CAMICIA ROSSA

Shakespeare’s Day has been transformed into Garibaldi’s day. This is one of the far-fetched coincidences of history, which alone is successful in achieving such improbabilities.

The people who gathered together on Primrose Hill to plant a tree in memory of the Shakespeare Tricentenary remained there to talk of Garibaldi’s sudden departure. The police dispersed the crowd. Fifty thousand men (according to the police report) obeyed the orders of thirty policemen and, from profound respect for the law, half-destroyed the grand right of open-air meeting, or, at any rate, helped to support the illegal intervention of the authorities.

Truly, something like a Shakespearian fantasy had passed before our eyes against the grey background of England with a truly Shakespearian juxtaposition of the grand and the revolting, of the heart-rending and the jarring: the holy simplicity of the man, the naïve simplicity of the masses, and the secret conclaves behind the scenes, the intrigues and the lies. Familiar shades seemed to flit before our eyes in other forms—from Hamlet to King Lear, from Goneril and Cordelia to honest Iago. The Iagos are all in miniature, but what a number there are of them, and how honest they are!

Prologue: Alarums and excursions. The idol of the masses, the one grand popular figure that has appeared since 1848, enters in all the brilliance of its glory. Everything bows down before it, everything celebrates its triumph; this is Carlyle’s hero-worship in real life. Cannon-shots, bells ringing, streamers on the boats, and no music only because England’s hero has arrived on a Sunday, and Sunday here is kept as a day of mortification.... London stands for seven hours on its feet awaiting its guest; the triumphant ovations increase with every day; the appearance in the street of the man in the red shirt calls forth an outburst of enthusiasm, crowds escort him at one o’clock in the night from the opera. Workmen and clerks, lords and sempstresses, bankers and High-church clergymen; the feudal wreck, Lord Derby, and the relic of the February revolution, the republican of 1848; Queen Victoria’s eldest son and the barefoot swiper born without father or mother, vie with one another in trying to capture a hand-shake, a glance, a word. Scotland, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Glasgow, Manchester are tremulous with expectation—while he vanishes into the impenetrable fog, into the blue of the ocean.

Like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, the guest stepped upon some ministerial trap-door and vanished. Where was he? He was in such a place a moment since, but now he is not.... All that is left is a point, a sail just floating out of sight.

The English people were bewildered—‘the great foolish people,’ as the poet said of them. John Bull is good-natured, powerful, stubborn, but heavy, slow and unresourceful, and one is sorry for him while one laughs! A bull with the gestures of a lion, he was just shaking his mane and preening himself to greet a guest as he had never greeted any monarch—still on duty or dismissed from service—and his guest was snatched from him. The lion-bull stamps with his cleft hoof, tears at the ground in his rage ... but his guards know all the subtle mechanism of the locks and screws of freedom in which he is confined, babble some nonsense to him and keep the key in their pocket, while the point vanishes on the ocean.

Poor lion-bull, go back to your hard labour, follow the plough, wield the hammer! Have not three ministers and one non-minister, one duke, one professor of medicine, and one pious lord testified to the public in the House of Peers and in the Lower House, in the journals and in the drawing-rooms, that the strong man whom you saw yesterday is sick, and so sick that he must be sent the length of the Atlantic and across the Mediterranean...? ‘Whom do you prefer to believe, my ass or myself?’ said the offended miller in the old fable to his sceptical friend who doubted whether the ass was out when he heard him braying....

And are they not the friends of the people—more than its friends, its guardians, its parents?

... The newspapers are full of detailed descriptions of fêtes and banquets, speeches and swords, addresses and concerts, Chiswick and Guildhall. Ballets and spectacles, pantomimes and harlequinades, depicting this ‘Midspring Night’s Dream,’ have been described enough. I do not intend to enter into competition with them, but simply want to give a few of the snapshots I have taken with my little camera from the modest corner from which I looked on. In them, as is always the case in photographs, much that is accidental is seized and retained, awkward draperies, awkward poses, over-prominent details, with the lines of events left untouched and lines of faces unsoftened....

This is my gift to you, my absent children (it is partly for you that it is written), and once more I deeply, deeply regret that you were not here with us on April the 17th.

1 At Brooke House

Garibaldi arrived at Southampton on the evening of the 3rd of April. I wanted to see him before he was caught up, whirled off, and exhausted.

I wanted to do so for many reasons: in the first place, simply because I loved him and had not seen him for about ten years. I had followed his great career step by step since 1848; by 1854 he had become in my eyes a character taken straight out of Cornelius Nepos or Plutarch ... since then he had outstripped half those characters, had become the Uncrowned King of the Peoples, their enthusiastic hope, their living legend, their holy man—and this from the Ukraine and Serbia to Andalusia and Scotland, from South America to the northern of the United States. Since then with a handful of men he had conquered an army, set free a whole country, and been dismissed from it as a cabman is dismissed when he has driven you to the station. Since then he had been deceived and defeated; and just as he had gained nothing for himself by victory, he had lost nothing by defeat, but his power among the people had been doubled. The wound dealt him by his own countrymen had cemented him with blood to the common people. To the greatness of the hero was added the crown of a martyr. I longed to see whether he was still the same simple-hearted sailor who had brought The Commonwealth from Boston to the India Docks, dreaming of a floating brotherhood of exiles that should sail over the ocean, and regaling me with Nice Bellet brought from America.

In the second place, I wanted to tell him a little about the intrigues and absurdities here, about the good people who with one hand were setting up a pedestal for him and with the other putting Mazzini in the pillory. I wanted to tell him about the harrying of Stansfeld, and about the Liberals of mean understanding who joined in the baying of the reactionary packs without seeing that the latter had at least an object—to trip up the piebald and characterless Ministry over Stansfeld, and to replace them, together with their gout, their musty relics and their faded heraldic rags.

In Southampton I did not find Garibaldi. He had just gone off to the Isle of Wight. In the streets there were still signs left of his triumphal reception—flags, groups of people, crowds of foreigners....

Without stopping at Southampton, I set off for Cowes. On the steamer and in the hotels every one was talking of Garibaldi, of his reception. Anecdotes were told: how he had come out on deck leaning on the arm of the Duke of Sutherland; how, when going from the steamer into Cowes, Garibaldi had been on the point of bowing to the sailors, but had suddenly stopped, stepped up to them and shaken each by the hand instead of giving tips.

I reached Cowes at nine o’clock in the evening; I learnt that Brooke House was a long way off, ordered a carriage for the next day, and walked along the sea-front. It was the first warm evening of 1864. The sea was perfectly calm, dancing in languid ripples; here and there a phosphorescent light gleamed and vanished; I drank in with delight the moist salt smell of the sea, which I love like the fragrance of hay. In the distance was the sound of dance-music from some club or casino, everything was bright and festive.

But next morning when I opened my window at six o’clock England was herself again; instead of sea and sky, earth and distance, there was one thick mass in tints of grey from which a fine steady rain was falling with that British persistence which tells one plainly: ‘If you imagine that I am going to stop, you are wrong. I am not.’ At seven o’clock I drove off to Brooke House in this shower-bath. Wishing to avoid long explanations with English servants, who are slow-witted and lacking in courtesy, I sent in a note to Garibaldi’s secretary, Guerzoni. Guerzoni led me into his room and went to tell Garibaldi. Then I heard the tapping of a stick, and a voice saying, ‘Where is he, where is he?’ I went out into the corridor. Garibaldi stood before me, looking me straight in the face with his candid, gentle expression; then he held out both hands to me, and saying, ‘Very, very glad, you are full of strength and health; you will do more work yet,’ embraced me. ‘Where would you like to be? This is Guerzoni’s room; would you rather come to mine or rather stay here?’ he asked, and sat down.

It was now my turn to look at him.

He was dressed as you know him from innumerable photographs, pictures and statuettes; he had a red woollen shirt, and over it a cloak buttoned in a peculiar way over the chest; he had a kerchief, not on his neck but on his shoulders, as sailors wear it, tied in a knot over the chest. All this suited him marvellously, especially his cloak.

He had changed much less in those ten years than I had expected. None of the portraits or photographs of him are good enough, all of them make him look older, darker, and, above all, fail to give the expression of his face. And it is just in the expression that the whole secret is revealed, not only of his face but of himself, of his power—of that magnetic and generous force by means of which he invariably dominated the circle around him whatever it might be, great or small: a handful of fishermen at Nice, a crew of sailors on the ocean, a drappello of guerillas at Monte Video, an army of volunteers in Italy, the masses of the people of all lands, whole quarters of the terrestrial globe. Every feature of his face, which is very irregular and more suggestive of the Slavonic type than the Italian, is full of life and of boundless good-nature, loving-kindness, and what is called bienveillance (I use the French word because our benevolence has been so cheapened in our Government offices and antechambers that its meaning is distorted and vulgarised). There is the same quality in his glance, the same quality in his voice, and it is all so simple, so straight from the heart, that unless a man has some ulterior motive, is in the pay of some Government, or deliberately determined against it, he is bound to love him.

But neither his character nor the expression of his face is made up of goodness alone; side by side with his kindness and attractiveness one feels the presence of unflinching moral firmness and a sort of return upon himself, reflective and mournful. I had not observed this melancholy, gloomy characteristic in him before.

At moments the conversation broke off: thoughts flitted over his face like clouds over the sea. Was it horror at the destinies that rested on his shoulders, at his consecration by the people—which he could not now refuse? Was it doubt aroused by all the downfalls, all the treacheries, all the weaknesses of men that he had seen? Was it the temptation of greatness? That last I do not think; his personality had long ago passed into his work....

I am certain that similar traces of anguish at their vocation were to be seen in the face of the Maid of Orleans, in the face of John of Leyden. They belonged to the people, and the elemental feelings or rather presentiments extinct in us are stronger in the common people. There was fatalism in their faith, and fatalism in itself is infinitely sad. ‘Thy will be done,’ says the Sistine Madonna in every feature of her face. ‘Thy will be done,’ says her Son, the Man of the people and the Saviour, as He sorrowfully prays on the Mount of Olives.

Garibaldi recalled various details of his visit to London in 1854, how he had spent the night with me when he had been too late to return to the India Docks; I reminded him how he had gone for a walk with my son and had his photograph taken for me at Caldesi’s, how we had dined at the American Consul’s with Buchanan,⁠[16] which made so much talk at the time though it was really of no importance.

‘I must confess that I have not hastened to see you without an object,’ I said at last; ‘I was afraid that the atmosphere with which you are surrounded would be too English, that is, too foggy for you to see clearly the strings behind the scenes working the drama which is being successfully played out now in Parliament ... the further you go the thicker the fog will be. Do you want to hear me?’

‘Tell me, tell me—we are old friends.’

I told him of the debates, of the wailing in the newspapers, of the grotesqueness of the manœuvres against Mazzini, the ordeal to which Stansfeld⁠[17] was being subjected. ‘Observe,’ I added, ‘that in Stansfeld the Tories and their supporters are persecuting not only the revolution which they mix up with Mazzini, not only the Ministry of Palmerston, but, in addition to all that, a man who by his personal qualities, his industry and his intelligence, has obtained at a comparatively early age the post of a Lord of the Admiralty, a man of no family or connections in the aristocracy. They will not dare to attack you directly at this moment, but just see how unceremoniously they are treating you. I bought the latest Standard yesterday at Cowes; I have read it driving here; just look at this: “We are convinced that Garibaldi will understand the obligations laid upon him by the hospitality of England, that he will have nothing to do with his former comrade, but will have too much tact to visit at 35 Thurloe Square.” Then follows the sentence passed upon you par anticipation if you do not act in accordance with this hint.’

‘I have heard something of this intrigue,’ said Garibaldi. ‘Of course one of my first visits will be to Stansfeld.’

‘You know better than I what to do. I only wanted to show you clearly the ugly outlines of this intrigue.’

Garibaldi stood up. I thought that he meant to put an end to the interview, and began taking leave.

‘No, no, let us go to my room now,’ he said, and he went off. He limps badly, but his constitution has emerged triumphantly from every sort of injury and operation, moral or surgical.

His dress, I say once more, is wonderfully becoming to him and wonderfully elegant; there is nothing suggestive of the professional soldier, nothing bourgeois about it, it is very simple and very convenient. The ease, the absence of all affectation with which he wears it, checks the tattle and sly mockery of the drawing-rooms; there can hardly be another European who could wear the red shirt successfully in the halls and palaces of England.

Moreover, his dress is of the greatest significance; in the red shirt the common people recognise one of themselves, and their man. The aristocracy imagine that, having clutched his horse by the bridle, they may lead him where they like, and above all, away from the people; but the people look at the red shirt and are delighted that dukes, marquises and lords have turned stable-boys and grooms to the revolutionary leader, have taken on the duties of major-domos, pages and couriers to the great plebeian in his plebeian dress.

Conservative newspapers saw what was wrong, and, to soften the immorality and unseemliness of Garibaldi’s dress, invented the tale that he was wearing the uniform of a Monte Video volunteer. But since those days the rank of general had been bestowed on Garibaldi by the king upon whom he had bestowed two kingdoms; why then should he wear the uniform of a Monte Video volunteer?

And indeed, in what way is his dress a uniform?

With the uniform is associated some deadly weapon, some symbol of authority or of bloody remembrance. Garibaldi goes about unarmed, he fears no one and seeks to be feared by no one; there is as little of the military man about Garibaldi as there is of the aristocrat or the petty bourgeois.

‘I am not a soldier,’ he said at the Crystal Palace to the Italians who presented him with a sword, ‘and I do not like the soldier’s trade. I saw my father’s house filled with robbers and snatched up a weapon to drive them out.’ ‘I am a workman, I have come from working people, and I am proud of it,’ he said in another place.

With that it must be noted that Garibaldi has not one grain of plebeian roughness or affectation of democracy. His manner is soft as a woman’s. A man and an Italian, he stands at the pinnacle of the civilised world, not only as a son of the people faithful to his origin but as an Italian faithful to the aesthetic instinct of his race.

His cloak, buttoned over the chest, is not so much a military cape as the robe of the martial high priest, the prophet. When he lifts his hand one expects words of greeting and blessing, not words of military command.

Garibaldi began talking of the Polish position. He wondered at the daring of the Poles. ‘With no organisation, no arms, no men, no open frontier, no support of any kind—to stand up against a strong military autocracy and to hold their ground for over a year—there has never been anything like it in history; it would be well if other nations would imitate them. Such heroism must not, cannot perish in vain. I suppose that Galicia is on the point of rising?’

I said nothing.

‘And Hungary too—you do not believe it?’

‘No, it is not that. I simply do not know.’

‘Well, may we expect any movement in Russia?’

‘None whatever. Nothing has changed since I wrote to you in November. The Government, conscious of public support for all their crimes in Poland, goes its headlong way, caring not a straw for Europe, while the educated class sinks lower and lower. The people are dumb. The Polish question is not their question; we have one common enemy, but the question is differently presented. Besides, we have plenty of time before us while they have none.’

So the conversation continued for a few minutes longer, when typically English countenances began to appear at the door, there was a rustle of ladies’ dresses. I stood up.

‘Why are you in such a hurry?’ said Garibaldi.

‘I won’t steal you longer from England.’

‘We shall meet in London, shan’t we?’

‘I will certainly come to see you. Is it true that you are staying at the Duke of Sutherland’s?’

‘Yes,’ said Garibaldi, and added as though apologising, ‘I could not get out of it.’

‘Then I shall come to see you with my head powdered so that the flunkeys at Stafford House may think you have a powdered servant.’

At that moment the poet-laureate, Tennyson, appeared with his wife. This was too many laurels for me, and through the same unceasing downpour I returned to Cowes.

The scene was changed, but the same play continued. The steamer from Cowes to Southampton had just left, but another set off three hours later, so I went to a restaurant hard by, ordered dinner and took up The Times. At the first sentence I was dumbfoundered. The seventy-year-old Abraham who had two months before been condemned for intrigues with a new Hagar had finally sacrificed his Isaac from Halifax. Stansfeld’s resignation had been accepted. And this at the very minute when Garibaldi was beginning his triumphal progress through England! I had no idea of this when speaking with Garibaldi.

That Stansfeld should for a second time have sent in his resignation, seeing that the attacks upon him persisted, was perfectly natural. He ought from the very first to have taken his own stand and to have flung up his post in the Admiralty. Stansfeld had done what he ought, but what were Palmerston and his colleagues doing? And what was Palmerston babbling in his speech afterwards?... With what cringing flattery he spoke of their magnanimous ally, of their fervent desire for his long life and continual blessings upon him. As though any one took au sérieux this police farce of Greco Trabucco and Company.

This was Magenta.⁠[18]⁠

I asked for paper and wrote a letter to Guerzoni. I wrote it in all the first flush of my annoyance and begged him to read The Times to Garibaldi; I wrote of the ugliness of this apotheosis of Garibaldi side by side with the insults paid to Mazzini. ‘I am fifty-two,’ I wrote, ‘but I must own that tears come into my eyes at the thought of this injustice.’

A few days before my visit to Garibaldi I had been to see Mazzini. The man has endured much and can endure much; he is an old fighter who cannot be cast down nor worn out; but this time I found him bitterly mortified just because he had been chosen as the means by which his friend was to be brought low. As I was writing the letter to Guerzoni the noble emaciated figure of the old man with his flashing eyes rose before me.

When I had finished and the waiter had brought my dinner, I noticed that I was not alone—a short, fair-haired young man with moustaches, wearing the dark blue reefer-coat of a sailor, was sitting by the fire à l’Américain, his legs skilfully raised to the level of his ears. His rapid manner of speech and provincial accent, which made his words incomprehensible to me, convinced me that this was some seaman carousing on shore. I left off paying attention to him—he was not speaking to me but to the waiter. Our acquaintance was limited to my passing him the salt and his shaking his head in response.

Soon he was joined by a dark elderly gentleman all in black and buttoned to the chin, with that peculiar air of insanity people acquire from a close acquaintance with heaven and an affected religious exaltation which has become natural from long perseverance.

It seemed that he was well acquainted with the sailor and had come to see him. After three or four words he left off speaking and began preaching. ‘I have seen,’ he said, ‘Maccabeus ... Gideon ... the weapon in the hands of Providence, His sword, His sling ... and the more I gazed upon him the more deeply was I moved and with tears I repeated “The sword of the Lord! the sword of the Lord!” He hath chosen the weak David to vanquish Goliath. Wherefore the English people, the chosen people, go forth to greet him as to the bride of Lebanon ... the heart of the people is in the hands of the Lord, it tells them that this is the sword of the Lord, the weapon of Providence—Gideon.’

The doors were flung wide open and there walked in not the bride of Lebanon but a dozen important-looking Britons, among them Lord Shaftesbury and Lord Lindsay. They all sat down to the table and asked for something to eat, announcing that they were going on at once to Brooke House. It was the official deputation from London with an invitation to Garibaldi. The preacher subsided, but the sailor rose in my esteem; he looked with such unmistakable aversion at the deputation that it struck me, remembering his friend’s sermon, that he might be taking these people, if not for the swords and bucklers of Satan, at least for his pen-knives and lancets.

I asked him how I ought to address a letter to Brooke House, whether it was sufficient to put the name of the house or whether I ought to add that of the nearest town. He told me there was no need to add anything.

One of the deputation, a stout, grey-headed old gentleman, asked me to whom I was sending a letter in Brooke House.

‘To Guerzoni.’

‘He is Garibaldi’s secretary, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘You need not trouble then. We are going there directly. I shall be pleased to take the letter.’

I took out my card and handed it him with the letter. Could anything like that have happened on the Continent? Imagine in France any one asking you in a hotel to whom you were writing, and, on learning that it was to Garibaldi’s secretary, undertaking to give him the letter!

The letter was delivered, and next morning I had an answer in London.

The editor of the foreign news column of the Morning Star recognised me; inquiries followed as to how I had found Garibaldi, how he was. After talking to him for a few minutes I went off into the smoking-room. There my fair-haired sailor and his swarthy theological friend were sitting over pale ale and pipes.

‘Well,’ he said to me, ‘have you had a good stare at those people?... That is jolly fine, Lord Shaftesbury and Lord Lindsay going as deputies to invite Garibaldi. What a farce! As though they knew what Garibaldi is!’

‘The weapon of Providence, a sword in the hands of the Lord, His buckler ... to that end He hath raised him up and hath kept him in his holy simplicity.’

‘That is all very fine, but what have these gentry come for? I’d like to ask every one of them how much money they have in the Alabama⁠[19] ... let Garibaldi come to Newcastle-on-Tyne or Glasgow, there he will see the people closer, there he won’t be hindered by lords and dukes.’

He was not a seaman, but a shipwright. He had lived for some years in America, had a thorough knowledge of the relations of South and North, and spoke of the hopelessness of the war there, to which the consolatory theologian observed: ‘If the Lord hath divided that people and set brother against brother, He hath His own designs, and if we comprehend them not, we must submit to His Providence even when it chastises us.’

It was under these circumstances and in this form that I heard for the last time a commentary on the celebrated Hegelian motto: ‘All that is real is rational.’ Shaking hands in a friendly way with the sailor and his chaplain, I departed for Southampton.

On the steamer I met the Radical journalist Holyoake; he had seen Garibaldi a little later than I had. Garibaldi had sent through him an invitation to Mazzini, and had already telegraphed to the latter to come to Southampton, where Holyoake intended to wait for him with Menotti Garibaldi and his brother. Holyoake very much wanted to get two letters to London by that evening (they could not reach by post before the morning). I offered my services.

I arrived in London at eleven o’clock in the evening, ordered a room at the York Hotel near Waterloo Station, and drove off with the letters, surprised to find that the rain had not yet managed to stop. At one o’clock or a little later I reached the hotel again. It was locked up. I knocked and knocked.... A drunken individual who was finishing his festive evening near the railing of a tavern said: ‘Don’t knock there, there is a night-bell round the corner.’ I went to look for the night-bell, found it and set to ringing. A sleepy-looking head was poked out of some basement and the porter asked me rudely without opening the door: ‘What do you want?’

‘A room.’

‘There is not one.’

‘I engaged one myself at eleven o’clock.’

‘I tell you there is not one,’ and he slammed the door of the netherworld without even waiting for me to swear at him, which I did indeed to no purpose, since he could not hear me.

It was an unpleasant position; to find a room in London at two o’clock at night, especially in that quarter of the town, is not easy. I remembered a little French restaurant and made my way there.

‘Have you a room?’ I asked the man who kept it.

‘Yes, but not a very nice one.’

‘Show it me.’

He had told the truth indeed. The room was more than not very nice, it was very nasty. But I had no choice. I opened the window and went down to the bar for a minute. There were still Frenchmen drinking, shouting, playing cards and dominoes there. A German of colossal height whom I had seen before came up to me and asked whether I had time for a word with him in private, as he had something of special importance to tell me.

‘Of course I have; let us go into the next room, there is no one there.’

The German sat down opposite me and began telling me tragically how his patron, a Frenchman, had cheated him, how he had been exploiting him for three years past, making him do the work of three and beguiling him with the hope that he would take him into partnership, and now, all of a sudden, without saying a disagreeable word, he had gone off to Paris and there taken a partner. On the strength of this, the German had told him that he should leave the place, but the patron had not returned....

‘But why did you trust him without any agreement?’

‘Weil ich ein dummer Deutscher bin.’

‘Well, that is another matter.’

‘I want to close the establishment and go away.’

‘You had better look out, he will bring an action against you; do you know the law here?’

The German shook his head.

‘I should like to pay him out.... I suppose you have been to see Garibaldi?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, how is he? Ein famoser Kerl—but you know, if he had not promised it me for the last three years I should have been doing something else. I could not expect it, I could not ... and how is his wound?’

‘I think it is all right.’

‘The beast, he kept it all quiet and the last day says “I have a partner already.” I am afraid I am boring you?’

‘Not at all, only I am a little tired and sleepy. I got up at six and now it is a little past two.’

‘But what am I to do? I was awfully pleased when you came in, ich habe so bei mir gedacht, der wird Rat schaffen. So I am not to close the establishment?’

‘No. But as he is so in love with Paris, you write to him to-morrow: “I have shut up the place. When will you be pleased to come and take charge of it?” You will see the effect; he will leave his wife and his gambling on the Bourse, come here post-haste and see that it is not shut up.’

‘Saperlot! das ist eine Idee—ausgezeichnet, I will go and write the letter.’

‘And I will go to bed. Gute Nacht!’

‘Schlafen Sie wohl.’

I asked for a candle. The restaurant-keeper brought it with his own hand and announced that he wanted a word with me. It was as though I had turned father confessor.

‘What is it? It is a little late, but I am ready to hear.’

‘Only a word or two. I wanted to ask you: What do you think if I were to put up a bust of Garibaldi to-morrow—you know, with flowers and a laurel wreath; wouldn’t it be very nice? I have been wondering about an inscription in letters of three colours: Garibaldi—Libérateur?’

‘To be sure you might! Only the French embassy will forbid the French to come to your restaurant, and they are here from morning till night.’

‘That is so ... but you know one would rake in a lot of money exhibiting the bust, and they will forget about it afterwards....’

‘Mind,’ I observed, resolutely getting up to go, ‘you don’t tell any one. Some one will steal the original idea from you.’

‘Not a word, not a word to any one. What we have said will remain, I hope, I beg, between us.’

‘Have no doubt about that,’ and I went off to his dirty bedroom.

Such was the sequel to my first interview with Garibaldi in 1864.

2 At Stafford House

On the day of Garibaldi’s arrival in London I did not see him, but I saw the sea of people, the streams of people, the streets flooded with them for several miles, the crowded squares; everywhere where there was a coping, a balcony, a window, people were perched, and they were all waiting, in some places waiting for six hours. Garibaldi arrived at the station of Nine Elms at half-past two, and only at half-past eight reached Stafford House, where the Duke of Sutherland and his wife were awaiting him on the steps.

The English crowd is coarse; no large gatherings take place without fights, without drunken men, without all sorts of revolting scenes, and without thieving organised on a vast scale. On this occasion the order was wonderful; the people understood that this was their holiday, that they were doing honour to one of themselves, that they were more than spectators. And only look in the police columns of the papers at the number of thefts on the day of the arrival of the Prince of Wales’ bride and the number⁠[20] on the day of Garibaldi’s triumphal march, though the police were far less numerous. What had become of the pickpockets?

At Westminster Bridge near the Houses of Parliament the people were so closely packed that the carriage, moving at a walking pace, stopped, and the procession, three-quarters of a mile long, moved on with its standards, its band and so on. With shouts of ‘Hurrah!’ the people clung to the carriage, all who could push forward shook hands, kissed the edge of Garibaldi’s cloak, shouted ‘Welcome!’ Adoring the great plebeian with delirious enthusiasm, the people wanted to unharness horses and to draw the carriage themselves, but they were dissuaded. No one noticed the dukes and lords who surrounded him; they had dropped into the modest position of grooms and attendants. This ovation lasted about an hour, he was passed from one living wave to the next while the carriage moved on a step or two and stood still again.

The resentment and exasperation of the continental Conservatives was perfectly natural. Garibaldi’s reception was not only an insult to the system of grades and ranks, to the livery of flunkeys, but was extremely dangerous as a precedent. And the fury of the personages who had been in the service of three emperors and one ‘imperial’ reaction surpassed all bounds, the bounds of courtesy to begin with. They felt faint and dizzy; the England of palaces, the England of coffers, forgetful of all decorum, was going hand in hand with the England of the workshops to greet an ‘aventurier,’ a rebel, who would have been hanged if he had not succeeded in freeing Sicily. ‘Why,’ la France asked naïvely, ‘why has England never so welcomed Marshal Pélissier, whose fame is so untarnished?’ In spite of the fact, she forgot to add, that he had burnt hundreds of Arabs with their wives and children, just as we burn out black-beetles.

It is a pity that Garibaldi accepted the hospitality of the Duke of Sutherland. The small consequence and the political insignificance of the fireman duke made Stafford House to a certain extent Garibaldi’s hotel; still, the surroundings were inappropriate and the intrigue hatched before his arrival in London found a propitious background in the palace. Its object was to keep Garibaldi away from the people, that is, away from the working classes, and to cut him off from those of his friends and acquaintances who had remained true to the old flag, most of all, of course, from Mazzini. A good half of these barriers were blown down by the nobility and simplicity of Garibaldi’s character, but the other half—to wit, the impossibility of speaking to him except in the presence of witnesses—remained. If Garibaldi had not got up at five and received visitors at six, it would have completely succeeded; but luckily the zeal of the intriguers could not get them up before half-past eight in the morning; only on the day of his departure ladies began the invasion of his bedroom an hour earlier. On one occasion Mordini, who had not succeeded in getting in a word with Garibaldi in the course of an hour, said to me, laughing: ‘No man in the world could be easier to see than Garibaldi, but no one could be more difficult to speak to.’

The duke’s hospitality was entirely lacking in that liberality which at one time reconciled men to aristocratic luxury. He only assigned one room to Garibaldi and one to the young man who bandaged his foot, but would have hired rooms for the others, namely Garibaldi’s sons, Guerzoni, and Basilio. They, of course, refused to accept this, and lodged at their own expense in the Bath Hotel. To appreciate the oddity of this, one must understand what sort of place Stafford House is. One could easily without inconveniencing the owners have lodged in it all the peasant families turned homeless into the world by the duke’s father—and there are very many of them.

The English are poor actors, and that does them the greatest credit. The first time I went to see Garibaldi in Stafford House I saw at once the intrigue going on around him. Figaros and factotums of all sorts, servants and observers, were in and out continually. An Italian was made police-master, master of the ceremonies, major-domo, stage-manager, butler, souffleur. And, indeed, who would not take such a job for the honour of sitting with dukes and lords, and with them taking steps to prevent and circumvent all intercourse between the people and Garibaldi, and assisting duchesses in weaving the spider’s web to catch the Italian leader, though the lame general broke it every day without seeing it?

Garibaldi, for instance, had gone to see Mazzini. What was to be done? How was it to be concealed? At once stage-managers and factotums were on the scene, a means was found. Next morning all London read: ‘Yesterday at such an hour Garibaldi visited John France in Onslow Terrace.’ You will think that this was an invented name; no, it was the name of the landlord of Mazzini’s lodging.

Garibaldi had no thought of breaking with Mazzini, but he might easily have left this vortex without meeting him before witnesses and without proclaiming it publicly. Mazzini refused to visit Garibaldi while he was at Stafford House. They might have met on a few occasions, but no one took the initiative. After considering this, I wrote a note to Mazzini and asked him whether Garibaldi would accept an invitation to go as far as Teddington; that if he would not, I would not invite him and that would be an end of the matter; if he would come, I should be very glad to invite them both. Mazzini wrote to me next day that Garibaldi would be delighted, and that, if nothing prevented him, they would come on Sunday at one o’clock. Mazzini added in conclusion that Garibaldi would be very glad to see Ledru-Rollin at my house.

On Saturday morning I went to Garibaldi, and not finding him at home, remained with Saffi, Guerzoni and the others to wait for him. When he returned, the crowd of visitors waiting for him in the anteroom and corridor fell upon him; one dauntless Briton snatched the stick out of his hand and thrust another in it, repeating in a sort of frenzy, ‘General, it is a better one, take it, allow me, it is a better one.’ ‘But what for?’ asked Garibaldi, smiling. ‘I am used to my own stick.’ But, seeing the Englishman would not relinquish the stick without a struggle, he gave a faint shrug of his shoulders and walked on.

In the drawing-room a weighty conversation was taking place behind my back. I should have paid no attention to it if I had not caught the words loudly repeated: ‘Capite, Teddington is only two or three steps from Hampton Court. Upon my word, but it is impossible.... Two or three steps from Hampton Court! It is sixteen to eighteen miles.’ I turned round, and seeing a man who was a complete stranger to me taking the distance from London to Teddington so much to heart, I said to him: ‘Twelve or thirteen miles.’

The argumentative gentleman turned at once to me: ‘Even thirteen miles is a terrible distance. The General has to be in London at three o’clock.... Teddington must be postponed in any case.’

Guerzoni repeated to him that Garibaldi wanted to go and was going.

The Italian guardian was joined by an Englishman, who felt that to accept an invitation to such a distance would be a fatal precedent.... Wishing to suggest to them the indelicacy of debating the question in my presence, I observed: ‘Gentlemen, allow me to put an end to your discussion,’ and going up to Garibaldi on the spot said to him: ‘A visit from you is infinitely precious to me, and now more than ever, at an epoch so black for Russia, your visit will have a special significance; your visit will be not to me alone but to our friends, fettered in prison and banished to penal servitude. Knowing your many engagements, I was afraid to invite you. But at a word from a common friend you sent word to me that you would come. That is even more precious to me. I believe that you want to come, but I do not insist (je n’insiste pas) if there are such insuperable obstacles in the way as this gentleman, with whom I am unacquainted, tells me.’ I indicated him with my finger.

‘What is the difficulty?’ asked Garibaldi.

The impresario ran up and hurriedly laid before him all the considerations which made driving at eleven o’clock the next day to Teddington and returning by three out of the question.

‘That is very simple,’ said Garibaldi, ‘I must start at ten then instead of eleven. That is clear, isn’t it?’ The impresario vanished.

‘In that case,’ I said, ‘to avoid loss of time, worries or fresh difficulties, allow me to come and fetch you between nine and ten and we will go together.’

‘I shall be delighted. I will expect you.’

From Garibaldi I went off to see Ledru-Rollin. I had not seen him for two years. It was not because there had been any misunderstanding between us but because we had very little in common. Moreover, London, and especially suburban life, makes people drift apart imperceptibly. He had of late years led a quiet and solitary existence, though he believed with the same intensity as he had done on the 14th of June 1849 in the approaching revolution in France. I had disbelieved in it almost as long, and I too was unshaken in my conviction.

With the greatest courtesy to me Ledru-Rollin refused my invitation. He said that he would have been truly glad to meet Garibaldi again, and would of course have been pleased to come and see me, but that, as the representative of the French Republic, as one who had suffered for Rome (on 13th of June 1849), he could not see Garibaldi for the first time anywhere but in his own house. ‘If,’ he said, ‘Garibaldi’s political views do not permit him to show officially his sympathy for the French Republic—whether in my person, in the person of Louis Blanc, or of some other one of us I do not care—I shall not complain. But I should decline an interview with him wherever that might be. As a private man I should like to see him, though I have no particular reason for doing so; the French Republic is not a courtisane to give assignations half in secret. Forget for a moment that you are inviting me, and tell me candidly, do you not agree with my contention?’

‘I think that you are right, and I hope that you have nothing against my repeating our conversation to Garibaldi.’

‘Quite the contrary.’

With that we changed the subject. The revolution of February and the year 1848 rose again from the tomb and stood before me once more in the same figure of the tribune of that day with a few wrinkles and a few more grey hairs. Language, thoughts, turns of phrase, and above all hopes, were the same. ‘Things are going magnificently. The Empire does not know what to do. Elle est débordée. Only to-day I have had news of an incredible advance in public opinion. And indeed it is high time; who could have supposed that so grotesque a state of things could have lasted till 1864?’

I did not contradict him, and we parted pleased with each other.

On reaching London next day I began by hiring a carriage with a pair of sturdy horses and driving to Stafford House. When I went up to Garibaldi’s room he was not in it, but the zealous Italian was already desperately expounding the utter impossibility of driving to Teddington.

‘Can you suppose,’ he was saying to Guerzoni, ‘that the duke’s horses can take him for twelve or thirteen miles there and then back again? Why, they simply would not let him have them for such a journey.’

‘There is no need, I have a carriage.’

‘But what horses will bring him back? The same?’

‘Don’t be anxious; if the horses are tired they can put in fresh ones.’

Guerzoni said to me with fury: ‘Where will it end? This is slavery; every wretched little cur gives orders and intrigues.’

‘I don’t know whether you are referring to me,’ the Italian shouted, pale with rage, ‘I sir, will not allow myself to be treated like a flunkey,’ and he snatched up a pencil on the table, broke it and threw it away. ‘If that is how it is, I will give it all up and will leave you at once.’

‘That is just what we ask you to do.’

The zealous Italian strode rapidly towards the door, but Garibaldi appeared in the doorway, looked calmly at them and at me, and then said: ‘Isn’t it time to start? I am at your disposal, only please bring me back to London by half-past two or three o’clock; and now, allow me to receive an old friend who has only just arrived. Perhaps you are acquainted with him—Mordini?’

‘More than acquainted, we are friends. If you have nothing against it, I will invite him too.’

‘We will take him with us.’

Mordini came up; I moved away to the window with Saffi. All at once the factotum, changing his mind, ran up to me and boldly asked me: ‘Excuse me, I don’t understand. You have a carriage and your party is—reckon up: the General, you, Menotti, Guerzoni, Saffi and Mordini.... How will you sit?’

‘If necessary, we will have another carriage—two....’

‘But is there time to get them...?’

I looked at him, and turning to Mordini said to him: ‘Mordini, I want to ask Saffi and you to do something. Take a hansom and drive at once to Waterloo Station. You will catch the train there, for this gentleman is afraid that there won’t be room for us all and that there is no time to send for another carriage. Had I known yesterday that there would have been these difficulties I would have asked Garibaldi to come by train, but now that won’t do, because I can’t answer for our finding a cab or a carriage at Teddington Station. And I don’t want to make him walk to my house.’

‘Delighted; we will go at once,’ answered Saffi and Mordini.

‘Let us go too,’ said Garibaldi, getting up.

We went out; a dense crowd had already gathered before Stafford House, and a loud, prolonged ‘Hurrah!’ greeted and accompanied our carriage.

Menotti could not come with us, he was going with his brother to Windsor. I was told that the Queen, who was longing to see Garibaldi, but who alone in all Great Britain had not the right to do so, desired an accidental meeting with his sons. In this division the lion’s share certainly was not the Queen’s.

3 At Home

That day was wonderfully successful and was one of the brightest, loveliest and most cloudless days of the last fifteen years. There was a wonderful serenity and fulness about it, an aesthetic proportion and completeness such as very rarely comes. One day later, and our festive day would not have had that character. One more—not an Italian—of our party, and the tone would have been different; at any rate, there would have been an uneasy fear that it would be spoilt. Such days stand out like mountain-tops ... as with notes fully sung, as with flowers fully opened; there is nothing further, nothing higher, nothing beyond.

From the moment when the steps of Stafford House with the Duke of Sutherland’s lackeys, factotums and porter had vanished and the crowd received Garibaldi with its ‘Hurrah,’ our hearts grew light, everything was attuned to a free human key and so remained till the moment when Garibaldi, pressed and crowded by the people again, kissed on his shoulder and on the hem of his coat, got into the carriage and drove back to London.

On the way we talked of different things. Garibaldi wondered that the Germans did not understand that it was not their freedom, not their unity, that was victorious in Denmark, but the two armies of two despotic states which they would not be able to control later.⁠[21] ‘If Denmark had been supported in her struggle,’ he said, ‘the forces of Austria and Prussia would have been diverted and a line of action on the opposite coast would have been thrown open to us.’

I observed that the Germans were terrible nationalists, that they were labelled as cosmopolitan because they were only known from books. They were just as patriotic as the French, but the French were calmer in their patriotism, knowing that they were feared. The Germans knew the poor opinion in which they were held by other peoples and strained themselves to the utmost to keep up their reputation. ‘Do you imagine,’ I added, ‘that there are Germans who want to give up Venice and the Quadrilateral?⁠[22] Perhaps Venice they would: that question is too conspicuous, the injustice of that is obvious, the aristocratic name has an effect on them; but you should just talk to them about Trieste, which they need for trade, or Galicia or Posen, which they need in order to civilise them.’

Among other things I repeated to Garibaldi my conversation with Ledru-Rollin, and added that in my opinion Ledru-Rollin was right.

‘Undoubtedly,’ said Garibaldi, ‘perfectly right. I had not thought of it. To-morrow I will go to him and to Louis Blanc. Couldn’t we go now?’ he added.

We were in the Wandsworth Road and Ledru-Rollin was in St. John’s Wood, that is eight miles away. I had à l’imprésario to tell him that it was utterly impossible.

And again at moments Garibaldi sank into thought and was silent, and again his face expressed that great sadness of which I have spoken. He looked away into the distance as though seeking something on the horizon. I did not interrupt him, but gazed and thought: ‘Whether he is a sword in the hands of Providence or not, he is certainly not a military leader by profession, he is not a general. He told the holy truth when he said he was not a soldier but simply a man who had taken up arms to defend his outraged hearth, an apostle-warrior ready to preach a crusade and go at the head of it, ready to lay down his soul and his children’s for his people, to give and receive terrible blows, to shake the life out of his enemy, to scatter his ashes to the winds ... and then, forgetting his victory, to fling his blood-stained sword together with its sheath into the depths of the sea....’

All that, and precisely that, was fully understood by the people, by the masses, by the ignorant mob, with that clearness of vision, that insight with which in other days the slaves of Rome understood the incomprehensible mystery of the coming of Christ and crowds of the weary and heavy-laden, women and old men, prayed at the cross of the crucified. For them understanding meant believing, believing meant worship, prayer.

That was why all the poorer classes of Teddington had crowded round the railings of our house waiting from early morning for Garibaldi. When we drove up, the crowd rushed to greet him in a sort of ecstasy, pressed his hands, shouted ‘God bless you, Garibaldi!’ Women caught at his hand and kissed it, kissed the hem of his cloak—I saw with my own eyes—lifted their children up to him, shed tears.... He, smiling as though among his own family, shook their hands, bowed, and could scarcely make his way to the door. When he had gone in the shouts were redoubled; Garibaldi came out again, and laying both hands on his breast bowed in all directions. The people grew quieter, but they remained standing there all the time till Garibaldi went away.

It is hard for people who have seen nothing like it, men who have grown up in offices, barracks and the anterooms of courts, to understand such manifestations—‘a filibuster,’ the son of a sailor from Nice, a seaman, a rebel ... and this royal reception! What had he done for the English people?... And worthy men rack their brains for an explanation and look for some secret wires by which it was worked: ‘It is wonderful with what astuteness the Government in England can get up demonstrations ... you won’t take us in—wir wissen was wir wissen—we have read Gneist ourselves!’

I daresay, and perhaps the Neapolitan boatman who used to declare that the medallion of Garibaldi, like the medallion of the Madonna, was a charm against ship-wreck had been bought by the party of Sicardi and the ministry of Venosta!

Though it is doubtful whether the journalistic Vidocqs,⁠[23] particularly our Moscow ones, could detect the play of such masters as Palmerston, Gladstone and Company so clearly, yet they would through the sympathy of the tiny spider for the immense tarantula understand it more readily than the secret of Garibaldi’s reception. And that is a good thing for them—if they did understand that secret there would be nothing left for them but to hang themselves on the nearest aspen-tree. Bugs can only live happily so long as they have no suspicion of their smell. Woe to the bug who develops a human sense of smell!

Mazzini arrived immediately after Garibaldi; we all went out to meet him at the gate. The crowd, hearing who it was, gave him a loud welcome; the common people have nothing against him. The old-womanish terror of a conspirator is only to be found at the level of shopkeepers, small property-owners and so on.

The few words said by Mazzini and Garibaldi are familiar to readers of the Bell, we do not think it necessary to repeat them.⁠[24]⁠

... All were so touched by Garibaldi’s words about Mazzini, by the sincere voice in which they were uttered, the depth of feeling which resounded in them, the impressiveness given them by the series of preceding incidents, that no one answered, only Mazzini held out his hand and twice repeated: ‘It is too much.’ I did not see one face, even among the servants, which did not wear a recueilli look and was not stirred by the sense that grand words had just been uttered and that the moment was passing into history.... I went up to Garibaldi with my glass when he spoke of Russia and told him that his words would reach our friends in the fortresses and mines, that I thanked him in their name.

We went into the other room. Various persons had gathered in the corridor; all at once an old Italian, an exile of days long gone by, a poor fellow who sold ice-cream, caught Garibaldi by the skirt of his coat, stopped him, and bursting into tears said: ‘Well, now I can die. I have seen him, I have seen him!’ Garibaldi embraced and kissed the old man. Then in stumbling and halting phrases, with the terrible rapidity of a peasant’s Italian, the old man began telling Garibaldi his adventures, and wound up his speech with an amazing flower of Southern eloquence: ‘Now I shall die content, but you—God bless you—live long, live for our country, live for us, live till I rise again from the dead!’ He clutched his hand, covered it with kisses, and went out sobbing.

Accustomed as Garibaldi must have been to all this, he was obviously agitated as he sat down on a little sofa. The ladies surrounded him; I stood near the sofa. A cloud of painful thoughts seemed to swoop down upon him—and this time he could not refrain from saying: ‘It sometimes seems dreadful and so overwhelming that I am afraid of losing my head ... it is too much happiness. I remember when I came back an exile from America to Nice—when I saw my father’s house again, found my family, my relations, found the old familiar places, the people I knew—I was crushed with happiness.... You know,’ he added, turning to me, ‘what happened afterwards, what a succession of calamities it was. The welcome of the English people has surpassed my expectation.... What is to come? What is before us?’

I had not one word of comfort to give him. I inwardly shuddered at the question, What is to come, what is before us?

It was time for him to go. Garibaldi got up, warmly embraced me, took a friendly leave of us all—and again there were shouts, again hurrahs, again two stout policemen together with us, smiling and pleading, made our way through the crowd, again cries of ‘God bless you!’ ‘Garibaldi for ever!’ and the carriage rolled away. We all remained in an exalted, quietly solemn state of mind, as after a festival service, after a christening or the departure of the bride; our hearts were full, and we were inwardly going over every detail and brooding upon that sinister unanswered ‘What is to come?’

Prince P. V. Dolgoruky was the first to take up a sheet of paper and write down both the speeches. He wrote them down faithfully while others supplied details. We showed the result to Mazzini and the rest, and so made up the text (with slight and insignificant alterations) which flew like an electric shock over Europe, evoking a shout of enthusiasm and a howl of indignation. Then Mazzini went away; the other visitors went too. We were left alone with two or three intimate friends, and twilight slowly fell. How deeply and truly sorry I was, children, that you were not with me on that day! It is good to remember such days for long years; they refresh the soul and reconcile it to the seamy side of life. They are very few....

4 26 Prince’s Gate

‘What is to come?’ ... The immediate future did not keep us long waiting. As in the old epic poems while the hero is calmly resting on his laurels, feasting or sleeping, Malice, Vengeance and Envy assemble in their gala dress on storm-clouds of some sort; Vengeance and Envy brew a poison and temper daggers, while Malice blows the bellows and whets the blades: so it happened now in a form decorously adapted to our mild and peaceful manners. In our day all this is done simply by men and not by allegorical figures; they meet together in brightly lighted drawing-rooms instead of in ‘the darkness of night,’ and are attended by powdered flunkeys instead of by dishevelled Furies; the horrors and scenery of classical poems and children’s pantomimes are replaced by simple peaceful playing with marked cards, and magic is superseded by the everyday tricks of commerce with which the honest shopkeeper selling some black-currant juice mixed with spirits swears that it is port, and old port XXX, too, knowing that though no one believes him, no one will take proceedings, or if any one does, he will only fare the worse for it.

At the very time when Garibaldi called Mazzini his friend and teacher, called him the first sower who had stood alone on the field when all were sleeping about him, who, pointing out the way, had shown it to the young warrior yearning to do battle for his country, and had become the leader of the Italian people; at the very time when, surrounded by friends, he looked at the weeping old Italian exile who repeated his ‘Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant ...’ and himself almost wept with him; at the time when he confided to us his secret dread of the future, conspirators were resolving at all costs to get rid of the awkward guest; and although men grown old in diplomacy and intrigue, grey and decrepit in subterfuge and hypocrisy, took part in the conspiracy, they played their game no worse than the shopkeeper who sells his black-currant juice for old port XXX on his word of honour.

The English Government never had invited nor sent for Garibaldi; that is all nonsense invented by the ingenious journalists on the Continent. The Englishmen who invited Garibaldi had nothing in common with the Ministry; the assumption of a Government plan is as absurd as the subtle observation of our crétins that Palmerston gave Stansfeld a post in the Admiralty just because the latter was a friend of Mazzini. Note that in the most furious onslaughts upon Stansfeld and Palmerston there was no word suggesting this in Parliament or in the English newspapers.

Such silliness would have provoked as much mirth as Urquhart’s accusation that Palmerston was in receipt of pay from Russia. Chambers and the others asked Palmerston whether Garibaldi’s visit would be disagreeable to the Government. Palmerston answered, as was fitting for him to answer: that it could not be disagreeable to the Government for General Garibaldi to visit England, that the Government neither forbade his visit nor invited it.

Garibaldi agreed to come with the object of raising the Italian question in England once more and collecting enough money to begin a campaign in the Adriatic and to win Victor Emmanuel by the accomplished fact.

That was all.

That Garibaldi would be received with ovations was very well known to those who visited him and to all who desired him to come. But the aspect it assumed among the common people was not expected.

At the news that the man ‘in the red shirt,’ the hero wounded by an Italian bullet, was coming to visit them, the English people stirred and fluttered their wings, unaccustomed to flight and stiff with heavy and incessant toil. There was not only joy and love in this, there was complaint, a murmur, a moan; the apotheosis of one was the condemnation of others.

Remember my meeting with the shipwright from Newcastle. Remember that the working men of London were the first who in their address intentionally put the name of Mazzini side by side with that of Garibaldi.

At the present time the English aristocracy have nothing to fear from their powerful down-trodden and undeveloped working class; moreover, their vulnerable point is not in the direction of the European revolution. But yet the character which the reception was taking was extremely displeasing to them. What made the shepherds of the people most wince at the working men’s peaceful agitation was that it was drawing them out of the fitting order, was distracting them from the excellent, moral, and, moreover, never-ending preoccupation with their daily bread, from the lifelong hard labour to which not they, the masters, had doomed them but our common Manufacturer, our Maker—the God of Shaftesbury, the God of Derby, the God of the Sutherlands and the Devonshires—in His incomprehensible wisdom and infinite mercy.

It never, of course, entered the heads of the real English aristocracy to turn Garibaldi out; on the contrary, they tried to draw him away to themselves, to hide him from the people in a cloud of gold, as ox-eyed Hera was hidden whenever she sported with Zeus. They proposed to show him kindness, to overwhelm him with food and drink, not to let him come to himself nor to recover his senses nor to be one moment alone. Garibaldi wants money: could those condemned by the mercy of our ‘Maker,’ the Maker of Shaftesbury, Derby and Devonshire, to obscure and blessed poverty collect much for him? We, they said, will throw him half a million—a million—francs, half the betting on a horse at Epsom races, we will buy him—

We will buy him the rest of Caprera, we will buy him a wonderful yacht, he is so fond of sailing about over the sea; and that he may not waste his money on nonsense (by nonsense understand the emancipation of Italy), we will entail the estate, we will let him enjoy the interest.⁠[25] All these plans were carried out with the most brilliant scenery and setting, but had little success. Garibaldi, like the moon on a dull night, however the clouds were moved forward, hastened or changed, shone out clear and bright and shed light on us below.

The aristocracy began to be a little embarrassed. The business men came to their aid. Their interests were too immediate for them to think about the moral consequences of the agitation; they wanted to control the moment; they fancied one Caesar had frowned, the other looked sulky and feared the Tories would take advantage of it. The scandalous Stansfeld affair was bad enough already.

Fortunately, just at that time Clarendon had to make a pilgrimage to the Tuileries! His business was of no great importance, he returned immediately. Napoleon talked with him about Garibaldi and expressed his satisfaction that the English people honours great men. Dronyn de Lhuys⁠[26] said—that is, he said nothing, but if he had, he would have stammered:—

The Austrian Ambassador did not even rejoice at the reception of the Umweltzungs General. Everything was arranged satisfactorily. But there was an uneasy gnawing in some hearts.

The Ministers could not sleep at nights. The first whispered to the second, the second to a friend of Garibaldi’s, a friend of Garibaldi’s to a kinsman of Palmerston’s, to Lord Shaftesbury, and to a still greater friend of his, Seeley; Seeley whispered to the surgeon Fergusson; Fergusson, who cared nothing for his neighbour, was alarmed and wrote letter after letter about Garibaldi’s illness. After reading them, Gladstone was even more alarmed than the surgeon. Who could have imagined that so much love and sympathy lies sometimes hidden under the portfolio of the Ministry of Finance?...

The day after our festivity I went to London. At the railway station I picked up the evening paper and read in large letters ‘Illness of General Garibaldi,’ then the announcement that he was going in a day or two to Caprera without visiting a single other city. Not being so nervously sensitive as Shaftesbury, nor so anxious over the health of my friends as Gladstone, I was not in the least troubled by the announcement in the newspaper of the illness of a man whom I had seen the day before perfectly well. Of course there are illnesses that run a very rapid course—the Emperor Paul, for instance, was not long ill—but Garibaldi was a long way from an apoplectic stroke, and if anything had happened to him, one of our common friends would have let me know, and so it was easy to guess that it was a deliberate plan, un coup monté.

It was too late to go to Garibaldi. I went to Mazzini’s and did not find him in, then to the house of a lady from whom I learnt the chief facts concerning the ministerial sympathy for the great man’s illness. While I was there Mazzini arrived in a state such as I had never seen him in before; there were tears in his eyes and in his voice.

From the speech uttered at the second meeting on Primrose Hill by Shaen one can tell en gros how it was done. The ‘conspirators’ were named by him, and the circumstances described fairly accurately. Shaftesbury went to take counsel with Seeley; Seeley as a practical man at once said that they must have a letter from Fergusson; Fergusson was too polite a man to refuse the letter. Armed with it, the conspirators went on Sunday evening, the 17th of April, to Stafford House and deliberated what to do, close to the room where Garibaldi was quietly sitting, eating grapes, unaware that he was so ill, or that he was departing. At last the valiant Gladstone undertook the difficult task, and, accompanied by Shaftesbury and Seeley, went to Garibaldi’s room. Gladstone used to talk over whole Parliaments, universities, corporations, deputations; it was easy for him to talk over Garibaldi. Moreover, he carried on the conversation in Italian, and did well, as in that way he talked without witnesses, though there were four in the room. Garibaldi answered first that he was quite well, but the Minister of Finance could not accept the chance fact of his good health as an answer, and pointed out that according to Fergusson he was ill, and confirmed this by the document in his hand. At last Garibaldi, perceiving that something else was hidden under this tender sympathy, asked Gladstone, Did all this mean that they wanted him to go? Gladstone did not conceal from him that his presence added to the complications of their already difficult position. ‘In that case I will go,’ said Garibaldi.

Gladstone, softened, was alarmed at a too conspicuous success and suggested he should visit two or three towns and then depart for Caprera.

‘I cannot choose between the towns,’ answered Garibaldi, wounded, ‘and I give you my word that within two days I shall be gone.’

On Monday there was a question asked in Parliament. The feather-headed old Palmerston in one House and the fleet-footed pilgrim Clarendon in the other explained everything with perfect candour. Clarendon assured the peers that Napoleon had not asked for Garibaldi to be turned out. Palmerston for his part was not at all desirous for his departure. He was only anxious about his health ... and thereupon he entered into all the details which a loving wife, or a doctor sent by an insurance society, goes into—the hours of sleep and of dinner, the consequences of his wound, his diet, the effects of excitement, his age. The sitting of the House of Commons was turned into a consultation of physicians. The Minister had recourse not to Chatham and Campbell but to therapeutics and Fergusson, who had been so helpful in this difficult operation.

The legislative assembly decided that Garibaldi was ill. Towns and villages, counties and banks are left entirely to self-government in England. The Government, which jealously guards itself from every suspicion of interference, which allows men to die of hunger every day through fear of limiting the self-government of workhouses, which permits whole populations to be worked to death and turned into crétins, was suddenly transformed into a hospital-nurse. These statesmen abandoned the helm of the great ship and babbled in hushed voices of the health of a man who had not asked for their sympathy, and, uninvited, prescribed for him the Atlantic Ocean and Sutherland’s Undine; the Minister of Finance forgot his budget, his income-tax, his debit and credit, and turned consulting physician. The Prime Minister laid this pathological case before Parliament. But is self-government in the case of a man’s legs and stomach less sacred than the freedom of charitable establishments whose task is to lead men to the graveyard?

Not long before this Stansfeld had had to pay for not thinking himself bound to quarrel with Mazzini because he was serving the Queen. And now were not the most securely placed Ministers writing, not addresses, but prescriptions and worrying themselves to prolong the days of another revolutionary like Mazzini?

Garibaldi ought to have been suspicious of the desire of the Government expressed to him by over-ardent friends and to have remained. Could any one have doubted the truth of the words of the Prime Minister, uttered to the representatives of England? All his friends advised him to remain. ‘Palmerston’s words cannot relieve me of my promise,’ answered Garibaldi, and told them to pack up.

This was Solferino.⁠[28]⁠

Byelinsky observed long ago that the secret of the success of diplomatists lies in the fact that they treat us as though we were diplomatists, while we treat diplomatists as though they were men.

Now you understand why our festive gathering and Garibaldi’s speech, his words about Mazzini, would have had a different character had they come one day later.

Next day I went to Stafford House and learnt that Garibaldi had moved to Seeley’s, 26 Prince’s Gate, near Kensington Gardens. I went to Prince’s Gate; there was no possibility of talking to Garibaldi, he was not allowed out of sight; some twenty visitors were walking about, sitting silent, or talking in the drawing-room and the study.

‘You are going?’ I said, and took him by the hand. Garibaldi pressed my hand and answered in a mournful voice: ‘I bow to the necessities (je me plie aux nécessités).’

He was going off somewhere. I left him and went downstairs; there I found Saffi, Guerzoni, Mordini and Richardson; all were beside themselves with anger at Garibaldi’s departure. Mrs. Seeley came in, followed by a thin, elderly, lively Frenchwoman who addressed herself with excessive eloquence to the lady of the house, speaking of her happiness in making the acquaintance of such a personne distinguée. Mrs. Seeley turned to Stansfeld, asking him to translate. The Frenchwoman went on: ‘Ah my God, how delighted I am! Of course that is your son, allow me to introduce myself.’ Stansfeld disabused the Frenchwoman, who had not observed that Mrs. Seeley was about his age, and asked her to tell him what it was she wanted. She flung a glance at me (Saffi and the others had gone out) and said: ‘We are not alone.’ Stansfeld mentioned my name. She immediately turned and harangued me, begging me to remain, but I preferred to leave her to a tête-à-tête with Stansfeld and went upstairs again. A minute later Stansfeld came up with some sort of hook or rivet. The Frenchwoman’s husband had invented it and she wanted Garibaldi’s approval.

The last two days were full of confusion and gloom. Garibaldi avoided talking about his departure and said not a word about his health.... In all his friends he met a look of sorrowful reproach. He was sick at heart, but he said nothing.

At two o’clock on the day before his departure I was sitting with him when they came to tell him that there was already a crowd in the reception-room. On that day the members of Parliament with their families and all sorts of nobility and gentry, numbering two thousand people according to The Times, were presented to him. It was a grand lever, a regal reception, but such a one as no king of Würtemberg or even of Prussia could ever have attracted without calling in professors and lower ranks of officers.

Garibaldi got up and asked: ‘Is it really time?’ Stansfeld, who happened to be there, looked at his watch and said: ‘There is still five minutes before the time fixed.’ Garibaldi heaved a sigh of relief and sat down cheerfully. But then a factotum ran in and began arranging where the sofa was to stand, by which door people were to come in, by which to go out.

‘I am going,’ I said to Garibaldi.

‘Why? Do stay.’

‘What am I going to do?’

‘Surely,’ he said, smiling, ‘I can keep one man I know, since I am receiving so many I don’t.’

The doors were opened; in the doorway stood an improvised master of the ceremonies with a sheet of paper in his hand from which he began reading aloud as from a directory: the Right Honourable So-and-so—the Honourable So-and-so—Esquire—Lady—Esquire—Lordship—Mrs.—Esquire—M.P., M.P., without end. At every name there burst in at the doorway and sailed into the room old and young crinolines, grey heads and bald heads, tiny little old men and stout sturdy little old men, and thin giraffes with no hind legs, who drew themselves up to such a height that it looked as though the upper part of their head was propped on huge yellow teeth, and tried to draw themselves higher still. Each one of them had three, four or five ladies, and this was very fortunate, since they occupied the space of fifty men, and in that way saved us from a crush. They all came up to Garibaldi in turn. The men shook his hand with the vigour with which a man shakes his own when he has put his finger in boiling water; some said something as they did so, the majority grunted, remained dumb and bowed as they turned away. The ladies too were mute, but they gazed so long and so passionately at Garibaldi that there will certainly be a crop of children born this year in London with his features; and as the children even now are going about in red shirts like his, there will be nothing left to imitate but his cloak.

Those who had paid their respects sailed towards the opposite door, which opened into the drawing-room, and descended the stairs; the bolder among them were in no haste to go, but tried to remain in the room.

At first Garibaldi stood up, then he kept sitting down and getting up again, finally he simply remained sitting; his leg did not allow him to remain standing for long. The end of the reception was beyond hoping for: carriages kept driving up, the master of the ceremonies kept reading out titles.

The band of the Horse Guards struck up. I stood about and stood about, and at last went out into the drawing-room, and there, with a stream of surging crinolines, reached the cascade, and with it was carried to the doors of the room where Saffi and Mordini usually sat. There was no one in it. I had a feeling of confusion and disgust in my heart; what a farce it all was, this gilded dismissal, and with it this comedy of a royal reception! Tired out, I threw myself on the sofa; the band was playing from ‘Lucrezia,’ and playing very well. I listened.—Yes, yes, ‘Non curiamo l’incerto domani.’

From the window could be seen rows of carriages; these had not yet driven up; here one moved up, after it a second and a third, again there was a pause; and I fancied how Garibaldi with his bruised hand was sitting tired and gloomy, how that dark cloud was coming over his face and no one noticing it, while still the crinolines float up and still the Right Honourables come—grey-headed, bald, broad-faced, giraffes....

The band played on, the carriages drove up. I don’t know how it happened, but I fell asleep. Some one opened the door and woke me.... The music was still playing, the carriages still driving up. There was no end in sight.... They really will kill him!

I went home.

Next day, that is on the day of his departure, I went to see Garibaldi at seven o’clock in the morning, and slept the night before in London on purpose to do so. He was gloomy and abrupt. For the first time one could see that he was accustomed to command, that he was an iron leader on the field of battle and on the sea.

He was caught by some gentleman who had brought with him a bootmaker, the inventor of a boot with an iron contrivance for Garibaldi. With self-sacrificing resignation Garibaldi sat down in a low chair; the shoemaker in the sweat of his brow forced his irons on him, then made him stamp and walk a step; it seemed all right. ‘What must we pay him?’ asked Garibaldi. ‘Upon my soul!’ answered the gentleman; ‘why, you will make him happy if you accept it.’ They withdrew.

‘It will be put up over his shop in a day or two,’ some one observed, while Garibaldi said with a supplicating expression to the young man who waited upon him: ‘For God’s sake get this contrivance off me; I can’t stand it, it hurts.’ It was frightfully funny.

Then the aristocratic ladies made their appearance; those of less consequence were waiting in a crowd in the drawing-room.

Ogaryov and I went up to him. ‘Good-bye,’ I said. ‘Good-bye till we meet in Caprera.’ He embraced me, sat down, stretched out both hands to us, and, in a voice which cut us to the heart, said: ‘Forgive me, forgive me, my head is going round. Come to Caprera,’ and once more he embraced us.

After the reception Garibaldi had to go for an interview with the Prince of Wales at Stafford House.

We went out of the gate and separated. Ogaryov went to Mazzini, I went to Rothschild. There was no one yet at Rothschild’s bank. I went to St. Paul’s tavern, and there was no one there either. I asked for a rump-steak, and, sitting down quite alone, went over the details of this Midspring Night’s Dream.

Go, great child, great force, great fanatic and great simplicity! Go to your rock, peasant in the red shirt! Go, King Lear! Goneril drives you out; leave her, you have poor Cordelia. She will not cease to love you, and she will not die!

The fourth act was over!

What is to come in the fifth?

May 15, 1864.