Beneath the ruins of the Roman Republic, how many private fortunes
were buried! and among these victims was Margaret. In that
catastrophe, were swallowed up hopes sacredly cherished by her through
weary months, at the risk of all she most prized.
Soon after the entrance of the French, she wrote thus, to the resident
Envoy of the United States:
My dear Mr. Cass,--I beg you to come and see me, and give me your
counsel, and, if need be, your aid, to get away from Rome. From what
I hear this morning, I fear we may be once more shut up here; and I
shall die, to be again separated from what I hold most dear. There
are, as yet, no horses on the way we want to go, or we should post
immediately.
You may feel, like me, sad, in these last moments, to leave this
injured Rome. So many noble hearts I abandon here, whose woes I have
known! I feel, if I could not aid, I might soothe. But for my child, I
would not go, till some men, now sick, know whether they shall live or
die.
* * * * *
Her child! Where was he? In RIETI,--at the foot of the Umbrian
Apennines,--a day's journey to the north-east of Rome. Thither
Margaret escaped with her husband, and thence she wrote the following
letter:
Dearest Mother,--I received your letter a few hours before leaving
Rome. Like all of yours, it refreshed me, and gave me as much
satisfaction as anything could, at that sad time. Its spirit is
of eternity, and befits an epoch when wickedness and perfidy so
impudently triumph, and the best blood of the generous and honorable
is poured out like water, seemingly in vain.
I cannot tell you what I suffered to abandon the wounded to the care
of their mean foes; to see the young men, that were faithful to their
vows, hunted from their homes,--hunted like wild beasts; denied a
refuge in every civilized land. Many of those I loved are sunk to the
bottom of the sea, by Austrian cannon, or will be shot. Others are in
penury, grief, and exile. May God give due recompense for all that has
been endured!
My mind still agitated, and my spirits worn out, I have not felt like
writing to any one. Yet the magnificent summer does not smile quite
in vain for me. Much exercise in the open air, living much on milk
and fruit, have recruited my health, and I am regaining the habit of
sleep, which a month of nightly cannonade in Rome had destroyed.
* * * * *
Receiving, a few days since, a packet of letters from America, I
opened them with more feeling of hope and good cheer, than for a long
time past. The first words that met my eye were these, in the hand of
Mr. Greeley:--"Ah, Margaret, the world grows dark with us! You grieve,
for Rome is fallen;--I mourn, for Pickie is dead."
I have shed rivers of tears over the inexpressibly affecting letter
thus begun. One would think I might have become familiar enough with
images of death and destruction; yet somehow the image of Pickie's
little dancing figure, lying, stiff and stark, between his parents,
has made me weep more than all else. There was little hope he could do
justice to himself, or lead a happy life in so perplexed a world;
but never was a character of richer capacity,--never a more charming
child. To me he was most dear, and would always have been so. Had he
become stained with earthly faults, I could never have forgotten what
he was when fresh from the soul's home, and what he was to me when my
soul pined for sympathy, pure and unalloyed.
The three children I have seen who were fairest in my eyes, and gave
most promise of the future, were Waldo, Pickie, Hermann Clarke;--all
nipped in the bud. Endless thoughts has this given me, and a resolve
to seek the realization of all hopes and plans elsewhere, which
resolve will weigh with me as much as it can weigh before the silver
cord is finally loosed. Till then, Earth, our mother, always finds
strange, unexpected ways to draw us back to her bosom,--to make us
seek anew a nutriment which has never failed to cause us frequent
sickness.
* * * * *
This brings me to the main object of my present letter,--a piece
of intelligence about myself, which I had hoped I might be able
to communicate in such a way as to give you _pleasure_. That I
cannot,--after suffering much in silence with that hope,--is like the
rest of my earthly destiny.
The first moment, it may cause you a pang to know that your eldest
child might long ago have been addressed by another name than yours,
and has a little son a year old.
But, beloved mother, do not feel this long. I do assure you, that it
was only great love for you that kept me silent. I have abstained a
hundred times, when your sympathy, your counsel, would have been most
precious, from a wish not to harass you with anxiety. Even now I would
abstain, but it has become necessary, on account of the child, for us
to live publicly and permanently together; and we have no hope, in
the present state of Italian affairs, that we can do it at any better
advantage, for several years, than now.
My husband is a Roman, of a noble but now impoverished house. His
mother died when he was an infant, his father is dead since we met,
leaving some property, but encumbered with debts, and in the present
state of Rome hardly available, except by living there. He has
three older brothers, all provided for in the Papal service,--one as
Secretary of the Privy Chamber, the other two as members of the Guard
Noble. A similar career would have been opened to him, but he embraced
liberal principles, and, with the fall of the Republic, has lost
all, as well as the favor of his family, who all sided with the Pope.
Meanwhile, having been an officer in the Republican service, it was
best for him to leave Rome. He has taken what little money he had,
and we plan to live in Florence for the winter. If he or I can get
the means, we shall come together to the United States, in the
summer;--earlier we could not, on account of the child.
He is not in any respect such a person as people in general would
expect to find with me. He had no instructor except an old priest,
who entirely neglected his education; and of all that is contained
in books he is absolutely ignorant, and he has no enthusiasm of
character. On the other hand, he has excellent practical sense; has
been a judicious observer of all that passed before his eyes; has a
nice sense of duty, which, in its unfailing, minute activity, may
put most enthusiasts to shame; a very sweet temper, and great native
refinement. His love for me has been unswerving and most tender. I
have never suffered a pain that he could relieve. His devotion, when
I am ill, is to be compared only with yours. His delicacy in trifles,
his sweet domestic graces, remind me of E----. In him I have found a
home, and one that interferes with no tie. Amid many ills and
cares, we have had much joy together, in the sympathy with natural
beauty,--with our child,--with all that is innocent and sweet.
I do not know whether he will always love me so well, for I am
the elder, and the difference will become, in a few years, more
perceptible than now. But life is so uncertain, and it is so necessary
to take good things with their limitations, that I have not thought it
worth while to calculate too curiously.
However my other friends may feel, I am sure that _you_ will love
him very much, and that he will love you no less. Could we all live
together, on a moderate income, you would find peace with us. Heaven
grant, that, on returning, I may gain means to effect this object.
He, of course, can do nothing, while we are in the United States, but
perhaps I can; and now that my health is better, I shall be able to
exert myself, if sure that my child is watched by those who love him,
and who are good and pure.
* * * * *
What shall I say of my child? All might seem hyperbole, even to my
dearest mother. In him I find satisfaction, for the first time, to the
deep wants of my heart. Yet, thinking of those other sweet ones fled,
I must look upon him as a treasure only lent. He is a fair child, with
blue eyes and light hair; very affectionate, graceful, and sportive.
He was baptized, in the Roman Catholic Church, by the name of Angelo
Eugene Philip, for his father, grandfather, and my brother. He
inherits the title of marquis.
Write the name of my child in your Bible, ANGELO OSSOLI, _born
September_ 5, 1848. God grant he may live to see you, and may prove
worthy of your love!
More I do not feel strength to say. You can hardly guess how all
attempt to express something about the great struggles and experiences
of my European life enfeebles me. When I get home,--if ever I do,--it
will be told without this fatigue and excitement. I trust there will
be a little repose, before entering anew on this wearisome conflict.
I had addressed you twice,--once under the impression that I should
not survive the birth of my child; again during the siege of Rome, the
father and I being both in danger. I took Mrs. Story, and, when she
left Rome, Mr. Cass, into my confidence. Both were kind as sister
and brother. Amid much pain and struggle, sweet, is the memory of
the generous love I received from William and Emelyn Story, and their
uncle. They helped me gently through a most difficult period. Mr.
Cass, also, who did not know me at all, has done everything possible
for me.
* * * * *
A letter to her sister fills out these portraits of her husband and
child.
* * * * *
About Ossoli[B] I do not like to say much, as he is an exceedingly
delicate person. He is not precisely reserved, but it is not natural
to him to talk about the objects of strong affection. I am sure he
would not try to describe me to his sister, but would rather she would
take her own impression of me; and, as much as possible, I wish to
do the same by him. I presume that, to many of my friends, he will
be nothing, and they will not understand that I should have life in
common with him. But I do not think he will care;--he has not the
slightest tinge of self-love. He has, throughout our intercourse, been
used to my having many such ties. He has no wish to be anything to
persons with whom he does not feel spontaneously bound, and when I am
occupied, is happy in himself. But some of my friends and my family,
who will see him in the details of practical life, cannot fail to
prize the purity and simple strength of his character; and, should
he continue to love me as he has done, his companionship will be an
inestimable blessing to me. I say _if_, because all human affections
are frail, and I have experienced too great revulsions in my own, not
to know it. Yet I feel great confidence in the permanence of his love.
It has been unblemished so far, under many trials; especially as I
have been more desponding and unreasonable, in many ways, than I ever
was before, and more so, I hope, than I ever shall be again. But at
all such times, he never had a thought except to sustain and cheer me.
He is capable of the sacred love,--the love passing that of woman. He
showed it to his father, to Rome, to me. Now he loves his child in the
same way. I think he will be an excellent father, though he could not
speculate about it, nor, indeed, about anything.
Our meeting was singular,--fateful, I may say. Very soon he offered me
his hand through life, but I never dreamed I should take it. I loved
him, and felt very unhappy to leave him; but the connection seemed so
every way unfit, I did not hesitate a moment. He, however, thought
I should return to him, as I did. I acted upon a strong impulse, and
could not analyze at all what passed in my mind. I neither rejoice
nor grieve;--for bad or for good, I acted out my character Had I never
connected myself with any one, my path was clear; now it is all
hid; but, in that case, my development must have been partial. As
to marriage, I think the intercourse of heart and mind may be fully
enjoyed without entering into this partnership of daily life. Still,
I do not find it burdensome. The friction that I have seen mar so much
the domestic happiness of others does not occur with us, or, at least,
has not occurred. Then, there is the pleasure of always being at hand
to help one another.
Still, the great novelty, the immense gain, to me, is my relation with
my child. I thought the mother's heart lived in me before, but it did
not;--I knew nothing about it. Yet, before his birth, I dreaded it.
I thought I should not survive: but if I did, and my child did, was I
not cruel to bring another into this terrible world? I could not, at
that time, get any other view. When he was born, that deep melancholy
changed at once into rapture: but it did not last long. Then came the
prudential motherhood. I grew a coward, a care-taker, not only for the
morrow, but, impiously faithless, for twenty or thirty years ahead.
It seemed very wicked to have brought the little tender thing into
the midst of cares and perplexities we had not feared in the least
for ourselves. I imagined everything;--he was to be in danger of
every enormity the Croats were then committing upon the infants
of Lombardy;--the house would be burned over his head; but, if he
escaped, how were we to get money to buy his bibs and primers? Then
his father was to be killed in the fighting, and I to die of my cough,
&c. &c.
During the siege of Rome, I could not see my little boy. What I
endured at that time, in various ways, not many would survive. In the
burning sun, I went, every day, to wait, in the crowd, for letters
about him. Often they did not come. I saw blood that had streamed on
the wall where Ossoli was. I have a piece of a bomb that burst close
to him. I sought solace in tending the suffering men; but when I
beheld the beautiful fair young men bleeding to death, or mutilated
for life, I felt the woe of all the mothers who had nursed each to
that full flower, to see them thus cut down. I felt the _consolation_,
too,--for those youths died worthily. I was a Mater Dolorosa, and I
remembered that she who helped Angelino into the world came from the
sign of the Mater Dolorosa. I thought, even if he lives, if he comes
into the world at this great troubled time, terrible with perplexed
duties, it may be to die thus at twenty years, one of a glorious
hecatomb, indeed, but still a sacrifice! It seemed then I was willing
he should die.
* * * * *
Angelino's birth-place is thus sketched:
My baby saw mountains when he first looked forward into the world.
RIETI,--not only an old classic town of Italy, but one founded by what
are now called the Aborigines,--is a hive of very ancient dwellings
with red brown roofs, a citadel and several towers. It is in a
plain, twelve miles in diameter one way, not much less the other, and
entirely encircled with mountains of the noblest form. Casinos and
hermitages gleam here and there on their lower slopes. This plain is
almost the richest in Italy, and full of vineyards. Rieti is near the
foot of the hills on one side, and the rapid Velino makes almost the
circuit of its walls, on its way to Terni. I had my apartment shut out
from the family, on the bank of this river, and saw the mountains, as
I lay on my restless couch. There was a piazza, too, or, as they call
it here, a loggia, which hung over the river, where I walked most of
the night, for I could not sleep at all in those months. In the wild
autumn storms, the stream became a roaring torrent, constantly lit up
by lightning flashes, and the sound of its rush was very sublime. I
see it yet, as it swept away on its dark green current the heaps of
burning straw which the children let down from the bridge. Opposite
my window was a vineyard, whose white and purple clusters were my food
for three months. It was pretty to watch the vintage,--the asses and
wagons loaded with this wealth of amber and rubies,--the naked boys,
singing in the trees on which the vines are trained, as they cut the
grapes,--the nut-brown maids and matrons, in their red corsets and
white head-clothes, receiving them below, while the babies and little
children were frolicking in the grass.
In Rieti, the ancient Umbrians were married thus. In presence of
friends, the man and maid received together the gifts of fire and
water; the bridegroom then conducted to his house the bride. At the
door, he gave her the keys, and, entering, threw behind him nuts, as a
sign that he renounced all the frivolities of boyhood.
I intend to write all that relates to the birth of Angelino, in a
little book, which I shall, I hope, show you sometime. I have begun
it, and then stopped;--it seemed to me he would die. If he lives, I
shall finish it, before the details are at all faded in my mind. Rieti
is a place where I should have liked to have him born, and where I
should like to have him now,--but that the people are so wicked. They
are the most ferocious and mercenary population of Italy. I did not
know this, when I went there, and merely expected to be solitary and
quiet among poor people. But they looked on the "Marchioness" as an
ignorant _Inglese_, and they fancy all _Inglesi_ have wealth untold.
Me they were bent on plundering in every way. They made me suffer
terribly in the first days.
[Footnote A: The first part of this chapter is edited by R.W.E.; the
remainder by W.H.C.]
[Footnote B: Giovanni Angelo Ossoli.]