The only episode worth mentioning at all occurred in the picture gallery, where she suddenly came face to face with a celebrated Titian painting depicting an illustrious Venetian family.19 It produced something of a shock. The contrast between the vague familiarity of the scene on the large canvas and those unfriendly surroundings unleashed a rush of nostalgia for the world she had left behind. Still, even a very good painting was not enough to fill an evening. “By misfortune I was unable to have a carriage until midnight.”
Giustiniana began to turn down invitations, something she had rarely done before, whether in London, Paris, or Venice. “I go out very little in public so as to preserve the applause for my sisters,” she joked. As she had predicted, the “applause” was going mostly to Bettina, now the most admired of the three sisters. Lady Montagu, hardly a fan of the Wynnes, had conceded even before they had left Venice that Bettina was likely to blossom into a paragon of Hanoverian beauty. She was tall, she said, “and as red and white as any German alive. If she has sense enough to follow good instructions she will be irresistible.”9
Occasionally, Giustiniana attended a conversazione—a rather large assembly where there was, in fact, very little conversation. As many as a hundred ladies would gather in one of the better houses of London, with the odd gentleman in attendance, invariably “old or blind or loud.” Giustiniana was freer to move around than she had been in other more formal occasions, but even these events she found tedious and suffocating. Few ladies were interested in speaking to her, and those who deigned to address her were not particularly friendly. “One ends up speaking only to people one knows, and the people one knows tend to spend their time at the gambling tables like almost everyone else.” Giustiniana felt more and more alienated: “One is made to feel so isolated in this grand society. What a life!” She was especially disappointed by the lack of warmth and solidarity between women: “You cannot imagine the degree to which [they] are malicious. Friendship does not exist among them. . . . I could never become a friend of any of them, and so I treat everyone well and pay many compliments.”
In her letters she went out of her way to make her London life sound dreary and wasteful: “I don’t go to the park so as not to die of cold . . . I read . . . I eat . . . I sleep a lot.” There was no point in fretting about what dress to wear at Court, she groused, because Holderness confirmed that there were still no seats available for them. The damp London weather did not help raise her spirits: she spent half her time in bed nursing head colds that never seemed to end: “I am so congested I cannot stand it anymore. . . . This damned climate is damaging my health. . . . It is more unpredictable than Giustiniana herself.” But there was no use blaming the rain, she added wistfully. The ennui that was sapping her energy “has more to do with my nature than with the climate.”
In fact, Giustiniana was not being entirely truthful when she depicted herself as a depressed stay-at-home who spent her time curled up in bed, writing to her long-lost lover in Venice and pining for his replies. She had met, through the Holdernesses, a handsome young man who came calling on her at Dean Street and found, to her own surprise, that his pleasing manner and his sensitive nature were beginning to warm her heart.
Giustiniana’s new admirer was Baron Dodo Knyphausen, a brilliant Prussian diplomat who was thirty years old—the same age as Andrea.20 George Townshend drew a couple of sketches of him that are now at the National Gallery; in them he appears as a smartly dressed young man with thin legs, a pointed nose, a broad forehead, and strands of curly hair combed straight back.
Knyphausen had been in London little more than a year but had immediately been very much at the center of things, with easy access to the highest reaches of government as well as the most elegant houses in London. Frederick the Great held him in very high regard: he had named him Prussian ambassador to Paris when he was only twenty-four. In France, Knyphausen had demonstrated his considerable skills in the complicated diplomatic game that had preceded the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, and his dispatches had been instrumental in paving the way for the alliance between Prussia and Great Britain. When war broke out, Frederick saw him as the ideal man to nurture the relationship with the British ally. The baron arrived in London as Frederick’s special envoy in 1758 and developed a close working relationship with William Pitt, the principal advocate of the war. By the time he met the Wynnes, he had already negotiated three contracts for British war subsidies to Prussia.
Giustiniana was flattered by the visits of such a coveted young man. “All the ladies want him,” she assured Andrea when she told him about Knyphausen. “He is the only fashionable man in England.” It was not just the sudden gratification of male attention that drew her to him. She was intrigued by this thoughtful, introspective man with whom she could carry on a conversation that ranged beyond the niceties of social chitchat. As the weeks passed she caught herself thinking about him more and more; waiting for him to appear and brighten up the day. He too reminded her of Andrea, though in a deeper way than had the frivolous Count de Lanoy in Brussels at the end of the summer: “I find myself busy thinking about a man who not only resembles you physically but also has a similar character. . . . That is why I find him so special and why I like him so. . . . Will you forgive me this new friendship? Oh, if only you knew how much he is worthy of it.”
Giustiniana grappled with these new feelings without quite knowing what to make of them. This was very different from willfully seducing an old man; different, too, from flirting gaily behind a Carnival mask. There was no room for coquetry here. Part of her wanted to give in to the new stirrings she felt inside her, yet after all that she had been through in Venice, and then in Paris, she was wary of more emotional strain. She was also confused: “I don’t even know if what I feel for him is love or respect. . . . I tremble at the idea of giving myself over to a passion. I fear passion. I try to convince myself that I should always preserve the will of reason. I already worry about the future, and I am fragile and I am anxious.”
As she ventured out cautiously on this new journey, she realized she wanted to have Andrea by her side. She would describe her feelings to him. She would take him along step by step. “Do not reproach me for this new folly,” she pleaded. “For heaven’s sake, be indulgent and charitable in the face of a weakness that in the beginning came about because of you.”
Soon Knyphausen was stopping by the Wynnes’ “every evening at the hour of the conversazione.” He showed Giustiniana “a thousand concerns, a thousand attentions,” but he was careful not to raise suspicions in the house by expressing “too evident a preference” for her. His assiduity kept her enthralled, to the point that she once forgot to post her weekly letter to Andrea. “I know my Memmo will forgive me,” she wrote apologetically the following week, “for an involuntary sin. The mail day was taken up with my new Memmo, whom I believe I love with a good heart and who gives me no reason to complain or wish for anything better. . . . If what keeps me so occupied is but a passing fancy, I would to heaven that all my previous ones had been grounded in such respectable foundations. Each day I find this man to be worthier of my esteem. I have for him the same kind of respect I have felt only for you in all my life.”
Soon Giustiniana and Knyphausen were also seeing each other “in secret, one, two, three times a week.” They talked for hours, confiding in each other, testing each other, stretching the bounds of their new friendship. They were drawn together by the ease, the subdued joy they felt in each other’s company, more than by physical attraction. “Respect and compassion are what our friendship is built upon,” she told Andrea.
Knyphausen had only recently recovered from his own painful love affair. For many years he had been secretly in love with a young and beautiful lady whose reputation had been sullied by “a thousand weaknesses”—most especially a severe gambling addiction. A young baronet had then come along and offered his hand, and she had accepted without telling him about her debts. Though not rich, Knyphausen had stepped in to
pay them and thus save her reputation. He had also paid for the wedding, as the baronet had not yet come into his inheritance, and kept his grief to himself. “He wept, he was in great despair, but he no longer saw this woman.”
Giustiniana felt that Knyphausen was a kindred spirit. He was curious about her life without being censorious. He showed understanding, he was sensitive, and above all, he listened. And she was grateful to have someone she could count on to talk to without fear of exposure. At last she had found a refuge in the frosty landscape of London society. Knyphausen gave her comfort and made her smile. She told him what she could about her life in Venice, her great journey across Europe, her adventures in Paris. Andrea loomed large over their long conversations. He had been the love of her life, she told Knyphausen. Now, she reassured him, he was a very close friend—her cher ami.
They continued their clandestine meetings. The only other person who was certain of their relationship was Andrea himself, the silent partner who, for all we can guess, seems to have been more curious than jealous. “Nobody knows anything about my involvement,” Giustiniana assured him. “. . . There is barely a suspicion in my own house.” She and Knyphausen had no compelling reason to behave so secretively. Neither was married, neither was officially involved with anyone else. Yet for all their intimacy they still circled around each other with a lingering hesitancy, still unsure of themselves as much as each other. Secrecy, one feels, suited both of them.
Giustiniana reverted quite naturally to some of her old Venetian ways in order to deceive her mother and meet Knyphausen on the sly. She told Andrea about her frequent escapades so she could, in a sense, share the thrill with her old accomplice. She boasted, for example, of the time she wangled an invitation to lunch at some friends’ house a couple of miles outside London. As soon as she arrived at the house she promptly took leave of her hosts, explaining that pressing business called her back to town. But instead of going home to Dean Street, she went directly to see Knyphausen, who lived just a few streets away: “He was busy with a government minister, from whom he took his leave. He put on a coat and left the house on foot. I followed him from a distance until we reached a little house he had at his disposal, and we walked in. We lunched, and a bottle of champagne put us in such an intimate mood that we shared our secrets and commiserated with each other until we were both crying. What a happy state it would have been if that mutual trust, that familiarity, had lasted longer! But he doesn’t trust me entirely, nor do I trust him.”
Over the course of the winter Giustiniana’s doubts about Knyphausen gradually dissolved. “I am still enchanted by my man,” she wrote in mid-February. “He’s the most charming and the most decent one there is. We see each other; we tell each other all sorts of tender things. But are we quite sure of ourselves?” In March she was already more hopeful: “I could be happy with this man, dear Memmo, if my anxious soul would only let me enjoy the moment without all the inner turmoil. . . . He believes in me; I’m very close to believing in him. He sympathizes with me; and I do respect him. His soul is so pure! Oh, do let me tell you: he’s just like you, and God knows it’s the truth. And you do look very much alike, though I promise you are more handsome.” By early spring Giustiniana felt more confident about her feelings for Knyphausen than she ever had, and Andrea must have assumed by then that they were lovers: “My love life goes on, and it looks as if we really love each other. I have nothing much to say beyond that, except to mention that we do have our moments of scorn, our bouts of jealousy, our tantrums, our peacemaking; usual things, and of no great importance. . . . Do you think I love the Baron? I firmly believe I do.”
How far should she go? How far did Andrea want her to go? “Give me your advice, help me keep a little mistrust alive; tell me his heart is not as good as it appears to be. You are my only friend, and you will be as long as you live. . . . Oh, if only I could see you now!”
To Andrea, this longing Giustiniana had to see him, so emphatically stated even as she was meeting secretly with her new lover, sounded disingenuous. He chided her, surmising that if he were to appear suddenly in London she would receive him with much less affection than her letters suggested. Giustiniana was hurt by his sarcasm: “Oh God, you can be so unfair. Come here and see for yourself what my feelings are for you. Then you will judge me. I have hardened out of necessity, but I have remained your loving friend.”
In this Giustiniana was truthful. She could not let go of Andrea—did not want to let go of him. And her letters, while mostly about her new lover, were still filled with ambiguous references to their own relationship. Yes, she loved Knyphausen, “but not in the way I once loved you. Oh, what a difference! Oh, happy rapture! How many times I have wept over you!” And again: “You know you can always expect the most tender transport on my part.”
In a world of fantasy, she said, she would have loved both men. Had Andrea come to London to see her, had money not been an obstacle, “I would have introduced you at once to the man I respect more than anyone else after you, and who is so dear to me.” They would have been together, the three of them, in a strange and happy harmony. “I would no longer have made distinctions between my lovers, and you would have both been my friends. What happiness! What joy I would have felt to be between these two dear persons! I would have held no preference, for I would have omitted everything that might have caused it. Oh God! Why are you not here now to make me revel in this pure and perfect happiness?”
In the real world, however, Andrea was far away and not at all likely to make the journey to London. Giustiniana could tell from his letters, affectionate as they were, that he was busy building his own life in Venice, courting other women, working on his political career. In London, it was Knyphausen who kept her heart warm and her mind occupied. She noticed how her daily life seemed less tedious now. He gave her new zest. “I go out nearly every evening,” she noted to her own surprise.
By the end of the winter Knyphausen was often by her side, even in public. Officially, their liaison was still a “secret.” But rumors, as ever, had spread, thanks largely to the indiscretion of the Venetian ambassador. Giustiniana discovered with horror that “charming” Count Colombo had been reading her letters to Andrea. Including, she fumed, “the one in which I gave you a detailed summary of my love life.” In revenge, she immediately sent off “a short but strong” letter to Andrea, blasting Colombo for “his shameful behavior.” She knew it would circulate in Venice and dishonor the ambassador. “By God, he will get what he deserves,” she quipped.
One outcome of Colombo’s “shameful curiosity” was that it no longer made much sense to go to extremes in order to conceal her friendship with Knyphausen. So they went to the Opera together to hear the Italian singers, and they visited the London gambling houses—always rife with crazed addicts—to watch and comment on the crowd. Giustiniana was still untouched by the disease: “All my pleasure is in making remarks, in criticizing, in amusing myself . . . with the Baron always with me,” she wrote to Andrea, recalling their own thrilling nights at the Ridotto in Venice. The dinners and assemblies were as “insufferable” as ever, but now she had someone to laugh with during those stuffy affairs. They whispered clever remarks to each other, smiled in wry amusement. Their favorite little game consisted of “discovering a caricature in all the people we run into.”
Giustiniana was having a fine time with Knyphausen, but she was not growing any more comfortable with the English aristocracy. Quite to the contrary, she felt increasingly at odds with the people she had come to dazzle. She had lost her natural gaiety, she complained. She began to strike a pose and suffer from ennui. Her occasional pleasure in going out endured only because Knyphausen, an outsider like her, played along. Giustiniana was genuinely fond of him. She treasured his company and his camaraderie, although she never spoke of their relationship in hopeful terms, at least not in her letters to Andrea. Marriage, apparently, was never seriously discussed. If Knyphausen ever considered the possibility, he did not make a d
ecisive move in that direction. There were the usual obstacles: the difference in religion (he was a Protestant), the difference in social standing. He also had pressing issues on his mind: he was in the middle of intense negotiations with Pitt in a frustrating and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to persuade him to send a British fleet to the Baltic Sea to protect the coast of Prussia. As for Giustiniana, her letters to Andrea consistently maintain that marriage was something she no longer wanted. In fact, her hostility to the idea of marrying anyone at all hardened during that winter despite her feelings for Knyphausen. If she talked about the subject at all, it was in the frivolous context of finding Knyphausen the best possible wife: “I’ve got it into my head to set him up, and I’ve already made my choice; but it’ll be hard because this little person I have in mind is very sly. . . . If she won’t fall in love with him it’ll be my fault; and the amount of effort I put into making him agreeable to her is the most ridiculous thing in the world.”
Even as she felt her bloom was fading, Giustiniana was determined to keep her independence, and she willfully relegated the issue of marriage to the background.
In early March Andrea sent word to Giustiniana that their old friend General Graeme was on his way to London and would call on her as soon as he got there. The news filled her with joy. It felt as though a warm, familiar breeze had suddenly blown into town, bringing back memories and stirring old yearnings.
Graeme, a prominent member of the English community in Venice, had been a good friend of the Wynnes before their departure, particularly Giustiniana. As commander in chief of the army he was also in close contact with all the ruling families of the Republic and was a coveted lunch and dinner guest at all the best Venetian houses. He had grown very fond of Andrea, and their friendship had deepened during Giustiniana’s absence despite the considerable difference in their ages. Graeme had had to sit out the war due to Venice’s neutrality. But at seventy, the energetic general still hankered for some action. He even hoped his visit to London might help him obtain a command in North America.
A Venetian Affair Page 26
