London, April 17, 1862
The successes, which I was so earnestly praying for in my letter to you, have come and have had all the effect I anticipated. There is just now nobody who professes to think well of the South. Neither will there be any more until the war varies. Of course, our position here becomes comparatively easy and comfortable. The quantity of official work has sensibly declined, and I can look round to interest myself in the scenes that are more immediately before me.
But just as the public work diminishes, as men cease to offer themselves as soldiers, or to propose all sorts of contracts for ships, cannon, rifles, and every imaginable death dealing invention, my correspondence has taken a wholly new direction. Good Mr. Peabody, having made more money than he can hold, takes it into his head to give to the poor of the city of London an endowment of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. To carry out his idea he conveys the sum to five gentlemen, the minister of the United States being ex officio one of them. No sooner did my name appear in the papers than all the poor women of the city begin to pelt me with applications for aid, and all the useful societies present their claims for consideration. The consequence is that I bid fair to become the most widely known American envoy that ever came here, and furthermore that all the army of beggars in this great Babylon feel as if they had a special right to importune me. Such is fame! In the meantime the great question how the most beneficially to apply this enormous sum is about to be imposed upon us, and I am to bear one-fifth of the responsibility of a decision. Whichever way it is made the cry of the disappointed majority which expect a dividend of a sovereign apiece will be loud and long. I know not that I should take this view so coolly, if I did not feel that it cannot be long before I bid my friends here farewell, and devolve all cares as well as honors upon a successor. That successor will devolve all the odium of the action taken upon his predecessor, so that both will be safe; and again I shall exclaim, such is fame!
