[Illustration: VICTOR EMMANUEL]
BUILDERS OF
UNITED ITALY
BY
RUPERT SARGENT HOLLAND
WITH EIGHT PORTRAITS
[Illustration printer's imprint]
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1908
Copyright, 1908,
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
Published, August, 1908
THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
RAHWAY, N. J.
_To
That Spirit of Italy
Which Calls to Men in All Lands
Like the Charmed Voice of
Their Own History_
There is no history more alternately desperate and hopeful than that of
the scattered Italian states in their efforts to form a united nation.
Many forces fuse in the progress of such a popular movement, and each
force has its own particular spokesman or leader. The prophet and the
soldier, the poet and the statesman, each gives his share of genius.
Those men who seemed to represent the most potent forces in this history
are included here.
CONTENTS
PAGE
ALFIERI, THE POET 1
MANZONI, THE MAN OF LETTERS 40
GIOBERTI, THE PHILOSOPHER 63
MANIN, THE "FATHER OF VENICE" 87
MAZZINI, THE PROPHET 125
CAVOUR, THE STATESMAN 165
GARIBALDI, THE CRUSADER 223
VICTOR EMMANUEL, THE KING 283
[Illustration: ALFIERI]
ALFIERI, THE POET
Alfieri was more than a great poet, he was the discoverer of a
new national life in the scattered states of Italy. Putting aside
consideration of his tragedies as literature, no student of the
eighteenth century can fail to appreciate his influence over Italian
thought. It was as though a people who had forgotten their nationality
suddenly heard anew the stories of their common folk-lore. The race of
Dante, of Petrarch, and of Tasso spoke again in the words of Alfieri.
It was high time that disunited Italy should find a poet's voice. There
was no vigor, no resolution, no originality from Turin to Naples, people
of all classes were sunk in apathy. No wonder that foreign lovers of
mediæval Italy turned their eyes away from the seats of so much former
glory; there seemed little hope in a people given over to trivial
personal enjoyment. There was no liberty of speech or action--sentiment,
reason, passion were all measured by the grand-ducal yard-stick.
At about the middle of this artificial eighteenth century, in 1749,
Vittorio Alfieri was born at Asti, in Piedmont. His parents were of the
upper rank in the close social order of the small kingdom, his father
Antonio Alfieri, a man of independent means, who, as one biographer
has it, "had never soiled his mind with ambition or his hands with
labor." His mother was the widow of the Marquis of Cacherano, and had
two daughters and a son before she married Antonio Alfieri. After the
latter's death, which occurred when Vittorio was scarcely a year old,
she married again, and it was this stepfather, the Chevalier Giacinto
Alfieri di Magliano, who stood in place of father to Vittorio and his
sister, as well as to their older half-brother and sisters. Although
these other children were near his own age the boy Vittorio seems to
have passed a lonely childhood, driven into unusual solitude by the
waywardness of his nature.
While still a child, Alfieri was sent away to the Academy of Turin, the
first of those journeys in which he was later to take such delight.
He cared little for books or study of any sort, he was over-critical,
and yet without the ambition to perfect himself. He spent his time, as
he says, in his famous memoirs, in acquiring a profound ignorance of
whatever he was meant to learn; and he left the Academy not only with
no knowledge of what were termed the humanities, but with no interest
in any language, speaking a mixed jargon of French and Piedmontese,
and reading practically nothing. Knowledge was held in small esteem by
all classes at that particular time, and the priests, who formed the
teaching class, were at small pains to spread a zeal for learning which
they did not share. Alfieri says, "We translated the Lives of Cornelius
Nepos; but none of us, perhaps not even the masters, knew who these men
were whose lives we translated, nor where was their country, nor in what
times they lived, nor under what government, nor what any government
was!"
In spite of the extraordinary incapacity of his teachers, Alfieri did
succeed in learning something, although he was always at great pains to
decry his early education. He learned sufficient Latin to translate the
Georgics of Virgil into his Italian dialect, and he was fond of reading
Goldoni and Metastasio. A little later he passed into a more advanced
grade, where he met many foreign youths who had been sent to Turin to
study, and where he was allowed some liberty in choosing his own course.
He found as much fault with these new conditions as with the old. "The
reading of many French romances," he says, "the constant association
with foreigners, and the want of all occasion to speak Italian, or
to hear it spoken, drove from my head that small amount of wretched
Tuscan which I had contrived to put there in those two or three years of
burlesque study of the humanities and asinine rhetoric." In place of it
he learned and read much French, then the language of polite society.
In such aimless desultory fashion Alfieri passed his boyhood. He hated
all restraint, and was continually getting into difficulties with the
officers of the Academy. He had more money than was good for him, and
spent it in the wildest extravagances whenever the opportunity offered.
He bade fair to become a more or less typical member of the Piedmont
nobility, perhaps a little more of a free-thinker than most, and
considerably more restive. He chafed at the lack of freedom allowed him
at the Academy, and on the marriage of his sister to the Count Giacinto
Cumiana besought her and the Count to use their influence to have his
scholar's bonds loosened. They succeeded, and Alfieri promptly took
advantage of his liberty to join in all the dissipations of the capital,
and to gratify his passion for riding. In about a year he became the
owner of a stable of eight horses. When his older friends cautioned the
boy against his extravagance he answered that he was his own master and
intended to do as he chose.
While still at the Academy the youth had sought a position in the
army, but very short service as ensign in a militia regiment proved to
him that he was as little fond of military restraint as of scholastic.
He traveled to Genoa with two boy friends and fell in love with their
sister-in-law, a vivacious brunette. He worshiped her from a distance,
becoming, as he writes in his ardent Italian, "a victim to all the
feelings which Petrarch has so inimitably depicted ... feelings which
few can comprehend, and which fewer still ever experienced." On his
return from Genoa he considered himself a great traveler, and spoke as
such, only to be laughed at by the English, French, and German boys who
had been his classmates. Immediately he was seized with a passion for
travel. He was only seventeen years old, and knew that he would not be
permitted to travel alone. Fortunately an English teacher was about to
set out with two scholars on a journey through Italy, and was willing to
have Alfieri join his party. So strict was the court of that day that
the King's consent had to be obtained before the youth could leave the
country. Through his brother-in-law's influence Alfieri obtained the
royal permission to go abroad.
The travels had been looked forward to with the greatest excitement.
When they were begun Alfieri professed himself utterly bored by almost
everything he saw. As one of his biographers says, "He was driven
from place to place by a demon of unrest, and was mainly concerned,
after reaching a city, in getting away from it as soon as he could. He
gives anecdotes enough in proof of this, and he forgets nothing that
can enhance the surprise of his future literary greatness." Whether
this desire to surprise his readers is really the keynote of the first
years in his memoirs or not, it would appear that the youth was about
as restless and turbulent-minded a creature as could be met with.
The further he traveled in Italy the less he liked it; he would not
speak the language or read the literature, he looked at an autograph
manuscript of Petrarch with supreme indifference, and wished to be
mistaken for a Frenchman. Yet this boy was to become, in time, the real
reviver of Italian letters.
After a fortnight in Milan the party traveled to Florence by way of
Parma, Modena, and Bologna. Neither people, buildings, views, pictures,
nor sculpture interested Vittorio; he no sooner reached a city than he
was eager to be posting on. Even Florence, later to be his home, did not
attract him; the only object he found to admire in the city was Michael
Angelo's tomb at Santa Croce. He must have been the worst traveling
companion possible; he hurried his friends from Florence to Rome, and
finding nothing there to interest him except St. Peter's, went on to
Naples. Naples was in the midst of a carnival, and Alfieri plunged into
its extravagances as though to distract his thoughts from some brooding
melancholy. He was presented to the King, went to all the balls and
operas, rode, gamed, made one of the fastest set, and yet in the midst
of it all was discontented. He wanted to be alone, and finally applied
to the King of Piedmont through his minister at Naples for permission
to travel by himself. His request was granted, and at nineteen he set
out to make what was then the fashionable grand tour. He traveled in
state, with plenty of money, and a body servant, and with letters of
introduction to the various courts.
It so happened that Alfieri had met certain French actors during a
summer holiday, and from talking with them he felt a desire to see
something of the French stage. He had no wish to try his own skill
at dramatic compositions--indeed his only thought of an occupation
at this time was that he should some day enter the diplomatic
service--but he was anxious to see something different from the
absurdly conventional Italian plays produced by the school which took
its name from Metastasio. He went first to Marseilles, where he spent
his time between the theater and solitary musing on the seashore.
Thence, after a short stay, he journeyed to Paris, full of the keenest
anticipations of finding pleasure in that famous city. His memoirs tell
us his feelings there. He writes: "The mean and wretched buildings, the
contemptible ostentation displayed in a few houses dignified with the
pompous appellation of hotels and palaces, the filthiness of the Gothic
churches, the truly vandal-like construction of the public theaters at
that time, besides innumerable other disagreeable objects, of which not
the least disgusting to me was the painted countenances of many very
ugly women, far outweighed in my mind the beauty and elegance of the
public walks and gardens, the infinite variety of the carriages, the
lofty façade of the Louvre, as well as the number of spectacles and
entertainments of every kind." Verily the young Alfieri was either the
hardest of all travelers to suit, or the older man, looking back, wished
to emphasize the perverseness of his youth.
The Piedmontese Minister presented the young traveler to Louis XV.,
concerning whom Alfieri wrote, "He received with a cold and supercilious
air those who were presented to him, surveying them from head to foot.
It seemed as if on presenting a dwarf to a giant he should view him
smiling, or perhaps say, 'Ah! the little animal!' or if he remained
silent his air and manner would express the same derision." He was
not at all attracted by the French court, which he considered very
pompous, and was anxious to be out on the highroads again, driving his
post-horses. In January, 1768, he crossed the channel and landed at
Dover.
England delighted him, he found London far more to his taste than Paris,
he was charmed with the country, the large estates, the inns, the roads,
the horses, the people, all pleased him. He was particularly struck
with the absence of poverty. For a time he even thought of settling
there permanently, and years afterwards when he had seen much of all
the European countries he said that Italy and England were the two he
infinitely preferred as residences.
But of the pleasures of London's fashionable life the young wanderer
soon tired, and for variety turned coachman, and drove a friend with
whom he was staying through all the city streets, leaving him wherever
he wished, and waiting patiently on the box for his return. "My
amusements through the course of the winter," he wrote, "consisted in
being on horseback during five or six hours every morning, and in being
seated on the coach-box for two or three hours every evening, whatever
might be the state of the weather." His tastes at this time were
closely akin to those of many of his English friends.
Finally he left London and went to Holland. There he met Don Joseph
d'Acunha, the Portuguese Ambassador, a man of considerable literary
taste, who induced him to read Machiavelli, and first led him to think
of trying his literary skill. At The Hague he also fell deeply in love,
and, quite according to the fashionable custom of the time, with a young
married woman. For the moment his fits of morbidness and continual
unrest left him, he contrived constantly to be with the woman he loved,
and even followed her and her husband to Spa. A short time afterwards
the husband started for Switzerland, and the young wife returned to The
Hague. For ten days Alfieri was constantly in her society, then came
a message from her husband bidding her follow him. She wrote Alfieri
a note saying farewell and sent it to him through D'Acunha after she
had left the city. The youth was prostrated and with the violence of
his nature planned to kill himself. He complained of illness and had
himself bled. When he was alone he tore off the bandages with the idea
of bleeding to death. His faithful valet, however, knew the peculiar
nature of his master, and entered Alfieri's room. The bandages were
replaced, and the incident ended, although it was long before the young
man could recover from the parting with his fair lady. He passed through
Belgium to Switzerland, and so on back to Piedmont, still wrapped in
recollections, and unable to awaken any lasting interest.
Living with his sister, first in the country, and later in Turin, a
short term of peace succeeded in Alfieri's life. He set himself to
reading, and studied with considerable care the popular French authors,
Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire. Plutarch, however, became his chief
companion. In one of the most characteristic pages of his memoirs we
find him writing, "The book of all others which gave me most delight and
beguiled many of the tedious hours of winter, was Plutarch. I perused
five or six times the lives of Timoleon, Cæsar, Brutus, Pelopidas, and
some others. I wept, raved, and fell into such a transport of fury, that
if any one had been in the adjoining chamber they must have pronounced
me out of my senses. Every time I came to any of the great actions of
those celebrated individuals, my agitation was so extreme that I could
not remain seated. I was like one beside himself, and shed tears of
mingled grief and rage at having been born in Piedmont and at a period
and under a government where it was impossible to conceive or execute
any great design." Plutarch first set before him vividly the contrast
between the Italy of the past and of his own day. As a result he became
dissatisfied with his own inability to win any high distinction.
The winter of his twentieth year found Alfieri still without any
definite plans, now studying astronomy, now considering a diplomatic
career. With spring he determined again to travel, and in May set
off for Vienna. The spirit of unrest had given place to a brooding
melancholy. In this sense of the times being out of joint and himself
without work to do was born the gradual desire to write something
different from and in a more heroic strain than the rigorously
conservative dramas of the day. He traveled with Montaigne's Essays in
his pockets, and Montaigne, he says, first taught him to think. He still
found difficulty in reading Italian and much preferred foreign authors
to those of his own land.
In Vienna Alfieri had a chance to meet the most eminent of then living
Italian authors, a man much admired in his generation. The opportunity
he declined. "I had seen Metastasio," he says, "in the gardens of
Schönbrunn, perform the customary genuflection to Maria Theresa in such
a servile and adulatory manner, that I, who had my head stuffed with
Plutarch, and who embellished every theory, could not think of binding
myself, either by the ties of familiarity or friendship, with a poet
who had sold himself to a despotism which I so cordially detested."
In Berlin he was presented to Frederick the Great, and as he writes
"mentally thanked Heaven I was not born his slave. Towards the middle of
November I departed from this Prussian encampment, which I regarded with
detestation and horror."
From Berlin the young man went to Denmark, thence to Sweden, thence to
Russia. He says, "I approached Petersburg with a mind wound up to an
extraordinary pitch of anxiety and expectation. But alas! no sooner had
I reached this Asiatic assemblage of wooden huts, than Rome, Genoa,
Venice, and Florence rose to my recollections, and I could not refrain
from laughing. What I afterwards saw of this country tended still more
strongly to confirm my first impression that it merited not to be seen.
Everything but their beards and their horses disgusted me so much, that
during the six weeks I remained among these savages I wished not to
become acquainted with any one, nor even to see the two or three youths
with whom I had associated at Turin, and who were descended from the
first families of the country. I took no measure to be presented to
the celebrated Autocratrix Catherine II., nor did I even behold the
countenance of a sovereign who in our days has out-stripped fame."
A little later he was back in England, and now again he fell in
love, this time also with a married woman of rank. With a truly
Byronic audacity he defied all the conventions, accompanied the woman
everywhere, and became a subject of town scandal. Finally confronted by
the husband, he fought a duel with swords in a field near St. James's
Park, his left arm being in a sling at the time as the result of a
bit of too daring horsemanship. Alfieri was slightly wounded, and the
husband declared himself satisfied. Shortly after the latter sued for
divorce, bringing the Italian's name into the case. The newspapers took
up the scandal, and the matter became a cause celèbre. Alfieri was on
the point of proposing marriage, when the woman, by her own confessions,
told him that such a result was impossible. With his ardor completely
cooled and his mind given to the bitterest thoughts he left London, and
after short stays in The Hague and Paris journeyed into Spain.
In Paris he had bought the best known Italian authors and at this time
commenced to read them, although it was not until much later that he
began to appreciate them at their real worth. He did, however, carry
them with him on his travels, and gradually learned something at first
hand of that great galaxy, Dante, Tasso, Petrarch, Ariosto, Boccaccio,
and Machiavelli. His mind was not yet ripe for any study, even as he
traveled in Spain he was still subject to those wild outbreaks of
despondency and passion which alternately seemed to seize upon him.
He became a creature of chance whims, now he was ready to yield to
the quiet contentment of a suitable marriage, now burning with rage
against all the customs of society. Morbid ideas continually pressed his
footsteps. The atmosphere of a malevolent passion seems almost always
surrounding the great tragedies he later penned, and that atmosphere was
generated by a nature which from earliest youth had been extraordinarily
violent. His temper was wholly ungovernable. One evening in Madrid, as
Alfieri's faithful valet, the companion of all his travels, was curling
his hair, he accidentally pulled it so sharply with the tongs that
Alfieri winced. Instantly he sprang from his chair, and seizing a heavy
candlestick, hurled it at the servant. It struck the man on the temple,
and instantly his face was covered with blood. He rushed at his master,
but fortunately a young Spaniard who was present came to the rescue,
and separated them. Immediately Alfieri was covered with shame. "Had
you killed me," he said to the man, "you would have acted rightly. If
you wish, kill me while I sleep to-night, for I deserve it." The valet
took no such reprisal, he had been with his young master long enough to
understand the sudden outbursts of his temper, and was content to keep
the two blood-stained handkerchiefs that had bandaged his head and show
them occasionally to Alfieri as a reminder.
In Lisbon the traveler formed a close friendship with the Abbot of
Caluso, whom he called a "true, living Montaigne." The Abbot tried to
interest the young man in literature, induced him to write some verses,
and gave him the benefit of his criticism. For a short time the interest
in poetry lasted, then it flagged, and again Alfieri felt himself
without any purpose. He decided to return home, and in May, 1772,
arrived at Turin.
Now he took a house for himself, furnished it elaborately, and made
it the headquarters of a youthful society that sought amusement in
various forms. Some of them wrote, and Alfieri tried his pen for their
amusement, but soon tired of writing as a sport, and gave himself up
to other occupations. Continually searching for something to still
his restlessness he again fell in love, this time with a woman of
rank, some ten years his senior, and of a most unenviable reputation.
He became absolutely her slave, worked himself into frenzies on her
account, would consider nothing but the happiness of being with her. He
fell very ill, but when he recovered found himself as much in love as
ever. For two years he lived in this state of obsession, tormented by
self-reproach, but unable to rid himself of his own yoke.
Finally he decided to quit Turin and break his fetters. When he was
only a short distance on the road to Rome his resolution failed and
he returned. Again he resolved to leave the city for a year. The year
lasted eight days. He was thoroughly ashamed, disliked being seen in
Turin, but could not keep away. He felt finally that he must take
one last stand or lose all self-respect and control forever. He had
his hair cut so short that he dared not appear in society, and shut
himself into his house to read. He could not keep his thoughts on the
books, and tried composition. He wrote a sonnet, and sent it to a
friend, and received a reply highly praising it. Then he remembered
that a year before as he sat watching by the sick bed of the woman who
had so charmed him he had lightly outlined a tragedy on the life of
Cleopatra, taking his subject from tapestries that hung in the room.
He threw himself into the work of writing that tragedy now, and found
that interest in it drove all other thoughts away. He wrote rapidly,
continually, only stopping when he was completely tired. When those
times came, still frightened with the possibility of leaving the house,
he had himself tied into a chair. He only allowed himself freedom when
he knew he had won self-control. By that time he had finished his
tragedy in blank verse called "Cleopatra," and a short farce called "The
Poets," the latter ridiculing the former. He sent them to a theater in
Turin, where they were produced on June 16, 1775, and met with success.
The author did not value either play highly himself, and sought to have
them withdrawn. He wrote later, comparing these works with those of his
contemporaries, "The sole difference which existed between their pieces
and mine was that the former were productions of learned incapacity,
whereas mine was the premature offspring of ignorance, which promised
one day to become something."
His battle against what he considered a highly unworthy infatuation had
restored Alfieri's self-respect and health, and out of this curious
struggle sprang his first real and lasting ambition. "A devouring fire
took possession of my soul," he says, "I thirsted one day to become
a deserving candidate for theatrical fame." The date of that first
performance marked a turning point, not only for Alfieri, but for his
country's literature. It was, said the Italian critic, Paravia, "a day
and a year of eternal memory not only for the Turinese, but for all
Italians; because it was, so to speak, the dawn of the magnificent day
which, thanks to Alfieri, was to rise upon Italian tragedy."
The restless energy which had driven Alfieri across the various European
countries now concentrated in an all-pervading determination to become
a tragic poet. He launched into that effort with the same unbounded
ardor with which he had so frequently before launched into love. He
was twenty-seven years of age when he seriously set himself to work to
acquire command of Italian so that he might think in the language of his
native land rather than in that of France. He described his resources
as "a resolute, obstinate, and ungovernable character, susceptible of
the warmest affections, among which, by an odd kind of a combination,
predominated the most ardent love, and hatred approaching to madness
against every species of tyranny; an imperfect and vague recollection
of several French tragedies which I had seen represented several years
before, but which I had then neither read nor studied; a total ignorance
of dramatic rules, and an incapability of expressing myself with
elegance and precision in my own language."
To accomplish his purpose Alfieri now began at the very beginning and
took up the study of Italian grammar, and thence made a first-hand
acquaintance with all the best of the early Italian writers. He would
not allow himself any longer to read French, and tried to break himself
of the habit of thinking in that tongue. He moved from town into a small
country village in order that nothing might distract him. There he
re-wrote for the third time his tragedy of "Cleopatra," and practised
turning into Italian verses the outlines of two tragedies which he had
recently written in French. He pored over Tasso, Ariosto, Petrarch, and
Dante until he felt that he at last really caught the full spirit of
each author's style, then he tried writing poetry of his own.
His ignorance of Latin continually vexed him, and now he employed a
teacher to begin over those lessons he had so thoroughly disliked at
school. It was very hard work at first, but he would learn what he now
considered essential to his purpose, and after three months' study of
Horace he found that he could read Latin. He took up the other classics
and translated some of them into modern Italian for practice in their
varied styles.
Turin was too near France to satisfy his new passion for only the purest
Italian and so he went to Pisa, and thence to Florence. In the latter
city he found that his ideas were at last shaping themselves in the
rich and clear Italian he was seeking, he wrote verses which critical
friends pronounced at last worthy of the name of poetry, and planned
several poetic tragedies. He had worked hard and felt that he needed a
little rest. For this purpose he returned to Turin and had the pleasure
of entertaining his old friend the Abbot of Caluso there. He, as well as
other friends, urged Alfieri to make literature his field. He decided
that it was best for him to live in Tuscany, and as he hated to have
to ask royal permission each year to allow him to remain away from
Piedmont--as was the custom with the nobility--he gave his estates at
Asti to his sister, and contented himself with half his former income.
Then he moved to Florence, which, except for intervals spent at Rome and
Naples, was for a considerable time to be his home.
On his way to Florence Alfieri was obliged to stop at Sarzana, where
he chanced upon a copy of Livy, and was so impressed with the story
of Virginia and Icilius that he immediately planned a tragedy on the
subject. Soon after he reached Pisa, but there he did not dare stay,
fearful that he might be involved in a marriage with a young girl whom
he had met there before and with whom he says that he had almost fallen
in love. He himself contrasts his feelings at that time with those he
had entertained when he had first thought of marriage. "Eight years
afterwards, my travels through Europe, the love of glory, a passion for
study, the necessity for preserving my freedom, in order to speak and
write the truth without restraint--all these reasons powerfully warned
me that under a despotic government it is sufficiently difficult even to
live single, and that no one who reflects deeply will either become a
husband or a father; thus I crossed the Arno and arrived at Siena."
In Siena he met a company of strongly intellectual people, and from one
of these, a friend who became a close confidant, he gained the idea of
writing a tragedy founded upon the conspiracy of the Pazzi. Here he also
wrote the first two books of an essay upon Tyranny, which was printed
several years later. Thoroughly absorbed in his literary work Alfieri
moved to Florence at the beginning of the winter, and took up his
residence there.
At that time there were living in Florence, under the titles of Count
and Countess of Albany, Charles Edward, "the Young Pretender" to the
English throne, and his wife. The latter, who had been Louisa, Princess
of Stolbergh, had been married when nineteen to the Stuart prince, who
was considerably her elder. Charles Edward had an unsavory reputation
and knew more drunk than sober moments. As a result the young Countess,
who was very beautiful and extremely fond of the fine arts and of
society, was the object of much romantic pity. When Alfieri came to
Florence he found the entire city at the feet of the Countess. Every
one condemned the Count's quarrelsome, tyrannical, libertine nature,
every one praised the Countess's sweet and sunny disposition. Friends
offered to introduce Alfieri to the star of Florence, but he declined
on the ground that he always shunned women who were the most beautiful
and most admired. He could not avoid, however, seeing her in the park
and at the theater, and the first sight of her was destined never to be
effaced. Thus he writes of her: "The first impression she made on me
was infinitely agreeable. Large black eyes full of fire and gentleness,
joined to a fair complexion and flaxen hair, gave to her beauty a
brilliancy difficult to withstand. Twenty-five years of age, possessing
a taste for letters and the fine arts, an amiable character, an immense
fortune, and placed in domestic circumstances of a very painful nature,
how was it possible to escape where so many reasons existed for loving?"
De Stendhal gives an account of their first meeting, which if inaccurate
(it does not appear in Alfieri's memoirs) is at least characteristic of
the man. According to this story Alfieri was presented to the Countess
in one of the galleries of Florence, and noticed at the time that the
lady was much interested in a portrait on the walls of Charles XII. She
told the poet that she admired the costume exceedingly. Two days later
Alfieri appeared in Florence dressed exactly like the portrait of the
Swedish King, and so presented himself before the Countess. The act was
quite in keeping with the poet's nature.
Alfieri made a determined effort to fight against the passion he had
cause to fear, and made a hurried journey to Rome. He could not stay
there, and returned to Florence, stopping at Siena to see his friend
Gandellini, to whom he spoke of the Countess, and who did not counsel
him against giving way to the fascination.
On his return to Florence he acknowledged that he was deeply in love.
This love, however, he felt ennobled him, and instead of causing him
to give up his work, continually inspired him to new literary heights.
He wrote, "I soon perceived that the object of my present attachment,
far from impeding my progress in the pursuit of useful knowledge, or
deranging my studies, like the frivolous woman with whom I was formerly
enamoured, urged me on by her example to everything dignified and
praiseworthy. Having once learned to know and appreciate so rare and
valuable a friend, I yielded myself up entirely to her influence." From
the commencement of this new affection, the best and most lasting of his
life, date the finest works of his genius.
There had been long delays in settling Alfieri's estate in Piedmont,
and arranging that he might live in Tuscany, but the presence of the
Countess urged him imperatively to remain in Florence. When the business
arrangements were finally at an end he found it would be necessary
for him to curtail his former expensive style of living. This he did,
giving up his horses, all his servants, except a valet and cook, and
most of his personal luxuries. Books were the only expense he indulged
in, he acquired gradually a very large and choice library. He took a
small house, and devoted himself to his dramas, seeing as much as he
could in leisure moments of the beautiful Countess. During these three
quiet years he wrote his tragedies "Virginia," "Agemennone," "Don
Garzia," "Maria Stuarda," and "Oreste," a poem on the death of Duke
Alexander, killed by Lorenzino de' Medici, had rewritten his drama of
"Filippo," and partly prepared the tragedies "Timoleone," "Ottavia,"
and "Rosmunda." All of these works are built on the classic Grecian
model, and flame with hatred of tyranny, and burn with civic virtue.
In that they show their kinship to the author's times. De Sanctis,
always a brilliant critic, says: "The situations that Alfieri has chosen
in his tragedies have a visible relation to the social state, to the
fears, and to the hopes of his own time. It is always resistance to
oppression, of man against man, of people against tyrant.... In the
classicism of Alfieri there is no positive side. It is an ideal Rome and
Greece, outside of time and space, floating in the vague ... which his
contemporaries filled up with their own life."
At about the end of the dramatist's third year of residence in Florence,
the ill-treatment of the Countess of Albany by her husband caused her
friends, and chief among them Alfieri, to plan for her release from such
servitude. To this end they secured her entrance first into a convent at
Florence, and then, with the consent of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and
the Count's own brother the Cardinal of York, her removal to Rome. So
afraid were her friends lest the Count should effect a rescue that they
surrounded her carriage with a body of horsemen as she left Florence,
and Alfieri rode on the coach box until she was well on her road.
While the Countess had been in Florence, Alfieri had worked assiduously
there; now that she was gone he found composition impossible, and after
a very short interval went to Naples, planning to wait there until
he should learn what the Countess would do. It was not long before
it became apparent that the courts of Europe had taken up the wife's
cause against her husband. The Pope gave her a pension and approved of
her taking apartments in the house of her brother-in-law. The court of
France gave her the pension which the Count had previously indignantly
declined as being insufficient for his position. Alfieri learned at last
that the Countess was living in entire independence of her husband, and
after a further stay of a month in Naples in order to avoid possible
scandal he moved to Rome, and took up his residence there.
With this new settled existence he began to write again, and produced
at this time "Saul," his fourteenth tragedy, and one of his finest
works. He took infinite pains with all his dramas, planned them again
and again, wrote version after version, and then selected the forms he
preferred after careful judgment, polished them line by line and word
by word until he was satisfied. He wished to try the effect of his
characters upon an audience, and had himself acted, together with some
of his friends, his play of "Antigone." He found he had not mistaken his
ability as a dramatist. At about the same time he published part of his
works, sending four dramas to the printer. Their publication excited
immediate and flattering attention. His life in Rome was the most
delightful he had yet known. His house was a pleasant villa near the
Baths of Diocletian. Here he wrote and studied in the morning. Later in
the day he went for long rides through the neighboring country, and the
evenings he spent with the woman who had become his chief inspiration.
In time, however, the poet's visits to the Countess became the subject
of unfavorable comment, and the Cardinal, her brother-in-law, brought
the matter to the attention of the Papal Court. Realizing the delicacy
of the situation, Alfieri reluctantly decided that he must quit Rome,
and in May, 1783, he set out again as a wanderer, his ambition lost, his
life offering him no further interests.
As in early youth he now took to rapid traveling for solace, carrying on
at the same time a continual correspondence with the Countess. He wrote
a few sonnets, but found that his mind was too unsettled to allow him
to engage in any more lengthy labors. He went to France, and then to
England, and in each country visited scenes which the impetuosity of his
youth had neglected. Horses again made their appeal to him in London,
and he bought fourteen, "as many horses as he had written tragedies,"
he states. With these horses he soon returned to Turin, and made a short
visit to his mother, whom he had not seen for a long time. When he left
her he went to Piacenza, and here he heard that the Countess had at last
been released from the restraint under which she had lived at Rome, and
that as her health was delicate she had gone to Baden. He was in two
minds as to his course, the thought of possible calumny to her bade him
refrain from going to Baden at once, and he tried to content himself
in Siena with his old friend Gandellini. The continual interchange of
letters gradually wore away his resolution, and at last the time came
when he could keep from her no longer. August 4, 1784, he set out to
join her and within a fortnight felt his old joy return. Immediately his
thoughts grew fertile, he began to write again as he had not done since
he had quitted her in Rome. There was no question but that her presence
acted as a continual inspiration to his genius.
To this period of new happiness belonged the dramas of "Agide,"
"Sofonisba," and "Mirra." The plot of the latter came to him as he was
reading the speech of Mirra to her nurse in the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid,
and was written in the first heat of his emotion at the woman's words.
He was somewhat in doubt as to the success of a play written on such
a subject, but it was hailed as a triumph at its first presentation
some years later, and made a remarkable impression on Byron and on
Madame de Staël, and was considered by most critics as Ristori's finest
impersonation.
After two months the Countess had to return to Italy, and Alfieri's
gloom at the separation was further increased by the news of the death
of his friend Gandellini. He went to Siena, but found that city lonely
without his friend, and passed the winter in Pisa. He did a great amount
of reading, repolished his later dramas, and prepared new volumes of
them for the press. When winter ended he spent another two months of
summer with the Countess at Colmar, and then again they separated. This
time he resolved to work unremittingly, and did so until his health
failed and he had to rest. At about the same time the Countess decided
to leave Italy permanently, and at length Alfieri, towards the close of
1786, joined her and went with her to Paris. He writes in his memoirs
of this journey into France, "This country which had always proved
extremely disagreeable to me, as much on account of my own character,
as the manners of the people, now appeared a perfect elysium." There
are many glimpses to be had of this new life in the French capital.
Montanari recounts how the Marquis Pindemonte, himself a dramatist,
used each evening to take an omelette soufflé in the Countess's room,
while Alfieri sat in the chimney corner sipping his chocolate. Under
such peaceful auspices the poet spent many months in a critical
preparation of all his works for new publication.
In February, 1788, word reached the Countess that her husband had died
in Rome, and it would appear that she was soon afterwards married to
Alfieri, although in the will of the latter she is referred to as the
Countess of Albany and not as his wife. His memoirs do not once speak
of her as his wife, but from the date of her husband's death their life
together was uninterrupted. It is now generally assumed that they were
privately married about this time.
For three years the two lived quietly in Paris, spending their summers
and autumns at a new home Alfieri had acquired in Alsace. During these
years he printed two editions of his works, supervised their sales, and
wrote his remarkably entertaining memoirs, which were finished up to
May, 1790. The end of the three years found Paris on the brink of the
great Revolution.
Alfieri saw the black clouds gathering on the French horizon, but
stayed on in the desire to complete the printing of his works. He was
in turn amazed, alarmed, and disgusted at the succeeding events in
the establishment of a republic. The principles proclaimed by these
so-called destroyers of tyrants were not the principles of his own
freedom-loving heart, nor those of any of his heroic characters. He
writes, "My heart was torn asunder on beholding the holy and sublime
cause of liberty betrayed by self-called philosophers,--so much did I
revolt at witnessing their ignorance, their folly, and their crimes;
at beholding the military power, and the insolence and licentiousness
of the civilians stupidly made the basis of what they termed political
liberty, that I henceforth desired nothing more ardently than to leave
a country which, like a lunatic hospital, contained only fools or
incurables."
Circumstances, however, conspired to keep them in Paris, the Countess
was dependent upon France for two-thirds of her income, Alfieri was
finishing the printing of his dramas. The hour came when Alfieri
determined that further delay would be more than foolhardy, and so, on
August 18, 1792, having obtained passports with great difficulty, he
drove with the Countess to the city barrier. A dramatic scene followed.
The National Guards found the passports correct, and would have let the
travelers pass, but at the same moment a crowd of drunken revelers broke
from a neighboring cabaret, and attracted by the well-laden carriage,
proceeded to stop its passage, while they debated whether they should
stone it or set it on fire. The Guards remonstrated, but the revelers
complained bitterly that people of wealth should leave the city. Alfieri
lost all prudence, and jumping from his carriage, seized the passports
from the man who held them and, as he himself tells the incident, "Full
of disgust and rage, and not knowing at the moment, or in my passion
despising the immense peril that attended us, I thrice shook my passport
in my hand and shouted at the top of my voice, 'Look! Listen! Alfieri
is my name; Italian and not French; tall, lean, pale, red hair; I am
he; look at me; I have my passport, and I have had it legitimately from
those who could give it; we wish to pass, and by Heaven, we _will_
pass!'"
The crowd was surprised, and before they had recovered Alfieri and the
Countess had driven past the barriers and were safely on their way. They
had left Paris none too soon. Two days later the same authorities that
had granted the passports confiscated the horses, furniture, and books
that Alfieri had left behind in Paris and declared both the Countess and
Alfieri refugee aristocrats. The fact that they were both foreigners
appeared to be of no importance. It was well that they had gone. The
Countess was too illustrious a personage to have escaped for long the
fury of the fast-gathering mob, and had she been lost Alfieri would
have shared her fate.
Florence thenceforth became the home of the Countess and of Alfieri.
He wrote desultorily, commenting upon what he had seen in France,
but for the most part devoted himself to a study of the classics. In
1795, when he was forty-six years of age, he started to learn Greek,
and was so fired with the desire that in a short time he had added an
intimate knowledge of Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides to that
he already had of the Latin authors. He was so much interested in the
"Alcestis" of Euripides that he wrote an original drama based on the
same theme. He was described at this time as of a tall and commanding
figure, with a face of intelligence, and the look of one born to
command, rather than obey. His forehead was broad and lofty; his red
hair fell in thick masses around it.
The restless youth had changed to a methodical, studious man, he
arranged his day by rule, and followed that rule exactly. Only one
event disturbed him, and that was the occupation of Florence by French
troops. He had distrusted the French while he lived among them, now when
they came to hold Florence in subjection his hatred of tyranny bade him
despise them. He refused to receive the call of the French general who,
having read his works, was anxious to meet him. On the correspondence
which passed between them in reference to this matter Alfieri wrote,
"Dialogue between a lion in a cage, and his crocodile guardian."
When he had fled from France he had been compelled to leave some
of his printed works behind him, and he was now in fear lest their
appearance and eager appeal for liberty should seem to ally him with
the Revolutionary cause. Above all things he condemned the French
Revolution. To avoid this possibility he now advertised in the Italian
papers a disclaimer, warning the public against any edition of his
writings except such as he himself issued. With this formal announcement
he had to be content.
Alfieri had determined to write no more tragedies, and turned to
composition of comedies, of which he had six nearly completed when his
health failed. He rested for a time and then resumed his methodical life
of study and work. He was advised to give himself more recreation, but
was too obstinate to adopt any plan but his own. His health gave way
again, and neglecting the physician's advice, he tried to minister to
his own illness. Gradually he grew weaker, and on October 3, 1803, he
died. He was buried in the Florentine church of Santa Croce, and his
monument, carved by Canova, rises between the tombs of Michael Angelo
and Machiavelli. An inscription states by whom the memorial was erected.
"Louisa, Princess of Stolbergh, Countess of Albany, to Vittorio Alfieri
of Asti, 1810." In 1824 she was buried in Santa Croce.
In his will Alfieri left everything to the Countess. Their love had
grown deeper with time. She wrote to a friend, "You know, by experience,
what it is to lose a person with whom we have lived for twenty-six
years, who has never given us a moment of displeasure, whom we have
always adored, respected, and venerated." Each, tormented alone, had
found happiness finally in their united life.