Chapter II: His Character

Motley’s letters afford the best insight into his generous, affectionate, richly endowed, and manly nature. They mirror his complete happiness in the home circle, his chivalrous devotion to the woman of his choice, his loyalty to his friends, and his passionate love of native land. They do not show--nor was it intended by the editor that they should--his fiery impatience, his quick resentment, his sensitive pride, his occasional and pardonable bitterness.

A dominant trait of Motley’s character was intensity of the patriotic sentiment. Much was required of a ‘good American’ who, living in Europe during the Civil War, frequented the circles Motley frequented--much in the way of tact, patience, and, above all, courage and hopefulness. Motley, who was far from being a placid, unreflecting optimist, had need of all his philosophy as he saw everywhere proofs of satisfaction in America’s misfortune. He had not only to meet a frank antagonism which could be understood and dealt with, but a hostility which took the galling form of suave assurances that his country was positively going to the dogs, and on the whole it was a very good thing that it was. If gentlemen did not exactly call on him for the purpose of telling him so, they managed sometimes to leave that impression. Motley’s services to his country in meeting every form of attack, direct or insidious, in the spirit of high confidence, were very great. The extent of his usefulness has not yet been fully measured.

He was free from literary vanity and would have been quite unmoved had his books come short of their actual fortune. His way of accepting the real or the superficial tributes to success shows the man. Honorary degrees, elections to learned societies, drawing-room lionizing, passing compliments, were taken exactly for what they were worth. He was as far removed from the absurdity of being elated by these things as he was from the absurdity of pretending not to care. No one could have been more alive to the significance of a degree from Oxford, yet Motley seems to have got the most of comfort on that occasion from the odd spectacle of the Doctors marching in the rain, and among them old Brougham ‘with his wonderful nose wagging lithely from side to side as he hitched up his red petticoats and stalked through the mud.’

The letters reveal so many pleasant traits as to make it difficult to comprehend the hostility which pursued the writer. Holmes throws a deal of light on that question by a single remark. Motley, he says, ‘did not illustrate the popular type of politician.’ The fact is, he illustrated everything that was opposed to that type. An uncompromising upholder of the democratic theory, a bitter foe of absolutism, a eulogist of the people, Motley was himself an aristocrat to the finger-tips. ‘He had a genuine horror of vulgarity in all its forms,’ said one of his friends, and doubtless he showed it. An ‘instinctive repugnance to bad manners and coarse-grained men’ was a trait ill-suited to popularity. Motley’s high-bred bearing alone constituted an offence. But he was incapable of so much policy as was involved in pretending to a bonhomie that was unnatural to him. He had a pliancy of nature fitted to the complex needs of a very complex social organization, but that was not enough to satisfy all his exacting countrymen. And among them were those who disliked him for being the gentleman he was.