H.
17 Cropley Street, New North Road.
8th February [1847].
My dear Signor Rossetti,
To your MS. has happened what often happens to our Italian affairs: in trying to do good, one does harm. If we had waited patiently for that Italian traveller of mine of the 24th January, the MS. would at this date be in Paris. But, urged on by my own wishes, and also by the strong pressure, I seized the opportunity of an Englishman, Captain Boulton, and consigned the volume to him. He, as he said, was to leave on the following day. And, knowing nothing to the contrary, I supposed him to have departed, in fact; until, five or six days ago, becoming suspicious from the silence of my correspondents, and making active quest for the officer, I found that owing to some family incident or other he had deferred his departure, and had indeed gone off to the country—whence he writes that he will be leaving in seven days!!
You should, therefore, be under no alarm for the MS. Like yourself, I regret the delay, but it is not my fault. If, earlier than the seven days, I get an opportunity, I will see that the MS. goes off before the officer; if not, not.
I felt anxious to reply to you about the MS., as the matter of most importance. As to Ricciardi’s eight copies, please inform Ricciardi that one can’t tell a tourist, “Take with you a boxful of things”; that it is a miracle if I found some one to convey the eight; that, sooner or later, I shall find some one to convey the others; and that moreover I would not have undertaken, except for wishing to do a service to you whom I greatly esteem, to send off either the eight or the sixteen. Neither would I set going from Paris to London, and then from London to Paris, copies of my own performances, but would order them to be burned or given away.
And believe me ever
Your much attached and affectionate
Giuseppe Mazzini.