Casanova's Women (6 page)

Alla mattina una massetta, al dopo dinar una bassetta, alia sera una donnetta
ran a local Venetian proverb – a little Mass in the morning, a little game of cards after dinner, a little woman in the evening. Venetian women were renowned for being beautiful, well-dressed and available. They bleached their hair a streaky blonde by pulling strands of it through the crowns of wide-brimmed straw hats and sitting out on their roof terraces all day in the sun. They adorned themselves with dresses made of sumptuous imported fabrics and wore fabulous pearls and precious stones around their long slender necks. A surprising number of women of all classes were sexually available. The city had been overrun with courtesans for more than a hundred years, and although young unmarried virgins of the patrician classes were safely cloistered away from sexual predators in the Republic's fifty-odd convents, their mothers and even their maids enjoyed an unprecedented amount of freedom. Allowed out all day either on their own or with their
cicisbeo
, a male companion or lover who was officially sanctioned by their families, they moved freely about the city on foot or by gondola, at liberty to do whatever they pleased. Anonymous in their carnival masks, androgynous in their floor-length black cloaks, these liberated wives played cards in the back rooms of theatres, frequented low-life taverns and smart cafes, and even visited male friends in their private
casini
, the small, luxuriously-appointed houses or apartments used by the wealthy for gambling and secret liaisons. No one knew exactly where they went to or what they got up to, and in most cases no one cared. Even God, it appeared, smiled upon love affairs in the Serenissima, where ‘Christ Defending the Woman taken in Adultery' was one of the favourite subjects tackled by the city's painters.

Marcia and Girolamo Farussi had to accept that Venice's tourists, thespians and the ruling class behaved as if they were living in Sodom and Gomorrah. However, ordinary working folk such as themselves lived by higher standards, and they expected their only daughter to do the same. When Zanetta fell in love with an actor from the local theatre, they were outraged. For actors were despised beings in their eyes, and rumoured to have no morals at all. ‘Remember you are persons whom God abhors, tolerated… only for the sake of those who enjoy your sinful antics,'
⁵
a member of Venice's Council of Ten had once warned the city's acting profession and, though the Farussis were materially worse off than many actors, they held themselves to be superior to them. If Zanetta married an actor, she would inevitably go on the stage herself, and actresses were no better than glorified whores who freely granted their male admirers whatever they desired. The prospect was unthinkable.

That their daughter's suitor, twenty-six-year-old Gaetano Casanova, had slipped into a theatrical career by chance and came from a good family made absolutely no difference to them; nor did the fact that, when he had first fallen in love with an actress himself, his own parents had been as outraged as the Farussis now were. Gaetano had only been nineteen years old when, in his native city of Parma, he had met Giovanna Balletti, an actress popularly known as La Fragoletta after the strawberry-shaped birthmark on her breast. La Fragoletta had not only been a despised thespian but a married woman some thirty-five years Gaetano's senior; both her son and her daughter were older than her lover was. When the senior Casanovas had objected to the patently unsuitable liaison, their son had impulsively run away from home in order to live with the actress, and in retaliation his father had cut him off. With no other means of support, Gaetano had left Parma and joined his lover on the road, first as a dancer and later as an actor in the same theatrical company. Sometime before 1723, the two of them came to Venice where La Fragoletta, who was then approaching sixty but still behaved as if she was a young star, shone playing
soubrette
roles.

Given the age gap between them, it was almost inevitable that the ill-matched lovers would part one day and, predictably, it had been Gaetano Casanova who had eventually left La Fragoletta (years later, when she was an old lady with ill-fitting false teeth and a wig, she still considered that he had never fully appreciated her). Unwilling or unable to return to the bosom of his family and admit that he had made a mistake, Gaetano had stayed on in Venice where he had joined the highly acclaimed company of Commedia dell' Arte players at the San Samuele theatre, a building owned by nobleman Michele Grimani. By late 1723, Gaetano had fallen in love with Zanetta, the beautiful cobbler's daughter who lived close by, and she had fallen for him too.

Ironically there was about as much chance of Girolamo and Marcia Farussi agreeing to the match as there had been of Gaetano's parents condoning his relationship with La Fragoletta. But like her lover before her, Zanetta refused to bow to her parents' wishes. Young, headstrong and displaying some of the determination and strength of character that would stand her in good stead in later life, she eloped without their consent. Provided with the necessary certificates and accompanied by two witnesses, she and Gaetano threw themselves at the mercy of Venice's Patriarch, Pietro Barbarigo, and were married on 27 February 1724 at the parish church of San Samuele.

There was a high price to pay for Zanetta's behaviour. Her mother went hysterical when she found out what had happened. Her father was so distraught that he literally died of grief within the month. By following her heart Zanetta had unwittingly killed her father and made a widow of her mother. The Casanovas' marriage was mired in guilt. When their first child was born on 2 April 1725, the couple named him Giacomo after his estranged paternal grandfather, and Girolamo after his late maternal one.

Had Zanetta known that her firstborn Giacomo Girolamo would posthumously become one of the most famous men ever to have lived, she might well have taken more interest in him, but she appears to have had little maternal instinct as far as he was
concerned. When her husband was invited to join a troupe of actors travelling to England at the beginning of 1726, she accompanied him, leaving her ten-month-old infant in her widowed mother's care for an indefinite period.

Invited to London by the Dukes of Montague and Richmond, the
Comédie du Théâtre de Gherardi
, as the Italian troupe were called after seventeenth-century harlequin Evaristo Gherardi, arrived in the sprawling metropolis of London in mid-March, and opened at the New Theatre in the Haymarket on the twenty-fourth with
La Fille à la Mode ou le Parisien Dupe
, an Italian comedy in spite of its French name. Despite a rather mixed reception, the following autumn they moved across the street to the grander and more famous King's Theatre, a building owned and designed by playwright and architect John Vanbrugh and managed by the charismatic if notoriously ugly Swiss impresario Johann Heidegger. Heidegger staged opera at the King's in conjunction with court composer George Frideric Handel. He also threw lavish masquerade parties there for the aristocracy, thus earning himself the reputation among churchmen as England's ‘principal promoter of vice and immorality' and ensuring that his premises became the epicentre of fashionable London society. Eager to exploit any new scheme to make his theatre pay, Heidegger booked the Gherardi players to perform at the King's on nights when no other entertainment was being held there.

After his father-in-law's death, Gaetano had promised Marcia Farussi that he would never force her daughter to appear on stage, but Zanetta needed little encouragement. Although she had had no musical training, she a fine actress with good taste, a true ear and perfect execution. When the Gherardi troupe opened at the King's Theatre on 28 September with a performance of
The Faithful Wife, or Arlequin Strip'd
, the young ‘Mrs Casanova' was among the cast. The first night's performance was a grand society event attended by King George I and the Prince of Wales, and despite the presence of his formidable wife, Caroline of Ansbach, forty-two-year-old
Prince George Augustus took an immediate fancy to the ravishing fledgling actress.

‘Repetitive' and ‘foolish' was how Nathaniel Mist, the publisher of
Mist's Weekly Journal
, described the Commedia dell' Arte season at the King's Theatre that autumn. The Prince of Wales, however, was sufficiently impressed to attend at least five more performances, though it appears he was more interested in one of the players than in the plays. For by early October, Zanetta Casanova, the twenty-year-old romantic heronie of
The Faithful Wife
, was with child. And ironically, far from her being faithful to her real-life husband, rumour had it that the Hanoverian prince was responsible for her condition.

By 26 April 1727, when she took one of the leading roles in a harlequinade called
La Parodia del Pastor Fido
, Zanetta was seven months pregnant. Six weeks later, on 1 June, she gave birth to her second child, a baby boy who was baptised Francesco. Ten days after that, King George I died in Osnabruck, Germany, and George Augustus, Francesco's putative father, became King George II of Great Britain and Elector of Hanover.

Sadly the royal connection was of little benefit to the Gherardi players, who were not proving the box-office draw that Heidegger had hoped for, so the following summer the entire company disbanded and the Casanovas undertook the long return journey to Italy. They arrived back in Venice between eighteen months and two years after they had left it, proudly toting Francesco, the brother whom Giacomo would resent all his life. Flush with the money they had earned on the London stage – and perhaps enriched by a secret pay-off from the new King George II – they rented a house in the parish of San Samuele from Zanetta's patrician godfather, Count Tribu Savorgnan.
⁶
The three-storey building in the Calle della Commedia was just around the corner from the theatre where, from now on, Zanetta worked as an actress, while Gaetano plied a second trade, that of making optical instruments.

His parents' homecoming was a rude shock for three-year-old
Giacomo who, during their long absence, had been the sole object of his grandmother's attention. Marcia Farussi was indulgent, warm-hearted and as motherly as her daughter was disinterested in her eldest son. Giacomo adored her, and although he was in many ways an unrewarding child to look after, out of all her grandchildren he remained her special pet. However, now that there was another infant in the house Marcia could no longer spend so much time with Giacomo, who suddenly found that he was of secondary importance compared to his new sibling and the three others that soon followed at yearly intervals. As for his parents, they were strangers to him, remote figures who appeared to pity rather than like him. Presuming, perhaps, that their sickly eldest son was an idiot who would not be long for this world, they ignored him most of the time.

 

Working in London had transformed Zanetta Casanova into a sophisticated actress as confident of her physical charms as of her acting talent, and after Gaetano's death in December 1733 she resolved to remain independent rather than marry again. From now on she would be the family's sole breadwinner. In the winter, autumn and spring there was plenty of work for actors in Venice, but in the hot summer months the tourists returned to their homes in the cooler climates of Northern Europe and the Venetian noble class took refuge in their country houses in the nearby region of Friuli and along the Brenta Canal. Suddenly Venice was empty of all but its poorest citizens. The Matter of Fact and Queen of the Sea cafés in the Piazza San Marco were virtually deserted, the streets and squares no longer echoed to the sounds of late-night revelry, and the theatres were forced to close. Desperate to make a living, Venetian actors packed their costumes and props into hampers and travelled to the mainland in search of new audiences, and during the first summer of her widowhood Zanetta had no choice but to go with them. Leaving her children with Marcia, she followed the San Samuele theatre company to Verona, where they were booked to perform at an annual theatre festival in the city.

Given that he was a sickly child thought to be in danger of dying, it is a mark of her lack of feeling for nine-year-old Giacomo that Zanetta left for the summer without first visiting him in Padua, even though she had not seen him since the day in April when she had left him there. If she imagined that her son was happy living with his foster-mother Signora Mida she was mistaken. At home in Venice he had been mollycoddled by his grandmother, but in Padua he was forced to fend for himself with a vengeance. Signora Mida was as cruel, neglectful and sluttish as she was hideous. Under her roof Giacomo shared a filthy attic room with three other boys, bullies whose beds, like his own, were infested with fleas and lice. Rats ran riot in the darkness at night, scurrying across the floor and even leaping terrifyingly on to the beds. No one ever changed the blood-flecked sheets or washed the children's filthy clothes, and no one ever saw to it that they washed themselves or even brushed their hair. If he did not die from the squalor in the house, Giacomo feared that he would die of starvation. Although he had never had much of an appetite before, at Signora Mida's he was always ravenous, for there was never enough to eat, and what little there was tasted disgusting. Since there were no separate plates or glasses to drink from, he was forced to fight his room-mates for spoonfuls of the foul-smelling soup which was dished up in a single, communal tureen. The lovely silver cutlery which his grandmother had given him had been locked away, and the only utensils available were a few old wooden implements. Whenever Giacomo complained to Signora Mida that things were not as they should be in the house, she scolded him violently and beat the maid.

After six months of torment, in which the only saving grace of his life proved to be Dr Antonio Gozzi, the young, dedicated schoolteacher whom Signora Mida had found for him, Giacomo wrote three desperate letters home: one to Giorgio Baffo, another to the priest Grimani, and a third to his grandmother. Since she was illiterate, Marcia Farussi asked Baffo to read the letter to her. She was appalled by what it said. Although she was far from wealthy
herself she had always been house-proud and kept a decent table. In her home, as in most houses belonging to the labouring classes in Venice, ‘cleanliness and honest sufficiency reigned'.
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Never before in his life had her sickly grandson gone hungry, or been treated unkindly. Now the little weakling was living in squalor with strangers, and being treated worse than an animal! And this was supposed to be good for his health? Since Zanetta was in Verona, Marcia took matters into her own hands and boarded the next
burchiello
down the Brenta Canal, determined to see for herself exactly what was going on in Padua.