February 12th, 1878.
To Emily and Edmund Maurice.
... We found Vaccari, a young shopman in a jeweller’s shop, in a little back street in Genoa. He was greatly delighted, and told us it was the first donation they had had from England, he thought. He was so sorry not to show us the house himself, (he could not leave his master’s shop on a week day) so that we fixed to go in to Genoa, on purpose, on Sunday, and to see the house and the tomb.
We drove first to the cemetery. On a little plateau there were four tombs. One of Mazzini’s mother, buried in 1852. It seems he chose the spot himself. He came unknown to Genoa, made his way into the cemetery, mingled with the crowd, wandered over the place, and chose this spot for her burial. He then returned to Geneva, and wrote to a friend of his in Genoa, asking him to arrange the burial. He planned the stone himself. There is a profile bas-relief of her; and the stone simply records that it is that of Maria Mazzini, the mother of the exile, Joseph Mazzini (escile is, I suppose, exile). Six very beautiful cypresses stand round the tomb, three on each side. The feeling is one of space, air, freedom, simplicity, and tenderness. Next to her tomb is that of Savi, much less simple, but beautiful. The third grave is that of a stranger. Behind the three is a kind of cavern, in the side of the steep rocky slope which rises high above. This cavern has a very simple massive Egyptian-looking entrance over which alone stand the words “Giuseppe Mazzini.” Within is the tomb. The whole was designed by a young workman not twenty years old, but a disciple of Mazzini’s.
We went then to the house. High but very humble; a dark staircase leads to a dark back room looking out upon one of the narrow viciola with which Genoa is traversed; here an old man, looking very poor, but (V. told us) who had known M. well, was carving little wooden frames by the faint light which came in just by the window. V. led us very solemnly into a small room leading out of this, where he told us Mazzini was born. This contained a book-case with their club-library—not in all more than double the size of mine—and several more portraits and relics of their heroes. It was evident the club used this as a little reading or committee room. There were besides numerous casts, engravings, photographs, and little busts of Mazzini, Mamelli, M.’s mother, and others; a little glass case with the quill pen with which M. wrote one of his books, the cockade he wore at Rome, two pairs of his spectacles, a tiny little letter from him, and a lock of his hair; another autograph framed, nearly undecipherable, had been written the day before his death.
The whole morning was to me very interesting and instructive; of course I judge from very slight data, but it appeared to me that we had come upon a man of deep and strong conviction, of much education, much thought, one of a company of poor men, bound together in closest fellowship by a common reverence, a common hope, and memory of a time of real danger and adversity. Their efforts were very touching. We asked what hope there was of collecting the remainder of the money. V. answered that they meant to do it. “Mais, madame, pour les ouvriers ça demande du temps.” We asked about the chance of securing the books. “Some of us,” he replied, “have the works of Signor Mazzini; it is our intention to present them to the library. We have ourselves read them, and made notes, that we may be able to spare them the better.” Something like a library that, written first indelibly in men’s minds. Their small contributions, too, for purchasing the house were touching.
REVERENCE FOR RELICS OF MAZZINI
I could not help thinking it strange that a man of such thought, dwelling on the far future with quiet hope, speaking of education as the thing to desire, and having come face to face with great men, at great epochs, should tell us, with such impressiveness, that one man in Genoa had Mazzini’s purse, his sword and other things. No body of workmen in England would speak so of any dead man’s possessions. Has the worship of saints’ relics thus coloured the forms of reverence? Was it that the times in England have needed and produced no such heroism, as that of the man who held his life in his hands for years, and chose exile for his fellow citizens? Was it that definite creeds of Catholicism had been cast aside by these men? no other profession of faith except reverence for country and heroes adopted? Is it southern adoration? Or what made the difference? I ask myself and know too little to reply. But of one thing I am sure; it is not that the spirit is less important than the accident of form. Except in that question of the autograph, I was struck again and again at the way in which Vaccari went right thro’ the non-essential to the essential.
All thro’ the interview I felt painfully that I knew too little to learn a tenth part from him of what I might. He gave me credit again and again for knowledge, and was disappointed by my ignorance. I stopped him to tell me about an inscription on a house I had noticed. It was to Mamelli saying that he gave his blood to his country, and his poems to posterity, and that in that house he had his cradle and his dwelling. He thought I knew that Mamelli had died young, wounded at the siege of Rome in 1849; and his face lighted with joy and he broke from French into his native Italian as he said it was he who sent Mazzini the message, “Rome is a republic! Come!” He told me that the mother of Mamelli still lived in a garret there, and his sister. I admired the stone and inscription, and he said with pleased smile, “It is we” (that was I think his circolo or club) “which drew out and planned it there.”
I suppose it will live rent free, if these three little rooms, of to them holy memory, are purchased.