highest, in London, during my recollection, was the man who probably
cared least about it, and who certainly never sought to win the favor of
fashion--I mean, of course, Garibaldi. To this day I am perfectly unable
to understand the demeanor of the British peerage toward Garibaldi, when
he visited London for a few days some years ago. The thing was utterly
unprecedented and inexplicable. The Peerage literally rushed at him. He
was beset by dukes, mobbed by countesses. He could not by any human
possibility have so divided his day as to find time for breakfasting and
dining with one-fifth of the noble hosts who fought and scrambled for
him. It was a perpetual torture to his secretaries and private friends
to decide between the rival claims of a Prime Minister and a Prince of
the blood; an Archbishop and a Duchess; the Lord Chancellor and the
leader of the Opposition. The Tories positively outdid the Whigs in the
struggle for the society of the simple seaman, the gallant guerilla. The
oddest thing about the business was, that three out of every four of
these noble personages had always previously spoken of Garibaldi--when
they did speak of him at all--with contempt and dislike, as a buccaneer
and a filibuster.
What did it mean? Was it a little comedy? Was it their fun? Was it a
political _coup de theatre_, to dodge the Radicals and the workingmen
out of their favorite hero? Certainly some of Garibaldi's friends
suspected something of the kind, and were utterly bewildered and
confounded by the unexpected rush of aristocratic admirers, who beset
the hero from the moment he touched the shore of England.
It was a strange sight, not easily to be forgotten, to see the manner in
which Garibaldi sat among the dukes and marchionesses--simple, sweet,
arrayed in the calm, serene dignity of a manly, noble heart. There was
something of Oriental stateliness in the unruffled, imperturbable, bland
composure, with which he bore himself amid the throng of demonstrative
and titled adulators. I do not think he believed in the sincerity of
half of it, any more than I did, but he showed no more sign of distrust
or impatience than he did of gratified vanity.
The thing ended in a quarrel between the Aristocracy and the Democracy,
between Belgravia and Clerkenwell, for the custody of the hero, and
Garibaldi escaped somehow back to his island during the squabble. But I
think Lady Palmerston let the mask fall for a moment, when, growing
angry at the assurance of Garibaldi's humbler friends, and perhaps a
little tired of the whole business, she told some gentlemen of my
acquaintance, that quite too much work had been made about a person who,
after all, was only a respectable brigand. This was said (and it _was_
said) at the very meridian of the day of noble homage to the Emancipator
of Sicily.
Garibaldi has never since returned to England. Should he ever do so, he
will find himself unembarrassed by the attentions of the Windsor uniform
and Order of the Garter. The play, however it was got up, or whatever
its object, was played out long ago. But the West End is, as a rule,
very fond of distinguished exiles, when they come and go quickly; and
Lord Palmerston's drawing-room was seldom without a representative of
the class. No man ever did less for any great cause than Lord Palmerston
did; but he liked brilliant exiles, and, perhaps, more particularly the
soldierly than the scholarly class. Such a man as the martial, dashing,
adventurous General Tuerr, for example, was the kind of refugee that Lord
and Lady Palmerston especially favored.
Many English peers have, indeed, quite a _specialite_ in the way of
patronizing exiles; but, of course, in all such cases the exile must
have a name which brings some gratifying distinction to his host. He
must be somebody worth pointing out to the other guests. I know that
many Continental refugees have chafed at all this, and some have
steadily held aloof from it, and declined to be shown off for the
admiration of a novelty-hunting crowd. Many, too, have been deceived by
it; have mistaken such idle attention for profound and practical
sympathy, and have thought that two or three peers and half a dozen
aristocratic petticoats could direct the foreign policy of England. They
have swelled with hope and confidence; have built their plans and based
their organizations on the faith that Park Lane meant the British
government, and that the politeness of a Cabinet Minister was as good as
the assistance of a British fleet; and have found out what idiots they
were in such a belief, and have gone nigh to breaking their hearts
accordingly. Indeed, the readiness of all classes in England to rush at
any distinguished exile, and become effusive about himself and his cause
is very often--or, at least, used to be--a cruel kindness, sure to be
misunderstood and to betray--a love that killed.
Nothing could, in its way, have been more unfortunate and calamitous
than the outburst of popular enthusiasm in England about the Polish
insurrection four years ago. Some of the Polish leaders living in London
were completely deceived by it, and finally believed that England was
about to take up arms in their cause. An agitation was got up, outside
the House of Commons, by an earnest, well-meaning gentleman, who really
believed what he said; and inside the House by a bustling, quickwitted,
political adventurer, who certainly ought not to have believed what he
said. This latter gentleman actually went out to Cracow, in Austrian
Poland, and was received there with wild demonstrations of welcome as a
representative of the national will of England and the precursor of
English intervention. The Polish insurrection went on; and England wrote
a diplomatic note, which Russia resented as a piece of impertinence; and
there England's sympathy ended. "I think," said a great English Liberal
to me, "that every Englishman who helped to encourage these poor Poles
and give them hope of English help, has Polish blood on his hands." I
think so, too.
I have always thought that Felice Orsini was in some sort a victim to
the kind of delusion which English popularity so easily fosters. I met
Orsini when he came to England, not very long before the unfortunate and
criminal attempt of the Rue Lepelletier; and I was much taken, as most
people who met him were, by the simplicity, sweetness, and soldierly
frankness of his demeanor. He delivered some lectures in London,
Manchester, Liverpool, and other large towns, on his own personal
adventures--principally his escape from prison--and though he had but a
moderate success as a lecturer, he was surrounded everywhere by
well-meaning and sympathizing groups, the extent of whose influence and
the practical value of whose sympathy he probably did not at first quite
understand. He certainly had, at one time, some vague hopes of obtaining
for the cause of Italian independence a substantial assistance from
England. A short experience cured him of that dream; and I fancy it was
then that he formed the resolution which he afterward attempted so
desperately to carry out. I think, from something I heard him say once,
that Mazzini had endeavored to enlighten him as to the true state of
affairs in England, and the real value of the sort of sympathy which
London so readily offers to any interesting exile. But I do not believe
Mazzini's advice had much influence over Orsini. Indeed, the latter, at
the time I saw him, had but little respect for Mazzini. He spoke with
something like contempt of the great conspirator. It would have been
well for Orsini if he had, in one thing at least, followed the counsels
of Mazzini. People used to say, some years ago, that odious and
desperate as Orsini's attempt was, it at least had the merit of
frightening Louis Napoleon into active efforts on behalf of Italy. There
was so much about Orsini that was worthy and noble that one would be
glad to regard him as even in his crime the instrument of good to the
country he loved so well. But documentary and other evidence has made
it clear since Orsini's death that the negotiations which ended in
Solferino and Villafranca were begun before Orsini had ever planned his
murderous enterprise. The fact is, that, during the Crimean war, Cavour
first tried England on the subject, through easy-going and heedless Lord
Clarendon--who hardly took the trouble to listen to the audacious
projects of his friend--and then turned to France, where quicker and
shrewder ears listened to what he had to say.
I have spoken of Orsini's contempt for Mazzini. Such a feeling toward
such a man seems quite inexplicable. Many men detest Mazzini; many men
distrust him; many look up to him as a prophet, and adore him as a
chief; but I am not able to understand how any one can think of him with
mere contempt. For myself, I find it impossible to contemplate without
sadness and without reverence that noble, futile career; that majestic,
melancholy dream. But it must be owned that an atmosphere of illusion
sheds itself around Mazzini wherever he goes. I believe the man himself
to be the very soul of truth and honor; and yet I protest I would not
take, on any political question, the unsupported testimony of any
devotee of Mazzini to any fact whatsoever. Mazzini's own faith is so
sublimely transcendental, so utterly independent of realities and of
experience, that I sincerely believe the visions of the opium-eater are
hardly less to be relied on than the oracles and opinions of the great
Italian. And yet the force of his character, the commanding nature of
his genius, are such that his followers become more Mazzinian than
Mazzini himself. There is something a good deal provoking about the
manner of the minor followers of Mazzini. I mean in England. I do not
speak of such men as my friend, Mr. Stansfeld, now a Lord of the
Treasury, or my friend, Mr. P. A. Taylor, M. P. These are men of ability
and men of the world, whose enthusiasm and faith, even at their highest,
are under the control of practical experience and the discipline of
public life. But I speak of the minor and less responsible admirers, the
men and women who accept oracle as fact, aspiration as experience, the
dream as the reality. The calm, self-satisfied way in which they deal
with contemporary history, with geography, with statistics, with
possibilities and impossibilities, in the hope of making you believe
what they firmly believe--that Italy could, if only she had proclaimed
herself Republican, have driven the Austrians into the sea in 1859, and
the French across the Alps in 1860, while at the same time quietly
kicking Pope, Bourbon, and Savoy out of throned existence. The confident
and imperturbable assurance with which they can do all this--and I have
never met with any genuine devotee of Mazzini who could not--is
something to make one bewildered rather than merely impatient. For it is
true in politics as in literature or in fashion, the admiring imitator
reproduces only the defects, the weaknesses, the mannerisms and mistakes
of the original. Mazzini himself is, I need hardly say, a singularly
modest and retiring man. While he lived in London, he shrank from all
public notice, and was seen only by his friends and followers. He sought
out nobody. "Sir," said Mr. Gladstone, addressing the Speaker of the
House of Commons, one night, when a fierce and factious attack was made
on Mr. Stansfeld as a follower of the great exile, "I never saw Signor
Mazzini." Yet Gladstone was by far the most prominent and influential of
all the English sympathizers with the cause of Italian liberty. One
would have thought it impossible for such a man as Mazzini to live for
years in the same city with Gladstone without the two ever chancing to
meet. But for the modest seclusion and shrinking way of Mazzini, such a
thing would, indeed, have been impossible.
Louis Blanc is, perhaps, the only Revolutionary exile who, in my time,
has been everywhere and permanently popular in London society. The fate
of a political exile in a place like London usually is to be a lion
among one clique and a _bete noir_ in another. But Louis Blanc has been
accepted and welcomed everywhere, although he has never compromised or
concealed one iota of his political opinions. I think one explanation,
and, perhaps, _the_ explanation of this somewhat remarkable phenomenon,
is to be found in the fact that Louis Blanc never for an hour played the
part of a conspirator. He seems to have honorably construed his place in
English society to be that of one to whom a shelter had been given, and
who was bound not to make any use of that shelter which could embarrass
his host. In London he ceased to be an active politician. He refused to
exhibit himself _en victime_. He appealed to no public pity. He made no
parade of defeat and exile. He went to work steadily as a literary man,
and he had the courage to be poor. When he appeared in public it was
simply as a literary lecturer. He was not very successful in that
capacity. At least, he was not what the secretary of a lyceum would call
a success. He gave a series of lectures on certain phases of society in
Paris before the great Revolution, and they were attended by all the
best literary men in London, who were, I think, unanimous in their
admiration of the power, the eloquence, the brilliancy which these
pictures of a ghastly past displayed. But the general public cared
nothing about the _salons_ where wit, and levity, and wickedness
prepared the way for revolution; and I heard Louis Blanc pour out an
_apologia_ (I don't mean an apology) for Jean Jacques Rousseau in
language of noble eloquence, and with dramatic effect worthy of a great
orator, in a small lecture-room, of which three-fourths of the space was
empty. Since that time he has delivered lectures occasionally at the
request of mechanics' institutions and such societies; but he has not
essayed a course of lectures on his own account. Everyone knows him;
everyone likes him; everyone admires his manly, modest character and his
uncompromising Republicanism. Lately he has lived more in Brighton than
in London; but wherever in England he happens to be, he lives always as
a simple citizen; has never been raved about like Kossuth, or denounced
like Mazzini; and has occupied himself wholly with his historical labors
and his letters to a Paris newspaper.
Another exile of distinction who lived for years in London apart from
politics and heedless of popular favor was Ferdinand Freiligrath, the
German poet. Freiligrath had to leave Prussia because of his political
poems and writings. He had undergone one prosecution and escaped
conviction, but Prussia was not then (twenty years ago) a country in
which to run such risks too often. So Freiligrath went to Amsterdam and
thence to London. He lived in London for many years, and acted as
manager of a Swiss banking-house. His life was one of entire seclusion
from political schemes or agitations. He did not even, like his
countryman and friend, Gottfried Kinkel, take any part in public
movements among the Germans in London--and he certainly never went about
society and the newspapers blowing his own trumpet, and keeping his name
always prominent, like the egotistical and inflated Karl Blind. Indeed,
so complete was Freiligrath's retirement that many Englishmen living in
London, who delighted in some of his poems--his exquisite, fanciful,
melodious "Sand Songs" his glowing Desert poems, his dreamy, delightful
songs of the sea, and his burning political ballads--were quite amazed
to find that the poet himself had been a resident of their own city for
nearly half a lifetime. Freiligrath has now at last returned to his own
country. His countrymen invited him home, and raised a national tribute
to enable him to give up his London engagement and withdraw altogether
from a life of mere business. In a letter I lately received from
Freiligrath's daughter (a young lady of great talent and
accomplishments, recently married in London), I find it mentioned that
Freiligrath expected soon to receive a visit from Longfellow in
Germany--the first meeting of these two old friends for a period of some
five-and-twenty years.
Alexander Herzen, the famous Russian exile, the wittiest of men, endowed
with the sharpest tongue and the best nature, has left us. For many
years he lived in London and published his celebrated _Kolokol_--"The
Bell," which rang so ominously and jarringly in the ears of Russian
autocracy. He has now set up his staff in Geneva, a little London in its
attractiveness to exiles; and his arrowy, flashing wit gleams no longer
across the foreign world of the English metropolis. I do not know how
long Herzen had lived in London, but I fancy the difficulties of the
English language must have proved insurmountable to him--a strange
phenomenon in the case of a Russian. Certainly he never, so far as I am
aware, either spoke or wrote English.
The latest exile of great mark whom we had among us in London was
General Prim. When his attempt at revolution in Spain failed some two
years ago, Prim went into Belgium. There some pressure was brought to
bear upon him by the Ministry, in consequence, no doubt, of certain
pressure brought to bear by France, and Prim left Brussels and came to
live in London. He lived very quietly, made no show of himself in any
way, and was no doubt hard at work all the time making preparation for
what has since come to pass. To all appearance he had an easy and
careless sort of life, living out among his private friends, going to
the races and going to the opera. But he was incessantly planning and
preparing; and he told many Englishmen candidly what he was preparing
for. There were many men in London who were looking out for the Spanish
Revolution months before it came, on the faith of Prim's earnest
assurances that it was coming. So much has of late been written about
Prim that his personal appearance and manner must be familiar to most
readers of newspapers and magazines. I need only say that there is in
private much less of the _militaire_ about him than one who had not
actually met him would be inclined to imagine. He is small, neat, and
even elegant in dress, very quiet and perhaps somewhat languid in
manner, looking wonderfully young for his years, and without the
slightest tinge of the Leicester square foreigner about him. He is
rather the foreigner of Regent street and the stalls of the opera
house--any one who knows London will at once understand the difference.
Prim impressed me with a much greater respect for his intellect, even
from a literary man's point of view, than I had had before meeting and
conversing with him. I think those who regard him as a mere _sabreur_,
the ordinary Spanish leader of a successful military revolution, are
mistaken. His animated and epigrammatic conversation seemed to me to be
inspired and guided by an intellectual depth and a power of observation
and reflection such as I at least was not prepared to find in the
dashing soldier of the Moorish campaign.
There is one class of the obscure exiles, different from both the
favored and the poorest, whose existence has often puzzled me. A
political question of moment begins to disturb the European continent.
Immediately there turns up in London, and presents himself at your door
(supposing you are a journalist with acknowledged sympathies for this or
that side of the question) a mysterious and generally shabby-looking
personage, who professes to know all about it, and volunteers to supply
you with the most authentic information and the most trustworthy
"appreciation" of any events that may transpire. He wants no money; his
information is given for the sake of "the cause." You ask for
credentials, and he produces recommendations which quite satisfy you
that his objects are genuine, although, oddly enough, the persons who
recommend him do not seem to have anything whatever to do with the cause
he represents. He comes, for example, to talk about the affairs of
Roumania, and he brings letters and vouchers from literary friends in
Paris. He professes to be an emissary from the Cretans, and his
recommendations are from a Manchester cotton-firm. Anyhow, you are
satisfied; you ask no explanations; you assume that your Paris or
Manchester friends have enlarged the sphere of their sympathies since
you saw them last, and you repose confidence in your new acquaintance.
You are right. He brings you information, the most rapid, the most
surprising, the most accurate. Such a man I knew during the
Schleswig-Holstein agitation, which ended in the Danish war of four
years since. He was a Prussian--a waif of the Berlin rising of 1848. Was
he in the confidence of Von Beust, and Bismarck, and Palmerston, and all
the rest of them? I venture to doubt it; yet if he had been, he could
hardly have been more quick and accurate in all the information he
brought me. Evening after evening he brought a regular minute of the
proceedings of the day at the Conference of London, which was sitting
with closed doors, and pledged to profoundest secrecy. Perhaps this was
only guesswork! Here is one illustration. The Conference was held
because some of the European Great Powers, England and France
especially, desired to save Denmark from a struggle against the
immeasurably superior force of Prussia and Austria. A certain proposal
was to be made to the Conference by England and France on the part of
Denmark. So much we all knew. One evening my friend came to me, and bade
me announce to the world that the proposal had been made that day, and
indignantly rejected--by Denmark! The story seemed preposterous, but I
relied on my friend. Next day I was laughed at; my news was denounced
and repudiated. The day after it was proved to be true--and Denmark went
to war.
The last time I saw my friend was in the spring of 1866. He came to tell
me that Prussia had resolved--at least that Bismarck had resolved--on
war with Austria. "Stick to that statement," he said, "whatever anybody
may say to the contrary--unless Bismarck resigns." I took his advice. At
this time I am convinced that the English government had not the least
idea that a war was really coming. The war came; but I never saw my
friend any more.
Another of my mysterious acquaintances was an old, white-haired, grave,
placid man who turned up in London during the early part of the French
occupation of Mexico. He was a passionate Republican and
anti-Bonapartist. He was a friend and apparently a confidant of Juarez,
and was thoroughly identified with the interests of the Republicans in
Mexico, although himself a Frenchman. I doubt whether I have ever met
with a finer specimen of the courtly old gentleman, the class now
beginning to disappear even in France, than this mysterious friend of
the Mexican Republic. He might have been fresh from the Faubourg St.
Germain, such was the grave, dignified, and somewhat melancholy grace of
his courtly bearing. Yet he had evidently lived long in Mexico, and he
was an ardent Republican of the red tinge; there was something of the
old _militaire_ about him, too, which lent a certain strength to his
bland and placid demeanor. I never quite knew what he was doing in
London. He was not what is called an "unofficial representative" of
Juarez (at this time diplomatic relations between England and Mexico
were of course broken off) for he never seemed to go near any of our
ministers or diplomatists, and his only object appeared to be to supply
accurate information to one or two Liberal journals which he believed
to be honestly inclined toward the right side of every question. His
information was always accurate, his estimate of a critical situation
was always justified by further knowledge and the progress of events,
his predictions always came true. He looked like a poor man, indeed,
like a needy man; yet he never seemed to want for money, and he neither
sought nor would have any compensation for the constant and valuable
information he afforded. His knowledge of European and American politics
was profound; and though he spoke not one word of English he seemed to
understand all the daily details of our English political life. He was a
constant visitor to me (always at night and late) during the progress of
the Mexican struggle. When the Mexican Empire was nearly played out he
came and told me the end was very, very near, and that in the event of
Maximilian's being captured it would be impossible for Juarez to spare
his life. He did not tell me that he was at once returning to Mexico,
but I presume that he did immediately return, for that was the last I
saw or heard of him.