The Manzoni Family (50 page)

His friends came to via del Morone every evening, and he conversed with them. There were Rossari, don Ghianda, don Ceroli, Francesco Rossi, librarian at the Brera, the Marchese Litti, Giulio Carcono, Ruggero Bonghi. Usually, Pietro was there too, They were happy hours: for Manzoni, perhaps the best of the day. The friends who survived him remembered those hours with pleasure. He would talk with obvious enjoyment; he was quick-witted; he told a thousand and one tales; he had a prodigious memory. Among these friends, whom he had known for so many years, he never stammered. ‘His voice was naturally weak and habitually humble,' Cristoforo Fabris, who often attended these evenings, wrote of him. He would stand, snuff-box in hand; he would poke the fire; this is how they remembered him.

In the summer of 1868 Vittoria came to Brusuglio with Matil-dina. It was the last time she and her father saw each other. Her father did not go to Tuscany, and she did not come back to Brusuglio.

However, Bista came there alone, the following summer; he read aloud to Manzoni, to their mutual delight, the letter A in the
Novo vocabolario della lingua italiana.

In 1870 Rossari died. Manzoni was asked to write an epitaph for his small tomb-stone. He wrote one, but it was too long, and was not used. It was published in the paper
La Perseveranza.

To Stefano, Rossari's death was a tremendous grief. He had been a brother and father to him. He left an aged sister, Peppina; Stefano took her to Morosolo with him for a while.

Stefano took another, bigger house in Milan, in via Monte di Pietà.

His uncle don Giacomo, the priest, died, and his other uncle, Giuseppe, became ill. Stefano cared for him. It was a long illness.

On 20 September 1870 the Italian artillery entered Porta Pia; on 2 October Rome was united with the Kingdom. The next year, the capital was transferred there.

Bista was made a senator. He invented a ‘calculator' for the application of grist-taxes; he was trading in agricultural implements, and thoroughly enjoying himself.

In January 1873 Vittoria received a photograph from her father. On the back was written: ‘Eyes, ears, legs, alas! and mind, / not one I have that tells the truth, I find.'

Still in January, Bista wrote to Manzoni, asking him to write an epitaph for a monument to Napoleon III. Manzoni said no. He did not feel he could. Napoleon III had opposed the unification of Italy; he did not want Rome to be the capital. How could he express distinctions and reservations in an epitaph? or leave them unspoken? ‘. . . I don't see how new terms can be found to touch only upon facts. . .'

This was Manzoni's last letter to Bista.

They told Vittoria her father had lost his memory, but she did not believe it. The letter he had written to Bista was so lucid and clear!

She found out he had fallen, on the steps of the Church of San Fedele, after hearing mass, and had struck his forehead.

In a portrait of the Manzoni family painted in 1826, grandmother, parents and children – Filippo and Matilde were not yet born – Pietro is in profile. He is a thick-set, strong boy, with a pronounced nose and serious expression. In one of his last portraits, now an old man, he seems equally sedate, weighty, serious. He preserved something of his boyhood appearance, having had, as a boy, an adult appearance.

When he was twelve, he was translating Aesop's fables, with Fauriel's help.

Giulietta admired him because he swam well, and dived from the boat; and because he was a good rider; and because he picked up languages easily; and because everything he did, he did well. Teresa said he was ‘an excessive drinker', but perhaps this was an invention. There does not seem to have been any sort of intemperance in his character.

Pietro was completely devoured by his father. He was simply his father's prop, and nothing else: his faithful shadow. He bent his mind patiently to resolve all his anxieties; he took upon himself all his problems, the most insignificant, the simplest, or the most inextricable; book-proofs and lands; Filippo's affairs and Enrico's affairs. Only once did he choose to act upon his own initiative, without consulting his father, when he got married. It was a happy marriage.

Pietro died on 28 April 1873. He was sixty. Manzoni did not realize he was dead. They told him he had gone to Bergamo.

At times he was surprised not to see him, and went through the rooms looking for him. He got very upset. Years ago he had told Vittoria he could not survive a month without Pietro.

Since that fall in San Fedele, he was not clear in his mind. Strange, lacerating thoughts must have passed through his darkened mind. He used to ask: ‘Will the forgiving Father have forgiven me everything?'

He died on 22 May, at six in the evening.

The funeral took place on 25 May. He was buried in the Famedio.

Stefano had a letter from Abbé Paoli, who had been secretary and friend of Rosmini, and was now living at Rovereto. He asked him to represent the Academy of Rovereto at the funeral. At his side would be a cousin of Rosmini, Count Fedrigotti.

Either Stefano or Abbé Paoli found that, in the many articles that appeared in the various papers, nobody spoke of the friendship between Manzoni and Rosmini. Only Ruggero Bonghi mentioned it, in
La Perseveranza.

There was a lengthy exchange of letters between Stefano and Abbé Paoli. The abbé wanted to know if, at the funeral, Count Fedrigotti had been pleasant to him, ‘or otherwise'. Then he asked him various things about Manzoni. He wanted to know if he had really been an atheist. He wanted to know if his wife, the Genevan Blondel, had really converted him to Catholicism. Stefano wrote what he could remember.
It was the grace of God, my son:
this is what Manzoni has answered when he questioned him. As for Count Fedrigotti, he had been pleasant.

Stefano seldom went to Lesa now because he, too, felt a profound melancholy there. He only went there for practical reasons. On the other hand, he often went to Morosolo, and to Torricella d'Arcellasco.

His uncle, Giuseppe Borri, was ill for three years; he had to accompany him when he wanted to go to Torricella, and take him back again to Milan. Giuseppe Borri died two months before Manzoni. Stefano was his sole heir. So he had more farms, more possessions, more lands.

He was living with Elisa Cermelli. He took her with him wherever he went. It was many years later that he married her.

The house in via del Morone had been stripped of its contents; Pietro's widow and her children had moved elsewhere.

In 1875 when the estate was wound up, Stefano received his mother's dowry.

Enrico wrote asking him for money. ‘If you, my dear Stefano, can do me the truly charitable office of lending me something, I shall be grateful to you all my life, and I promise you an exact repayment.' So far he had received nothing from the winding up of the estate. At last he had obtained a small steady job at the Brera National Library, but it paid very little. He had separated from his wife and was living alone. But he had to provide for the children. Twice he asked Stefano for money, and twice Stefano sent it. The third time he apologized, saying it was difficult for him at that moment. He suggested Enrico make economies. Enrico wrote again. ‘I economise as much as I can, and I live in a wretched little fourth floor room where I thought I would die of cold this winter. Those of my relations who have been able to go on living in L2500 apartments are more fortunate than I. . . In the inventory they drew up, a great deal of stuff was omitted, which constitutes a crime, and they even refused me a blanket I asked for to protect me from the cold.' He still hated the dead Pietro and hated all Pietro's family. He tried to win over Stefano. According to him, Pietro and his wife had brought suffering upon the unfortunate Teresa, whom he represented as a poor suffering creature obliged to swallow insults. Neither Pietro nor Teresa was mentioned by name; he expressed himself in an obscure tortuous manner. He depicted himself as the only person with whom their ‘revered father' had enjoyed a little peace. The fact is that his ‘revered father' had known no peace in his relationship with him. Then he fantasized about the winding up of the estate' he would use the money for a certain small business affair. And finally he confided that his father had imagined he was extremely poor and had been consumed with anxiety. People had encouraged this belief. Only, he, Enrico, had tried to tell him the truth, and for this reason they had waged war against him, ‘a treacherous war'. ‘I must tell you that my revered father, about six months before his infirmity oppressed him, had a conversation with me which ended with him kissing me, on the brow and forgiving everything, with words of comfort and consolation.' Then he returned to the question of the loan. He enclosed a receipt. ‘By this means I could provide myself with items of clothing I need, and make some other indispensable little purchases, and would thus be saved from the damage I would unfortunately incur if I had to resort to other means that are so ruinous, because those who lend money, that is, the so-called ‘bru brú', always demand disastrous interest. . .'

It seems Enrico was an excellent employee, hard-working, scrupulous, conscientious. Which leads one to think that, if it had not been for the silk-worms, the legacy from Giulia, the villa of Renate, the desire to cut a dash in the eyes of his father and brothers, Enrico might have led a normal life.

In 1876 Matildina came out of the Conservatorio di Sant' Anna, where she had been for nine years. She had copper-coloured hair and a pale complexion, and when she went to her first ball, with a taffeta dress with fine blue and white stripes, she looked so much like Matilde that Vittoria was disturbed.

‘Babbo' Gaetano had died in Florence in 1874. His wife, Signora Carolina, the one who was mad and moved from house to house, had also died two years later.

Bista and Vittoria decided to settle in Rome. Bista took a house and arranged the removal. They set off in December 1877. Vittoria and Matildina had never seen Rome. They arrived in the evening and saw a great expanse of light. ‘Rome,' said Bista.

The house was in via Cavour. Enrico came to call on them. He had arranged to be transferred, and was now an assistant at the National Library of Rome. He was living with his son Alessandro, who had a wife and small children. It was a great pleasure for Vittoria to be with Enrico again. They had not met for such a long time. And now they were the only two remaining of the nine children. They had so many things to talk about! Enrico got in the habit of coming to see her often with Alessandro, his wife, the wife's sisters, and the children. But Bista was not so pleased with these visits. He did not like Enrico. He said he had caused his father so much suffering and he could not forget this. Whether Enrico asked them for money, whether he talked to them of Pietro in the obscure, tortuous way he did to Stefano, Vittoria does not say in her memoirs.

Enrico died in Rome in 1881, attended by his son Alessandro and family. He had lost his reason. He said il Caleotto was his again, and the property at Lecco, and all the places named in
I promessi sposi.

In 1878 Stefano painted two pictures:
Emanuele Filiberto, lost on a hunt, asks the way of a mountaineer,
and
Beech Wood.
They were enormous paintings. He maintained he was more successful with large than small paintings. He wanted to show them at the Brera, but first he wanted an opinion of the
Beech Wood
from Couture, a French painter he had once met on his visit to Paris ten years before. He wrote to Couture, asking his permission to send him for his comment a painting, with which he would include some bottles of wine. Couture replied coldly that he did not give opinions of other people's works, he only judged his own. He should keep the picture and just send the wine. However, he could if he liked wrap the bottle in one of his studies, ‘which would be sufficient for me to judge your talent and tell you all the truths I found in the bottom of my glass. Yours, Couture.' Stefano sent him the wine, ‘the bottles of
Lacrimacristi
you wished to sample,' and in the crate he put a tiny
Beech Wood,
done during his stay in Paris. ‘I beg you to tell me if it has
verdure, light, truth. . .
On the other hand, if you think it is an abominable crust, tell me frankly all the same, I shall still be grateful for I love truth above all things. . . Believe me your most humble and obedient servant.'

Matildina got married in 1880. She went to live at Modena with her husband, Roberto Schiff, a professor of chemistry.

Bista and Vittoria wanted their son Giorgino to take up a military career. He did not want to. At twenty-seven, he left the army. Bista had a marble quarry at Massa Carrara; Giorgino decided to take charge of it.

In 1881 Bista and Vittoria left Rome and settled at Montagnoso. Vittoria did not like it, especially in the winter, but resigned herself to it. She began to write, with great difficulty because her sight was so bad; she wrote poetry, and her memoirs. As for Bista, he was never bored; like his father and grandfather, he had a weakness for
mortar:
he had dams, walls, houses built; the walls he had built along the mountain streams were always collapsing and having to be rebuilt; she thought all those wretched little houses spoiled the view.

In 1882 Stefano brought out a book of philosophical and religious writings, called
Il numero infinito.
It did not bear his name, only his initials, S. S.

He sent one of the first copies to Antonio Stoppani, the great scientist and geologist, priest of liberal ideas, a student of Rosmini. Stefano knew him only by sight. Stoppani replied: ‘I have dipped into your book, and in general it seems to me an excellent work, worthy of a Rosminian. But why did you not put your name to it? When I read a book by an anonymous author, I feel as if I am listening to someone speaking through a keyhole. I am always keen to look people who talk to me in the face. . . I believe you are a priest, like me, and perhaps not unknown to me.'