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Mary Kuper, Meeting on the Ridotto - Patricia Cleveland-Peck on Andrea di Robilant, A Venetian Affair - Slightly Foxed Issue 15

Impossible Love

As I make my way through narrow passages and over numerous little bridges, I am trying to imagine a Venice of two and a half centuries ago, the Venice of A Venetian Affair by Andrea di Robilant.

Not only the book but the way it came about is intriguing. It is every writer’s dream to come across a cache of letters which tell a riveting but true story. Add to this the setting of Venice, a cast of characters that includes a beautiful English girl, a Venetian nobleman and (of course) Casanova, and a book begs to be written.

In fact it was the author’s father who happened upon the letters in a trunk in his old family palazzo on the Grand Canal. He no longer lived there. The family’s fortunes had suffered and his grandfather had sold off the Palazzo Mocenigo floor by floor. The old papers were compacted by damp and barely legible but they appeared to be a series of love letters between a Venetian ancestor of his, Andrea Memmo, and a beautiful Anglo-Venetian girl, Giustiniana Wynne. Excited, he showed the documents to his journalist son Andrea.

Di Robilant’s father had transcribed the letters with a view to publication when in 1997 events took a tragic and unexpected turn. Intruders broke into his apartment in Florence and bludgeoned him to death. The culprits were never caught and it was not until two years later that his laptop and notes were returned to his son, who vowed to complete his father’s work.

Memmo and Giustiniana’s love affair was un amore impossibile simply because of the strict morality laws of the Venetian Republic. Memmo was a nobleman. Giustiniana’s parents were an obscure English baronet and a woman with a shady reputation – and she was a Protestant. In fact Giustiniana’s father Sir Richard Wynne died shortly before the family returned from London to Venice in 1753. The children had been born in Venice, but in Giustiniana’s case, unfortunately, two years before her parents marrie

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As I make my way through narrow passages and over numerous little bridges, I am trying to imagine a Venice of two and a half centuries ago, the Venice of A Venetian Affair by Andrea di Robilant.

Not only the book but the way it came about is intriguing. It is every writer’s dream to come across a cache of letters which tell a riveting but true story. Add to this the setting of Venice, a cast of characters that includes a beautiful English girl, a Venetian nobleman and (of course) Casanova, and a book begs to be written. In fact it was the author’s father who happened upon the letters in a trunk in his old family palazzo on the Grand Canal. He no longer lived there. The family’s fortunes had suffered and his grandfather had sold off the Palazzo Mocenigo floor by floor. The old papers were compacted by damp and barely legible but they appeared to be a series of love letters between a Venetian ancestor of his, Andrea Memmo, and a beautiful Anglo-Venetian girl, Giustiniana Wynne. Excited, he showed the documents to his journalist son Andrea. Di Robilant’s father had transcribed the letters with a view to publication when in 1997 events took a tragic and unexpected turn. Intruders broke into his apartment in Florence and bludgeoned him to death. The culprits were never caught and it was not until two years later that his laptop and notes were returned to his son, who vowed to complete his father’s work. Memmo and Giustiniana’s love affair was un amore impossibile simply because of the strict morality laws of the Venetian Republic. Memmo was a nobleman. Giustiniana’s parents were an obscure English baronet and a woman with a shady reputation – and she was a Protestant. In fact Giustiniana’s father Sir Richard Wynne died shortly before the family returned from London to Venice in 1753. The children had been born in Venice, but in Giustiniana’s case, unfortunately, two years before her parents married. Subsequently Sir Richard managed to legitimize her, but the damage had already been done. In the eyes of Venetian society she was illegitimate. Lady Wynne guarded the respectability she had acquired fiercely and as a result she had an almost paranoid dread of scandal. Once the family was installed in their rented house she kept her daughters on a very tight leash. One place she did allow Giustiniana to visit, however, was a palazzo on the Grand Canal that belonged to Joseph Smith, an English friend of her late husband. Smith was among the most prominent of the foreign residents in Venice and had amassed a huge art collection. To help organize it he had employed a young assistant, Andrea Memmo. Our vaporetto slows down to let a gondola glide past. The Grand Canal is surely the most amazing highway in the world, flanked by buildings so beautiful as to look almost unreal. We pass the classical white palazzo built for Consul Smith by the architect Antonio Visentini in 1751. The exterior has not changed since Giustiniana and Memmo first met there. For Giustiniana and Memmo, it was truly love at first sight. For a brief, halcyon period they saw each other every day. Wearing masks, they would meet on the Ridotto, at the theatre or strolling in the Piazza San Marco. Very soon, however, Lady Wynne got wind of what was going on. If this impossible flirtation continued, Giustiniana would never find a husband, so all contact between the two was forbidden. Of course this did not stop them. Notes flew back and forth, and secret meetings were arranged. Memmo would comb the city for a sight of Giustiniana. ‘After lunch I went looking for you. Nothing. When I arrived on the bridge of San Moisè . . . I saw you . . . I forged ahead and waited for you, filled with desire.’ As their passion grew, stolen glances were no longer enough. It became essential to find somewhere to meet. Here Memmo was lucky. One of his best friends was Domenico Tiepolo, and from the side window of the Palazzo Tiepolo’s mezzanine floor it was possible to look directly across to the Wynnes’ balcony. At first they would just wave to each other. ‘After lunch,’ Memmo wrote in a note to Giustiniana, ‘find an excuse to come out on the balcony. But for heaven’s sake be careful about your mother.’ When waving no longer sufficed, they were lent a room within the Palazzo Tiepolo in which to make love. I know that the Palazzo Tiepolo is now called the Palazzo Papadopoli, and from the map I locate the small canal running alongside it. I enlist the help of a Venetian friend, and soon we are standing outside the house in which Giustiniana lived. The Palazzo Papadopoli is enclosed by forbidding-looking gates. Luckily for us, however, part of the palazzo is now a research institute and along comes a man who taps in the entrance code. The gates open and we slip in after him. Once inside we sneak up the stairs to a window overlooking the side canal. A tall, attractive young woman appears and asks us what we are doing. I feel sure we’ll be thrown out, maybe even prosecuted for trespassing . . . but the woman turns out to be the owner and is happy to help. She speaks perfect English (‘I had a nanny from Peterborough’) and knows all about the love story – Andrea di Robilant is a friend of hers. She takes us up another flight of stairs and shows us the window from which Memmo waved and the room where the lovers met. Things did not go so well for Giustiniana and Memmo. When the wife of the octogenarian Consul Smith died, Lady Wynne lost no time in hatching a plot to marry Giustiniana off to him. Giustiniana, aged only 18, was distraught, but with convoluted logic, Memmo persuaded her that if she married the consul she would soon be widowed and in the meantime she could be his mistress. Unwillingly Giustiniana played along with this stratagem. It was time for the villeggiatura when Venetians leave the heat of the city for their summer villas along the Brenta Canal. Consul Smith, delighted at the idea of a young and beautiful bride, arranged for her to stay at a villa near his summer retreat. Giustiniana, still uneasy about the arrangement, realized that the country might offer opportunities to meet her beloved. I am in the little town of Dolo enjoying my own villeggiatura. The sound of laughter and music issues from cafés and bars, and the scent of jasmine hangs in the air. It is just the sort of night on which Giustiniana wrote to Memmo from the consul’s villa, ‘Come quickly, my heart . . . I would do anything, anything for the pleasure of seeing you.’ Then, disaster struck. Lady Wynne intercepted some of their letters and as a result Consul Smith abandoned any idea of marrying Giustiniana and dismissed Memmo. After this there was a brief period when, after all, a marriage contract seemed possible, and negotiations began. But before long the lovers’ hopes were crushed. The authorities turned up ancient records which revealed, with what must have been cruel irony for Lady Wynne, that before her own marriage she had been ‘deflowered by a Greek’. Marriage between the daughter of such a woman and a Venetian nobleman was unthinkable. Disgraced, the Wynne family left Venice. Correspondence between the lovers continued for the rest of their lives, but for them there was no happy ending. In Paris, Giustiniana concealed the birth of a baby, probably Memmo’s, and gave it up for adoption. She was assisted in this by Casanova, who had made a pass at her when she arrived in Venice at the age of 16, but who later became a good friend. She eventually married a Swedish diplomat, and after his death she returned to the Veneto where she lived comfortably and wrote several successful books. She had admirers but she did not remarry. Memmo married someone of his own class by whom he had two daughters, and he became a great Venetian statesman. From time to time Giustiniana and Memmo would meet, always with great tenderness. When at the age of 54, Giustiniana was dying, Memmo sped to her bedside. As my plane rises above Venice and I see its cluster of islands shimmering in the lagoon, I reflect on the way in which the Venetian Republic dealt so harshly with the destinies of these two people. The look of Venice hasn’t changed. In his introduction Andrea di Robilant makes the point that the buildings are the same and that even the names on the doorbells are familiar. As a visitor armed with this book, however, I have made a journey beyond appearances and I give thanks to Andrea di Robilant and his father for such an opportunity.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 15 © Patricia Cleveland-Peck 2007


About the contributor

Patricia Cleveland-Peck has written children’s books, non-fiction works and radio and stage plays. She is now working on a novel and also writes for the travel pages of several newspapers, focusing mainly on gardens abroad.

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