The Manzoni Family

by Natalia Ginzburg

  ‘God bless you for the benefit brought to a desolate family by your affectionate words and the merciful offerings you sent yesterday by our two Enrichettas.

  ‘We are all broken by the physical fatigue of caring for the Angel we have lost. . . and I accept, dear Father, your per mission to come to Brusuglio for a few days; but as I do not wish to sadden your heart at the sight of our desolation, I shall be happy if you will allow me two rooms, where I shall remain hidden with my family, to seek the calm and strength I lack today. . .’

  In the New Year of 1866 news reached Milan that Massimo d’Azeglio was very ill. He was in Turin, and Provost Ratti set out to go there. Rossari informed Stefano, who was at Morosolo; then the news appeared in the paper La Perseveranza. Stefano wrote to Rossari: ‘I can’t get used to the idea of not seeing Massimo again, after I’ve known him for thirty-two years and had such a special affection for him! All my castles in the air that one year I could show him I was a worthy pupil, have vanished! . . . And he is hardly sixty-seven! ... I should like to go and see him, as so many others are doing. . . but what then? would Massimo have confidence in me as a nurse? . . . would I be in the way or welcome at such a time? I really don’t know what to think. . .’ Rossari sent him the text of a telegram which had come to Provost Ratti’s house: ‘The Marchese’s condition is still grave though better than yesterday. – His wife arrived in Turin yesterday. – The patient received last communion. – They are expecting Ambassador d’Azeglio tomorrow’ [Emanuel, his nephew].

  When he saw his wife before him, Massimo said to her: ‘As usual, as you are coming, I am going.’

  He died on 15 January.

  Manzoni to Bista:

  ‘You can imagine how heartfelt are the thanks I send you on my own behalf and on behalf of everyone here for the rather better news you give of our poor dear Vittoria. Let us hope soon to have much better, and before long really good news. Your own feelings will tell you what a blow the death of poor Massimo has been to us. It is some consolation, especially for those who had strong loving bonds with him, to see how he is universally lamented; and rightly so because the fact that one did not agree in every point with a man who did so much of great value and distinction does not mean that his passing is not regarded as a public tragedy. . .’

  Vittoria had become our poor dear Vittoria’, this was how her father referred to her in his letters; he was in the habit of writing not to her but to Bista, with whom he had a cheerful relationship that grew closer with the years. He was one of the people he most enjoyed talking and writing to. He had Pietro; but Pietro was essentially a prop, the shoulder he lent on, or his faithful shadow as he walked. But Bista moved in a different world: he was close to him, yet different from him. He sent Bista little notes almost every day with persistent questions on points of language:

  ‘Which is the common or prevalent term in Florence, Orologiere, Orologiaro or Oriolaio?’

  At the bottom of every letter he wrote greetings for ‘poor dear Vittoria’ and the hope that she was a bit better. But he had detached himself from her by now; perhaps he was too old and too tired to take another illness to his heart.

  Vittoria and Bista came to Brusuglio with the children in that summer of 1866. Bista had given up his teaching post.

  In the autumn they took a house in Florence. ‘Babbo’ Gaetano came to live with them. Matildina was sent to the Conservatorio di Sant’ Anna in Pisa, because her mother could not take charge of her. Giorgino was sent to the Military Academy in Milan.

  In the summer of 1867 Manzoni made a will, annulling a previous one. He would have liked to disinherit Enrico and Filippo in favour of their children, but the law no longer allowed this.

  In his will he favoured Pietro, and absolved him of any obligation to account to the other heirs. ‘My son Pier Luigi shall be protected against any loss or damage he may incur in the realization and effective obtaining of credits as a result of advances already made to his brothers which were in no way imputable to him. . . . Whereas the management of my affairs by my son Pier Luigi was never authorized by power of attorney, but was founded entirely on mutual trust and good faith. . . it is my intention that the said Pier Luigi shall not be molested by my heirs, nor required to account for any actions whatsoever taken in the course of his aforesaid management.’ Furniture and furnishings and linen at Brusuglio and via del Morone were left to Pietro, since Enrico and Filippo had already been given furniture, furnishings and linen.

  In a letter to his father Filippo spoke of his children. Giulio was a soldier. Massimiliano and Cristina were away at school. He said nothing about the youngest or about his wife.

  Filippo died in February 1868 of the kidney trouble he had contracted years before. Enrico wrote asking his father for money to buy a black coat to attend the funeral.

  Tommaseo wrote of Filippo: ‘They say he married a lady of low life.’ Because of this reputation, poor Erminia Catena had never been received in the family.

  After Filippo’s death, Erminia Catena wrote to Manzoni every New Year; she sent her best wishes, and thanked him ‘for all the kindness and help which, in your exquisite goodness, you continue to show towards the children of the lamented Filippo.’

  Enrico lost his job. It was not his fault, he wrote to his father, others had been dismissed, too, for economic reasons. He had the idea of sending an appeal to Prince Umberto. Prince Umberto replied, ‘expressing his regret’, but it was impossible for him to do anything. His wife than asked for an audience with the prince, which was granted. She obtained nothing. They asked Manzoni to write to the director of the Savings Bank. Manzoni refused. Now Enrico’s wife, Emilia Redaelli, was also writing to him. She would ask for clothes for Eugenio or Lodovico. ‘My revered father-in-law. . .’

  At last Enrico got a small job as an assistant at the Braidense library. But other misfortunes befell him. He had a bad hand. It was ‘a carcinoma on the middle finger’. He wrote to his father:

  ‘From my earliest years I was taught it is our duty to preserve our life until it pleases God to take it from us. . . It is my sacred duty to continue to appeal to you. To whom could I appeal for help to cure an ill I bear from birth, if not to you, Father? Besides, you never refused anything to Filippo or to Pietro, and I too am your son, and child of my poor mother, like the others.’

  He asked for money to go to Salsomaggiore to take the waters. He got the money. He sent his son Alessandro asking for more money and swearing it would be his very last request. Shortly after, he asked again.

  In the summer of 1870 his father wrote to him:

  ‘Enrico!

  ‘After so many years of sacrifice and pain on my part, and of promises not kept and repeated with the same persistence on yours; and after a recent more considerable sacrifice and a new, more solemn assurance given to me on that occasion, I should not have had to expect another request from you.

  ‘What I give you annually, arising from your receipts, would, in the opinion of any honest, practical person, suffice for the decent upkeep of a family, even a bigger family than yours, if properly managed. . .

  ‘I am eighty-five; and you should be content to compensate, by allowing me die in peace, for not allowing me to live in peace for so many years, not only by the distresses which came from you directly, but also by the many, many people you have brought down upon me, who have been one of the most painful experiences of my life.

  ‘Any speech with you can only serve to recall and repeat for me so many painful things; your letters have already hurt me so much that I have had to declare, over and over again, that I would not receive any more, unless you had something new to say: a proposition I mean at last to carry out.

  ‘I do what I can and more; you should do what any honourable feelings dictate. And I pray God, from the bottom of my heart, to grant you all the blessings I could desire for myself.’

  Non è ver che sia Pierino

  Il peggior die miei ragazzi,

  Tutti e sette sono pazzi,
r />   Dalla Giulia al Filippino.

  [It is not true that Pierino / Is the worst of my brood, / All seven of them are mad, / From Giulia to Filippino.]

  This was a jingle Manzoni had written years and year ago, when Matilde was not yet born. How far away the jingle must have seemed, if he still remembered it, if it still danced in his memory! That was a time when he was still under the illusion that parenthood was a cheerful, easy affair. Only a few years later he knew this was not so; on the contrary, for him it was a very difficult area to cope with. Now it was a deserted landscape where his gaze no longer ventured. It was true he had Pietro and his family: but all the other tempests and losses made that family group seem less solid and secure: and in this winter landscape he was like a solitary tree buffetted by the north winds.

  There is a studio photograph of Manzoni, sitting, with Pietro’s family around him. He is there, small, bent, shrunken, solitary. Behind him stands Pietro, in profile, serious. Women and girls fill the space, parading their satisfied expressions, pleased to find themselves assembled to pose for a portrait. He is shrinking there, shut away in his thoughts as in a shell, exiled in a world with which he no longer had anything in common.

  He must have asked himself endlessly in his old age for reasons and explanations. He must have wondered why, when Matilde was calling him and dying, he did not move. And why those two, Enrico and Filippo, limpid and gentle in childhood, had became two such strange, querulous, unfortunate men, full of subterfuge and lies, and if the cause was in their natures, or some fault of his, or a hostile fate. Perhaps he would have thought he had been somehow to blame, at some remote point in his life: but what and where was too difficult now to establish, and futile.

  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.

  Stefano III

  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.

&
nbsp; 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. . .’