On reaching London next day I began by hiring a carriage with a pair
of sturdy horses and driving to Stafford House. When I went up to
Garibaldi’s room he was not in it, but the zealous Italian was already
desperately expounding the utter impossibility of driving to Teddington.
‘Can you suppose,’ he was saying to Guerzoni, ‘that the duke’s horses can
take him for twelve or thirteen miles there and then back again? Why,
they simply would not let him have them for such a journey.’
‘There is no need, I have a carriage.’
‘But what horses will bring him back? The same?’
‘Don’t be anxious; if the horses are tired they can put in fresh ones.’
Guerzoni said to me with fury: ‘Where will it end? This is slavery; every
wretched little cur gives orders and intrigues.’
‘I don’t know whether you are referring to me,’ the Italian shouted, pale
with rage, ‘I sir, will not allow myself to be treated like a flunkey,’
and he snatched up a pencil on the table, broke it and threw it away. ‘If
that is how it is, I will give it all up and will leave you at once.’
‘That is just what we ask you to do.’
The zealous Italian strode rapidly towards the door, but Garibaldi
appeared in the doorway, looked calmly at them and at me, and then said:
‘Isn’t it time to start? I am at your disposal, only please bring me back
to London by half-past two or three o’clock; and now, allow me to receive
an old friend who has only just arrived. Perhaps you are acquainted with
him—Mordini?’
‘More than acquainted, we are friends. If you have nothing against it, I
will invite him too.’
‘We will take him with us.’
Mordini came up; I moved away to the window with Saffi. All at once the
factotum, changing his mind, ran up to me and boldly asked me: ‘Excuse
me, I don’t understand. You have a carriage and your party is—reckon up:
the General, you, Menotti, Guerzoni, Saffi and Mordini.... How will you
sit?’
‘If necessary, we will have another carriage—two....’
‘But is there time to get them...?’
I looked at him, and turning to Mordini said to him: ‘Mordini, I want to
ask Saffi and you to do something. Take a hansom and drive at once to
Waterloo Station. You will catch the train there, for this gentleman is
afraid that there won’t be room for us all and that there is no time to
send for another carriage. Had I known yesterday that there would have
been these difficulties I would have asked Garibaldi to come by train,
but now that won’t do, because I can’t answer for our finding a cab or a
carriage at Teddington Station. And I don’t want to make him walk to my
house.’
‘Delighted; we will go at once,’ answered Saffi and Mordini.
‘Let us go too,’ said Garibaldi, getting up.
We went out; a dense crowd had already gathered before Stafford House,
and a loud, prolonged ‘Hurrah!’ greeted and accompanied our carriage.
Menotti could not come with us, he was going with his brother to Windsor.
I was told that the Queen, who was longing to see Garibaldi, but who
alone in all Great Britain had not the right to do so, desired an
_accidental_ meeting with his sons. In this division the lion’s share
certainly was not the Queen’s.
3