“British Museum,
November 27th, 1860.
“My dear Sir,
Your letter has filled me with apprehension for poor Italy, and with gratitude for your warm interest in her cause. I felt reason daily to mistrust the conduct of my Paris interlocutor, and I am the more afraid, seeing that you, too, feel there is reason for mistrust. When the conduct of the fleet at Gaeta was first known, I wrote to say that it was suspicious, and at variance with recent professions. My letter went through the Minister to St. Cloud, and I received from my friend with whom the correspondence was carried on the enclosed answer, which please return. Lord P. has seen it, but no one else. I was not satisfied, and I wrote again to my friend to say so, but he is not in Paris, and he had to send my last letter from the country to Paris. He has since written that the Minister would be glad to correspond chiefly with me; but now he is out, and my communications are stopped. Nor do I know how I could reach St. Cloud without it being known to many who ought not to know it. The appointment of Walewski and that of Flahaut portend no good to Italy and to the English alliance. If this interference by sea and by land continue, it is evident that it is intended to allow a civil war to kindle in Italy, to have a pretext for interfering, not certainly for the good of the country. Is it possible that the three Emperors and the supporters of the Pope and of despotism in Germany have agreed to settle matters to their own advantage, leaving Prussia, England, and Italy out? Allowing Russia to act as she thinks best in the East, France on the Rhine and in Italy, and Austria in the outer provinces of the Turkish Empire, close to Hungary! It is an extravagant supposition, but the conduct of France is still more so.
Believe me always,
Yours most sincerely obliged,
A. Panizzi.”
The author is well aware that nothing short of his long-standing intimacy with the subject of this “Memoir” could justify the introduction into the work of anything approaching egotism, unless it were to illustrate an essential point in the character of which he is treating; but in writing of the year 1860, recollections crowd upon the memory which he trusts his readers will excuse him for committing to paper. In that same year he (then a boy of thirteen) was sent, under the charge of a Queen’s Messenger, from Naples to a school in England. Arriving in London, he was most kindly received by Panizzi, and well remembers his first interview with one who was thenceforth to be his staunchest friend. Not that this was the first time that the latter had bestowed his good offices upon the family of the writer, whose eldest brother, now Major Fagan, owes and acknowledges a debt of gratitude for the kindness received at his hands in youthful days, and up to the time of receiving his Commission and starting for India in 1859.
But pleasant and important as it would be, for some reasons, to dwell upon many happy reminiscences of uninterrupted intercourse with a pre-eminent man, the task which is here undertaken leads us to more serious matters relating to that period, and that yet remain to occupy the space which should be devoted rather to the information of our readers than to a recital of personal recollections.
