The Manzoni Family (31 page)

When Sofia died, the whole family went to spend a few days at Niguarda. Teresa remained in Milan, with Stefano. Manzoni wrote her a short note from Niguarda. It was the first of April; Sofia had died the day before.

‘My dear Teresa, get Stefano to send me detailed news of you. We are well.'

Teresa did not regain her strength after that birth. She lived like an invalid for a long time. She was up for only a few hours each day, and considered she was nearing the end.

Sofia was buried at Brusuglio.

At Verano, in the garden of the Trotti villa, Vittoria carved these words on the trunk of a tree:

‘Dear Verano, where I have spent so many sweet, happy days: 1841 – 42 – 43 – 44. . . Then it all finished, forever!'

Verano, the Trotti villa, Sofia, Lodovico and their four children: there in those rooms, in that garden, among those people, she had felt loved and protected, it had become her home. Now that Sofia was dead, she had to leave. And nobody in the world could give her the generous affection that Sofia had offered, at once sisterly and motherly.

She went to via del Morone, where she did not feel at home, and where Teresa ruled with her querulous, invalid ways.

Then she succumbed to a serious attack of bronchitis. The family feared she would meet the same fate as her sisters.

At that point
tante
Louise intervened. Her intervention was precious and providential.

Tante
Louise and her husband, Massimo d'Azeglio, had been living apart for two years. Even when they were in love, in the first years of their marriage, he was often away from home; he liked to roam the countryside, as he had done as a boy, with a little group of friends, in search of landscapes to draw and paint; he would spend the night in dirty little flea-ridden taverns, climb stony tracks on the back of a mule, venturing through woods and wading mountain streams; he sent affectionate letters to his wife, with minute descriptions of his days and the people he met; he bewailed the distance that separated them, and commended the little girl to her, little Rina, whom she was bringing up as if she were her own child; every letter ended with a loving sentence to them both: ‘now I wrap you both up in a ball and give you lots of kisses.' Gradually, when they were together, relations between husband and wife became sharp and irritable, his absences grew longer, and his letters colder; finally they stopped living together, every now and then he would come to see her, for the sake of his little girl for whom he felt a great bond of affection; the child remained with
tante
Louise, who surrounded her with every care and affection, as she had always done, for which Massimo was grateful to her. Manzoni, too, regarded her with respect and gratitude for the same reason, and the times when
tante
Louise and the Manzoni family had been on bad terms seemed very remote.

In 1845
tante
Louise was thirty-nine. She had a generous nature and liked to make herself useful to others. She considered her help was indispensable to Vittoria, and suggested to Manzoni that she would take her away somewhere, for a change of air and ambience. She was preparing to spend some time in Tuscany with little Rina. Vittoria could go with them. Relieved and grateful, Manzoni accepted.

So
tante
Louise, Vittoria and little Rina set off. They went to Genoa, La Spezia, and then Pisa, where
la tante
had taken an apartment.

Costanza Arconati, in a letter to Mary Clarke, pronounced herself delighted that Vittoria had finally
sortie de ce taudis de sa maison paternelle
and affirmed that the ‘Marquise d'Azeglio' was a second mother to her. Costanza Arconati could not stand Teresa. She felt that wherever Teresa was, everything became constricted, dreary and oppressive. The house in via del Morone seemed to her
un
taudis
[a hovel], a black, airless, oppressive hole. It was certainly true that, at that time, the house was a rather gloomy place, with Teresa unwell, Stefano worried about her state of health, Manzoni anxious and tired, and sad memories wherever they looked.

Vittoria sent little presents to Teresa, from her travels, and asked her father for news of her, which was always bad. She wrote long letters to Pietro describing her new life. Just as Sofia had always been close to Enrico, Vittoria had always been close to Pietro from her earliest childhood.

Vittoria to Pietro, in May, from Pisa:

‘La tante
is making me take English lessons from an excellent lady-teacher here; and I'm having other lessons too. . . As Aunt is so fond of riding, and there is nowhere where this exercise could be more enjoyable than here, where there are extraordinarily beautiful rides in a place called
Le Cascine,
I thought I would go with her, and I am having riding lessons. We have very fine, comfortable rooms on the Lung' Arno: I have met some of the nicest people you could imagine: and yet, however I force myself, I can enjoy none of this; the slightest pleasure is always followed by profound bitterness. . .'

She confided her every thought to Pietro. He was both father and brother to her. ‘My dear Pietro, you told me at a
tremendous
moment, that our poor Mother had commended us all to you in the last days of her life; only two little sisters are left to you, poor Pietro. . .' The idea that Matilde, some not-so-distant day, would have to leave school in her turn, filled her with anguish. What would become of her? how would she live in that house, now so different from what it had been? ‘Poor Matilde! I pray God may not reserve for her the sad youth He prepared for me! . . . From now on I may say mine is almost over.'

Yet it was Vittoria's natural instinct to look for something to afford her some immediate consolation, and reconcile her to life, when it seemed utterly dark and hostile; and in that first period in Tuscany, although she felt old at twenty-three, jaded in body and soul, unable to escape from her painful memories, yet the idea of her father's fame gave her great pleasure:

‘They absolutely adore Papa here: I am never ten minutes in society without hearing his dear name ringing in my ears. . . I assure you that in spite of my physical infirmities, in spite of the even more wretched state of my morale, and the aversion and embarrassment I have always felt at being in society, I repeat I can assure you that these gentlemen manage in the end to make the time pass pleasantly for me; and they do it with a kind attentiveness which I certainly do not deserve. But it's all done not for me personally, but rather for the
name
I bear – so unworthily – and I receive all these demonstrations as proof of their love and veneration for our Papa, and I rejoice inwardly, much more than if it were for me – which, besides, could never happen. . .'

‘These gentlemen' who made ‘the time pass pleasantly' were Giuseppe Romanelli, the poet Giuseppe Giusti and Giovan Battista Giorgini.

Giusti was then thirty-six. He was born at Pescia. He had studied law at Pisa, but had never practised. He wrote poems deriding Austria, which were printed clandestinely and circulated throughout Italy.

Giuseppe Romanelli had introduced Bista Giorgini to
tante
Louise and Vittoria. Romanelli, a professor of civil and business law at the University of Pisa, was conducting a law-suit taken out by Manzoni against the publishers Le Monnier of Florence, who had published a pirated edition of
I promessi sposi
(‘on me fait une avanie dans cette Toscane que j'aime tant' – they have insulted me in my beloved Tuscany, Manzoni had written to
tante
Louise, begging her to find someone to come to his aid, and she had put him in touch with Romanelli). Bista Giorgini was a colleague of Romanelli at the university. He taught canon law. He was born in Lucca in 1818. He was thin, with a black ‘imperial'. In June, Vittoria wrote about him to Pietro:

‘There is a person here of outstanding merit, who is highly regarded in Tuscany, and who carries his adoration for Papa to the point of idolatry. This is Prof. Giorgini, who has begged me to get Papa's autograph for him. I couldn't possibly refuse, especially as it is he who makes the time pass so pleasantly for us, reading
I promessi sposi
wonderfully well, and speaking of Papa, to tell the truth, as I have never heard anyone do. . .'

In the summer Vittoria and
la tante
were to meet up with Pietro, Lodovico and the children at La Spezia. Vittoria was longing for the summer. She was eager to see Sofia's children again; they would play in the shade of the trees by the bay, ‘breathing the balmy sea air'. She wrote a great deal to Pietro, fondly imagining this imminent meeting, and gradually became cheerful, and more curious about the things that were going on about her.

‘Tuesday morning there was a solemn mass at the Cathedral, attended by the Court with all the ladies dressed in their ballgowns. . . such
folly!
There was such a crowd I risked being suffocated in going there; I returned safely, but I wouldn't go again. In any case, we're better off at our windows than anywhere, because we are at the best point of the Lung' Arno, and we see a continual flow of people. The Grand Duke often passes under our windows, on foot, in the midst of the crowd, and he has more the bearing of a fine gentleman than of a sovereign. Mossotti told me he met him one day with his little girl in his arms, like a nanny. Poor Grand Duke, he is perhaps the only
digestible
sovereign there is. . . !'

The summer came and they met at last at La Spezia as they had planned. Vittoria had a letter from her father. She had sent him a little portrait of herself.

‘I cannot and will not delay telling you how much the thought, the thing and your words touched my heart. The portrait is already in position, that is, in the only little place left in my den: between the two windows, under the Madonna, so that I can look at you from my nook. . . it will not move from there; your coming might cause it to lose the extra value it has in your absence, but not drive it away!'

Manzoni was writing from Milan. He and Teresa had stayed there, because she was too unwell to contemplate the slightest move. ‘Why can I not give you absolutely and consistently better news of Teresa?' wrote Manzoni to Vittoria. ‘There is now no trace of blood and the cough has more or less gone: but she suffers a great deal, chiefly from the erysipelatic inflammation of the skin. God grant you find her at least fully convalescent, as I am sure you pray. . .

‘I am with you in thought; but since I cannot be there as I should like, at least make sure you return from this absence fortified in body and spirits. Give my love to Pietro, Lodovico, Tonino, Sandrone, the little scamp Giulio – give him a biscuit from
grandpapa
every day at table. . .'

Less than a month later, however, he was urgently calling Pietro back to Milan because Teresa's condition was worrying. So Pietro had to leave La Spezia before the others. Lodovico and the three children stayed on; Lodovico had not brought the fourth, Margherita, who was scarcely a year old.

When Pietro had gone, Giorgini and Giusti arrived. A letter from
la tante
inviting them to La Spezia had been delayed. It was now September, and Vittoria had to return to Milan with
la tante;
this had been settled.

Vittoria to Pietro, from Genoa:

‘God willing, this time I won't arrive empty-handed. I am bringing a present worthy of you – something that will give you a lot of pleasure, and will certainly be unexpected:
I'm bringing Giusti! –
Monday morning, at La Spezia, we suddenly took a great decision. In spite of a host of things that might have prevented him accompanying us, above all (unfortunately!) his health, poor Giusti could not resist our pleas, and the mania he's always had to spend some time with Papa; so he decided to set off with us. You can imagine how delighted we are! We've travelled together, and now we're here, he and I using the same inkstand. . .'

Giusti obtained from Florence his passport to enter Lombardy, but Giorgini did not have a passport; besides it was forbidden for university teachers to leave Tuscany without a permit from the superintendent of studies, and the superintendent of studies at that time was Gaetano Giorgini, Bista's father, who had no idea his son was at Genoa, nor of the journey he was intending to make to Milan. So Bista was reproved by the superintendent ‘as a son and a teacher'. However, in the end the permit and passport arrived.

Still from Genoa, Vittoria to Pietro:

‘From your letter I'm delighted to hear you intend to put both our friends up at home. This was what aunt and I hoped, but we did not presume to ask. . .

‘Poor Giusti, if you could have seen his pleasure on reading your letter, and how pleased he is that he decided to come! Yesterday afternoon, while we were on a boat-trip out of the harbour, he was suddenly seized by such a rush of joy that he grasped our hands, exclaiming: “Oh, these blessed angels who are taking us to Milan!”'

In the same letter, later (the question of Giorgini's passport had just been sorted out: the Austrian consul had intervened) :

‘This is splendid! Both our friends are so happy to come and stay in our house, and I am sure they will be delighted with the cordial and affectionate welcome that is usually given in casa Manzoni
(soit dit entre nous).

‘On the whole Giorgini, too, has been quite cheerful during the journey, but he has Giusti beside him playing the
tutor:
when he's about to go into
raptures,
he gets a little shake and he has to steady up. . . It's curious how these two are absolutely in charge of each other, while neither seems in charge of himself. . .'

Giusti and Giorgini stayed in Milan a month as guests at via del Morone. They were given a very warm welcome. But Teresa was getting steadily worse; she was given extreme unction about this time. But she still wanted to meet Giusti. They took him to her room. Giusti stayed a while chatting beside her bed; he recited some of his poetry to her. As she said goodbye to him, Teresa said: ‘Now I look up at him from below [that is, from her bed] but soon I shall look down at him from above [that is, from heaven].' Either Giusti misunderstood these words and saw them as an expression of disdain, or they were just not to his liking.