ome of them
printed the important announcement that I was quite friendly to Ireland!
At Liverpool was Mr. Laughlin[11], Charge d'Affaires in London since Mr.
Reid's death, to meet me, and of course the consul, Mr. Washington. . . .
On our arrival in London, Laughlin explained that he had taken quarters
for me at the Coburg Hotel, whither we drove, after having fought my way
through a mob of reporters at the station. One fellow told me that since
I left New York the papers had published a declaration by me that I
meant to be very "democratic" and would under no conditions wear "knee
breeches"; and he asked me about that report. I was foolish enough to
reply that the existence of an ass in the United States ought not
necessarily to require the existence of a corresponding ass in London.
He printed that! I never knew the origin of this "knee breeches" story.

That residence at the Coburg Hotel for three months was a crowded and
uncomfortable nightmare. The indignity and inconvenience--even the
humiliation--of an ambassador beginning his career in an hotel,
especially during the Court season, and a green ambassador at that! I
hope I may not die before our Government does the conventional duty to
provide ambassadors' residences.

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