What I Remember, Volume 2

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

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The remarks contained in the former of the two letters here transcribed seem to make this a proper place for recording "what I remember" of Garibaldi.

My first acquaintance with him was through my very old, and very highly valued, loved, and esteemed friend, Jessie White Mario. The Garibaldi culte has been with her truly and literally the object (apart from her devoted love for her husband, an equally ardent worshipper at the same shrine) for which she has lived, and for which she has again and again affronted death. For she accompanied him in all his Italian campaigns as a hospital nurse, and on many occasions rendered her inestimable services in that capacity under fire. If Peard has been called "Garibaldi's Englishman," truly Jessie White Mario deserves yet more emphatically the title of "Garibaldi's Englishwoman." She has published a large life of Garibaldi, which is far and away the best and most trustworthy account of the man and his wonderful works. She is not blind to the spots on the sun of her adoration, nor does she seek to conceal the fact that there were such spots, but she is a true and loyal worshipper all the same.

Her husband was—alas! that I should write so; for no Indian wife's life was ever more ended by her suttee than Jessie Mario's life has practically been ended by her husband's untimely death!—Alberto Mario was among the, I fear, few exceptions to Peard's remarks on the men who were around Garibaldi. He was not only a man of large literary culture, a brave soldier, an acute politician, a formidable political adversary, and a man of perfect and incorruptible integrity, but he would have been considered in any country and in any society in Europe a very perfect gentleman. He was in political opinion a consistent and fearlessly outspoken Republican. He and I therefore differed toto coelo. But our differences never diminished our, I trust, mutual esteem, nor our friendly intercourse. But he was a born frondeur. He edited during his latter years a newspaper at Rome, which was a thorn in the side of the authorities. I remember his being prosecuted and condemned for persistently speaking of the Pope in his paper as "Signor Pecci." He was sentenced to imprisonment. But all the Government wanted was his condemnation; and he was never incarcerated. But he used to go daily to the prison and demand the execution of his sentence. The gaoler used to shut the door in his face, and he narrated the result of his visit in the next day's paper!

It was as Jessie Mario's friend then, that I first knew Garibaldi.

One morning at the villa I then possessed, at Ricorboli, close to Florence, a maid-servant came flying into the room, where I was still in bed at six o'clock in the morning, crying out in the utmost excitement, "C'è il Generale! c'è il Generale; e chiede di lei, signore!"—"Here's the General! here's the General! And he is asking for you, sir!" She spoke as if there was but one general in all the world. But there was hardly any room in Florence at that time where her words would not have been understood as well as I understood them.

I jumped out of bed, got into a dressing-gown, and ran out to where the "General" was on the lawn before the door, just as I was, and hardly more than half awake. There he was, all alone. But if there had been a dozen other men around him, I should have had no difficulty in recognising him. There was the figure as well known to every Italian from Turin to Syracuse as that of his own father—the light grey trousers, the little foraging cap, the red shirt, the bandana handkerchief loosely thrown over his shoulders and round his neck.

Prints, photographs, portraits of all kinds, have made the English public scarcely less familiar than the Italian, with the physiognomy of Giuseppe Garibaldi. But no photograph, of course, and no painting which I have ever seen, gives certain peculiarities of that striking head and face, as I first saw it, somewhere about twenty years ago.

The pose of the head, and the general arrangement and colour of the tawny hair (at that time but slightly grizzled) justified the epithet "leonine" so often applied to him. His beard and moustache were of the same hue, and his skin was probably fair by nature, but it had been tanned by wind and weather. The clear blue eyes were surrounded by a network of fine lines. This had no trace or suggestion of cunning, as is often the case with wrinkles round the setting of the eyes, but was obviously the result of habitual contraction of the muscles in gazing at very distant objects. In short, Garibaldi's eyes, both in this respect and in respect of a certain, steadfast, far-away look in them, were the eyes of a sailor. Seamanship, as is generally known, was his first profession. Another physical peculiarity of his which I do not remember to have seen noticed in print was a remarkably beautiful voice. It was fine in quality and of great range; sweet, yet manly, and with a suggestion of stored-up power which harmonised with the man. It seemed to belong, too, to the benevolence, which was the habitual expression of his face when in repose.

"Jessie [pronounced Jèssee] told me I should find you up; but you are not so early as I am!" was his salutation. I said he had dans le temps been beforehand with others as well as with me! At which he laughed, not, I thought, ill-pleased. And then we talked—about Italy of course. One subject of his talk I specially remember, because it gave rise to a little discussion, and in a great degree gave me the measure of the man.