Henry Adams, private secretary of the US Minister to the UK, to his brother, Charles.
London, June 5, 1863
The weeks dance away as merrily as ever they did in that dimly distant period when we were boys and you used to box my ears because your kite would n’t fly and were the means of getting them boxed by disseminating at the tea-table truthless stories that I was painting myself a moustache with pear-juice — incidents of an early youth which you no doubt have forgotten, as I was the injured party, but which have remained deeply rooted in my associations with an ancient greenroom called the dining-room in a certain house on a hill. At the present day, life is a pretty dull affair, but it passes quick enough. Still, before I die I would like to have one more good time such as I knew in former areas of the earth’s history. . . .
While you, like the Emperor Charles of Spain, are cursing the Rebels and the weather, we are going on in the old track. I am tired of it and want to go home and take a commission in a negro regiment. We dawdle ahead here, going to dinners, races, balls, dropping a mild dew of remonstrances upon the British Government for allowing rebel armaments in their ports; riding in the parks; dining stray Americans and stately English; and in short groaning under the fardel of an easy life. Such a thing it is to be pampered.
We are in short at vacation, politically speaking. I expect it to last a fortnight longer, and then I rather think we shall see the winds rise again. I fancy there will be a good storm by the middle of August. If we were let alone, the two nations would do admirably, but the rebels are doing their best to create a row, and I should not wonder if they succeeded. I believe we should have been at home by this time if the Alexandra had n’t been seized, and there are some ironclads now preparing, whose departure would certainly pack us off. There’s no telling what will happen, but I have no confidence in this Government. . . .
You will see perhaps that we’ve been having an election over in France, which has not been very favorable to our friend Napoleon. European affairs get worse than ever. They will have business enough to occupy them, and the Lord grant that Puebla may hold out. If it can, or if it lasts only a few months or even weeks, and we are reasonably successful on the Mississippi, I think that Europe will turn with considerable disgust from our affairs and will not again burn its fingers with them in our time.
As there does n’t seem to be anything of interest in the periodical way to send you this week, I put into the envelope my little pocket Horace. It can’t take much room and it may amuse you. You will find some few marks of mine in it, and certain odes where the leaf is turned down and pencil-marked, were the ones which Charles James Fox admired most. They are certainly not the best known. . . .
