A Venetian Affair - Andrea di Robilant in interview.

Author: Andrew Lawless

 

Andrea di Robilant is a soft spoken Italian journalist, with just the slightest hint of an American accent coming through, (he has American family roots on his mother’s side, and for a number of years was the La Stampa correspondent in America). He is more likely to be found writing about International Politics than 18^th Century love stories, but strangely enough, through a family connection he came to write his first book on precisely that era. “The book began when my father came home one day with an box filled with old letters, that he had found in the house that he had grown up in, in Venice. So we started to pull these old letters out, and started to try to figure out what they were about. We didn’t know who the characters involved were. We were intrigued, as many of the letters were written in a secret code, there were pages with what seemed to be strange hieroglyphics. My father then decided to try to crack the code, and once he had cracked it, he transcribed the letters. From all this work emerged this rather incredible love story, between an ancestor of ours - Andrea Memmo, who we knew very little about - and this Anglo-Venetian girl Giustiniana Wynne. My father decided to do some research on these characters, hoping to write a book eventually. Alas, he was murdered in 1997 [Editor’s note: Signor Di Robilant sr. was murdered in Florence, in what remains an unsolved case] so it seemed natural to me to pick up things where he had left them, and to try to write the book he would like to have written. I was then living in the United States. I decided to make it an American project, to find an American Publisher, and to write it in English.”

The book A Venetian Affair pieces together the clandestine love affair brilliantly. At times a biography, at times a history, and always with a page turning captivating quality. The story is set against the rigid social structure of the Venetian Republic. Di Robilant explains “It was a social structure that was very old, obsolete, and anachronistic in many ways. It was interesting because on the one hand it was governed by very rigid customs. It was a very closed society where the scions, the sons and daughters who belonged to the Venetian oligarchy, always married between themselves and all of this was governed in a very rigid way. The inquisitors had a strong say in making sure the customs were observed, because they felt that was the way to make the Republic prosper. It was a family-based Republic, and the rules and regulations were designed to foster this system and they were very rigid in this. On the other hand, this was precisely what was causing the decline of the political class in Venice: it was very closed and inbred”.

Warming to his theme, he continues “Venice was also small, while being relatively large on a European level, it was still a town: everybody knew each other. It’s not as if the members of the ruling class only saw each other. There was a great deal of promiscuity, and friendships, intimacy and frequentations, so it was a contradictory situation. On the one hand, it was a vibrant and mixed situation with a great deal of crossovers between the social classes. On the other hand, the superstructure was very rigid, so when it came to serious matters such as marriage, the superstructure would take over and be enforced by this rigid system”.

This vivid portrayal of Venice interested me greatly when reading the book. While initially approaching the book with trepidation, and a vague disinterest, presuming that an 18^th century love story would have little to interest, I soon became intrigued by the portrait offered of Venetian society. It is at times far from complimentary. Di Roblilant portrays the blossoming of the forbidden love between Andrea and Giustiniana, and their scheme to further the relationship. Society’s norms meant that while Giustiniana remained unmarried all eyes would remain on her (in particular the scrutiny of her ever vigilant mother), thus making loving trysts nigh on impossible. The best solution to the dilemma, as proposed by the lovers, was to marry Giustiniana off to an elderly widower, thus gaining an independence to maintain an affair. Actions that might seem morally dubious to say the least. Di Robilant is neutral in the book, preferring not to judge, but in conversation he is more defensive of his protagonists: “I have a great deal of sympathy. They were trying to do the best they could in difficult circumstances. Whatever they did, and whatever might seem to us morally dubious, it was done for love. And so I certainly didn’t want to appear judgmental. For someone in Andrea’s position, he had to be realistic, and had to find a practical solution to the problem. He was the son of one of the most important families in Venice and if he had eloped or run away, it would have been no good for either of them. Gustiniana understood this, and that was why in the end she was a partner with him in their plans. It’s true that the seduction of an old man, such as Consul Smith, or later on with the French widower La Pouplinière might seem a very crude and cynical way of dealing with the problem, but I see it rather as an attempt by people who were deeply rooted in their own century, to come to terms with the customs of the age. I might point out as well that having failed in these objectives, they did try their best to get married”.

There are curious power dynamics at play in the relationship, and in the book. Andrea starts off the book as the seemingly more experienced lover who counsels Giustiniana in how she must comport herself, and it is he that leads the way in the plot to marry her off. When these ideas fail, he does his best to organise a marriage, which due to the society’s rigid structure is doomed to failure”. Andrea devoted an incredible amount of energy and ingenuity in trying to convince his family and the authorities that they should be allowed to get married, and it was incredibly brave and courageous, so I give him his due for that. One can’t forget that a man like Andrea was a child of his time – one can’t expect that he should have behaved in ways that might make us feel more comfortable. He was very different at the same time from his contemporaries; I have a lot of sympathy and respect for him”.

Giustiniana however is the real protagonist of the book, and truly comes to life in Di Robilant’s descriptions. While he may defend Andrea’s behaviour, it’s easy to see who captivated the author during his research.” I have a great deal of sympathy for Giustiniana: she was a terrific girl, bright, creative, with a wonderful spirit, which comes across in her letters. It would have been great to know her! She takes over because in the end she’s the figure that bridges the centuries. She has a foot in the past but also in the future. She’s a child of the Enlightenment but she’s also a pre-romantic and this is why she finds Venice so uncomfortable and stifling, and ultimately why she decides not to live there. There’s a wonderful line in one of her letters, written in Padova on her return from England, where she explains to Andrea “You have to live in Venice. I don’t”. This is the heart of the matter. Andrea was so steeped in the Venetian tradition, his whole life was that of his family, which in turn was that of Venice. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to free himself from these bonds, that his destiny was that of the city and that was not the case for Giustiniana. They both saw this clearly. They realised in the end that this would be an obstacle that they could not surmount. She did not want to be suffocated. The destiny of Venice was not hers. She wanted to build her own life, and to free herself from the shackles of Venetian history and tradition.

She was infused with the time that was coming, and so was able to build herself that life, a life of independence, of creativity etc. The other extraordinary thing is how close they remained for the rest of their lives. They remained best friends, and what more can you expect from a wonderful love story, but to remain close for the rest of your life – Until death do us part - because there’s that wonderful scene described by Andrea’s daughter, when Giustiniana is dying, and Andrea, an old man, arrives to be with her in her final moments. It’s telling of how deep their love was and their friendship, even though they had been unable to marry. In fact perhaps it was because they were unable to marry... Maybe things would have been very different”.

The story, while set in Venice, paints a wider picture of Europe at a pivotal moment. Giustiniana and family leave Venice, and travel through a Europe convulsed by war and strife. We follow Giustiniana through a provincial and boring Milano, through Torino, to Paris and its decadence. Casanova appears a number of times, and it’s a testament to the strength of the story that he easily remains a supporting actor. The glimpses of Europe outside of Venice beg the question, would their love story have been different had they lived in a different city, without the specific structures of the Venetian Republic? “Well, Andrea felt the weight of tradition from the Republic, very much on his shoulders. He was very lucid about this. He knew that he would not be able to escape this destiny. This is why I feel for him in the end. Not only was he a prisoner of his own destiny, but he was lucid and intelligent enough to realise it. In this sense he was very admirable. It’s hard to imagine what would have happened in another city. In Venice, his family carried a very big burden, and it was all on his shoulders, because he was the oldest son. The old men in the oligarchy looked upon Andrea as a man with great promise, that he would become a great statesman, as in fact he did become.”

Time as much as location plays its part in destroying the chance of union between the two lovers. They lived during the dying days of the Venetian Republic; had they lived a generation later perhaps all would have been different? “Certainly it would have been different. They probably would have married, but that also begs the question, to what degree did the impediment and the obstacles thrown their way fuel the passion. In other words had everything been easy and possible perhaps their love would have lost its passion. There’s nothing like secrecy and clandestinity to make love grow. There are lines in Giustiniana’s letters that suggest that. It’s hard to speculate about how things would have happened in a later era. The interesting thing to me is how the story illuminates their period, and shows how things worked then. The enduring value of this love story to me was precisely because it is so emblematic of the time, of that moment in history in Venice. If you look at it that way, Andrea embodies the decaying Venetian Republic, while Giustiniana represents the flowering romantic period, the future. So these two lives are irreconcilable”.

The real value of the book is precisely that, while it tells a story of two specific individuals, it also paints us a living picture of the 18th century. Many reviews have focused on the explicit nature of some of the letters: Andrea for instance includes his semen in one letter sent to Giustiniana (who, it should be said, remained slightly taken aback at this arduous show of devotion), but these are just part of the complex portrayal that reminds us that these were real people, with similar passions and emotions to our own, rather than dull portraits. “I loved writing about history. It combines all the journalistic skills such as researching, sleuthing etc. The skills were useful in uncovering the different aspects of the story. I always loved history, so it was wonderful to tell the story, to be able to find a story like this that brings history alive in such a vivid way is a rare opportunity. This is possible precisely because these were clandestine love letters – what could be more intimate. It’s one thing having regular letters, but it’s another thing entirely with clandestine letters, there’s an intimacy that allows you to reach back into the recesses of real human history, and there’s something very exciting about that”.