Nostro Uomo
OF all the national heroes thrown up by the nineteenth century. Garibaldi is virtually alone in having retained his halo undimmed. It is not clear whether this is a result of the man's genuine qualities or whether Italianophile hero- worship a la Trevelyan still casts its potent spell. But the fact remains that the 'Lion' of the Italian national movement has not suffered from the passage of time.
The present book, certainly, will do nothing to detract from Garibaldi's reputation. For all the antipathy inseparable from a movement known by the colour of its shirt, Garibaldi the man is shown- naive but triumphant. Mr. Parris is a determined Garibaldian, convinced that his hero must occupy the centre of the stage, convinced, too, that the minimum of political issues must obscure the heroic image. The result is not as insipid or as distorted as this might suggest. Gari- baldi, after all, had enough vitality to occupy at least three stages—the amorous, the political, the military, perhaps even the stage of social reform: What is more, Mr. Parris is not an ob- trusive biographer. He does not manipulate or unduly display his hero : he lets Garibaldi do his own posturing. This is a biography—and it involves no disparagement of Mr. Parris's re- search to say so—that has written itself. It has done so in a lively, vigorous style, replete with incident and conflict.
On the political side, however, it is almost true to say that the author has produced a simple drama in which the virtuous Garibaldi is shown at grips with the villain, Cavour. It is Cavour, for example, who prevents Garibaldi from play- ing his due role in the campaign of 1859 against the Austrians; Cavour who does his utmost to thwart Garibaldi's intervention in Sicily.
Neither attempt wholly succeeded, of course. But at the end of it all it is not clear that Gari- baldi's was not a wasted life—or a life, at least, which did not meet its due reward. He himself once complained of Victor Emmanuel and Cavour: 'They use men like they use oranges, They suck the juice out to the last drop and throw the peel away in the corner.' It is made obvious by Mr. Parris that Garibaldi was fully entitled to feel ill-used in this way.
But what might well be further emphasised is Garibaldi's own contribution to his defeat through his failure to appreciate the limitations of his power. What could his conquest of the South mean, for example, if it had as conse- quence that Naples and Sicily were ruled by Piedmontese as though they were conquerors in an occupied territory? If taxation was increased and conscription introduced? If enclosures of common land proceeded with more encourage- ment than under the Bourbons? If arrest,, im- prisonment and execution without trial became a commonplace? No wonder five years of virtual civil war followed the 'unification' of Piedmont and the South. Never fewer than sixty battalions were required to hold the South in check during that period.
No doubt this was the doing of the North, and not Garibaldi's at all; but it was undeniably a strange result to put before the survivors of the Thousand. Again, Mr. Parris relates how in 1866 Garibaldi was shaken to find that the peasants of the Trentino by no means preferred parlia- mentary corruption and bad government at the hands of their Italian fellow-countrymen to the moderately good government of the Austrians. Only rarely, it seems, was Garibaldi's simple faith put to this sort of test. One significant occasion of enlightenment came during the 1860 campaign in the South. Garibaldi had spent four hours nursing a dying boy of fifteen, mortally wounded while fighting with the red shirts. The boy finally died in his leader's arms, amidst Garibaldi's outburst of tears and the anguished exclamation : 'Can even liberty be worth this?'
But at the end of his life, as if to compensate for all the disappointments attendant on a united Italy, Garibaldi could indulge in all the dreams typical of the man and his time. He came out with qualified support for the First International; he became an advocate of such causes as the United States of Europe, an international court of justice, free education, an extension of the franchise and of trade unions—all worthy causes, but illustrative of the general shallowness of Garibaldi's outlook. But at least, however mis- timed his efforts, and however paradoxical their results, he rarely espoused the wrong cause.
Not the least surprising and welcome aspect of this book is the amount of wit and jocularity Mr. Parris has been able to include. There is Pius IX ('whose only endearing quality was the habit of making bad puns') exclaiming when the French had withdrawn their troops from Rome after Sedan: 'La France a perdu ses
dents.; there is Cremieux, Minister of Defence in the French provisional government formed
after the defeat of Napoleon HI, ejaculating, 'My God--we needed only that,' when Garibaldi landed at Marseilles to offer his help against the Prussians. Lastly, there is Victor Emmanuel's remark when Garibaldi confidently asked him to annul one marriage so that he might contract another and thus regularise the status of his children. Alas-1f I could legitimate your bastards,' the king said, `I would first do my own.'
LIONEL KOCHAN
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