Prince de Ligne, in his own _Memoirs_, tells us that Casanova had read
to him, and in which he found _du dramatique, de la rapidité, du
comique, de la philosophie, des choses neuves, sublimes, inimitables
même_) until the year 1820, when a certain Carlo Angiolini brought to
the publishing house of Brockhaus, in Leipzig, a manuscript entitled
_Histoire de ma vie jusqu'à l'an_ 1797, in the handwriting of Casanova.
This manuscript, which I have examined at Leipzig, is written on
foolscap paper, rather rough and yellow; it is written on both sides of
the page, and in sheets or quires; here and there the paging shows that
some pages have been omitted, and in their place are smaller sheets of
thinner and whiter paper, all in Casanova's handsome, unmistakable
handwriting. The manuscript is done up in twelve bundles, corresponding
with the twelve volumes of the original edition; and only in one place
is there a gap. The fourth and fifth chapters of the twelfth volume are
missing, as the editor of the original edition points out, adding: 'It
is not probable that these two chapters have been withdrawn from the
manuscript of Casanova by a strange hand; everything leads us to believe
that the author himself suppressed them, in the intention, no doubt, of
re-writing them, but without having found time to do so.' The manuscript
ends abruptly with the year 1774, and not with the year 1797, as the
title would lead us to suppose.
This manuscript, in its original state, has never been printed. Herr
Brockhaus, on obtaining possession of the manuscript, had it translated
into German by Wilhelm Schütz, but with many omissions and alterations,
and published this translation, volume by volume, from 1822 to 1828,
under the title, _Aus den Memoiren des Venetianers Jacob Casanova de
Seingalt_. While the German edition was in course of publication, Herr
Brockhaus employed a certain Jean Laforgue, a professor of the French
language at Dresden, to revise the original manuscript, correcting
Casanova's vigorous, but at times incorrect, and often somewhat Italian,
French according to his own notions of elegant writing, suppressing
passages which seemed too free-spoken from the point of view of morals
and of politics, and altering the names of some of the persons referred
to, or replacing those names by initials. This revised text was
published in twelve volumes, the first two in 1826, the third and fourth
in 1828, the fifth to the eighth in 1832, and the ninth to the twelfth
in 1837; the first four bearing the imprint of Brockhaus at Leipzig and
Ponthieu et Cie at Paris; the next four the imprint of Heideloff et
Campé at Paris; and the last four nothing but _À Bruxelles_. The volumes
are all uniform, and were all really printed for the firm of Brockhaus.
This, however far from representing the real text, is the only
authoritative edition, and my references throughout this article will
always be to this edition.
In turning over the manuscript at Leipzig, I read some of the suppressed
passages, and regretted their suppression; but Herr Brockhaus, the
present head of the firm, assured me that they are not really very
considerable in number. The damage, however, to the vivacity of the
whole narrative, by the persistent alterations of M. Laforgue, is
incalculable. I compared many passages, and found scarcely three
consecutive sentences untouched. Herr Brockhaus (whose courtesy I cannot
sufficiently acknowledge) was kind enough to have a passage copied out
for me, which I afterwards read over, and checked word by word. In this
passage Casanova says, for instance: _Elle venoit presque tous les jours
lui faire une belle visite._ This is altered into: _Cependant chaque
jour Thérèse venait lui faire une visite._ Casanova says that some one
_avoit, comme de raison, formé le projet d'allier Dieu avec le diable_.
This is made to read: _Qui, comme de raison, avait saintement formé le
projet d'allier les intérêts du ciel aux oeuvres de ce monde._
Casanova tell us that Thérèse would not commit a mortal sin _pour
devenir reine du monde_: _pour une couronne_, corrects the indefatigable
Laforgue. _Il ne savoit que lui dire_ becomes _Dans cet état de
perplexité_; and so forth. It must, therefore, be realised that the
_Memoirs_, as we have them, are only a kind of pale tracing of the vivid
colours of the original.
When Casanova's _Memoirs_ were first published, doubts were expressed as
to their authenticity, first by Ugo Foscolo (in the _Westminster
Review_, 1827), then by Quérard, supposed to be an authority in regard
to anonymous and pseudonymous writings, finally by Paul Lacroix, _le
bibliophile Jacob_, who suggested, or rather expressed his 'certainty,'
that the real author of the _Memoirs_ was Stendhal, whose 'mind,
character, ideas and style' he seemed to recognise on every page. This
theory, as foolish and as unsupported as the Baconian theory of
Shakespeare, has been carelessly accepted, or at all events accepted as
possible, by many good scholars who have never taken the trouble to look
into the matter for themselves. It was finally disproved by a series of
articles of Armand Baschet, entitled _Preuves curieuses de
l'authenticité des Mémoires de Jacques Casanova de Seingalt_, in _Le
Livre_, January, February, April and May, 1881; and these proofs were
further corroborated by two articles of Alessandro d'Ancona, entitled
_Un Avventuriere del Secolo XVIII._, in the _Nuova Antologia_, February
1 and August 1, 1882. Baschet had never himself seen the manuscript of
the _Memoirs_, but he had learnt all the facts about it from Messrs.
Brockhaus, and he had himself examined the numerous papers relating to
Casanova in the Venetian archives. A similar examination was made at the
Frari at about the same time by the Abbé Fulin; and I myself, in 1894,
not knowing at the time that the discovery had been already made, made
it over again for myself. There the arrest of Casanova, his imprisonment
in the _Piombi_, the exact date of escape, the name of the monk who
accompanied him, are all authenticated by documents contained in the
_riferte_ of the Inquisition of State; there are the bills for the
repairs of the roof and walls of the cell from which he escaped; there
are the reports of the spies on whose information he was arrested, for
his too dangerous free-spokenness in matters of religion and morality.
The same archives contain forty-eight letters of Casanova to the
Inquisitors of State, dating from 1763 to 1782, among the _Riferte dei
Confidenti_, or reports of secret agents; the earliest asking
permission to return to Venice, the rest giving information in regard to
the immoralities of the city, after his return there; all in the same
handwriting as the _Memoirs_. Further proof could scarcely be needed,
but Baschet has done more than prove the authenticity, he has proved the
extraordinary veracity, of the _Memoirs_. F. W. Barthold, in _Die
Geschichtlichen Persönlichkeiten in J. Casanova's Memoiren_, 2 vols.,
1846, had already examined about a hundred of Casanova's allusions to
well-known people, showing the perfect exactitude of all but six or
seven, and out of these six or seven inexactitudes ascribing only a
single one to the author's intention. Baschet and d'Ancona both carry on
what Barthold had begun; other investigators, in France, Italy and
Germany, have followed them; and two things are now certain, first, that
Casanova himself wrote the _Memoirs_ published under his name, though
not textually in the precise form in which we have them; and, second,
that as their veracity becomes more and more evident as they are
confronted with more and more independent witnesses, it is only fair to
suppose that they are equally truthful where the facts are such as could
only have been known to Casanova himself.
II
For more than two-thirds of a century it has been known that Casanova
spent the last fourteen years of his life at Dux, that he wrote his
_Memoirs_ there, and that he died there. During all this time people
have been discussing the authenticity and the truthfulness of the
_Memoirs_, they have been searching for information about Casanova in
various directions, and yet hardly any one has ever taken the trouble,
or obtained the permission, to make a careful examination in precisely
the one place where information was most likely to be found. The very
existence of the manuscripts at Dux was known only to a few, and to most
of these only on hearsay; and thus the singular good fortune was
reserved for me, on my visit to Count Waldstein in September 1899, to be
the first to discover the most interesting things contained in these
manuscripts. M. Octave Uzanne, though he had not himself visited Dux,
had indeed procured copies of some of the manuscripts, a few of which
were published by him in _Le Livre_, in 1887 and 1889. But with the
death of _Le Livre_ in 1889 the _Casanova inédit_ came to an end, and
has never, so far as I know, been continued elsewhere. Beyond the
publication of these fragments, nothing has been done with the
manuscripts at Dux, nor has an account of them ever been given by any
one who has been allowed to examine them.
For five years, ever since I had discovered the documents in the
Venetian archives, I had wanted to go to Dux; and in 1899, when I was
staying with Count Lützow at Zampach, in Bohemia, I found the way kindly
opened for me. Count Waldstein, the present head of the family, with
extreme courtesy, put all his manuscripts at my disposal, and invited me
to stay with him. Unluckily, he was called away on the morning of the
day that I reached Dux. He had left everything ready for me, and I was
shown over the castle by a friend of his, Dr. Kittel, whose courtesy I
should like also to acknowledge. After a hurried visit to the castle we
started on the long drive to Oberleutensdorf, a smaller Schloss near
Komotau, where the Waldstein family was then staying. The air was sharp
and bracing; the two Russian horses flew like the wind; I was whirled
along in an unfamiliar darkness, through a strange country, black with
coal mines, through dark pine woods, where a wild peasantry dwelt in
little mining towns. Here and there, a few men and women passed us on
the road, in their Sunday finery; then a long space of silence, and we
were in the open country, galloping between broad fields; and always in
a haze of lovely hills, which I saw more distinctly as we drove back
next morning.
The return to Dux was like a triumphal entry, as we dashed through the
market-place filled with people come for the Monday market, pots and
pans and vegetables strewn in heaps all over the ground, on the rough
paving stones, up to the great gateway of the castle, leaving but just
room for us to drive through their midst. I had the sensation of an
enormous building: all Bohemian castles are big, but this one was like a
royal palace. Set there in the midst of the town, after the Bohemian
fashion, it opens at the back upon great gardens, as if it were in the
midst of the country. I walked through room after room, along corridor
after corridor; everywhere there were pictures, everywhere portraits of
Wallenstein, and battle-scenes in which he led on his troops. The
library, which was formed, or at least arranged, by Casanova, and which
remains as he left it, contains some 25,000 volumes, some of them of
considerable value; one of the most famous books in Bohemian literature,
Skála's _History of the Church_, exists in manuscript at Dux, and it is
from this manuscript that the two published volumes of it were printed.
The library forms part of the Museum, which occupies a ground-floor wing
of the castle. The first room is an armoury, in which all kinds of arms
are arranged, in a decorative way, covering the ceiling and the walls
with strange patterns. The second room contains pottery, collected by
Casanova's Waldstein on his Eastern travels. The third room is full of
curious mechanical toys, and cabinets, and carvings in ivory. Finally,
we come to the library, contained in the two innermost rooms. The
book-shelves are painted white, and reach to the low-vaulted ceilings,
which are white-washed. At the end of a bookcase, in the corner of one
of the windows, hangs a fine engraved portrait of Casanova.
After I had been all over the castle, so long Casanova's home, I was
taken to Count Waldstein's study, and left there with the manuscripts. I
found six huge cardboard cases, large enough to contain foolscap paper,
lettered on the back: _Gräfl. Waldstein-Wartenberg'sches Real
Fideicommiss. Dux-Oberleutensdorf: Handschriftlicher Nachlass Casanova_.
The cases were arranged so as to stand like books; they opened at the
side; and on opening them, one after another, I found series after
series of manuscripts roughly thrown together, after some pretence at
arrangement, and lettered with a very generalised description of
contents. The greater part of the manuscripts were in Casanova's
handwriting, which I could see gradually beginning to get shaky with
years. Most were written in French, a certain number in Italian. The
beginning of a catalogue in the library, though said to be by him, was
not in his handwriting. Perhaps it was taken down at his dictation.
There were also some copies of Italian and Latin poems not written by
him. Then there were many big bundles of letters addressed to him,
dating over more than thirty years. Almost all the rest was in his own
handwriting.
I came first upon the smaller manuscripts, among which I found, jumbled
together on the same and on separate scraps of paper, washing-bills,
accounts, hotel bills, lists of letters written, first drafts of letters
with many erasures, notes on books, theological and mathematical notes,
sums, Latin quotations, French and Italian verses, with variants, a long
list of classical names which have and have not been _francisés_, with
reasons for and against; 'what I must wear at Dresden'; headings without
anything to follow, such as: 'Reflexions on respiration, on the true
cause of youth--the crows'; a new method of winning the lottery at Rome;
recipes, among which is a long printed list of perfumes sold at Spa; a
newspaper cutting, dated Prague, 25th October 1790, on the
thirty-seventh balloon ascent of Blanchard; thanks to some 'noble donor'
for the gift of a dog called 'Finette'; a passport for _Monsieur de
Casanova, Vénitien, allant d'ici en Hollande_, October 13, 1758 (_Ce
Passeport bon pour quinze jours_), together with an order for
post-horses, gratis, from Paris to Bordeaux and Bayonne.[1]
Occasionally, one gets a glimpse into his daily life at Dux, as in this
note, scribbled on a fragment of paper (here and always I translate the
French literally): 'I beg you to tell my servant what the biscuits are
that I like to eat, dipped in wine, to fortify my stomach. I believe
that they can all be found at Roman's.' Usually, however, these notes,
though often suggested by something closely personal, branch off into
more general considerations; or else begin with general considerations,
and end with a case in point. Thus, for instance, a fragment of three
pages begins: 'A compliment which is only made to gild the pill is a
positive impertinence, and Monsieur Bailli is nothing but a charlatan;
the monarch ought to have spit in his face, but the monarch trembled
with fear.' A manuscript entitled _Essai d'Égoïsme_, dated, 'Dux, this
27th June, 1769,' contains, in the midst of various reflections, an
offer to let his _appartement_ in return for enough money to
'tranquillise for six months two Jew creditors at Prague.' Another
manuscript is headed 'Pride and Folly,' and begins with a long series of
antitheses, such as: 'All fools are not proud, and all proud men are
fools. Many fools are happy, all proud men are unhappy.' On the same
sheet follows this instance or application:
Whether it is possible to compose a Latin distich of the greatest
beauty without knowing either the Latin language or prosody. We
must examine the possibility and the impossibility, and afterwards
see who is the man who says he is the author of the distich, for
there are extraordinary people in the world. My brother, in short,
ought to have composed the distich, because he says so, and because
he confided it to me tête-à-tête. I had, it is true, difficulty in
believing him; but what is one to do? Either one must believe, or
suppose him capable of telling a lie which could only be told by a
fool; and that is impossible, for all Europe knows that my brother
is not a fool.
Here, as so often in these manuscripts, we seem to see Casanova thinking
on paper. He uses scraps of paper (sometimes the blank page of a letter,
on the other side of which we see the address) as a kind of informal
diary; and it is characteristic of him, of the man of infinitely curious
mind, which this adventurer really was, that there are so few merely
personal notes among these casual jottings. Often, they are purely
abstract; at times, metaphysical _jeux d'esprit_, like the sheet of
fourteen 'Different Wagers,' which begins:
I wager that it is not true that a man who weighs a hundred pounds
will weigh more if you kill him. I wager that if there is any
difference, he will weigh less. I wager that diamond powder has not
sufficient force to kill a man.
Side by side with these fanciful excursions into science, come more
serious ones, as in the note on Algebra, which traces its progress since
the year 1494, before which 'it had only arrived at the solution of
problems of the second degree, inclusive.' A scrap of paper tells us
that Casanova 'did not like regular towns.' 'I like,' he says, 'Venice,
Rome, Florence, Milan, Constantinople, Genoa.' Then he becomes abstract
and inquisitive again, and writes two pages, full of curious,
out-of-the-way learning, on the name of Paradise:
The name of Paradise is a name in Genesis which indicates a place
of pleasure (_lieu voluptueux_): this term is Persian. This place
of pleasure was made by God before he had created man.
It may be remembered that Casanova quarrelled with Voltaire, because
Voltaire had told him frankly that his translation of _L'Écossaise_ was
a bad translation. It is piquant to read another note written in this
style of righteous indignation:
Voltaire, the hardy Voltaire, whose pen is without bit or bridle;
Voltaire, who devoured the Bible, and ridiculed our dogmas, doubts,
and after having made proselytes to impiety, is not ashamed, being
reduced to the extremity of life, to ask for the sacraments, and to
cover his body with more relics than St. Louis had at Amboise.
Here is an argument more in keeping with the tone of the _Memoirs_:
A girl who is pretty and good, and as virtuous as you please, ought
not to take it ill that a man, carried away by her charms, should
set himself to the task of making their conquest. If this man
cannot please her by any means, even if his passion be criminal,
she ought never to take offence at it, nor treat him unkindly; she
ought to be gentle, and pity him, if she does not love him, and
think it enough to keep invincibly hold upon her own duty.
Occasionally he touches upon æsthetical matters, as in a fragment which
begins with liberal definition of beauty:
Harmony makes beauty, says M. de S. P. (Bernardin de St. Pierre),
but the definition is too short, if he thinks he has said
everything. Here is mine. Remember that the subject is
metaphysical. An object really beautiful ought to seem beautiful to
all whose eyes fall upon it. That is all; there is nothing more to
be said.
At times we have an anecdote and its commentary, perhaps jotted down for
use in that latter part of the _Memoirs_ which was never written, or
which has been lost. Here is a single sheet, dated 'this 2nd September,
1791,' and headed _Souvenir_:
The Prince de Rosenberg said to me, as we went down stairs, that
Madame de Rosenberg was dead, and asked me if the Comte de
Waldstein had in the library the illustration of the Villa
d'Altichiero, which the Emperor had asked for in vain at the city
library of Prague, and when I answered 'yes,' he gave an equivocal
laugh. A moment afterwards, he asked me if he might tell the
Emperor. 'Why not, monseigneur? It is not a secret.' 'Is His
Majesty coming to Dux?' 'If he goes to Oberlaitensdorf (_sic_) he
will go to Dux, too; and he may ask you for it, for there is a
monument there which relates to him when he was Grand Duke.' 'In
that case, His Majesty can also see my critical remarks on the
Egyptian prints.'
The Emperor asked me this morning, 6th October, how I employed my
time at Dux, and I told him that I was making an Italian anthology.
'You have all the Italians, then?' 'All, sire.' See what a lie
leads to. If I had not lied in saying that I was making an
anthology, I should not have found myself obliged to lie again in
saying that we have all the Italian poets. If the Emperor comes to
Dux, I shall kill myself.
'They say that this Dux is a delightful spot,' says Casanova in one of
the most personal of his notes, 'and I see that it might be for many;
but not for me, for what delights me in my old age is independent of the
place which I inhabit. When I do not sleep I dream, and when I am tired
of dreaming I blacken paper, then I read, and most often reject all that
my pen has vomited.' Here we see him blackening paper, on every
occasion, and for every purpose. In one bundle I found an unfinished
story about Roland, and some adventure with women in a cave; then a
'Meditation on arising from sleep, 19th May 1789'; then a 'Short
Reflection of a Philosopher who finds himself thinking of procuring his
own death. At Dux, on getting out of bed on 13th October 1793, day
dedicated to St. Lucy, memorable in my too long life.' A big budget,
containing cryptograms, is headed 'Grammatical Lottery'; and there is
the title-page of a treatise on _The Duplication of the Hexahedron,
demonstrated geometrically to all the Universities and all the Academies
of Europe_.[2] There are innumerable verses, French and Italian, in all
stages, occasionally attaining the finality of these lines, which appear
in half a dozen tentative forms:
_Sans mystère point de plaisirs,_
_Sans silence point de mystère._
_Charme divin de mes loisirs,_
_Solitude! que tu m'es chère!_
Then there are a number of more or less complete manuscripts of some
extent. There is the manuscript of the translation of Homer's _Iliad, in
ottava rima_ (published in Venice, 1775-8); of the _Histoire de Venise_,
of the _Icosameron_, a curious book published in 1787, purporting to be
'translated from English,' but really an original work of Casanova;
_Philocalies sur les Sottises des Mortels_, a long manuscript never
published; the sketch and beginning of _Le Polémarque, ou la Calomnie
démasquée par la présence d'esprit. Tragicomédie en trois actes,
composée à Dux dans le mois de Juin de l'Année, 1791_, which recurs
again under the form of the _Polémoscopé: La Lorgnette menteuse ou la
Calomnie démasquée_, acted before the Princess de Ligne, at her château
at Teplitz, 1791. There is a treatise in Italian, _Delle Passioni_;
there are long dialogues, such as _Le Philosophe et le Théologien_, and
_Rêve: Dieu-Moi_; there is the _Songe d'un Quart d'Heure_, divided into
minutes; there is the very lengthy criticism of _Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre_; there is the _Confutation d'une Censure indiscrète qu'on
lit dans la Gazette de Iéna, 19 Juin 1789_; with another large
manuscript, unfortunately imperfect, first called _L'Insulte_, and then
_Placet au Public_, dated 'Dux, this 2nd March, 1790,' referring to the
same criticism on the _Icosameron_ and the _Fuite des Prisons_.
_L'Histoire de ma Fuite des Prisons de la République de Venise, qu'on
appelle les Plombs_, which is the first draft of the most famous part of
the _Memoirs_, was published at Leipzig in 1788; and, having read it in
the Marcian Library at Venice, I am not surprised to learn from this
indignant document that it was printed 'under the care of a young Swiss,
who had the talent to commit a hundred faults of orthography.'
III