Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir

[207] and in all social matters he so adorned his position that I should have been glad to see him remain. I told him he ought to do every thing in his power to cultivate American society; to invite Americans to his house, to make himself liked by them. He took my advice after a fashion; held Saturday receptions for Americans and made a Fourth of July party for them. But it did no good, for he asked no English to meet them, and the Americans felt themselves excluded from the society to which their Minister was admitted as their representative. I also urged Motley, if he was anxious to please the President, to make much of the envoys of the Central and South American Republics. I thought if he would form a democratic coterie and put himself at the head of it in London society, it would make him more of a power, enhance the consequence of the republicans, and be an advantage to himself at home. He invited the republican ministers a little, but his heart was not with them. He preferred ambassadors and royal and aristocratic connections in every way. Still he asked me to write to the President what he was doing, and I complied.

But it was of no avail. In July he read in the newspapers rumors of his recall, and of the appointment of Mr. Frelinghuysen in his place. He was greatly shocked, and I was myself surprised, for I had thought from the delay that the President's feeling might have been mitigated. Motley himself acknowledged that he had erred the year before, but he held that his offense had been condoned. But Grant did not often condone. The crisis finally came.

Motley was living in Lord Yarborough's house, in Arlington Street, one of the most sumptuous in London; he was entertaining sovereigns, his halls were filled with Titians and Murillos and Van Dykes. I recollect a dinner just before he fell at which D'Israeli, the Duke of Devonshire, the Rothschilds, and thirty or forty others of the highest position in London were present, and the grace and urbanity with which