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?’