Miss Fuller (15 page)

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 & passionate 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 grass & 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-shift 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-washing, 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 grass & 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 circumstances 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-glass held over the tinder to make a forest fire!

15 July, Sea choppy

Celesta & I have managed to air the cabin & its sorry linens. Husband & baby sick, Mrs Hasty also, but all now asleep. The sailor Tomaso has given me a small rope-bracelet with wooden beads that press against my wrist — a salt’s remedy or charm against sea-sickness that aids me immeasurably.

Mr Bangs says that a storm is behind us & will whisk us north & east & home in a matter of a day or two. I had best speed my pen as well.

My story now is in the winter of 1848–49, & into the spring, the months of the Risorgimento, the Roman Republic & then the terrible siege. Oh, to recall the thrill of those few months of Rome’s freedom — the Pope having left in November! (I liked to pretend he left because I returned, but in truth he left because he was a coward & feared assassination.) The Assembly in session & daily new declarations & new laws passed for our freedoms! Freedom of the press! 250,000 Romans casting votes in their first elections! The Inquisition declared illegal & its monstrous building shut down! Many wanted to burn it but cooler heads prevailed — as fortunately cool heads prevailed throughout that halcyon time — to propose that
the building instead be made into new homes for the poor, or perhaps an asylum for orphans. Mazzini came in & out of Rome, for he was wanted in the fighting in the Piedmont & then in Naples — every time he came into the city, he paid me a visit in my new rooms on the Piazza Barbieri. He was tired but hopeful — & like my Giovanni, like all the men, seemed to have derived some super-human strength in those glory days of freedom. Daily we prayed for expected help — money or arms from England, & at the very least diplomatic recognition from everyone’s beloved America.

During these months I was able to visit Rieti for two weeks, in April. The family was quarrelsome & rude, I worried about the cold, as the cottage there had only the one fire-place in the kitchen, but Nino’s cradle was always on the hearth & all seemed well. After two weeks in my arms & bed, he cried when I left but was soon comforted again by Chiara & so the agony of leaving was chiefly mine.

As I had long predicted, the return of the conservatives in France meant that instead of offering salvation, as some had once fondly hoped, France as enemy sent ships & a full battalion to restore the Pope to “his” State — landing on the coast at the end of April & laying violent siege to Rome & its brave people for many terrible weeks. Cannons fired all day long into the city. The Princess Belogioso, with admirable efficiency, organized field hospitals. I was delegated to run the one on Tiber Island called Fate Bene Fratelli.

Early on, a boy with a wounded leg had the gangrene setting in — the one doctor for five of our hospitals was not around, who knew when he would return, not that day or the next surely — we had no surgery saw, & so I asked one of the only men who was able — his own head-wound had nearly healed — to fetch an axe, & while I & another woman held the boy’s arms he chopped off the leg just below the knee. It took three whacks, & as the boy did not swoon at once I was obliged to sit on his chest to keep him down. Then I sat by & pressed the bandage all night to make sure the bleeding stopped, until in the morning the doctor’s boy arrived with his bucket of hot tar & we were able to sear the stump. The soldier did survive — unlike so many others — & lived to hop about on a wooden peg. But tho’ he called me Mama, as all the boys & even most of the older men did as well, when in distress — I felt like no Mama I had ever wished to be.