The Life of Mazzini Part 14

Garibaldi is here: ready to act. Garibaldi's name is all powerful among the Neapolitans, since the Roman affair of Velletri. I want to send him to Sicily, where they are ripe for insurrection and wishing for him as a leader.

Of course another action would simultaneously take place in a point of the centre, and I would lead a third operation in the North.

For these two, I have, though very little, still enough of money. For the first, that is for Garibaldi, I have none, and claiming it from Italy would imply expenses for travellers, risks, the unveiling of the secret, and _uncertain indefinite_ time.

Are there not to be found in England ten persons willing for the sake of Italy and for the sake of baffling schemes of French domination absolutely antagonistic to English interests, to take each 100 of our National Loan notes?[49]--or twenty ready to take 50 each?

This is the problem.

I know n.o.body almost. It must be the work of some Englishman. If any plan could be devised of certain fulfilment, but requiring longer time, the sum could be perhaps advanced by some person who would keep all that would come in by degrees.

--ever yours affectionately,

JOSEPH MAZZINI.

To friends whom you can trust, you may, under pledge of honour, communicate what you think proper.

Feb. 16. 15 Radnor St.

King's Road, Chelsea.

V

LETTER TO MR PETER TAYLOR [October 26, 1854].

MY DEAR FRIEND,--Are you astonished at our inertness? at our talking so much and doing so little? I often think that you feel so. I could explain everything in two hours of conversation; but take my word in spite of all, we are ripe for the aim, and that ere long we shall reach it. In fact, had I not been exceptionally prudent and calm, action would have been already initiated. It would be any day, were it not for Piedmont and the "Western Powers." Piedmont is our curse.

First, on account of its enjoying liberty, it is so much withdrawn from the field of action; then we have, just as in 1848, a whole world of courtiers, of ministerial agents, of journalists, and even of clandestine-press-writers, spreading everywhere that the King will draw the sword one of these days, that France and England will cause the revolution to spring up in Naples, that you will quarrel with Austria about the Princ.i.p.alities, that a better opportunity will come, must come, if only we have patience for one month, for two months, for two weeks. There was a whole dream-dispelling work to be done before thinking of immediate action. This work is, for the two-thirds, done, the other third will take, perhaps some two months. The field will be mine then. The people, the working-cla.s.ses, are admirable: they are mine, mine devotedly to blindness.

One thing is out of doubt: any _initiative_ will be an Italian one: one spark will settle the whole on fire, only, the _initiative_ MUST be a successful one. This is the source of all my delays. I feel too certain of success after the first blow being struck for my risking uncautiously the first blow.

The English agitation I am trying to spread would be of real importance to me, if taking a certain degree of _consistence_, both from the financial point of view and from the moral one. You have not an idea of how proud and stronger my working men do feel here, when they find themselves noticed, encouraged and helped in England. I trust you will do what is in your power to promote and help.

How are you? How is your wife? Are you ever talking about me? against me? I am well in health, spite of the forcedly sedentary life I lead.

I think very often, under these radiant skies, of the London fogs, and always regretfully. Individually speaking, I was evidently intended for an Englishman.

What are you doing at Pinner? What little dogs have you caused to disappear? How many poor hens kept in a state of bondage, and tied by the leg somewhere, are awaiting for a revolutionist to untie them?...

What do you read? What do you antic.i.p.ate for England's politics? Do you smoke much?... I wish we could have a talk of one hour all together, with cigars and sherry, and then be back where I am wanted.... Ever your friend,

JOSEPH.

VI

LETTER TO MRS PETER TAYLOR [March 19, 1857].

Thanks, my dear Friend, for your having remembered my name's day [St Joseph's Day]. I don't know why, but every anniversary concerning myself finds me very sad: those friendly whisperings are checking the tendency.

The box has arrived. You have made out the _only_ point of contact between Shakespeare and myself, on all the rest we deeply differ. He was an extraordinary poet: I am not. He was--spite of your interpretations--calm:[50] I am not. He looked on the world from above: I look at it from within and want to make a revolution. He was--if reports are correct--merrily poaching: I have always before my eyes, like a remorse, the large convulsion with which a poor thrush, shot by me at the age of sixteen, was twisting with her beak a bit of gra.s.s. He was the Lord of Individuality: all my tendency, if developed, would have been a generalising one. He was powerful: I am powerless--and so on, to the end of the chapter.--your friend,

JOSEPH MAZZINI.

VII

TWO LETTERS TO MRS MILNER-GIBSON

(Translated from the French)

[Mrs Milner-Gibson had just lost a little boy. Mazzini was G.o.dfather to a younger brother.]

[April 15, 1859.]

DEAR FRIEND,--What can I say? You believe, as I do, in G.o.d and immortality. It is there that you must find your comfort and strength.

Love your boy as if he were alive, for in that you will have what will restore him to you in the series of existences, which follows this one. Become even better than you are by thinking of him, for this will make a bond of love and mutual influence between you and him.

Think of him when you are doing good. Think of him, when impulses of selfishness or human frailty a.s.sail you. Be good and strong. Give your other children the love he gave them himself. And count on G.o.d. There is immortality to link the mother and the child, and only forgetfulness can break it. I have heard of his last words and kisses: he loved you to his last moment, love him to yours, and believe it, this will have been but the parting for a journey.

This is all I can say. From me to you such commonplace words of comfort as the world generally gives would be a kind of sin. I suffer with your grief. I, who have no home now, know what the sorrows of home are,--they leave a scar in the heart, which never goes, and that is sad, but it is well. Cherish this scar, it is a pledge of the future. Do not give yourself up to the barren, cowardly sorrow, called despair. There is no death in the world except forgetfulness.

Everything that loves and has loved to death meets again. Good-bye, my friend. Think of your health for the sake of your other children. G.o.d bless you in them,--your friend,

JOSEPH.

[This letter was succeeded by the following.]

DEAR FRIEND,--I have received your letters, they are more and more sad. You have been ill and you are unhappy. Your visit to the Continent will do you good physically, I hope, but as to your moral health, you must cure that yourself. Rouse your soul, which is in danger of being benumbed by sorrow; you will find at the bottom of it, I don't say happiness, I don't say even hope, but duty and faith in some affections which do count. For G.o.d's sake, do not despair: you have dear children to bring up; you can still do good, and you have friends who esteem and love you and suffer with your sufferings and find strength in your own. Ah me, what the devil should I do myself, if I allowed the little strength, which G.o.d has left me, to desert me, as it often threatens to do.... Good-bye. Yours with all my heart,

JOSEPH.

VIII

LETTER TO MR PETER TAYLOR [September 11, 1860].

DEAR PETER,--

I have yours of the 29th of Aug. written with an improved handwriting, and the article on Lady Byron. It is according to me, unwise and unjust: unwise, because to praise Lady Byron for her life's silence and to abuse the very man about whom she has chosen to be silent, is inconsistent: unjust, because it grounds a verdict on the wrongs of one party, without taking into account those of the other. Everybody seems to forget that Lady Byron did not only leave her husband for ever, going "a la promenade," but that she did set at him before, lawyers and doctors to try if she could make him be proved _mad_! I wish--no, I don't--that your wife should set at you Dr E-- and Mr S-- for such a purpose, only to see what you would do when discovering it, and I wish I had time to write, before dying, a book on Byron and abuse all England, a few women excepted, for the way she treats one of her greatest souls and minds: I shall never write the book nor--it begins to be clear--any other.

Well, I do not go into particulars about our condition here [at Naples]. As a party we are going through that sort of method which you called one day a _suicide_, preparing and attempting things which are calling on us calumnies, abuse and persecution, but which are taken up by the other Party as soon as we are put out of the field. After having been baffled and most shamefully so, in an attempt against the Pope's dominions,[51] they are now, at a few days' distance, taking up our plan. We shall have to do the same, soon or late, concerning Rome, and then Venice. And we _shall_, if life endures. Only, I am worn out, morally and physically.

Everything is now resting on Garibaldi: will he go on, without _interruption_, in his invading career, or will he not? That is the question. If he does, we shall have unity within five months: Austria, spite of the boasted position, will not hold up, if the proper means--a coup de main in the Tyrol, an insurrection in the Venetian mountainous districts, an attack by land, and a landing near Trieste--are adopted. If he does not, we shall have slumber, then anarchy--then--a little later--unity. _That_ you may consider as settled, and so far so good. The rest is all wrong. And as for myself don't talk of either prosperity or consciousness of having done, etc.

All that is chaff. The only real good thing would be to have unity atchieved [sic] quickly through Garibaldi, and one year, before dying, of Walham Green or Eastbourne, long silences, a few affectionate words to smooth the ways, plenty of sea-gulls, and sad dozing.