It has been a year without highlights. I have been again in Dresden and Leipzig (where the roasted larks are succulent as ever!)
I have counted books, in and out, in and out.
I have written.
I have been tortured by Feldkirchner, who tweaks rolls of manuscript out of my pocket and drops them on dirty floors for me to scrabble for.
I have missed you and worried about you.
Your Casanova.
September 13th, 1791
Cecilia,
Where is your letter? Why have I not heard from you? I hope fervently it is just the post-chaise that is delayed.
Next to me there is a brocaded chair, grander than the one I occupy with my shabby shelf. There, I thought, there Cecilia ought to be sitting, just opposite me; it was the finer seat, I left it unoccupied for you.
I have a companion, though, who keeps it warm for you – I have acquired a pet, a little terrier whom I have christened Melampyge. He watches me as I work and I can summon his affectionate presence with a glance or a soft word. He has disgraced me in Teplitz, by publicly impregnating a bitch in the street, and you can imagine the commentary his exertions drew regarding his master.
The servant Feldkirchner continues with his vendetta and it has broken out into violence. Just two weeks ago he had one of his brutish minions beat me with a stick in a dark street of Dux. I still limp. I have no recourse but my pen. I have now finished twenty-one letters to Feldkirchner, which, when published, will destroy his immortality. I am easy again, the way you feel when you finish a painting of someone you dislike.
After this distraction, I work tirelessly on the memoirs. I think the work is justified. One day, I think, they will be translated into all languages. As you know, I write in French – the libidinous French will buy it. We poor Italians cannot afford such works, and not enough of us can read. It needs a big, sophisticated readership, my book, of people who know the joys of life. Of course the nature of my life story means that some decent countries will forbid it, and its rarity will make it as desirable as pearls. How they will clamour for my book, hide it in their garments, read it secretly by candlelight!
It is only after uttering these three thousand pages that I suddenly realise the effect that I shall have. All my confessions of louche behaviour will be believed at face value but all the truths I tell that reflect well on me will be disbelieved. I shall be obliged to make enemies by revealing matters that show people I have known in a bad or immoral light. If I do not give their real names, they will be guessed. Either way, I shall make trouble! How the husbands and wives of Europe must be shuddering at the thought of these memoirs! Venice will not be able to forget me once they are published. They will make a mockery of this exile, for absent in body I shall still be on every lip. I suspect they will talk about me long after they forget the names of the doges.
Yet I do not wish her ill, La Serenissima.
You know, Cecilia, I loved it all, I loved to see our Venetian women, seeming always in masquerade. I remember those veils of glittering taffeta, from under which the women would dart a glance of fire. And the black veils of the married women, and the winter capes lined with fur from the bellies of squirrels … And the Jews, the Turks, the Armenians, the Persians, the Moors, the Greeks and the Slavs, all in their native costumes … How I miss the colours and the masks and the fairy-tale life of Venice! We were such a happy city!
Here everyone is pale grey, dressed in pale grey. They speak pale grey, they eat pale grey porridge, and we spend hours at the grey window pane transfixed by the slow grey rain outside. They tell me another hard winter is coming, all over Europe. I think of white winters in Venice and the softness of those freezing, forgiving mists.
Your Casanova.
PS I hear that Beckford’s and my mutual friend Hamilton has married the delectable little Emma. How long before he is wearing the horns?
1792
Dearest Cecilia,
The grip of the ice must have loosened from Venice now? Tell me it has. What a tragedy! Since you told me of your father’s death I have worried more than ever for you. You are without a real man to protect you. I do not like the sound of your brother-in-law. And your sister – how does she manage now? To lose a little child is the most grievous thing. Be kind to her, Cecilia. And your mother? She is young to be a widow, and in so shocking a circumstance.
Speaking of shocks, I hear stories from France that curdle my blood. I shall never return there. I am too much afraid of the executions of an unbridled people. They have gone mad for blood, now that they have tasted it.
Feldkirchner treats me as a drivelling old goat, a satyr, and he makes me feel like one. I hide from him. I sit under the white arches in the library and I dream of the high blue sky above Venice and the dark stars above us in the gondola.
When I close my eyes I think that you stand in front of me. Do you remember those kisses behind the frame at the Palazzo Mocenigo? And against the well in Campo San Vio? If only you could paint one for me, so I could keep it here and look at it.
Your Casanova.
1793
My darling Cecilia,
I am so glad you were not in Paris during the evil times. You are safer in Venice, where I can think of you in your studio. You are now so famous that the celebrities will come to you. Make them do that. It will add to your price. You will not have to pack your bath with canvasses and take them on the road. Unless you want to. Unless you seek novelty
So I suppose you will, after all! One day, when Europe is a safer place, when the French have finally finished killing each other. But not yet.
Ah, I am so lonely, so lonely here. But I will not be alone. I have here my letter to you. And my memories. In my memoirs, I have found myself the author of so many delightful comedies. I can make myself laugh, even when alone in a room. I am satisfied to find that I have done more good than evil in this world. I have been able to make people happy. There is not a person in my life who does not owe at least a moment of contentment – if not ecstasy – to me. And I think of this: if I were such a moral leper as the world has painted me, why was I made so welcome in every court in the civilised world?
And there is good news – the Count has at last dismissed the evil Feldkirchner. May all your enemies be sent away likewise in humiliation. You never write to me of problems or wickedness, Cecilia, but I know that you must find them in your life. You are only a human being, like me.
Do not protect me. If there is something I should know, please tell me.
Your Casanova.
1794
Darling Cecilia,
I continue to revise my memoirs, this time for the honour of the Prince de Ligne, uncle of my host, who wants to read them, surely only to establish that he has indeed bedded more women than the great Casanova. Well, in the heart of his loins, the Prince knows that he cannot compare, because his combats are like so many notches on a stick, and mine … well, I have no need to tell you.
I have decided not to continue with my Dictionary of Cheeses. I don’t want to dilute the gravitas of my true literary memorial, which will, of course, be my memoirs.
I am sending you a miniature of myself. I should explain that the satin jacket is the one I mention often in my letters. (It has rubbed up against minor royalty in several capital cities.) I have caused quite a sensation in it in drawing rooms on the Thames and the Seine. I have slept in it through entire nights on seats of carriages. It has travelled in diligences, cabriolets, diables, berlins, has been spattered with my vomit when I became sick with the constant motion. It is ageing with me. Like me, on closer inspection, it’s no longer as good as in the picture. The cravat is a real showpiece; I bought it on a trip to Paris. By pure chance I happen to be wearing this cravat now, while I am writing. It, too, is getting older. Like me, it has outlived its time. Louis XV is dead. Louis XVI is fallen under the guillotine, but my cravat lives on, yellowed, but at least it is not spattered with blood and at least it is still overshadowed b
y my head.
I am glad you cannot see my breeches, as they are darned, which is a great shame to me. Looking at them, I recall the scandal of the newfangled breeches without codpieces in Spain. The only way the church could stop the fashion, which had spread like wildfire, was to proclaim that executioners alone were entitled to wear the unpieced trousers. I believe that the codpieces became yet more prominent after that edict, for no one wanted to be mistaken for an executioner!
Laughing at that memory delivers me another, of the Duchess of Villandarias, who was a famous nymphomaniac and utterly pious. When the uterine fury seized her, nothing could contain her. She attacked the man who had excited her instinct and he had to satisfy her, then and there. It happened several times in public places when I was in Spain, and all the people who were present simply had to take to their heels, or watch.
Any woman’s womb, of course, becomes furious when it’s not occupied by the matter for which nature has made it. The womb is an animal so self-willed and so untameable that a wise woman, far from opposing its whims, should defer to them. Yet the ferocious organ is susceptible to a certain amount of management, I have found …
My little Melampyge is no more. I have wept for hours and pronounced a funeral oration in Latin. Princess Lobkowitz has sent me a new dog from Berlin, and little Finette turns out to be as faithful a lover as I could want. I used to dislike dogs, with their eyes like reproachful saints and their stench like ancient sausages. But then I realised how often dogs are blamed for the eructations of their owners. Anyway, this new little dog is as delicate as a well-bred young girl. She leaves the room to spare me if she must perform any embarrassing function.
I used to think there were no embarrassing functions. I must have grown old, Cecilia.
Your Casanova.
1795
Darling Cecilia,
The Prince de Ligne has now read the first volumes of my memoirs. I quote his verdict: ‘One third … made me laugh, one third gave me an erection, one third gave me food for thought.’
I have made an attempt to escape my prison. I requested letters of introduction to the Duke of Weimar. I went there and waited in antechambers; no one would place me as librarian, chamberlain, anything. After six fruitless weeks I returned, penniless, to Dux. I do not think to leave it again, Cecilia.
However, I have been home scarcely a week and the insults have started. This night there were strawberries for dessert, and everyone was served before me. When the plate came to me, there were none left.
I was left looking at the empty plate and I tried to console myself with its beauty. It’s my favourite Sèvres service with bluebells at the bottom of each bowl, leaving something to be discovered at the end of each crab soup or berry compote, as if to compensate for the sorrow that this one good thing is at an end. I rejoice in the elegance of the diamond-shaped serving plates and the coffee service with its vessels, tiny as egg cups, seeming too fragile to hold their strong flavours. I know that I am fortunate to live in a place where such things are still part of everyday life.
Love, kisses as always,
Your starving Casanova.
PS I am distraught to hear that my miniature never reached you. The artist is gone. I cannot have another made. This is the footman’s work. He hates me.
1796
Dearest Cecilia,
I am accused of fathering a child on the daughter of the gatekeeper! How potent remains the reputation of the great Casanova, even at seventy-one years of age! And Dorothy Kleer, the young woman in question, is one I would be honoured to impregnate. But, alas, I cannot claim the honour.
Still, it gives me pause for thought. I start counting. It is fourteen years since I was in your arms, inside your delicious flesh, Cecilia, and still I remember every sensation. I try to count the number of times and the number of places where we gave each other proofs of our ardent affection. I count the minutes I waited outside your window, that first night, for you to fall into my arms.
As I write this I hear news that Napoleon has occupied Brescia. How close he is to you now! So the noble Venetians think that he will deliver them from revolution? That he is the man of the moment? The latest novelty! How can they be so naive? What revolution? The factions in Venice are tiny; no one can take them seriously. But it’s a good confidence trick on Napoleon’s part, if he can get away with it. I fear he will. Then Napoleon will sell Venice like a gilded bauble.
Our city will not fall in glorious battle but will be sold to the first comer without even taking part in the transaction. Venice will become a harlot and Napoleon will be her pimp. Austria, I suspect, will be the client.
Your Casanova.
June, 1797
Dear Cecilia,
Your letters are heavy with horrors.
So the Great Council has voted itself into extinction? May 12th, 1797, then, marks the end of the known world for me. Venice is dead.
When you tell me that, at the end, Venice put up a tiny fight against Napoleon, I feel warm and proud. Of course it was the poor and dispossessed who rallied a little. They had nothing to lose, or rather, Venice was all that they had. I can picture them running around the streets, screaming for San Marco, spitting at the nobles … Yes, the People know very well who has betrayed them.
When you tell me that the French have entered the city, I think that it is a thousand and a half years since Venice saw an enemy on our stones.
When you tell me that Napoleon has ordered the Libro d’oro burned, I have mixed feelings in my breast. It is all summed up for me when you describe Marina Benzona dancing half-naked around the ‘liberty tree’ at San Marco wearing an Athenian petticoat split to the flank! A beautiful woman, gone to the bad, just like Venice! In burning the Libro d’oro, Napoleon has burned the list of all your clients, you tell me. He has also burned the characters in my memoirs!
I, too, preserve happiness and lust, as you do with your pictures. You see, I, too, am a portrait painter. You paint the faces of counts and princes who come to Venice to find you; in my memoirs I paint whole courts – the France of Madame de Pompadour, the Prussia of Frederick, the England of George. I lift the veil on all of them! And I am freer than you. For you confine yourself, by necessity, to the glittering cages of the rich who can afford you, while I move easily from garret to ballroom, from hovel to palace, from rich nation or gypsy encampment.
The panorama stretches in front of me now. For it is finished, the memoirs, the final revision – the record of my life until twenty-six years ago. I know now I will never touch the rest, and indeed the last twenty years, with the exception of loving and being loved by you, have been of little worth to me, or to a reader. So you will remain my secret, Cecilia. The way I won you and those nights of ours that I cannot recover will never be known to the world.
The more I write, the more I see that all things are linked together. I also see that we are the instigators of events in which we are not merely actors. Hence anything important that happens to us in this world is only what is bound to happen to us. By our actions, we consent to the consequences of them. I think now on my months in the Leads, and I realise that the punishment was not an outright act of despotism. I had abused my freedom, knowingly. I had stolen joy from fate. Fate stole freedom from me. It is like that.
That is what is happening to Venice. Poor fluttering little Venice, beautiful as a pleasure-craft, sunk under the warship of Napoleon’s implacable will. Mark my words, Napoleon is not a good man for a happy city. Happiness is irrelevant to him. So is charm, beauty, lightness, richness, flirtation and rich food. He will grind our happiness under his little heel. But Venice consented to the sacrifice of her felicity by her heedless pursuit of it.
Your Casanova.
November 1st, 1797
Dearest Cecilia,
I feel detached, but diminished. How is an exile to feel about the Fall of the Serene Republic? It seems Casanova and Venice have succumbed together. I think we both have been ancient so long that no one though
t we could grow feeble and die. We seemed to be immortal. I speak still, of course, both of Venice and myself.
I have summed up my age: I have been happy as only a Venetian can. I have slept in satin and walked through moonlit mud. I have unlaced silk to find pestilence. I have lifted a crude shift to find Heaven. But best of all I have known you, Cecilia Cornaro, heart of my heart. And that has been a pleasure unmixed with corruption, for once. I have known what it is to love someone greater and dearer to me than myself.
I am sick, darling. Nothing works any more.
Even so, death is not welcome here in my soul. I am not so curious to find out whether I am immortal: a truth obtained at the cost of the life of the senses is too expensive.
Now we are on the edge of something else. I don’t like the smell of this new century. I shall have no truck with it. I sense something cold and selfish about it.
Love what is good and not what is dangerous, Cecilia, even if the bad thing is a novelty. You know how I fear for you. Do not be led into temptation by something that seems to be new. It may merely be an old evil dressed up in new clothes.
Your lover,
Casanova.
May 28th, 1798
Darling Cecilia,
I am ill. The pain is desperate.
The vultures are gathering. My nephew by marriage Carlo Angiolini is here, which probably means that I shall shortly die. He is kind, if stiff.
Elise von Recke has promised me crayfish soup but as ever I am disappointed. The rivers are swollen, and the crayfish will not allow themselves to be caught. As I turn in bed I fancy that I smell the frittata of fish in the Venetian calle. My taste-memories come back, like truant lovers. In my dream I enjoy a meal of Venetian fish dishes, one after another, sarde in saor, baccalà, crab soup. From the kitchens downstairs comes, no doubt, the ineffable stink of Bohemian cabbage, as ever, but I cannot detect it. My senses have lost all sense of themselves; I am disoriented. By this more than anything I know that the end is near.