Chapter D

4 YORK BUILDINGS, CHELSEA.
? _May 1845._

MY DEAR SIGNOR ROSSETTI,

We have decided to have on an early day in June a concert for the benefit of the school; Pistrucci, I suppose, will give you all the particulars of the project, or I will give them myself. You will then see how far and in what way you may be able to aid towards a good result. But meanwhile I have to beg you urgently for one thing. I have a letter of introduction to Miss Kemble,[95] and I want to request her to sing: singing for a school is quite a different thing from singing in a theatre. I know that she at one time asked Giannone[96] for a letter to you, and that you saw her. I don’t know on what terms you have remained with her, but, knowing _you_, I presume good terms. Could you add a letter to the one which I hold? or could you join me in a visit? or, if nothing else, write to her on your own part?--and, in this last case, on Monday or Tuesday. Thus assailed at one moment from two sides, she would perhaps surrender.

Whatever you decide, please oblige me with a couple of words in reply, and with the lady’s present address,[97] if you can give this.

Wish me well, and believe me
Your very affectionate
GIUSEPPE MAZZINI.

E.

108 HIGH HOLBORN.
_31st October 1845._

MY DEAR SIGNOR ROSSETTI,

Pistrucci told me that he would undertake to beg you to allow your voice to be heard, in one way or other, at the Anniversary of our School, 10th November.[98] Still, I will join to his my poor request. The fact of the School is an Italian fact; and it ought, even with a view to the English, to have the moral support of all Italians who, like yourself, do honour to the name of our common country.

Confiding in your willingness to hearken to our request, believe, dear Signor Rossetti, in the full friendly esteem of

Yours,
GIUSEPPE MAZZINI.

F.

19 CROPLEY STREET, NEW NORTH ROAD.
[? _January 1847_].

VERY DEAR SIGNOR ROSSETTI,

An opportunity has arisen. Will you give the MS. to the bearer? He will be leaving to-morrow, or at latest on Tuesday.

I thank you for your good wishes for the year now commenced; but I have no hope of joy, save one alone--that of bearing witness in death, as I have endeavoured to do in life, to my Italian faith. Pray that this may occur within this year, and believe me always

Your much attached
GIUSEPPE MAZZINI.

G.

19 CROPLEY STREET, NEW NORTH ROAD.
[? _January 1847_].

MY DEAR SIGNOR ROSSETTI,

The Manuscript has gone off--not anything else. Ricciardi, Janer, Pistrucci, will have patience, and await other opportunities which I shall have towards the end of the month. We cannot, for exhortations and sonnets, be guilty of an indiscretion towards English travellers, who consider they have stretched a point if they accept letters, and are quite capable of throwing in your face a “Why not employ a bookseller?”--which I should not like. However, I undertake, for love of you, to get all the things off, but distributing them among various travellers. A slight delay will not spoil matters; nor will the exhortations to return to Paris accelerate to any great extent the progress of French civilization.

I was unable to charge my traveller--an Englishman, young, and an officer--with the eight shillings, for he would probably have forgotten them. But I have written that you had given them to me, to be paid to Ricciardi--and probably they will be paid one of these days.

Believe me, with all esteem,
Your much attached
GIUSEPPE MAZZINI.

H.

17 CROPLEY STREET, NEW NORTH ROAD.
_8th February_ [1847].

MY DEAR SIGNOR ROSSETTI,

To your MS. has happened what often happens to our Italian affairs: in trying to do good, one does harm. If we had waited patiently for that Italian traveller of mine of the 24th January, the MS. would at this date be in Paris. But, urged on by my own wishes, and also by the strong pressure, I seized the opportunity of an Englishman, Captain Boulton, and consigned the volume to him. He, as he said, was to leave on the following day. And, knowing nothing to the contrary, I supposed him to have departed, in fact; until, five or six days ago, becoming suspicious from the silence of my correspondents, and making active quest for the officer, I found that owing to some family incident or other he had deferred his departure, and had indeed gone off to the country--whence he writes that he will be leaving in seven days!!

You should, therefore, be under no alarm for the MS. Like yourself, I regret the delay, but it is not my fault. If, earlier than the seven days, I get an opportunity, I will see that the MS. goes off before the officer; if not, not.

I felt anxious to reply to you about the MS., as the matter of most importance. As to Ricciardi’s eight copies, please inform Ricciardi that one can’t tell a tourist, “Take with you a boxful of things”; that it is a miracle if I found some one to convey the eight; that, sooner or later, I shall find some one to convey the others; and that moreover I would not have undertaken, except for wishing to do a service to you whom I greatly esteem, to send off either the eight or the sixteen. Neither would I set going from Paris to London, and then from London to Paris, copies of my own performances, but would order them to be burned or given away.

And believe me ever
Your much attached and affectionate
GIUSEPPE MAZZINI.