The year following these studies under Count Usedom I was living in London, and met Mazzini one evening by special invitation alone at the house of Mr. and Mrs. James Stansfeld (I speak of Mr. Stansfeld’s first wife, sister of Madame Venturi). After dinner our hosts left us alone, and Mazzini, whom I had often met before and who was always very good to me, asked me if I would listen to his version of the recent history of Italy, since he thought I had been much misinformed on the subject? Of course I could only express my sense of the honour he did me by the proposal; and then, somewhat to my amazement and amusement, Mazzini descended from his armchair, seated himself opposite me cross-legged on the magnificent white rug before Mrs. Stansfeld’s blazing fire, and proceeded to pour out,—I believe for quite two hours,—the entire story of all that went before and after the siege of Rome, his Triumvirate, and the subsequent risings, plots and battles. If any one could have taken down that wonderful story in shorthand it would possess immense value, and I regret profoundly that I did not at least attempt, when I went home, to write my recollections of it. But I was merely bewildered. Each event which Mazzini named,—sitting so coolly there on the rug at my feet:—“I sent an army here, I ordered a rising there,” appeared under an aspect so entirely different from that which it had borne as represented to me by my political friends in Italy, that I was continually mystified, and asked: “But Signor Mazzini, are you talking of such and such an event?”—“Ma sì, Signora”—and off he would go again with vivid and eloquent explanations and descriptions, which fairly took my breath away. At last (I believe it was near midnight), Mrs. Stansfeld, who had, of course, arranged this effort for my conversion to Italian Republicanism, returned to the drawing-room; and I fear that the truly noble-hearted man who had done me so high a favour, rose disappointed from his lowly rug! He said to me at another time: “You English, who are blessed with loyal sovereigns, cannot understand that one of our reasons for being Republicans is, that we cannot trust our Kings and Grand Dukes an inch. They are each one of them a Rè Traditore!” One could quite concede that a constitutional government under a traitor-prince would not hold out any prospect of success; but at all events Victor Emanuel and Umberto have completely exonerated themselves from such suspicions.
To return to Italy and the men I know there. Count Usedom’s reference to Napoleon’s Coup d’état reminds me of the clever saying which I have quoted elsewhere, of a greater diplomatist than he; Cavaliere Massimo d’ Azeglio. Talking with him, as I had the privilege of doing every day for many months at the table d’hôte in the hotel where we both spent a winter in Pisa, I made some remark about the mistake of founding Religion on histories of Miracles. “Ah, les miracles!” exclaimed D’ Azeglio; “je n’en crois rien! Ce sont des coups d’état célestes!” Could the strongest argument against them have been more neatly packed in one simile? A coup d’état is a practical confession that the regular and orderly methods of Government have failed in the hands of the Governor, and that he is driven to have recourse to irregular and lawless methods to compass his ends and vindicate his sovereignty. A coup d’état is like the act of an impatient chess player who, finding himself losing the game while playing fairly, sweeps some pieces from the board to recover his advantage. Is this to be believed of Divine rule of the universe?
D’ Azeglio was one of those men, of whom I have met about a dozen in life, who impressed me as having in their characters elements of real greatness; not being merely clever or gifted, but large-souled. When I knew him he was a fallen Statesman, an almost forgotten Author, a General on the shelf, a Prime Minister reduced to living in a single room at an hotel, without a secretary or even a valet; yet he was the cheeriest Italian I ever knew. His spirits never seemed to falter. He was the life of our table every day, and I used to hear him singing continually over his watercolour drawing in his room adjoining mine at the Gran’ Bretagna, on the dull Lung-Arno of Pisa. The fate of Italy, which still hung in suspense, was, however, ever near his heart. One day it was talked over at the table d’hôte, and D’ Azeglio looked grave, and said: “We speak of this man and the other; but it is God who is making Italy!” It was so unusual a sentiment for an Italian gentleman to utter, that it impressed the listeners almost with awe. Another day, talking of Thackeray and the ugliness of his school of novelists, he observed: “It is all right to seek to express Truth. But why do these people always seem to think qu’il n’y a rien de vrai excepté le laid?” The reason,—I might have replied,—is, that it is extremely difficult to depict Beauty, and extremely easy to create Ugliness! Beauty means Proportion, Refinement, Elevation, Simplicity. How much harder it is to convey these truly, than Disproportion, Coarseness, Baseness, Duplicity? Since D’ Azeglio spoke we have gone on creating Ugliness and calling it Truth, till M. Zola has originated a literature in honour of Le Laid, and given us books like L’Assommoir in which it is perfected, almost as Beauty was of old in a statue of Praxiteles or in the Dresden Madonna.
One day that M. d’ Azeglio was doing me the honour of paying me a visit in my room, he narrated to me the following singular little bit of history. It seems that when he was Premier of Sardinia and Lord John Russell of England, the latter sent him through Lord Minto a distinct message,—“that he might safely undertake a certain line of policy, since, if a given contingency arose, England would afford him armed support.” The contingency did occur; but Lord Russell was unable to give the armed support which he had promised; “and this,” said D’ Azeglio, “caused my fiasco.” He resigned office, and, I think, then retired from public life; but some years later, being in England, he was invited to Windsor. There he happened to be laid up with a cold, and Lord Russell and Lord Minto, who were also guests at the castle, paid him a visit in his apartments. “Then,” said D’ Azeglio, “I turned on them both, and challenged them to say whether Lord Minto had not conveyed that message to me from Lord Russell, and whether he had not failed to keep his engagement? They did not attempt to deny that it was so.” D’ Azeglio (I understood him to say) had himself sent the Sardinian contingent to fight with our troops and the French in the Crimea, for the express and sole purpose of making Europe recognise that there was a Question d’Italie; (or possibly he spoke of this being the motive of the Minister who did so). Another remark which this charming old man made has remained very clearly on my memory for a reason to be presently explained. He observed, laughing: “People seem to think that Ministers have indefinite time at their disposal, but they have only 24 hours like other men, and they must eat and sleep and rest like the remainder of the human race. When I was Premier I calculated that dividing the subjects which demanded attention and the time I had to bestow on them, there were just three minutes and a-half on an average for ordinary subjects, and eight minutes for important ones! And if that be so in a little State like Piedmont, what must it be in the case of a Prime Minister of England? I cannot think how mortal man can bear the office!”
Many years afterwards I told this to an English Statesman, and he replied—with rather startling gaieté de cœur, considering the responsibilities for Irish murders then resting on his shoulders:—“Quite true, it is all a scuffle and a scramble from morning to night. If you had seen me two hours ago you would have found me listening to a very important dispatch read to me by one of my secretaries while I was dictating another, equally important; to another. All a scuffle and a scramble from morning to night!” Count Usedom told me that at one time he had been Minister of War in Prussia, and that he knew a great battle was imminent next day, the Prussian army having just come up with the enemy. He lay awake all night reflecting on the horrors of the ensuing fight; remembering that he had the power to telegraph to the General in command to stop it, and longing with all his soul to do so, but knowing that the act would be treachery to his country. Of this sort of anxiety I strongly suspect some statesmen have never felt a twinge.
It was at Florence in 1860 that I met Theodore Parker for the first time. After the letters of deep sympathy and agreement on religious matters which had passed between us, it was a strange turn of fate which brought him to die in Florence, and me to stand beside his death-bed and his grave. The world has, as is natural, passed on over the road which he did much to open, and his name is scarcely known to the younger generation; but looking back at his work and at his books again after thirty years, and when early enthusiasm has given place to the calm judgment of age, I still feel that Theodore Parker was a very great religious teacher and Confessor,—as Albert Reville wrote of him: “Cet homme fût un Prophète.” That is, he received the truths of what he called “Absolute Religion” at first hand in his own faithful soul, and spoke them out, fearless of consequences, with unequalled straightforwardness. He was not subtle-minded. He did not at all see obliquely round corners, as men like Cardinal Newman always seem to have done; nor estimate the limitations which his broad statements sometimes required. It would have been scarcely possible to have been both the man he was, and also a fine critic and metaphysician. But his was a clear, trumpet voice, to which many a freed and rejoicing spirit responded; and if he founded no sect or school, he did better. He infused into the religious life of England and America an element, hardly present before, of natural confidence in the absolute goodness of God independent of theologies. No man did more than he to awaken the Protestant nations from the hideous nightmare of an Eternal Hell, which within my own recollection, hovered over the piety of England. As he was wont himself to say, laughingly, he had “knocked the bottom out of hell!”
I will copy here some Notes of my only interviews with this honoured friend and teacher, to whom I owed so much:
“28th April. Saw Mr. Parker for the first time. He was lying in bed with his back to the light. Mrs. Parker brought me into the room. He took my hand tenderly and said in a low, hurried voice, holding it: ‘After all our wishes to meet, Miss Cobbe, how strange it is we should meet thus.’ I pressed his hand and he turned his eyes, which were trembling painfully and evidently seeing nothing, towards me and said, ‘You must not think you have seen me. This is not me, only the wreck of the man I was.’ Then, after a pause he added: ‘Those who love me most can only wish me a quick passage to the other world. Of course I am not afraid to die (he smiled as he spoke) but there was so much to be done!’ I said: ‘You have given your life to God and His truth as truly as any martyr of old.’ He replied: ‘I do not know; I had great powers committed to me, I have but half used them.’ I gave him a nosegay of roses and lily-of-the-valley. He smiled and touched the lily-of-the-valley, saying it was the sweetest of all flowers. I begged him, if his lodgings were not all he desired, to come to villa Brichieri” “April 29th. I was told on arriving that Mr. Parker had spoken very tenderly of my visit of the day before, but had said, ‘I must not see her often. It makes my heart swell too high. But you (to his wife) must see her every day. Remember there is but one Miss Cobbe in the world.’ Afterwards he told Dr. Appleton that he wanted him to get an inkstand for me as a last gift. [This inkstand I have used ever since.] He received me very kindly, but almost at once his mind wandered, and he spoke of ‘going home immediately.’ He asked what day of the week it was? I said: ‘This is the blessed day; it is Sunday.’ ‘Ah yes!’ he said, ‘It is a blessed day when one has got over the superstition of it. I will try to go to you to-morrow.’ (Of course this was utterly out of the question.) Then he looked at the lily of Florence which I had brought, and told him how I had got it down from one of the old walls for him, and he smiled the same sweet smile as yesterday, and touched the beautiful blue Iris, and soon seemed to sleep.” I called after this every day, generally twice a day, at the Pension Molini where he lay; but rarely could interchange a word. Parker’s friend, Dr. Appleton of Boston, who was faithfully attending him, sent for another friend, Prof. Desor, and they and the three ladies of the party nursed him, of course, devotedly. On the 10th May I saw him lying breathing quietly, while life ebbed gently. I returned to Bellosguardo and at eight o’clock in the evening Prof. Desor and Dr. Appleton came up to tell me he had passed peacefully away.