London, July 18, 1861
I Have engaged a house1 which will I hope be more convenient. It is not in quite so fashionable or so noisy a situation, but it is amply and in some respects richly furnished, and is in a very good neighborhood. My engagement is only for a year, and even that may be shortened if the Earl of Derby should come into the ministry. For my landlord, who is in Parliament, hopes to get back to the same place he had before, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in which contingency he will want his house in May next. In the exact condition of our affairs I have not considered the arrangement so bad as I might otherwise have done. Our relations with this country are now in a promising condition. I have no idea that anybody means war. But a blockade which shuts up the cotton crop is not unlikely to try the nerves of our friends a little, and to elicit causes of difference that may prove difficult to settle. . . .
I think I have attained a tolerable idea of the texture of London society. I have seen most of the men of any reputation, literary or political. The conclusion is not favorable, so far as the comparison with other periods is concerned. Lord Palmerston, Mr. Gladstone, Lord John Russell and Lords Derby and Ellenborough are the orators. Mr. D’Israeli perhaps might be included. Thackeray, Senior, Monckton Milnes, Grote, Lord Stanhope, and Mr. Reeve, the editor of the Edinburgh Review, constitute pretty much the literature. Perhaps I should include Milman. Gladstone and Cornewall Lewis are the scholar politicians. Intermixed with all these are men of education, if not of eminence, who contribute a share to the common stock of society. But I have not yet been to a single entertainment where there was any conversation that I should care to remember. This is not much of a record as compared with the early part of the present or the close of the last century, with the days of Queen Anne, or of Elizabeth. The general aspect of society is profound gravity. People look serious at a ball, at a dinner, on a ride on horseback or in a carriage, in Parliament or at Court, in the theatres or at the galleries. The great object in life is social position. To this end domestic establishments are sustained to rival each other. The horses must be fine, the carriage as large and cumbrous as possible, the servants as showy in livery as anybody’s, the dinners must be just so, the china of Sevres and the plate of silver, the wines of the same quality and growth, not because each person takes pleasure in the display, but because everybody else does the same thing. And so it is through all the economy of social life. The difference is only in the amount of wealth applicable to each particular instance. Yet with all this there is a studied avoidance of all appearance of ostentation. It is not the fashion to parade titles, scarcely even to use them. I do not think I have heard even the most ordinary forms of address to the nobility resorted to more than a dozen times or so. At one dinner I was surprised to hear a lady spoken to several times as “Duchess” rather than “your Grace.” But etiquette is rigid. A white cravat at dinner is indispensable, as well as patent leather shoes, and each person has his distinct place according to the rules which are laid down in the books, in which he must fulfil all his duties to every other person in every, the most exact particular.
Some people say this is true of the London season only. When these same people go to their estates in the country the case is altered. There they are easy and sociable. It may be so, but I doubt it. The Englishman is formal by nature, and he is made so by education. The only question with him is upon the greater or the less. His kindness is all according to rule. If he invites you to his house, he does not think it any part of his duty to put you at your ease there. You must work your own way to acquaintance. He will not help you unless you ask him to do so, and if you do, you subject yourself to a chance of being repelled, unless your situation is such as to make your acquaintance deemed desirable. This is the reason why strangers make so little headway in incorporating themselves into society, and why they seek other countries to dwell in. I know of many Americans in London, but I see scarcely any in the places I am invited to, and these owe their admission to some exceptional recommendation rather than civility or good will. . . .
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1 No. 5 Mansfield Street, belonging to Sir William Robert Seymour Vesey Fitzgerald