The next morning I went to the Chancery (123, Victoria Street) and my heart sank.  I had never in my life been in an American Embassy.  I had had no business with them in Paris or in London on my previous visits.  In fact I had never been in any embassy except the British Embassy at Washington.  But the moment I entered that dark and dingy hall at 123, Victoria Street, between two cheap stores—­the same entrance that the dwellers in the cheap flats above used—­I knew that Uncle Sam had no fit dwelling there.  And the Ambassador’s room greatly depressed me—­dingy with twenty-nine years of dirt and darkness, and utterly undignified.  And the rooms for the secretaries and attaches were the little bedrooms, kitchen, etc., of that cheap flat; that’s all it was.  For the place we paid $1,500 a year.  I did not understand then and I do not understand yet how Lowell, Bayard, Phelps, Hay, Choate, and Reid endured that cheap hole.  Of course they stayed there only about an hour a day; but they sometimes saw important people there.  And, whether they ever saw anybody there or not, the offices of the United States Government in London ought at least to be as good as a common lawyer’s office in a country town in a rural state of our Union.  Nobody asked for anything for an embassy:  nobody got anything for an embassy.  I made up my mind in ten minutes that I’d get out of this place[12].

At the Coburg Hotel, we were very well situated; but the hotel became intolerably tiresome.  Harold Fowler and Frank and I were there until W.A.W.P.[13] and Kitty[14] came (and Frances Clark came with them).  Then we were just a little too big a hotel party.  Every morning I drove down to the old hole of a Chancery and remained about two hours.  There wasn’t very much work to do; and my main business was to become acquainted with the work and with people—­to find myself with reference to this task, with reference to official life and to London life in general.

Every afternoon people came to the hotel to see me—­some to pay their respects and to make life pleasant, some out of mere curiosity, and many for ends of their own.  I confess that on many days nightfall found me completely worn out.  But the evenings seldom brought a chance to rest.  The social season was going at its full gait; and the new ambassador (any new ambassador) would have been invited to many functions.  A very few days after my arrival, the Duchess of X invited Frank and me to dinner.  The powdered footmen were the chief novelty of the occasion for us.  But I was much confused because nobody introduced anybody to anybody else.  If a juxtaposition, as at the dinner table, made an introduction imperative, the name of the lady next you was so slurred that you couldn’t possibly understand it.

Party succeeded party.  I went to them because they gave me a chance to become acquainted with people.