The Manzoni Family (30 page)

Jules Mohl, friend of Fauriel and Mary Clarke, wrote to Manzoni, sending him a drawing and a miniature which he had found in Fauriel's bedroom. The drawing was the work of Giulietta, ‘the daughter you had the misfortune to lose', wrote Jules Mohl. He thought the miniature of a little girl might be Giulietta, but he was not sure. At any rate, Cabanis' daughter, to whom Fauriel had left all his works of art, had given him permission to send them both to Manzoni. Mary Clarke was in England; Manzoni had sent her a portrait of Fauriel he had; Jules Mohl said she must be too distressed at that time to thank him. Then he gave a few particulars of Fauriel's death.

For some time Fauriel had been suffering from a polyp which caused a rush of blood to his head and made him sleepy. So he had had an operation.

This polyp was in the nasal cavity. Many years before, in Italy, he had already had an operation at Mary Clarke's insistence: she thought it deformed his nose and spoilt his looks. But it was obviously not cured and he still had the polyp. So he had another operation. We do not know whether the polyp really troubled him or made him torpid, or if he was again obeying the aesthetic whims of Mary Clarke. From what Jules Mohl wrote, the operation was necessary. All went well. The next day Fauriel was feeling well, and went out to the Louvre. He caught cold, got erysipelas and died within a week.

Of Manzoni's feelings at the death of Fauriel we have only the word ‘sad' in a letter from Teresa to Stefano talking of various other matters. In the years that ensued Manzoni rarely mentioned Fauriel in his letters. ‘A friend ever dear and ever lamented. . .', ‘My illustrious and lamented friend Fauriel. . .' This is how the image of Fauriel surfaced, not more than once or twice in the course of years, among other topics, names and themes, in Manzoni's letters.

On 15 August, Teresa's mother died.

Teresa and Alessandro decided to go to Lesa. They were to be joined there at the beginning of September, by Sigismondo Trechi, who was convalescing after a ‘terrible pernicious fever'. Teresa had ordered a chest of drawers to put in Trechi's room, and it did not come and she was in despair. Manzoni had had a letter from Abbé Rosmini, who was impatient to see him. ‘I live in hopes that this year will satisfy my most eager desire to see don Alessandro again on the shores of this lake of ours. . .' And Teresa to Stefano: ‘I've been waiting and waiting and waiting for them to send a
cantará,
a
trumo,
a something or other with drawers, old but good, already made and finished a century ago for us to have it in the future for the 7th or 8th or 9th as Trechi is coming on the 9th or 10th, I think.'

So they were preparing for their departure. But at the beginning of September Teresa fell ill. She had been unwell for a while, she felt ‘extremely weak and shattered into fragments and tiny pieces'. Manzoni wrote to Rosmini: ‘Unfortunately my wife's health makes it impossible for us to travel to Lesa.' Teresa sent for Doctor Mazzola, who had operated on her for tonsilitis years before. Then other doctors were called. A tumour was diagnosed. Stefano Stampa told the story: ‘and so the poor lady was treated with frictions of mercury and with iodine; but the tumour grew instead of diminishing, and her health deteriorated . . .' The winter months passed and Teresa became more and more poorly. The doctors felt her hard, swollen stomach and perceived movements, which were, according to them, ‘rumblings of the lower intestine which sometimes lifted the tumour and shook it'. In the night of the 7th to 8th of February she was gripped by atrocious pains. It was the tumour bursting, said the doctors. They bled her. They said it was the end. She believed them and announced it to her son ‘with a sad smile'. Suddenly they all realized that they were labour pains. The first doctor, Mazzola, had at one time advanced the hypothesis of a pregnancy, but without conviction because of Teresa's age (she was forty-five) and besides, the others had immediately spoken of a tumour. Twin girls were born. In the night Manzoni had sent for an obstetrician, Doctor Billi, but he arrived when it was all over. ‘He arrived in time to baptise one of the twins who lived almost till the morning, and to baptise the other
sub-conditione
because it was still-born, or died as soon as it was born. Then in a whisper Doctor Billi asked Manzoni (who was standing near the fireplace, behind a screen which was hiding the light and the fire from the patient) if he might take home the little dead body (I think it was five or six months) to put it with his collection of foetuses. Manzoni looked embarrassed; he made a movement of the head that looked like consent, and the doctor put the little body in his pocket and took it home. But Manzoni never divulged this fact to his wife, nor did the son to his mother, for they were both convinced that she would have been distressed' (Stefano Stampa).

When the first baby died too, they cut a lock of her hair, which Manzoni placed in an envelope; on the envelope he wrote:

‘And you who have no name, but are the blessed daughter of the Saviour in heaven, look down from there in blessing on your parents, who wept for you and envied you. Teresa and Alessandro Manzoni.'

Vittoria was given the task of communicating the event to the family; she wrote to the ‘zietta': ‘Papa would like to write to Uncle to inform him of a
great event
which occurred last night; but as he feels rather tired after being up all night, he has asked me to write for him. Just think that our poor invalid, to everyone's astonishment, was delivered of all her tumours last night by giving birth to a beautiful baby girl, who, poor little thing, is already an angel, as she survived only nine or ten hours. We were all up all night, consumed with anxiety, as nothing like this was suspected so we thought the poor invalid was in a very bad way indeed. . . We passed from the appalling fear of an incurable disease (as the doctor had spoken an hour before of colic of the uterus) to the relief of seeing the trouble vanish in a moment! . . . Things are going well now, and the patient is doing quite nicely. Heaven be praised! Dear Sofia is better, but her pain has been quite severe these last days.'

On 31 March that year Sofia died. She had taken to bed in February. The doctors said she had developed an obstruction of the pleura. Like Cristina, she was happily married. She had an affectionate, kind, sensitive husband and four beloved little children. Before her stretched a happy, festive prospect, full of colour, friendly faces, solicitous relatives, and she lavished attention on others, her brothers and sisters, the babies that were born to her, the objects and the foods she received and sent. Yet this world which seemed to her so beautiful could not exclude the memory of the loved ones she had lost. She would be gripped by a fit of terror. She was always so tired! Then suddenly the beautiful lakes, mountains, villas, boat-trips, were all plunged into darkness. ‘Of my state of mind I have made it a rule to speak as little as possible, because I bore other people, and do myself no good, so
glissons,
which will be better for everyone. . .'

In the summer of 1841 Vittoria was nineteen; Matilde was eleven. Vittoria left school; Matilde stayed there.

The adolescent Vittoria was different from her sisters, because she was stronger, healthier, more vital. She was not beautiful, but attractive, with fresh, healthy colouring, and a slim, robust, agile form;
le petit écureuil,
the little squirrel, Stefano called her. But she was at once beset by misfortunes: by the death of her sister Cristina, then her grandmother, and a few years later her sister Sofia, she found herself deprived of the only people who offered her maternal affection. She quickly lost her rosiness and her fresh vivacity and strength, and became a melancholy girl, easily moved to tears, often ill, without much will to live.

Cristina had died in the spring of 1841; Vittoria had nursed her, then returned to school; in the summer she came home, but found a very different scene: her grandmother was old; her stepmother reigned. Her brothers were ill at ease, as they had been since Teresa had come into the house: but now that their grandmother was so old and overwhelmed with grief, the unease weighed more heavily. Now it was just the house of their father, Teresa and Stefano: there was no room for anyone else. Vittoria went off to Bellagio with Sofia, Lodovico and the children.

‘I commend our dearest Sofia to you: she needs comfort and support: help each other. . . Oh my Vittoria, I love you so. . . you will understand. . . Kiss my
Ninoni,
repeat Nonna's name to him, and kiss the other little angel too. Give my fondest love to my dear son, Lodovico; I feel ever greater esteem and affection for him, if possible. Your Papa sends you all lots of love too, and Donna Teresa sends her regards and Nanny sends lots of hugs.

‘My Vittoria, may God and the Blessed Virgin ever watch over you, and keep you always as you were on leaving that holy place.

‘A kiss, my dearest darling, from your Nonna.

‘P. S. I see I haven't mentioned my health; I am as usual – cough and no appetite.'

This was how Giulia wrote to Vittoria from Brusuglio in the summer: these are the last lines of her last letter. A few days later, Vittoria and Sofia were called to Brusuglio.

Vittoria wrote to tell Matilde their grandmother was dead:

‘Oh Matilde mia, it breaks my heart to have to send this terrible news! . . . For you she really was the most loving of mothers, after
ours
had left us. . . how she loved you! and how she thought of you to the very end! . . . I at least had the painful consolation of being able to care for her and help her, close her eyes with my own hands and kiss her brow once more. I send you a lock of her dear hair in saddest memory.

‘You must pray God to take her noble soul straight into the glory of heaven, and ask Him, after sending us so much grief early in our lives, to prepare a little peace and happiness for us in the future. . .'

Now that their grandmother was gone Vittoria felt that Matilde had only her. Their father was self-absorbed; their brothers full of their own problems. She felt that she and Matilde were two orphans. She felt it, but would not say it. Although she had become so melancholy, Vittoria kept a deep-seated, innate warmth through life's vicissitudes: and even in moments of bitter despair, this deep, conciliatory warmth led her to view the world as a place that was never entirely dark and inhospitable. Besides, at that time there was still Sofia; and then there was Pietro, whom Vittoria loved and thought of as her strongest support.

At that time Matilde still used the formal address to her father, as the nuns had taught her to do. She wrote to him in the autumn of 1841:

‘My dearest, most esteemed Father,

‘It was my duty to address myself to you before this, and such, indeed, was my wish, but an indisposition prevented me from fulfillng the desire of my heart, but now that I am completely recovered I cannot delay affording myself this satisfaction. I have heard from my dear Sisters of your excellent state of health, and of the happy issue of their journey, which gave me great satisfaction. The wise instructions you are so kind as to send me continuously, are really engraved in my mind and heart; I promise you, dearest, most esteemed father, to practise them better than I have done in the past.

‘The last day of last month we did our examinations in the presence of His Eminence who in his great goodness, pronounced himself perfectly satisfied. Be so kind as to present my duty to dearest Mother, and accept the respectful filial affection which always affords me unspeakable satisfaction. . .'

About Matilde, we know that she had fair hair and complexion and blue eyes. It is not difficult to imagine this gentle, judicious little girl, brought up by the nuns, writing her little letter to her father in her beautifully neat, precise, uniform hand. How remote her ‘most esteemed Father' and ‘dearest Mother' must have seemed! And how remote and severe the ‘wise instructions' that reached her from her father! The nuns had told her that her father was there to guide her on the right paths, and ‘dearest Mother' was there to offer tenderness and motherly warmth. But from her father she received these ‘wise instructions' which she felt she must learn by heart like school lessons; and from Teresa she had never received anything that gave her pleasure or that she managed to recall. And she had seen so little of both of them! However, she acquiesced in the nuns' teaching out of obedience, but saw no real sign of it about her. At eleven Matilde, perhaps more certainly and clearly than Vittoria, knew that she was an orphan, and admitted it to herself.

Vittoria went off to live with Sofia at Verano. Sometimes she stayed in her father's house, but uneasily, and for short periods. Writing her memoirs years later, she adduced a reason for this unease: Stefano. ‘Dear Stefano, always so kind to me! yet it was chiefly because of him that, as a girl, I preferred to live in casa Trotti than in casa Manzoni. When I came home from the convent, I found this
new
brother; there was something in his show of brotherly affection that I did not care for. I discovered later that he had discussed with Lodovico the idea of making me his companion. When I heard this, I backed away so that he never revealed this notion of his to me. As I said, poor Stefano was so good, so upright, religious, and not lacking in intelligence, but. . . so dull! Lord, forgive me for never having been able to bear dull people! When I think
how
bored I would have been if I had married Stefano, I thank You for arranging a different future for me!'

However, even if he had confided these vague matrimonial projects to Lodovico, Stefano always maintained that his feelings for Vittoria were purely fraternal. It may be that, in thinking of marrying Vittoria, he wished above all to marry into his mother's ambience; and thereby please her. Mistakenly, no doubt, for Teresa, who so much wanted him to marry, would not have considered Vittoria a good choice. She would have thought her unsuitable for Stefano, delicate, and somehow unworthy of him. However, between Vittoria and Stefano there were never any precise words or acts leading to a sentimental attachment. And the fundamental reason why Vittoria did not like living with her stepmother and her father was probably that she felt herself a stranger in the house. Her relations with Teresa were not particularly bad, and they even became quite good later when she was far away in another province; but they posed problems and made life bitter.