The Manzoni Family

by Natalia Ginzburg

  Mary Clarke to Fauriel, from Rome; he had now rejoined the Manzonis at Brusuglio (Bruzuglio, he and Mary called it) and was to spend the summer there: ‘I am pleased to think you are at Bruzuglio and happier than in your letter, though you love me much more when you like the people about you less, and Manzoni and Cousin are a threat to me, while Musky [Mus-toxidi] made you gloomy. . . . Goodbye then, my dear Dicky [she often called him this], I shall write to you sometimes poste restante, for they will think it strange that I write to you so often, and I prefer your friends to suspect nothing, because Signora Manzoni will think it wasn’t very nice of me not to have told her about our relationship, and I don’t want you to tell her about it, if I see her this autumn, I will tell her. Goodbye, my angel, write to me and be good and write masterpieces and judge them to be so, and be talkative, which is healthier; it hurt me more than I can say to go four months in Milan without really speaking; goodbye, my angel. ’ So she had been ill at ease in Milan among the Manzonis who did not know about her amorous relationship with Fauriel; and yet it seems impossible that they should not have guessed it.

  From Brusuglio, Fauriel to Mary Clarke: ‘You know the friends I am with, so I need not tell you the welcome I got; I felt I was finding not just friends but something sweeter still: the children talked about me all the time, sometimes they dreamed of me, and whenever a carriage made a noise around midnight, they thought it was the stage-coach. They were delighted with the shells I brought them, and I hastened to explain that you had helped me gather them, so that I should not usurp your share in their gratitude. So much for the children. As for the grown-ups, they were no less delighted with the news they had had from you. . . Believe me, we have talked about you such a lot: and if I had no other reasons to love such excellent friends, I would have to love them for the affection they bear you. That is why I could not help being indiscreet with them about you: what they may have suspected about my feelings toward you, they now know completely and without a shadow of doubt. I told them I love you, that I love you with all my heart; I told them our plans for the future, without concealing the doubts I feel about my capacity to engender a happiness that I desire more than my own.’ So perhaps Mary Clarke and Fauriel were thinking of getting married, but they never did.

  Fauriel spent a peaceful summer at Brusuglio; he wrote the preface to the Greek Songs; he intended to join Mary and her mother in Florence in the autumn, and meanwhile he and Mary regularly exchanged long letters. The two Clarkes had been in Naples, and were now back in Rome; they were tremendously keen on Italy; Mary loved the Italians, but not the poor (le has peuple) whom she thought fierce and brutal: They ill-treated horses. She had read Alfieri’s Memorie with enthusiasm. She enjoyed being in Rome, but in the family boarding-house where they were staying the cooking was dreadful (‘they cook like pigs’) and she and her mother moved to Tivoli for the fresh air and better food: ‘I need to cosset my stomach which is somewhat recalcitrant, although I’m a bit better after a week of complete rest during which I have amused myself painting, which has been like mother’s milk to babes.’ Talking of babies, she recalled freeing one from its swaddling-clothes on the outskirts of Naples: ‘Poor creature! it was howling fit to burst and it was only two weeks old, and the weather was scorching; when we adults could hardly bear our loose clothing, the wretched little thing was all bundled up in swaddling clothes, tightly bound, almost hidden from sight; as soon as we released it, it smiled and was quite happy. A young English painter Fm mad about told me he had freed at least a hundred in the three years he’s been in Italy.’ At one moment she and her mother were without money, and she wrote urgently to Fauriel asking him to send them some of his or ask Manzoni to lend some: but then their money arrived from England. ‘Long live money!’ she wrote. ‘It’s the key to everything: that’s why I would like to be able to earn some and why I am so avaricious.’ Her health improved at Tivoli, after the heat of the Roman summer: ‘It isn’t hot here, in fact it’s almost cold in the evening, but there is no shade; fortunately Mama has found a painter’s wife who is bored too and they keep each other company, otherwise I couldn’t wait to set off again, and I’ve been cursing my life and especially the hateful box in which it pleased God to imprison me, because if I were a man, I ask you, would it be necessary for Mama and myself to be chained together? Ah, if I were asked: Would you rather be a woman or a galley-slave? I would say at once: Hurrah for the galley! ... I am like a great eagle in a little cage, but enough, I must resign myself. ‘ She often asked how Manzoni’s novel was going, and she wanted to translate it into French; she knew that Fauriel had discussed it in Paris with another possible translator called Trognon, and she wanted to have the book as soon as it was printed to translate it at once, leaving Trognon empty-handed: ‘If Signor Manzoni’s first volume is printed, bring it with you, possession is nine points in the law [in English in original]: and if I had it before that beastly Frenchman, I would perhaps finish it first and then we’d see. You must realize, dear Dicky, I love money, and that’s why I want to translate the book well or ill; my own dear sweetie, do write to me, pray do’ [English in original]. However, in the end neither she nor Trognon translated the book.

  In the autumn Fauriel went to Florence, where the two Clarkes were waiting for him; as he set off, he told the Manzonis to come and join him, or he would fly back to them; but the Manzonis went on postponing their trip to Tuscany; and Fauriel did not fly back to them, in fact after a short letter in December, they did not hear from him for several months. Pietro answered that short letter: ‘ I am pleased to tell you we are all well; my dear mother is taking walks which do her a lot of good. My sisters Giulia, Cristina and Sofia and my brother Enrico send you all their love; Vittorina calls Tola and then answers at once “he don to Florence” - she gets sweeter every day, can recite the verse about all the animals, sings and runs all round the house like a big girl.’ Enrichetta also added a few lines: ‘We cannot get used to your absence. . . We are always talking seriously of the plan of joining you in the spring as long as we don’t meet with any obstacles. . .’

  ‘Oh, our dear Tola, why did you leave us?’ Enrichetta wrote again two months later. ‘My children often bewail your absence, gratefully remembering your kindness and regretting that they can no longer try your patience. . . I wanted to write to Miss Clarke for news of you, and to ask her if you are so absorbed in her as to forget, it seems, your friends in Milan; I cannot altogether forgive her for taking you from us. . . she was not wrong. . . but we are not wrong to lament your absence. Giulia was supposed to write to you, but could never find the courage; Pietro is a scatter-brain; even Alessandro does not write, though he always means to do so, and it is, I imagine, for the same reasons as you do not write; Mama is full of good intentions. . . and I see I am the boldest, since I have dared to write.’ ‘Enrichetta says I never carry out my intentions,’ added Giulia, the grandmother, ‘the truth is that for more than twenty-five years my intention has been to love you all my life, and I carry it out every moment of my life, but you make me pay dearly for it with all the anxiety you cause us! Here is the whole family who love you dearly and who are consumed with longing because of your silence. Oh, dear friend of us all, what are you doing? where are you? you can’t possibly have forgotten us? it cannot be! then what is our Tolla doing, whom not even Vittorina forgets? ... I beseech you to write to us. . . Goodbye, dear friend - your room remains just as it was, but in vain, it is empty. ’

  For Manzoni, the chief purpose of this famous trip to Tuscany, which kept being postponed, was to temper his style, for he thought it was there that the true Italian language was spoken; yet he never found the right time to go, perhaps fearing that, if he went too soon before the novel had really taken shape, the sudden encounter with a different idiom might be too much of a shock and strangle the novel at birth. But he certainly thought a great deal about the streets of Florence where that idiom was spoken, and where Fauriel was now walking. ‘My son’s book is very behind-hand
, he still hasn’t finished writing, revising and re-revising the 2nd volume,’ Grandmother Giulia wrote again to Fauriel in the spring. ‘So he will be occupied the whole summer, when I hope he will bring it all to a speedy close in the solitude of Brusú. Wherever he goes, the speech of the Mercato Vecchio is always on his mind, but that is really the only problem and I think he would find a few months in Tuscany in the autumn sufficient to resolve it. . . but we’ll talk about it when it’s convenient, meanwhile he afflicts our ears with all his “Tuscanisms”.’

  ‘Dear friend, oh! how happy Alessandro is, he has hit upon a good writing spell. . . We had vaguely hoped to see Mrs and Miss Clarke, thinking they would pass through Milan on their way back to France, but unfortunately this is not to be,’ again Grandmother Giulia writing to Fauriel. He had finally announced he would be arriving soon. ‘I think you will receive our letter, so I must tell you we cannot get to Florence this summer, so Brusu awaits you . . . We will remain in our Thebaid at Brusii; after all the plays, the balls and masquerades in Florence, I dare say you must be longing for your cell. Alessandro is overjoyed at the thought of having you with him, so you can have some good chats over breakfast; I need not mention Enrichetta and myself, for you know our feelings; your goddaughter loves you as dearly, but always imagines she is not loved. . . You will talk to Alessandro about the Mercato Vecchio, because it is for him the whole of Tuscany. ’

  ‘How can you be so good as to take an interest in the trifles that come from my pen?’ Manzoni wrote to Abbé Degola, who had written again after a long silence. ‘Do you know what sort of thing I am struggling with as if it were a matter of great importance? It is the sort of composition whose authors your Nicole — and mine — unhesitatingly called empoisonneurs publics. I have certainly done everything in my power not to deserve this title, but have I succeeded?’ Pierre Nicole, a seventeenth century Jansenist, in his book Les imaginaires et les visionnaires, had launched a bitter attack against a satirical comedy by Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin called Les visionnaires, which had offended Jansenist severity. Manzoni obviously thought his novel might offend Jansenist severity. ‘When you have seen this work, I shall await your judgment with impatience and some little trepidation. I warn you, however, that, as a good author, I have prepared an apologia against any objections that could possibly occur to you, and I intend to justify my work not only against the reproach of perniciousness, but also on the score of utility. But these are jests: in all charity, pray to Him who is not deluded that He may condescend to keep me from wretched self-delusion. And since you want to know how far I have got, I will add that the 2nd volume is at the printer’s, and I hope in three or four months to say the same of the 3rd and last. ’

  Fauriel spent the whole of the summer of 1825 at Brusuglio; in October he suddenly returned to Milan and left Italy. He left secretly, leaving a book as a present for Grandmother Giulia, a small sum of money for a doctor who had treated him, and a brief farewell note. He gave no reason for a departure so sudden and hasty as to seem a flight, and his friends never knew what it was; perhaps he had some money troubles; or perhaps he simply feared the commotion and tears of goodbyes. During the summer he had expressed the intention of leaving Italy for a short period, and then returning; but he never returned, and his friends never saw him again. In November he wrote from Marseilles: ‘If anything could increase my unhappiness at leaving you, and my regrets for having left you, it would have been the inconveniences and delays I have suffered on the journey. I was obliged to spend three whole days in Turin, so I had time to digest the heavy beauty of the city, with the sole company, when I had it, of a Polish braggart and a mason from Milan, who was responsible for that wretched grave in which goodness knows how many people were buried last winter. Likewise I was held up at Nice where I was even more bored than in Turin, despite my walks by the sea, and my excursions into countryside which, like all the beautiful localities of Provence, looks rather like a garden set in a casket of rocks. . . As for Marseilles, I can’t say whether I was amused or deafened by the noise, the bustle and activity of this mercantile population. . . Although everything I’ve been seeing and hearing for some days convinces me I’m in France, I don’t feel completely repatriated, and I grieve for something of Italy, especially you and everything about you. . . I can tell from here that in spite of so much that is dear to me there, I shall not like Paris at all. . . But since I have ceased to be one of you, I grow daily more impatient to get to Paris, and I am weary of highways and inns. — Adieu, I clasp you tightly, so tightly in my arms, all, grown-ups and little ones, those dear little ones whose beloved faces, voices, and even their merry noise, still seem to be with me, so that I look round expecting to see them. I would weep if I thought of them and of you all too often. . .’

  From Toulouse, where he stopped for a few days to pursue his studies, he wrote to Mary Clarke: ‘Since I left Narbonne, I have spent almost all my time in horrible places, with no company but my guides, exhausted by long walks on paths the like of which I have never seen in the wildest corners of the Alps. — Adieu, dear friend of my heart, we will meet soon. This is my fondest hope.’ Although it was his fondest hope to see her again, and although she too expressed in every letter to him her desire to be near him, they made no attempt to be together always, and she wanted to keep their relationship hidden; perhaps he did too; this relationship of theirs was passionate but troubled and complicated, and they kept separating, and so it went on, with long separations and long exchanges of letters, for years, until he died.

  Giulietta

  ’You’ve gone, dear, too dear friend to us all!’ wrote Grandmother Giulia to Fauriel. ‘You have left your family, ah, if you knew how many tears you caused us to shed! the children are inconsolable and Enrico threatens anyone who utters your name. . . What can I say about Giulia or Pietro? in their sensitive and reflective natures silence is eloquent, if I may put it like that, while we could not appease Cristina’s sobs. My Alessandro, ours and yours, feels your absence more than you can imagine. Believe me, I am not exaggerating. Enrichetta regards you as one of our family, and cannot be consoled for this sort of laceration; it is as if you have scattered a bundle that was so closely tied. And I who am writing this - I weep more bitterly than all the rest.’

  ‘Dear friend, ’ wrote Manzoni, ‘the feelings your departure left in our hearts cannot easily be expressed, and are not the sort one likes to chat about. I can add nothing to what Mama has said. You can imagine how impatient we are to hear from you. ’

  ‘My dearest godfather,’ wrote Giulietta. It was the first of the many letters she wrote to him. Mon bien cher parrain; mon cher parrain. Writing to Fauriel became a fond habit and pleasure. She wrote in place of her father, who was too busy. This first letter is still timid. ‘I am always being scolded because my foolish timidity outweighs my desire to write to you. However seeing that everyone keeps putting it off till tomorrow, and Papa scolds us all, I am resolved to be the kindest, and to make a virtue of something really very dear to me, of being able to converse for a moment with you, as it’s so long (long for me, at least) since I bored you with my chatter, as I did when we had the pleasure of having you here with us. After a month of waiting, and dare I say anxiety, we have had your dear letter. But why keep us waiting and longing like that? And now who knows when we’ll have another. You know how we love you, and (especially we women) how we tend to worry and imagine all sorts of misfortunes, so don’t leave us to languish so long in fantastic suppositions, fortunately dissipated by your letters which always announce, somewhat belatedly, that you are in good health and that nothing unpleasant prevented you from telling us so before. Not a day goes by without our talking of you. . . Mother sends you her best regards, she is rather poorly these days, but as this is the result of her condition, nobody seems worried, which makes her say not only has she to suffer but also to hear everyone say it’s quite natural and nothing at all, poor Mama! However, she feels the moment of her release can’t come too soon.�
� Enrichetta was pregnant. She was so ill she thought she would die in childbirth, and towards the end of her pregnancy she made a will. She wrote a letter to her husband, which she kept hidden. ‘To you, my beloved Alessandro, I venture to declare my intentions, in case God in His Divine Wisdom takes me from this world. . . Although I have very little to dispose of, I wish to leave at my death a little memento to those who were most dear to my heart.’ There followed a detailed enumeration of her possessions, money, small jewels and shawls, which she wanted to go to her husband, her mother-in-law, her children, the servants and the poor.

  In his letters Fauriel asked for news of ‘Signor Blondel and the Signora’, that is, Enrichetta’s brother, Enrico Blondel, and his wife. After many years Enrico Blondel had renewed relations with Alessandro, which had been broken off at the time of the conversion; now the two brothers-in-law met often and exchanged books, ideas and affectionate letters. Manzoni had written to him once, when they had recently resumed relations: ‘It happens all too often that differences of opinion, and especially of faith, freeze the good will between men. Such a difference existed between us but we never spoke of it; we both avoided any discussion that might expose it. Now we have broken the ice, I feel an even stronger need of reassurance that the friendship you have shown me, which is most precious to me, has not suffered thereby. Suffice to say that for me nothing has changed, and nothing can ever change, either the feelings of universal charity that bind me to you as to all men, or the particular feelings of esteem and friendship which I have vowed to you, or the happy relations created between us by the person who came from your family into mine, to be at once a consolation and an example to us. ’ Enrico Blondel had been seriously ill for years; his young wife looked after him; he had married Louise Maumary, who was his niece, daughter of a sister. Louise, tante Louise, would be very important in the life of the Manzoni family.