It was, to the best of my recollection, much about the same time as
that visit of Charles Dickens which I have chronicled in the last
chapter but one, which turned out to be eventually so fateful a one to
me, as the correspondence there given shows, that my mother received
another visit, which was destined to play an equally influential
part in the directing and fashioning of my life. Equally influential
perhaps I ought not to say, inasmuch as one-and-twenty years (with the
prospect I hope of more) are more important than seventeen. But both
the visits I am speaking of, as having occurred within a few days of
each other, were big with fate, to me, in the same department of human
affairs.
The visit of Dickens was destined eventually to bring me my second
wife, as the reader has seen. The visit of Mr. and Mrs. Garrow to the
Via dei Malcontenti, much about the same time, brought me my first.
The Arno and the Tiber both take their rise in the flanks of
Falterona. It was on the banks of the first that my first married
life was passed; on those of the more southern river that the largest
portion of my second wedded happiness was enjoyed.
Why Mr. and Mrs. Garrow called on my mother I do not remember.
Somebody had given them letters of introduction to us, but I forget
who it was. Mr. Garrow was the son of an Indian officer by a high
caste Brahmin woman, to whom he was married. I believe that unions
between Englishmen and native women are common enough. But a marriage,
such as that of my wife's grandfather I am assured was, is rare,
and rarer still a marriage with a woman of high caste. Her name was
Sultana. I have never heard of any other name. Joseph Garrow, my
father-in-law, was sent to England at an early age, and never again
saw either of his parents, who both died young. His grandfather was an
old Scotch schoolmaster at Hadley, near Barnet, and his great-uncle
was the well known Judge Garrow. My father-in-law carried about with
him very unmistakable evidence of his eastern origin in his yellow
skin, and the tinge of the white of his eyes, which was almost that of
an Indian. He had been educated for the bar, but had never practised,
or attempted to do so, having while still a young man married a wife
with considerable means. He was a decidedly clever man, especially in
an artistic direction, having been a very good musician and performer
on the violin, and a draughtsman and caricaturist of considerable
talent. The lady he married had been a Miss Abrams, but was at the
time he married her the widow of (I believe) a naval officer named
Fisher. She had by her first husband one son and one daughter. There
had been three Misses Abrams, Jewesses by race undoubtedly, but
Christians by baptism, whose parent or parents had come to this
country in the suite of some Hanoverian minister, in what capacity I
never heard. They were all three exceptionally accomplished musicians,
and seem to have been well known in the higher social circles of the
musical world. One of the sisters was the authoress of many once well
known songs, especially of one song called "Crazy Jane," which had a
considerable vogue in its day. I remember hearing old John Cramer
say that my mother-in-law could, while hearing a numerous orchestra,
single out any instrument which had played a false note--and this he
seemed to think a very remarkable and exceptional feat. She was past
fifty when Mr. Garrow married her, but she bore him one daughter, and
when they came to Florence both girls, Theodosia, Garrow's daughter,
and Harriet Fisher, her elder half-sister, were with them, and at
their second morning call both came with them.
The closest union and affection subsisted between the two girls, and
ever continued till the untimely death of Harriet. But never were two
sisters, or half-sisters, or indeed any two girls at all, more unlike
each other.
Harriet was neither specially clever nor specially pretty, but she
was, I think, perhaps the most absolutely unselfish human being I ever
knew, and one of the most loving hearts. And her position was one,
that, except in a nature framed of the kindliest clay, and moulded by
the rarest perfection of all the gentlest and self-denying virtues,
must have soured, or at all events crushed and quenched, the
individual placed in such circumstances. She was simply nobody in the
family save the ministering angel in the house to all of them. I
do not mean that any of the vulgar preferences existed which are
sometimes supposed to turn some less favoured member of a household
into a Cinderella. There was not the slightest shadow of anything of
the sort. But no visitors came to the house or sought the acquaintance
of the family for _her_ sake. She had the dear, and, to her, priceless
love of her sister. But no admiration, no pride of father or mother
fell to _her_ share. _Her_ life was not made brilliant by the notice
and friendship of distinguished men. Everything was for the younger
sister. And through long years of this eclipse, and to the last, she
fairly worshipped the sister who eclipsed her. Garrow, to do him
justice, was equally affectionate in his manner to both girls, and
entirely impartial in every respect that concerned the material
well-being of them. But Theodosia was always placed on a pedestal on
which there was no room at all for Harriet. Nor could the closest
intimacy with the family discover any faintest desire on her part to
share the pedestal She was content and entirely happy in enjoying the
reflected brightness of the more gifted sister.
Nor would perhaps a shrewd judge, whose estimate of men and women had
been formed by observation of average humanity, have thought that the
position which I have described as that of the younger of these two
sisters, was altogether a morally wholesome one for her. But the
shrewd judge would have been wrong. There never was a humbler, as
there never was a more loving soul, than that of the Theodosia Garrow
who became, for my perfect happiness, Theodosia Trollope. And it was
these two qualities of humbleness and lovingness that, acting like
invincible antiseptics on the moral nature, saved her from all
"spoiling,"--from any tendency of any amount of flattery and
admiration to engender selfishness or self-sufficiency. Nothing more
beautiful in the way of family affection could be seen than the tie
which united in the closest bonds of sisterly affection those two so
differently constituted sisters. Very many saw and knew what Theodosia
was as my wife. Very few indeed ever knew what she was in her own home
as a sister.
When I married Theodosia Garrow she possessed just one thousand pounds
in her own right, and little or no prospect of ever possessing any
more; while I on my side possessed nothing at all, save the prospect
of a strictly bread and cheese competency at the death of my mother,
and "the farm which I carried under my hat," as somebody calls it. The
marriage was not made with the full approbation of my father-in-law;
but entirely in accordance with the wishes of my mother, who simply,
dear soul, saw in it, what she said, that "Theo" was of all the girls
she knew, the one she should best like as a daughter-in-law. And here
again the wise folks of the world (and I among them!) would hardly
have said that the step I then took was calculated, according to all
the recognised chances and probabilities of human affairs, to lead to
a life of contentment and happiness. I suppose it ought not to have
done so! But it did! It would be monstrously inadequate to say that I
never repented it. What should I not have lost had I not done it!
As usual my cards turned up trumps! but they began to do so in a way
that caused me much, and my wife more, grief at the time. Within two
years after my marriage, poor, dear, good, loving Harriet caught
small-pox and died! She was much more largely endowed than her
half-sister, to whom she bequeathed all she had.
She had a brother, as I have said above. But he had altogether
alienated himself from his family by becoming a Roman Catholic priest
There was no open quarrel. I met him frequently in after years at
Garrow's table at Torquay, and remember his bitter complaints that he
was tempted by the appearance of things at table which he ought not to
eat. It would have been of no use to give or bequeath money to
him, for it would have gone immediately to Romanist ecclesiastical
purposes. He had nearly stripped himself of his own considerable
means, reserving to himself only the bare competence on which a
Catholic priest might live. He was altogether a very queer fish!
I remember his coming to me once in tearful but very angry mood,
because, as he said, I had guilefully spread snares for his soul! I
had not the smallest comprehension of his meaning till I discovered
that his woe and wrath were occasioned by my having sent him as a
present Berington's _Middle Ages_. I had fancied that his course of
studies and line of thought would have made the book interesting to
him, utterly ignorant or oblivious of the fact that it laboured under
the disqualification of appearing in the _Index_.
I take it I knew little about the _Index_ in those days. In after
years, when three or four of my own books had been placed in its
columns, I was better informed. I remember a very elegant lady who
having overheard my present wife mention the fact that a recently
published book of mine had been placed in the _Index_, asked her, with
the intention of being extremely polite and complimentary, whether
_her_ (my wife's) books had been put in the _Index_. And when the
latter modestly replied that she had not written anything that could
merit such a distinction, her interlocutor, patting her on the
shoulder with a kindly and patronising air, said "Oh! my dear, I am
_sure_ they will be placed there. They certainly ought to be!"
Mrs. Garrow, my wife's mother, was not, I think, an amiable woman. She
must have been between seventy and eighty when I first knew her; but
she was still vigorous, and had still a pair of what must once have
been magnificent, and were still brilliant and fierce black eyes. She
was in no wise a clever woman, nor was our dear Harriet a clever girl.
Garrow on the other hand and _his_ daughter were both very markedly
clever, and this produced a closeness of companionship and alliance
between the father and daughter which painfully excited the jealousy
of the wife and mother. But it was totally impossible for her to cabal
with her daughter against the object of her jealousy. Harriet always
seeking to be a peacemaker, was ever, if peace could not be made,
stanchly on Theo's side. I am afraid that Mrs. Garrow did not love her
second daughter at all; and I am inclined to suspect that my marriage
was in some degree facilitated by her desire to get Theo out of the
house. She was a very fierce old lady, and did not, I fear, contribute
to the happiness of any member of her family.
How well I remember the appearance of Mr. and Mrs. Garrow, and those
two girls in my mother's drawing-room in the Via dei Malcontenti. The
two girls, I remember, were dressed exactly alike and very _dowdily_.
They had just arrived in Florence from Tours, I think, where they
had passed a year, or perhaps two, since quitting "The Braddons" at
Torquay; and everything about them from top to toe was provincial, not
to say shabby. It was a Friday, my mother's reception day, and the
room soon filled with gaily dressed and smart people, with more than
one pretty girl among them. But I had already got into conversation
with Theodosia Garrow, and, to the gross neglect of my duties as
master of the house, and to the scandal of more than one fair lady, so
I remained, till a summons more than twice repeated by her father took
her away.
It was not that I had fallen in love at first sight, as the phrase is,
by any means. But I at once felt that I had got hold of something of a
quite other calibre of intelligence from anything I had been recently
accustomed to meet with in those around me, and with a moral nature
that was sympathetic to my own. And I found it very delightful. It is
no doubt true that, had her personal appearance been other than
it was, I should not probably have found her conversation equally
delightful. But I am sure that it is equally true that had she been in
face, figure, and person all she was, and at the same time stupid, or
even not sympathetic, I should not have been equally attracted to her.
She was by no means what would have been recognised by most men as a
beautiful girl. The specialties of her appearance, in the first place,
were in a great measure due to the singular mixture of races from
which she had sprung. One half of her blood was Jewish, one quarter
Scotch, and one quarter pure Brahmin. Her face was a long oval, too
long and too lanky towards the lower part of it for beauty. Her
complexion was somewhat dark, and not good. The mouth was mobile,
expressive, perhaps more habitually framed for pathos and the gentler
feelings, than for laughter. The jaw was narrow, the teeth good and
white, but not very regular. She had a magnificent wealth of very dark
brown hair, not without a gleam here and there of what descriptive
writers, of course, would call gold, but which really was more
accurately copper colour. And this grand and luxuriant wealth of hair
grew from the roots on the head to the extremity of it, at her waist,
when it was let down, in the most beautiful ripples. But the great
feature and glory of the face were the eyes, among the largest I
ever saw, of a deep clear grey, rather deeply set, and changing in
expression with every impression that passed over her mind. The
forehead was wide, and largely developed both in those parts of it
which are deemed to indicate imaginative and idealistic power, and
those that denote strongly marked perceptive and artistic faculties.
The latter perhaps were the more prominently marked. The Indian strain
showed itself in the perfect gracefulness of a very slender and
elastic figure, and in the exquisite elegance and beauty of the
modelling of the extremities.
That is not the description of a beautiful girl. But it is the fact
that the face and figure very accurately so described were eminently
attractive to me physically, as well as the mind and intelligence,
which informed them, were spiritually. They were much more attractive
to me than those of many a splendidly beautiful girl, the immense
superiority of whose beauty nobody knew better than I. Why should this
have been so? That is one of the mysteries to the solution of which no
moral or physical or psychical research has ever brought us an iota
nearer.
I am giving here an account of the first impression my future wife
made on me. I had no thought of wooing and winning her, for, as I have
said, I was not in a position to marry. Meanwhile she was becoming
acclimatised to Florentine society. She no longer looked _dowdy_ when
entering a room, but very much the reverse; and the little Florentine
world began to recognise that they had got something very much like
a new Corinne among them. But of course I rarely got a chance of
monopolising her as I had done during that first afternoon. We were
however constantly meeting, and were becoming ever more and more close
friends. When the Garrows left Florence for the summer, I visited them
at Lucerne, and subsequently met them at Venice. It was the year of
the meeting of the Scientific Congress in that city.
That was a pleasant autumn in Venice! By that time I had become
pretty well over head and ears in love with the girl by whose side
I generally contrived to sit in the gondolas, in the Piazza in the
evening, etcaetera. It was lovely September weather--just the time for
Venice. The summer days were drawing in, but there was the moon, quite
light enough on the lagoons; and we were a great deal happier than the
day was long.
Those Scientific Congresses, of which that at Venice was the seventh
and the last, played a curious part, which has not been much observed
or noted by historians, in the story of the winning of Italian
independence. I believe that the first congress, at Pisa, I think, was
really got up by men of science, with a view to furthering their own
objects and pursuits. It was followed by others in successive autumns
at Lucca, Milan, Genoa, Naples, Florence, and this seventh and last
at Venice. But Italy was in those days thinking of other matters than
science. The whole air was full of ideas, very discordant all of them,
and vague most of them, of political change. The governments of the
peninsula thought twice, and more than twice, before they would grant
permission for the first of these meetings. Meetings of any kind were
objects of fear and mistrust to the rulers. Those of Tuscany, who were
by comparison liberal, and, as known to be such, were more or
less objects of suspicion to the Austrian, Roman, and Neapolitan
Governments, led the way in giving the permission asked for; and
perhaps thought that an assembly of geologists, entomologists,
astronomers, and mathematicians might act as a safety valve, and
divert men's minds from more dangerous subjects. But the current of
the times was running too strongly to be so diverted, and proved too
much for the authorities and for the real men of science, who were, at
least some of them, anxious to make the congresses really what they
professed to be.
Gradually these meetings became more and more mere social gatherings
in outward appearance, and revolutionary propagandist assemblies in
reality. As regards the former aspect of them, the different cities
strove to outdo each other in the magnificence and generosity of their
reception of their "scientific" guests. Masses of publications were
prepared, especially topographical and historical accounts of the city
which played Amphytrion for the occasion, and presented gratuitously
to the members of the association. Merely little guide-books, of which
a few hundred copies were needed in the case of the earlier meetings,
they became in the case of the latter ones at Naples, Genoa, Milan,
and Venice, large and magnificently printed tomes, prepared by the
most competent authorities and produced at a very great expense.
Venice especially outdid all her rivals, and printed an account of the
Queen of the Adriatic, embracing history, topography, science in
all its branches, and artistic story, in four huge and magnificent
volumes, which remains to the present day by far the best
topographical monograph that any city of the peninsula possesses. This
truly splendid work, which brought out in the ordinary way could not
have been sold for less than six or eight guineas, was presented,
together with much other printed matter--an enormous lithographed
panorama of Venice and her lagoons some five feet long in a handsome
roll cover, I remember among them--to every "member" on his enrolment
as such.
Then there were concerts, and excursions, and great daily dinners
the gayest and most enjoyable imaginable, at which both sexes were
considered to be equally scientific and equally welcome. The dinners
were not absolutely gratuitous, but the tickets for them were issued
at a price very much inferior to the real cost of the entertainment.
And all this it must be understood was done not by any subscription of
members scientific or otherwise, but by the city and its municipality;
the motive for such expenditure being the highly characteristic
Italian one, of rivalling and outdoing in magnificence other
cities and municipalities, or in the historical language of Italy,
"communes."
Old Rome, with her dependent cities, made no sign during all these
autumns of ever increasing festivity. Pity that they should have come
to an end before she did so; for at the rate at which things were
going, we should all at least have been crowned on the Capitol, if not
made Roman senators, _pour l'amour du Grec_, as the _savant_ says in
the _Précieuses Ridicules_, if we had gone to the Eternal City!
But the fact was, that the _soi-disant_ 'ologists kicked up their
heels a little too audaciously at Venice under Austria's nose; and the
Government thought it high time to put an end to "science."
For instance, Prince Canino made his appearance in the uniform of the
Roman National Guard! This was a little too much; and the Prince, all
prince and Buonaparte as he was, was marched off to the frontier.
Canino had every right to be there as a man of science; for his
acquirements in many branches of science were large and real; and
specially as an entomologist he was known to be probably the first
in Italy. But he was the man, who, when selling his principality of
Canino, insisted on the insertion in the legal instrument of a claim
to an additional five pauls (value about two shillings), for the title
of prince which was attached to the possessor of the estates he was
selling. He was an out-and-out avowed Republican, and was the blackest
of black sheep to all the constituted governments of the peninsula.
He looked as little as he felt and thought like a prince. He was a
paunchy, oily-looking black haired man, whose somewhat heavy face
was illumined by a brilliant black eye full of humour and a mouth
expressive of good nature and _bonhomie_. His appearance in the
proscribed uniform might have been considered by Austria, if her
police authorities could have appreciated the fun of the thing, as
wholesomely calculated to throw ridicule on the hated institution. He
was utterly unassuming, and good-natured in his manner, and when seen
in his ordinary black habiliments looked more like a well-to-do Jewish
trader than anything else.
As for the social aspects of these Scientific Congresses, they were
becoming every year more festive, and, at all events to the ignoramus
outsiders who joined them, more pleasant. My good cousin and old
friend, then Colonel, now General, Sir Charles Trollope, was at Venice
that autumn. I said on meeting him, "Now the first thing is to, make
you a member." "Me! a member of a Scientific Congress!" said he. "God
bless you! I am as ignorant as a babe of all possible 'epteras and
'opteras, and 'statics and 'matics!" "Oh! nonsense! we are all men
of science here! Come along!"--_i.e._, to the ducal palace to be
inscribed. "But what do you mean to tell them I am?" he asked. "Well!
let's see! You must have superintended a course of instruction in the
goose-step in your day?" "Rather so!" said he. "Very well, then. You
are Instructor in Military Exercises in her B.M. Forces! You are all
right! Come along!" And if I had said that he was Trumpeter Major of
the 600th Regiment in the British Army, it would doubtless have been
equally all right. So said, so done! And I see his bewildered look
now, as the four huge volumes, about a load for a porter, to which he
had become entitled, together with medals and documents of many kinds,
were put into his arms.
Ah! those were pleasant days! And while Italy, under the wing of
science, was plotting her independence, I was busy in forging the
chains of that dependence which was to be a more unmixed source of
happiness to me, than the independence which Italy was compassing has
yet proved to her.
Those chains, however, as regarded at all events the outward and
visible signs of them, had not got forged yet. I certainly had no
"proposed" to Theodosia. In fact, to the very best of my recollection
I never did "propose" to her--or "pop," as the hideous phrase is--any
decisive question at all. We seem, to my recollection, to have come
gradually, insensibly, and mutually to consider it a matter of course
that what we wanted was to be married, and that the only matter
which needed any words or consideration was the question, how the
difficulties in the way of our wishes were to be overcome.
In the autumn of 1847 my mother and I went to pass the winter in Rome.
My sister Cecilia's health had been failing; and it began to be feared
that there was reason to suspect the approach of the malady which had
already destroyed my brother Henry and my younger sister Emily. It
was decided therefore that she should pass the winter in Rome. Her
husband's avocations made it impossible for him to accompany her
thither, and my mother therefore took an apartment there to receive
her. It was in a small _palazzo_ in that part of the Via delle Quattro
Fontane, which is now situated between the Via Nazionale and the
Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, to the left of one going towards the
latter. There was no Via Nazionale then, and the buildings which now
make the Via delle Quattro Fontane a continuous line of street existed
only in the case of a few isolated houses and convents. It was a very
comfortable apartment, roomy, sunny, and quiet. The house exists
still, though somewhat modernised in outward appearance, and is, I
think, the second, after one going towards Santa Maria Maggiore has
crossed the new Via Nazionale.
But the grand question was, whether it could be brought about that
Theodosia Garrow should be permitted to be my mother's guest during
that winter. A hint on the matter was quite sufficient for my dear
mother, although I do not think that she had yet any idea that I
was minded to give her a daughter-in-law. Theodosia's parents had
certainly no faintest idea that anything more than ordinary friendship
existed between me and their daughter, or, if they had had such,
she would certainly have never been allowed to accept my mother's
invitation. As for Theodosia herself and her willingness to come, it
seems to me, as I look back, that nothing was said between us at all,
any more than anything was said about making her my wife. I think it
was all taken for granted, _sans mot dire_, by both of us. But there
was one person who knew all about it; knew what was in both our
hearts, and was eagerly anxious that the desire of them should be
fulfilled. This was the good fairy Harriet Fisher. Without the
strenuous exertion of her influence on her mother and Mr. Garrow, the
object would hardly have been accomplished. Of course the plea put
forward was the great desirability of taking advantage of such an
opportunity of seeing Rome.
My sister, whose health, alas! profited nothing by that visit to Rome,
and could have been profited by no visit to any place on earth, became
strongly attached to Theodosia; and the affection which grew up
between them was the more to the honour of both of them, in that they
were far as the poles asunder in opinions and habits of thought. My
sister was what in those days was called a "Puseyite." Her opinions
were formed on the highest High Church model, and her Church opinions
made the greatest part, and indeed nearly the whole of her life.
Theodosia had no Church opinions at all, High or Low! All her mind and
interests were, at all events at that time, turned towards poetry
and art. Subsequently she interested herself keenly in political and
social questions, but had hardly at that time begun to do so. But she
made a conquest of my sister.
Indeed it would have been very difficult for any one to live in
the same house with her without loving her. She was so bright, her
sympathies so ready, her intelligence so large and varied, that day
after day her presence and her conversation were a continual delight;
and she was withal diffident of herself, gentle and unassuming to a
fault. My mother had already learned to love her truly as a daughter,
before there was any apparent probability of her becoming one.
We did not succeed in bearing down all the opposition that in the name
of ordinary prudence was made to our marriage, till the spring of
forty-eight. We were finally married on the 3rd of April in that
year, in the British Minister's chapel in Florence, in the quiet,
comfortable way in which we used to do such things in those days.
I told my good friend Mr. Plunkett (he had then become the English
representative at the Court of Tuscany), that I wanted to be married
the next day. "All right!" said he; "will ten o'clock do?" "Could not
be better!" "Very good! Tell Robbins [the then English clergyman] I'll
be sure to be there." So at ten the next morning we looked in at the
Palazzo Ximenes, and in about ten minutes the business was done!
Of Mr. Robbins, who was as kind and good a little man as could be, I
may note, since I have been led to speak of him, the following rather
singular circumstance. He was, as I have been told, the son of a
Devonshire farmer, and his two sisters were the wives of two of the
principal Florentine nobles, one having married the Marchese Inghirami
and the other the Marchese Bartolomei. What circumstances led to the
accomplishment of a destiny apparently so strange for the family of a
Devonshire farmer, I never heard. The clergyman and his sisters were
all much my seniors.
After the expeditious ceremony we all--about half a score of us--went
off to breakfast at the house of Mr. Garrow in the Piazza di Santa
Maria Novella, and before noon my wife and I were off on a ramble
among the Tuscan cities.