Among the very great number of men and women whom I have known during my life in Italy some merely acquaintances, and many whom I knew to be, and a few, alas! a very few, whom I still know to be trusty friends there were many of whom the world has heard, and some perhaps of whom it would not unwillingly hear something more. But time and space are limited, and I must select as best I may.

I have a very pleasant recollection of “Garibaldi’s Englishman,” Colonel Peard. Peard had many more qualities and capabilities than such as are essential to a soldier of fortune. The phrase, however, is perhaps not exactly that which should be used to characterise him. He had qualities which the true soldier of fortune should not possess. His partisanship was with him in the highest degree a matter of conviction and conscientious opinion, and nothing would have tempted him to change his colours or draw his sword on the other side. I am not sure either, whether a larger amount of native brain power, and (in a much greater degree) a higher quality of culture, than that of the general under whom it may be his fortune to serve, is a good part of the equipment of a soldier of fortune. And Peard’s relation to Garibaldi very notably exemplified this.

He was a native of Devonshire, as was my first wife; we saw a good deal of him in Florence, and I have before me a letter written to her by him from Naples on the 28th of January, 1861, which is interesting in more respects than one. Peard was a man who would have all that depended on him ship-shape. And this fact, taken in conjunction with the surroundings amid which he had to do his work, is abundantly sufficient to justify the growl he indulges in.

“My dear Mrs. Trollope,” he writes, “I am ashamed to think either of you or of other friends at Florence; it is such an age since I have written to any of you. But I have been daily, from morning to night, hard at work for weeks. The honour of having a command is all very well, but the trouble and worry are unspeakable. Besides, I had such a set under me that it was enough to rile the sweetest tempered man. Volunteers may be very well in their way. I doubt not their efficiency in repelling an attack in their own country. But defend me from ever again commanding a brigade of English volunteers in a foreign country. As to the officers, many were most mutinous, and some something worse. Thank goodness the brigade is at an end. All I now wait for is the settlement of the accounts. If I can get away by the second week in February, I at present think of taking a run as far as Cairo, then crossing to Jerusalem, and back by Jaffa, Beyrout, Smyrna, and Athens to Italy, when I shall hope once more to see you and yours.

“Politics do not look well in Southern Italy, I fear. The Mazzinists have been most active, and have got up a rather strong feeling against Cavour and what they think the peace party. Now Italy must have a little rest for organisation, civil as well as military. They do not give the Government time to do or even propose good measures for the improvement of the country. No sooner are one set of ministers installed than intrigues are on foot to upset them. I firmly believe that the only hope for Southern Italy and Sicily is in a strong military Government. These districts must be treated as conquered provinces, and the people educated and taught habits of industry, whether they like it or not. The country is at present in a state of barbarism, and must be saved from that. All that those who are supposed to be educated seem to think about is how they can get a few dollars out of Government.” [I fear the honest Englishman would find that those supposed to be educated in those provinces are as much in a state of barbarism in the matters that offended him as ever.] “I never saw such a set of harpies in my life. One had the assurance to come to me a few days since, asking if I could not take him on the strength of the brigade, so as to enable him to get six months pay out of the Government. As to peculation, read Gil Blas, and that will give you a faint sketch of the customs and habits of all impiegati [civil servants] in this part of Italy. I do not believe that the Southern Italians, taken as a body, know what honesty is.” [All that he says is true to the present day. But the distinction which he makes between the Southern Italians and those of the other provinces is most just, and must be remembered.] “But that is the fault of the horrid system of tyranny under which they have so long lived. I do not say that the old system must be reformed, it must be totally changed. Solomon might make laws, but so corrupt are all the impiegati, that I doubt if he could get them carried out. Poor Garibaldi is made a tool of by a set of designing intriguers, who will sacrifice him at any moment. He is too honest to see or believe of dishonesty in others. He has no judgment of character. He has been surrounded by a set of blacklegs and swindlers, many among them, I regret to say, English. How I look forward to seeing you all again! Till we meet, believe me

“Most truly yours,

“GIO. [sic] PEARD.”

The last portion of this letter is highly interesting and historically well worth preserving. It is entirely and accurately true. And there was no man in existence more fitted by native integrity and hatred of dishonesty on the one hand, and close intimacy with the subject of his remarks on the other, to speak authoritatively on the matter than “Garibaldi’s Englishman.”

The following letter, written, as will be seen, on the eve of his departure for the celebrated expedition to Sicily, is also interesting. It is dated Genoa.

“DEAR MRS. TROLLOPE, I have been thinking over your observations about terno. I don’t give up my translation; but would it not be literal enough to translate it, ‘the bravest three colours’?

[This refers to the rendering of the lottery phrase terno in a translation by my wife of the stornello of Dall’ Ongaro previously mentioned. In the Italian lottery, ninety numbers, 1-90, are always put into the wheel. Five only of these are drawn out. The player bets that a number named by him shall be one of these (semplice estratto); or that it shall be the first drawn (estratto determinato); or that two numbers named by him shall be two of the five drawn (ambo); or that three so named shall be drawn (terno). It will be seen, therefore, that the winner of an estratto determinato, ought, if the play were quite even, to receive ninety times his stake. But, in fact, such a player would receive only seventy-five times his stake, the profit of the Government consisting of this pull of fifteen per ninety against the player. Of course, what he ought to receive in any of the other cases is easily (not by me, but by experts) calculable. It will be admitted that the difficulty of translating the phrase in Dall’ Ongaro’s little poem, so as to be intelligible to English readers, was considerable. The letter then proceeds]:

“I did not start, you will see, direct from Livorno [Leghorn], for Medici wrote me to join him here. Moreover, the steamer by which I expected to have gone, did not make the trip, but was sent back to this city. I will worry you with a letter when anything stirring occurs. We sail to-night. Part went off last evening 1,500. We go in three steamers, and shall overtake the others.

“With kind regards to all friends, believe me,

“Yours very faithfully,

“JOHN PEARD.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“As for the priests,” said he, “they ought all to be put to death, without exception and without delay!”

“Rather a strong measure!” I ventured to say.

“Not a bit too strong! not a bit!” he rejoined warmly. “Do we not put assassins to death? And is not the man who murders your soul worse than the man who only kills your body?”

I attempted to say that the difference of the two cases lay in the fact, that as to the killing of the body there was no doubt about the matter, whereas mankind differed very widely as to the killing of the soul; and that as long as it remained a moot point whether priests did so or not, it would hardly be practicable or even politic to adopt the measure he suggested.

But he would not listen to me only repeated with increasing excitement that no good could come to humanity till all priests were destroyed.

Then we talked about the Marries, of both of whom he spoke with the greatest affection; and of the prospects of “going to Rome,” which of course he considered the simplest and easiest thing possible.

I saw Garibaldi on many subsequent occasions, but never again tete-a-tete, or a Quattro Oct, as the Italians more significantly phrase it. The last time I ever saw him was under melancholy circumstances enough, though the occasion professed to be one of rejoicing. It was at the great gathering at Palermo for celebrating the anniversary of the Sicilian Vespers. Of course such a celebration would have brought Garibaldi to partake in it, wherever he might have been, short of in his grave. And truly he was then very near that. It was a melancholy business. He was brought from the steamer to his bed in the hotel on a litter through the streets lined by the thousands who had gathered to see him, but who had been warned that his condition was such, that the excitement occasioned by any shouting would be perilous to him. Amid dead silence his litter passed through the crowds who were longing to welcome him to the scene of his old triumphs! Truly it was more like a funeral procession than one of rejoicing.

It was very shortly before his death, which many people thought had been accelerated by that last effort to make his boundless popularity available for the propagation of Radicalism.

Peard’s words reveal with exactitude the deficiency which lay at the root of all the blunders, follies, and imprudence which rendered his career less largely beneficent for Italy than it might have been. “He had no judgment of character,” and was too honest to believe in knavery. It must be added that he was too little intelligent to detect it, or to estimate the consequences of it. Of any large views of social life, or of the means by which, and the objects for which, men should be governed, he was as innocent as a baby. In a word, he was not an intellectual man. All the high qualities which placed him on the pinnacle he occupied were qualities of the heart and not of the head. They availed with admirable success to fit him for exercising a supreme influence over men, especially young men, in the field, and for all the duties of a guerilla leader. They would not have sufficed to make him a great commander of armies; and did still less fit him for becoming a political leader.

Whom next shall I present to the reader from the portrait gallery of my reminiscences?

Come forward, Franz Pulszky, most genial, most large-hearted of philosophers and friends! I can’t say “guides,” for though he was both the first, he was not the last, differing widely as we did upon perhaps not most, but at all events many large subjects.

I had known the lady whom Pulszky married in Vienna many years previously, and long before he knew her. She was the daughter of that highly cultivated Jewish family of whom I have spoken before. When I first knew her she was as pretty and charming a young girl as could be imagined. She was possessed then of all the accomplishments that can adorn a girl at that period of life. Later on she showed that she was gifted with sense, knowledge, energy, firmness, courage and caractère in a degree very uncommon. Since leaving Vienna I had neither seen nor heard more of her, till she came to live with her husband and family of children in Florence. But our old acquaintanceship was readily and naturally renewed, and his villa near the city became one of the houses I best loved to frequent. She had at that time, and even well-nigh I take it in those old days at Vienna, abandoned all seeming of conformity to the practices of the faith she was born in.

I used to say of Pulszky that he was like a barrel full to the bung with generous liquor, which flowed in a full stream, stick the spigot in where you would. He was is, I am happy to say is the proper tense In his case a most many-sided man. His talk on artistic subjects, mainly historical and biographical, was abundant and most amusing. His antiquarian knowledge was large. His ethnographical learning, theories, and speculations were always interesting and often most suggestive. Years had, I think, put some water in the wine of his political ideas, but not enough to prevent differences between us on such subjects. He was withal there again I mean “is,” for I am sure that years and the air of his beloved Pesth cannot have put any water in that generous and genial wine a fellow of infinite jest, and full of humour; in a word, one of the fullest and most delightful companions I have ever known. He talked English with no further accent than served to add a raciness to the flavour of his conversation; and every morning of one fixed day in the week he used to come to Ricorboli for what he called a tobacco parliament.

I used frequently to spend the evening at his villa, where one met a somewhat extraordinary cosmopolitan gathering. Generally we had some good music; for Madame Pulszky was unhappily in her case the past tense is needed a very perfect musician. Among other people more or less off the world’s beaten track, I used to meet there a very extraordinary Russian, who had accomplished the rare feat of escaping from Siberia. He was a Nihilist of the most uncompromising type; a huge, shaggy man, with an unkempt head and chest like those of a bear; and by his side more or less there was a pretty, petite, dainty little young wife beauty and the beast, if ever that storied couple were seen in the flesh!

Many years afterwards when I and my wife saw Pulszky at Pesth, and were talking of old times, he reminded me of this person; and on my doubting that any man in his senses could believe in the practicability of the extreme Nihilist theories, he instanced our old acquaintance, saying, “Yes, there is a man, who in his very inmost conscience believes that no good of any sort can be achieved for humanity till the sponge shall have been passed over all that men have instituted and done, and a perfect tabula rasa has been substituted for it!”

I have many letters from Pulszky, written most of them after his return to Pesth, and for the most part too much occupied with the persons and politics of that recent day to be fit for publication.

Here is one, written before he left Florence, which may be given:

“VILLA PETROVICH.

“MY DEAR TROLLOPE, I am just returned from a long excursion with Boxall to Arezzo, Cortona, Borgo San Sepolcro, Città di Castello, Perugia, and Assisi. We were there for a week, and enjoyed it amazingly. I am sorry to say that I am not now able to join your party to Camaldoli, since I must see Garibaldi, and do not know as yet what I shall do when the war begins, which might happen during your excursion. I hope you will drink a glass of water to my remembrance at La Vernia from the miraculous well, called from the rocks by my patron saint, St. Francis of Assisi. I shall come to you on Sunday, and will tell you more about him. I studied him at Assisi.

“Yours sincerely,

“FR. PULSZKY.”

The following passages may be given from a long letter, written from Pesth on the 27th of March, 1869. It is for the most part filled with remarks on the party politics of the hour, and persons, many of them still on the scene:

“MY DEAR MRS. AND MR. TROLLOPE, You don’t believe how glad I was to get a token of remembrance from you. It seems to me quite an age since I left Florence, and your letter was like a voice from a past period. I live here as a stranger; you would not recognise me. I talk nothing but politics and business. There is not a man with whom I could speak in the way that we did on Sundays at your villa. I am of course much with old Deak. I often dine with him. I know all his anecdotes and jokes by heart. He likes it, if I visit him; but our conversation remains within the narrow limits of party politics and the topics of the day. Sometimes I spend an evening with Baron Eotvoes, the Minister of Public Instruction, my old friend; and there only we get both warm in remembering the days of our youth, and building chateaux en Espagne for the future of the country. Eotvoes has appointed me Director of the National Museum, which contains a library of 180,000 volumes, mostly Hungarian; a very indifferent picture gallery, with a few good pictures and plenty of rubbish; a poor collection of antiquities; splendid mediaeval goldsmith work; arms, coins, and some miserable statues; a good collection of stuffed birds; an excellent one of butterflies; a celebrated one of beetles, and good specimens for geology and mineralogy. But all this collection is badly, if at all, catalogued; badly arranged; and until now we have in a great palace an appropriation of only 1,200_l._ a year. I shall have much to do there as much as any minister in his office, if politics leave me the necessary time for it.

[Then follows a quantity of details about the party politics of the day. And then he continues: ]

“Such a contested election with us costs about 2,000_l._ to 3,000_l._ I must say I never spent money with more regret than this; but I had to maintain the party interest and my family influence in my electoral district. I have there a fine old castle and a splendid park, but I rarely go to the country, since I have jumped, as you know, once more into the whirlpool of politics, and can’t get out again. An agrarian communistic agitation has been initiated, I do not know whether with or without the sanction of S , but certainly it has spread rapidly over a great portion of the country, and I doubt whether Government has the energy for putting that agitation down. It is a very serious question, especially as it finds us engaged in many other questions of the highest interest.

[Then he gives an outline of the position of Hungary in relation to other States, and then he continues: ]

“We remain still in opposition with the Wallachians, or, as they now like to call themselves, Rumanes, and we try to maintain the peace with Prussia. And now when we should concentrate all our forces to meet the changes which threaten us, a stupid and wicked Opposition divides the nation into two hostile camps [how very singular and unexampled!]. We fight one another to the great pleasure of Russia and Prussia, who enjoy our fratricidal feuds as the Romans in the amphitheatre enjoyed the fights of the barbarians in the arena.

“I must beg your pardon, dear Mrs. Trollope, that I grow so pathetic! You know it is not my custom when I am with ladies. But you must know likewise that I live now outside of female society. I do not exactly know whether it is my fault or that of the ladies of Pesth; so much is certain that only at Vienna, where I go from time to time, I call upon ladies. As to my children, Augustus, whom you scarcely know, is a volunteer in the army according to our law of universal conscription. Charles you may have seen at Florence. I sent him thither to visit his grandmother.” [Madame Walter, the mother of Madame Pulszky; the lady who had received us with such pleasant hospitality at Vienna, and who had come to reside at Florence, where she lived to a great age much liked and respected.] “Polixena gets handsome and clever; little Garibaldi is to go to school in September next. I grow old, discontented, insupportable;” [we found him at Pesth many years afterwards no one of the three!]; “a journey to Greece and Italy would certainly do me immense good; but I fear I must give up that plan for the present year, since after a contested election it is a serious thing to spend money for amusement. In June I shall leave my present lodging and go to the Museum, which stands in a handsome square opposite to the House of Parliament. Excuse me for my long, long talk; and do not forget your faithful friend, in partibus infidelium,

“FR. PULSZKY.”

On the 26th of March, 1870, he writes a letter which was brought to us by his son, the Augustus mentioned in the letter I have just transcribed.

“MY DEAR MRS. AND MR. TROLLOPE, Detained by Parliamentary duties and the management of my own affairs, I am still unable to make a trip to Italy to visit my friends, who made the time of my exile more agreeable to me than my own country. But I send in my stead a second edition of the old Pulszky, revised and corrected ad usum Delphini, though I do not doubt that you prefer the old book, to which you were accustomed. My son Augustus has now finished his studies, and is D.E.L. in a few days Lieutenant in the reserve, and Secretary at the Ministry of Finance. Few young men begin their career in a more promising way. As to myself, Augustus will tell you more than I could write. I have remained too long in foreign countries to feel entirely at home at Pesth, where people know how to make use of everybody. I am M.P., belong to the Finance Committee, am Chairman of the Committee of Foreign Affairs in the Delegation, Director of the Museum, Chairman of the Philological Section in the Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the Society of Fine Arts, Vice-President of three Insurance Offices, and Member of the Council of two railroads. This long list proves sufficiently that my time is taken up from early morning to night. But my health is good, despite of the continuous wear and tear.

“During the summer vacations I wish to go to England. For ten years I have not been there; and I long to see again a highly civilised people; else I become myself a barbarian. Still I am proud of my Hungarians, who really struggle hard, and not without success, to be more than they are now the first of the barbarians.

“I have for a long time not heard of you. Of course, in our correspondence your letter was the last, not mine. It is my own fault. But you must excuse me still for one year. Then I hope I can put myself in a more comfortable position. For the present I am unable even to read anything but Hungarian papers, bills, reports, and business letters. I envy you in your elegant villa, where you enjoy life! I hope you are both well, and do not forget your old friend,

“FR. PULSZKY.

“P.S. Augustus will give you a good photograph of me.”

Here is one other letter of the 13th June, 1872:

“MY DEAR TROLLOPE, What a pity that my time does not allow me to visit Italy at any other season than just in summer. We are in the midst of our canvass for the general elections. My son Augustus is to be returned for my old place Szecseny without opposition on the 21st. On the following day we go to the poll at Gyoengyoes, a borough which is to send me to Parliament. It is a contested election, therefore rather troublesome and expensive, though not too expensive. Parliament meets with us on the first of September. Thus my holidays are in July and August. Shall we never have the pleasure to see you and Mrs. Trollope, to whom I beg you to give my best regards, here at Pesth? Next year is the great exhibition at Vienna. Might it not induce you to visit Vienna, whence by an afternoon trip you come to Pesth, where I know you would amuse yourselves to your hearts’ content.

“My children are quite well. Charles is at the University at Vienna. He despises politics, and wants to become Professor at the University of Pesth in ten or twelve years.

“As to me I am well, very busy; much attacked by the Opposition since I am a dreaded party man. Besides I have to re-organise the National Museum, from the library, which has no catalogue, to the great collections of mineralogy and plants. We bought the splendid picture gallery of Prince Esterhazy. This too is under my direction, with a most important collection of prints and drawings. You see, therefore, that my time is fully occupied.

“Yours always,

“FR. PULSZKY.”

My wife and I did subsequently visit our old friend at Pesth, and much enjoyed our brief stay there and our chat of old times. But the work of re-organising the Museum was not yet completed. I do sincerely hope that the task has been brought to an end by this time, and that I may either in England or at Pesth once again see Franz Pulszky in the flesh!