Caps off to Garibaldi
The champion of the Risorgimento famously visited London in 1864. But a decade earlier, he had received a hero’s welcome on Tyneside, too.
Early in the spring of 1854, the little port of Tynemouth was swept by rumours that Giuseppe Garibaldi was aboard a steam ship that would shortly be docking to take on coal. By the time the brig SS Commonwealth had tied up beside the fishing boats and coal barges, excitement was at fever pitch. The working-class communities of Tyneside were fiercely proud that the leader of the epic struggle to unify Italy would be taking his first steps on English soil in their corner of the North-east. ‘Viva Garibaldi!’ posters appeared up and down Tynemouth’s trim main street, while brass bands were perfecting arrangements of ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’.
No one was awaiting Garibaldi’s arrival more eagerly than Joseph Cowen Jr, a local industrialist who made his pile in the brick business and now represented Newcastle in Parliament. A man of strong radical beliefs, Cowen had used the newspaper he owned, the
Newcastle Evening Chronicle, to campaign for universal suffrage, the abolition of slavery and Irish Home Rule and was a fervent supporter of the revolutionary movements sweeping Europe in the mid-19th century. A friend and confidant of Giuseppe Mazzini – often described as ‘the soul’ of the Italian Risorgimento – Cowen had dipped into his own pocket to help finance and arm the forces of liberation. Now he could welcome Garibaldi, ‘the sword’ of the uprising, into his spacious mansion in nearby Blaydon.
To Cowen’s disappointment, his distinguished guest declined to speak in public, probably aware that his fiery oratory might alarm the authorities, though he did make an appearance at the Blaydon Mechanics Institute, addressing an awestruck gathering on current events in Europe. Cowen consoled himself by commissioning a larger-than-life-size statue of his hero in trademark round-topped hat and flowing shirt to stand in the grounds of his estate.
After a stay of three weeks, Garibaldi took ship for Genoa, eager to resume his place at the head of the red-shirted revolutionaries advancing through the south of Italy. He took with him a gilded sabre, paid for by a penny-a-head public subscription and bearing the inscription ‘Presented to General Garibaldi by the People of Tyneside, Friends of European Freedom’. Years later, he recalled having ‘unsheathed it against the Italian despot’ on the field of combat.
Another decade would pass before Garibaldi visited England again, arriving in Southampton aboard the SS Ripon in April 1864 to be greeted by rousing cheers as he disembarked, limping slightly as a result of being shot in the foot at the Battle of Mentana. After receiving the freedom of the city, he electrified those present by declaring: ‘Without the help of the English nation it would have been impossible to complete the deeds we did in southern Italy.’ Garibaldi stayed in the Isle of Wight house of another wealthy sympathiser, where people would stand for hours in the hope of glimpsing him. On a courtesy visit to Alfred Tennyson, the pair reputedly declaimed poetry to each other, though neither spoke the other’s language. In May 1864 Garibaldi set off for London to receive the freedom of the capital, already firmly in the grip of red-shirt mania. He is said to have chosen to arrive on a Saturday afternoon, when working-class admirers would be enjoying their half-day off. Contemporary press reports claimed that an astonishing 500,000 people turned out to greet him: so dense was the crowd that it took his carriage six hours to travel barely three miles. A senior police officer who was present observed that even Queen Victoria was never received with such enthusiasm.
Her Majesty was decidedly unamused: possibly under pressure from nervous Continental allies and her own political advisers, she informed her prime minister, Lord Palmerston, that Garibaldi should be induced to return speedily to Italy.
He did so a few days later, travelling in style aboard the Duke of Sutherland’s yacht, his abrupt departure unconvincingly attributed to health problems (Garibaldi hinted later that he was ‘ obbligato’ to leave). A Tyneside balladeer, Joe Wilson, sent him on his way with some heartfelt words in the local dialect: ‘Fareweel! Tho ye gan ower the sea/they cannot tyek wor luv frae ye!’
There is a beguiling coda to the story of Garibaldi’s sojourn on Tyneside, whose warm welcome he would never forget. Soon after Joseph Cowen’s death in 1900, the statue of Garibaldi disappeared from the grounds of his mansion. It was later found shattered into pieces, possibly as a result of vandalism, but in the 1940s the head was rediscovered in the garden of a local builder who had rescued it from a junk yard. In 1977, the heavily eroded bust was donated to Blaydon Library, where it now stands in a glass case at the entrance.