In another letter conveying a similar invitation he says, with his usual bitterness and injustice as regards America:
“Be brave my dear lady. Hoist the American flag. Barbarise your manners. Dissyntax your language. Fling a thick mantle over your lively spirits, and become the fust of American women. You will always remain a bright vision in my recollection. Do not forget me. Call me Butler’s Hudibras. Any appellation provided I am not forgotten.”
Among the residents in Clifton and at Stoke Bishop over the Downs I had many kind friends, some of whom helped me essentially in my work by placing tickets for hospitals and money in my hands for the poor. One of these whom I specially recall with gratitude was that ever zealous moral reformer, Mrs. Woolcott Browne, who is still working bravely with her daughter for many good causes in London. I must not write here without permission of the many others whose names have not come before the public, but whose affectionate consideration made my life very pleasant, and whom I ever remember with tender regard. Of one excellent couple I may venture to speak,—Dr. and Mrs. Goodeve of Cook’s Folly. Mrs. Goodeve herself told me their singular and beautiful story, and since she and her husband are now both dead, I think I may allow myself to repeat it.
Dr. Goodeve was a young medical man who had just married, and was going out to seek his fortune in India, having no prospects in England. As part of their honeymoon holiday the young couple went to visit Cook’s Folly; then a small, half-ruinous, castellated building, standing in a spot of extraordinary beauty over the Avon, looking down the Bristol Channel. As they were descending the turret-stair and taking, as they thought, a last look on the loveliness of England, the young wife perceived that her husband’s head was bent down in deep depression. She laid her hand on his shoulder and whispered “Never mind, Harry? You shall make a fortune in India and we will come back and buy Cook’s Folly.”
They went to Calcutta and were there most kindly received by a gentleman named Hurry, who edited a newspaper and whose own history had been strange and tragic. Started in his profession by his interest, Dr. Goodeve soon fell into good practice, and by degrees became a very successful physician, the founder (I believe) of the existing Medical College of Calcutta. Going on a shooting party, his face was most terribly shattered by a chance shot which threatened to prove mortal, but Mrs. Goodeve, without help or appliances, alone with him in a tent in a wild district, pulled him back to life. At last they returned to England, wealthy and respected by all, and bringing a splendid collection of Indian furniture and curios. The very week they landed, Cook’s Folly was advertised to be sold! They remembered it well,—went to see it,—bought it—and rebuilded it; making it a most charming and beautiful house. A peculiarity of its structure as remodelled by them was, that there was an entire suite of rooms,—a large library overlooking the river Avon, bedroom, bathroom and servant’s room,—all capable of being shut off from the rest of the house, by double doors, so that the occupant might be quite undisturbed. When everything was finished, and splendidly furnished, the Goodeves wrote to Mr. Hurry: “It is time for you to give up your paper and come home. You acted a father’s part to us when we went out first to India. Now come to us, and live as with your son and daughter.”
Mr. Hurry accepted the invitation and found waiting for him and his Indian servant the beautiful suite of rooms built for him, and the tenderest welcome. I saw him often seated by their fireside just as a father might have been. When the time came for him to die, Mrs. Goodeve nursed him with such devoted care, and strained herself so much in lifting and helping him, that her own health was irretrievably injured, and she died not long afterwards.
I could write more of Bristol and Clifton friends, high and low, but must draw this chapter of my life to a close. I went to Bristol an utter stranger, knowing no human being there. I left it after a few years all peopled, as it seemed to me, with kind souls; and without one single remembrance of anything else but kindness received there either from gentle or simple.
CHAPTER
XIV.
ITALY. 1857–1879.
I visited Italy six times between the above dates. The reader need not be wearied by reminiscences of such familiar journeyings, which, in my case, were always made quickly through France, (a country which I intensely dislike) and extended pretty evenly over the most beautiful cities of Italy. I spent several seasons in Rome and Florence, and a winter in Pisa; and I visited once, twice or three times, Venice, Bologna, Naples, Perugia, Assisi, Verona, Padua, Genoa, Milan and Turin. The only interest which these wanderings can claim belongs to the people with whom they brought me into contact, and these include a somewhat remarkable list: Mr. and Mrs. Browning, Mrs. Somerville, Theodore Parker, Walter Savage Landor, Massimo d’ Azeglio, John Gibson, Charlotte Cushman, Count Guido Usedom, Adolphus Trollope and his first wife, Mr. W. W. Story, and Mrs. Beecher Stowe. Of many of these I gave slight sketches in my book, Italics; and must refer to them very briefly here. That book, I may mention, was written principally at Villa Gnecco, a beautiful villa at Nervi on the Riviera di Levante, then rented by my kind friend Count Usedom, the Prussian Ambassador and his English wife. Count Guido Usedom,—now alas! gone over to the majority,—was an extremely cultivated man, who had been at one time Secretary to Bunsen’s Embassy in Rome. He was so good as to undertake what I may call my (Italian) Political Education; instructing me not only of the facts of recent history, but of the dessous des cartes of each event as they were known to the initiated. He placed all his despatches for many years in my hands, and explained the policy of each nation concerned; and even taught me the cryptographs then in diplomatic use. His own letters to his King, the late Emperor Wilhelm I., were lively and delightful sketches of Italian affairs; for, as he said, he had discovered that to induce the King to read them they must be both amusing and beautifully transcribed. From him and the Prefects and other influential men who came to visit him at Villa Gnecco, I gained some views of politics not perhaps unworthy of record.
One day I asked him, “Whether it were exactly true that Cavour had told a distinct falsehood in the Chambers about Garibaldi’s invasion of Naples?” Count Usedom replied, “He did; and I do not believe there is a statesman in Europe who would not have done the same when a kingdom was in question.” He obviously thought, (scrupulously conscientious as he was himself) that, to diplomatists in general and their sovereigns, the laws of morality and honour were like ladies’ bracelets, highly ornamental and to be worn habitually, but to be slipped off when any serious work was to be done which required free hands. He said: “People (especially women) often asked me is such a King a good man? Is Napoleon III. a good man? This is nonsense. They are all good men, in so far that they will not do a cruel, or treacherous, or unjust thing without strong reasons for it. That would be not only a crime but a blunder. But when great dynastic interests are concerned, Kings and Emperors and their ministers are neither guided by moral considerations or deterred from following their interests because a life, or many lives, stand in the way.” He adduced Napoleon III.’s Coup d’état as an example. Napoleon was not a man to indulge in any cruel or vindictive sentiment; but neither was he one to forego a step needed for his policy.