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?’