The Manzoni Family (23 page)

Sí che Tu sei terribile!

Sí che in quei lini ascoso

In braccio a quella Vergine

Sovra quel sen pietoso

Come da sopra i turbini

Regni, o Fanciul severo!

É fato il tuo pensiero,

É legge il tuo vagir.

Vedi le nostre lagrime,

Intendi i nostri gridi;

Il voler nostro interroghi,

E a tuo voler decidi;

Mentre a stornar la folgore

Trepido il prego ascende,

Sorda la folgor scende

Dove tu vuoi ferir.

[Yea, Thou art terrible! / Yea, concealed in those swaddling clothes, / in the arms of the Virgin / on that merciful bosom / as from above the whirlwinds / Thou reignest, stern Boy! / Thy thoughts are fate, / Thy will is law.

Thou seest our tears / Hearest our cries; / Thou dost search our will, / And it is Thy will that decides; / While to ward off the thunderbolt / Our prayers rise in trepidation, / Deaf the thunderbolt falls / To wound where Thou wilt.]

These are the opening lines of a poem, ‘Christmas 1833', which Manzoni wrote on the first anniversary of Enrichetta's death. He wrote only a few, fragmentary stanzas. God is remote. His dwelling, in dark skies furrowed by lightning, inspires terror. In that remote dwelling God sees and hears tears, cries and prayers, but His will remains immutable. After a few stanzas the page remained blank. It was impossible to continue. How can one invoke or address a God who seems so distant, lofty and inexorable? One can only say how He acts, and bow one's head. ‘Deaf, the thunderbolt falls - to wound where Thou wilt'.

Giuletta's baby, little Rina, was taken into the Manzoni household and entrusted to Giulia.

D'Azeglio said to Cesare Cantú, going with him to Gessate to visit the Beccarias one day that autumn, shortly after Giulietta's death, and feeling the first breath of winter: ‘I can't feel it without thinking how cold my Giulia must be there in the open country'. Cesare Cantú remembered these words with some astonishment, for d'Azeglio uttered few words of tenderness and commiseration for his wife. His memory of Giulietta must have been opaque, heavy, anguished, devoid of light. Her image evoked difficult days, mutual incomprehension, disharmony.

His mother, Marchesa Cristina, thought again of the harsh letter she had sent to Giulietta. She wrote to Massimo in March 1835:

‘My scant virtue, and a touch of ill humour caused me to make that complaint, which I so repented. My dear Mass., I should have remained silent, knowing your heart as I did, but what can I do. . . you too must forgive me; I don't expect every letter from you to be an epistle, but every 4 or 5. You give me new life when you tell me what you are doing. . . I don't know why, for some days Giulietta is on my mind in such a grievous way; I have renewed my prayers for the dead, if ever they were needed.'

In April 1835, at Lodi, Vittoria took her first communion. She wrote home, and her grandmother and father both replied.

Grandmother:

‘Oh, Vittoria, half a year has already passed since our Giulia turned her gaze away from life's tribulations to go and join your saintly mother in Eternal Rejoicing. . . But I, poor old sinner that I am, cannot obtain from God that resignation that makes grief sweet to a Christian soul, and of which your father gives me such an edifying example. . . Pray the Lord at this holy time to grant it to me: your innocent prayers will certainly be more acceptable than mine. . .

‘Our little Rina, whom Massimo has entrusted to my care, is such a pretty dear. . . Poor little mite, for whom a
great-grandmother
must take the place of a mother. . . '

Father:

‘Your letter affords me that living consolation that the Lord reserves sometimes, in His mercy, for those He has most sorely tried. Yes, my little Vittoria, your sense of the ineffable grace you are preparing to receive gives me the sweet hope that it will be for you a principle of constant grace and unbroken blessing. May the joy you already feel, and the greater joy still before you, teach you now and throughout your life that there is no real happiness except in union with God, and in the hope of a more perfect, intimate and indestructible union with Him. Love and gratitude, confusion and courage! Trust all the more when you feel yourself frail, because the Lord never fails those who know themselves and pray. Promise to be ever faithful in all things to His holy law: promise it unhesitatingly, since He who ordered it promises His help. In strong hope, ask Him what you feel you need most; ask beforehand for those things you will need, when the world, with its flattering and false doctrines proposes, enjoins and demonstrates a law opposed to the one which must be your salvation. Learn now to fear this world, because it can be stronger than you: accustom yourself to despise it, since He who so loves you that He comes to be with you, is stronger than it. At this happy, holy time, feel a more lively gratitude, a more tender affection, a more humble reverence for the Virgin, in whose womb our Judge became our Redeemer, our God became our brother: ask and pray that she may protect and teach you all your life. Your angelic mother looks on you from Heaven with happiness, and with you offers up supplication, thanks and promises.'

In summer 1835, less than a year after Giulia's death, d'Azeglio married again. The speed of this new marriage outraged the Manzonis. Moreover, he was marrying Louise Maumary,
tante Louise,
and there were rumours in the town that d'Azeglio had had a relationship with this lady when Giulietta was still alive, and that her jealousy had been well founded.

Niccolò Tommaseo, who was in Paris, commented:

‘Azeglio is getting married again, and he's taking the Widow Blondel, of whom they say Giulietta was jealous. Wretched business!'

And Costanza Arconati commented:

‘And does not this prompt marriage, following upon a love which had already existed for some time, perhaps arouse the suspicion that poor Giulietta was never loved?'

On the other hand, these are the kindly, discreet comments of Giulio Carcano, writer and man of learning, who later published a correspondence between Massimo and Louise:

‘He had sought a second marriage within the domestic circle that was so dear to him, an intelligent companion, a mother for his “orphaned baby girl.'

Shortly after their marriage Massimo and Louise came to take back little Rina who had been living in Giulia's care in the Manzoni household since Giulietta's death. They took her to their home for good. This was a bitter blow to Giulia, and seemed a fresh and bitter offence to her and to Manzoni.

Uncle Giulio Beccaria and his wife, ‘la zietta', found nothing contemptible in d'Azeglio's behaviour, and they remained on good terms with him. For this reason, in that autumn of 1835, the Manzonis refused their invitation to go to Gessate, and went instead to spend a few weeks at Monticello with acquaintances, the Navas. Cesare Cantú wrote to ‘la zietta':

‘Yesterday I saw, guess whom? the Manzonis. I went to Monticello to the casa Nava expressly to see them. He and the Nonna are in excellent health, looking cheerful and happy, and the Nonna said she felt 10 years younger. As for him, he looks like a schoolboy, and you know he doesn't lack masters.

‘But Giulia took me aside and opened her heart to me about the griefs she had suffered, and the need she felt for immense, warm-hearted courtesy such as the Navas practise. . . She recited to me more or less the letter she had written you; that if they had come to Gessate, they might have met d'Azeglio with that woman etc. . . . She found it quite right and proper that he should marry again, but thought the manner of it horrible, and strange that you should approve. Here she got into an endless maze of talk, but Alessandro, who had noticed, interrupted the conversation asking her: “Will you never have done with your Odyssey?”‘

Cesare Cantú and ‘la zietta' were great friends. It was said later that they were lovers.

Manzoni opened a law-suit against d'Azeglio. Giulietta had died intestate; in her last weeks, she was ‘incapable of speech', according to the documents relating to the trial. Manzoni and especially Giulia thought the interests of little Rina should be defended in a court of law. When Giulietta had got married, Giulia had made her a donation, and now wanted that money to be pledged to the little girl. The suit was argued in the court at Milan, and went in favour of d'Azeglio; the Manzonis lost their case.

As the years went by, relations between Manzoni and d'Azeglio became affectionate once more. Manzoni was fundamentally very fond of d'Azeglio, because ‘he could play, sing, dance', because he was different from him in every way.

Louise, like Giulietta before her, wished to be called ‘marchesa', and this annoyed the real Marchesa, Cristina di Bianzé.

D'Azeglio soon got tired of Louise, and a few years later they were already living apart.

In 1836, Vittoria was removed from the school at Lodi, and put in the Monastero della Visitazione, in Milan.

In January 1837 Manzoni married again. He married donna Teresa Borri, widow of Count Decio Stampa, who had been left a widow young, with one son whom she had brought up on her own. The son was then eighteen. It was Tommaso Grossi who had spoken to Manzoni of Teresa Borri. It seemed to Giulia quite right that Alessandro should marry again. At first she liked Teresa Borri very much. But immediately after the wedding differences arose. Teresa had a brusque temperament and was used to giving orders. Giulia took a strong dislike to her son, Stefano. Bit by bit Giulia tended to withdraw to her own rooms, and began to live like a stranger in the house where she had reigned. In the summer Tommaseo wrote to Cantú from Paris:

‘They tell me D. Giulia is more or less alone in the country, her son all wife!'

‘Is it true that D. Giulia bears something of a grudge towards her daughter-in-law? She used to hold such sway!'

Meeting Fauriel in Paris, Tommaseo spoke to him of Manzoni's new marriage. Malicious things were being said about it. Fauriel said:
‘Qu'on s'arrange comme on pent; il a besoin d'être heureux'
[‘Let them suit themselves; he needs to be happy].

Tommaseo continued to muse about the Manzoni family, whom he had not seen for some time. In summer 1838 he wrote from Nantes to Cantú:

‘Donna Giulia is rather left out; not ill-treated, I hope; give her my best regards. The girls must be over twenty by now. Quite different in appearance from Giulia who died. At least, they seemed so as little girls. Nothing of the father's genius in any of them. He is just an accident of destiny'

In 1839 Cristina married a young man called Cristoforo Baroggi, a love match long opposed by his parents.

In February 1840 Giulia was writing to Rosa Somis (Counsellor Somis had died the year before):

‘Oh my Rosa, could I forget you? you, the loving daughter of that good man for whom I have always felt the most profound veneration and esteem and warm sincere friendship? And gratitude that still lives in a heart that should be crushed by the years, but which on the contrary feels every hour of every day the pain of so many fatal losses. Dear Rosa, I cannot, I do not know how to resign myself. After the irreparable loss of my angelic Enrichetta whom you loved so much, oh Rosa, Rosa, everything is changed for your poor old friend, absolutely everything. . . When you came to Brusuglio the last time I saw you, I urged you to write, to keep me informed of your circumstances, you promised to do so, yet I have always been in the dark about your life: I heard of your change of state only a few months ago — is it I who am at fault, or you who have forgotten the poor old woman? Oh Rosa, your forgetfulness has hurt me!

‘I hope to hear you are happy, you were always such a dear, good girl. Pray for me, for my needs are too great, and may that dear saintly man who in his life, always tried to do good to me remember a poor unhappy old woman. Rosa, I press you to my heart with the most sincere and heartfelt effusion of love and emotion. '

At Brusuglio that summer Cristina had fallen ill. She had recently had a baby girl, whom she had called Enrichetta. She was ill all winter; in April Vittoria left school — she was eighteen now — and came to live with her and help her. Cristina died in May.

Vittoria went to live with Sofia (but Sofia too was to die a few years later, in 1845, leaving four children).

Giulia wrote to Vittoria on 20 June 1841 (she herself would take to bed with inflammation of the lungs and die a few days later on 7 July):

‘Oh my beloved child, your
povera poverissima Nonna
hugs you tight, and thinks of you and Sofia all the time, my dearest girls! Write to me, and
whatever happens
you know you can always open your heart to me. May God be always the driving force and guide of your every action. Never, never forget your angelic mother.

‘Yesterday I went to the Visitazione and found dear Matilde still sad at your departure and the fresh test God has chosen to send us, but resigned and serene. Write to her, Vittoria dear, write to her rather than to me.

‘Then I went to pay my tribute of tears and wretched prayers at the tomb of our beloved and lamented Cristina. Oh holy God! Decrepit old woman as I now am, to be preceded by so many darlings of my blood!'

Part Two
1836–1907

Teresa Borri was born at Brivio, in Brianza in 1799, daughter of Cesare Borri and Marianna Meda. Both parents belonged to the aristocracy. When she was born they were not rich; the French occupation had destroyed family fortunes, and the father, an
assessore di tribunale
[one of the citizens called upon to sit, together with two judges, in a criminal court] in Milan, had been deprived of his office. He was made a stipendiary magistrate at Brivio. He lost this post, too, after the battle of Marengo. He held two minor offices, until, with the return of Austrian rule, he was made master of ceremonies at court. He moved back to Milan, and bought property at Torricella d'Arcellasco. Teresa had two brothers, Giuseppe and Giacomo. Giuseppe took a degree in law, and was a sculptor and writer. Giacomo was a priest.