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Among the men whose acquaintance I made in the Tyrol, who afterwards became my intimate friends, was Boyd Kinnear, then a well-known barrister and a leader-writer for the Daily News. His enthusiasm for the Italian cause had taken him out as a volunteer private in Garibaldi’s army. It was by him I was introduced to Mazzini and thus came to know the great Italian so well as I did, from that first interview to the end of his life. I have never been a hero-worshipper, and when I meet men who have done great things my first inclination, much as I may admire them, is to try to discover how it is they have thus been able to impress themselves on their day and generation, and what personal qualities they possess which give them their wide influence. When, however, Kinnear and I turned into the row of small, gloomy-looking houses which, with trees and shrubs in front of them, stood back from the main stream of traffic along the Fulham Road I felt a sensation of something approaching to nervousness which has never affected me before or since. For I was about to meet close at hand, and on terms which might easily develop into those of friendship, if I were able to gain his confidence, the man who for many a long year had kept England and Europe looking with watchful interest at his career; who was represented by the reactionary press as a ruthless assassin and cold sacrificer of noble young lives to a hopeless cause; who was regarded as so dangerous by the governing classes here that his letters were systematically opened in the Post Office, and a leading politician was driven out of office because he was believed to be too closely concerned in his schemes.
On the other hand, Giuseppe Mazzini had concentrated round himself a band of personal friends and devoted enthusiasts such as no other personage in modern times had been able to secure. That Italians should respect and even adore the high-spirited patriot and many-sided conspirator who had kept alive the idea of a united Italy, with Rome as its capital, when hope had died down in all other hearts, was intelligible enough. It would have been strange indeed if the daring organiser and inspirer of his countrymen who, at the hourly risk of his life, would visit the revolutionary centres throughout Italy in disguise, encouraging the depressed and firing their faculties with a fresh life, had not become the idol of the “Young Italy,” which was just beginning to realise some of the results of his lifelong efforts and sacrifices. But that foreigners who had no direct connection with his country should have been influenced in the same way proves what an extraordinary power over others this remarkable man possessed.
Peter Taylor, Stansfeld, Kinnear, and Cowen were not people easy to induce to do what they had at first no mind to attempt. Yet Mazzini’s influence over them and many others, women as well as men, of a very different race and character from his own, was beyond all question. Joseph Cowen, who was one of his most earnest and devoted supporters, once said to me, “When I think of the things I did at the instance of that man my hair almost stands on end.” And I know that some of the risks which the late member for Newcastle ran in the matter of supplying arms to the revolutionaries and giving aid to their plots would drive our timorous Radicals of to-day into fits of terror-stricken apprehension. Then, too, the remembrance of the Orsini bomb-throwing at the Emperor Napoleon III, with, as was believed, the war of 1859 as its consequence; the trial of Dr. Bernard for taking part in the preparations for the attempt, his triumphant acquittal after Mr. Edwin James’s robustious challenge to the 600,000 French bayonets, which he suggested were glittering before the eyes of the jurymen called upon to render a just and fearless verdict; the violent attacks made upon Mazzini himself as an assassin and a murderer, which even the reverence for him displayed by the popular hero Garibaldi could not altogether counteract – the remembrance of all this as well as of the effect produced upon myself by his writings in admirable English was, I say, still fresh in my mind as I walked towards his lodgings. So there is no wonder that, as my friend knocked and rang that afternoon at the house where I was to meet Mazzini for the first time, the mean and commonplace surroundings of the Fulham Road faded from before me and only the conception of the great personality we were to talk with held my thoughts and compelled my memory.
It was a shabby lodging-house. The servant who opened the door had none of the bright, spruce appearance which sometimes flashes out unexpectedly upon the visitor in the person of the housemaid with clean white cap and apron and pleasant, laughing face. Dulness pervaded the whole place, and even its cleanliness was none too obvious. Yet, as I climbed up that depressing staircase behind Kinnear, some ideas little suited to the surroundings rushed through my mind. In particular that fine description in which Mazzini tells us how one evening, walking just before sundown along the Appian Way, with its memories of the past surging up around him, he thought of all the great men who had fought and fallen on that historic high-road for the emancipation of the people and the liberation of Italy in the centuries gone by, and heard them calling to him from their graves as he passed along, “How much longer have we to wait?” What brought the passage to my mind I know not, possibly the very incompatibility of the surroundings, the unbridgable distance between the Roman Campagna and the Fulham Road; but these words were singing in my ears as we reached the drawing-room and found ourselves in the presence of the idealist creator of Italian unity.
Mazzini was standing with his back to the fire in a colourless dressing-gown with a more than half-smoked cigar in his mouth, which he took in his hand as he turned round and came forward to greet us. An inveterate smoker, I never remember to have seen him without that half-smoked cigar between his lips or in his fingers. A thin, slender figure of middle height, the face which surmounted it, with its thin greyish-white beard and much-bitten moustache, so trimmed as to make the upper part of his face and head look even broader than it was, gave the impression of an old ecclesiastical ascetic, and the wrinkled skin around his eyes increased the look of age. As you met him the contour of his face ceased to present itself to you, you saw only the eyes and the mouth. Just forty-four years have passed since this meeting with Mazzini and I can still realise in imagination every detail of his personal appearance, and think I see him again cordially greeting my friend, his sombre countenance lighting up with pleasure at his coming. It was the eyes that were so much the most expressive feature in his face that they alone attracted continuous attention, and in speaking with him I had that strange sensation which has often come upon me when addressing a large and interested audience, that the figures and faces disappear and only the eyes of the crowd remain. In fact, it was the great power of those deep and brilliant eyes which entirely relieved Mazzini’s appearance, even in repose, from any idea of the commonplace. They struck me at once and they impressed me ever after. Very full and expressive and dark. You could see right into them. When much moved or excited he used vigorous gestures, but as a rule he maintained an unusually placid demeanour for an Italian.
Simple, unaffected and direct, with a complete volcano of energy and passion and enthusiasm underlying this seeming quietude of manner, Mazzini gained his influence over men by sheer devotion to his cause, unfailing enthusiasm and courage, and the absence, or so I thought, of any appearance of dictation. I was frequently alone with him and had good opportunities for observing him when he had no reason to conceal his feelings, nor even to repress his ambitions. A less self-seeking or personally proud man I never met. Yet he had an abiding consciousness of his own dignity and the ever-present knowledge that he represented a great cause and a high policy, even though that cause was scarcely making way as he would have wished it, and his policy as a whole, being, perhaps, not adapted to the existing situation, seemed at the time doomed to defeat. His attitude towards more or less accredited envoys of the Italian Government, however, was at all times determined, not to say arrogant, enough. When such men approached him his charm and simplicity of manner with his friends disappeared at once and he became the dignified representative and autocrat of a great socio-political priesthood, treating, as a great Cardinal or Papal Mayor of the Palace might have done, with men who held in the eyes of the world a much superior position to his own, as really standing on a far higher elevation than they.
I saw evidence of this myself on more than one occasion. But Kinnear told me of an interview at which he was present, between Mazzini and a very noble personage in the confidence of Victor Emmanuel, which quite surprised him in the quick change from the easy chat with a friend to the address of an ecclesiastical potentate of the old time to a misbehaving baron. “Tell your master,” he said, and the message to be conveyed did not lack in precision or even menace. And yet Mazzini’s real power in 1867 was much less than he or his enemies imagined. It was the shadow of his great past which stood behind him and affected his visitors.
Few foreigners have ever spoken and written the English language with the purity of Mazzini. He as often discussed in English as he did in Italian. To hear him talk at length on the dangers and difficulties of the early days, of the sad Bandiera tragedy, of the organisation of the secret societies – still by far the best model for such dangerous associations – of the glorious “five days” of Milan and the siege of Rome was a fine education in the moving history of the period. I contemplated at that time writing a monograph on the European revolutions of 1848-49 and I was specially interested in the Roman uprising with the action at first of Pope Pius IX on the Liberal side, the assassination of Rossi and the success and failure of the Roman Republic, as well as in Daniele Manin’s splendid endeavour to restore the ancient independence of Venice.
Mazzini gave me all the help he could, and lent me books and papers which I could have got from no one else. He also introduced me to the third member of the famous Roman triumvirate, Aurelio Safi, a man of manners so charming and intercourse so soft and genial that it seemed impossible he could be at bottom the courageous leader and indefatigable revolutionist he undoubtedly was. From them and from careful reading I obtained a good conception of this stirring period; while as to the events in Hungary I got direct information from the well-known Ce, whom I knew as a correspondent under the name of Cernatony, Nicolini and Kossuth himself. Unfortunately, I never took advantage of this great opportunity, and though the facts and descriptions are still to my hand, and I seem even now to be able to live back into the midst of the storm and strife of that stirring time, I fear the work will never be done. In fact the only thing I ever wrote of any length on Italy at any time was an article on Cavour in the Fortnightly Review.
It may not be out of place to say a word here about that able aristocrat whom I have myself always regarded as the greatest statesman of the nineteenth century. Until the fiftieth anniversary of his lamented death Cavour had not, as it seems to me, received full appreciation from his countrymen. His great services were overshadowed, to some extent at least, by the work of Mazzini and Garibaldi. But with all my admiration for those two fine characters I was forced to recognise, even in 1866 and 1867, that without Cavour’s admirable political courage and statecraft Italy would never have arrived at the point she had already reached. Taking up the difficult task of reinvigorating Piedmont and encouraging Italy after the crushing defeats of 1848 and 1841, Cavour saw clearly that mere ideas would not emancipate Italy. She needed a thoroughly capable, well-equipped and well-disciplined army, with the possibility of obtaining a powerful ally. His native State of Piedmont could alone supply this. Beginning with democratic ideas he accommodated them to the conditions around him, gained for Piedmont a position in the councils of Europe, compelled all Italy to look again to Turin as the hope for the future, inspired his own people with confidence in themselves and in him, used the monarchy which was ready enough to be used as a solid nucleus round which to rally his forces, employed intrigue and secrecy where intrigue and secrecy were necessary; but so fully explained his policy beforehand to his countrymen that they trusted him implicitly in the midst of the greatest difficulties, made tremendous sacrifices where such sacrifices were unavoidable in order to gain greater advantages, took all the responsibility for partial failure and unpopularity entirely upon himself, and succeeded at last – this was his finest triumph – in so imposing his ideas upon Italy and the Italians that far inferior men who succeeded him, Ratazzi, Minghetti, Visconti-Venosta, inherited with his position some reflection of his genius. A splendid career indeed.
That Mazzini should not have agreed with much that Cavour did was inevitable. Mazzini was a Republican and a Federalist, and, had Italian unity been possible on those lines, it is quite reasonable to say that his views were the sounder. But as matters stood Cavour was right. And he was never afraid of criticism, in fact he courted it; neither did he allow any minor matters to stand in the way of what he judged to be advisable politically because he was not specially favourable to them socially. His amusements with the King and Sir James Hudson could only be defended on this ground. Mazzini, in fact, did not understand Cavour; though Cavour, I fancy, quite understood Mazzini, even when he opposed and thwarted and denounced him. The statesman was playing a very great and deep game and he was bound, it seems to me, to regard Mazzini and his followers, with all their noble idealism, as only one element in it, and this, of course, Mazzini could not be expected to appreciate. Though I scarcely know why, I never discussed Cavour directly with Mazzini; yet I know he felt that the dominating role taken up by Piedmont and the House of Savoy under Cavour’s leadership, in the enfranchisement and consolidation of Italy, could not in the long run be to the advantage of his country. With all my admiration for Mazzini and his splendid idealism I felt he was wrong then, and, though Italy has still a long and a hard row to hoe before she attains to a complete control over her own destinies, I still am of opinion that he misjudged the situation. Garibaldi was even more opposed to the great statesman than was Mazzini. He never forgave Cavour for having traded away the provinces of Nice and Savoy, even for Lombardy and Tuscany, and all that followed thereupon. Cavour had made him, he said, a foreigner in the land of his birth.
There must always be this antagonism between the idealist and the man of affairs, and even Mazzini himself, as dictator in Rome, became inevitably the man of business for the time being. To recognise the truth of this proposition it needs only to be stated. And Cavour, before he came to power and probably afterwards, was an idealist at bottom too. That he throughout fought hard for freedom and democracy is indisputable, and he even overrated the value of Parliament as we can now see. But he accepted centralisation because he saw no other way out. Mazzini, on the contrary, held that the Italian cities and provinces had had too long and too remarkable an individual history separately, for any plan of centralisation to be permanently successful. Moreover, the nature of the peoples was different: in particular it would take two or three generations, in his opinion, before Piedmontese and Neapolitans could understand one another. Therefore, though the army or the armed citizen force of the whole people should always be national, the civil administration in Mazzini’s opinion should always be federal. It is possible that this is after all the true solution of existing difficulties.
Mazzini’s conception of the conduct of human life was a high and a noble one, nor is it at all fair to him to say that he was not deeply interested in the welfare of the working people of other nations. His writings and his speeches all tell to the contrary of that. But his mind was really deeply religious, he believed firmly in God and in Duty and he was a convinced Nationalist, not in the Socialist sense an Internationalist. He possessed no thorough knowledge of political economy and had a strong dislike, not unmingled with contempt, for what he regarded as the debasing materialism of Socialism. Hence his determined though unsuccessful opposition to Marx in the early days of the “International,” and his vigorous condemnation a little later of the Paris Commune: actions which have led many Socialists to be very unjust to one of the really great figures of the nineteenth century. I may have something to add on this antagonism between Mazzini and his national idealism on the one side and Marx and his international realism on the other later on. But for the moment I will only say that, knowing both men and their works well and having been much more deeply influenced intellectually by the latter than by the former, I still feel all these long years afterwards that Mazzini’s fine view of what humanity might be could ill have been spared.
Many a time I asked him, from different points of view, what he meant by the word “duty” and how he could be sure that the intentions of a Supreme Being were fully understood, or adequately translated, by his worshippers and exponents. I am bound to say I never got an answer that satisfied me. For Mazzini, I do think, had so completely persuaded himself that his conception of Duty – admittedly a very high one – was absolutely right and was so profoundly convinced that a personal God existed, and in the main took an interest in and superintended the course of events, that he could not comprehend that to other minds these ideas might present themselves as merely the unverifiable abstractions of a religious sentimentalist. I never pushed my objections too far. I felt that one who had done so much had earned his full right to believe in a creed which had been so all-sufficient a guide for him. It was a privilege for a young student, as I was, to be the friend of a man of such genius and character, and that was enough for me.
I saw Mazzini for the last time at the end of 1868. I have written of him as I remember him; for there are very few now living who enjoyed his intimate acquaintance as I did, and I hope it will be many a long day before his memory ceases to be cherished in the England which was to him a second country and which, much as its press vilified and traduced him, nevertheless point-blank refused to give him up to the monarchs who pressed for his extradition. Was Mazzini himself in favour of assassination in countries where all freedoms were crushed down by tyranny? I firmly believe he was, and for my part I do not regard that as any blemish whatever on a great man, the memory of whose kindly intimacy with myself I shall cherish to the end of my days.
But this matter of assassination undoubtedly raised a very strong prejudice against Mazzini in this country. In the mind of the ordinary Englishman, in spite of all his early biblical and classical training, assassination, under any circumstances, must be criminal. Even Disraeli’s championship of it, when no other effective protest is possible against crying social or political wrongs, could not affect this view. And yet when Marshal Haynau came to London and was chucked into a vat and nearly killed by Barclay and Perkins’ draymen, because he had had women flogged at Brescia, the British public applauded the draymen. If Haynau had died they would have applauded still. My friend Stepniak, too, who undoubtedly stabbed to death the titled head of the Russian police, was received with open arms by the well-to-do educated class in Great Britain, wrote frequently for the Times, the journal which was most bitter in its denunciation of Mazzini and his friends, and, when he met with his sad death by accident, was mourned as a man of the highest ability and character. So it is very difficult, evidently, to form any definite judgment as to the line Englishmen will take in dealing with such matters. For the Austrians in Italy were at times guilty of as great atrocities as the Russians in Poland, and Marshal Haynau was not, unfortunately, an exceptional military tyrant at that time. Italians, also, had no rights of free speech or a free press and their power of effective protest was, therefore, confined to assassination.
Whether, consequently, assassination is a proper means of bringing about a great political change, and national emancipation, or not, clearly Mazzini, even supposing he was at heart an assassin himself, had every possible excuse for resorting to this “wild justice of revenge.” When, too, the jury refused to find a verdict of guilty against Orsini’s associate and co-conspirator, Dr. Bernard, and the people of London acclaimed them as noble men, they both certainly went a very long way, in my opinion, towards declaring their sympathy with the anti-Napoleonic bomb-thrower.
With reference to the trial and acquittal of Dr. Bernard for complicity in the Orsini attempt upon Napoleon III, which I well remember and which made a very great stir at the time, my old friend Mr. Joseph Cowen told me an amusing story, showing how unsafe it is to trust a mob. A great demonstration was to be held in Hyde Park in honour of this same Dr. Bernard, who had become a great favourite with the people, accessory to attempted assassination before the fact though he was declared to be. Mr. Cowen and two or three friends went up to attend this meeting. When they got into the Park, and before they had covered nearly half the distance to the platforms, they saw a man come rushing towards them at the top of his speed, bareheaded, his long hair flying behind him, his face ghastly white from exertion, and half-dead, as it appeared, from fear. For following close upon his heels was a great crowd shrieking “Down with the spy,” “Stop him,” “Knock him over,” and similar pleasing cries. As the fugitive came closer Mr. Cowen and his friends saw, to their horror, that the man was no other than Dr. Bernard, the very person in whose honour the demonstration had been organised ! They gathered round him, defended him against his assailants, telling the latter to no purpose who their supposed “spy” was, and eventually got him off safely into a cab.
I have referred to Mazzini’s antagonism to Marx in the “International” and his denunciation of the Commune of Paris and tried to account for both mistakes, as they seem to Socialists. But time will put these errors, if errors from Mazzini’s point of view they were, in the right perspective. Not having been a Socialist myself at the time, though I sympathised with the Communists in their rising, and understanding too how Marx’s able domination of the International must have galled a man like the great Italian, I can perhaps appreciate his point of view better than men who did not know him in those days of nationalist and idealist agitation. But Mazzini had then done his work, and passing away shortly afterwards he left behind him the glorious memory of being the one person who kept alive in the hearts and minds of his countrymen the glorious aspiration for a united Italy when it had died down everywhere else.
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Last updated on 30.7.2006