Margaret Fuller Ossoli - At Home And Abroad

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"Mankind is one,
And beats with one great heart."

They have not read the life of Jesus Christ.

Then the American Maecenas sometimes, after ordering a work, has been
known to change his mind when the statue is already modelled. It is
the American who does these things, because an American, who either
from taste or vanity buys a picture, is often quite uneducated as to
the arts, and cannot understand why a little picture or figure costs
so much money. The Englishman or Frenchman, of a suitable position to
seek these adornments for his house, usually understands better than
the visitor of Powers who, on hearing the price of the Proserpine,
wonderingly asked, "Isn't statuary riz lately?" Queen Victoria of
England, and her Albert, it is said, use their royal privilege to get
works of art at a price below their value; but their subjects would be
ashamed to do so.

To supply means of judging to the American merchant (full of kindness
and honorable sympathy as beneath the crust he so often is) who wants
pictures and statues, not merely from ostentation, but as means of
delight and improvement to himself and his friends, who has a soul to
respect the genius and desire the happiness of the artist, and who,
if he errs, does so from ignorance of the circumstances, I give the
following memorandum, made at my desire by an artist, my neighbor:--

"The rent of a suitable studio for modelling in clay and executing
statues in marble may be estimated at $200 a year.

"The best journeyman carver in marble at Rome receives $60 a month.
Models are paid $1 a day.

"The cost of marble varies according to the size of the block, being
generally sold by the cubic palm, a square of nine inches English.
As a general guide regarding the prices established among the higher
sculptors of Rome, I may mention that for a statue of life-size the
demand is from $1,000 to $5,000, varying according to the composition
of the figure and the number of accessories.

"It is a common belief in the United States, that a student of Art can
live in Italy and pursue his studies on an income of $300 or $400 a
year. This is a lamentable error; the Russian government allows its
pensioners $700, which is scarcely sufficient. $1,000 per annum should
be placed at the disposal of every young artist leaving our country
for Europe."

Let it be remembered, in addition to considerations inevitable
from this memorandum, that an artist may after years and months of
uncheered and difficult toil, after he has gone through the earlier
stages of an education, find it too largely based, and of aim too
high, to finish in this world.

The Prussian artist here on my left hand learned not only his art,
but reading and writing, after he was thirty. A farmer's son, he was
allowed no freedom to learn anything till the death of the head of
the house left him a beggar, but set him free; he walked to Berlin,
distant several hundred miles, attracted by his first works some
attention, and received some assistance in money, earned more by
invention of a ploughshare, walked to Rome, struggled through every
privation, and has now a reputation which has secured him the means of
putting his thoughts into marble. True, at forty-nine years of age he
is still severely poor; he cannot marry, because he cannot maintain a
family; but he is cheerful, because he can work in his own way, trusts
with childlike reliance in God, and is still sustained by the vigorous
health he won laboring in his father's fields. Not every man
could continue to work, circumstanced as he is, at the end of the
half-century. For him the only sad thing in my mind is that his works
are not worth working, though of merit in composition and execution,
yet ideally a product of the galvanized piety of the German school,
more mutton-like than lamb-like to my unchurched eyes.

You are likely to have a work to look at in the United States by the
great master of that school, Overbeck; Mr. Perkins of Boston, who
knows how to spend his money with equal generosity and discretion,
having bought his "Wise and Foolish Virgins." It will be precious to
the country from great artistic merits. As to the spirit, "blessed are
the poor in spirit." That kind of severity is, perhaps has become, the
nature of Overbeck. He seems like a monk, but a really pious and pure
one. This spirit is not what I seek; I deem it too narrow for our
day, but being deeply sincere in him, its expression is at times also
deeply touching. Barabbas borne in triumph, and the child Jesus,
who, playing with his father's tools, has made himself a cross, are
subjects best adapted for expression of this spirit.

I have written too carelessly,--much writing hath made me mad of late.
Forgive if the "style be not neat, terse, and sparkling," if there be
naught of the "thrilling," if the sentences seem not "written with a
diamond pen," like all else that is published in America. Some time I
must try to do better. For this time

"Forgive my faults; forgive my virtues too."

March 21.

Day before yesterday was the Feast of St. Joseph. He is supposed to
have acquired a fondness for fried rice-cakes during his residence
in Egypt. Many are eaten in the open street, in arbors made for the
occasion. One was made beneath my window, on Piazza Barberini. All the
day and evening men, cleanly dressed in white aprons and liberty
caps, quite new, of fine, red cloth, were frying cakes for crowds of
laughing, gesticulating customers. It rained a little, and they held
an umbrella over the frying-pan, but not over themselves. The arbor
is still there, and little children are playing in and out of it; one
still lesser runs in its leading-strings, followed by the bold, gay
nurse, to the brink of the fountain, after its orange which has
rolled before it. Tenerani's workmen are coming out of his studio,
the priests are coming home from Ponte Pio, the Contadini beginning
to play at _moro_, for the setting sun has just lit up the magnificent
range of windows in the Palazzo Barberini, and then faded tenderly,
sadly away, and the mellow bells have chimed the Ave Maria. Rome looks
as Roman, that is to say as tranquil, as ever, despite the trouble
that tugs at her heart-strings. There is a report that Mazzini is to
be made Dictator, as Manin is in Venice, for a short time, so as to
provide hastily and energetically for the war. Ave Maria Sanissima!
when thou didst gaze on thy babe with such infinite hope, thou didst
not dream that, so many ages after, blood would be shed and curses
uttered in his name. Madonna Addolorata! hadst thou not hoped peace
and good-will would spring from his bloody woes, couldst thou have
borne those hours at the foot of the cross. O Stella! woman's heart of
love, send yet a ray of pure light on this troubled deep?

LETTER XXX.

THE STRUGGLE IN ROME.--POSITION OF THE FRENCH.--THE
AUSTRIANS.--FEELING OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE.--THE FRENCH TROOPS.--EFFECTS
OF WAR.--HOSPITALS.--THE PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO.--POSITION OF MR. CASS AS
ENVOY.--DIFFICULTIES AND SUGGESTIONS.--AMERICA AND ROME.--REFLECTIONS
ON THE ETERNAL CITY.--THE FRENCH: THE PEOPLE.

Rome, May 27, 1849.

I have suspended writing in the expectation of some decisive event;
but none such comes yet. The French, entangled in a web of falsehood,
abashed by a defeat that Oudinot has vainly tried to gloss over, the
expedition disowned by all honorable men at home, disappointed at
Gaeta, not daring to go the length Papal infatuation demands, know not
what to do. The Neapolitans have been decidedly driven back into their
own borders, the last time in a most shameful rout, their king flying
in front. We have heard for several days that the Austrians were
advancing, but they come not. They also, it is probable, meet with
unexpected embarrassments. They find that the sincere movement of the
Italian people is very unlike that of troops commanded by princes
and generals who never wished to conquer and were always waiting to
betray. Then their troubles at home are constantly increasing, and,
should the Russian intervention quell these to-day, it is only to
raise a storm far more terrible to-morrow.

The struggle is now fairly, thoroughly commenced between the principle
of democracy and the old powers, no longer legitimate. That struggle
may last fifty years, and the earth be watered with the blood and
tears of more than one generation, but the result is sure. All Europe,
including Great Britain, where the most bitter resistance of all will
be made, is to be under republican government in the next century.

"God moves in a mysterious way."

Every struggle made by the old tyrannies, all their Jesuitical
deceptions, their rapacity, their imprisonments and executions of the
most generous men, only sow more dragon's teeth; the crop shoots up
daily more and more plenteous.

When I first arrived in Italy, the vast majority of this people had no
wish beyond limited monarchies, constitutional governments. They still
respected the famous names of the nobility; they despised the priests,
but were still fondly attached to the dogmas and ritual of the Roman
Catholic Church. It required King Bomba, the triple treachery
of Charles Albert, Pius IX., and the "illustrious Gioberti," the
naturally kind-hearted, but, from the necessity of his position,
cowardly and false Leopold of Tuscany, the vagabond "serene"
meannesses of Parma and Modena, the "fatherly" Radetzsky, and,
finally, the imbecile Louis Bonaparte, "would-be Emperor of France,"
to convince this people that no transition is possible between the
old and the new. _The work is done_; the revolution in Italy is now
radical, nor can it stop till Italy becomes independent and united as
a republic. Protestant she already is, and though the memory of saints
and martyrs may continue to be revered, the ideal of woman to be
adored under the name of Mary, yet Christ will now begin to be a
little thought of; _his_ idea has always been kept carefully out of
sight under the old _regime_; all the worship being for the Madonna
and saints, who were to be well paid for interceding for sinners;--an
example which might make men cease to be such, was no way coveted. Now
the New Testament has been translated into Italian; copies are already
dispersed far and wide; men calling themselves Christians will no
longer be left entirely ignorant of the precepts and life of Jesus.

The people of Rome have burnt the Cardinals' carriages. They took the
confessionals out of the churches, and made mock confessions in the
piazzas, the scope of which was, "I have sinned, father, so and so."
"Well, my son, how much will you _pay_ to the Church for absolution?"
Afterward the people thought of burning the confessionals, or using
them for barricades; but at the request of the Triumvirate they
desisted, and even put them back into the churches. But it was from no
reaction of feeling that they stopped short, only from respect for
the government. The "Tartuffe" of Moliere has been translated into
Italian, and was last night performed with great applause at the
Valle. Can all this be forgotten? Never! Should guns and bayonets
replace the Pope on the throne, he will find its foundations, once
deep as modern civilization, now so undermined that it falls with the
least awkward movement.

But I cannot believe he will be replaced there. France alone could
consummate that crime,--that, for her, most cruel, most infamous
treason. The elections in France will decide. In three or four days
we shall know whether the French nation at large be guilty or
no,--whether it be the will of the nation to aid or strive to ruin a
government founded on precisely the same basis as their own.

I do not dare to trust that people. The peasant is yet very ignorant.
The suffering workman is frightened as he thinks of the punishments
that ensued on the insurrections of May and June. The man of property
is full of horror at the brotherly scope of Socialism. The aristocrat
dreams of the guillotine always when he hears men speak of the people.
The influence of the Jesuits is still immense in France. Both in
France and England the grossest falsehoods have been circulated with
unwearied diligence about the state of things in Italy. An amusing
specimen of what is still done in this line I find just now in a
foreign journal, where it says there are red flags on all the houses
of Rome; meaning to imply that the Romans are athirst for blood. Now,
the fact is, that these flags are put up at the entrance of those
streets where there is no barricade, as a signal to coachmen and
horsemen that they can pass freely. There is one on the house where
I am, in which is no person but myself, who thirst for peace, and the
Padrone, who thirsts for money.

Meanwhile the French troops are encamped at a little distance from
Rome. Some attempts at fair and equal treaty when their desire to
occupy Rome was firmly resisted, Oudinot describes in his despatches
as a readiness for _submission_. Having tried in vain to gain this
point, he has sent to France for fresh orders. These will be decided
by the turn the election takes. Meanwhile the French troops are much
exposed to the Roman force where they are. Should the Austrians come
up, what will they do? Will they shamelessly fraternize with the
French, after pretending and proclaiming that they came here as a
check upon their aggressions? Will they oppose them in defence of
Rome, with which they are at war?

Ah! the way of falsehood, the way of treachery,--how dark, how full of
pitfalls and traps! Heaven defend from it all who are not yet engaged
therein!

War near at hand seems to me even more dreadful than I had fancied
it. True, it tries men's souls, lays bare selfishness in undeniable
deformity. Here it has produced much fruit of noble sentiment, noble
act; but still it breeds vice too, drunkenness, mental dissipation,
tears asunder the tenderest ties, lavishes the productions of Earth,
for which her starving poor stretch out their hands in vain, in the
most unprofitable manner. And the ruin that ensues, how terrible! Let
those who have ever passed happy days in Rome grieve to hear that
the beautiful plantations of Villa Borghese--that chief delight and
refreshment of citizens, foreigners, and little children--are laid
low, as far as the obelisk. The fountain, singing alone amid the
fallen groves, cannot be seen and heard without tears; it seems like
some innocent infant calling and crowing amid dead bodies on a field
which battle has strewn with the bodies of those who once cherished
it. The plantations of Villa Salvage on the Tiber, also, the beautiful
trees on the way from St. John Lateran to La Maria Maggiore, the trees
of the Forum, are fallen. Rome is shorn of the locks which lent grace
to her venerable brow. She looks desolate, profaned. I feel what I
never expected to,--as if I might by and by be willing to leave Rome.

Then I have, for the first time, seen what wounded men suffer. The
night of the 30th of April I passed in the hospital, and saw the
terrible agonies of those dying or who needed amputation, felt their
mental pains and longing for the loved ones who were away; for many of
these were Lombards, who had come from the field of Novarra to fight
with a fairer chance,--many were students of the University, who had
enlisted and thrown themselves into the front of the engagement. The
impudent falsehoods of the French general's despatches are incredible.
The French were never decoyed on in any way. They were received with
every possible mark of hostility. They were defeated in open field,
the Garibaldi legion rushing out to meet them; and though they
suffered much from the walls, they sustained themselves nowhere. They
never put up a white flag till they wished to surrender. The vanity
that strives to cover over these facts is unworthy of men. The only
excuse for the imprudent conduct of the expedition is that they were
deceived, not by the Romans here, but by the priests of Gaeta, leading
them to expect action in their favor within the walls. These priests
themselves were deluded by their hopes and old habits of mind. The
troops did not fight well, and General Oudinot abandoned his wounded
without proper care. All this says nothing against French valor,
proved by ages of glory, beyond the doubt of their worst foes. They
were demoralized because they fought in so bad a cause, and there was
no sincere ardor or clear hope in any breast.

But to return to the hospitals: these were put in order, and have been
kept so, by the Princess Belgioioso. The princess was born of one
of the noblest families of the Milanese, a descendant of the great
Trivalzio, and inherited a large fortune. Very early she compromised
it in liberal movements, and, on their failure, was obliged to fly to
Paris, where for a time she maintained herself by writing, and I
think by painting also. A princess so placed naturally excited great
interest, and she drew around her a little court of celebrated men.
After recovering her fortune, she still lived in Paris, distinguished
for her talents and munificence, both toward literary men and her
exiled countrymen. Later, on her estate, called Locate, between Pavia
and Milan, she had made experiments in the Socialist direction with
fine judgment and success. Association for education, for labor, for
transaction of household affairs, had been carried on for several
years; she had spared no devotion of time and money to this object,
loved, and was much beloved by, those objects of her care, and said
she hoped to die there. All is now despoiled and broken up, though it
may be hoped that some seeds of peaceful reform have been sown which
will spring to light when least expected. The princess returned to
Italy in 1847-8, full of hope in Pius IX and Charles Albert. She
showed her usual energy and truly princely heart, sustaining, at her
own expense, a company of soldiers and a journal up to the last sad
betrayal of Milan, August 6th. These days undeceived all the people,
but few of the noblesse; she was one of the few with mind strong
enough to understand the lesson, and is now warmly interested in the
republican movement. From Milan she went to France, but, finding
it impossible to effect anything serious there in behalf of Italy,
returned, and has been in Rome about two months. Since leaving
Milan she receives no income, her possessions being in the grasp of
Radetzky, and cannot know when, if ever, she will again. But as
she worked so largely and well with money, so can she without. She
published an invitation to the Roman women to make lint and bandages,
and offer their services to the wounded; she put the hospitals in
order; in the central one, Trinita de Pellegrini, once the abode where
the pilgrims were received during holy week, and where foreigners
were entertained by seeing their feet washed by the noble dames and
dignitaries of Rome, she has remained day and night since the 30th of
April, when the wounded were first there. Some money she procured at
first by going through Rome, accompanied by two other ladies veiled,
to beg it. Afterward the voluntary contributions were generous; among
the rest, I am proud to say, the Americans in Rome gave $250, of which
a handsome portion came from Mr. Brown, the Consul.

I value this mark of sympathy more because of the irritation and
surprise occasioned here by the position of Mr. Cass, the Envoy. It is
most unfortunate that we should have an envoy here for the first
time, just to offend and disappoint the Romans. When all the other
ambassadors are at Gaeta, ours is in Rome, as if by his presence to
discountenance the republican government, which he does not recognize.
Mr. Cass, it seems, is required by his instructions not to recognize
the government till sure it can be sustained. Now it seems to me that
the only dignified ground for our government, the only legitimate
ground for any republican government, is to recognize for any nation
the government chosen by itself. The suffrage had been correct here,
and the proportion of votes to the whole population was much larger,
it was said by Americans here, than it is in our own country at the
time of contested elections. It had elected an Assembly; that Assembly
had appointed, to meet the exigencies of this time, the Triumvirate.
If any misrepresentations have induced America to believe, as France
affects to have believed, that so large a vote could have been
obtained by moral intimidation, the present unanimity of the
population in resisting such immense odds, and the enthusiasm of their
every expression in favor of the present government, puts the matter
beyond a doubt. The Roman people claims once more to have a national
existence. It declines further serfdom to an ecclesiastical court.
It claims liberty of conscience, of action, and of thought. Should it
fall from its present position, it will not be from, internal dissent,
but from foreign oppression.

Since this is the case, surely our country, if no other, is bound to
recognize the present government _so long as it can sustain itself_.
This position is that to which we have a right: being such, it is no
matter how it is viewed by others. But I dare assert it is the only
respectable one for our country, in the eyes of the Emperor of Russia
himself.

The first, best occasion is past, when Mr. Cass might, had he been
empowered to act as Mr. Rush did in France, have morally strengthened
the staggering republic, which would have found sympathy where alone
it is of permanent value, on the basis of principle. Had it been in
vain, what then? America would have acted honorably; as to our being
compromised thereby with the Papal government, that fear is idle. Pope
and Cardinals have great hopes from America; the giant influence there
is kept up with the greatest care; the number of Catholic writers
in the United States, too, carefully counted. Had our republican
government acknowledged this republican government, the Papal
Camarilla would have respected us more, but not loved us less; for
have we not the loaves and fishes to give, as well as the precious
souls to be saved? Ah! here, indeed, America might go straightforward
with all needful impunity. Bishop Hughes himself need not be
anxious. That first, best occasion has passed, and the unrecognized,
unrecognizing Envoy has given offence, and not comfort, by a presence
that seemed constantly to say, I do not think you can sustain
yourselves. It has wounded both the heart and the pride of Rome. Some
of the lowest people have asked me, "Is it not true that your country
had a war to become free?" "Yes." "Then why do they not feel for us?"

Yet even now it is not too late. If America would only hail
triumphant, though she could not sustain injured Rome, that would
be something. "Can you suppose Rome will triumph," you say, "without
money, and against so potent a league of foes?" I am not sure, but
I hope, for I believe something in the heart of a people when fairly
awakened. I have also a lurking confidence in what our fathers spoke
of so constantly, a providential order of things, by which brute force
and selfish enterprise are sometimes set at naught by aid which seems
to descend from a higher sphere. Even old pagans believed in that,
you know; and I was born in America, Christianized by the
Puritans,--America, freed by eight years' patient suffering, poverty,
and struggle,--America, so cheered in dark days by one spark of
sympathy from a foreign shore,--America, first "recognized" by
Lafayette. I saw him when traversing our country, then great, rich,
and free. Millions of men who owed in part their happiness to what, no
doubt, was once sneered at as romantic sympathy, threw garlands in his
path. It is natural that I should have some faith.

Send, dear America! to thy ambassadors a talisman precious beyond all
that boasted gold of California. Let it loose his tongue to cry, "Long
live the Republic, and may God bless the cause of the people, the
brotherhood of nations and of men,--equality of rights for all." _Viva
America!_

Hail to my country! May she live a free, a glorious, a loving
life, and not perish, like the old dominions, from, the leprosy of
selfishness.

Evening.

I am alone in the ghostly silence of a great house, not long since
full of gay faces and echoing with gay voices, now deserted by every
one but me,--for almost all foreigners are gone now, driven by force
either of the summer heats or the foe. I hear all the Spaniards are
going now,--that twenty-one have taken passports to-day; why that is,
I do not know.

I shall not go till the last moment; my only fear is of France. I
cannot think in any case there would be found men willing to damn
themselves to latest posterity by bombarding Rome. Other cities they
may treat thus, careless of destroying the innocent and helpless, the
babe and old grandsire who cannot war against them. But Rome, precious
inheritance of mankind,--will they run the risk of marring her shrined
treasures? Would they dare do it?

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