‘What is to come?’ ... The immediate future did not keep us long waiting.
As in the old epic poems while the hero is calmly resting on his laurels,
feasting or sleeping, Malice, Vengeance and Envy assemble in their gala
dress on storm-clouds of some sort; Vengeance and Envy brew a poison and
temper daggers, while Malice blows the bellows and whets the blades: so
it happened now in a form decorously adapted to our mild and peaceful
manners. In our day all this is done simply by men and not by allegorical
figures; they meet together in brightly lighted drawing-rooms instead of
in ‘the darkness of night,’ and are attended by powdered flunkeys instead
of by dishevelled Furies; the horrors and scenery of classical poems
and children’s pantomimes are replaced by simple peaceful playing with
marked cards, and magic is superseded by the everyday tricks of commerce
with which the honest shopkeeper selling some black-currant juice mixed
with spirits swears that it is port, and old port XXX, too, knowing that
though no one believes him, no one will take proceedings, or if any one
does, he will only fare the worse for it.
At the very time when Garibaldi called Mazzini his friend and teacher,
called him the first sower who had stood alone on the field when all were
sleeping about him, who, pointing out the way, had shown it to the young
warrior yearning to do battle for his country, and had become the leader
of the Italian people; at the very time when, surrounded by friends,
he looked at the weeping old Italian exile who repeated his ‘Lord, now
lettest Thou Thy servant ...’ and himself almost wept with him; at the
time when he confided to us his secret dread of the future, conspirators
were resolving at all costs to get rid of the awkward guest; and although
men grown old in diplomacy and intrigue, grey and decrepit in subterfuge
and hypocrisy, took part in the conspiracy, they played their game no
worse than the shopkeeper who sells his black-currant juice for old port
XXX on his word of honour.
The English Government never had invited nor sent for Garibaldi; that
is all nonsense invented by the ingenious journalists on the Continent.
The Englishmen who invited Garibaldi had nothing in common with the
Ministry; the assumption of a Government plan is as absurd as the subtle
observation of our _crétins_ that Palmerston gave Stansfeld a post in the
Admiralty just because the latter was a friend of Mazzini. Note that in
the most furious onslaughts upon Stansfeld and Palmerston there was no
word suggesting this in Parliament or in the English newspapers.
Such silliness would have provoked as much mirth as Urquhart’s accusation
that Palmerston was in receipt of pay from Russia. Chambers and the
others asked Palmerston whether Garibaldi’s visit would be disagreeable
to the Government. Palmerston answered, as was fitting for him to answer:
that it could not be disagreeable to the Government for General Garibaldi
to visit England, that the Government neither forbade his visit nor
invited it.
Garibaldi agreed to come with the object of raising the Italian question
in England once more and collecting enough money to begin a campaign in
the Adriatic and to win Victor Emmanuel by the accomplished fact.
That was all.
That Garibaldi would be received with ovations was very well known to
those who visited him and to all who desired him to come. But the aspect
it assumed among the common people was not expected.
At the news that the man ‘in the red shirt,’ the hero wounded by an
Italian bullet, was coming to visit them, the English people stirred
and fluttered their wings, unaccustomed to flight and stiff with heavy
and incessant toil. There was not only joy and love in this, there was
complaint, a murmur, a moan; the apotheosis of one was the condemnation
of others.
Remember my meeting with the shipwright from Newcastle. Remember that the
working men of London were the first who in their address intentionally
put the name of Mazzini side by side with that of Garibaldi.
At the present time the English aristocracy have nothing to fear from
their powerful down-trodden and undeveloped working class; moreover,
their vulnerable point is not in the direction of the European
revolution. But yet the character which the reception was taking was
extremely displeasing to them. What made the shepherds of the people most
wince at the working men’s peaceful agitation was that it was drawing
them out of the fitting order, was distracting them from the excellent,
moral, and, moreover, never-ending preoccupation with their daily bread,
from the lifelong hard labour to which not they, the masters, had doomed
them but our common Manufacturer, our Maker—the God of Shaftesbury, the
God of Derby, the God of the Sutherlands and the Devonshires—in His
incomprehensible wisdom and infinite mercy.
It never, of course, entered the heads of the real English aristocracy
to turn Garibaldi out; on the contrary, they tried to draw him away to
themselves, to hide him from the people in a cloud of gold, as ox-eyed
Hera was hidden whenever she sported with Zeus. They proposed to show him
kindness, to overwhelm him with food and drink, not to let him come to
himself nor to recover his senses nor to be one moment alone. Garibaldi
wants money: could those condemned by the mercy of our ‘Maker,’ the Maker
of Shaftesbury, Derby and Devonshire, to obscure and blessed poverty
collect much for him? We, they said, will throw him half a million—a
million—francs, half the betting on a horse at Epsom races, we will buy
him—
‘Estate and home and villa,
A hundred thousand in pure silver.’
We will buy him the rest of Caprera, we will buy him a wonderful yacht,
he is so fond of sailing about over the sea; and that he may not waste
his money on nonsense (by _nonsense_ understand the emancipation
of Italy), we will entail the estate, we will let him enjoy the
interest.[25] All these plans were carried out with the most brilliant
scenery and setting, but had little success. Garibaldi, like the moon on
a dull night, however the clouds were moved forward, hastened or changed,
shone out clear and bright and shed light on us below.
The aristocracy began to be a little embarrassed. The business men came
to their aid. Their interests were too immediate for them to think about
the moral consequences of the agitation; they wanted to control the
moment; they fancied one Caesar had frowned, the other looked sulky and
feared the Tories would take advantage of it. The scandalous Stansfeld
affair was bad enough already.
Fortunately, just at that time Clarendon had to make a pilgrimage to
the Tuileries! His business was of no great importance, he returned
immediately. Napoleon talked with him about Garibaldi and expressed
his satisfaction that the English people honours great men. Dronyn de
Lhuys[26] said—that is, he said nothing, but if he had, he would have
stammered:—
‘I was born near the Caucasus,[27]
Civis Romanus sum.’
The Austrian Ambassador did not even rejoice at the reception of the
_Umweltzungs_ General. Everything was arranged satisfactorily. But there
was an uneasy gnawing in some hearts.
The Ministers could not sleep at nights. The first whispered to the
second, the second to a friend of Garibaldi’s, a friend of Garibaldi’s to
a kinsman of Palmerston’s, to Lord Shaftesbury, and to a still greater
friend of his, Seeley; Seeley whispered to the surgeon Fergusson;
Fergusson, who cared nothing for his neighbour, was alarmed and wrote
letter after letter about Garibaldi’s illness. After reading them,
Gladstone was even more alarmed than the surgeon. Who could have imagined
that so much love and sympathy lies sometimes hidden under the portfolio
of the Ministry of Finance?...
The day after our festivity I went to London. At the railway station I
picked up the evening paper and read in large letters ‘Illness of General
Garibaldi,’ then the announcement that he was going in a day or two to
Caprera _without visiting a single other city_. Not being so nervously
sensitive as Shaftesbury, nor so anxious over the health of my friends
as Gladstone, I was not in the least troubled by the announcement in
the newspaper of the illness of a man whom I had seen the day before
perfectly well. Of course there are illnesses that run a very rapid
course—the Emperor Paul, for instance, was not long ill—but Garibaldi was
a long way from an _apoplectic stroke_, and if anything had happened to
him, one of our common friends would have let me know, and so it was easy
to guess that it was a deliberate plan, _un coup monté_.
It was too late to go to Garibaldi. I went to Mazzini’s and did not find
him in, then to the house of a lady from whom I learnt the chief facts
concerning the ministerial sympathy for the great man’s illness. While
I was there Mazzini arrived in a state such as I had never seen him in
before; there were tears in his eyes and in his voice.
From the speech uttered at the second meeting on Primrose Hill by Shaen
one can tell _en gros_ how it was done. The ‘conspirators’ were named
by him, and the circumstances described fairly accurately. Shaftesbury
went to take counsel with Seeley; Seeley as a practical man at once said
that they must have a letter from Fergusson; Fergusson was too polite a
man to refuse the letter. Armed with it, the conspirators went on Sunday
evening, the 17th of April, to Stafford House and deliberated what to do,
close to the room where Garibaldi was quietly sitting, eating grapes,
unaware that he was so ill, or that he was departing. At last the valiant
Gladstone undertook the difficult task, and, accompanied by Shaftesbury
and Seeley, went to Garibaldi’s room. Gladstone used to talk over whole
Parliaments, universities, corporations, deputations; it was easy for
him to talk over Garibaldi. Moreover, he carried on the conversation
in Italian, and did well, as in that way he talked without witnesses,
though there were four in the room. Garibaldi answered first that he
was quite well, but the Minister of Finance could not accept the chance
fact of his good health as an answer, and pointed out that according to
Fergusson he was ill, and confirmed this by the document in his hand.
At last Garibaldi, perceiving that something else was hidden under this
tender sympathy, asked Gladstone, Did all this mean that they wanted him
to go? Gladstone did not conceal from him that his presence added to the
complications of their already difficult position. ‘In that case I will
go,’ said Garibaldi.
Gladstone, softened, was alarmed at a too _conspicuous_ success and
suggested he should visit two or three towns and then depart for Caprera.
‘I cannot choose between the towns,’ answered Garibaldi, wounded, ‘and I
give you my word that within two days I shall be gone.’
On Monday there was a question asked in Parliament. The feather-headed
old Palmerston in one House and the fleet-footed pilgrim Clarendon in
the other explained everything with perfect candour. Clarendon assured
the peers that Napoleon had not asked for Garibaldi to be turned out.
Palmerston for his part was not at all desirous for his departure. He
was only anxious about his health ... and thereupon he entered into
all the details which a loving wife, or a doctor sent by an insurance
society, goes into—the hours of sleep and of dinner, the consequences of
his wound, his diet, the effects of excitement, his age. The sitting of
the House of Commons was turned into a consultation of physicians. The
Minister had recourse not to Chatham and Campbell but to therapeutics and
Fergusson, who had been so helpful in this difficult operation.
The legislative assembly decided that Garibaldi was ill. Towns and
villages, counties and banks are left entirely to self-government
in England. The Government, which jealously guards itself from every
suspicion of interference, which allows men to die of hunger every day
through fear of limiting the self-government of workhouses, which permits
whole populations to be worked to death and turned into _crétins_, was
suddenly transformed into a hospital-nurse. These statesmen abandoned the
helm of the great ship and babbled in hushed voices of the health of a
man who had not asked for their sympathy, and, uninvited, prescribed for
him the Atlantic Ocean and Sutherland’s Undine; the Minister of Finance
forgot his budget, his income-tax, his debit and credit, and turned
consulting physician. The Prime Minister laid this pathological case
before Parliament. But is self-government in the case of a man’s legs and
stomach less sacred than the freedom of charitable establishments whose
task is to lead men to the graveyard?
Not long before this Stansfeld had had to pay for not thinking himself
bound to quarrel with Mazzini because he was serving the Queen. And now
were not the most securely placed Ministers writing, not addresses, but
prescriptions and worrying themselves to prolong the days of another
revolutionary like Mazzini?
Garibaldi _ought_ to have been suspicious of the desire of the Government
expressed to him by over-ardent friends and to have remained. Could any
one have doubted the truth of the words of the Prime Minister, uttered to
the representatives of England? All his friends advised him to remain.
‘Palmerston’s words cannot relieve me of my promise,’ answered Garibaldi,
and told them to pack up.