Chapter 6 (3)

I observed that the Germans were terrible nationalists, that they were labelled as cosmopolitan because they were only known from books. They were just as patriotic as the French, but the French were calmer in their patriotism, knowing that they were feared. The Germans knew the poor opinion in which they were held by other peoples and strained themselves to the utmost to keep up their reputation. ‘Do you imagine,’ I added, ‘that there are Germans who want to give up Venice and the Quadrilateral?[22] Perhaps Venice they would: that question is too conspicuous, the injustice of that is obvious, the aristocratic name has an effect on them; but you should just talk to them about Trieste, which they need for trade, or Galicia or Posen, which they need in order to civilise them.’

Among other things I repeated to Garibaldi my conversation with Ledru-Rollin, and added that in my opinion Ledru-Rollin was right.

‘Undoubtedly,’ said Garibaldi, ‘perfectly right. I had not thought of it. To-morrow I will go to him and to Louis Blanc. Couldn’t we go now?’ he added.

We were in the Wandsworth Road and Ledru-Rollin was in St. John’s Wood, that is eight miles away. I had _à l’imprésario_ to tell him that it was utterly impossible.

And again at moments Garibaldi sank into thought and was silent, and again his face expressed that great sadness of which I have spoken. He looked away into the distance as though seeking something on the horizon. I did not interrupt him, but gazed and thought: ‘Whether he is a sword in the hands of Providence or not, he is certainly not a military leader by profession, he is not a general. He told the holy truth when he said he was not a soldier but simply a man who had taken up arms to defend his outraged hearth, an apostle-warrior ready to preach a crusade and go at the head of it, ready to lay down his soul and his children’s for his people, to give and receive terrible blows, to shake the life out of his enemy, to scatter his ashes to the winds ... and then, forgetting his victory, to fling his blood-stained sword together with its sheath into the depths of the sea....’

All that, and precisely that, was fully understood by the people, by the masses, by the ignorant mob, with that clearness of vision, that insight with which in other days the slaves of Rome understood the incomprehensible mystery of the coming of Christ and crowds of the weary and heavy-laden, women and old men, prayed at the cross of the crucified. For them understanding meant believing, believing meant worship, prayer.

That was why all the poorer classes of Teddington had crowded round the railings of our house waiting from early morning for Garibaldi. When we drove up, the crowd rushed to greet him in a sort of ecstasy, pressed his hands, shouted ‘God bless you, Garibaldi!’ Women caught at his hand and kissed it, kissed the hem of his cloak—I saw with my own eyes—lifted their children up to him, shed tears.... He, smiling as though among his own family, shook their hands, bowed, and could scarcely make his way to the door. When he had gone in the shouts were redoubled; Garibaldi came out again, and laying both hands on his breast bowed in all directions. The people grew quieter, but they remained standing there all the time till Garibaldi went away.

It is hard for people who have seen nothing like it, men who have grown up in offices, barracks and the anterooms of courts, to understand such manifestations—‘a filibuster,’ the son of a sailor from Nice, a seaman, a rebel ... and this royal reception! What had he done for the English people?... And worthy men rack their brains for an explanation and look for some secret wires by which it was worked: ‘It is wonderful with what astuteness the _Government_ in England can get up demonstrations ... you won’t take us in—_wir wissen was wir wissen_—we have read Gneist ourselves!’

I daresay, and perhaps the Neapolitan boatman who used to declare that the medallion of Garibaldi, like the medallion of the Madonna, was a charm against ship-wreck had been bought by the party of Sicardi and the ministry of Venosta!

Though it is doubtful whether the journalistic Vidocqs,[23] particularly our Moscow ones, could detect the play of such masters as Palmerston, Gladstone and Company so clearly, yet they would through the sympathy of the tiny spider for the immense tarantula understand it more readily than the secret of Garibaldi’s reception. And that is a good thing for them—if they did understand _that_ secret there would be nothing left for them but to hang themselves on the nearest aspen-tree. Bugs can only live happily so long as they have no suspicion of their smell. Woe to the bug who develops a human sense of smell!

Mazzini arrived immediately after Garibaldi; we all went out to meet him at the gate. The crowd, hearing who it was, gave him a loud welcome; the common people have nothing against him. The old-womanish terror of a conspirator is only to be found at the level of shopkeepers, small property-owners and so on.

The few words said by Mazzini and Garibaldi are familiar to readers of the _Bell_, we do not think it necessary to repeat them.[24]

... All were so touched by Garibaldi’s words about Mazzini, by the sincere voice in which they were uttered, the depth of feeling which resounded in them, the impressiveness given them by the series of preceding incidents, that no one answered, only Mazzini held out his hand and twice repeated: ‘It is too much.’ I did not see one face, even among the servants, which did not wear a _recueilli_ look and was not stirred by the sense that grand words had just been uttered and that the moment was passing into history.... I went up to Garibaldi with my glass when he spoke of Russia and told him that his words would reach our friends in the fortresses and mines, that I thanked him in their name.

We went into the other room. Various persons had gathered in the corridor; all at once an old Italian, an exile of days long gone by, a poor fellow who sold ice-cream, caught Garibaldi by the skirt of his coat, stopped him, and bursting into tears said: ‘Well, now I can die. I have seen him, I have seen him!’ Garibaldi embraced and kissed the old man. Then in stumbling and halting phrases, with the terrible rapidity of a peasant’s Italian, the old man began telling Garibaldi his adventures, and wound up his speech with an amazing flower of Southern eloquence: ‘Now I shall die content, but you—God bless you—live long, live for our country, live for us, live till I rise again from the dead!’ He clutched his hand, covered it with kisses, and went out sobbing.

Accustomed as Garibaldi must have been to all this, he was obviously agitated as he sat down on a little sofa. The ladies surrounded him; I stood near the sofa. A cloud of painful thoughts seemed to swoop down upon him—and this time he could not refrain from saying: ‘It sometimes seems dreadful and so overwhelming that I am afraid of losing my head ... it is too much happiness. I remember when I came back an exile from America to Nice—when I saw my father’s house again, found my family, my relations, found the old familiar places, the people I knew—I was crushed with happiness.... You know,’ he added, turning to me, ‘what happened afterwards, what a succession of calamities it was. The welcome of the English people has surpassed my expectation.... What is to come? What is before us?’

I had not one word of comfort to give him. I inwardly shuddered at the question, What is to come, what is before us?

It was time for him to go. Garibaldi got up, warmly embraced me, took a friendly leave of us all—and again there were shouts, again hurrahs, again two stout policemen together with us, smiling and pleading, made our way through the crowd, again cries of ‘God bless you!’ ‘Garibaldi for ever!’ and the carriage rolled away. We all remained in an exalted, quietly solemn state of mind, as after a festival service, after a christening or the departure of the bride; our hearts were full, and we were inwardly going over every detail and brooding upon that sinister unanswered ‘What is to come?’

Prince P. V. Dolgoruky was the first to take up a sheet of paper and write down both the speeches. He wrote them down faithfully while others supplied details. We showed the result to Mazzini and the rest, and so made up the text (with slight and insignificant alterations) which flew like an electric shock over Europe, evoking a shout of enthusiasm and a howl of indignation. Then Mazzini went away; the other visitors went too. We were left alone with two or three intimate friends, and twilight slowly fell. How deeply and truly sorry I was, children, that you were not with me on that day! It is good to remember such days for long years; they refresh the soul and reconcile it to the seamy side of life. They are very few....

4

26 PRINCE’S GATE

‘What is to come?’ ... The immediate future did not keep us long waiting. As in the old epic poems while the hero is calmly resting on his laurels, feasting or sleeping, Malice, Vengeance and Envy assemble in their gala dress on storm-clouds of some sort; Vengeance and Envy brew a poison and temper daggers, while Malice blows the bellows and whets the blades: so it happened now in a form decorously adapted to our mild and peaceful manners. In our day all this is done simply by men and not by allegorical figures; they meet together in brightly lighted drawing-rooms instead of in ‘the darkness of night,’ and are attended by powdered flunkeys instead of by dishevelled Furies; the horrors and scenery of classical poems and children’s pantomimes are replaced by simple peaceful playing with marked cards, and magic is superseded by the everyday tricks of commerce with which the honest shopkeeper selling some black-currant juice mixed with spirits swears that it is port, and old port XXX, too, knowing that though no one believes him, no one will take proceedings, or if any one does, he will only fare the worse for it.

At the very time when Garibaldi called Mazzini his friend and teacher, called him the first sower who had stood alone on the field when all were sleeping about him, who, pointing out the way, had shown it to the young warrior yearning to do battle for his country, and had become the leader of the Italian people; at the very time when, surrounded by friends, he looked at the weeping old Italian exile who repeated his ‘Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant ...’ and himself almost wept with him; at the time when he confided to us his secret dread of the future, conspirators were resolving at all costs to get rid of the awkward guest; and although men grown old in diplomacy and intrigue, grey and decrepit in subterfuge and hypocrisy, took part in the conspiracy, they played their game no worse than the shopkeeper who sells his black-currant juice for old port XXX on his word of honour.

The English Government never had invited nor sent for Garibaldi; that is all nonsense invented by the ingenious journalists on the Continent. The Englishmen who invited Garibaldi had nothing in common with the Ministry; the assumption of a Government plan is as absurd as the subtle observation of our _crétins_ that Palmerston gave Stansfeld a post in the Admiralty just because the latter was a friend of Mazzini. Note that in the most furious onslaughts upon Stansfeld and Palmerston there was no word suggesting this in Parliament or in the English newspapers.

Such silliness would have provoked as much mirth as Urquhart’s accusation that Palmerston was in receipt of pay from Russia. Chambers and the others asked Palmerston whether Garibaldi’s visit would be disagreeable to the Government. Palmerston answered, as was fitting for him to answer: that it could not be disagreeable to the Government for General Garibaldi to visit England, that the Government neither forbade his visit nor invited it.

Garibaldi agreed to come with the object of raising the Italian question in England once more and collecting enough money to begin a campaign in the Adriatic and to win Victor Emmanuel by the accomplished fact.

That was all.

That Garibaldi would be received with ovations was very well known to those who visited him and to all who desired him to come. But the aspect it assumed among the common people was not expected.

At the news that the man ‘in the red shirt,’ the hero wounded by an Italian bullet, was coming to visit them, the English people stirred and fluttered their wings, unaccustomed to flight and stiff with heavy and incessant toil. There was not only joy and love in this, there was complaint, a murmur, a moan; the apotheosis of one was the condemnation of others.

Remember my meeting with the shipwright from Newcastle. Remember that the working men of London were the first who in their address intentionally put the name of Mazzini side by side with that of Garibaldi.

At the present time the English aristocracy have nothing to fear from their powerful down-trodden and undeveloped working class; moreover, their vulnerable point is not in the direction of the European revolution. But yet the character which the reception was taking was extremely displeasing to them. What made the shepherds of the people most wince at the working men’s peaceful agitation was that it was drawing them out of the fitting order, was distracting them from the excellent, moral, and, moreover, never-ending preoccupation with their daily bread, from the lifelong hard labour to which not they, the masters, had doomed them but our common Manufacturer, our Maker—the God of Shaftesbury, the God of Derby, the God of the Sutherlands and the Devonshires—in His incomprehensible wisdom and infinite mercy.

It never, of course, entered the heads of the real English aristocracy to turn Garibaldi out; on the contrary, they tried to draw him away to themselves, to hide him from the people in a cloud of gold, as ox-eyed Hera was hidden whenever she sported with Zeus. They proposed to show him kindness, to overwhelm him with food and drink, not to let him come to himself nor to recover his senses nor to be one moment alone. Garibaldi wants money: could those condemned by the mercy of our ‘Maker,’ the Maker of Shaftesbury, Derby and Devonshire, to obscure and blessed poverty collect much for him? We, they said, will throw him half a million—a million—francs, half the betting on a horse at Epsom races, we will buy him—

‘Estate and home and villa,
A hundred thousand in pure silver.’

We will buy him the rest of Caprera, we will buy him a wonderful yacht, he is so fond of sailing about over the sea; and that he may not waste his money on nonsense (by _nonsense_ understand the emancipation of Italy), we will entail the estate, we will let him enjoy the interest.[25] All these plans were carried out with the most brilliant scenery and setting, but had little success. Garibaldi, like the moon on a dull night, however the clouds were moved forward, hastened or changed, shone out clear and bright and shed light on us below.

The aristocracy began to be a little embarrassed. The business men came to their aid. Their interests were too immediate for them to think about the moral consequences of the agitation; they wanted to control the moment; they fancied one Caesar had frowned, the other looked sulky and feared the Tories would take advantage of it. The scandalous Stansfeld affair was bad enough already.

Fortunately, just at that time Clarendon had to make a pilgrimage to the Tuileries! His business was of no great importance, he returned immediately. Napoleon talked with him about Garibaldi and expressed his satisfaction that the English people honours great men. Dronyn de Lhuys[26] said—that is, he said nothing, but if he had, he would have stammered:—

‘I was born near the Caucasus,[27]
Civis Romanus sum.’

The Austrian Ambassador did not even rejoice at the reception of the _Umweltzungs_ General. Everything was arranged satisfactorily. But there was an uneasy gnawing in some hearts.

The Ministers could not sleep at nights. The first whispered to the second, the second to a friend of Garibaldi’s, a friend of Garibaldi’s to a kinsman of Palmerston’s, to Lord Shaftesbury, and to a still greater friend of his, Seeley; Seeley whispered to the surgeon Fergusson; Fergusson, who cared nothing for his neighbour, was alarmed and wrote letter after letter about Garibaldi’s illness. After reading them, Gladstone was even more alarmed than the surgeon. Who could have imagined that so much love and sympathy lies sometimes hidden under the portfolio of the Ministry of Finance?...

The day after our festivity I went to London. At the railway station I picked up the evening paper and read in large letters ‘Illness of General Garibaldi,’ then the announcement that he was going in a day or two to Caprera _without visiting a single other city_. Not being so nervously sensitive as Shaftesbury, nor so anxious over the health of my friends as Gladstone, I was not in the least troubled by the announcement in the newspaper of the illness of a man whom I had seen the day before perfectly well. Of course there are illnesses that run a very rapid course—the Emperor Paul, for instance, was not long ill—but Garibaldi was a long way from an _apoplectic stroke_, and if anything had happened to him, one of our common friends would have let me know, and so it was easy to guess that it was a deliberate plan, _un coup monté_.

It was too late to go to Garibaldi. I went to Mazzini’s and did not find him in, then to the house of a lady from whom I learnt the chief facts concerning the ministerial sympathy for the great man’s illness. While I was there Mazzini arrived in a state such as I had never seen him in before; there were tears in his eyes and in his voice.

From the speech uttered at the second meeting on Primrose Hill by Shaen one can tell _en gros_ how it was done. The ‘conspirators’ were named by him, and the circumstances described fairly accurately. Shaftesbury went to take counsel with Seeley; Seeley as a practical man at once said that they must have a letter from Fergusson; Fergusson was too polite a man to refuse the letter. Armed with it, the conspirators went on Sunday evening, the 17th of April, to Stafford House and deliberated what to do, close to the room where Garibaldi was quietly sitting, eating grapes, unaware that he was so ill, or that he was departing. At last the valiant Gladstone undertook the difficult task, and, accompanied by Shaftesbury and Seeley, went to Garibaldi’s room. Gladstone used to talk over whole Parliaments, universities, corporations, deputations; it was easy for him to talk over Garibaldi. Moreover, he carried on the conversation in Italian, and did well, as in that way he talked without witnesses, though there were four in the room. Garibaldi answered first that he was quite well, but the Minister of Finance could not accept the chance fact of his good health as an answer, and pointed out that according to Fergusson he was ill, and confirmed this by the document in his hand. At last Garibaldi, perceiving that something else was hidden under this tender sympathy, asked Gladstone, Did all this mean that they wanted him to go? Gladstone did not conceal from him that his presence added to the complications of their already difficult position. ‘In that case I will go,’ said Garibaldi.

Gladstone, softened, was alarmed at a too _conspicuous_ success and suggested he should visit two or three towns and then depart for Caprera.

‘I cannot choose between the towns,’ answered Garibaldi, wounded, ‘and I give you my word that within two days I shall be gone.’

On Monday there was a question asked in Parliament. The feather-headed old Palmerston in one House and the fleet-footed pilgrim Clarendon in the other explained everything with perfect candour. Clarendon assured the peers that Napoleon had not asked for Garibaldi to be turned out. Palmerston for his part was not at all desirous for his departure. He was only anxious about his health ... and thereupon he entered into all the details which a loving wife, or a doctor sent by an insurance society, goes into—the hours of sleep and of dinner, the consequences of his wound, his diet, the effects of excitement, his age. The sitting of the House of Commons was turned into a consultation of physicians. The Minister had recourse not to Chatham and Campbell but to therapeutics and Fergusson, who had been so helpful in this difficult operation.

The legislative assembly decided that Garibaldi was ill. Towns and villages, counties and banks are left entirely to self-government in England. The Government, which jealously guards itself from every suspicion of interference, which allows men to die of hunger every day through fear of limiting the self-government of workhouses, which permits whole populations to be worked to death and turned into _crétins_, was suddenly transformed into a hospital-nurse. These statesmen abandoned the helm of the great ship and babbled in hushed voices of the health of a man who had not asked for their sympathy, and, uninvited, prescribed for him the Atlantic Ocean and Sutherland’s Undine; the Minister of Finance forgot his budget, his income-tax, his debit and credit, and turned consulting physician. The Prime Minister laid this pathological case before Parliament. But is self-government in the case of a man’s legs and stomach less sacred than the freedom of charitable establishments whose task is to lead men to the graveyard?

Not long before this Stansfeld had had to pay for not thinking himself bound to quarrel with Mazzini because he was serving the Queen. And now were not the most securely placed Ministers writing, not addresses, but prescriptions and worrying themselves to prolong the days of another revolutionary like Mazzini?

Garibaldi _ought_ to have been suspicious of the desire of the Government expressed to him by over-ardent friends and to have remained. Could any one have doubted the truth of the words of the Prime Minister, uttered to the representatives of England? All his friends advised him to remain. ‘Palmerston’s words cannot relieve me of my promise,’ answered Garibaldi, and told them to pack up.

This was Solferino.[28]

Byelinsky observed long ago that the secret of the success of diplomatists lies in the fact that they treat us as though we were diplomatists, while we treat diplomatists as though they were men.

Now you understand why our festive gathering and Garibaldi’s speech, his words about Mazzini, would have had a different character had they come one day later.

Next day I went to Stafford House and learnt that Garibaldi had moved to Seeley’s, 26 Prince’s Gate, near Kensington Gardens. I went to Prince’s Gate; there was no possibility of talking to Garibaldi, he was not allowed out of sight; some twenty visitors were walking about, sitting silent, or talking in the drawing-room and the study.

‘You are going?’ I said, and took him by the hand. Garibaldi pressed my hand and answered in a mournful voice: ‘I bow to the necessities (_je me plie aux nécessités_).’

He was going off somewhere. I left him and went downstairs; there I found Saffi, Guerzoni, Mordini and Richardson; all were beside themselves with anger at Garibaldi’s departure. Mrs. Seeley came in, followed by a thin, elderly, lively Frenchwoman who addressed herself with excessive eloquence to the lady of the house, speaking of her happiness in making the acquaintance of such a _personne distinguée_. Mrs. Seeley turned to Stansfeld, asking him to translate. The Frenchwoman went on: ‘Ah my God, how delighted I am! Of course that is your son, allow me to introduce myself.’ Stansfeld disabused the Frenchwoman, who had not observed that Mrs. Seeley was about his age, and asked her to tell him what it was she wanted. She flung a glance at me (Saffi and the others had gone out) and said: ‘We are not alone.’ Stansfeld mentioned my name. She immediately turned and harangued me, begging me to remain, but I preferred to leave her to a _tête-à-tête_ with Stansfeld and went upstairs again. A minute later Stansfeld came up with some sort of hook or rivet. The Frenchwoman’s husband had invented it and she wanted Garibaldi’s approval.

The last two days were full of confusion and gloom. Garibaldi avoided talking about his departure and said not a word about his health.... In all his friends he met a look of sorrowful reproach. He was sick at heart, but he said nothing.

At two o’clock on the day before his departure I was sitting with him when they came to tell him that there was already a crowd in the reception-room. On that day the members of Parliament with their families and all sorts of nobility and gentry, numbering two thousand people according to _The Times_, were presented to him. It was a _grand lever_, a regal reception, but such a one as no king of Würtemberg or even of Prussia could ever have attracted without calling in professors and lower ranks of officers.

Garibaldi got up and asked: ‘Is it really time?’ Stansfeld, who happened to be there, looked at his watch and said: ‘There is still five minutes before the time fixed.’ Garibaldi heaved a sigh of relief and sat down cheerfully. But then a factotum ran in and began arranging where the sofa was to stand, by which door people were to come in, by which to go out.

‘I am going,’ I said to Garibaldi.

‘Why? Do stay.’

‘What am I going to do?’

‘Surely,’ he said, smiling, ‘I can keep one man I know, since I am receiving so many I don’t.’

The doors were opened; in the doorway stood an improvised master of the ceremonies with a sheet of paper in his hand from which he began reading aloud as from a directory: the Right Honourable So-and-so—the Honourable So-and-so—Esquire—Lady—Esquire—Lordship—Mrs.—Esquire—M.P., M.P., without end. At every name there burst in at the doorway and sailed into the room old and young crinolines, grey heads and bald heads, tiny little old men and stout sturdy little old men, and thin giraffes with no hind legs, who drew themselves up to such a height that it looked as though the upper part of their head was propped on huge yellow teeth, and tried to draw themselves higher still. Each one of them had three, four or five ladies, and this was very fortunate, since they occupied the space of fifty men, and in that way saved us from a crush. They all came up to Garibaldi in turn. The men shook his hand with the vigour with which a man shakes his own when he has put his finger in boiling water; some said something as they did so, the majority grunted, remained dumb and bowed as they turned away. The ladies too were mute, but they gazed so long and so passionately at Garibaldi that there will certainly be a crop of children born this year in London with his features; and as the children even now are going about in red shirts like his, there will be nothing left to imitate but his cloak.

Those who had paid their respects sailed towards the opposite door, which opened into the drawing-room, and descended the stairs; the bolder among them were in no haste to go, but tried to remain in the room.

At first Garibaldi stood up, then he kept sitting down and getting up again, finally he simply remained sitting; his leg did not allow him to remain standing for long. The end of the reception was beyond hoping for: carriages kept driving up, the master of the ceremonies kept reading out titles.

The band of the Horse Guards struck up. I stood about and stood about, and at last went out into the drawing-room, and there, with a stream of surging crinolines, reached the cascade, and with it was carried to the doors of the room where Saffi and Mordini usually sat. There was no one in it. I had a feeling of confusion and disgust in my heart; what a farce it all was, this gilded dismissal, and with it this comedy of a royal reception! Tired out, I threw myself on the sofa; the band was playing from ‘Lucrezia,’ and playing very well. I listened.—Yes, yes, ‘_Non curiamo l’incerto domani_.’

From the window could be seen rows of carriages; these had not yet driven up; here one moved up, after it a second and a third, again there was a pause; and I fancied how Garibaldi with his bruised hand was sitting tired and gloomy, how that dark cloud was coming over his face and no one noticing it, while still the crinolines float up and still the Right Honourables come—grey-headed, bald, broad-faced, giraffes....

The band played on, the carriages drove up. I don’t know how it happened, but I fell asleep. Some one opened the door and woke me.... The music was still playing, the carriages still driving up. There was no end in sight.... They really will kill him!

I went home.

Next day, that is on the day of his departure, I went to see Garibaldi at seven o’clock in the morning, and slept the night before in London on purpose to do so. He was gloomy and abrupt. For the first time one could see that he was accustomed to command, that he was an iron leader on the field of battle and on the sea.

He was caught by some gentleman who had brought with him a bootmaker, the inventor of a boot with an iron contrivance for Garibaldi. With self-sacrificing resignation Garibaldi sat down in a low chair; the shoemaker in the sweat of his brow forced his irons on him, then made him stamp and walk a step; it seemed all right. ‘What must we pay him?’ asked Garibaldi. ‘Upon my soul!’ answered the gentleman; ‘why, you will make him happy if you accept it.’ They withdrew.

‘It will be put up over his shop in a day or two,’ some one observed, while Garibaldi said with a supplicating expression to the young man who waited upon him: ‘For God’s sake get this contrivance off me; I can’t stand it, it hurts.’ It was frightfully funny.

Then the aristocratic ladies made their appearance; those of less consequence were waiting in a crowd in the drawing-room.

Ogaryov and I went up to him. ‘Good-bye,’ I said. ‘Good-bye till we meet in Caprera.’ He embraced me, sat down, stretched out both hands to us, and, in a voice which cut us to the heart, said: ‘Forgive me, forgive me, my head is going round. Come to Caprera,’ and once more he embraced us.

After the reception Garibaldi had to go for an interview with the Prince of Wales at Stafford House.

We went out of the gate and separated. Ogaryov went to Mazzini, I went to Rothschild. There was no one yet at Rothschild’s bank. I went to St. Paul’s tavern, and there was no one there either. I asked for a rump-steak, and, sitting down quite alone, went over the details of this Midspring Night’s Dream.

Go, great child, great force, great fanatic and great simplicity! Go to your rock, peasant in the red shirt! Go, King Lear! Goneril drives you out; leave her, you have poor Cordelia. She will not cease to love you, and she will not die!

The fourth act was over!

What is to come in the fifth?

_May 15, 1864._

APOGEE AND PERIGEE

Our acquaintances, and the Russian ones especially, used to meet at our house on Sunday evenings. In 1862 the number of the latter greatly increased: merchants and tourists, journalists and officials of all the departments, and of the Third Section[29] in particular, were arriving for the Exhibition. It was impossible to make a strict selection; we warned our more intimate friends to come on another day. The respectable boredom of a London Sunday was too much for their discretion, and these Sundays did to some extent lead to disaster. But before I tell the story of that, I must describe two or three samples of our native fauna who made their appearance in the modest drawing-room of Orsett House. Our gallery of living curiosities from Russia was, beyond all doubt, more interesting than the Russian Section at the Great Exhibition.

In 1860 I received from a hotel in the Haymarket a Russian letter in which some unknown persons informed me that they were Russians and were in the service of Prince Yury Nikolayevitch Golitsyn, who had secretly left Russia: ‘The prince himself has gone to Constantinople, but has sent us by another route. The prince bade us wait for him and gave us money enough for a few days. More than a fortnight has passed; there is no news of the prince; our money is spent, the hotel-keeper is angry. We don’t know what to do. Not one of us speaks English.’ Finding themselves in this helpless position, they asked me to get them out of it. I went to them and arranged things. The hotel-keeper knew me, and consented to wait another week.

Five days later a sumptuous carriage with a pair of dapple-grey horses drove up to my front-door. However often I explained to my servants that no one was to be admitted in the morning—even though he should arrive in a four-in-hand and should be called a duke—I could never overcome their respect for an aristocratic turn-out and title.

On this occasion both these temptations to transgression were present, and so a moment later an immense man, stout and with the handsome face of an Assyrian bull-god, was embracing me and thanking me for my visit to his servants.

This was Prince Yury Nikolayevitch Golitsyn. It was a long time since I had seen so solid and characteristic a specimen of old Russia, so choice a flower of our fatherland.

He at once began telling me some incredible story, which afterwards turned out to be true, of how he had given a Cantonist an article from the _Kolokol_ to copy, and how he had parted from his wife; how the Cantonist had given the police information against him, and how his wife did not send him money; how the Tsar had sent him into perpetual banishment to Kozlov, in consequence of which he had made up his mind to escape abroad, and had carried off with him over the Moldavian frontier some young lady, a governess, a steward, a ‘regent’ and a maid-servant.

At Galatz he had picked up also a valet who spoke five languages after a fashion, and seemed to him to be a spy. Then he explained to me that he was an enthusiastic musician and was going to give concerts in London; and that therefore he wanted to make the acquaintance of Ogaryov.

‘They d-do make you p-pay here in England at the C-customs,’ he said with a slight stammer, as he completed his course of universal history.

‘For goods, perhaps, they do,’ I observed, ‘but the Customs-house is very lenient to travellers.’

‘I should not say so. I paid fifteen shillings for a crocodile.’

‘Why, what do you mean?’

‘What do I mean? Why, simply a crocodile.’

I opened my eyes wide and asked him: ‘But what is the meaning of this, prince? Do you take a crocodile about with you instead of a passport to frighten the police on the frontier?’

‘It happened like this. I was taking a walk in Alexandria, and I saw a little Arab selling a crocodile. I liked it, so I bought it.’

‘Oh, did you buy the little Arab too?’

‘Ha-ha!—no.’

A week later the prince was already installed in Porchester Terrace, that is, in a large house in a very expensive part of the town. He began by ordering his gates to be for ever wide open, which is not the English custom, and a pair of dapple-grey horses to be for ever waiting in readiness at the door. He lived in London as though he were in Kozlov or in Tambov.

He had, of course, no money, that is, he had a few thousand francs, enough to pay for the advertisement and title-page of a London life; they were spent at once; but he made a sensation, and succeeded for a few months in living free from care, thanks to the stupid trustfulness of the English, of which the foreigners from all parts of the Continent have not yet been able to cure them.

But the prince did have his fling. The concerts began. London was impressed by the prince’s title on the placards, and at the second concert the room (St. James’s Hall, Piccadilly) was full. The concert was magnificent. How Golitsyn had succeeded in training the chorus and the orchestra is only known to himself, but the concert was absolutely first-rate. Russian songs and prayers, the Kamarinsky and the Mass, fragments from Glinka’s opera and from the Gospel (Our Father)—it was all splendid. The ladies could not sufficiently admire the colossal fleshy contours of the handsome Assyrian god, so majestically and gracefully wielding his ivory sceptre; the old ladies recalled the athletic figure of the Emperor Nicholas, who had conquered the hearts of the London fair most of all by the tight doeskin _collants_, white as the Russian snows, of his Horse Guard uniform.

Golitsyn found the means of making this success his ruin. Intoxicated by the applause, he sent at the end of the first half of the concert for a basket of bouquets (remember the London prices), and before the beginning of the second part of the programme he appeared on the platform; two liveried servants carried the basket, and the prince, thanking the singers and chorus, presented each with a bouquet. The audience received this act of gallantry on the part of the aristocratic conductor with a storm of applause. My prince, towering to his full height and beaming all over, invited all the musicians to supper at the end of the concert.

At this point not only London prices but also London habits must be considered. Without sending previous notice in the morning, there is no place where one can give a supper to fifty persons at eleven o’clock at night. The Assyrian chief walked valiantly along Regent Street at the head of his musical army, knocking at the doors of various restaurants; and at last he knocked successfully. A restaurant-keeper, grasping the situation, rose to the occasion—cold meats and ardent beverages.

Then followed a series of concerts with every possible variation, even with political tendencies. At each of them the orchestra struck up Herzen waltzes, an Ogaryov quadrille, and then the Emancipation Symphony ... compositions with which the prince is very likely even now enchanting Moscow audiences, and which have probably lost nothing in moving from Albion, except their names; they could easily be altered to Potapoff waltzes, Mina waltzes, and Komissaroff’s _Partitur_.

With all this glory there was no money, he had nothing to pay with. His purveyors began to murmur. And little by little there was actually something like the slave revolt of Spartacus....

One morning the prince’s factotum, that is, his steward who styled himself his secretary, together with the ‘regent,’ that is, not the father of Philippe of Orleans, but a fair-haired, curly-headed Russian lad of two-and-twenty who led the singers, came to me.

‘We have come to see you, Alexandr Ivanovitch, sir.’

‘What has happened?’

‘Why, Yury Nikolayevitch is treating us very badly. We want to go back to Russia, and we ask him to settle our account—do not fail in your gracious kindness, defend us.’

I felt myself instantly surrounded by the atmosphere of ‘Home,’ which seemed to rise up like steam in a bath-house.

‘Why do you come to me with this complaint? If you have serious grounds for complaining of the prince, there is a Court of Justice here for every one, which will not turn aside in favour of any prince or any count.’

‘We have heard of that indeed, but _why go to law_? You had much better go into it.’

‘What good will it be to you if I do go into it? The prince will tell me to mind my own business; I shall look like a fool. If you do not want to go to law, go to the ambassador; the Russians in London are in his care, not in mine....’

‘But where should we be then? As soon as Russian gentlemen sit together, what chance can there be of settling with the prince? But you see, you are on the side of the people; so that is why we have come to you. Do be gracious, and take up our cause.’

‘What fellows you are! But the prince won’t accept my decision; what will you gain by it?’

‘Allow me to lay before you,’ the secretary retorted eagerly, ‘he will not venture on that, sir, as he has a very great respect for you; besides, he would be afraid. He would not be pleased to get into the _Kolokol_—he is ambitious.’

‘Well, listen, to waste no more time; here is my decision. If the prince will consent to accept my mediation, I will undertake the matter; if not, you must go to law; and as you know neither the language nor the mode of proceeding here, if the prince really is treating you unfairly, I will send you a man who knows English and English ways and speaks Russian.’

‘Allow me,’ the secretary was beginning.

‘No, I won’t allow you, my dear fellow. Good-bye.’

I will say a word about them too.

The ‘regent’ was in no way distinguished except by his musical abilities; he was a well-fed, soft, stupidly handsome, rosy servant-boy; his manner of speaking with a slight burr and his rather sleepy eyes called up before me a whole series, as when you see one reflection behind another in the looking-glass, of Sashkas, Senkas, Alyoshkas, and Miroshkas.

The secretary, too, was a purely Russian product, but a more striking specimen of his type. He was a man over forty, with an unshaven chin and battered face, in a greasy coat, unclean and soiled inwardly and outwardly, with small crafty eyes and that peculiar smell of Russian drunkards, made up of the ever-persistent aroma of vodka fumes mixed with a flavour of onion and cloves to conceal it. Every feature of his face approved and abetted every evil suggestion; it would doubtless have found response and appreciation in his heart, and would if profitable have received his aid. He was the prototype of the Russian petty official, the Russian shark, the Russian sharper. When I asked him whether he was pleased at the approaching emancipation of the peasants, he answered: ‘To be sure—most certainly,’ and added with a sigh: ‘Good Lord, the lawsuits and the cases there will be! And the prince has brought me here as though to spite me at a time like this.’

Before Golitsyn arrived, this man had said to me with a show of genuine feeling: ‘Don’t you believe what people will tell you about the prince oppressing the peasants, or how he meant to set them free for a big redemption money without any land. That is all a story spread by his enemies. It is true he is hasty-tempered and extravagant, but he has a good heart and has been a father to his peasants.’

As soon as he had quarrelled with the prince he cursed his lot and lamented that he had trusted such a swindler. ‘Why, he has done nothing all his life but squander money in debauchery and ruin his peasants; you know he is just keeping up a pretence before you now—but he is really a beast, a robber....’

‘When were you telling lies: now, or when you praised him?’ I asked him, smiling.

The secretary was overcome with confusion. I turned on my heel and went away. Had this man not been born in the servants’ hall of the Prince Golitsyn, had he not been the son of some village constable, he would long ago, with his abilities, have been a minister—a Valuev, or I don’t know what.

An hour later the ‘regent’ and his mentor appeared with a note from Golitsyn. He asked me, with apologies, whether I could go and see him to put an end to these wretched difficulties. The prince promised beforehand to accept my decision without dispute.

There was no getting out of it; I went.

Everything in the house betrayed an extraordinary excitement; the French servant Picot hurriedly opened the door to me, and, with the solemn fussiness with which doctors are conducted to a consultation at the bedside of a dying man, led me into the drawing-room. There I found Golitsyn’s second wife, flustered and irritated. Golitsyn himself, with no cravat, his heroic chest bare, was pacing up and down the room with huge strides. He was furious, and so stammered twice as much as usual; his whole face betrayed his suffering from the blows, kicks and punches that were surging inwardly but could have no outlet in the actual world, though they would have been his answer to the insurgents in the Tambov province.

‘For G-G-God’s sake, forgive me for t-t-troubling you about these b-b-blackguards.’

‘What is the matter?’

‘P-p-please ask them yourself; I will merely listen.’

He summoned the ‘regent,’ and the following conversation took place between us:—

‘Are you dissatisfied in any way?’

‘Yes, very much dissatisfied; that is why I want to go to Russia.’

The prince, who had a voice as strong as Lablache’s, emitted a leonine moan: another five blows in the face had to be stifled within him.

‘The prince cannot keep you; so tell us what it is you are dissatisfied with.’

‘Everything, Alexandr Ivanovitch.’

‘Well, do speak more definitely.’

‘What can I say? Ever since I came away from Russia I have been run off my legs with work, and had only two pounds of pay, and what the prince gave me the third time, in the evening, was more by way of a present.’

‘And how much ought you to have received?’

‘That I can’t say, sir....’

‘Have you a definite agreement?’

‘No indeed, sir. The prince, when he was graciously pleased to run away’ (this was said without the slightest malicious intention), ‘said to me: “If you like to come with me, I’ll make your future,” says he, “and if I have luck, I’ll give you a good salary; but if not, then you must be satisfied with a little”; so I took, and came.’

He had come from Tambov to London on such terms. Oh, Russia!

‘Well, and what do you think? has the prince been lucky or not?’

‘Lucky? no, indeed! Though to be sure, he might....’

‘That is a different question. If he is not lucky, then you ought to be satisfied with a small salary.’

‘But the prince himself has told me that for my duties and my abilities, according to the rate of pay here, I ought not to get less than four pounds a month.’

‘Prince, are you willing to pay him four pounds a month?’

‘I shall be d-d-delighted.’

‘That is capital; what more?’

‘The prince promised that if I wanted to go back he would pay my return fare to Petersburg.’

The prince nodded and added: ‘Yes, but only if I were pleased with him!’

‘Are you displeased with him?’

Then the pent-up torrent burst out; the prince leapt up. In a tragic bass, which gained weight from the quiver on some vowels and the little pauses before some of the consonants, he delivered the following speech: ‘Could I be p-p-pleased with that m-milksop, that p-p-pup? What enrages me is the foul ingratitude of the beggar. I took him into my service from the very poorest family of peasants, barefoot, devoured by lice; I trained the rascal. I have made a m-m-man of him, a m-musician, a “regent”; I have trained the scoundrel’s voice so that he could get a hundred roubles a month in Russia in the season.’

‘That is all very true, Yury Nikolayevitch, but I don’t share your view of it. Neither he nor his family asked you to make a Ronconi of him; so you can’t expect any special gratitude on his part. You have trained him as one trains a nightingale, and you have done a good thing, but that is the end of it. Besides, that is not the point.’

‘You are right; but I meant to say, see what I have to put up with, see what I have done for the rascal....’

‘So you consent to pay his fare?’

‘The devil take him. For your sake, simply, for your sake, I will....’

‘Well, the matter is settled, then: and do you know what the fare is?’

‘I am told it is twenty pounds.’

‘No, that is too much. A hundred roubles from here to Petersburg is enough. Will you give that?’

‘Yes, I will.’

I worked out the sum on paper and handed it to Golitsyn; the latter glanced at the total ... it amounted, if I remember rightly, to just over thirty pounds. He handed me the money on the spot.

‘You can read and write, of course?’ I asked the young man.

‘Of course, sir.’

I wrote out a receipt for him in some such form as this: I have received from Prince Yury Nikolayevitch Golitsyn thirty odd pounds (so much in Russian money), being salary owing to me and my fare from London to Petersburg. With that I am satisfied, and have no other claims against him.

‘Read it for yourself, and sign it.’

The young man read it, and made no movement to sign it.

‘What is the matter?’

‘I can’t, sir.’

‘Why can’t you?’

‘I am not satisfied.’

A restrained leonine roar—and, indeed, I was on the point of crying out myself.

‘What the devil is the matter? You said yourself what you claimed. The prince has paid you everything to the last farthing. Why are you dissatisfied?’

‘Why, upon my word, sir, and the straits I have been put to ever since I have been here.’

It was clear that the ease with which he had obtained the money had whetted his appetite.

‘For instance, sir, I ought to have something more for copying music.’

‘You liar!’ Golitsyn boomed, as Lablache can never have boomed; the piano responded with a timid echo; Picot’s pale face appeared at the crack of the door and vanished with the speed of a frightened lizard.... ‘Wasn’t copying music a part of your definite duty? Why, what else had you to do all the time when there were no concerts?’

The prince was right, though he need not have frightened Picot by his _contrabombardo_ voice.

The ‘regent,’ being accustomed to notes of all sorts, did not give way, but, dropping the music-copying, turned to me with the following absurdity: ‘And then, too, there is something for clothes. I am quite threadbare.’

‘But do you mean to tell me that Yury Nikolayevitch undertook to clothe you, as well as to give you about fifty pounds a year salary?’

‘No, sir; but in old days the prince did sometimes give me things, but now, I am ashamed to say so, I have come to going about without socks.’

‘I am going about without s-s-socks myself,’ roared the prince, and, folding his arms across his chest, he looked haughtily and contemptuously across at the ‘regent.’ This outburst I had not expected, and I looked into his face with surprise; but, seeing that he was about to continue, I said very gravely to the precious singer: ‘You came to me this morning to ask for my mediation: so you trusted me?’

‘We know you very well, we have no doubt of you at all, you will not let us be wronged.’

‘Very good. Well, this is how I settle the matter: sign the receipt at once or give me back the money, and I will give it back to the prince and decline to meddle any further.’

The ‘regent’ had no inclination to hand the money to the prince; he signed the receipt and thanked me. I will spare you the description of his reckoning it in roubles. I could not din into him that the rouble was not the same in the exchange as it was when he left Russia.

‘If you imagine that I am trying to cheat you of thirty shillings, this is what you had better do: go to our priest and ask him to reckon it for you.’ He agreed to do so.

It seemed as though all were over, and Golitsyn’s breast no longer heaved with such stormy menace; but as fate would have it, the sequel recalled our fatherland as the beginning had.