The Manzoni Family (46 page)

‘Last night a dance in casa Abudarham. . . I quite enjoyed it. I had a white dress with blue spots and three
volants
[flounces], little blue flowers in my hair, my
berthe di blonde
[flat hair-piece worn across top of hair] and a broad white and blue bow at my waist: my simple
toilette
was much admired. I wore poor Nonna's
rivière
of opals round my neck; and several people said the opals were the same colour as my eyes: that means eyes with no brightness, used to looking at dead things. . .

‘Here I am, parted from Luisa, for goodness knows now many days! [Luisa Lovatelli, her best friend]. Her brother has German measles, and I must
exile
myself
totally
from casa Lovatelli, not to risk bringing it to Luisina. Oh! how I love the little pet! When she is grown up and I am no more, she will forget me, and she'll never guess how I loved her like a mother!'

Massimo d'Azeglio recalled a saying of Luisina's. When Manzoni and Pietro came to Viareggio that summer which was to be Luisina's last, and d'Azeglio was there too, one day they were all standing on the jetty looking at the sea. They were talking about Matilde. Luisina was listening. Someone said to her: ‘Your poor aunt, who has left us for ever.' Luisina said:
‘Ever
begins after – in this world we are just birds of passage – aren't we, grandpapa?'

In 1858, about the middle of May, Manzoni became seriously ill. It all began with a simple inflammation of the throat. But it soon became clear that it was serious. Teresa was terrified. Soon the whole town knew; people took up their stand beneath the windows. Prayers were said in every church. He was bled eighteen times. Two months later he was quite well, and went driving in the carriage with Pietro.

Uncle Giulio Beccaria had died in the February of that year. Manzoni received an annuity of four thousand lire a year; their uncle's wife, ‘la zietta', said it had been the wish of the deceased to appoint this annual sum for him, but it seems it was, in fact, her idea.

In the summer Stefano fell ill; he had gone to Munich for an exhibition; he had to stop at Lindau, as he had a high temperature. Teresa heard and was terrified. She wanted to send her administrator Patrizio, Provost Ratti and Doctor Pogliaghi to Bavaria. In the end, she just sent Doctor Pogliaghi. But when he got to Lindau, Stefano had recovered.

So that was a year of terrors for Teresa. Then she became ill herself, not with an imaginary illness, as was so often the case: this time she was really ill.

She had been living the life of an invalid for years, so her life did not change. For years she had claimed that she ate very little. Nevertheless, she dedicated enormous attention to her meals. She used to describe them minutely to Stefano: ‘Yesterday I ate a lot of fried brains, a little morsel of beef with onions, and two morsels of roast, with a small rice broth, and a small loaf of fine flour: afterwards I felt
hungrier than before.
— Now I've taken the two mouthfuls of Cassia and Tamarind I should have taken yesterday. . .' When they were at Lesa, Manzoni had to write and ask Pietro to send at once ‘a large three or four pound loaf', ‘breakfast for Teresa who, apart from her persistent lack of appetite, is reduced also by the state of her teeth to putting no more than the indigestible soft part of the bread in her coffee in the morning. To my surprise, at Arona they only make it at Christmas.' This time, however, perhaps she really lost her appetite: she really ate listlessly, but still with that supreme attention. For years she had lavished infinite attention upon her own health and she continued to do so. ‘Castor oil! sunshine of invalids!' she wrote to her son in the solemn but jubilant tone she used to speak of medicines and purgatives; she was sure castor oil cured head colds. But no doubt her husband and son realised that something in her had changed and that she had suddenly become a real invalid.

She had a ‘rheumatic pain' in her spine, which gave her no rest. She treated it with applications of
taffeta
material, leeches,
opodeldoch
rubs. She treated it by sitting in the garden with her back to the sun, while her chambermaid Laura shaded her head with one umbrella while she did the same with another. Stefano suggested they pour cold water on her spine from a watering can, seeing that she said this ‘rheumatic pain' required cold water. Then she felt a great weakness ‘in my legs, my thighs and stomach'. She went for little walks with Laura every day from via del Morone to the Case Rotte, near the Church of San Fedele, ‘because it's absolutely essential to set those legs and thighs in motion: otherwise I'll lose the use of them'. But every now and then one of her legs gave way beneath her. She thought it was her age: she was fifty-eight. She had four chambermaids simply to look after her: Laura; Signora Teresina; a certain Luisa from Bruzzano; and Elisa Cermelli, from a quondam noble family from Campolungo. She was not satisfied with the one from Bruzzano: ‘we'll be patient, we'll punish her, then if she doesn't improve, we'll turn her face towards Bruzzano again'. Each had a particular task: comb her hair, dress her, put her stockings on, carry out the suggestions of Doctor Pogliaghi and Stefano. To Stefano, who escaped to Lesa whenever he could, she regularly sent minute descriptions of her nights and her meals. She had abandoned Boario water in favour of Recoaro water. She was taking an electuary, a paste or powder sweetened with honey. ‘Recoaro, electuary – always. Cutlet, soup and chocolate – always. A tiny drop of wine, very, very little but very good, white, 30 years old, that poor Sogni gave me. . . my legs and feet are not so swollen. But there's still that pain, though not so violent, in the middle of my shoulders and spine that demands cold water. . .'

In March 1859, as war appeared imminent, Bista wrote to Manzoni that he thought he should leave Milan. Bista and Vittoria feared Manzoni might be taken hostage, as Filippo had been. Bista offered to come and accompany him to Tuscany.

Manzoni wrote to him:

‘Fata obstant
[The fates oppose it]. I could neither bring my wife who, after a sore throat that required bleeding, leeches, decubitus and diet, is dragging herself through a sadly slow convalescence, nor leave her here in this condition. And there are other minor obstacles I won't talk about now. Moreover, I do not think that, even for an old man enfeebled by years and infirmities, Milan is likely to become dangerous. I know nothing about strategy, but I do know, in fact I remember, that the town has always remained outside the wars that have occurred in these parts.'

Then he added a few sentences about Enrico. ‘In the midst of my painful worries, which have become more painful than ever (because the person who has so long been rushing towards extreme poverty has reached his goal, and I can only partly remedy his situation), the Lord has granted me a grace I could never have expected: that I can find, not relief but some sort of distraction in work. I have accustomed myself, in moments I might otherwise spend in useless affliction, to take my thoughts by the hair and fix them where there's something to be done, if not useful, at least not painful. That is why I am asking you to find out if anything has been done on the Vocabulary of Cherubini.'

However, he changed his mind about staying in Milan. He and Teresa set off with Stefano for Torricella d'Arcellasco. They would have had to request passports for Lesa. At Torricella, Teresa's brother, Giuseppe Borri, was expecting them. They stayed a month, from 13 May to 14 June.

On 20 May, the Franco-Piedmontese forces defeated the Austrians at Montebello, and again on 4 June at Magenta.

On 8 June Vittorio Emanuele II and Napoleon III entered Milan, to the acclamation of the crowd.

Manzoni returned to Milan the next week.

Vittorio Emanuele, on a private visit to Milan in August, heard that Manzoni was in financial difficulties. It was decided to assign him a life pension of twelve thousand lire a year, as a reward from the nation.

Enrico and family had left the villa of Renate, which no longer belonged to them. They went to Torricella di Barzanò, in Brianza. Having heard about his pension, Manzoni wanted to provide for Enrico's children: he wrote to two Houses of Education arranging for the older children to be accepted there; he sent a seamstress to measure all the children and make them some clothes. Enrico thanked him. But he had taken offence at these paternal initiatives; he wrote to tell Pietro he had other plans for his children's schooling and sent back the seamstress. Then they heard he had nominated a trustee for himself and a legal representative for the children. His relations with Pietro, which until then had been good, became very bad.

His father wrote to him:

‘Enrico,

‘I could have overlooked the indelicacy and bad faith with which you responded to my charitable intentions towards you and your family, while it remained a matter between father and son. But now that you inform me you have, by a notarial deed, nominated a trustee for you and a representative for your children, thus changing a father's charitable intention into a legal controversy, I declare that, obliged by an action so injurious to me as a father and as a grandfather reluctantly to follow you along this path, I too intend to nominate a procurator to represent me in legal matters. . . the state of affairs you have brought about makes this a duty for me to which I am irrevocably bound.'

On 27 April Florence had risen in revolt. Bista was elected deputy in the Tuscan Council.

On 20 August he introduced the law proclaiming the union of Tuscany and Piedmont. He took part in the commission which transmitted this vote to Vittorio Emanuele.

In Milan, speaking from the balcony of La Scala, he was so tired and so excited that he fainted.

He devoted himself entirely to politics. The faculty of law was restored to Pisa; he was given the chair of History of Law. So he and Vittoria left Siena and went back to live in Pisa. But he was almost always in Turin, and did not spend much time at Pisa.

In Pisa Vittoria had many friends, and
tante
Louise and Babbo Gaetano. But her sight had grown worse and her health was poor. She spent long months at Montignoso.

There she sometimes met Bista's mother, Signora Carolina. She had been mad for years. She had not brought up her children, they had been brought up by their grandparents. For years she had been living on her own, here and there, in the various Giorgini houses. She was a bigot and lived surrounded by priests and nuns. She could not stand Vittoria. She said to her:

‘What do you think you are, just because you're Manzoni's daughter? A fine thing! I've never been able to understand if he is a count, or if he isn't! And what would you think if you were the daughter of a
real
Count, like me? and of Count Paleologo, Grand Chamberlain of the King of Prussia! and if you had been held at the baptismal font, like me, by the Margrave of Brandenburg. That's a bit different from a Manzoni or manzetti [heifer], my dear girl!'

Vittoria became pregnant for the third time. It was the spring of 1860; in the summer Bista took her to Brusuglio, where she remained until October, with her father and Pietro. Teresa came too, for a few days.

That winter Manzoni had heard they wanted to make him a senator. He had written to Emilio Broglio:

‘It is absolutely impossible for me to accept. I leave aside the fact that at seventy-five it is no small matter to travel, change one's residence and habits, be separated from an invalid wife and from a family who could not follow me. But there is more to it than this. There can be no question of my speaking in the Senate, as I stammer, especially when I am pinned down: so that I would certainly make people laugh behind my back if I simply had to respond, there and then, to the formula of the oath, I sw. . . sw. . . swear! To go to the Senate, even to remain silent, would be a major difficulty for a man who for forty years, as a result of nervous attacks, never dares to leave his house alone. .

Nevertheless, they made him a senator, and he accepted.

He received a letter from a lawyer in Como, who was Filippo's procurator. So Filippo, like Enrico, had nominated a procurator. Manzoni wrote to the lawyer:

‘Ever since my son Filippo removed himself from my authority, that is, more than ten years ago, I have been forced to the resolution, after mature consideration, to take no part whatsoever in his affairs. Anything that has happened in the meantime could only confirm me in this resolution, if there had been any need of confirmation. Therefore I can. . . express no opinion regarding the procuration sent to you by him, of which you had the courtesy to speak to me in your letter. . .'

In this interval Filippo had continued to run up debts and to ask his father for money, money he solemnly promised to pay back in instalments and which he never paid back. Through his procurator, he protested because his father had sent his monthly order in the form of a hundred and twenty-five Milanese instead of Austrian lire. His father sent a further 25 lire. He wrote: ‘I need not say that you should have left this L.25 until the repayment of a sum I advanced you. . . I need not tell you that I have lent you another sum of money that you were to pay back in several instalments, fixed by you, according to your most solemn promise; and you have paid me only one. These facts do not make your observations to me more unjust, but they give them a sadder and more painful character.'

In his turn Manzoni nominated his own legal representative.

Enrico and his family were living in Casatenovo, in Brianza, where a parish priest, don Saulle Miglio, seeing the family's pitiful condition, wrote to Manzoni. He suggested he send linen and foodstuffs to Enrico, seeing that Enrico squandered money. From then Manzoni addressed the money for Enrico's monthly allowance to this priest. He sent linen.

To Enrico:

‘Heaven knows I should like, in your present circumstances, to spare you not only any reproof, but any observation at all; but I must point out that, precisely because of these circumstances, it would have been a considerable saving to leave your son at school in the holiday months.'