Read The Manzoni Family Online
Authors: Natalia Ginzburg
The Manzoni Family
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Alessandro Manzoni
ALSO BY NATALIA GINZBURG
All Our Yesterdays
The City and the House
Family Sayings
The Little Virtues
The Road to the City
Voices of the Evening
NATALIA GINZBURG
A Novel
Translated from the Italian by Marie Evans
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Copyright © 1983 by Giulio Einaudi s.p.a., Turin
English-language translation copyright © 1987, 2013 by Marie Evans
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-61145-717-9
Printed in the United States of America
Family Tree
The book is intended as an attempt at a detailed reconstruction and a reshaping of the story of the Manzoni family, through their letters and the things we know about them. It is a story that is scattered in various books, most of them unobtainable in bookshops. It is full of gaps, absences, obscurities, like any family history one might try to piece together. These gaps and absences cannot be filled.
I had never written a book like this, requiring other books and documents. I had written novels born of invention or of my memories, dependent on nothing and no one outside myself.
Therefore I must thank some people who have helped me.
I must thank Donata Chiomenti Vassalli. The first thing I read was her book,
Giulia Beccaria,
published some years ago by Ceschina and never republished, goodness knows why. I must thank her for her very fine book. And I must thank her for listening to me, lending me books, making suggestions.
I must thank Cesare Garboli for listening to me, making suggestions, and for his usual great, irascible, generous patience.
I also thank Signora Letizia Pecorella and Signorina Maria de Luca of the Braidense Library; Signora Jone Caterina Riva of the Centre for Manzoni Studies, in Milan; and in Rome, Signora Annamaria Giorgietti Vichi, Director of the Biblioteca Nazionale, and Alessandro Florio. They have helped me in many different ways, making books and letters available to me.
Finally I thank Enrica Melossi and Augusta Tosone, who provided the illustrations [not included in this edition].
I dedicate this book to my friend Dinda Gallo. She knew all about the Manzoni family, and I nothing. I just felt a simple curiosity about this family's destiny. The desire to know it more intimately and thoroughly grew out of my conversations with her. And so, as I wrote, I would take the pages to her to read. She shared my perplexities and uncertainties. She shared my frustration at the gaps and absences. She was a generous guide and companion along the way. Without her I would not have written this book, which is why I dedicate it to her.
Some letters were in French in the original, and were translated into Italian by Natalia Ginzburg, though she 'would have preferred to leave them in French'. All the letters between Manzoni and Fauriel were in French, except the first in Italian from Manzoni. All the letters addressed to Fauriel, from Giulia, Giulietta etc., were in French. Enrichetta's letters were all in French, as were those following: Giulietta to Cristina (from Andeer), Giulietta to her father (from Castello d'Azeglio), Giulia to her friend Euphrosine Planta, and Teresa to Aunt Notburga.
Part One
1762-1836
Giulia Beccaria had red hair and green eyes. She was born in Milan in 1762. Her father was Cesare Beccaria and her mother Teresa de Blasco; he belonged to the nobility, she was the daughter of a colonel. The marriage had met with bitter opposition. The couple had financial difficulties, but they always lived extravagantly. When he was very young Cesare Beccaria wrote a book which brought him a certain fame,
Of Crimes and Punishments.
Teresa was a graceful woman with black hair. She became the mistress of a rich man called Calderara. A frequent visitor to their house was Pietro Verri, economist, philosopher, lover of one of Cesare's sisters. Relations between Verri and the two Beccarias were always somewhat stormy, they would quarrel and make it up again.
Giulia was four when her sister Marietta was born. The same year her mother contracted venereal disease, but she continued to travel and lead a worldly life. Then she gave birth to a boy who died immediately. The father longed for a son. Giulia and her sister were brought up by servants, because their mother, although ill, was always travelling. In 1774 she died of her illness in appalling suffering. The father was in despair. The day she died he demanded an inventory of her many clothes and jewels. He called the two little girls to him and said âIt's all yours'. He clasped them in his arms, weeping. But the girls never saw the clothes and jewels again. He went off to weep in the opulent house of his wife's lover, Calderara. The girls stayed home with the servants. A few days later Calderara was astonished to see him having his hair curled by the barber. He told Calderara: âI want to keep up appearances.' Forty days after his wife's funeral he became engaged to a beautiful rich woman, one Anna Barbò. Three months later he married her. In the end he had by her the son he wanted. Meanwhile Giulia had been put into a convent. Marietta stayed at home because she was frail, rickety and hunch-backed. She was put in an iron corset and consigned to a life of domestic slavery. In the convent Giulia was utterly forgotten. Her paternal grandparents were dead, and a maternal uncle who was fond of her was abroad at the time living in Brazil. The only person who remembered Giulia was Pietro Verri. He used to come and see her occasionally in the convent parlour. When she was eighteen, he persuaded her father to take her back into his house.
Giulia was a very beautiful, healthy, intelligent girl with a strong character. From the first she had violent quarrels with her father. Then she fell in love with Giovanni Verri, a younger brother of Pietro, Knight of the Cross of Malta, an idle, elegant man with girlish features. But there could be no question of marriage. Neither the Verris nor her father would consider it. Giulia was not rich. So Pietro Verri and Cesare Beccaria looked round and hit on a certain country nobleman called Don Pietro Manzoni, a childless widower of forty-six, not rich but with a modest affluence. He had a property near Lecco called II Caleotto where he used to spend the summer. In the winter he lived in Milan in a house on the Navigli in via San Damiano. He proved reasonable about the dowry. Thus the marriage was swiftly arranged. Giulia simply wanted to get out of her father's house.
Don Pietro Manzoni lived with seven unmarried sisters, one an ex-nun, and had a brother, a Monsignore, who was a canon at the Cathedral. Giulia was very unhappy from the start. She quarrelled with her husband and her sisters-in-law were hostile. The house on the Navigli was ugly, small, damp and dark. Her husband seemed to her a wretched creature, without intelligence, without great wealth and without prestige. He was conservative and clerical, while she had breathed in new liberal ideas, both in her father's house and in the Verri family. She was desperately bored. She continued to see Giovanni Verri and to frequent the fine Verri house, always full of guests and gaiety. She led a brilliant life and aroused in her in-laws increasingly manifest hostility, and in her husband the urge to spy on her.
Three years after her marriage, on 7 March 1785, she gave birth to her first and only son, Alessandro. He was named after the father of the Manzonis, and baptised at the church of San Babila. His birth pleased nobody. Quarrels between Giulia and her husband became more bitter. People were talking.
The baby was immediately put out to nurse at Malgrate, near Lecco. Giulia took up her old life again. But she was tired of Giovanni Verri and he of her. She had a relationship with a certain Taglioretti. Meanwhile Alessandro was growing up with the nurse in a peasant home, loved by the nurse and her many relatives. His mother rarely came to see him. Then he was taken back to Milan, but always returned to the nurse for long periods. Andrea Appiani painted a portrait of Giulia with the little boy, in which she is dressed in a riding habit. Her face is hard, bony and weary. She is gazing into space, and shows no sign of maternal affection for the little four-year-old boy leaning against her knee. Giulia gave the portrait to Giovanni Verri.
It was at that time that she got to know Carlo Imbonati. She met him in the salon of his sister, who had been a schoolfriend of hers at the convent. There is a second portrait of Giulia painted by a woman called Cosway not many years after the Appiani with the child. It was painted in Paris where Giulia was living with Imbonati and where she was happy. In this one she is wearing a little white cap and veil. Her nose is delicate and there is a certain humorous shrewdness in the faint smile on her lips. She looks very young. The years and the bitterness have fallen from her face.
