The Manzoni Family

by Natalia Ginzburg

  Writing to Stefano, Teresa continued to complain not only that his letters never contained a greeting for the grandmother, but even greetings for Manzoni or the rest of the family. This absence of greetings was deeply distressing to her. ‘Your letter. . . without a shadow of affection, thought or greeting for Alessandro has left me quite turned to stone, but to stone burning with shame. . . Papa who was there said (we were alone) oh well, if that’s the way it is, and the young lord doesn’t send his regards, I won’t go to Lesa any more. . . he was such a good friend, and all of a sudden he doesn’t remember, doesn’t even bother to send his greetings. Think how this pierced my heart for your sake! it seems impossible just because he said to you: greet the person you don’t want to. . . If he had said just as you were leaving, remember to greet the guinea-fowl in your letters and the geese and ganders, you ought to greet the fowl and the geese and the ganders, and then greet him. I know you don’t like the person he asked you to remember; and I know it’s just because of the suffering she costs him; if she adored him, you would love her from the heart, I know; but he not only accords this person who is his mother the respect required by human and divine law, but he also lavishes upon her the feelings that can only spring from a heart like his. . . and then how improper not to send your regards to Enrico, who always mentions you in his letters from Lyons; nor to don Giovanni [Ghianda] who called specially to greet you the morning you left; nor Cristina, who always remembers to send her regards to you and ask for news of you when you’re away!’

  Teresa often spoke of Filippo in her letters to Stefano; she thought he looked like Alessandro; he was her favourite stepchild at that time. ‘Filippo wanted to add a few words at the end of this; he gets more and more attached to me; he doesn’t come into my room out of discretion, which he had to learn at school, but he makes up for it with his caresses, and his pretty ways, and affectionate expressions for you and me; he urged me in his open, insistent way to send you all his love: you will send him my regards, mama; don’t forget to tell him that I love him very much and that I always remember him; that I hope he’s well and having a good time; but do you think that he’ll remember me? is it really true that he sends me his regards?’ Filippo must have been full of admiration for Stefano; he saw him coming and going, free, cheerful, having a good time, with his palettes and brushes; Stefano had money, independence, a mother to scold and love him, and everything he did not have. As for Stefano, always so miserly with his greetings, who knows if he really remembered to send his regards to this little boy, entrusted to a priest, whom he occasionally met in the avenues of Brusuglio or at table.

  Teresa and Alessandro went to Lesa in the summer of 1839; Stefano was there and greeted them very effusively; they planned to return in the autumn, although the thought of the Caccia-piattis bothered them a bit. Stefano wanted to meet the expenses of this first visit to Lesa by Alessandro; he was twenty now and the court allowed him control of his own income; but he was not yet allowed to buy or sell, or to incur debts. Teresa felt well at Lesa, all her indispositions vanished; whereas, in the heat of Brusuglio the summer months seemed tedious and heavy; but they had to spend the summer and a good part of the autumn there, none the less, to take care of the estate. ‘You’ll see how well I am!’ Teresa wrote as she left Lesa, to Stefano who was still there. ‘It’s Lesa, Lesa all the time, Lesa which delights Alessandro, who is still talking about it with his mouth watering.’ It must have been painful for Giulia to hear them talking of the wonders of Lesa, to see at table the wine from Lesa that Alessandro liked, and see Alessandro and Teresa setting off for Lesa, while she remained alone at hot, despised Brusuglio, with Filippo and don Ghianda and the others who were excluded from Lesa.

  In 1839 Sofia had her first baby, Antonio. In 1840 Lodovico’s father, the Marchese Antonio Trotti Bentivoglio, died. When the will was read out, Lodovico discovered that his share of the inheritance was much less than his brothers’. His father had been angry with him when he had abandoned his military career, and had chosen to punish him in this way. Manzoni wrote a bitter letter to Costanza Arconati, Lodovico’s sister, asking her to intervene with the older brother to make the terms of the will more favourable to Lodovico, ‘husband and father’.

  In 1840 Cristina had a baby, Enrichetta. Then she became ill. She developed a sort of erythema on the face. In the summer, at Brusuglio, her condition was very bad. She was bled. Teresa wrote to Stefano at Voltri (where he had fallen ill himself and Teresa, in a panic, wanted to join him, but they had soothed her, and in fact it was nothing serious): ‘Cristina, after being bled three times and cruelly bitten by leeches several times, and put on a very strict diet, silence, darkness, etc., after having lost a lot of weight and all her colour as a result of the remedies, has now been sent to Doctor Casanova, who has taken the precaution of making her husband the first recipient of his diagnosis, adding that it would soon be over, but that in the few days that remained to her they must remove lots and lots more blood. You can imagine the laments of poor Cristoforo who had never dreamed, not only of taking a black, but even a cloudy view. They immediately went to Piantanida, who changed the treatment together with the name of the illness, which is no longer a “slow-fast inflammation”, but shingles, as Caramella said last year when she saw the tremendous eruption she had in the face. Just think of shingles being treated all winter and spring and half the summer with sulphur baths, morphine and opium in those quantities! So, no more bleedings, no more opium, she has been put on a simple diet, but with meat, and encouraged to get up; which she did at once and post haste to Milan, away from that doctor who would have it his own way, in spite of the result of the consultation. Now she’s been in Milan for three days and made great progress, because she gets up, eats, receives friends in the drawing-room, and is doing very nicely; apart from that pain she has [in the temples] which has come back dreadfully and continues, sometimes more, sometimes less, but by what her doctor says, who is now Piantanida, she shouldn’t take any more remedies for it, as unfortunately there aren’t any.’ According to Piantanida she was in no danger. ‘So as far as that’s concerned dear Alessandro can breathe again. . .’

  Manzoni wanted very much to go to Lesa that autumn, but it was not possible, first because Teresa was ill with a ‘phlogosis’ in the head, and feared ‘to encounter rude air’ on the journey; then in October Pietro became seriously ill. Teresa wrote to Stefano: ‘After various lapses due to his excessive and unfortunate drinking, Pietro is in bed with severe inflammation of the brain and the intestines, which causes delirium night and day. . . imagine poor Alessandro, who had begged and prayed, coaxed and constrained him to give up that drinking!’ And Manzoni to Cattaneo: ‘At last I can take up my pen to tell you of a danger, which, thank Heaven, has passed over. My Pietro had succumbed to a violent attack of meningitis, and after sixty hours of delirium, has now recovered, thanks to the prudent but determined application of bleeding and of tartarate of tin. Yesterday morning the deadly symptoms began to diminish; during the day he improved steadily; finally last night of blessed memory, at about two o’clock he went into a wholesome sleep. . . the doctors are very pleased, so you can imagine our feelings.’ Teresa to Stefano: ‘In four days they bled him profusely nine times, applied 24 leeches, and administered a load of emetic tartar.’ But Manzoni was always an optimist: in November Pietro was ill again, and ‘they had to go back to the bleedings, leeches and three blister-papers’.

  When Pietro recovered, there followed a brief spell of peace; Giulia was in a good mood, pleased about Pietro’s recovery; Cristina too, although very thin and pale, seemed better. Enrico had come home. Giulia finally agreed to taste the Lesa wine; ‘All in all, I might call it a honeymoon, please God it may last!’ Teresa told Stefano, ‘not for me, but for Alessandro, who was losing his health, his studies, and years of life!. . . Poor Alessandro. . . It’s true that even before, if the conductor was different, the music was the same. [By which Teresa meant that even with Enrichetta, Giulia must have
been unbearable.] We hope that now that deadly orchestra will cease or hold its peace somewhat! Who knows if God, or time and her 77 years may partly change her, at least in the ways most necessary to Alessandro! As I’ve never written so explicitly about this matter, you would do well to burn this letter, after reading it, I mean. . .’ Stefano did not burn it.

  I promessi sposi began to appear in instalments, in the new revised and illustrated edition. Teresa exulted in it. But it very soon became apparent that things were not going too well. The printer Guglielmini proved to be untrustworthy. Subscriptions rapidly declined. Unsold copies piled up in the rooms of via del Morone. Giulia and cousin Giacomo had sensed that the undertaking would prove ruinous. They were right.

  Teresa’s brother, Giuseppe, came to stay at via del Morone that winter. Giulia did not speak to him. There had never been any sympathy between them; and now Teresa’s family – and of course above all Teresa herself – seemed to her most to blame for that unfortunate publishing operation: they had strongly urged Manzoni to become his own publisher. This visit of Giuseppe Borri to Manzoni made her more than usually gloomy. Giuseppe made this comment on his visit: ‘His mother was reading, and went on reading, or at least turning the pages of her book, all evening.’

  A page which Tommaseo wrote many years later tells about Manzoni and this edition, and the facts that preceded and ensued, in a few rapid, dry words:

  ‘He was correcting, even recasting proofs, and, regretfully, reprinting sheets. And one day when he had some spread out to dry in his room, he said to me with a smile: “You see I too have something in the sun.” Indeed, he had estates in the sun; Carlo Imbonati’s legacy had enriched his mother, who had her friend’s body dragged from Paris and from Milan, but she diminished that inheritance by many charitable works and by the troubles impatiently borne, inflicted by the second daughter-in-law, made all the more grievous to her by the memory of the first, a lady of incomparable gentleness. And the mother herself had chosen this second wife for her son, who took her almost unknown, and did not know how to keep peace between the two ladies, and was always so resigned as to seem unconcerned. But then his sons’ irregularities diminished his wealth; and his writings, which outside Italy would have enriched him, not only brought him no profit, but financial damage in the end. Self-inflicted harm, more or less asked for, because he decided to reprint the novel with vignettes, as if such reading needed such distractions; and they brought an artist from Paris, and spent time and money and trouble; and the printer secretly produced extra copies and sold them at reduced prices, perhaps to make up for the trouble of having to alter the proofs all the time with fresh corrections, and hold up a sheet until he had recast it in his own way.’

  Early in the spring of 1841 Cristina became ill again. It was the same illness and nobody knew how to treat it. Violent headaches, and that eruption on the face. They stuffed her with opium again. Her face was swollen, deformed, unrecognizable. Once she had been pretty. Ma petite noiraude, Enrichetta used to call her. She was the only one in the family with black hair.

  The course of the illness was rapid and terrible. Soon they all realized she was lost. Her husband tended her lovingly. She lived to the end of May. She did not want to die. She had a little baby girl, a happy marriage. She thought death was unjust and rebelled against it, refusing the sacraments. Her father had to intervene. ‘(6 o’clock, after dinner) I lie awake at night,’ Teresa wrote to Stefano, ‘thinking of poor Cristina. . . at that moment they came to call poor, adorable, broken-hearted Alessandro to poor Cristina, who cannot overcome her shrinking from the sacred oil; her confessor cannot convince her, she will only believe her father. . . Poor Alessandro! It has fallen to him to prepare her for confession and the last rites; now. . . Oh, God, what a cup my poor Alessandro has to drink!’ And later: ‘Alessandro returned broken with grief, after preparing Cristina for extreme unction: so that she told him to go, for she was content; then, when he had gone, she called Cristoforo, embraced him and said: I am content. You see how she will be in Heaven. Oh Lord! Put some black crêpe on your hat.’

  Teresa to Stefano again, after the funeral:

  ‘Sofia looked quite dreadful; Thursday evening you had to feel very sorry for her; now she’s a little better, but her face is horribly drawn; I mean, it makes you fear for her health. Vittorina will come out of the convent to go to Bellagio with Sofia; you can imagine her state, too. Poor Alessandro couldn’t even go to Brusú, because yesterday evening they were taking poor Cristina there; she was received by peasant schoolchildren with lighted candles, and they insisted on carrying her on their shoulders with great solemnity to the cemetery, where she was placed beside her mother and her sister! I am in a very weak state. . .’

  This is the epitaph her father wrote for Cristina’s tomb:

  ‘For Cristina Baroggi Manzoni / who, with uplifting patience / through a long and painful illness / with Christian resignation / crowned an immaculate / pious and charitable life / and a death precious in the sight of God / offering to Him in sacrifice / a beloved baby girl and husband, / her sorrowing relations / implore your prayers / and His divine mercy.’

  Filippo to Stefano:

  ‘My dearest Stefano, oh! you will say, what has happened to Mammina that she is getting Filippo to write to me? Nothing has happened to her. She is not writing because she is sitting chatting to Papa on the sofa; forgive her for being so frivolous as to chat instead of writing to you; she is excusable because Papa has only just returned from Bellagio where he accompanied Sofia and Vittoria. The next time you write to her, give her a good refilé [scolding], because it’s a shame the way she always trembles for fear of thieves, though the roads Papa was using are quite safe. But she’s a woman, after all! We are all indebted to you for sharing in our grief for the loss of poor Cristina! It was truly a very hard blow for Papa, but Mammina is always there to console him with her gentle words. I am plagued with rather bad toothache; I shall have to have two out. Brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law all send you boundless greetings and thanks for your kind thoughts. Papa tells me to give you all his very best regards; you know how fond he is of you. . . Goodbye, dearest Stefano, remember you have in Filippo a brother who loves you like a precious friend.’

  Cristina’s baby had been taken to Verano, to the villa of the Trottis.

  Teresa had commissioned a portrait of Manzoni from Francesco Hayez. Writing to Stefano, she expressed her disappointment that she was too weak to accompany her husband to every sitting: ‘I should say that I am recovering from my weakness by eating two beef-steaks a day, and tasty broths; but the improvement is so slight that I am scarcely aware of it, and I despair of being able to accompany Alessandro to Hayez tomorrow, even in the carriage. This time, however, I am not writing from bed, but from my magnificent table, which Cecchina contemplated with great admiration yesterday; together with my little bookcase. I get the impression that Grossi is not feeling too well these days, but he came to take Papa for a walk; I think he works too hard, poor Grossi. It upsets me to see him so thin. For a Grossi to be reduced to working as a solicitor! Oh! it is a disgrace to the Italians in general and the Milanese in particular.’

  Towards the end of June, after fourteen sittings, the portrait was finished. At that time, Giulia took to her bed. Teresa to Stefano: ‘The Nonna is very ill, and I am very distressed for her (you will think I am exaggerating! but it’s true) and for Alessandro. Just think! that another blow should strike him after the last. However, I hope not, but I am afraid, because she has a sharp pain; yesterday she went to bed, and was bled at once, and twice today. . . If only I could write to rejoice in the successful portrait of Alessandro! . . . Oh Heavens, how I wish for my sake and Papa’s that you were in Milan, if the Nonna, poor lady, should get worse! Worse, you must understand, means, fatally. Papa does not know how bad she is, and I don’t know what to do. I feel that if you were here we could change the subject a bit, and relieve the gloom; and to tell the truth, reluctant as I am to suggest it, i
f things went badly, you could do a great deal for us; enough! even I don’t know what to say! ... I assure you I am as distressed about her condition as if she had never once upset me. . .’ Stefano did not come. He answered: ‘I’m sorry about the Nonna too, for her, for Papa and for the family; but what good would it do you to have me in Milan, if she got worse? What good could I do? I have no idea how to comfort people, I can only keep them cheerful when they want to be. . . So! . . . Enough, please write at once, and if I really could do any good, tell me straight out, and I’ll come to Milan to do what I can; in any case, if you wanted to go to Lesa, I could go and arrange the passports.’ Passports were required to go to Lesa, as it was in the kingdom of Carlo Alberto.

  Sofia, her husband, Vittoria and Emilia Luti were at Giulia’s bedside. On 28 June Teresa wrote to Stefano:

  ‘She was given the sacraments in great haste; she was almost given the holy oil at once, and none of the doctors thought she would live to the morning; all yesterday evening and all night they were praying for her soul and nobody imagined she would see the light today; but in the night she roused herself and this morning she greeted Alessandro and recited, in a laboured way, it’s true, but quite intelligibly, part of his hymn which tells of the Blessed Virgin going to Saint Elizabeth; because today is, in fact, the day of the Visitation; and she sent them all to mass for her, including Alessandro; poor woman, how lucid she is! But she wants to die because she is suffering too much, but you would hardly know except by her face. I’ve been twice to receive her blessing and her pardon, poor woman! However, this morning there’s a faint hope in the quinine, seeing her miraculous resistance to her illness, and the miraculous waking, speaking and being aware of the slightest thing. All this so upset me yesterday and the day before that I can’t eat or walk, but I get up a bit.’ The next day: ‘That poor woman sent for Alessandro last night, and he flung himself down on the bed to ask her forgiveness, and she blessed him, and asked after me, saying: “And your wife. . . my daughter-in-law. . . where is she? Tell her I commend the children to her. “ Imagine how upset I’ve felt last night and this morning, not to be able to get up and go upstairs! My heart would not and will not allow it. I am keeping to a strict diet; I am drinking a lot of fresh water; and since yesterday I’ve been taking laurocerasus water every two hours, which has steadied my heart and given me a bit more strength. . . The other evening Pietro came and hugged me tight, crying, and so did all the others.’ The 6th July: ‘The Nonna is still alive but in such a wretched state that all the time she is longing for the end. . . Just think how many days and nights she has been in extremis. Three times her soul had been commended, poor woman! Oh Heavens! to see poor Papa, who can’t stay still for five minutes; up and down, up and down, from the top of the house to the bottom all day, and in the night!. . . Nobody can speak of yesterday, because it already seems far, far away, with so many ups and downs, so many things said, given, things to be done, things done, said again, thought again. . . Sofia and Vittoria sleep upstairs and are at her bedside every moment, they look like ghosts as you can imagine. That this should happen to Papa a month after the shock of poor Cristina, and so long drawn-out, yet so short! . . . God forbid he should fall ill! Please pray to Him! and pray for the Nonna, for your Papa, Stefano, and for poor Cristina, invoke that very Father Cristoforo [of I promessi sposi], who is, after all, our Alessandro, as well as once being called Lodovico. . . This morning the poor Nonna wished to be bled again. . .’