Читать книгу A Venetian Affair: A true story of impossible love in the eighteenth century - Andrea Robilant di - Страница 8

In early December 1755, news quickly spread that Catherine Tofts, the elusive wife of Consul Smith, had died after a long illness. She had once been an active and resourceful hostess, often giving private recitals in her drawing room. There is a lovely painting by Marco Ricci, one of Smith’s favorite artists, of Catherine singing happily with a chamber orchestra. But the picture was painted shortly after her marriage to Smith and before the death of her son. As the years went by, she was seen less and less (Andrea never mentions her in his letters). Toward the end of her life it was rumored that she had lost her mind and her husband had locked her up in a madhouse.

Smith organized a grand funeral ceremony, which was attended by a large contingent of Venice’s foreign community (the Italians were absent because the Catholic Church forbade the public mourning of Protestants). A Lutheran merchant from Germany, a friend of the consul, recorded the occasion in his diary: “Signor Smith received condolences and offered everyone sweets, coffee, chocolate, Cypriot wine and many other things; to each one he gave a pair of white calfskin gloves in the English manner.” Twenty-five gondolas, each with four torches, formed the procession of mourners. The floating cortege went down the Grand Canal, past the Dogana di Mare, across Saint Mark’s Basin, and out to the Lido, where Catherine’s body was laid to rest in the Protestant cemetery: “The English ships moored at Saint Mark’s saluted the procession with a storm of cannon shots.”¹

The consul was eighty years old but still remarkably fit and energetic. He had no desire to slow down. By early spring gossips were whispering that his period of mourning was already over and he was eager to find a new wife—a turn of events that caused quite a commotion in the English community.

John Murray, the British Resident, had had a prickly relationship with Smith ever since he had arrived in Venice in 1751. Smith had vied for the position himself, hoping to crown his career by becoming the king’s ambassador in the city where he had spent the better part of his life. But his London connections had not been strong enough to secure it, and Murray, a bon vivant with a keener interest in women and a good table than in the art of diplomacy, had been chosen instead. “He is a scandalous fellow in every sense of the word,” complained Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who, rather snobbishly, preferred the company of local patricians to that of her less aristocratic compatriots. “He is not to be trusted to change a sequin, despised by this government for his smuggling, which was his original profession, and always surrounded with pimps and brokers, who are his privy councillors.”² Casanova, predictably, had a different view of Murray: “A handsome man, full of wit, learned, and a prodigious lover of the fair sex, Bacchus and good eating. I was never unwelcome at his amorous encounters, at which, to tell the truth, he acquitted himself well.”³

Smith did not hide his disappointment. In fact he went out of his way to make Murray feel unwelcome, and the new Resident was soon fussing about the consul with Lord Holderness, the secretary of state, himself an old Venice hand and a friend to the Wynnes: “As soon as I got here I tried to follow your advice to be nice to Consul Smith. But he has played so many unpleasant tricks on me that I finally had to confront him openly. He promised me to be nice in the future—then he started again, forcing me to break all relations.”⁴

Catherine’s death and, more important, Smith’s intention to marry again brought a sudden thaw in the relations between the Resident and the consul. Murray conceived the notion that his former enemy would be the perfect husband for his aging sister Elizabeth, whom he had brought over from London (perhaps Murray also calculated that their marriage would eventually bring the consul’s prized art collection into his hands). Smith was actually quite fond of Betty Murray. He enjoyed her frequent visits at Palazzo Balbi. She was kind to him, and on closer inspection he found she was not unattractive. Quite soon he began to think seriously about marrying “that beauteous virgin of forty,” as Lady Montagu called her.⁵

Murray and his sister were not alone in seeing the consul in a new light after Catherine’s death. Mrs. Anna too had her eye on him, because she felt he would be the perfect husband for Giustiniana: Smith could provide her daughter a respectable position in society as well as financial security. Furthermore, he had been a friend of the family for twenty years, and he would surely watch over the rest of the young Wynnes—at least for the short time that was left to him. After all, wasn’t such a solution the best possible way to fulfill the promise he had made to look after Sir Richard’s family? Mrs. Anna began to lure the consul very delicately, asking him over to their house more frequently, showing Giustiniana off, and dropping a hint here and there. She set out to quash the competition from Betty Murray while attempting to preserve the best possible relations with her and her brother. Inevitably, though, tensions in their little group rose, and Betty Murray reciprocated by drawing the consul’s attention to the fact that, as far as she could tell, Giustiniana still seemed very much taken with Andrea.

At first Giustiniana was stunned by her mother’s plan, but she knew that the matter was out of her hands. And although she was only eighteen, she did not express disgust at the idea of marrying an octogenarian. She was fond of Smith, and she also recognized the material advantages of such a marriage. But all she really cared about was how the scheme would affect her relationship with Andrea. Would it protect their love affair, or would it spell the end? Would it be easier for them to see each other or more difficult? The consul was so old that the marriage was bound to be short-lived. What would happen after he died?

Andrea had often said, sometimes laughing and sometimes not, that their life would be so much happier if only Giustiniana were married or, even better, widowed. It had been fanciful talk. Now, quite unexpectedly, they contemplated the very real possibility that Giustiniana might be married soon and widowed not long after. Andrea became quite serious. He set out his argument with care:

I want you to understand that I want such a marriage for love of you. As long as he lives, you will be in the happiest situation…. You will not have sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law and God knows who else with whom to argue. You will have only one man to deal with. He is not easy, but if you approach him the right way from the beginning, he will eagerly become your slave. He will love you and have the highest possible regard for you…. He is full of riches and luxuries. He likes to show off his fortune and his taste. He is vain, so vain, that he will want you to entertain many ladies. This will also open up the possibility for you to see gentlemen and be seen in their company. We will have to behave with great care so that he does not discover our feelings for each other ahead of time.

Andrea began to support Mrs. Anna’s effort by dropping his own hints to Smith about what a sensible match it would be. Giustiniana stepped into line, though warily, for she continued to harbor misgivings. As for the consul, the mere prospect of marrying the lovely girl he had seen blossom in his drawing room put him into a state of excitement he was not always able to contain. Andrea immediately noticed the change in him. “[The other evening] he said to me, ‘Last night I couldn’t sleep. I usually fall asleep as soon as I go to bed. I guess I was all worked up. I couldn’t close my eyes until seven, and at nine I got up, went to Mogliano,^* ate three slices of bread and some good butter, and now I feel very well.’ And to show me how good he felt he made a couple of jumps that revealed how energetic he really is.”

Word about a possible wedding between the old consul and Giustiniana began to circulate outside the English community and became the subject of gossip in the highest Venetian circles. Smith did little to silence the talk. “He is constantly flattering my mother,” Giustiniana wrote to Andrea. “And he lets rumors about our wedding run rampant.” Andrea told Giustiniana he had just returned from Smith’s, where a most allusive exchange had taken place in front of General Graeme,^† the feisty new commander in chief of Venice’s run-down army, and several other guests:

[The consul] introduced the topic of married women and after counting how many there were in the room he turned to me:

“Another friend of yours will soon marry,” he said.

“I wonder who this friend might be that he did not trust me enough to tell me,” I replied.

“Myself…. Isn’t that the talk of the town? Why, the General here told me that even at the doge’s …”

“… Absolutely, I was there too. And Graeme’s main point was that having mentioned the rumor to you, you did nothing to deny it.”

“Why should I deny something which at my old age can only go to my credit?”

Andrea had come away from the consul’s rather flustered, not quite knowing whether Smith had spoken to him “truthfully or in jest.” He asked Giustiniana to keep him informed about what she was hearing on her side. “I am greatly curious to know whether there are any new developments.” No one really knew what the consul’s intentions were—whether he was going to propose to Giustiniana or whether he had decided in Betty’s favor. It was not even clear whether he was really interested in marriage or whether he was having fun at everyone’s expense. Giustiniana too found it hard to read Smith’s mind. “He was here until after four,” she reported to her lover. “No news except that he renewed his invitation to visit him at his house in Mogliano and that he took my hand as he left us.”

Andrea feared Smith might be disturbed by the rumors, ably fueled by the Murray clan, that his affair with Giustiniana was secretly continuing, so he remained cautious in his encouragement: perhaps the consul felt he needed more time; his wife, after all, had only recently been buried. Mrs. Anna, however, was determined not to lose the opportunity to further her daughter’s suit, and she eagerly stepped up the pressure.

In the summer months wealthy Venetians moved to their estates in the countryside. As its maritime power had started to decline in the sixteenth century, the Venetian Republic had gradually turned to the mainland, extending its territories and developing agriculture and manufacture to sustain its economy. The nobility had accumulated vast tracts of land and built elegant villas whose grandeur sometimes rivaled that of great English country houses or French châteaux. By the eighteenth century the villa had become an important mark of social status, and the villeggiatura—the leisurely time spent at the villa in the summer—became increasingly fashionable. Those who owned a villa would open it to family and guests for the season, which started in early July and lasted well into September. Those who did not would scramble to rent a property. And those who could not afford to rent frantically sought invitations. A rather stressful bustle always surrounded the comings and goings of the summer season.

Venetians were not drawn to the country by a romantic desire to feel closer to nature. Their rather contrived summer exodus, which Goldoni had ridiculed in a much-applauded comedy earlier that year at the Teatro San Luca,^* was a whimsical and ostentatious way of transporting to the countryside the idle lifestyle they indulged in during the winter in the city. In the main, the country provided, quite literally, a change of scenery, as if the burchielli, the comfortable boats that made their way up the Brenta Canal transporting the summer residents to their villas, were also laden with the elaborate sets of the season’s upcoming theatrical production.

Consul Smith had been an adept of the villeggiatura since the early twenties, but it was not until the thirties that he had finally bought a house at Mogliano, north of Venice on the road to Treviso, and had it renovated by his friend Visentini. The house was in typical neo-Palladian style—clear lines and simple, elegant spaces. It faced a small formal garden with classical statues and potted lemon trees arranged symmetrically on the stone parterre. A narrow, well-groomed alley, enclosed by low, decorative gates, ran parallel to the house, immediately beyond the garden, and provided a secure route for the morning or evening walk. The consul had moved part of his collection to adorn the walls at his house in Mogliano, including works by some of his star contemporaries—Marco and Sebastiano Ricci, Francesco Zuccarelli, Giovan Battista Piazzetta, Rosalba Carriera—as well as old masters such as Bellini, Vermeer, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, and Rubens. “As pretty a collection of pictures as I have ever seen,”⁶ the architect Robert Adam commented when he visited Smith in the country.

The consul had often invited the Wynnes to see his beautiful house at Mogliano. Now, in the late spring of 1756, he renewed his invitation with a more urgent purpose: to pay his court to Giustiniana with greater vigor so that he could come to a decision about proposing to her, possibly by the end of the summer. Mrs. Anna, usually rather reluctant to make the visit on account of the logistical complications even a short trip to the mainland entailed for a large family like hers, decided she could not refuse.

The prospect of spending several days in the clutches of the consul did not particularly thrill Giustiniana. She told Andrea she wished the old man “would just leave us in peace” and cursed “that wretched Mogliano a hundred times.” But Andrea explained to her that Smith’s invitation was a good thing because it meant he was serious about marrying her and was hopefully giving up on the spinsterish Betty Murray. Giustiniana continued to dread the visit—and the role that, for once, both Andrea and her mother expected her to play. Her anguish only increased during the daylong trip across the lagoon and up to Mogliano. But once she was out in the country and had settled into Smith’s splendid house, she rather began to enjoy her part and to appreciate the humorous side of her forced seduction of il vecchio—the old man. The time she spent with Smith became good material with which to entertain her real lover:

I’ve never seen Smith so sprightly. He made me walk with him all morning and climbed the stairs, skipping the steps to show his agility and strength. [The children] were playing in the garden at who could throw stones the furthest. And Memmo, would you believe it? Smith turned to me and said, “Do you want to see me throw a stone further than anyone else?” I thought he was kidding, but no: he asked [the children] to hand him two rocks and threw them toward the target. He didn’t even reach it, so he blamed the stones, saying they were too light. He then threw more stones. By that time I was bursting with laughter and kept biting my lip.

The visit to Mogliano left everyone satisfied, and even Giustiniana returned in a good mood. Smith was by now apparently quite smitten and intended to continue his courtship during the course of the summer. As this would have been impossible if the Wynnes stayed in Venice, he suggested to Mrs. Anna that she rent from the Mocenigo family a pleasant villa called Le Scalette in the fashionable village of Dolo on the banks of the Brenta, a couple of hours down the road from Mogliano. Smith himself handled all the financial transactions, and since the rental cost would have been high for Mrs. Anna it is possible that he also covered part of the expenses.

Needless to say, Giustiniana was not happy about the arrangement. It was one thing to spend a few days at Mogliano, quite another to have Smith hovering around her throughout the summer. Meanwhile, where would Andrea be? When would they be able to see each other? She could not stand the idea of being separated from her lover for so long. Andrea again tried to reassure her. There was nothing to worry about: it would probably be simpler to arrange clandestine meetings in the country than it was in town. He would come out as often as possible and stay with trusted friends—the Tiepolos had a villa nearby. He would visit her often. It would be easy.

In the meantime Andrea decided he needed to spend as much time as possible with the consul in order to humor him, allay his suspicions, and steer him ever closer toward a decision about Giustiniana. It soon became apparent that the consul, too, wished to keep his young friend close to him. He said he wanted Andrea at his side to deal with his legal and financial affairs but he was probably putting him to the test, observing him closely to see if he still loved Giustiniana. Never before had he seemed so dependent on him. The two of them became inseparable—an unusual couple traveling back and forth between Venice and Mogliano, where Smith’s staff was preparing the house for the summer season, and making frequent business trips to Padua.

Giustiniana was left to brood over her future alone. She complained about Andrea’s absences from Venice and dreaded the uncertainty of her situation. She did not understand his need to spend so much time with that “damned old man.” She felt they were “wasting precious time” that they could be spending together. Yet her reproaches always gave way to words of great tenderness. During one of Andrea’s overnight trips to the mainland with the consul, she wrote:

You are far away, dear Memmo, and I am not well at all. I am happier when you are here in town even when I know we won’t be speaking because I always bear in mind that if by happy accident I am suddenly free to see you, I can always find a way to tell you. You might run over to see me; I might see you at the window…. And so the time I spend away from you passes less painfully…. But days like this one are very long indeed and seem never to end…. Though I must say there have been some happy moments too, as when I woke up this morning and found two letters from you that I read over and over all day. They gave me so much pleasure…. I still have other letters from you, which I fortunately have not yet returned to you—those too were brought out and given a “tour” today. And your portrait—oh, how sweetly it occupied me! I spoke to it, I told it all the things that I feel when I see you and I am unable to express to you when I am near you…. My mother took me out with her to take some fresh air, and we went for a ride ever so lazily down the canal. And as by chance she was as quiet as I was, I let myself go entirely to my thoughts. Then, emerging from those thoughts, I looked around eagerly, as if I were about to run into you. Every time I saw a boat that seemed to me not unlike yours, I couldn’t stop believing that you might be in it. The same thing happened when we got back home—a sudden movement outside brought me several times to the window where I always sit when I hope to see you…. The evening hours were very uncomfortable. We had several visitors, and I could not leave the company. But in the end they did not bother my heart and thoughts so much because I went to sit in a corner of the room. Now, thank God, I have retired and I am with you with all my heart and spirit. This is always the happiest moment of the evening for me. And you, my soul, what are you doing in the country? Are you always with me? Tonnina now torments me because she wants to sleep and is calling me to bed. Oh, the fussy girl! But I guess I must please her. I will write to you tomorrow. Wouldn’t it be sweet if I could dream I was with you? Farewell, my Memmo, farewell. I adore you…. Memmo, I always, always think of you, always, my soul, yes, always.

As the villeggiatura approached, Giustiniana’s anxiety increased. Andrea still spent most of his time with the consul, working for their future happiness, as he put it. But there was no sign that the consul was any closer to a decision. Furthermore, the idea of spending the summer in the countryside deceiving the old man disconcerted her. She grew pessimistic and began to fear that nothing good would ever come of their cockamamie scheme. Andrea was being unrealistic, she felt, and it was madness to press on: “Believe me, we have nothing to gain and much to lose…. We are bound to commit many imprudent acts. He will surely become aware of them and will be disgusted with both you and me. You will have a very dangerous enemy instead of a friend. As for my mother, she will blame us as never before for having disrupted what she believes to be the best plan she ever conceived.” The two of them carried on regardless, Giustiniana complained—she by ingratiating herself to the consul every time she saw him “as if I were really keen to marry him,” thereby pleasing her mother to no end, and Andrea by “lecturing me all day that I should take him as a husband.” But even if she did, even if the consul, at the end of their machinations, asked her to marry him and she consented, did Andrea really think things would suddenly become easier for them or that the consul would come to accept their relationship? “For heaven’s sake, don’t even contemplate such a crazy idea. Do you believe he would even stand to have you in his house or see you next to me? God only knows the scenes that would take place and how miserable my life would become, and his and yours too.”

In June, as Giustiniana waited for the dreaded departure to the countryside, Andrea’s trips out of town increased. There was more to attend to than the consul’s demands: his own family expected him to pay closer attention to the Memmo estates on the mainland now that his uncle was dead. As soon as he was back in Venice, though, he immediately tried to comfort Giustiniana by reiterating the logic behind their undertaking. He insisted that there was no alternative: the consul was their only chance. He argued for patience and was usually persuasive enough that Giustiniana, by her own admission and despite all her reservations, would melt “into a state of complete contentment” just listening to him speak.

Little by little she was beginning to accept the notion that deception was a necessary tool in the pursuit of her own happiness. But the art of deceit did not come naturally to her. When she was not in Andrea’s arms, enthralled by his reassuring words, her own, more innocent way of thinking quickly took over again, and she would panic: “Oh God, Memmo, you paint a picture of my present and my future that makes me tremble. You say Smith is my only chance. Yet if he doesn’t take me, I lose you, and if he does take me, I can’t see you. And you wish me to be wise…. Memmo, what should I do? I cannot go on like this.”

“Ah, Memmo, I am here now and there is no turning back.”

In early July, after weeks of preparations, the Wynnes had finally traveled across the lagoon and up the Brenta Canal and had arrived at Le Scalette, the villa the consul had arranged for them to rent. The memory of her tearful separation from Andrea in Venice that very morning—the Wynnes and their small retinue piling onto their boat on the Grand Canal while Andrea waved to her from his gondola, apparently unseen by Mrs. Anna—had filled Giustiniana’s mind during the entire boat ride. She had lain on the couch inside the cabin, pretending to sleep so as not to interrupt even for an instant the flow of images that kept her enraptured by sweet thoughts of Andrea. Once they arrived at the villa and had settled in, she cast a glance around her new surroundings and had discovered that the house and the garden were actually very nice and the setting on the Brenta could not have been more pleasant. “Oh, if only you were here, how delightful this place would be. How sweetly we could spend our time,” she wrote to him before going to bed the first night.

The daily rituals of the villeggiatura began every morning with a cup of hot chocolate that sweetened the palate after a long night’s sleep and provided a quick boost of energy. It was usually served in an intimate setting—breakfast in the boudoir. The host and hostess and their guests would exchange greetings and the first few tidbits of gossip before the morning mail was brought in. Plans for the day would be laid out. After the toilette, much of which was taken up by elaborate hairdressing in the case of the ladies, the members of the household would reassemble outdoors for a brief walk around the perimeter of the garden. Upon their return they might gather in the drawing room to play cards until it was time for lunch, a rather elaborate meal that in the grander houses was usually prepared under the supervision of a French cook. Afternoons were taken up by social visits or a more formal promenade along the banks of the Brenta, an exercise the Venetians had dubbed la trottata. Often the final destination of this afternoon stroll was the bottega, the village coffeehouse where summer residents caught up with the latest news from Venice. After dinner, the evening was taken up by conversation and society games. Blindman’s bluff was a favorite. In the larger villas there were also small concerts and recitals and the occasional dancing party.

Giustiniana did not really look forward to any of this. As soon as she arrived at Le Scalette she was seized by worries of a logistical nature, wondering whether it would really be easier for her to meet Andrea secretly in the country than it had been in Venice. She looked around the premises for a suitable place where they could see each other and immediately reported to her lover that there was an empty guest room next to her bedroom. More important: “There is a door not far from the bed that opens onto a secret, narrow staircase that leads to the garden. Thus we are free to go in and out without being seen.” She promised Andrea to explore the surroundings more thoroughly: “I will play the spy and check every corner of the house, and look closely at the garden as well as the caretaker’s quarters—everywhere. And I will give you a detailed report.”

The villa next door belonged to Andrea Tron, a shrewd politician who never became doge but was known to be the most powerful man in Venice (he would play an important role in launching Andrea’s career). Tron took a keen interest in his new neighbors. As an old friend of Consul Smith, he was aware that the death of Smith’s wife had created quite an upheaval among the English residents. Like all well-informed Venetians, he also knew about Andrea and Giustiniana’s past relationship and was curious to know whether it might still be simmering under the surface. He came for lunch and invited the Wynnes over to his villa. Mrs. Anna was pleased; it was good policy to be on friendly terms with such an influential man as Tron. She encouraged Giustiniana to be sociable and ingratiating toward their important neighbor. In the afternoon, Giustiniana took to sitting at the end of the garden, near the little gate that opened onto the main thoroughfare, enjoying the coolness and gazing dreamily at the passersby. Tron would often stroll past and stop for a little conversation with her.

Initially Giustiniana thought his large estate might prove useful for her nightly escapades. She had noticed that there were several casini on his property where she and Andrea could meet under cover of darkness. But thanks to her frequent trips to the servants’ quarters, where she was already forming useful alliances, she had found out that Tron’s casini were “always full of people and even if there should be an empty one, the crowds next door might make it too dangerous” for them to plan a tryst there.

In the end it seemed to her more convenient and prudent to make arrangements with their trusted friends, the Tiepolos: their villa was a little further down the road, but Andrea could certainly stay there and a secret rendezvous might be engineered more safely. Giustiniana even went so far as to express the hope that they might be able to replicate in the countryside “another Ca’ Tiepolo,” which had served them so well back in Venice. She added—her mind was racing ahead—that when Andrea came out to visit it would be best “if we meet in the morning because it is easy for me to get up before everyone else while in the evening the house is always full of people and I am constantly observed.”

As Giustiniana diligently prepared the ground for a summer of lovemaking, she did wonder whether “all this information might ever be of any use to us.” Andrea was still constantly on the move, a fleeting presence along the Brenta. When he was not with the consul at Mogliano, he was traveling to Padua on business, visiting the Memmo estate, or rushing back to Venice, where his sister, Marina, who had not been well for some time, had suddenly been taken very ill. Giustiniana might hear that Andrea was in a neighboring village, on his way to see her. Then she would hear nothing more. Every time she started to dream of him stealing into her bedroom in the dead of night or surprising her at the village bottega, a letter would reach her announcing a delay or a change of plans. So she waited and wrote to him, and waited and wrote:

I took a long walk in the garden, alone for the most part. I had your little portrait with me. How often I looked at it! How many things I said to it! How many prayers and how many protestations I made! Ah, Memmo, if only you knew how excessively I adore you! I defy any woman to love you as I love you. And we know each other so deeply and we cannot enjoy our perfect friendship or take advantage of our common interests. God, what madness! Though in these cruel circumstances it is good to know that you love me in the extreme and that I have no doubts about you: otherwise what miserable hell my life would be.

A few days later she was still on tenterhooks:

I received your letter just as we got up from the table and I flew to a small room, locked myself in, and gave myself away to the pleasure of listening to my Memmo talk to me and profess all his tenderness for me and tell me about all the things that have kept him so busy. Oh, if only you had seen me then, how gratified you would have been. I lay nonchalantly on the couch and held your letter in one hand and your portrait in the other. I read and reread [the letter] avidly, and for a moment I abandoned that pleasure to indulge in the other pleasure of looking at you. I pressed one and the other against my bosom and was overcome by waves of tenderness. Little by little I fell asleep. An hour and a half later I awoke, and now I am with you again and writing to you.

Andrea was finally on his way to see Giustiniana one evening when he was reached by a note from his brother Bernardo, telling him that their sister, Marina, was dying. Distraught, he returned to Venice and wrote to Giustiniana en route to explain his change of plans. She immediately wrote back, sending all her love and sympathy:

Your sister is dying, Memmo? And you have to rush back to Venice? … You do well to go, and I would have advised you to do the same…. But I am hopeful that she will live…. Maybe your mother and your family have written to you so pressingly only to hasten your return…. If your sister recovers, I pray you will come to see me right away…. And if she should pass away, you will need consolation, and after the time that decency requires you will come to seek it from your Giustiniana.

In this manner, days and then weeks went by. Eventually, Giustiniana stopped making plans for secret encounters. There were moments during her lonely wait when she even worried about the intensity of her feelings. What was going on in his mind, in his heart? She had his letters, of course. He was usually very good about writing to her. But his prolonged absence disoriented her. She needed so much to see him—to see him in the flesh and not simply to conjure his image in a world of fantasy. “I tremble, Memmo, at the thought that my excessive love might become a burden on you,” she wrote to him touchingly. “… I have no one else but you … Where are you now, my soul? Why can’t I be with you?”

While she longed for Andrea to appear in the country, Giustiniana also forced herself to be graceful with the consul. He called on the Wynnes regularly, coming by for lunch and sometimes staying overnight at Le Scalette, throwing the household into a tizzy because of his surprise arrivals and the late hours he kept. He took Giustiniana out on walks in the garden and spent time with the family, lavishing his attention on everyone. There was no question in anybody’s mind that the old man was completely taken with Giustiniana and that he was courting her with the intention of marriage. Even the younger children had come to assume that the consul had been “tagged” and already “belonged” to their older sister, as Giustiniana put it in her letters to Andrea.

As she waited for her lover, Giustiniana watched with mild bewilderment the restrained embraces between her sister Tonnina and her young fiancé, Alvise Renier, who was summering in a villa nearby. “Poor fellow!” she wrote to Andrea. “He takes her in his arms, holds her close to him, and still she remains indolent and moves no more than a statue. Even when she does caress him she is so cold that merely looking at her makes one angry. I don’t understand that kind of love, my soul, because you set me on fire if you so much as touch me.” She was being a little hard on her youngest sister. After all, Tonnina was only thirteen and Alvise little older than that; it was a fairly innocent first love. But of course every time Giustiniana saw them together she longed to be in the arms of her impetuous lover.

Mrs. Anna, unaware of the heavy flow of letters between Le Scalette and Ca’ Memmo, could not have been more pleased at how things were developing. With Andrea out of the way, the consul seemed increasingly comfortable with the idea of marrying Giustiniana. It was not unrealistic to expect a formal proposal by the end of the season. The other summer residents followed with relish the comings and goings at the Wynnes’. The consul’s visits were regularly commented upon at the bottega in Dolo, as was Andrea’s conspicuous absence. Were they still seeing each other behind the consul’s back, or had their love affair finally succumbed to family pressures? Giustiniana’s young Venetian friends often put her on the spot when she appeared to fetch her mail. However circumspect she had to be, she could not give up the secret pleasure of letting people know, in her own allusive way, that she still loved Andrea deeply. “Today we were talking about how the English run away from passions whilst the Italians seem to embrace them,” she reported. “I was asked somewhat maliciously what I thought of the matter. I replied that life is quite short and that a well-grounded passion for a sweet and lovable person can give one a thousand pleasures. In such cases, I said, why run away from it? The same person pressed on: ‘What if that passion is strongly opposed or if it is hurtful?’ I answered that once a passion is developed it must always be sustained…. Must I really care about what these silly people think? I have too much vanity to disown in public a choice that I have made.”

The consul’s repeated visits—and Andrea’s continued absence—created an air of inevitability about her future marriage that took its toll on Giustiniana. In public, she did her best to put on a brave front. But as soon as she was alone the gloomiest premonitions took hold of her. The hope that when it was all over—when the marriage had taken place—she would be free to give herself completely to the man she loved sustained her through the performance she was putting on day after day. But she could not rid herself of the fear that for all their clever scheming, once the consul married her she would not be able to see Andrea at all. As an English friend summering by the Brenta whispered to her one day, “I know my country well, and I am quite sure the first person Smith will ban from his house will be Memmo.” She wrote to Andrea:

Alas, I know my country too! So what is to be done? Wait until he dies to be free? And in the meantime? And afterward? He might live with me for years, while I cannot live without you for a month…. True, any other husband would stop me from seeing you without having the advantages Smith has to offer, including his old age…. But everything is so uncertain, and it seems to me that the future can only be worse than the present. Of course it would be wrong for the two of us to get married. I wouldn’t want your ruin even if it gave me all the happiness I would feel living with you. No, my Memmo! I love you in the most disinterested and sincerest way possible, exactly as you should be loved. I do not believe we shall ever be entirely happy, but all the same I will always be yours, I will adore you, and I will depend on you all my life…. So I will do what pleases you, [but remember] that if Smith were to ask for my hand and my Memmo were not entirely happy about it I would instantly abandon Smith and everything else with him, for my true good fortune is to belong to you and you alone.

In August Marina’s health briefly improved and Andrea was finally free to go to the country to see Giustiniana. He was not well—still recovering from a bad fever that had forced him to bed. But he decided to make the trip out to Dolo anyway and take advantage of the Tiepolos’ open invitation. Giustiniana was in a frenzy of excitement. “Come quickly, my heart, now that your sister’s condition allows you to…. I would do anything, anything for the pleasure of seeing you.” It was too risky for Andrea to visit her house, so she had arranged to see him in the modest home of the mother of one of the servants, thanks to the intercession of a local priest in whom she had immediately confided. “I went to see it, and I must tell you it’s nothing more than a hovel,” she warned, “but it should suffice us.” Alternatively, they could meet in the caretaker’s apartment, which was reached “by taking a little staircase next to the stables.”

These preparations were unnecessary. Andrea arrived by carriage late in the night, exhausted after a long detour to Padua he had made on behalf of the ever-demanding consul. He left his luggage at the Tiepolos’ and immediately went off to surprise Giustiniana by sneaking up to her room from the garden.

The following morning, after lingering in bed in a joyful haze, she scribbled a note and sent it to Andrea care of the Tiepolos: “My darling, lovable Memmo, how grateful I feel! Can a heart be more giving? Anyone can pay a visit to his lover. But the circumstances in which you came to see me last night, and the manner and grace you showed me—nobody, nobody else could have done it! I am so happy and you are wonderful to me. When will I be allowed to show you all my tenderness?”

Giustiniana fretted about Andrea’s health. He had not looked well, and she feared a relapse: “You have lost some weight, and you looked paler than usual…. I didn’t want to tell you, my precious, but you left me worried. For the love of me, please take care of yourself. How much you must have suffered riding all night in the stagecoach, and possibly still with a fever…. My soul, the pleasure of seeing you is simply too, too costly.” Yet she was so hungry for him after his long absence that she could hardly bear not to see him now that he was so close: “Maybe you will come again this evening…. Do not expose yourself to danger, for I would die if I were the cause of any ailment…. If you have fully recovered, do come, for I shall be waiting for you with the greatest impatience, but if you are still not well then take care of yourself, my soul. I will come to see you; I will … ah, but I cannot. What cruelty!”

Andrea settled in at the Tiepolos’ for the rest of summer. His health fully regained and his sister apparently out of immediate danger, he was anxious to catch up on the time not spent with Giustiniana. They were soon back to their old routine, working their messengers to exhaustion and conniving with trusted allies to set up secret meetings. Giustiniana’s muslins were swishing again as she rushed off on the sly for quick visits to the “hovel”—which she now called “our pleasure house”—or to the caretaker’s, to the Tiepolos’, or even to the village bottega if they were feeling especially daring. When they were not together, they sent notes planning their next escapade. Giustiniana was in heaven. There were no worries in her mind, no dark clouds in the sky: “Am I really entirely in your heart? My Memmo, how deeply I feel my happiness! What delightful pleasure I feel in possessing you. There were times, I confess, in which I doubted my own happiness. Now, Memmo, I believe in you completely, and I am the happiest woman in the world. What greater proof of tenderness, of friendship, of true affection can I possibly want from you, my precious one? My heart and soul, you are inimitable. And it will be a miracle if so much pleasure and joy do not drive me entirely mad.”

In the tranquil atmosphere of the Venetian summer, when the days were held together by card games, a little gossip, and an evening trottata, the sudden burst of activity between the Tiepolos’ villa and Le Scalette did not go unnoticed. There was much new talk about Andrea and Giustiniana among the summer crowd. Even certain members in the Wynne household grew worried. Aunt Fiorina, always sympathetic to their cause, had been aware of the intense correspondence between the two lovers over the course of the summer but had refrained from making an issue of it. When she learned that Andrea and Giustiniana were actually seeing each other, however, she put her foot down and subjected her niece to “a long rebuke.” The stakes with the consul were too high for them to be playing such a dangerous game, she explained.

Fiorina’s alarm presaged worse things to come. Andrea went back to Venice on family business for a few days. Giustiniana wrote to him several times, but the letters never reached him; her messenger had been intercepted. Someone in the Wynne household—perhaps in the servants’ quarters—had betrayed Giustiniana and handed the letters over to Mrs. Anna. The last lines of a frantic message to Andrea are the only fragment that has survived to give us a sense of the panic and chaos that ensued:

… the most violent remedies. It is known that I have written to Venice, but not to whom! Everyone, my Memmo, is spying on me…. Don’t abandon me now, and don’t take any chances by writing to me. I won’t lose you, but if something violent were to happen, I feel capable of anything. If you leave me I shall die, my soul!

Alas, Mrs. Anna knew very well to whom Giustiniana had written in Venice because she was also in possession of some of Andrea’s letters—letters she had intercepted before they could be delivered to her daughter. She confronted Giustiniana, shaking with anger. “All day was an absolute hell—if Hell can really be that horrible,” Giustiniana wrote to Andrea a few days later, when she was finally able to seclude herself (“I must write to you where and when I can”). At the height of her fury Mrs. Anna threatened to sue Andrea and “expose him as a seducer who upsets peaceful families,” she raged, “for the letters I have in my hands prove that he is just that.” Giustiniana pleaded for mercy with such force and conviction that eventually she managed to calm her mother down. In tears, Mrs. Anna withdrew her threat but warned her daughter there would not be another reprieve: “I will have you watched all the time, I will keep my eyes wide open, I will know everything. And remember that I have enough in my hands to ruin Signor Memmo.”

The worst was avoided—what could have been more nightmarish than seeing their love story torn to shreds in a courtroom? But the betrayal had suddenly exposed the secret life of the two lovers. The places they met, their secret arrangements, their promises of lifelong love and devotion—everything was now known to Mrs. Anna. She had a list of the names of their messengers and accomplices. There was not much she could do about the Tiepolos except prohibit her daughter from setting foot in their house. But within the Wynne household, retribution was swift. The servants who had abetted the lovers were given a scolding and punished harshly. Alvisetto, who had been in on the whole thing from the start, was sent away.

There is something deeply sad about Alvisetto’s dismissal, which reminds us to what degree a servant’s life was in the hands of his padrone—his master. In general the master of the house and his wife had a formal, even distant relationship with the servants. But the younger members of the household had a closer rapport with the house staff. They would often appear in the servants’ quarters to trade gossip or ask a favor. And it was not uncommon for a daughter of the house to confide some of her secrets to a maid (or for a son to seek sexual favors). But it was always an imbalanced and ultimately ambiguous relationship. And there was often as much room for treachery as there was for connivance—on both sides. After all, Giustiniana found her allies in the kitchen at Le Scalette, but she had probably found her betrayer there as well. Goldoni made fun of the complicated relations between masters and servants in one of his most popular plays. But poor Alvisetto was nothing like “the wily and dumb” Truffaldino, the main character in A Servant for Two Masters. One has the feeling that, all along, he had been forced by Giustiniana and Andrea to cooperate with them against his better judgment. Now he was being made to pay, very dearly, for a mess that was not of his making. And they could do nothing to save him.

The two lovers managed to resume communications within a few days. Giustiniana barricaded herself in a kindly peasant’s home on the property, where she hastily scribbled her notes to Andrea. But seeing each other was out of the question, given the circumstances. “Ah, Memmo, what must I do? … Will I ever see you again? I love you more than ever, but I am losing you! … Help me, tell me what to do.” It was not long before they found a solution. Andrea suggested he write a letter to Mrs. Anna, professing his undying love for Giustiniana and offering to marry her in a couple of years if Consul Smith did not make an offer. It was a bluff: Andrea and Giustiniana both knew he was not planning to make good on the promise. But he thought it would convince Mrs. Anna that his intentions were honorable and she might therefore allow them to see each other. It was a risky strategy for a short-term gain. Nevertheless, Giustiniana agreed to the plan and decided to bring her aunt Fiorina in on it to a point—telling her about the letter Andrea wished to write to Mrs. Anna but without explaining to her that it was a deception. Aunt Fiorina responded with mixed feelings. “There is no denying that Memmo loves you and that he is a gentleman,” she said to her niece. His proposal was “very reasonable.” The problem, as she saw it, was getting Mrs. Anna to consider listening to him. But she was willing to help.

Even with Aunt Fiorina on their side, Giustiniana felt that, in the end, success or failure hinged on Andrea finding the right tone and words with which to address her mother. Her instructions to him were very precise—and they showed a considerable determination to take charge of the situation.

You will begin your letter by complaining that I have not written to you. You will tell me that you know in your heart that I love you deeply. You will assure me that you love me in the extreme and that to prove it you had written to my mother because you wanted her to hear an important suggestion you had to make—at which point you will copy the letter you have prepared for her. The most important thing (and here, my dear, you need to be artful and I want you to trust me) is to show yourself resolute in offering to write up a document in which, as you have said, you will promise to marry me in two years if Smith or some better party does not come along and propose to me. Give several reasons why it would be advantageous for me to marry you and add that it is your deep love for me that brings you to make this proposition, which you already know will be embraced by me with all my heart. And say you will have to wait because your present circumstances do not allow you to go through with the proposal at this time but in two years things should happen that could make us happy and comfortable for the rest of our lives…. [Add] that we would be very careful to keep this promise a secret.

It is hard to imagine that deep in her heart Giustiniana, though fully aware it was all a scheme, did not hope it would all actually come true, and that in two years’ time she would be married to Andrea. If she did, she kept it to herself.

Andrea struggled over a first draft. Giustiniana showed it to Fiorina, who was “satisfied with [Andrea’s] sentiments” but a little daunted by the resentment he expressed toward Mrs. Anna. “She told me to tell you that to seduce that woman one must flatter her—not be aggressive.” She asked Andrea to try again. “My love,” she added to encourage him, “what happiness will come our way if we manage to deceive her! Either Smith will marry me, in which case we won’t need [the subterfuge], or he won’t marry me, in which case she certainly won’t take away from the man whom she thinks will one day marry me the freedom to be with me from time to time.”

Andrea’s second draft, however, was even more disappointing.

My Memmo, this is not the sort of letter that will get us what we want…. It is weak and useless, so you will understand why I haven’t shown it to my mother and not even to my aunt. The other one was stronger and would have served our purpose wonderfully if you had simply deleted the few lines in which you insulted my mother…. In this one I see only the lover…. So write a new letter or rewrite the first one the way I told you to…. Send it immediately…. My aunt has already asked me if it had arrived, and it would be a pity if she saw us so unhurried in a matter of such importance