The Manzoni Family

by Natalia Ginzburg

  Filippo had been taken to Kufstein, in the Tyrol. People said the hostages would soon be set free, but no one knew when.

  Filippo to Vittoria, in April:

  ‘My good Vittoria

  ‘I am sure all the righteous indignation you felt towards me for going so long without writing will turn to compassion and love, when you receive this from the fortress of Kufstein in the Tyrol, where I am held hostage. The family must have told you of my situation. I assure you that I bear it with all possible resignation and firmness. My health is quite good. I’m only writing a few lines, but I want you to have news from me. Tell dear Bista that I am thinking of him too with the affection and heart of a true brother. Then give the biggest hug possible to my Matilde. Kiss your baby girl for me, and together with the names of Papa and Mama, teach her to say the name of Uncle Pippo, who loves her as he loves all his nephews and nieces. Please God the exchange of hostages take place soon, that I may once more be reunited with my family. . .

  Filippo returned home in mid-June. From Kufstein he had been moved to Vienna, where he lived free under police supervision. He ran up many debts in Vienna, but his father did not know until later.

  Bista had succumbed to pernicious fever at the front, and was sent back to Pisa.

  Massimo d’Azeglio, who was field adjutant to General Durando, was wounded in the leg.

  In July there was a serious fire at Brusuglio. The farm houses were destroyed. The financial loss to the Manzonis was enormous.

  The war was going badly. In Milan they were afraid the Austrians would return. At the end of July, Manzoni made an inventory of the things in the house, locked the cupboards and rooms, gave the keys to Pietro, and set off for Lesa on 29 July with Teresa and two maids; Lesa was in the State of Sardinia. He left Pietro in charge of the house, and Giacomo Beccaria in charge of his interests. The same day Filippo too was leaving Milan, as a volunteer in the mobilized National Guard.

  From Lesa, on 5 August, Manzoni wrote to Vittoria:

  ‘Here news is slow to arrive, uncertain and contradictory. We scarcely know that Milan is free and on the defensive, that the king has entered with part of the army, and that the rest were on the way. Exactly what point the enemy have reached, we do not know. . . You can guess what is going on in my heart at this time, and it would be inopportune and pointless to talk of my anxieties. I’ll say instead that both here, and from what one hears generally, from beyond the Ticino, there’s bustle and agitation, but anything but sterile discouragement. I would almost say that faith in success has not even diminished, and this is a great good in itself, and a great presage of good.

  ‘My Vittoria, Matilde and Bista, you know with what love I press you to my heart.’

  On that very day, Milan was surrendering to the Austrians.

  Vittoria, Bista and Matilde were at Viareggio. Massimo d’Azeglio joined them. The Arconatis and Collegnos were there. Here they heard Milan had surrendered.

  In September, the Giorginis went to the Baths at Lucca, as there was cholera in the town. Bista’s sister, Giannina, and her fiancé went with them. Bista was translating Goethe’s Faust. They went for long walks in the woods. It was a happy month, for Matilde and all of them.

  Manzoni was invited to stand as a deputy in Turin. He expressed his thanks and refused. He wrote to Giorgio Briano, who had invited him to stand: ‘A Utopian and an irresolute man are two useless subjects, at least at a meeting where the discussions are meant to reach conclusions: I should be both at one and the same time.’ He was asked to stand as a deputy at Arona; he received a great number of votes, thanked and refused: ‘In many cases, and especially the most important, the construction of my speech would be: I deny everything and propose nothing’, he wrote, still to Giorgio Briano. ‘. . . Besides, there’s something else. Speaking itself presents insuperable difficulties for me. The man you want to make a deputy stammers, not only in the metaphorical sense with his mind, but in the real, physical sense, so that he could not attempt to speak without putting the gravity of any assembly to the test: so in such a new and frightening situation, he would certainly get no further than attempting. I felt I could make these confessions frankly to you in private: when I have to write my letter of apology to the Chamber (since the College at Arona has been so cruelly kind to me) it will be a more complicated matter, since it is ridiculous to express certain ridiculous things in public’

  He wrote to Vittoria:

  ‘You will have read in some paper, or heard from somebody, that the electors of Arona were so kind as to nominate me as a deputy; and you will have guessed at once that I excused myself.

  ‘Indeed, it was like inviting a cripple to a dance festival.’

  Costanza Arconati to Teresa, in October:

  ‘Dearest Teresa!

  ‘I’ve been wanting to write to you for a long time, ever since I was in Arona and had to renounce the pleasure of going to Lesa because I was suffering from an accursed rheumatic pain exacerbated by the journey. And this blessed rheumatism has been the cause of delaying writing for news of you and Alessandro. Today I’m taking advantage of a slight improvement to take up my pen, and beg for a long letter to compensate somewhat for this long deprivation. What are you doing? how is Alessandro? Is he still troubled with lumbago? We came to Genoa because the Collegnos were here. . . Then the need of rest and quiet brought us to the country, and we are in fact in a beautiful villa on the Riviera di Ponente [west of Genoa] . . . The catastrophe of the end of July and the ruin of all our hopes had so depressed me that I went more than a month without reading a paper, and I couldn’t bear to hear anyone speak of our misfortune. Now although still distressed, I am less morbidly so. I think that if Italy has not achieved as much as our imagination assured us it would, none the less it has done more than ever before. As a protest against the foreign yoke, the last six months are honourable and extremely valuable. We were deceived on the one hand, in thinking Austria more decrepit than it was, and on the other in exaggerating our strength and worth.’ Then she asked for news of Rosmini, and if he had returned to Stresa from Rome, where he had been sent by Carlo Alberto on a political mission to Pius IX; but Rosmini did not get back to Stresa until the next year.

  Vittoria wrote to her father, inviting him and Teresa to come and spend the winter with them. On their return to the town from the Baths at Lucca, Vittoria had had worries and upsets: in the first place Matilde had become ill, and had had to be bled; then there had been a bitter quarrel between Bista and Romanelli: Bista was a monarchist; Romanelli a republican. Romanelli had fought at Curtatone, and had been taken prisoner; at Pisa they had thought he was dead, and had conducted a funeral service. When he got back to Pisa, he quarrelled with Bista about an article Bista had published in June: ‘The Kingdom of Northern Italy’. They broke off all relations. Bista felt very bitter about it. The baby, little Luisina, was ‘blooming’, and full of health; but that autumn, because she was teething, even she had a cough.

  Manzoni to Vittoria:

  ‘Dear Vittoria! how touched we were by your invitation to spend the winter in Tuscany! If you knew how often we’ve talked of it, but unfortunately only as a beautiful dream! Even if there were not the probability of being able, and therefore having to, return to Milan soon, there is another difficulty, of money. We are living here as thriftily as possible, with money which Stefano has been able to borrow here for us. The contributions we paid willingly to our soldiers, the accursed contributions we were forced to pay to the Germans, the low value of the cocoons, the fire at Brusuglio have left us, as you might say, without a rag on our backs. And I must say that my face is red, not metaphorically but really, when I think of the debts I am incurring with you for Matilde. I have already spoken to Bista about it, and then I hoped that I would not be kept waiting so long: now, instead of improving, the situation has got a little worse. But I know who I’m dealing with, with my two children, and Matilde’s brother and sister. So I am sure of your patience: it is mine that is causing me prob
lems.

  ‘Your letter from the Baths at Lucca comforted me with its news of Matilde’s recovery; your last cannot give me the same cause for satisfaction. I hope to receive another very soon saying that the cough has gone. I am not so concerned that the bleeding did not immediately produce the required effect, because this remedy, unique and paramount in these cases, does, it’s true, block the progress of the illness, but takes some time to remove it altogether. Now, lemonade, vegetables, total abstinence from wine, guard against sudden changes of temperature, and all’s well. And poor Luisina, too, with her cough! But you’ll have to resign yourself to something of the kind each time she’s teething. Let’s hope that the others will come less unkindly now the ice is broken. . . You can imagine how I’d love to see her and give her a kiss myself; I hope you’ll be able to bring her to see me in Milan soon, since it seems the Germans are willing to make our residence there possible soon in the only way that depends on them, which is by going away.’

  At Lesa, in August, Manzoni had heard he must pay a tax or fine of twenty thousand lire, as an emigrant. He had written to ask Leopoldo Maderna, the steward at Brusuglio, to let him have this money at once. There were also debts at Milan ‘to the baker, butcher, pork-butcher and grocer’; the widow Tarlarmi, pork-butcher to the household, wrote asking that her account should be settled, together with the accounts of Enrico and Pietro; they also had to pay the salary outstanding to the heirs of their servant Domenico, who had died at via del Morone a few days before they left. Then again they owed two months’ salary to the Nanny, and they also owed her money she had paid to Vittoria. Ask her if she can wait a bit longer, until Providence enables me to do my duty’

  Alessandro and Teresa needed a passport to remain at Lesa, and it was not easy to get one. They had to draw up a declaration specifying that Teresa was in very bad health and not fit to tackle the journey to Milan, and her husband could not leave her.

  They feared the Austrians in Milan were intending to sequestrate the possessions of people who had left the town. Teresa lived in terror of this. She wrote to her administrator, Antonio Patrizio:

  ‘Alessandro has incurred the tax of twenty thousand Austrian lire by his absence, which he will not be able to pay. . . Now, since Alessandro is without the means to pay, and to tell the whole truth, also without means to go on paying our small household and food expenses, which for now, are being provided by a small sum borrowed from Stefano by means of a mortgage on the Nivolè, so as Alessandro is quite without present and future means, we shall have to allow the sequestration to take place. Now, if the furniture at the house in Milan were also to be sequestrated, I should like to ask you to be so good as to trouble Grossi for myself and Stefano about Stefano’s three rooms (two of his, one of his servant’s) which are two on the 2nd floor, and one on the ground floor; together with mine on the 1st, furnished almost entirely with my own things; I would ask you and Grossi to be so good as to save these from sequestration. . . Forgive me, my good Patrizio, for sending this infamous spegasc [dialect: a botch] and not rewriting this dreadful page. . . Our stay here is quite peaceful; to be brief, as far as our political cause is concerned, we hear nothing that could be said to offer any sort of indication for the near or the distant future. In my opinion, Italy l’è on garbioz [dialect: is a muddle], a tangled skein that it will take God knows how many years of educating to unravel. Meanwhile, (in my opinion, poor little old lady that I am) the present generation will all have time to grow old, and the old like me, will have time to move on to the next world. . .’

  Thinking of her death, and imagining she was poor, she wrote the following declaration, in April 1849:

  ‘I wish and beg my Alessandro not to spend more on my funeral than that minimum that is spent for the poorest, or at least for the lower orders.’

  She had a cult of objects, and hoarded everything jealously, valuable or valueless. She pinned little tickets on everything, with a description or comment. Leaving Milan for Lesa, she had filled two trunks and a harpsichord case with her name written on them, and entrusted them to don Ghianda to be taken to his room in the Collegio Calchi, of which he was rector. Then Pendola, one time inn-keeper at Lesa and now an odd-job man, had come to move them from there to Lesa, where they reached her in September. She said those two trunks and the harpsichord case contained her dearest memories, things which she had received as presents or kept jealously as souvenirs. They were things everyone had seen in her rooms, with the tickets pinned on them. The jewels her mother had left her. A reliquary belonging to a great-aunt who was a nun. A gold filigree knife, in memory of her first husband, ‘stupendous work, ancient Flemish’. The various editions of I promessi sposi. A ‘quinternetto’, or five-page fold, with instructions written by Manzoni for Gonin concerning the vignettes. A ‘lock of Alessandro’s hair when he was young’. A glove of Alessandro’s. A ‘poor but faithful portrait of Alessandro Manzoni at 17, by Bordiga’. A miniature of the portrait of Giulia with Alessandro as a little boy, with an accurate description of the materials of their clothes and the colour of their eyes and hair. A few letters from Rosmini. Two portfolios of yellow leather with silver fastenings; two earrings with brilliants, a present from Giulia. ‘A crystal flacon from Paris shaped like a marine chestnut.’ ‘Box made from shells. A work basket embroidered in chenille.’ ‘Three parcels of books with a beautiful little key.’ A copy of Grossi’s Marco Visconti in a de luxe binding ‘with a note to me from the author’. But there were different opinions about the trunks and harpsichord case. Someone claimed there was something else in them. These rumours reached Teresa’s ears. She wanted Alessandro to make a declaration about them. He obeyed. He wrote: ‘Lesa, 1st May 1849. My dear Teresa. Since, for your peace of mind, you wish me to attest that the case and the two trunks with your name on, which were moved from Milan to Lesa, contain only your belongings; and since this is the simple truth, I bear witness to it absolutely and explicitly; and declare, equally absolutely that I do not admit the possibility that anybody of my acquaintance should ever have the remotest suspicion to the contrary. Your Alessandro Manzoni.’

  But it all led to bad feelings. It was apparently Giacomo Beccaria and Pietro who had voiced suspicions about the trunks; and Nanny, it seems, had affirmed that Teresa had taken things that belonged to the house. Teresa to Antonio Patrizio in October 1849: ‘My trunks and my harpsichord case, marked with my name, entrusted to don Giovanni who is an acquaintance of mine, but a great friend of quite different people. . . these locked possessions of mine were secretly opened and searched by Cons. G. B. [Giacomo Beccaria]. I discovered this last January because the family Nanny, perhaps overcome by scruples, told Pendola. . . and then I heard it again this July when our chambermaid, who had gone to Milan to see her sick father, happened to meet the Nanny, who must have been overcome by scruples more than by shame, and said once again to the aforesaid chambermaid, Laura Boschetti, that my trunks had been opened by the Aforesaid Person. This poor lady [the Nanny] had proclaimed all through the house, high and low, (except to Alessandro and me) that in the trunks and case, which had still not left the house, I had put things, linen etc. belonging to the Manzoni household. . . When Laura heard from the Nanny that Cons. G. B. had opened my cases, to check, Laura said to her: “Well, what did he find?” “Nothing; doma i so liber e i so strafusari [only her books and her scarves].”’ The Nanny, according to Teresa always spoke the truth, ‘she would rather have her head cut off than tell a lie: except that she has spoken gross calumnies against me: but always because she believed it, or liked to make others believe it.’ Since the keys of those famous trunks were at Lesa, Giacomo had opened them, Teresa maintained, with picklocks, ‘I say with picklocks. God knows, and Alessandro and Stefano know too, if I could or would ever use or take advantage of their love for me to appropriate, either by art, or (let it be said) by cunning, one scudo, or a hundred, or one coin, or one book of theirs. .’ In October 1849 Teresa wrote some notes which she entitled ‘Important memorandu
m. . . or rendered important by the conduct of Nanny, of Sig. Cons. Giac. Ba. and some others’: she wanted another declaration from her husband specifying her ownership, since he had given them to her himself, of ‘a mahogany chaise-longue’, ‘a white and blue tricotée blanket which has been on my bed for three years of illness’, and ‘a linen-drum’ that Alessandro had written to ask the steward at Brusuglio to send to Lesa, ‘for the sala à manger at Lesa, so that we can use it in the winter’. The words ‘some others’ obviously allude to Pietro. At the end of 1849 Manzoni wrote letters to Pietro, which he later asked him to destroy. Brief fragments of them remain:

  ‘You may expect only very sharp letters from me, because this wretched business is not over. I would have much more to say, but I am more troubled about R. and S. than you.’ Manzoni was supervising an edition of his works, with the title Opere varie. R. and S. were Redaelli and Stella, the publisher and his assistant.