The Manzoni Family

by Natalia Ginzburg

  ‘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.’

  Vittoria went back to Pisa in the autumn. On 31 December that year, 1860, she had a baby girl, whom they called Matildina.

  After the birth, she contracted miliary fever and for two months hung between life and death. Massimo d’Azeglio, who was in Pisa at the time, used to come and keep her company. He infuriated her by calling the baby girl ‘raw sweetbread’.

  Massimo d’Azeglio had been Governor of Milan between February and September that year.

  That year Enrico’s wife, Emilia, had also had a baby at Casatenovo; it was her eighth child. They called him Lodovico, in memory of Lodovico Trotti.

  In February 1861 Bista went to Turin as reporter of the bill conferring on Vittorio Emanuele the title of King of Italy. Manzoni went with him to record his vote. As he came out of the portico of the Palazzo Madama, between Bista and Cavour, Manzoni was applauded by the crowd. But he thought the applause was for Cavour, and he joined in energetically.

  It was clear that Teresa was really ill, as, instead of lamenting her infirmities as had been her custom, she now maintained she was fairly well. To Stefano: ‘I joined Alessandro at table to eat my pasta soup, and took my coffee and cream in my room with a fair amount of bread. I can’t stand it for long in the warm dining-room, where there’s the stove, as you know. So you will be persuaded that I am well, well for me, that is. But it’s rainy, windy, damp, pouring, dark, it’s night before evening, and evening before night, and I’m not at all melancholy, as you think, but recklessly cheerful for no reason. Poor Signora Emilia is always reckless with cheerfulness that does not cheer. . Emilia Luti had been to see her, and Teresa thought she had become old and fat; she had been in Switzerland, where she had taken a treatment for dropsy. Teresa wanted to try new treatments she had heard of: electric shocks; ‘iron baths’.

  The valet Clemente Vismara, who had been with the family for many years, detested Teresa, and she detested him. Later he gave his own account of the ‘warm dining-room’. One day Teresa had eaten with her husband in the dining-room, which was a rare event, as she usually ate in her room. After eating she had started to rave, and made a scene to Clemente because the stove was giving out too much heat. She had gone off in a fury. Manzoni had remained alone with the servant, and said to him: ‘Clemente, see that the stove gives out less heat.’ ‘I can’t,’ answered Clemente. ‘Why?’ ‘Because it isn’t lit.’

  According to Clemente Vismara, the servants called Teresa ‘Donna Stramba’ or ‘The Weird Woman’, and they all hated her as he did.

  It was a cold winter and Manzoni sent Enrico cartloads of wood, together with linen and foodstuffs. Enrico wrote to thank him, and at the same time asked for other things, especially money.

  Enrico to his father, January 1861:

  ‘My dearest Father,

  ‘I can’t tell you what a relief it was to me to receive the cartload of wood, the rice and the chickens. . . Please accept my warmest thanks, which come from my heart. God knows how it breaks my heart to have to ask you another favour, when I am just thanking you for your generosity. Since the excellent Priest has informed me that your generous quarterly allowance has not reached him yet, and that he therefore cannot let me have from his private account the money I need to pay for Alessandro’s board which now falls due, as well as the house rent, and transport costs, all of which will come to about 500 Milanese lire, I find myself obliged (and God knows how it grieves me) to beg you to remove this great anxiety as soon as you can.

  ‘May God grant me the grace I continually implore, that I may be, by my work less of a trial to you.’

  Enrico had no work. And he had a strange relationship with money: he pursued it, begged for it, wasted it. For three years – ever since coming to Casatenovo – he had kept a rented piano, without paying the rent and without giving it back. The man who was hiring it out, a certain Signor Vago, wrote to Manzoni. He wanted the ‘pianforte’ back, and threatened to make trouble. Manzoni wrote to don Saulle Miglio.

  In June Enrico asked if his father could increase his allowance. He also asked if he could send him some cherries from Brusuglio. Perhaps he was remembering with nostalgia the orchards at Renate; he was jealous of Pietro’s children picking and eating cherries at Brusuglio. His father sent him some cherries with a letter saying he had bought them; they were finished at Brusuglio. Enrico to his father:

  ‘Dearest Father,

  ‘Cavallante Bestetti delivered your affectionate letter of the 27th to me yesterday, with the rice which I was so pleased to
have, and the cherries which I certainly would not have asked for if I could have known you would be obliged to spend money to send me them. It really wasn’t necessary. I expressed that wish, thinking there would be a little basketful for me too at Brusuglio; I must say I am quite mortified to have put you to that expense. Forgive me, my dear Father, perhaps I should have expressed myself better in my last letter. . . After you have declared, with great kindness, that I neither could nor should count on any further help from you, to renew my request would show not only an unspeakable lack of delicacy but also stupidity on my part. Stricken by three different illnesses in my family, all requiring treatment. . . I have turned to you, who have always been so merciful towards me, begging you to help me in this painful emergency by allowing me a small increase now, which will enable me to meet these expenses, and which can be discounted from the next quarters. . .’

  In August, Enrico to his father:

  ‘Dearest Papa,

  ‘How good you are to me! your affectionate missive has filled me with loving gratitude. Dear Papa, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and cannot tell you what joy it gave to all the family and to my poor convalescents to receive those fine pullets, the ducks, and all those apples.

  ‘Oh dear Papa, what will you say if at the very moment I receive a further token of your great kindness to me, I venture to ask another favour of you? I have done all in my power not to trouble you, but I have failed.

  ‘Since the last load of wood you so kindly sent in April, which I have tried to use as economically as possible, for some time I have been without any at all. . . I would not dare ask you to send sticks, but just some faggots, some few splinters, in short, some of the sweepings from the wood-shed, anything would be good enough to boil a pan. This quarter I’ve been plagued by a thousand troubles; illnesses, and lack of water which involves me in daily expenditure just to have water to drink. . . Forgive me, I beg you, if I have ventured so far. . . Oh! if you could read my poor heart!’

  Shortly after receiving this letter from Enrico, Manzoni received another from an innkeeper called Antonio Tettamanti. He was writing from Bizzarone, a village where Enrico’s mother-in-law, Signora Luigia Redaelli Martinez, lived, also reduced to abject poverty. Antonio Tettamanti wrote:

  ‘It’s already some days since your son Don Enrico landed up in my house with all his family, and he goes frequently to Stab-bio, not far from this township, to drink the waters. I am a wretched country inn-keeper and have not the wherewithal to continue to provide him with victuals, as he owes me about three hundred Milanese lire. I’ve already asked him several times to settle my account and he says: today, tomorrow! but it’s never the right moment. Not knowing how to proceed from now on 1 dared to consider turning to Your Excellency, as your goodness and kindness is well known, to ask you to rescue me from this predicament. . . if I do not hear from you, I shall be obliged to take steps which sadly it breaks my heart to think of.’

  Manzoni to Tettamanti:

  ‘I sincerely regret to tell you that I can in no wise stand surety for the debt you tell me my son Enrico has contracted with you. . .’

  And to don Saulle Miglio:

  ‘You must have thought, as I did, that the charitable burden you took upon yourself would bring only a succession of tedious, but simple and predictable cares. We were sadly deceived. The excellent D. Giovanni [Ghianda] had already informed me of his extravagant decision to remove his son from college, and the other, no less extravagant, of going, with all his family, to live in an inn, for no reason, at least no apparent reason, and with no idea how to pay for it. . .

  ‘In this painful dilemma, uncertain whether to allow a scandal to occur, or to encourage other equally unthinkable schemes, it requires even more courage than usual, to turn to you for advice, and if it may be, for help.’

  In that summer of 1861 Teresa’s legs became completely paralysed.

  Stefano went off to Lesa for a few days. When he got there he sent her a telegram. Teresa to Stefano: ‘Hurrah for the face of the telegraph-boy! and hurrah for the filial love of my Stefano! . . . Oh, what a touching surprise! Praise be to God.’

  She spent the month of July dictating long lists of Tuscan words, with the meanings alongside in Milanese. She dictated to one or another of her four chambermaids. Some vocabulary collected in Florence, she made them write at the top of the page. Then she wrote in her own hand: ‘Brought to me by Stefano.’

  Sometimes she tried to write a few words to Stefano in her own hand. He had let her know he was about to return.

  ‘I embrace you with all my heart and longing, and I beg you not to come if you are tired, and if the weather is not good. I commit you to our dear Lord. Your Mama.’

  This was the last letter she wrote to Stefano.

  Manzoni thought she seemed better in August. It was very hot. Stefano had returned. Manzoni wrote to Bista on 11 August:

  ‘There has been some improvement in Teresa’s condition: the pains have stopped, and there is some flexibility if not movement in the lower limbs. . . It is unpleasantly hot here, and there has been a drought for some time, which will be a disaster, if it continues.’

  On 23 August Teresa died.

  Manzoni was at Brusuglio. When he heard of her death, he came, knelt before her, and went back to Brusuglio.

  She was buried at Lesa. Neither Manzoni nor Stefano went. The mayor, don Orlando Visconti, presided at the funeral, and all the local people attended.

  Massimo d’Azeglio confessed to Bista that he would have liked to write to Manzoni expressing his condolences, ‘but when I tried, I found my inspiration in a state of absolute sterility, and the only idea that kept occurring to me was precisely what I could not put on to paper!’ Massimo d’Azeglio loathed Teresa, and thought her death was a tremendous relief for Manzoni. This is what he would have liked to ‘put on to paper’. Writing to Stefano, on the other hand, was an easy matter, because he knew his mother’s death was genuinely a great loss to him.

  For Manzoni, Teresa’s death must have been at once a sadness and a relief, so closely mixed as to generate a confused anguish. He did not see her with Massimo d’Azeglio’s eyes, nor Clemente Vismara’s. He saw her with his own eyes. She was so many things at once to him, tedium and grace, tamarind and cassia, coffee with cream, the smell of opodeldoch. And they had spent so many years together, at Lesa and in via del Morone, tedious years at times, yet so encrusted in his existence that he could not detach himself from the memory without drawing blood. He did not go back to Lesa because it made him melancholy. He dictated this sentence to be put on the card announcing her death: ‘Pray for the soul of Teresa Manzoni Stampa’. Some thought it too laconic. But he had written so many epitaphs, for so many tombs! He no longer had any taste for it.

  Stefano II

  After Teresa’s death, Manzoni and Stefano went their separate ways. Manzoni asked Stefano to stay, but he did not want to, he said the house made him sad, and he left at once. Pietro, Giovannina and their four children came to live at via del Morone.

  Stefano did not ask Manzoni for his mother’s dowry. Every now and then Manzoni told him he would soon let him have it. But Stefano told him not to give it a thought. Only after Manzoni’s death did he require it from the heirs.

  Stefano spent some time at Torricella d’Arcellasco. From there he wrote asking Rossari to get the door-porter at via del Morone to give him two cardboard boxes, ‘containing hats and caps’ which had belonged to his mother, and some ‘cushions, small cushions and very small cushions’, which had also been hers. Then he asked him to find out from Manzoni the name of the author of a book he had once mentioned, Of the hope of seeing our loved ones again after death. Manzoni said it was a Dominican, one Father Ansaldi.

  Rossari wrote Stefano letters full of fatherly advice. As Stefano complained of having ‘a weakened ventricle’, he suggested he was taking too much coffee with cream, like his mother. He suggested ‘eating a little and often’: ‘a cup of chocolate’, and an
hour or so later ‘half a small roll, with two fingers of wine’.

  Stefano took a house in the Santo Spirito district. In the autumn he brought Elisa Cermelli, one of his mother’s four chambermaids, back from Campolungo. He wrote to her: ‘Lisa. I am writing this little note to tell you you can come to Milan immediately because by Tuesday I will have prepared a bed for you too in the new apartment. . . So carry out these instructions. Take a carriage for yourself, and get your father to accompany you to Seregno, or one of your brothers, so you don’t have to do that part of the journey alone. Then take second class seats on the steamer so you won’t have to be with all kinds of people. . .’

  He also brought back Signora Teresina, to keep Elisa company and serve her, and a young manservant. Francesco was old, and had returned to his family at Brusuglio.

  He started wandering again between Lesa, Morosolo, Torricella and other places. When he and Elisa were at Lesa, Signora Teresina stayed to look after the apartment in Milan. In the summer of 1862 he was at Courmayeur with Rossari, to paint and to take the waters. He had left Elisa at Lesa. He wrote to her often. He took care to write as clearly and simply as possible, as she was not exactly illiterate but unaccustomed to reading. ‘Elisa, I’m writing you a line or two to tell you I arrived safely yesterday evening. . . It’s a good hotel and I have good accommodation. . . The address is Signor Stefano Stampa (never put Count unless I tell you), Valle d’Aosta, Courmayeur. . . Elisa I’m writing another note to give you some instructions you must follow exactly. Take care not to wash your legs with cold water from the fountain, and at certain times don’t even wash with lake water. Don’t go washing in the sun. Always wear a straw hat when it’s sunny, even to go into the garden. Never stay at the fountain in the courtyard, for washing or for anything else. Take care you don’t get overtired, especially ironing, because the fire from kitchen stoves can make you quite ill at this time of year. . . Eat well and don’t worry about the cost and drink some wine if you feel the need. . . Meanwhile, keep well. Best wishes. Stefano Stampa. ‘