At Home And Abroad Part 39

A day or two since, we sat in the Pope's little pavilion, where he used to give private audience. The sun was going gloriously down over Monte Mario, where gleamed the white tents of the French light-horse among the trees. The cannonade was heard at intervals. Two bright-eyed boys sat at our feet, and gathered up eagerly every word said by the heroes of the day. It was a beautiful hour, stolen from the midst of ruin and sorrow, and tales were told as full of grace and pathos as in the gardens of Boccaccio, only in a very different spirit,--with n.o.ble hope for man, and reverence for woman.

The young ladies of the family, very young girls, were filled with enthusiasm for the suffering, wounded patriots, and they wished to go to the hospital, to give their services. Excepting the three superintendents, none but married ladies were permitted to serve there, but their services were accepted. Their governess then wished to go too, and, as she could speak several languages, she was admitted to the rooms of the wounded soldiers, to interpret for them, as the nurses knew nothing but Italian, and many of these poor men were suffering because they could not make their wishes known. Some are French, some Germans, many Poles. Indeed, I am afraid it is too true that there were comparatively few Romans among them. This young lady pa.s.sed several nights there.

Should I never return, and sometimes I despair of doing so, it seems so far off,--so difficult, I am caught in such a net of ties here,--if ever you know of my life here, I think you will only wonder at the constancy with which I have sustained myself,--the degree of profit to which, amid great difficulties, I have put the time,--at least in the way of observation. Meanwhile, love me all you can. Let me feel that, amid the fearful agitations of the world, there are pure hands, with healthful, even pulse, stretched out toward me, if I claim their grasp.

I feel profoundly for Mazzini. At moments I am tempted to say, "Cursed with every granted prayer,"--so cunning is the demon. Mazzini has become the inspiring soul of his people. He saw Rome, to which all his hopes through life tended, for the first time as a Roman citizen, and to become in a few days its ruler. He has animated, he sustains her to a glorious effort, which, if it fails this time, will not in the age.

His country will be free. Yet to me it would be so dreadful to cause all this bloodshed,--to dig the graves of such martyrs!

Then, Rome is being destroyed; her glorious oaks,--her villas, haunts of sacred beauty, that seemed the possession of the world for ever,--the villa of Raphael, the villa of Albani, home of Winckelmann and the best expression of the ideal of modern Rome, and so many other sanctuaries of beauty,--all must perish, lest a foe should level his musket from their shelter. I could not, could not!

I know not, dear friend, whether I shall ever get home across that great ocean, but here in Rome I shall no longer wish to live.

O Rome, _my_ country! could I imagine that the triumph of what I held dear was to heap such desolation on thy head!

Speaking of the republic, you say, "Do you not wish Italy had a great man?" Mazzini is a great man. In mind, a great, poetic statesman; in heart, a lover; in action, decisive and full of resource as Caesar.

Dearly I love Mazzini. He came in, just as I had finished the first letter to you. His soft, radiant look makes melancholy music in my soul; it consecrates my present life, that, like the Magdalen, I may, at the important hour, shed all the consecrated ointment on his head.

There is one, Mazzini, who understands thee well,--who knew thee no less when an object of popular fear than now of idolatry,--and who, if the pen be not held too feebly, will help posterity to know thee too!

TO HER SISTER, MRS. E.K. CHANNING.

Rome, June 19, 1849.

As was Eve, at first, I suppose every mother is delighted by the birth of a man-child. There is a hope that he will conquer more ill, and effect more good, than is expected from girls. This prejudice in favor of man does not seem to be destroyed by his shortcomings for ages.

Still, each mother hopes to find in hers an Emanuel. I should like very much to see your children, but hardly realize I ever shall.

The journey home seems so long, so difficult, so expensive. I should really like to lie down here, and sleep my way into another sphere of existence, if I could take with me one or two that love and need me, and was sure of a good haven for them on that other side.

The world seems to go so strangely wrong! The bad side triumphs; the blood and tears of the generous flow in vain. I a.s.sist at many saddest scenes, and suffer for those whom I knew not before. Those whom I knew and loved,--who, if they had triumphed, would have opened for me an easier, broader, higher-mounting road,--are everyday more and more involved in earthly ruin. Eternity is with us, but there is much darkness and bitterness in this portion of it. A baleful star rose on my birth, and its hostility, I fear, will never be disarmed while I walk below.

TO W.H. CHANNING.

July, 1849.

I cannot tell you what I endured in leaving Rome, abandoning the wounded soldiers,--knowing that there is no provision made for them, when they rise from the beds where they have been thrown by a n.o.ble courage, and have suffered with a n.o.ble patience. Some of the poorer men, who rise bereft even of the right arm,--one having lost both the right arm and the right leg,--I could have provided for with a small sum. Could I have sold my hair, or blood from my arm, I would have done it. Had any of the rich Americans remained in Rome, they would have given it to me; they helped n.o.bly at first, in the service of the hospitals, when there was far less need; but they had all gone. What would I have given could I but have spoken to one of the Lawrences, or the Phillipses! They could and would have saved this misery. These poor men are left helpless in the power of a mean and vindictive foe.

You felt so oppressed in the Slave States; imagine what I felt at seeing all the n.o.blest youth, all the genius of this dear land, again enslaved!

TO HER MOTHER.

Florence, February 6, 1850.

Dearest Mother,--After receiving your letter of October, I answered immediately; but as Richard mentions, in one dated December 4th, that you have not heard, I am afraid, by some post-office mistake, it went into the mail-bag of some sail-s.h.i.+p, instead of steamer, so you were very long without hearing. I regret it the more, as I wanted so much to respond fully to your letter,--so lovely, so generous, and which, of all your acts of love, was perhaps the one most needed by me, and which has touched me the most deeply.

I gave you in that a flattering picture of our life. And those pleasant days lasted till the middle of December; but then came on a cold unknown to Italy, and which has lasted ever since. As the apartments were not prepared for such weather, we suffered a good deal. Besides, both Ossoli and myself were taken ill at New-Year's time, and were not quite well again, all January: now we are quite well. The weather begins to soften, though still cloudy, damp, and chilly, so that poor baby can go out very little; on that account he does not grow so fast, and gets troublesome by evening, as he tires of being shut up in two or three little rooms, where he has examined every object hundreds of times. He is always pointing to the door. He suffers much with chilblains, as do other children here; however, he is, with that exception, in the best health, and is a great part of the time very gay, laughing and dancing in the nurse-maid's arms, and trying to sing and drum, in imitation of the bands, which play a great deal in the Piazza.

Nothing special has happened to me. The uninhabitableness of the rooms where I had expected to write, and the need of using our little dining-room, the only one in which is a stove, for dressing baby, taking care of him, eating, and receiving visits and messages, have prevented my writing for six or seven weeks past. In the evening, when baby went to bed, about eight, I began to have time, but was generally too tired to do anything but read. The four hours, however, from nine till one, beside the bright little fire, have been very pleasant. I have thought of you a great deal, remembering how you suffer from cold in the winter, and hope you are in a warm, comfortable house, have pleasant books to read, and some pleasant friends to see. One does not want many; only a few bright faces to look in now and then, and help thaw the ice with little rills of genial conversation. I have fewer of these than at Rome,--but still several.

Horace Sumner, youngest son of father's friend, Mr. Charles P. Sumner, lives near us, and comes every evening to read a little while with Ossoli. He has solid good in his heart and mind. We have a true regard for him, and he has shown true and steadfast sympathy for us; when I am ill or in a hurry, he helps me like a brother. Ossoli and Sumner exchange some instruction in English and Italian.

My sister's last letter from Europe is full of solemnity, and evidences her clear conviction of the perils of the voyage across the treacherous ocean. It is a leave-taking, dearly cherished now by the mother to whom it was addressed, the kindred of whom she speaks, and by those other kindred,--those who in spirit felt near to and loved her. It is as follows:--

Florence, May 14, 1850.

"Dear Mother,--I will believe I shall be welcome with my treasures,--my husband and child. For me, I long so much to see you!

Should anything hinder our meeting upon earth, think of your daughter, as one who always wished, at least, to do her duty, and who always cherished you, according as her mind opened to discover excellence.

"Give dear love, too, to my brothers; and first to my eldest, faithful friend, Eugene; a sister's love to Ellen; love to my kind good aunts, and to my dear cousin E. G.o.d bless them!

"I hope we shall be able to pa.s.s some time together yet, in this world. But if G.o.d decrees otherwise,--here and HEREAFTER, my dearest mother,

"Your loving child,

"MARGARET."

PART IV.

HOMEWARD VOYAGE, AND MEMORIALS.

It seems proper that some account of the sad close of Madame Ossoli's earthly journeyings should be embodied in this volume recording her travels. But a brother's hand trembles even now and _cannot_ write it.

n.o.ble, heroic, unselfish, _Christian_ was that death, even as had been her life; but its outward circ.u.mstances were too painful for my pen to describe. Nor needs it,--for a scene like that must have impressed itself indelibly on those who witnessed it, and accurate and vivid have been their narratives. The Memoirs of my sister contain a most faithful description; but as they are accessible to all, and I trust will be read by all who have read this volume, I have chosen rather to give the accounts somewhat condensed which appeared in the New York Tribune at the time of the calamity. The first is from the pen of Bayard Taylor, who visited the scene on the day succeeding the wreck, and describes the appearance of the sh.o.r.e and the remains of the vessel. This is followed by the narrative of Mrs. Hasty, wife of the captain, herself a partic.i.p.ant in the scene, and so overwhelmed by grief at her husband's loss, and that of friends she had learned so much to value, that she has since faded from this life. A true and n.o.ble woman, her account deserves to be remembered. The third article is from the pen of Horace Greeley, my sister's ever-valued friend.

Several poems, suggested by this scene, written by those in the Old World and New who loved and honored Madame Ossoli, are also inserted here. The respect they testify for the departed is soothing to the hearts of kindred, and to the many who love and cherish the memory of Margaret Fuller.--ED.

LETTER OF BAYARD TAYLOR

Fire Island, Tuesday, July 23.

To the Editors of the Tribune:--

I reached the house of Mr. Smith Oakes, about one mile from the spot where the Elizabeth was wrecked, at three o'clock this morning. The boat in which I set out last night from Babylon, to cross the bay, was seven hours making the pa.s.sage. On landing among the sand-hills, Mr.

Oakes admitted me into his house, and gave me a place of rest for the remaining two or three hours of the night.

This morning I visited the wreck, traversed the beach for some extent on both sides, and collected all the particulars that are now likely to be obtained, relative to the closing scenes of this terrible disaster. The sand is strewn for a distance of three or four miles with fragments of planks, spars, boxes, and the merchandise with which the vessel was laden. With the exception of a piece of her broadside, which floated to the sh.o.r.e intact, all the timbers have been so chopped and broken by the sea, that scarcely a stick of ten feet in length can be found. In front of the wreck these fragments are piled up along high-water mark to the height of several feet, while farther in among the sand-hills are scattered casks of almonds stove in, and their contents mixed with the sand, sacks of juniper-berries, oil-flasks, &c. About half the hull remains under water, not more than fifty yards from the sh.o.r.e. The spars and rigging belonging to the foremast, with part of the mast itself, are still attached to the ruins, surging over them at every swell. Mr. Jonathan Smith, the agent of the underwriters, intended to have the surf-boat launched this morning, for the purpose of cutting away the rigging and ascertaining how the wreck lies; but the sea is still too high.

From what I can learn, the loss of the Elizabeth is mainly to be attributed to the inexperience of the mate, Mr. H.P. Bangs, who acted as captain after leaving Gibraltar. By his own statement, he supposed he was somewhere between Cape May and Barnegat, on Thursday evening.

The vessel was consequently running northward, and struck head on.