4669. EBB to John Forster
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 2–4.
28, Via Tritone, Rome,
Monday. [14 May 1860] [1]
I have tried and taken pains to see the truth, and have spoken it as I seemed to see it. If the issue of events shall prove me wrong about the E. Napoleon, the worse for him, I am bold to say, rather than for me, who have honored him only because I believed his intentions worthy of the honor of honest souls. [2]
If he lives long enough, he will explain himself to all. So far, I cannot help persisting in certain of my views, because they have been held long enough to be justified by the past on many points. The intervention in Italy, while it overwhelmed with joy, did not dazzle me into doubts of the motive of it, but satisfied a patient expectation and fulfilled a logical inference. Thus it did not present itself to my mind as a caprice of power, to be followed perhaps by an onslaught on Belgium .. and an invasion of England. These things were out of the beat; and are. There may follow Hungarian, Polish, or other questions—but there wont follow an English question unless the English make it, which, I grieve to think, looks every day less impossible.
Dear Mr. F., have you read “La foi des traités” [3] —written, some of it, by L.N.’s own hand? Do you consider About’s “Carte de l’Europe” (as the Times does) “a dull jeu d’esprit?” [4] The wit is’nt dull, and the serious intention, hid in those mummy wrappings, is not inauthentic. Official, .. certainly not!—but Napoleonic, .. yes. I believe so. And I seem to myself to have strong reasons.
But you are sorry that Cavour loses popularity in England. [5] I cry rather bitterly, “Better so!” A complete injustice comes to nearly the same thing as a complete justice. Have we not watched for a year while every saddle of iniquity has been tried on the Napoleonic back, and nothing fitted. Was’nt he to crush Piedmontese institutions like so many egg-shells. Was he ever going away with his army, and had’nt he occupied houses in Genoa with an intention of bombarding the city? didn’t he keep troops in the north after Villafranca on purpose to come down on us with a Grand Duke at best .. or otherwise with a swamping Kingdom of Etruria and Plon-Plon [6] to rule it, .. and wouldn’t he give back Bologna to the pope bound by seven devils fiercer than the first, [7] and prove Austria bettered by Solferino? [8] Also were not Cipriani, Farini, and other patriots, his “mere creatures” in treacherous correspondence with the Tuileries; “doing his dirty work”—“keeping things in suspense”—till destruction should arrange itself on falsehood? Have I not read and heard from the most intelligent English journals, and the best-informed English politicians (men with one foot and two ears in the cabinet) these true things written and repeated .. and watched while they died out into the Vast Inane, and immense Absurd from which they were born?
So I would rather have rounded, complete injustice .. as we can’t have the complete justice. After all, the thing done is only a nation mad[e]. Hurry [9] up the men who did it on the same cord!– Ought not Cavour to be there?
And if the Savoy cession [10] is a crime, he is criminal, he, who undeniably from the beginning contemplated it, not as the price of the war, but as the condition of a newly constituted Italy. And the condition implies more than is understood, more than the consenting parties dare to confess .. can at present afford to confess .. unless I am deceived by information which has always hitherto justified itself in the event. Be patient with me one moment—for if I differ from you, I seem to have access to another class of facts than you see. If Italy, for instance, expands itself to a nation of twenty six millions .. would you blame the Emperor who “did it all” (Cavour’s own phrase) for providing an answer to his own people in some small foresight about the frontier, when, in the course of fifty or a hundred years, they may reproach his memory with the existence of an oppressive rival or enemy next door? Mr. Russell said to me last January “everything that comes out proves the emperor to have acted towards Italy like an Italian rather than a Frenchman.” At which we applaud; that is, you, and Mr. R. and I and the Italians generally applaud– But .. let us be just—that would not be a satisfactory opinion in France of the Head of the State,—would it, do you think? It was obviously his duty not to be negligent of certain eventualities in the case of his own country, to be a “Frenchman” there.
Oh—Savoy has given me pain: and I would rather for the world’s sake, that a great action had remained out of reach of the hypothetical whispers of depreciators– I would rather not hear Robert say, for instance—“It was a great action; but he has taken eighteenpence for it, which is a pity.” I dont think this judgment fair—and much worse judgments are passed than that; which is very painful. But, after all, this thing may have been a necessary duty on L.N.’s part, and I can understand that it was so. For this loss of the Italians, that is not to be dwelt on; while for the Savoyards, none knew better than Cavour (not even L.N.) the leaning of those populations towards France for years back: it has been an inconvenient element of his government. Whether there are or are not natural frontiers, there are natural barriers, and the Alps hinder trade and make direct influence difficult: and what the popular vote would be, nobody here doubted. Be sure that nobody did in Switzerland. The Swiss have been insincere, it seems to me—talking of terror when they thought chiefly of territory. [11] But I feel tenderly for poor heroic Garibaldi .. who has suffered, he and his minority. [12] He is not a man of much brain; which makes the subject the more cruel to him. But I cant write of Garibaldi this morning, so anxious we are after an unpleasant despatch yesterday. He is a hero, and has led a forlorn hope out to Sicily, [13] to succeed for Italy, or to fail for himself. It’s “imprudence,” if he fails; if otherwise, who shall praise him enough? it’s salvation and glory.
Docket, in RB’s hand: Copy of a letter written by E.B.B. to John Forster—made in consequence of F’s wishing to return the original.
Publication: LEBB, II, 383–386.
Source: Kenyon Typescript, British Library.
1. Dating based on EBB’s references to The Times of 2 May 1860 (see note 4 below) and About’s pamphlet, which she also discusses in letter 4670.
2. EBB is responding to letter 4650.
4. EBB refers to an editorial in The Times of 2 May 1860 that took as its subject Edmond About’s recently issued pamphlet, La Nouvelle carte d’Europe (1860), which features a discussion among characters representing nationalities, who proceed to magnanimously redraw the map of Europe: “The Austrian submits to give up Venetia to the Italians, Hungary to the Hungarians, and Gallicia to the Poles. The Englishman finds that she is sinning against the laws of M. About by keeping Gibraltar and Malta, and she generously resigns them. … We believe that this pamphlet is simply and entirely a jeu d’esprit of a French littérateur acting entirely upon his own impulse” (p. 9).
5. Sic, for loses. See the part of letter 4650 addressed to RB.
6. i.e., Prince Napoleon (see letter 3537, note 4). The Kingdom of Etruria, named for the ancient land of the Etruscans, was created by Napoleon I in 1801. It encompassed most of Tuscany and was ruled by a Bourbon king.
7. Cf. Matthew 12:45.
9. Sic, for hang.
10. The formal treaty ceding Savoy and Nice to France was signed on 24 March 1860. Plebiscites held the following month went overwhelmingly for the cessions (see letter 4656, note 6).
13. Garibaldi sailed from Genoa for Sicily on 5 May 1860 with a group of volunteers, later known as “The Thousand.”
___________________
