Lucia (4 page)

It was not enough to feel every day the anxiety of marrying a man she had never seen; she also had to contend with the depressing thought of being unwanted and unloved by her new family. The Mocenigos’ immediate disapproval of the marriage and Sebastiano’s outright opposition to it caused Lucia much pain. She begged Alvise to be more conciliatory, to cede ground in order to find peace:

I heard about your family’s wrath, for which I am so sorry…I beseech you to use respect towards your father and your uncle so as to calm them down. Give in to some of their demands so that we may live in tranquillity…I pray to God that all these problems I have caused may be resolved before our wedding takes place.
²²

On 1 April 1786, a full five weeks after learning the name of the man who was to become her husband, the small portrait of Alvise she had been promised finally arrived with the morning courier. She rushed to her room “blushing,” she later confessed to Alvise, and sat there gazing at the small image: it was a portrait of him at sixteen, a handsome youth with a broad forehead, who looked mature even at such a young age. “Everyone assures me you look very much the same ten years later and this rather startles me,” she said, openly flirting with him for the first time. “I can assure you that I am very pleased with it.” Lucia was so transfixed by this image of Alvise that it took her some time to realise there was another miniature attached to it. It was a twin portrait of herself, which Alvise had had copied from the old miniature Memmo had given him, and embellished. It showed a beaming Lucia holding in her arms a bouquet symbolising their betrothal. “You could not have had a kinder thought,” she wrote back, very touched. “And the bouquet could not have been richer or more beautiful.”
²³
She resolved to wear the twin miniatures around her neck at the large dinner her father was planning in honour of the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland.

Meanwhile, Lucia’s portrait, which Alvise was waiting for with equal impatience, was lagging behind. She had begun to sit for Remondini, a Genoese portraitist in vogue among the Roman aristocracy, after returning from Naples. But she had interrupted the sessions because a nasty sty in her right eye had puffed up her cheekbone, slightly disfiguring her, and giving her a terrible headache. As soon as she recovered, Remondini disappeared. Memmo sent a servant looking for him, but the man had vanished mysteriously and in fact never returned. The portrait was left unfinished. Lucia, worrying she might give Alvise a false impression of her, was loath to send him a picture that in some parts did not even look like her. She finally relented under pressure from her father. She explained to Alvise:

Most esteemed spouse, there were good reasons not to send you a portrait in which much of the contour of the head had yet to be completed…I could be very sorry should I appear to be more beautiful than I am, or more ugly for that matter…But in the end what I most cared for was that it be truthful as a whole, and I think it is. My father is satisfied, except for the colour of the hair, which is certainly not mine…If only we had had time for a couple more sittings, the result would have been superior. In my haste to satisfy your desire, I have taken a substantial risk…You will observe that I asked to be painted holding a small portrait of you in my hand. It is to remind you that nothing occupies me more than the original article represented in that small frame.
²⁴

Alvise was delighted with the unfinished portrait and told Lucia how beautiful she was “with words that could not have been kinder or more obliging.” The veil that had kept them invisible to one another, adding mystery and anxiety to their long-distance relationship, had been shed. Now both of them held an image on which to fix their thoughts. Their letters became more personal, more intimate, and Lucia must have felt a very sensual pleasure as she began signing off with expressions like “Your most trusted friend,” “Your most beloved wife” or “Your loving spouse.” She told Alvise: “I want to give myself over to my husband.”
²⁵
She did not yet abandon herself entirely to her fantasies because of “the bad situation” between Alvise and his family; but Alvise’s letters, which she read in the privacy of her own room, clutching his small portrait, bolstered her confidence. He promised her their marriage would be based on love, but also on truth and loyalty, all the time reminding her that he was marrying her at his own initiative, not because of a family arrangement. There would be no secrets between them, no hypocrisy. And they would never cease to respect and to care for each other in the face of life’s tribulations. Lucia was touched by his words. “Your wisdom about the maxims one should uphold in marriage gives me great comfort,” she wrote. “It makes me hold you in ever greater esteem.”
²⁶
She dwelled on the example of her own parents:

I will always remember how, despite their age difference, and their different character, and circumstances and education, my mother and father learnt to love each other, and to be always happy together even in adversity, except, as my poor mother used to say to us, at the time of separation, when they were torn by the feeling they might never see each other again.
²⁷

The weather had warmed since the family’s return from Naples. Roman spring was bursting everywhere. From her window in Palazzo San Marco, Lucia could see the flowering wisteria climb around the large marble columns of the main loggia. In the courtyard below, water splattered gaily in a fishpond surrounded by palm trees and laurel hedges. Although Alvise was far away, Lucia felt his presence more strongly each day. She longed to be close to him, to touch him. His letters became an instrument of pleasure. “The longer they are, the longer I feel near to you,” she told him tenderly. “My feelings for you are certainly not lesser than those you profess having for me, and I cannot wait to prove it to you with greater freedom.”
²⁸

Memmo could not have been happier at the way Alvise and Lucia were getting to know each other by correspondence. His dealings with the Mocenigos, on the other hand, were more frustrating. They were raising objections about Memmo’s ability to honour the marriage contract—legitimate objections, one might add, for rumour had it in Venice that Memmo had accumulated enormous debts during his tenure in Rome. The rumours were exaggerated by interested parties, but money, as Memmo well knew, was a serious problem. “I wouldn’t want us to fall on our backside at this crucial point, making a ridiculous spectacle of ourselves and jeopardising my daughter’s future,”
²⁹
he told Chiarabba. But it was not just the money: the Mocenigos were raising issues of lineage that infuriated Memmo. There had been a Memmo doge as early as ad 979, well before the Mocenigos had even appeared in Venice! “I honestly cannot imagine what they can object to,” he said in exasperation, “apart from the fact she wasn’t born a Mocenigo.”
³⁰

Memmo had to guard himself from his own brothers, who were constantly pulling the rug from beneath his feet, making it all the more difficult for him to carve out a decent dowry from a much reduced Memmo estate. And Alvise, with all his haste, was proving a less effective ally than expected. “He is young and wants everything at once, whereas I know that on every issue I must move only if we are sure to be on firm ground,” he told his agent. Memmo conceded he was not entirely blameless, especially during his early approaches, “when I operated as if Alvise did not have a father or an uncle.” But Alvise had shown himself quite “incapable of dealing with his family,” and Memmo “absolutely” insisted on “reconciliation with the Mocenigos.”
³¹

The deal needed more work, and Memmo instructed Lucia to return to her old routine—not exactly the easiest thing, given the circumstances. She resumed her grammar and composition lessons with Abbé Sintich, her French lessons with Madame Dupont, and her lessons of philosophy and architecture, which Memmo supervised. The days were now longer. If Lucia finished her morning classes early, she and Paolina and Madame Dupont would sometimes go out for a walk at the edge of the city, towards the Roman ruins along the Appian Way, or else in the direction of the Vatican, in the hope of catching sight of the papal cavalcade. The afternoons were usually devoted to music and singing and to social visits. The girls also took riding lessons at the Villa Borghese. Before their trip to Naples, Memmo had escorted Lucia to dinners and balls; but after receiving Alvise’s marriage proposal, he curtailed her evening engagements. Occasionally, she was allowed to go to the nearby Teatro Valle, the only theatre where the family kept a box.

Memmo seldom entertained at home for he was too mindful of the expenses. But he occasionally gave a lavish dinner to acquit himself in one go of the many he had enjoyed during the year. He had opened up Palazzo San Marco to honour King Gustav III of Sweden, for example, and he had thrown a memorable ball for the Duke and Duchess of Curlandia. Now Memmo decided to give a dinner with dancing and musical entertainment on Easter night, in honour of the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland. It was their second visit to the Eternal City. The duke had come to Rome in the 1770s with his morganatic wife Lady Anne Luttrell, much to the irritation of his brother, King George III. Back then Pope Pius VI had received the duke, but he had only agreed to meet Lady Luttrell in the papal gardens as if by chance. Now, ten years later the duke was back in Rome with his travelling court, and with Lady Anne firmly established as the Duchess of Cumberland (this time the Pope granted her an official audience). They rented a
palazzo
on Via Condotti, just off Piazza di Spagna, an area known as the English ghetto on account of the many
milordi inglesi
who took lodgings there during their Grand Tours. The Cumberlands spent extravagant sums of money, commissioned paintings from Italian and foreign artists, and worked their way through the palaces of the Roman aristocracy.

Memmo applied himself with special diligence to give his guests an evening worthy of their rank. Palazzo San Marco was scrubbed from top to bottom. The cracks in the wall were filled in or camouflaged. For once he did not penny-pinch in brightening up the building: two rows of torches were laid out to illuminate the facade. Memmo ordered bushels of oysters and fresh fish from the Adriatic, the choicest meats, his favourite cheeses from the Veneto and the best ices in Rome. The Map Room, originally the largest room in the
palazzo,
was divided in two rooms. The several hundred guests were to gather in the smaller one for the reception, and then move into the larger one, the
sala del camino grande,
for dinner. Musical entertainment, followed by dancing, was to take place in the adjacent ballroom. Rather than hiring musicians and singers, Memmo prevailed upon his daughters to organise an after-dinner show with the help of their ballet teacher, the formidable Madame Viganò, who managed the Teatro Valle and therefore had a number of dancers and singers on hand. “God help us!” Lucia wrote to Alvise with trepidation on the eve of her show. “If only my husband were here, I would surely dance more happily than I will!”
³²

The evening was a great success, and a personal one for Lucia and Paolina. The Duchess of Cumberland was so taken with their ballet that she begged to see it again. As a result, all the Roman ladies asked the two sisters to repeat the performance in their palaces. If they did not come, the Marchesa Massimo warned, she would be forced to cancel her dinner for the duke and duchess! Lucia related her adventures with amusement to Alvise. For her, the high point of the evening had not been the ballet at all. “I wore your portrait upon my breast for the first time in public,” she confessed. “Everyone loved it and commented on how magnificent you looked. They even went so far as to praise your taste in the choice of the small frame.”
³³

The duke and duchess became very fond of Lucia and Paolina, and they took them along wherever they went. The duke only liked to dance with them, while the duchess took it upon herself to improve the girls’ halting English. Lucia was frustrated by her lack of progress in the language everyone wanted to learn in Rome. Her conversations with the duchess had only made her more aware of how much practice she still needed “to express myself better and improve my pronunciation.” With difficulty, she could get through a book in English:

But it is one thing to understand a passable amount of what one has read, and quite another to understand what the English are saying when they talk to you, or for that matter to actually speak it ourselves. The two of us haven’t got very far, and I fear we never will.
³⁴

She knew Alvise too had tried to learn English, in Venice, and had given up; but if he desired to do so, they could try to learn it together once they were married. “It’s a very difficult language, and I honestly fear I shall never learn to speak it well, but if you should have some extra time available to resume this fruitful occupation, then I will make a special effort to improve my own skills.”
³⁵

Lucia often fantasised about her future life as Alvise’s wife, and tried to imagine him in Venice by piecing together the bits of information that came her way. Apart from the letters she received every week from him, she culled useful nuggets from visitors who came down from Venice—Venetian senators who were friends of her father, for the most part, or else foreigners who had been to Venice on their Grand Tour and were visiting Rome. The conversation among these dinner guests at Palazzo San Marco often touched on Venetian affairs, with the inevitable digressions about Alvise, his past vicissitudes, his prospects as a politician—he had his eye on the position of Savio di Terraferma, the traditional stepping-stone for ambitious young Venetians embarking on a political career. Lucia was touched to hear how Alvise always rushed to retrieve her letters from the courier; about the inspired toasts he had given to her health in a number of assemblies; about the pleasure he derived in hearing people speak well about “the woman he had not seen and did not know, and yet had chosen as his eternal companion.” But she warned him not to rely too much on hearsay. She pointed out she was not a woman who sought the limelight or thrived in society: