Poor Emilia Radaelli, Enrico’s widow, was living in a garret in piazza Beccaria. In 1896 she was put in a nursing home. She had quarrelled with some of her sons, Eugenio and Alessandro. It was Alessandro who declared her mentally ill, and had her shut up in the asylum at Mombello. One of her daughters, Bianca, had married one cavaliere Pietro Fregonara, a clerk in Rome. Her mother wrote to her: ‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the good news you send me. . . I hope you will never doubt my sincere affection for you and your husband, and that if I lack words to express my rapture, it will nevertheless be understood by you. Please believe, me, my darling. . . I do not wish to darken your just and sacred joy! But my heart and mind are full of anguish which I feel an overwhelming need to express to you! Shed a tear for your unhappy mother! On the 10th of last month, by the most disgusting trick, they removed me from the nursing home (while the distinguished Director was absent) and I was brought without a word of warning to the Mombello asylum! I could never tell you what I have suffered! and you could never imagine! . . . The Superiors are quite good to me: but Bianca, it’s horrible to live in the infirmary among these unfortunate wretches and their cruel spasms; how can I ever forgive it? If you and your husband can save me, in God’s name, do so!’ She died at Mombello a month later.
This was the Emilia to whom Sofia, Enrico’s sister, wrote loving advice, the Emilia who from Renate sent Sofia strawberries, flowers, cakes and live lambs.
On the occasion of a wedding, Matildina sorted a small group of Manzoni’s letters to Bista and had them printed, and she sent the opuscule to Stefano. He thanked her. He told her that the first time he met Vittoria they had all been sitting at luncheon, and she had got up and walked round the table to shake hands with him. He was twenty at the time, and she sixteen. Teresa had given him a sharp tug, because he should have been the one to get up; so, embarrassed and mortified, he had walked round the table in his turn and shaken Vittoria’s hand. Everyone had started to laugh; and Manzoni observed that they were behaving like princes, who always exchange visits without delay.
Matildina had another little boy, Giorgio, who was born in 1898, four years after her mother’s death.
Bista lived until 1906.
Stefano became ill with diabetes and cataract. Then Elisa became ill, and died in February 1904.
He commissioned a portrait of her by the painter Tallone. He sent him her photograph and her clothes.
The portrait was done. It shows a tall, sad, gentle woman, dressed in black, two large hands in her lap holding her missal.
He made a will, leaving everything to the Istituto dei Figli della Provvidenza, apart from some legacies to all the Cermelli relations. He left his art-books and lithographs to the Brera Academy, his music books to the Conservatorio, his theology books to Ambrosiana. ‘I do not want flowers at my funeral. I wish to be borne like a poor man to my grave.’
He quarrelled with the local council at Lesa. He had become touchy and quarrelsome. They excluded him from the council. Then he heard they wanted to knock down the cemetery. So he arranged for the remains of his mother, and his father, Decio Stampa, to be taken first to Morosolo, then to Torricella, where he had a family tomb built.
He became completely blind. He never moved from Torricella. He used to sit under a chestnut tree, near the house, which they called ‘Stefano Stampa’s chestnut’.
He died in February 1907.
List of Characters
ALFIERI, VITTORIO an aristocrat, author of tragedies and of an essay on tyranny, written in Italian; through his plays many Italians became acquainted with contemporary political ideas. Manzoni’s early uncritical admiration for him changed when he realized how much Alfieri hated France.
ARCONATI, MARCHESA COSTANZA and MARCHESE GIUSEPPE exiled by the Austrian regime to Belgium, where their home was a centre for Italian liberals; later settled in Cassolo in Piedmont; the Marquis became a member of the Chamber of Deputies in Turin. Costanza’s brother Lodovico married Manzoni’s daughter, Sofia.
ARESE, LUIGI son of a conservative, patrician family; a freethinker and with Manzoni a passionate bibliophile; died young.
BECCARIA, DONNA GIULIA Manzoni’s mother.
BECCARIA, DONNA TERESA DE BLASCO mother of Donna Giulia, after a runaway marriage with Cesare Beccaria; died when her daughter was twelve.
BECCARIA, MARCHESE CESARE when twenty-six published his book Dei Delitti e delle Pene, hailed by Voltaire, Diderot and Hume; it caused Leopold of Tuscany to abolish capital punishment. By his first marriage he was father to Donna Giulia, Manzoni’s mother.
BECCARIA, GIACOMO a cousin of Manzoni’s, for whom his daughter Giulietta developed a sentimental attachment, and to whom she wrote many letters.
BECCARIA, MARCHESE GIULIO son of Cesare and his second wife; he took over the administration of Manzoni’s property at the latter’s request.
BERCHET, GIOVANNI poet and patriot, a member of Manzoni’s circle; fled to Paris in 1821 when the Austrian police discovered his activities; remained in exile for twenty-seven years.
BLONDEL, ENRICHETTA Manzoni’s first wife; daughter of Swiss Calvinist immigrants who objected to her marriage (at sixteen) in a civil ceremony and even more to her later conversion to Catholicism.
BLONDEL, ENRICO Enrichetta’s brother, who married his own niece, Louise.
BORRI, GIUSEPPE brother of Donna Teresa, Manzoni’s second wife.
CABANIS, PIERRE-GEORGES brilliant physician and philosopher, one of the leading members of the French ‘Ideologues’ who were devoted to an analytical search for truth in the traditions of the Enlightenment; friend of Fauriel and of Sophie de Condorcet, to whose sister he was married.
CANTÙ, CESARE long-standing friend of Manzoni’s, author of lively Reminiscenze (1885).
CARLO ALBERTO became King of Sardinia in 1831; declared war on Austria in 1848, after Radetzky abandoned Milan; defeated at the battle of Novara and abdicated in favour of his son, Victor Emmanuel II.
CATTANEO, GAETANO member of the reforming Lombard group; tried to introduce scientific method into antiquarian research; provided many of the source references for I promessi sposi.
CAVOUR, COUNT CAMILLO DI aristocrat of liberal opinions; with Count Cesare Balbo founded the newspaper Il Risorgimento (1847) advocating a system of representative government; led the petition for a constitution which was granted by the King of Sardinia in 1848. He advised Sardinia to take part in the Crimean War; the question of Italy was thus brought into the settlement discussions (the Congress of Paris, 1856). With Napoleon he planned to drive the Austrians out of Italy; the peace of Villa-franca left Venetia in Austrian hands. In 1860 popular feeling brought central and northern Italy together; Cavour bought French agreement by ceding Nice and Savoy to them. He secretly encouraged Garibaldi’s expedition to Sicily and southern Italy. In 1861 Victor Emmanuel was declared king of a united Italy, though Rome and Venetia were still outside it, and Cavour died the same year. He and Manzoni admired each other, Cavour offering the writer a seat in the Senate of the united Italy.
CIONI, GAETANO helped Manzoni with the language of Ipromessi sposi; the use of Italian as spoken language was current only in Tuscany; dialects were spoken in every region, e.g. the Milanese dialect in Manzoni’s own home. The official language in Milan after the Napoleonic period was German.
CLARKE, MARY devoted to Fauriel, active in Paris intellectual life for many years; later the wife of the distinguished German orientalist, Julius von Mohl.
CONDORCET, SOPHIE DE la belle révolutionnaire, whose husband was the most prominent intellectual to support the Revolution, in which he died; she survived and had some power under the Directorate, when the ‘Ideologues’ were generating ideas for the reform of the education system. Manzoni’s mother, Donna Giulia, became a close friend of Mme de Condorcet and her lover, Claude Fauriel, on whom she relied when Imbonati died. Manzoni and his family spent some time at their house, La Maisonnette, in 1819.
CONFALIONIERI, FEDERIGO scho
olfriend of Manzoni and later a member of the Italici party, when he helped to introduce industrial machinery such as the spinning-jenny into Northern Italy; helped found the radical journal Il Conciliatore (1817). In 1819 he was among those who planned to drive the Austrians out of Italy by concerted action with the Piedmontese constitutionalists, but the uprising broke out in 1821 just after the Austrians had entered Naples and suppressed the Carbonari government; Confalionieri’s irresolution and the defection of Carlo Alberto (heir to the throne) collapsed the revolt.
D’AZEGLIO, MARCHESE MASSIMO landscape painter, writer of romances, statesman; married Manzoni’s eldest daughter Giulietta. He eventually became Prime Minister of Piedmont, and helped forge the unification policy. His second marriage, to Louise Blondel, widow of Manzoni’s brother-in-law, was unhappy.
DEGOLA, ABBE EUSTACHIO the Italian delegate to the Constitutional Church in France, led by the Abbé Grégoire. The two became the leaders of a small group of French Jansenists (a doctrine similar to Calvinism in its stress on divine grace as opposed to salvation by works); Degola in particular converted Calvinists to his section of the Catholic Church. He was adviser to Mme Geymüller and through her to Enrichetta Manzoni, then to her husband. His spiritual guidance was extremely rigorous, and continued in correspondence with them both, after he had handed them on to Tosi.
DE MAISTRE, COUNT JOSEPH French diplomat and philosopher, believed in an ordered theocracy as the only protection against anarchy.
FAURIEL, CLAUDE critic and historian; wrote studies of Provençal and Italian literature; the first to hold a chair of foreign languages at the Sorbonne; translated Manzoni’s tragedies and was his close friend for twenty years. He was briefly private secretary to Fouché, Minister of Police, in 1799; withdrew from political life in 1802 to settle with Sophie de Condorcet at Meulan. Although they lost touch in the 1830s, Fauriel was a profound influence on Manzoni.
FOSCOLO, UGO briefly a close friend of Manzoni. Published his most famous poem I Sepolchri in 1807; when the Austrians entered Milan, Foscolo left for London, and died in poverty and neglect there in 1827.
GEYMÜLLER, Mme ANNE-MARIE Swiss friend of Enrichetta, leading Calvinist convert to Catholicism through Abbé Degola.
GIORGINI, GIOVAN BATTISTA lawyer, married to Vittoria Manzoni, and wrote the State-sponsored Italian dictionary, along principles Manzoni had laid down. Had the Chair of the History of Law at Pisa, played an important part in political life.
GIUSTI, GIUSEPPE poet and political satirist; elected to the Tuscan Chamber of Deputies in 1848.
GREGOIRE, ABBÉ a noted cleric of radical convictions; leader of the Constitutional Church in France; prominent in the Revolutionary Convention; pioneer in the abolition of slavery; his funeral in 1831 was attended by twenty thousand people. Manzoni revered his example.
GROSSI, TOMMASSO close friend of Manzoni, composing an epic poem on the Lombards at the First Crusade as Manzoni worked on his novel, had a study in the Casa Manzoni in Milan.
IMBONATI, COUNT CARLO lover of donna Giulia, with whom he lived in Paris after her legal separation (1796) until his early death in 1805.
JOSEPH II, EMPEROR son of Maria Theresa and Francis I, whom he succeeded in 1765. Developed a centralized administration whose bureaucrats were mostly Viennese or Tuscan, without any Milanese representation in its hierarchy. The government of the duchy was quite enlightened by contemporary standards – Manzoni remembered his mother speaking of it with approval – but it was by foreigners in a foreign language.
LEOPOLD II, EMPEROR in 1765 succeeded his father as Grand Duke of Tuscany where he attempted unsuccessfully to reform the Church along more Jansenist lines. Succeeded his brother Joseph II as emperor in 1790, began to form a coalition of states against the new France (he was brother to Marie Antoinette) but died before the war broke out.
LEOPOLD II, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY Tuscany was the most liberal of the Italian states, though it too was ruled from Vienna and the Duke declared his allegiance when he suppressed the last liberal journal in Italy, L’Antologia (1821-33). In 1848 republicans captured the government in Tuscany; they forced the Duke to agree to a Constituent Assembly at Rome, which would settle on the form of government for central Italy; he fled the province in 1849. His eventual return with Austrian troops – he kept ten thousand in Tuscany – and his abolition of the constitution in 1852 inclined the Tuscans to look north to Turin for leadership. He was expelled finally in the revolution of 1859.
LUTI, EMILIA read I promissi sposi aloud to Manzoni, substituting Tuscan words for Milanese expressions; decisive influence on the revised edition of 1840.
MANZONI, DON PIETRO from a solid provincial landowning family; his main interest was the management of his estates, and his marriage to Giulia Beccaria when she was twenty and he forty-seven was unhappy from the start. Although always aloof from his son, he made Alessandro his sole heir on his death in 1807.
MAZZINI, GIUSEPPE ardent liberal advocate born in Genoa (1805); his mother was converted by the Abbé Degola. He founded the enormously influential Young Italy Association in exile in France (1831), whence he was expelled. Took refuge in England in the 1840s. Participated in the Lombard revolt of 1848, with Garibaldi tried to keep the revolt alive after the capitulation of Milan. Planned various abortive uprisings in the 1850s; elected as parliamentary deputy by Messina as a protest in the 1860s. He died in Pisa in 1872 and was given a public funeral by the government. He and Cavour distrusted each other; both were essential to Italy’s unification. Mazzini was too extreme for Manzoni’s liking; he thought that Manzoni should have seized the chance to be ‘the Luther of Italian literature’, though his general remarks about the writer were warm.
MONTI, VINCENZO the most celebrated poet of Manzoni’s youth, their relationship was chequered, but Manzoni visited him often in his last illness, and after his death wrote famously in his praise.
MUSTOXIDI, ANDREA Greek writer and historian, in exile until 1824, publishing works on archaeology and classical history. Became Minister of Education after Independence.
NAPOLEON I ended the first Austrian occupation in Northern Italy in 1796; crowned himself King of Italy in 1805. Seen by Manzoni and his friends as a last hope against reaction when he promised constitutions to every state during the Hundred Days. Manzoni was shattered by his defeat at Waterloo, and on his death wrote an ode, ‘Il Cinque Maggio’, which was translated all over Europe (Goethe was among the first translators).
NAPOLEON III in 1859 supported Victor Emmanuel (then King of Sardinia and Piedmont) and Cavour in the war to expel the Austrians from Lombardy; the French victory at Magenta made possible the occupation of Parma, Modena and Milan, where the French were greeted with great enthusiasm, but without the active support that had characterized the civic uprising of 1848. After the difficult French victory at Solferino, the war came to an abrupt end; in the treaty of Villafranca the French and Austrian emperors agreed that there should be an Italian confederation; the Austrians surrendered most of Lombardy to the French, who undertook to cede it subsequently to Piedmont. In 1860 Napoleon took over Nice and Savoy as a condition for Piedmont’s annexation of central Italy. In 1861 he suggested to Cavour that the French garrison in Rome would be gradually withdrawn if Italy would allow the papacy to keep a reduced state around the city of Rome. He recognized the unified Italy, and among European statesmen had been the most helpful to its progress, if only to further his own schemes.
NICCOLINI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA with Cioni, advised on the language of I promessi sposi.
PAGANI, GIANBATTISTA schoolfriend of Manzoni, and responsible for his losing his faith at that time, Manzoni wrote him the Sermoni, verse letters, in 1803; because of their attacks on Napoleon and the French occupation, his mother destroyed all but four.
PARINI, GIUSEPPE tutor to Imbonati, author of Il Giorno, a satire on fashionable life in Milan; combined the theories of Rousseau with â broad form of Christianity. Much admired by Manzoni.
PIUS IX, Po
pe began as a reformer but became a stern conservative; after 1860 papal territory was to a great extent incorporated into the Italian state, which the Pope refused to recognize. Once his power was no longer secured by the French garrison, he lived as a voluntary ‘prisoner’ in the Vatican.
RADETZKY, COUNT JOHANN JOSEPH Commander-in-Chief in Lombardy from 1831. In March 1848, after the news from Vienna of the students’ revolt, the republicans of Milan took to the streets in the revolution known as the ‘Cinque Giornate’. With a population of 156,000, few trained soldiers and about 650 firearms, they opposed Radetzky’s garrison of about 12,000 men and thirty field guns, and succeeded in driving them from Milan. Radetzky held Verona and Mantua for the Hapsburgs; a few months later, after a decisive victory at Custozza, he reentered Milan. In 1849 he nearly destroyed the Sardinian army at Novara, forced Venice to surrender, and resumed his iron rule over Lombardy and the Veneto.
ROSMINI, ANTONIO a philosopher priest, his most important work was his New Essay on the Origin of Ideas (1830); his political ideal was a confederacy of Italian states under the presidency of the Pope. When two of his books were put on the Index in 1848, he retired from public activity to Stresa, and spent the rest of his life in devotion and developing his philosophy. His friendship with Manzoni became very close in these years of mutually stimulating interchange.
The Manzoni Family Page 41
