ONE dismal night just before the turn of the century, so the story goes, a London bobby approached an American leaning wearily against a lamppost, summarily ordered him along home. "Home! Home!'' came the answer in a twanging New England accent. "I have no home. I am the American ambassador."
Like any U.S. ambassador in those days, Joseph Hodges Choate had been sent to the Court of St. James's with little more than his credentials and traveling expenses, was left to himself to find some house that would serve as both home and embassy. It was not until 1911 that the U.S....