ministers, with complaining wives, who were required to set up large establishments and to entertain on a European scale.
- "I cannot describe to you," wrote Merry privately,[1] "the difficulty and expense which I have to encounter in fixing myself in a habitation. By dint of money I have just secured two small houses on the common which is meant to become in time the city of Washington. They are mere shells of houses, with bare walls and without fixtures of any kind, even without a pump or well, all which I must provide at my own cost. Provisions of any kind, especially vegetables, are frequently hardly to be obtained at any price. So miserable is our situation."
Had these been the worst trials that awaited the new British minister, he might have been glad to meet them; for when once surmounted, they favored him by preventing social rivalry. Unfortunately he met more serious annoyances. Until his arrival, Yrujo was the only minister of full rank in the United States; and Yrujo's intimate relations at the White House had given him family privileges. For this reason the Spanish minister made no struggle to maintain etiquette, but living mostly in Philadelphia disregarded the want of what he considered good manners at Washington, according to which he was placed on the same social footing with his own secretary of legation. Yet Yrujo, American in many respects, belonged to the school of Spanish diplomacy which had for centuries studied points of honor.
- ↑ Merry to Hammond, Dec. 7, 1803; MSS. British Archives.
