“Did I? By Jove I do believe that you are right. Did I not ask you as well to keep record of ship movements?”
“You did indeed, your Lordship. There is a Belgian barque, the Marie Celestine, now taking on cargo in the port of Baltimore. She will be departing for the port of Ostend in two days time.”
“Excellent. I will take the cars to Baltimore in the morning. Arrange it.”
He must return to London at once; he had no other choice. But there was the ameliorating factor that at least he would be out of this backwoods capital and, for a time at least, in the clement city at the heart of the mightiest Empire on earth. One whose drastic displeasure these frontiersmen must be ready to surfer if their truculence prevailed.
Lord Lyons was indeed correct, at least about the weather in Britain. It was a weak and watery sun which shone on London this same December day — but at least it shone. Charles Francis Adams, the United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James, was happy to be outdoors and away from the endless paperwork and the smoky fires. The servants in the homes he passed must have been up at dawn to sweep and wash the Mayfair pavements: the walk was a pleasant one. He turned off Brook Street and into Grosvenor Square, climbed the familiar steps of number 2 and tapped lightly on the door with the handle of his walking stick. The manservant opened it and ushered him through to the magnificent sitting room where his friend awaited him.
“Charles — how kind of you to accept my invitation.”
“Your invitation to dine with you, Amory, was as a rainbow from heaven.”
They were close friends, part of the small number of Americans resident in London. Amory Cabot was a Boston merchant who had made his fortune in the English trade. He had been a young man when he had first come to this city to represent the family business. The temporary position had become permanent when he had married here, his wife a member of a prominent Birmingham manufacturing family. Now, alas, his wife was dead, the children far from the family seat. But London was his home and Boston a distant part of the world. Now in his eighties, he watched his business with a benign eye and let others do the hard work. While devoting most of his attention to whist and other civilized diversions. The servants brought pipes and mulled ale as the friends talked idly. Only when the door had closed did Cabot’s features darken with worry.
“Is there any new word of the crisis?”
“None. I do know that the newspapers and public opinion at home is still very firm on the matter. The traitors are in our hands and there they must stay. Setting them free would be unthinkable. There has been no response from Washington as yet to the Trent memorandum. My hands are tied — there is nothing that I can do on my own — and I have no instructions. Yet still this crisis must be averted.”
Cabot sighed. “I could not agree more. But can it be done? Our countrymen are incensed but, as you well know, matters are no better here in London. Friends I have known for years shut their doors to me, harden their faces should we meet. I’ll tell you something — it is like the War of 1812 all over again. I was here then as well, kept my head down and rode it out. But even then most of my friends and associates did not turn on me as they are doing now. They felt that war had been forced upon them and they fought it with great reluctance. Why a few, the more liberal of them, even sympathized with our cause and thought it to be a singularly stupid war. Not brought about by circumstance but by arrogance and stupidity. No shortage of that at any time. But it is far different now. Now the anger and hatred are fierce. And the newspapers! Did you read what the Times wrote?”
“Indeed I did, the so-called ‘City Intelligence.’ Said outright that Lincoln and Seward were attempting to hide the spectacle of their internal condition by embarking on a foreign war. Utter hogwash!”
“As indeed it is. But the Daily News is even worse. They write that all Englishmen believe that Seward, in some manner they did not reveal, had arranged the entire Trent Affair himself.”
Adams’s pipe had gone out. He rose and used a spill to relight it from the fire, exhaled pungent Virginia smoke. “What bothers me more than the newspapers are the politicians. The traditional Whig elite, like our mutual acquaintance the Earl of Clarendon, actually hate democracy. They feel it threatens their class system and their power. To them the Unites States is the bastion of the devil, a perversion that is best wiped out before it can contaminate the underclasses here. They would cheerfully welcome a war against our country.”
“The Queen as well,” Cabot said glumly, taking a long swig from his tankard as though to wash some bad taste from his mouth. “She approves of all this, actually predicts the utter destruction of the Yankees. She blames us for Prince Albert’s death, you know, irrational as the thought is.”
“It goes beyond words. I walked along the Thames on Christmas Day. Even on that feast day they were working flat out at the Tower of London — packing firearms. I counted eight barges that were filled that single morning.”
“Can nothing more be done? Must we sit by helplessly while the United States and Great Britain march to their doom? Is foreign intervention not possible?”
“Would that it were,” Adams sighed. “The Emperor Louis Napoleon has quite charmed Queen Victoria. And he agrees with her that America must bend the knee. The French are at least behind him in this. They see Britain as the traditional enemy and welcome any trouble here. Then of course there is Prussia and the other German states. All related some way or other to the Queen. They will do nothing. Russia holds no love for the British after the Crimean War — but the Czar will not intervene on America’s behalf. He is too stupid in any case. No, I am afraid that we are alone in the world and can expect no outside help. Something terrible is happening and no one seems to have discovered a way to avoid it.”
Black clouds had come up to obscure the sun and the room grew dark. Obscured their spirits as well and they could only sit in silence. Where would it end, where would it end?
A brisk walk from this house on Grosvenor Square to Park Lane would take one to the most famous address in London. Appsley House. Number 1, London. The carriage from Whitehall stopped there and the footman opened the door. Grunting with the effort, wincing with the pain from his gouty foot, Lord Palmerston clambered down and hobbled into the house. A servant took his coat and the butler opened the door and admitted him to the presence.
Lord Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, perhaps the most famous man in England; surely the most famous general alive.
“Come in, Henry, come in,” the voice said from the wingchair before the fire. A thin voice, high-pitched with age, yet nevertheless still containing echoes of the firmness of command.
“Thank you, Arthur. It has been quite a time.”
Lord Palmerston eased himself into the chair with a sigh. “You are looking good,” he said.
Wellington laughed reedily. “When one is ninety-two it does not matter how one looks, rather that it is of paramount importance that one is there to be looked at at all.”
Thin, yes, the skin drawn back over the bones of his skull to further accent the mighty Wellington nose. Conky, his troops had called him affectionately. All dead now, all in their graves, the hundreds of thousands of them. When one reaches the ninth decade one finds that there are very few peers left.
There was a slight click as a silent servant placed a glass on the table at Palmerston’s elbow.
“The last bottle of the last case of the ’28 port,” Wellington said. “Been saving it for you. Knew you would be around here one of these days.”
Palmerston sipped and sighed. “By gad that is music, heavenly music not drink. To your continued good health.”
“May your toast be a true one. 1828, you remember that year?”