoy at court was therefore caught between two irreconcilable dilemmas. By nature he was fitted to meet a situation which his ideals denied but which his instinct told him must be faced; and the men with whom he was forced to associate and work not only gave him a grudging welcome, but were constantly tempted to ignore him except where the business of diplomacy made association obligatory. It was an impossible task, therefore, which confronted John Adams when he arrived in London in 1785 with the authority of a congress but not actually of a nation behind him. It was his mission to bring about the recognition by her enemy of a country which scarcely yet believed in her own existence and was still rather uncertain as to what form that existence was likely to take. He had, together with Jefferson, Jay, the Pinckneys, and others, tasted of the sort of diplomacy which centered around the benign Franklin, who, his active work done, had retired to Passy, near Paris. He had a clear-cut idea of what he hoped to accomplish and a rather vague though powerful presentiment of the difficulties which he would be called upon to face. It was a pleasant surprise, therefore, when the King and Queen received him formally "with some marks of attention." The Queen replied to his suitably respectful and dignified address by saying simply, "I thank you, sir, for your civilities to me and my family, and am glad to see you in this country," and then inquired whether he had provided himself with a house. From this he thought it might fairly be concluded that it was the intention of the royal family and of the ministers to treat America like other foreign powers; but he hastens to add that it would not be safe for inference to go further. Adams was conscious of the fact that his example might be valuable to his successors, and he therefore reports his audience with the King at great length. He had been warned that he should make his speech as complimentary as possible, and as usual, he was unwilling that an inherent shrinking from small hypocrisies should block the attainment of greater ends. George III was apparently moved, both by the extraordinary necessity of thus courteously receiving a rebel, and by the great propriety and dignity of this gentleman. He assured Adams, however, that only duty to his people had prompted his recent military activities, and that he was all willingness now to "let the circumstances of language, religion, and blood have their mutual and full effect." After some further conversation, with visible emotion on the part of each, the audience was courte |