MIA > Archive > Hyndman > Adventurous Life
Early in 1866 I decided I had had enough of London and England and I would travel through Italy and make myself thoroughly acquainted with the country and the language. I had no special object in view beyond wishing to enjoy myself in an intelligent manner, yet in a way this trip was the turning-point in my life. I had done nothing and was doing nothing, though, even so, my time had not been altogether wasted. I knew Gibbon nearly by heart and was well read in previous Roman history. The annals of the Eternal City in her Papal period were fresh in my mind and I had studied the development of the Italian Republics, with their strange commingling of art and homicide, probably more closely than most educated young Englishmen. Consequently, when, having sailed from Marseilles to Leghorn, I landed in Italy I was not wholly unprepared to take advantage of my tour.
Florence, then the capital of Italy, was the first stage in my travels and I passed a most pleasant time there with a very clever and cultivated young American banker, Charles Morgan of New York, whose perfect knowledge of Italian and thorough acquaintance with the beautiful city rendered my stay there one continuous delight. The effect which a first visit to Florence must produce upon any intelligent young man I need not speak of. But when I got to Rome in January 1866 after a journey carefully escorted by Italian troops – for there were many brigands in those days – in the banquette of a clumsy rumbling old diligence at one o’clock in the morning I found myself back in the medieval epoch, though I took up my quarters at the then modern Hotel d’Angleterre in the Via Bocca di Leone.
Pius IX was then Pope-King, Cardinal Antonelli was the Pope-King’s Mayor of the Palace. Princes of the Church and Princes of the great families, in gorgeous equipages and striking apparel, monks with variously coloured hoods, the noble guard of resplendent magnificos arrayed in glorious uniforms, pervaded the streets, little French red-pantalooned soldiers stood sentry at every street corner, Macdonald the sculptor had just been stabbed going up to his studio in the Via Babuino, and to go to the Coliseum by moonlight without a strong guard was a wanton sacrifice either of your ears or your nose or a great part of your fortune. All this was quite commonplace and uninteresting to the Roman population in those easy-going days of miscellaneous laissez-faire. But the discovery of the great gilded statue of Neptune, now in the Vatican, stirred the whole population to excitement and appreciation. Every detail lent attraction to the entire social picture. Rome and the Romans constituted the civilised world within: the rest of mankind were the barbarians without. Antonelli, whose own brother was a brigand, was, all said, triumphantly holding his own against the sacrilegious machinations of the godless Piemontesi, Cardinal Illustrissimo’s coachman had put a knife into his stableman to the latter’s final separation from this life, and his master had sent for the survivor and remonstrated with him so angrily on this awkward occurrence that the poor fellow actually cried. A good coachman was hard to come by: stablemen were plentiful in those days. Such was the sort of gossip we heard on all hands.
To look on at it all as a visitor was to gain a new conception of life. Even the great pictures and sculptures, the remains and the ruins of Rome’s ancient magnificence, were scarcely more interesting and attractive than to live in this active past which it was difficult to believe could possibly be the present. Marion Crawford, who knew it so well, gives a brilliant description of this little world which has passed away in the opening chapters of Saracinesca. The city could not be recognised as the Rome of to-day. Between the great main artery of the Corso and other portions of the Rome of that time were labyrinths innumerable, and I thought I had done wonders when I had mastered their intricacies sufficiently to be able to go direct and without losing myself from the Piazza di Spagna to the Tiber. I can well understand that those who lived in and loved Rome before 1870 never cease to regret the disappearance of the picturesque though antiquated and ill-governed metropolis of the Papal States. There was doubtless much that needed reform and much that was downright harmful; but it is questionable whether the bulk of the inhabitants were not really better off in their ignorance and superstition than they are now in their enlightenment and knowledge. I was in no danger of missing the contrast between the old and the new, the outworn and the modern; for my principal companion during my stay was a very clever Frenchman several years older than myself, who used to amuse himself and me by his caustic remarks on what we saw. We were waiting in Easter week for the coming of some wonderful sacrosanct procession with its variegated cohort of monks, and its coming was unduly delayed – “Voilà ,” said he, himself being a careful observer of all Catholic rites, “Voila comme on passe la Semaine Sainte. On attend toujours une bêtise qui ne vient pas.”
On the other hand, I encountered everywhere unmistakable evidences of the most genuine and touching belief. The Coliseum was then a ruin indeed, with here and there plants and creepers growing in unchecked confusion inside and out. It was none too safe to clamber up the crumbling stairways in order to find a seat high up on a broken arch. Below, the arena showed up as one great oval of bright green turf amid the grey of the vast building, with the Stations of the Cross placed at intervals around. Seated thus one afternoon, thinking of Gibbon’s inspiration from the same spot, and its results in the greatest history that ever was written, I was awakened from my half-dream by the sound of voices below and looking down saw a crowd of people following a priest who led them round from Station to Station, delivering a short and apparently, for I was too high up to hear the exact words, an eloquent and impressive address at each. When he reached the last Station he held up the black crucifix which had hung at his girdle, as he finished his remarks, advancing towards the people while he did so. They one and all bent in fervent adoration and some knelt down upon the grass. It was an impressive scene in that vast place, with all the memories of the great past crowding up behind the preacher. The exposure of the underworks of the ancient arena by the clearing away of the super-incumbent grass and rubbish may have added to instruction; but it has destroyed the beauty of the interior of the Coliseum and the Stations of the Cross have long since been swept away.
Another time I went to the ceremonies held at Easter in St. Peter’s. They too were impressive, in a very different way, and their effect has often been described. I went outside when they were over and was one of the crowd who stood awaiting the Pope’s benediction, which Pius IX used to deliver from the balcony of the great Cathedral, his fine voice sounding through the Piazza. At the close of this function a number of papers, which I believe are called “Indulgences,” were distributed from above and wafted down by the breeze fell among the people, who looked for them anxiously and grasped them eagerly as they descended.
A pretty young Italian peasant girl with a baby in her arms stood close to me, as deeply desirous of securing one for herself or her infant as any of the ruder sex present. By every right of religion and conviction an Indulgence should have come to this pleasing pair, and the rustic madonna would have returned to her Trastevere village with the certainty of a happy life hereafter to follow upon a life of mingled care and enjoyment here. But, alas, Providence, as she would have put it, the accident of a passing gust, as it seemed to me, wafted the longed-for bulletin of eternal felicity out of the reach of my pious little neighbour with the beautiful eyes and the swelling bosom and deposited it with careful solicitude on the chest of the foreign heretic. Her pained look of regret and disappointment I can see again now. Tears came into her eyes. I needed the Indulgence, with all its possibilities of pardon, far more than she did, for of a certainty she was a good little soul. But, with a profound sense of the necessity for sacrifice, my politeness and pity overcame my passing wish to have an anchor out to windward. I therefore took off my hat and handed my very own indulgence to the delighted contadina. She thanked the strange signore most earnestly and there was quite a little scene around us in consequence. I should have liked to bestow upon her a fraternal kiss and I don’t think at the moment she would have refused me the privilege. But I only begged her to pray for me, and I verily believe she did.
During my stay in Rome and afterwards at Naples, Sorrento, and Castellainare I worked hard at Italian, going whenever I could to Italian theatres and speaking the language not only to my masters but to all who would bear with my grammatical mistakes and barbarian accent. It was lucky I attained the proficiency I did. For, having left Rome and Naples, I went farther afield and then, after a delicious month or two of enjoyment in the lovely district of Salerno, Vietri, and Amalfi, there came to me, in my lotus-eating Paradise, the news that war was certain between Italy and Prussia and Austria. I therefore abandoned my agreeable lethargy and went forth as War Correspondent for the then recently-started Pall Mall Gazette, thus beginning a connection with that journal and its editor, Frederick Greenwood, which extended over many years and a close friendship with the latter which lasted until his death. My desire to see and record something of the war was the keener, inasmuch that I was in those days an ardent Italianissimo and longed for the day when Italy would suffice for herself and the foreign rulers would be driven out.
It is difficult for those who only remember Italy as she has been during the past forty years, united, free and mistress of her own destinies, to comprehend fully the enthusiasm felt by nearly all educated young Englishmen in those days for Italy in her efforts for emancipation: an enthusiasm which broadened and deepened by the chivalrous exploits of Garibaldi, the unquenchable fire of Mazzini and the sagacious genius of Cavour affected more or less our whole people. Such eminent Radicals as Cowen, Stansfeld, Peter Taylor, and Boyd Kinnear came under the direct influence of Mazzini himself; while Cavour’s master-stroke in the Crimean War and his great ability alike as a diplomatist, as an organiser and as an administrator conquered the confidence of the English middle-class. I was, therefore, for once in the full current of popular feeling as I steamed up from Naples to Genoa on board a Rubattino liner with some two thousand soldiers on board; who had as nearly as possible capsized us all in the Bay at starting, by rushing en masse from one side of the vessel to the other when bidding farewell to their friends.
Garibaldi landed at Genoa from Caprera on the night of the day I arrived, and I saw him under the light of the torches, in the stern of the boat which brought him ashore with his heavy grey poncho over his shoulders and the familiar red shirt peeping out from under it. I had last seen Garibaldi cheered and welcomed by at least three hundred thousand people as he was driven down Whitehall to Stafford House in the Duke of Sutherland’s carriage. No such spontaneous and enthusiastic a reception has been given by Londoners to any foreigner before or since. It was a purely personal demonstration, due to the splendid, unselfish courage and devotion of this guerilla leader in 1859 and 1860 as well as to the remembrance of his long and brilliant life of adventure in South America on the side of the people, At that moment a wave of Republicanism swept through our own country. Now Garibaldi came from his humble home in the island of Caprera to take part in another effort to free his beloved country finally from the Austrian tyranny. It was a dramatic opening to what, from the military point of view, was a most disappointing and unsuccessful campaign.
I went up with Garibaldi’s force into the Tyrol. At Desenzano I made the acquaintance of nearly all my fellow-correspondents. I was strolling along the platform to find a carriage in a train going up to the front, when I heard a voice say in English, “That’s he – you may depend upon it, that’s he,” followed by the invitation, “Come in here.” It then appeared that Sala and Henty, Bullock-Hall and Henry Spicer, who made up the party, had seen in the papers that another correspondent was coming out to represent the Pall Mall Gazette, and they judged from the spruceness of my apparel, so they were jokingly pleased to say, that I must be the representative of the journal referred to. And so I found myself following the fortunes and misfortunes of the Garibaldini, amid the beautiful scenery at the head of the Lago di Garda. And here my lately-acquired knowledge of colloquial Italian soon stood me in good stead.
At the Rocca d’Anfo, where the village leading to the fortress was traversed by a road running up at an angle of about forty-five degrees, I met Sala, who, failing to get provisions at the Inn, had gone out to forage for food. He was descending the hill with difficulty, for he suffered from varicose veins, bearing in one hand a brown-paper bag and using a good stout stick with the other. “Well,” I asked, “what have you got?” “I have swept the place of maccaroons,” he answered, “and I have bought some chocolate drops which are very sustaining.” Maccaroons and chocolate drops! “Avadavats and Indian crackers!” Sala’s face and general appearance were not at all in concatenation accordingly with such fare as this. His was a high-coloured rubicund visage with one exceedingly bright, jovial eye, the other being not so brilliant, and the contour of his body was certainly not suggestive of a light supper after a long day’s fast.
What was to be done? We were all hungry. The Garibaldians had no rations to sell, the innkeepers could give us no satisfaction and no hope of better things soon, as no further supplies could come for many hours and the evening was closing in. We heard also that the farmers in the neighbourhood had removed everything eatable up into the mountains, fearful of raids on their flocks and fowls by their countrymen of the army of liberation. But the only chance of obtaining a meal lay in this direction, so I started out to see what could be done, with Henty, the Hercules of the little group, accompanying me to the turn of the road leading to the farm-houses in order to protect me from pillage on my return, should I buy anything worth putting our teeth into, for “nostri prodi” were hungry too. My first two visits were bootless. All the knocking and shouting brought forward none to negotiate with. At the third farm I was more fortunate. A girl opened the door a little and I quickly put my foot into the space. After a few words of supplication on my side and remonstrance on hers, she let me in and I saw her family gathered behind her in the room. My appearance, or perhaps the sight of my money, convinced them of my natural honesty, and after a rather lengthened bargaining, carried on purely for form’s sake on my side, I returned in triumph with a rough sack containing quite a good supply of very decent fowls, a lot of eggs, two huge rolls of bread, and other matters of lesser moment. Yes, Italian is a very useful language when out campaigning in an Italian country, and I was unanimously appointed forager-in-chief and commissariat-provider-in-general to the correspondent camp—a position not wholly devoid of drawbacks, however. At any rate, we had an excellent supper that night and, having persuaded the landlord at our inn to discover some really delicious wine in his cellar, which we speedily transferred to our throats, it could not be said that our first visit to the Rocca d’Anfo was devoid of hilarity at the finish. We served Sala’s maccaroons and chocolates with all due solemnity as an entremet, of which, be it said, Sala himself did not partake.
If you want to see war do not follow an army of volunteers. Garibaldi’s force was full of patriotism and courage, and I dare say with even a few months of guerrilla training might have been very useful. As it was, it fell between two stools. It was too large for rapid movement and sudden attack, and it was too ill-organised for regular operations on a considerable scale. There was but one regiment that could in any sense be called disciplined, that commanded by the General’s eldest son Menotti Garibaldi, in which my friend Boyd Kinnear served as a private. As I look back on the events of that nominally successful advance – for the Austrians fell back fighting continuously as we went forward – I am astonished that Henty and Bullock-Hall and I – Sala could not stand the fatigue of walking and went back to Milan – returned safe and sound to Italian soil.
Bullock-Hall, the pacifist of the Daily News, in particular, at the fight of Monte Suello, ran a risk which even a braver man might have shrunk from. Garibaldi himself was present at the affair and was badly wounded in the foot when leading on his men. The fire of a body of Kaiser-Jägers was deadly, and many of the Italian officers were shot down. Where we stood the rank and file were obviously wavering. This was too much for Bullock-Hall. He rushed forward, caught a horse belonging to one of the officers who had fallen, mounted it, and, revolver in hand, led a charge himself, the volunteers, to do them justice, rallying quickly to his support. Who won or who lost I did not then know; but Bullock returned hot and naturally excited, dismounted and then wanted to go to the front again. With the greatest difficulty he was persuaded to retire to the rear, though it was pointed out to him that as a civilian and non-combatant the enemy would be quite justified in shooting or hanging him out of hand should he be caught. Bullock-Hall, who, in 1871, was one of the most active organisers of relief in Paris, inherited his uncle General Hall’s property at Six Mile Bottom and became quite a conservative county magnate. Landowning has commonly this stolidifying effect.
There may be something exhilarating and inspiring for the actual combatants in war: there is, so far as I could detect, nothing but what is horrible for the looker-on in such conflict. The splendid courage and coolness displayed by the Piedmontese artillery and by some of the Garibaldini could not compensate for the frightful appearance of the wounded or calm the feelings aroused by their groans. To see an artillery-man staggering to the rear with one of his arms blown off, the hideous injury partly dressed by a surgeon or fellow-bombardier; to watch a rocket jumping about unexpectedly as rockets do, and landing at last full in the chest of a volunteer with horrible results – though rockets are on the average ineffective missiles, they are very alarming to young troops; to witness two or three soldiers advancing together all blown to atoms by a shell from a fort: these are ugly sights enough. The pomp and circumstance of glorious war have no place in this sort of fighting, and it is hard to rouse any enthusiasm even for a desperate and successful charge when such sad scenes of human butchery are going on all round.
But all this was as nothing to the hospital. There were some 800 or 1000 seriously wounded men when I was at Storo after the so-called battle or skirmish of Bezzecca. A large church had been cleared of its seats and converted into the chief hospital, the wounded being laid out as close as possible, on the straw which had been strewn for their accommodation. There were no proper sanitary arrangements whatever. The force was also very short indeed of doctors, and a young Russian man of science who was with us as correspondent, Kovalevsky by name, who has since achieved a great reputation, offered his services. “I have never practised dressing on the living,” he said, “but under the circumstances I may be useful. Will you come and help me?” It was not at all the sort of job I liked, especially as typhoid fever was rife among the injured, and I have a perfect horror of blood and broken bones. But it was necessary I should put pressure on myself at such a time, so I accompanied Kovalevsky on his mission.
I never felt so ill in all my life as when I got inside and saw what was going on. I have thought ever since that only the very highest causes could justify any nation or government in running such risks of the mutilation and torture of human beings. The place was literally like a charnel-house: the lack of doctors and the deficiency of appliances occasioning scenes of horror which recalled, as Henty said, the most terrible events of the Crimean War. What made things worse in a way for me was the fact that Kovalevsky, in spite of all his modesty, soon showed himself to be the most rapid and tender and skilful dresser in the place. It was wonderful, as I carried out his instructions, to note the swift and sure action of his long taper fingers as he applied the bandages and carried out such simple operations as he felt sure would benefit the sufferers. So skilful was he, and so manifestly considerate of the wounded, that the poor fellows whose injuries were yet undressed cried for him to come and attend them.
Thus hour after hour passed and I am bound to say I felt very bad indeed and like to faint. But I determined I wouldn’t give in as long as Kovalevsky stuck to his work, which was, of course, far more trying than mine, that consisted only in holding limbs or wounded places in this or that position. I thought he must break down; for he was not physically strong and, long before he withdrew, his face was deathly pale and streams of perspiration were pouring down his forehead. The close air and dreadful smell were of themselves sufficient to exhaust him, apart from the strain on his nerves. At last he could do no more and abandoned his work, sad as it was to hear the cries of disappointment from the men whom he was obliged to leave untended. So out we went. The moment I breathed the fresh air coming down upon us from the mountains I was violently sick. Kovalevsky was not. He was, however, quite overcome with his exertions, and what with this and similar visits to the hospital was all but seriously ill before he started back South.
Ever since, when I have heard or read about splendid feats of heroism in warfare, as during the Russo-Turkish, the Franco-German, and the Russo-Japanese campaigns, I have thought of that churchful of shattered human creatures at Storo, with typhoid fever standing grimly by to reap its harvest of death from those who were recovering from their injuries, and I have felt what a preposterous state of civilisation is that in which intelligent human beings can find no better way of settling their differences than that which I had witnessed.
A few days later I made Garibaldi’s acquaintance. He was lying on a sofa in the big room of the village inn at Storo clad in the familiar red shirt and grey trousers with his staff around him. The general looked pale from his wound and his natural anxiety for his army, none too well supplied by the Government, but he received me, as invariably he did all Englishmen – he had two among his immediate personal followers – with charming courtesy and warmth. The impression which he produced was one of the most unaffected genuineness and frank behaviour. Whatever may have been the case with him later, Garibaldi was at this time wholly unspoiled by success and flattery, and was inclined to belittle rather than overrate his own achievements. His influence over the men with him was surprising: it was not due to his ability but to the simplicity and unselfishness of his character and the daring, amounting at times to sheer recklessness, with which he threw himself, as at Mentana, into hopeless exploits. Thenceforward to the end of the campaign he was unable to mount a horse and drove about always in a large carriage.
Of all the men of that period Garibaldi’s personal appearance is perhaps the best known; but no portrait of him that I have ever seen gives quite the expression of the benevolent lion that his face in repose had at this time. It has always seemed to me that Garibaldi’s chief exploit was not the dashing conquest of the Sicilies, in which he would certainly have failed but for the support given him by Cavour, nor even his brilliant services the year before on the left wing of the French army, in the campaign of 1859; but his really marvellous efforts during the siege of Rome, when, with his brother triumvirs Mazzini and Saffi he held that city for the Republic against the French in 1848. It was his indefatigable resource and courage on this occasion, with the heroic retreat he organised, when the national rising was beaten down by overwhelming numbers and superior equipment, that came to my mind as I saw the wounded leader on his couch and in his carriage, and the remembrance obliterated even the more recent achievements of “the thousand of Marsala.”
Garibaldi’s move up into the Tyrol was, of course, only a trifling though picturesque incident, in the great campaign of Prussia and Italy against Austria. The Prussians won in the North, partly because they were better armed, but chiefly because Marshal Benedek was forced to adopt a ruinous strategy by silly Court orders from Vienna. The Italians lost in the South because they chose the worst possible ground for their first great battle, and because they were not as a whole at all a match for the Austrian forces. But for the Piedmontese artillery, also, a mere handful of Kaiser-Jägers would have held the entire Garibaldian army in check, and, but for the victories of Königgrätz and Sádová the Austrian troops would have been back in Milan. It is natural that correspondents with an army should take the side of the men whom they see daily risking life and limb for their cause; but talking over matters quietly, Henty and Brackenbury who had had much experience of war, and I who had had none, were driven to the conclusion that such affairs as those of Monte Suello, the fort of Ampola, and the “battle” of Bezzecca reflected little credit upon the volunteers; while the absurd blunder which, after having challenged the Austrian army on its own familiar parade ground, so piled up the commissariat and ammunition wagons on the only accessible road, that the two wings of their own army could not communicate or manoeuvre with one another, thus making the defeat of Custozza much more complete than it need have been, said little for Italian Generalship.
However, Italy by her attack had diverted a considerable portion of the Austrian army from the Prussian side, and in spite of Sala’s bitter jest to Garibaldi’s Secretary Plantulli, “Votre Gouvernement doit faire une bonne petite guerre contre la Turquie,” she obtained her reward by the acquisition of Venice when peace was proclaimed. The interval I spent in a delightful visit to Bologna, Verona, Vicenza, Pavia, and Padua, and, after a short stay in Venice, devoted the rest of the time, before the entrance of the troops into that city, to a trip with Henty by way of Trieste to the grotto of Adelsberg and the mercury mines of Idria. Trieste we found much afflicted by a virulent form of cholera. People were dying rather uncomfortably fast, falling down in the street, in fact, as if smitten by the plague, and succumbing in a few hours to the attack. There was therefore good ground for apprehension, and the Italians, a demonstrative people, took little pains to conceal their dread of the pestilence. In fact, the atmosphere of the whole city at this time was decidedly depressing and even funereal. So, though our hotel was excellently managed and the wine good, we thought the country districts would be pleasanter resorts than Trieste for two foreigners in search of diversion. It was not right also, we felt, that we two, who had escaped by a miracle from being tumbled out of a cart over a precipice on the road down from the front to Brescia, should try fortune and risk our lives too hard by remaining unnecessarily in a plague-stricken city.
I shall never forget the alarm displayed on our arrival at our first two or three stopping-places by those who had got there before us, and thought we had brought infection with us. Their attitude put me in mind of the behaviour of the country people to the refugees from the Plague of London. They shrank from us muttering, “Il cholera, il cholera,” and disappeared into the background with white faces and trembling limbs. We only recovered our full spirits a day or two later when, after an excellent dinner, we found ourselves dancing with the miners and their womenkind at Idria who, although the cholera was coming swiftly towards them by another route, thought, as we did, that the best way to make head against the epidemic was to eat, drink, and be merry. We did all three much to our satisfaction for several days and enjoyed ourselves mightily.
By what right do “the authorities” stifle men and women under pretence of saving other people’s lives? I asked myself this, when I found myself with a number of others thrust into a sort of Black Hole of Calcutta at Udine. There was barely room for us to breathe to start with, and then some disgusting chemicals, worse in odour than an arsenal of Chinese stinkpots, were turned in upon us. It was indeed a frightful experience. I thought my latter end was not only approaching, but was fully come. The fumigation was intolerable. Nose, eyes, lungs, ears, all suffered from it. We were suspected of cholera and were therefore fair game. I bore my martyrdom with reasonable resignation. Not so Henty. Ordinarily the most good-natured, buoyant-spirited, and long-suffering man that ever lived, so much so that he was known in the Crimea as “Mark Tapley” Henty, there was some malignant essence in this abominable stench which stirred up all that was furious in his nature. He began by loud but unheeded protest and gradually worked himself up to an assault upon the window-panes, many of which he and I, bound to follow his lead out of sheer comradeship, speedily shattered. Air came through the openings but gendarmes through the door. The two “mad Englishmen” were removed in custody, after some expostulation and movements in various senses. Happily we were not so mad but that, having cleared our throats of the unspeakable effluvium, we were able to bethink us of wine and tips and the mollifying effect of both upon the most austere of police officers in that latitude. Thus it came about that we were allowed to re-enter the train for Venice with our batch of only half-suffocated fellow-travellers, who benefited by Henty’s sudden outburst of indignation.
At Goritz, just before this little comedy, I saw another side of that Austrian occupation of Italy which I was denouncing as an outrage upon civilisation. A fine regiment was quartered there returning to Vienna from Venice. We dined at the same inn at which the officers were staying and met them all at the table. They were most courteous and considerate as, in my not inconsiderable experience, Austrian officers almost invariably are. The conversation naturally turned upon the war and the strange fact that, though the Italians had entirely failed to beat them, they were now in full retreat. They one and all expressed the deepest regret that they had not had a turn at the Prussians, and it was from them I first learnt, what has since become a matter of history, that Benedek was wholly blameless for the Austrian disasters in Bohemia, though they felt sure he would never exonerate himself at the expense of the Emperor. This indeed proved to be the case; for Benedek, who lived to an advanced age, died without having at any time shown, as he easily could have shown, that his whole plan of campaign in 1866 was wrecked by orders from the highest quarters.
In the course of conversation, however, I congratulated the Colonel upon the fact that he was now “going home.” “It may seem strange to you,” he answered, in Italian, not in German, “but I don’t feel like that at all. I have been quartered here in Italy for twenty years. I have grown to love the country and the people. I have many dear friends here, and my leave-taking from them now has been the saddest event in my life. I have not the slightest grudge against the Italians, and though I may have my doubts as to their capacity for self-government, I think I quite understand, and even sympathise with, their desire to get rid of us. If I were to retire from my profession I might come back and spend the rest of my days in Italy. I certainly have the desire to do so at this moment, and I believe all my officers are of the same opinion.” And so it was. All these Austrian officers, who spoke Italian perfectly, gave a somewhat similar view of their departure. The charm of Italy and her people had reached them all, in spite of the bitter national antagonism which then prevailed. If this charm of Italy once seizes hold of any one it lasts him his life. And it is due, not merely to the combination of beauty of scenery and old buildings, to historic associations and exquisite art, but to the delightful character of the people themselves. Even the Southern Italians, who are regarded by the Northerners almost as a strange and inferior folk, have charming qualities which not even the Mafia and the Camorra, and the general addiction to saying what is pleasing rather than what is true, can obscure. I could well understand the feeling of that old Austrian colonel; yet I rather think he was one of Radetzky’s men in ’48 and ’49.
Thus, fatigued and yet again fumigated, we got back to Venice. A period of transition indeed. The Austrian troops had gone: the Italian troops had not come in. The famous performances of the Austrian band in the Piazza San Marco were at an end, and the Venetians themselves almost regretted their cessation. Why is it, by the way, that nowhere are there such glorious military bands as in Austria? The finest display of this kind I ever heard was during the armistice, when all the bands of the great garrison of Verona played together in front of General John’s headquarters. I had gone out from my hotel to stroll listlessly in the evening through the beautiful city, when I was attracted by the sound of the bands in the distance. When I got closer to the performers I soon found out that I had been lucky enough to be present at an exceptional entertainment. The bands of all the regiments in garrison were playing together. The playing was quite magnificent. Attack, rhythm, vivacity, tone, expression, feeling, they were all present; and nobody would have believed that the men had not been practising together for months before. How they contrived to combine such a volume of sound from brass instruments with such a softness of tone, I have never yet understood. The same qualities were shown by the Austrian bands on the Piazza San Marco, and when the Italians came to take their place the contrast was so marked that not all the Venetian enthusiasm for the national triumph could conceal the disappointment of the habitual listeners. The Italians are, of course, a musical people. Some of the chorus-singing in Venice itself is very fine. But it would be as reasonable to compare a German tenor to Mario or Caruso as to put an Italian military band on the same level as an Austrian. aides-de-camp of the famous Hungarian General Gorgei, with voluble accounts of all we had done the previous day – and in doing such writing as had to be done.
The evenings after dinner we all devoted to talks in the open. We were a merry lot, undoubtedly, and the older at any rate not deficient in ability. I have always thought that, owing to a variety of reasons, George Augustus Sala never did justice to his own powers, nor were his very considerable faculties properly appreciated either by his friends or the public. The extent and accuracy of his knowledge were extraordinary, and his capacity for concentrating it upon the subject in hand was equally remarkable. Journalism as he used it, or as it used him, was a positive curse. Ideas and thoughts which, fully worked out, would have been of permanent value, were employed in almost meretricious fashion, to suit what was supposed to be the taste of the readers of a daily newspaper with wide circulation, whose proprietors regarded all he wrote merely as padding for their advertisements. Yet, provoking as his style often was, some of his most rapidly-written articles show what he might have achieved had he but given himself the chance. I remember a sort of lightning sketch he wrote as a leading article on Carpeaux the French sculptor, which seemed to me to cover within the space of a column and a half really all there was to be said on his works, and the wording of the criticism was as good as the artistic appreciation was judicious. We went together one afternoon into the Cathedral of St. Mark, and were looking around us in the gloom of the edifice when suddenly the whole nave was flooded with a glorious burst of sunlight which changed the aspect of everything in the great church, the rays being reflected back into the nave from a concave golden-tiled recess immediately over the altar.
Thereupon Sala became as one inspired. All that the sun had ever done for man as a race and for man as an individual poured forth from him in one stream of quite astonishing eloquence. I saw the world and its products warm up and expand under its influence and mankind in all ages rejoicing in its glow. Then he passed on to those who had worshipped the sun and to others who, in dying as in living, had rejoiced in its splendour and prayed that their last hours might be brightened by its rays.
Vieux vagabond le soleil est à moi.
His marvellous memory was never at fault. The leading article with much of this illustration and quotation appeared duly in the Daily Telegraph, but the freshness and spontaneity of the thing had somewhat evaporated, and the simplicity of the original wording had almost entirely disappeared. Nearly forty years afterwards I walked with my wife into the cathedral of San Marco in the afternoon, and Sala seemed again to stand by my side, like a gifted Silenus with high artistic appreciation, and the Venice of 1866 was once more before me.
And so, thoroughly exploring the beauties of the city, we all awaited the arrival of the National troops. It must be borne in mind that the Venice, like the Rome, of that day was still in the main the Venice of the Middle Ages. Modern improvements had not come in to increase rapidity of transit and general comfort at the expense of destroying the old associations. Consequently, when the Italian authorities did at last enter Venice and came in procession of boats and gondolas up the Grand Canal we might almost have been assisting at some great celebration of the olden time. I shall never forget the view of the entry as the vessels came up through the famous bridge of the Rialto which formed a frame to the picture. It was a splendid as well as a historical scene with all the magnificent palaces looking down on the commencement of the new era, and taking the mind back to the records of the past of Venice with its intense political selfishness and wonderful artistic grandeur. The quarrels of our gondolieri with those of the neighbouring craft brought in a touch of humour; though I was glad indeed that some very charming bright English girls who were with us and claimed to understand Italian perfectly were obviously quite ignorant of the Venetian dialect and the sort of talk which waterside folk of all nations indulge in when in anger. If those fair ladies, having arrived at old age, glance through these lines they may perhaps be amused to learn that they heard on that occasion, without grasping their meaning, some of the most outrageous but at the same time humorous phrases of personal abuse that were ever exchanged in any known language. We entered vigorous remonstrances, which were, of course, wholly futile, against these utterances.
When I left Italy I did so with the full intention of returning thither very soon, to enjoy again its manifold beauties, and to watch the growth of a nation which had gained more by its numerous defeats than its fellow-peoples had by their victories. As luck would have it I did not see the country again for nearly forty years, and then I sadly doubted whether the new generation of peasants who had taken the places of those with whom I had chatted in my early manhood were benefited by the change of rule. The tax on grain was a heavy price to pay for independence, and the great emigration of the best class of cultivators to the Argentina and the United States has been a mournful consequence of the raising of Italy to the rank of a great power; though the heavy remittances home of the emigrants has done away altogether with the pleasing experience of getting thirty francs for a sovereign and even a Bank of France note now sells at a small discount in Rome. Why should I not confess here and now that, enthusiastic as I was for the emancipation of the country of Mazzini, Garibaldi and Cavour, modern bourgeois Italy has come upon me with something of a shock? I recognise the material progress in certain directions, but – well, youth has its illusions and age its disappointments.
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Last updated on 30.7.2006