Part 4 (2/2)

Another thing I learned at this time: Discretion can be expensive tho' candor costs more. Discretion costs at most such trifles as the hire of a hansom & a slight sense of shame; candor costs the earth. The Greeleys knew nearly nothing of my friends.h.i.+p with Mr Nathan & moreover I felt it wise not to speak of my frequent dining with any friends, as the first such occasion resulted in a quizzing such as you cannot imagine, as to what exactly I had eaten - with such a hand-wringing about the duck, & the berry-sauce & the joint & the peppered turnips, the cakes & creams, & the claret -!

My obligation of writing copy for the Tribune cost me some friends.h.i.+ps in that time. Caroline, & Mr E, & a dozen or more of my dearest correspondents could not understand that I no longer had the leisure to pour forth my thoughts privately on the page, as all such thoughts were now claimed by the public sphere. Well I felt from Up North the cold mutterings that I had become a frivolous city scribbler & had succ.u.mbed to the vulgar blandishments of the market-place.

Perhaps because I never felt any diminution of your regard, dear Sophie - perhaps because so much of what we felt for one another was wordless - & was simply, as the poet Herbert has written of an even deeper connexion, ”something understood” - that I cherish our friends.h.i.+p through all that has happened in these years. I see your dear face, silently listening as Elizabeth & I talked into the early morning. I feel your hand in mine as I guided you along the river path when you were with child. & I remember how often, in those first months of your marriage, when Nathaniel would take me on one arm & you on the other, & we three would sally forth into the Concord evening - how I loved you both, & loved your love for one another!

I must not be distracted by sentimental tears; my tale of dollars is nearly done. I had told everyone I knew that I wished to go to Europe. Mr Greeley, tho' unable he said to pay my expenses, would be interested in commissioning me to write regularly for the Tribune. Marcus & Rebecca Spring proposed themselves as my saviors & companions, as they had a plan to bring their young son to be educated in England for a year while they visited the Continent. They would pay my pa.s.sage to England if I would consent to tutor their boy on the voyage to prepare him for the rigors of an English school. With what I had saved & sums from a range of friends & a small advance from Mr Greeley with a promise to pay twice the rate he had paid me before - $10 a column! - I was able to ama.s.s my supply of $2,000 & so we embarked.

Alas there has not been a moment in the last four years in which money was far from my mind. Mr Greeley paid me but not always quickly & once the Springs had left me on my own in Italy I was bereft of my accountant Marcus & his habit of advancing me funds until money from New York arrived. For the first time I needed to apply to Mother for help, & from time to time as well my brothers, Mr E, & other old friends sent a ”donation” to the ”cause” of my bed & board. For many weeks in Rome I kept an ”economies” note-book in which I entered every purchase, as dear Henry Th.o.r.eau taught me once - & by eating only bread & fruit, & allowing friends to buy me coffee, I was able to live on less than one dollar a day, including rent. Fortunately I was often taken into the homes of people we met for dinner & during the siege itself most everyone shared what little was to be had. (Twice I used my payments from Mr Greeley just to buy hospital supplies.) My husband's family had land & property once upon a time & while Giovanni's father was still alive he had some small income. The Ossoli family are of the ”Papal Aristocracy,” so his two elder brothers, following the family tradition of Vatican service, were soldiers of the Papal Guard. Giovanni, with his much older sister (more like a mama to him since his own mother's early death), had stayed at home to care for their long-ill & lingering father. The anger in the family when Giovanni joined the Civil Guard & spoke with revolutionary fervor! I met him when he had just done so, & his father had for a time forbidden him his presence.

Unlike many others in the Democratic, Unitary, a.s.sociationist, & Revolutionary movements (& these are only 4 of the many shades of the causes of the people & not always in accord amongst themselves), Giovanni was never fooled by the Pope's words - he believed, as was shown to be right by later events, that the Pope would turn against our Revolution at last. But it is curious. He who has in his quiet way raged most persuasively against the betrayals of Pius IX cannot bear for others, such as Protestant Americans like myself, to criticize the Holy Father even now. I am grateful that he cannot read English because he would be angry at what I have written in my book.

Now I am well & truly done with the sordid account of My Life in Economies.

3 July Cruel irony! I write of my tea-drinking at the Greeleys & my supply of tea is stolen. My head aches & I cannot write today. I suspect a mids.h.i.+pman named Cole.

Later, same day The men have pooled what tea they can spare & brought me more than I lost. Once I had restored my spirits with a strong brew, I gave a speech of thanks where many of the men were gathered & there was some laughter & some tears as for all the best speeches ever given in this world tho' my eloquence was not the cause on this occasion but rather their generous & tender hearts.

4 July Mr Bangs fires a salute in honor of Independence Day & we Americans on board (I believe there are five of us all told) sing ”Yankee Doodle” as the colors are flown. Nino cheers along with the pip-pip-hurrah! I have made a small flag - from a square of white canvas, red ribbons & a sc.r.a.p of blue flannel - & to Nino's delight have sewn this badge onto the front of his jacket, over his heart.

I have also promised the men a recitation this evening & am trying out several texts to see what I remember best. Mrs Hasty would appreciate a rouser such as ”Once more unto the breach” but I cannot bring myself to celebrate even so n.o.ble a king on this day. Am trying to remember the third verse of Mr E's ”Concord Hymn.” On this green bank, by this soft stream / We set today a votive stone / That something something may redeem....

7 July Head-aches & small discouragements - Celesta has been weeping about her sailor & there are bruises on her arms where he has handled her roughly. Nino lost his spinning-top overboard & wept. I heard one of the sailors refer to me as the ”Signora vecchia,” the ”old lady,” so in preference to weeping I stared myself out of countenance in the looking-gla.s.s. It seems my hair is as much silver as it is golden, & l.u.s.treless. There are shadows beneath my eyes & the flesh of my jaw & neck in repose hangs like a curtain. I fear the return home, I fear old friends as well thinking me an old lady, my years of force spent by motherhood & the sufferings of the body & the pietas that were our daily lot during the siege.

Does not America chafe under the tyranny of her young? Well we might contrast the respect - nay more than that, the reverence - that is shown in Europe for the elders, male & female alike. Mme Sand is older than I nonetheless she is the axis round which an entire world spins. Grand-parents are the center of every social gathering they attend, not bundled off to a warm corner & ignored as they are in America. Is it because the country itself is so young, & so dependent on the energies & the new ideas of the young, that America begins to despise its old folks? & Even calls them ”old folks,” instead of ”Madame,” or ”Signor,” or ”Sir”?

Well since I am coming home, will-I-nill-I, I must prepare myself to feel & act young again & so keep pace with this American necessity. Heaven knows I wish to act.

8 July Now the time has come, my dear, to tell of how I came to be the married lady you will meet in a few weeks.

As I already explained, I had met Giovanni Angelo Ossoli in Rome in early April of 1847. He escorted me home when I lost my way after vespers in St. Peter's, & took to calling on me at the rooms we had taken on the Corso. Later in Gren.o.ble, I told Mish all about him - & then by letter Mish continued to urge me to take the step of marriage & said that he prayed I might experience the joy of motherhood at last. I was so grateful. I had lost my ”beloved” but I had not lost the Poet himself; my beloved had become like my father, advising & urging me to do what would make me happy & fulfill my place in the world.

It is no insult to the Poet to say that he like all men perforce under-estimated the cost to my physical self that becoming a mother would mean. No doubt he also imagined, as indeed I did, that having a husband would mean I would be protected & could continue in my work. But as I am now circ.u.mstanced, with a small child & a war-scarred husband to support, how am I to take ”my place in the world”? This is a puzzle I am yet working out, one that I hope my friends in America will not refuse to help me solve. I hope that Mr E will not gloat that he was right, that solitude & chast.i.ty & barrenness were the requisite conditions for me to be the New Woman & raise my beacon of education & action aloft. Minerva & her chaste moon are all very well for school-girls to emulate. But what World worth its salt will deny women the creature necessities of love & motherhood as the price for partic.i.p.ation in its decisions & its future? The a.s.sociationists, I believe, have many practical solutions to offer, with their plans for community nurseries & schools....

But there are times when I long only for this: That my husband & child would venture on an excursion for a few days & leave me to my solitude. Would I write a newspaper column? A chapter? No. A letter begging for money from an old friend who is feeling less friendly with every letter he receives? No! Would I mount a platform & urge the rights of slaves not to be slaves, the rights of a free Europe, the rights of women? Not I. I would sit with Goethe's poems, & attempt a translation. I would take a walk, a long city walk in which I could day-dream amidst the throng, their dreams & mine twining into the thick rope that is humanity ... I would stand on a dock & watch the boats, I would dream in color & music but not in words ... & then I would return to my desk, make a pot of tea, & try to make the German words come alive in English before me. This I would do for several days until I felt like myself once again.

Upon our reunion in Rome that autumn - October, 1847 - Giovanni pressed me to marry him. His father was ill, & we could marry as soon as his father was dead. (This sounds a harsh calculation - but think. I was not a suitable wife, an American & not a Catholic; his father was already furious that his youngest son was an impious revolutionary & the additional shock of marriage to such a one as I might end forever his family ties & his hopes of rightful inheritance.) Such was our case, & still his father lingered in this life, & the earthquake of the coming Revolution was beginning to rumble beneath our feet - bread riots in the countryside again in France - Vienna in an uproar for a const.i.tution - the Austrian General Radetsky building new fortifications in Milan because the people had gone on strike, refusing to buy the tobacco & pay the taxes that fed the Austrian army, & rioting in the streets. Naples was in turmoil. Rome was shaking with energy & anger & we believed the Pope would take our part.

Imagine my feelings, if you can. Giovanni, this dear man, whose presence was both a delight & a comfort to me, who showed me so many graceful yet manly courtesies - at any moment he would be fighting & he could die. We did what I believe any people of true feeling would have done: We stood, just we two, in the Lady Chapel of the Santa Maria Maggiore, before Giovanni's favorite painting of the Virgin. (The ”Virgin of the People,” as she is rightly called. Can I describe adequately the tenderness of her gaze, the archaic stained gold dappling over the surface of that ikon which reminds the pet.i.tioner before her of the centuries of hopes & fears she has met & allayed?) We joined our hands, & whispered to the a.s.sembled saints, the stone floors & the rafters of that church, our vows. We were truly married then, & so my own date of marriage is November the 8th of 1847.

We found that I was with child in January. I was also so ill from my condition & from the dark Roman winter that we hardly knew if I would survive. Before any chance of reconcilement, Giovanni's father died in February. Much as he had hoped that his sister would have say over the disposition of the estate (as their father had pledged she would) alas his eldest brother took all legal control & refused to listen to her pleas for the rights of Giovanni. The brother was if anything more angry than the father had been about Giovanni's revolutionary ideals & immediately besought the magistrate for a writ to prevent my husband from claiming his inheritance. By April, we were confidently hopeful that the baby would live - & indeed my health began to improve with the coming of the spring, & with news of the Viennese ”republic,” & then of Austria's routing from Milan, & our spirits soared. This being the case, & anxious to secure our child's future rights, we were officially married (before a priest, & filing a paper at the local registrar) on April 4, 1848. But for the time my husband felt that maintaining secrecy was still essential. Ever hopeful that all would come right with the estate, he was anxious not to add this news as fuel to the fire of his brother's wrath. Thus our dilemma: desirous of being above-board & honest, but doomed to secrecy - temporary so we believed! - so as to protect our love & our child's future.

Public events soon overtook us all - tho' as the horses of change plunged forward no progress was made on the estate's disposition. Giovanni had always expected to inherit a small farm & modestly prosperous vine-yard his family owned in the Tuscan hills north of Rome - such he had always believed would be his maintenance & support! How he agonized in fear he would lose it! How painful it was for me to keep all this a secret from friends back home! With every week that went by without telling you & all my family & friends, the difficulty of telling & the fear of not being understood grew worse. Yet was I joyful. The gestation of a new Italy & my new Child became as one in my mind in those months.

Mickiewicz was able to cross the border to come to Italy! Austria, internally in disarray & weakened at its northern Italian garrisons, could no longer enforce its standing arrest warrant against ”dangerous” Polish nationals. First he gathered a group of Poles from various cities in Italy, received a blessing from the Pope, & then they marched as a battalion into Milan with a banner proclaiming the rights of all men, civil rights for Jews & for women! While his men stayed behind to hold the line against the Austrians, in May he came to Rome!

I had heard that he was near, I sent a note by guardia courier to tell him where to find ”La Signora Ossoli” & for three days & more I quivered listening for his step on the stair. Then on the fourth day: It was just before dusk; Giovanni was not due home for a time. The door to the street was not locked during the day, as many tenants came & went, & whenever that door was pushed open, the wind in the vestibule rushed up the stairs to the second floor where I lived, making a little ”whoos.h.i.+ng” sound at my door, like an unearthly knock. I heard it; it was he, I knew. As in the old days, awaiting his approach I felt as one suspended in air, my head & heart floating in those seconds as his heavy tread, slightly uneven like a heartbeat, came up the narrow steps. I opened the door so he could see me whole before he spoke - he placed his hands where my child was sleeping inside me & kissed me as the tears wet his face.

”I am glad!” he said.

Then Giovanni came home & as we had agreed asked Mish to be our child's G.o.dfather.

All right; I hear your objections: Reason dictates that we must take this scene in hand. What? you exclaim: A woman with child, with her husband & her lover both at her side, & they all at supper? How can this be? Even in a French novel of the most scandalous & progressive sort, surely at the least the woman, & probably both the men as well, should fall a-wailing at this juncture, & threats of duel or suicide should be all that tongue can utter?

Reason & dramatic decorum must topple together however, when I tell you that on the contrary we laughed & toasted our friends.h.i.+p & that Mish was all kindness & Giovanni all goodness & I the happiest of women. For the nonce at least. Did Giovanni guess at the past that Mish & I shared? I think he believed the Poet & I had a rare friends.h.i.+p & I know he was, & is, too great of soul himself to be jealous of that.

So it is that the next generation forms our lives & we conform to theirs. Our sole duty, rejoicing in the lives to come, is to make the world better fit for them, on our hearthstones & in the broad world.

My husband & the Poet also had their faith to share & next day we three went to hear the ma.s.s together, Mish for once tolerating the presence of the priests. Giovanni had decided in his quiet way that as I was in my heart & soul a Roman woman, so I was for all purposes a Catholic. I never quarrelled about this as we were I believe trusting in the same Divine being. When, much later, our marriage became known & friends in Italy wondered at the ”mixed” nature of our alliance, Giovanni always silenced them with a simple, ”No, Margherita is also of our faith” & I think he believed that he had converted me with his love & our original marriage vows before the Virgin.

10 July, Very calm seas, pleasant on deck but sails flat Today I must take myself in hand & resolve not to become impatient with Giovanni. His nightmares have been keeping us awake & he whimpers like a baby all night. I cannot have two babies, I tell him unkindly, but I am trying to remind him of his courage & his manhood. The man who held the Pincio Hill in the midst of the siege, day following day, to fire the last cannon at the French, who led the ragged last bits of the army to fight until they dropped around him - this man weeps in my arms & moans like a second Nino every night. I am grateful he cannot fully understand the hurtful things I sometimes say to him - tho' I know my harsh tone flings barbs that catch in his heart.

I am very tired, & in danger of despair, the only mortal sin I believe in & fear.

11 July, Wind! Brisk & homewards Returning to May of 1848: After a few hectic weeks, during which I sat for my portrait - Mr Thos Hicks was very insistent that it be done & tho' I was heavily robed I was uneasy that his anatomist's eye would guess my secret - in early June I left Rome for the mountains north & east of the city - first at Aquila, later in the Apennines at Rieti - to spend the last months before the birth in peace & privacy. What feeble explanation did I make in the Tribune for leaving Rome just as her Revolution was at hand? My health, & an interest in the customs of the peasantry, I believe. I wish that I could say all was well as I waited for the new life within me. But tho' I found servants, I was never able to pay them enough to guarantee loyalty. For a certainty they none of them believed I was as poor as I said - their experience with ladies of the Inglese variety was not vast but it had taught them to expect ample reward for service. In Aquila I found a saintly older woman who wanted to mother me & would have done so for no money at all; but I needed to be closer to the city & to Giovanni, & so moved to Rieti - where I was met with sloth & insolence by the servants Maria & Guidetta & their family of spongers.

Was ever a woman waiting for her first-born in such a state as I? I wondered aloud in self-pity, only to be answered in an instant by common sense: Yes to be sure, the world over, now & throughout history, women have had to endure worse than this as the world tumbled & rose about them. I thought often of the stoical Indian women I had met at the Lakes - how they endured poverty & childbirth without comment (or, to be accurate, any comment I could make out). I was daily anxious for news of my husband, as the streets of Rome were filled with demonstrations, some peaceful & others not - the Pope having turned to Austria for help at last in a betrayal whose immensity we could hardly credit, so the Civil Guard was in skirmish with the Papal Guard, & the Duke of Naples sent troops to disperse the crowds. I was much relieved when in July Giovanni left the city to recruit men from the countryside. The farmers, as always except in times of drought, were traditionalists & resistant to the call for change. & Yet Giovanni was a persuasive leader - something about his quiet & truly aristocratic demeanor, combined with his simple words & pa.s.sionate eyes, compelled many men from the villages & towns to follow him.

Indeed how simple - through all the turmoil of politics, the complexities of alliances, the daunting imaginary architectures of future states - remains the basic claim: That men are equal in the eyes of the Divine, that the worldly power of some individual men does not give them the right to torment, oppress & deprive their fellows; & that the powerless many, if they unite, can be powerful against the few.

Meanwhile I was experiencing an interesting & no doubt ultimately instructive loss of personal power, there in the village of Rieti. The goat I had purchased for too many lire, so as to have milk every day, was taken from me by Maria's mother - to give milk to her loutish son who was a hulking 12 years of age & would have been better served by a switch to get him to work. Oh no, they explained when I demanded the goat's return - I had only leased the goat - that payment was by the week! So I paid & paid again. The goat herself was white, dappled with brown, & had a large purple wen on the side of her neck. She fed on the gra.s.s & thistles & her milk was delicious. Alas, she chewed through her tether every few days or so & we all spent much time chasing her, tho' I was now not much able to scramble about the hills & sometimes despaired that the family, so misnamed Cherubimi, would never find her again.

Thus was my final month - August. I was too hot & too ill to work. I had no home for my baby, no nest for my little bird, only the make-s.h.i.+ft of hired quarters & squabbling attendants. My feet had swollen so that only rush-weave slippers fitted me. My teeth ached, often so violently that they woke me in the night. Tho' we were well up in the hills & so should have been safe from the malaria that plagues the Roman summer, the air was heavy & the nights were clogged with the damp & with biting flies. The good Dr Carlos bled me twice which strengthened me & I believe forestalled the convulsions I had sensed coming on. He had guessed that my age was greater than I allowed - (I was 38, tho' my husband believed I was but 30, such is my vanity) - & he feared for the life of his foolish Inglese patient & her unborn child.

Perhaps my age was the reason, or that same dark fear that I would again be punished for my sins, but in my heart I did not fully believe that I would survive this ordeal. I dreamed constantly of disaster, fires & floods & walls falling on me. Perhaps the reason I had agreed to sit for Mr Hicks was that I wanted some memento to leave my friends - it did not seem possible, most of the time, that I or my baby would live.

By the middle of August the wicked Austrian Redetsky had pushed through Ferrara & headed for Rome. The first news made me scream with fear - for my husband, for Mazzini, for all the men & even for us here in Rieti - Dr Carlos gave me a sedative drink so that I could sleep a little. It was days before we received word that the battles were stalled & a stasis, a stand-off, held once more.

& It was Dr Carlos who helped me place a bench & a broad green umbrella beside a little spring that bubbled from the hill-side just below the old well. Even in the high heat of the day, & aided by the thin shade of an olive-tree, the umbrella allowed me to sit for an hour or so with my feet in the cold waters & so find some relief, & some numbing of my fears.

13 July, Strong wind The lice have returned con spirito but there is no way to address the plague in this windy weather. Poor Nino cannot stop scratching his head to runnels of blood - so I have again salved him, this time trying a mixture of lye with the pork-fat as Tomaso advised. Mrs Hasty disagrees & says it will burn & meanwhile Nino is crying so I cannot think straight.

Later. Following his third head-was.h.i.+ng, Nino sleeps in his father's arms. The lye did scorch his scalp & I am sick at my foolish mistake that pained him so. The smell in the cabin - it can scarcely be called a cabin, let us call it a cupboard - is ferocious. I press a lemon to my nose with my left hand as I write, holding the paper in place with my elbow.

Giovanni arrived in Rieti in time for our son's birth on September 5th. I cannot remember all - that there was pain & that I suffered I do not deny but Nature seems intent to give us the blessing of forgetfulness. (It is the same with all the mothers I have spoken to, but one -. She claimed to remember every throe, but then - she is a friend of Mme Arconati & from time to time a soprano at La Scala.) Some day very soon I will ask for your own insights about motherhood, my darling Sophia.

Angelo Eugene Philip Ossoli. Tanto belo, my little one, my Nino! Amidst all my fears for his life & mine, I did not dare think ahead to the great love that would arrive like a thunder-clap! I swear the heavens themselves broke open when I gave birth & the cooling rains came to Rieti like the blessings I suddenly knew.

A month & a little more - I had milk fever & could not nurse - the perfidious Guidetta refused to nurse my baby, a desperate day when we thought he would die from hunger. Then we found the lovely Chiara, another of the far-flung Cherubimi-Seraphimi clan, who came to us & fed him amply - strange quiet days marked by intervals of sleep & holding my baby, as the autumn rains gently fell & the gra.s.s & leaves on the hills turned first green again, then golden & then brown. I would crush a grape & drip the juice into Nino's mouth - it was like feeding a little bird. Even in his first days he knew me & turned his face to me wherever I was in the room, & only would rest quietly when in my arms.

Into the serenity of the nursery, however, the world's tendrils crept. One such vine was the war itself - as the rest of Europe lost her nerve, it seemed that it remained to our Italia to lead the way to a new world, as our Revolutionists gathered strength & hope. Another vine that wound about me, now that I believed I would live & Nino would as well - was the necessity of money. Again & again, money. My secrecy about my circ.u.mstances had led those at home to be mistrustful, & perhaps those who might have helped with gifts & loans were hesitant. Also - I learned that many believed I had come into an income when my Uncle Abraham had died, indeed I received two letters congratulating me on my good fortune - such congratulations being baseless, as I received nothing whatsoever from him, in punishment no doubt for my years of taking Mother's part. A great-aunt's promised gift on her death was likewise a disappointment - instead of her estate, some $50,000 which she willed to her church, she left me her books, all still in Boston, & $100, which went to pay for food & the doctor & Chiara & so helped save my son's life in the moment, & for which I am grateful still, but otherwise did not rescue us. I had privately lost all hope of Giovanni's inheritance - at least until after the war, & then who knew what the new world would offer. All our hopes must be pinned to my book, which I had begun in the spring & worked on in the summer as long as my health would permit - my ”History of the Italian Revolution.” Writing that would require much time & effort & moreover - moreover - I must be back in Rome to witness the unfolding of the history I was to write.

Letters having got lost & misdirected across the ocean, Mr Greeley was impatient that I had not written for him since June. When I got his late letters, in November, I saw that he offered me a raise - $12.50 a column! - if I would only write more. Obviously, I must return to Rome immediately.

Chiara had a relative she could board with in Rome & we began to plan a move in November. But Giovanni would not allow it, firm as he was in his belief that all would come right with the family inheritance & so continuing to hold to our policy of secrecy. Already we had paid Guidetta to keep quiet - she often asked for more, & we gave her what we could spare. Unlike her cousin, Chiara was no blackmailer but she was simple & a talker & our baby's presence in Rome could never be kept discreet. Alas, alas - I left Nino with her in Rieti. My very bones ached, as Giovanni held me in his arms & the cart jostled us the 40 miles or so into the city, 40 miles between me & my darling, 'neath the drizzly November sky.

14 July Mother-love, so fierce, like a magnifying-gla.s.s held over the tinder to make a forest fire!

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