Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 4

[128] relations with the foreign ministers resident at Washington,— Lord Lyons, Mercier, Schleiden, and Baron Gerolt the dean of the corps, the last named always his cordial friend; and he was a favorite guest at their family as well as their state dinners. Lord Lyons, though not at all earnest for our cause, was not unfriendly to it, and our country was on the whole fortunate in having him at this critical period as the representative of Great Britain in Washington. When his intercourse with public men more or less in sympathy with the rebellion was questioned, Sumner put the better construction upon it, as will be seen in his letter to Lieber.¹

Partly for amusement, and partly for practice in French, Sumner allowed his time to be taken by conversations with Gustave Paul Cluseret, a Frenchman always in search of revolutions, made a brigadier-general in our Civil War at a period when commissions were lavishly and inconsiderately given, and later a minister under the French Commune. Like all such adventurers, he was full of complaints against everybody, which he poured on the senator in frequent calls and in letters of enormous length.

Another foreigner often seen at Sumner's lodgings during the first year or two of the Civil War, whose visits were about this time discontinued, was Adam Gurowski,² a Polish count, learned, but of unbridled speech, almost a madman when in passion,— ‘the terrible count,’ as Longfellow called him. He appeared in Cambridge in 1850, where his learning and liberal sentiments commanded the friendly interest of Longfellow, Felton, and Parsons. The last named procured for him the opportunity, when his English was still very broken, to deliver in the Harvard Law School some lectures on the civil law, which few attended and none understood.³ Afterwards he lived mostly in New York and Washington. Sumner once climbed to an attic in New York to find him, when he lay ill and alone. In 1861– 1862, at Sumner's instance, Seward gave the count a place in his department as translator, rather from sympathy with his misfortunes than from any service he rendered. He haunted Sumner's study at all hours, coming often in the evening and hanging on till past midnight, breaking in on important business and interrupting all work. Sumner's patience with bores