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But should any prosaic reader imagine that this little story is too melodramatic to be true, I refer him to the monograph, "Garibaldi the Patriot," by Alexandre Dumas, who got his data from the record written by Garibaldi, himself. Moreover, Anita, for it was she, told the tale to Madame Brabante, who in turn gave the facts to Margaret Fuller Ossoli.
We do not know Anita's last name. When she placed her foot in the stirrup of Garibaldi's saddle, she gave herself to him, body, mind and spirit, for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, through evil and good report, forever. By that act she left the past behind: even the name "Anita" was a name that Garibaldi gave her, and if he ever knew the story of her life before they met, he never thought it worth while to mention it. Probably he did not care—life for both of them really dated from the day they met. He was thirty-one, she was twenty- two.
When Garibaldi rode into camp, with the lady on the crupper, the six red-shirted ones in waiting were not surprised. They were never surprised at anything their master did. They believed in him as they believed in God—only more so. And so they asked no questions—for Garibaldi was one of the men that common men never interrogated.
"Break camp!" was the order, and in ten minutes they were on the march, two men trailing a mile behind as a rear-guard. At midnight they were safely aboard the good ship "Mazzini."
Anita proved herself a worthy mate for Garibaldi. She was the first woman to wear a Garibaldi waist, although for the most part she wore men's clothes, with two pistols in her belt and a rifle in her hands, and wherever Joseph went, there went Anita. She was his servant, his slave, his comrade, his wife. Read his autobiography and you will find how lasting, loyal and tender his devotion was toward her. He was a fatalist—a man without fear—and many times when surrounded by an overwhelming foe, he simply bided his time and fought his way through to safety. "When other men are ready to surrender, I hold fast," he said. When once cut off by four soldiers of the enemy, and they approached with loaded rifles and bayonets fixed, he drew his sword and shouted, "I am Garibaldi—you are my prisoners!" and down went the rifles.
At another time he and Anita were caught by a band of forty troopers in a log cabin in a clearing. They flung open the door, and standing, one on each side, showed only the long glittering point of a spear across the doorway. The enemy demanded a parley, but finally, not knowing the number of persons inside, and realizing that a charge meant death for two of the company, they withdrew. Silence and the unknown are the only things really terrible.
And so Joseph and Anita lived and loved and fought, and incidentally studied the few books which they possessed, and at odd times wrote poetry. A year after that first ride on the back of the horse that carried double, a son was born to them. A contemporary tells of seeing Anita riding horseback, the chubby babe carried like a papoose, looking out wonderingly at the world, which for him was just six months old. In three years this baby boy was riding behind his mother on the crupper, and another baby had come to do the papoose act.
So passed eight years of adventure by land and sea, in wood and vale, on mountain and plain. Garibaldi had given Brazil all the freedom she deserved—all she knew how to use. He was crowned as "The Hero of Montevideo," and could have taken a place high in the councils of the State. But across the sea he heard the rumble of battle going on in his beloved fatherland, and the dream of a United Italy was still vivid in his mind, and of course, vivid, too, in the mind of Anita. So they sailed away, taking with them a hundred of their loyal, loving men in the red shirts, who refused to be left behind. Arriving in Italy, Garibaldi went at once to the home of his mother, who had mourned him as lost and now received him as one risen from the dead. Anita and the children appealed to the good woman, and her heart went out to them, as if, indeed, they were all her own, loved into life.
When all at once, remembering her son's indifference for the Church, she asked when and where they were married, Joseph looked at Anita, and Anita looked at Joseph, and then they acknowledged that they had only been married by a sailor, who had said the ceremony as he remembered it, adding, "And may God have mercy on your souls." Hastily the mother packed them off to a priest, who administered the right of extreme marital unction, and charged them double fee on account of their carelessness. They paid the fee, laughing inwardly, but glad to relieve the mother of her qualms.