When Garibaldi was at Brooke House, Isle of Wight, I was deputed by the Society of the Friends of Italy to accompany Mazzini to meet Garibaldi. Herzen, the Russian, who kept the "Kolokol" ringing in the dominions of the Czar, met us at Southampton. The meeting with Garibaldi took place at the residence of Madame Nathan. The two heroes had not met in London when the General was a guest of the Duke of Sutherland. As soon as Garibaldi saw Mazzini, he greeted him in the old patois of the lagoons of Genoa. It affected Mazzini, to whom it brought back scenes of their early career, when the inspiration of Italian freedom first began.
Mrs. Nathan, wife of the Italian banker of Cornhill, was an intrepid lady, true to the freedom of her country, who had assisted Garibaldi and Mazzini in many a perilous enterprise. After the interview at her house, she had occasion to consult Garibaldi on matters of moment. Misled or deterred by aspersion, which every lady had to suffer, suspected of patriotic complicity, Mrs. Nathan was not invited to Brooke House. Under these circumstances she could not go alone to see the General, and she asked me to take her. Offering her my arm, we walked through the courtyard and along the corridors of the house to Garibaldi's rooms. Going and returning from her interview, I was much struck by the queenly grace and self-possession of Mrs. Nathan's manner. There was neither disquietude nor consciousness in her demeanour of the disrespect of not being invited to Brooke House, though her residence was known.
On the night of Garibaldi's arrival at Brooke House, Mr. Seely, the honoured host of the General, invited me to join the dinner party, where I heard things said on some matters, which the speakers could not possibly know to be true. Garibaldi showed no traces of excitement, which had dazed so many at Southampton that afternoon. The vessel which brought him there was immediately boarded by a tumultuous crowd of visitors. All the reporters of the London and provincial press were waiting for the vessel to be sighted, and they were foremost in the throng on the ship. Before them all was Mrs. Colonel Chambers, with her beseeching eyes, large, luminous and expressive, and difficult to resist. Garibaldi gave instant audience to Joseph Cowen, whose voice alone, or chiefly, influenced him. Years before, when Garibaldi was unknown, friendless, and penniless, he turned his bark up the Tyne to visit Mr. Cowen, the only Englishman from whom he would ask help. Garibaldi's first day at Southampton was more boisterous than a battle. Everybody wanted him to go everywhere. Houses where his name had never been heard were now open to him. Mr. Seely was known to be his friend. The Isle of Wight was near. Brooke House lay out of the way of the "madding crowd," and there his friends would have time to arrange things for him. The end of his visit to England was sudden, unforeseen, inexplicable both to friend and foe, at the time and for long after.
He had accepted engagements to appear in various towns in England, where people would as wildly greet him as the people of London had done. When it was announced that he had left England, it was believed that the Emperor of the French had incited the Government to prevail upon Garibaldi to leave the country. Others conjectured that Mr. Gladstone had whispered something to him which had caused the Italian hero to depart. I asked about it from one who knew everything that took place—Sir James Stansfeld—and from him I learned that no foreign suggestion had been made, that nothing whatever had been said to Garibaldi. His leaving was entirely his own act. He had reason to believe that Louis Napoleon was capable of anything; but with all his heroism, Garibaldi was imaginative and proud He fancied his presence in England was an embarrassment to the Government. He being the guest of the nation, they would never own to it or say it. But his departure might be a relief to them, nevertheless. And therefore he went. His sensitiveness of honour shrank from his being a constructive inconvenience to a nation to whom he owed so much and for whom he cared so much. It was an instance of the disappointment imagination may cause in politics.*
* Some who read Mr. Morley's account of "Garibaldi's
Departure" in his "Life of Gladstone" will think that
Garibaldi did not require much imagination to see that he
was not wanted to stay in England. He heard, even from Mr.
Gladstone, words of solicitude for his health, if he visited
the many towns he had promised—and not one suggestion that
he should limit the number, which could do him no harm.
There could be but one inference from this and Garibaldi
drew it.
But Garibaldi was a poet as well as a soldier. Like the author of the "Marseillaise," Korner and Petofe, he could write inspiring verse, as witness his "Political Poem" in reply to one Victor Hugo wrote upon him, which Sir Edwin Arnold, the "Oxford Graduate" of that day, translated in 1868. Those do not understand Garibaldi who fail to recognise that he had poetic as well as martial fire.*
* Both poems, the one by Hugo and Garibaldi's in reply, were
published with a preface by the present writer.
CHAPTER XX. THE STORY OF THE BRITISH LEGION—NEVER BEFORE TOLD
General de Lacy Evans is no longer with us, or he might give us an instructive account of the uncertainty and difficulty of discipline in a patriotic legion which volunteers its services without intelligently intending obedience. When I became Acting Secretary for sending out the British Legion to Garibaldi, I found no one with any relevant experience who knew what to expect or what to advise. Those likely to be in command were ready to exercise authority, but those who were to serve under them expected to do it more or less in their own way. The greatest merit in a volunteer legion is that they agree in the object of the war they engage in. They do not blindly adopt the vocation of murder—-for that is what military service means. It means the undertaking to kill at the direction of others—without knowledge or conviction as to the right and justice of the conflict they take part in.