A Venetian Affair
By Andrea Di Robilant (Knopf, $24, 320 pp.)
If, in this jaded age, any hopeless romantics remain—the sort of die-hard idealists who believe in eternal amour—then their spirits will be fortified by A Venetian Affair, Andrea Di Robilant’s glittering nonfiction account of a real-life passion that time never tamed. Sure to lure those who love love, this richly veined nugget of 18th century history has all the requisite elements of a classic romance: an appealing young couple in the throes of eros, a meddling, mercenary mother determined to keep them apart and a gossiping group of townsfolk who thrive on making mischief.
As fate-laden as an ancient Greek drama, A Venetian Affair contains so many schemes and deceptions, pledges and betrayals, personal ruptures and reconciliations, it would’ve made Shakespeare’s head spin. But far from confounding the reader, the story’s crimps and kinks prove deucedly seductive, and as A Venetian Affair unfolds, it becomes the ultimate valentine to a pair of lovers whose forbidden desire nearly destroys them.
The doomed-love scenario is a story we never tire of hearing, its 200th telling as compelling as its first. What distinguishes A Venetian Affair, aside from its admirable craftsmanship and wonderfully brisk pace, is the author’s personal connection to the narrative. Di Robilant is distantly related to the book’s hero, Andrea Memmo, a Venetian patrician and statesman who belonged to one of the Republic’s most prestigious families. The discovery of a collection of Andrea’s letters in the Di Robilant family’s old palazzo in Venice sparked the author’s interest.
To conceal their contents, the letters had been written in an obscure code, for, as Di Robilant soon discovered, they were addressed to Andrea’s secret lover, Giustiniana Wynne, a young woman whose exceptional beauty and intelligence were celebrated throughout Venice. Giustiniana’s only flaw was her questionable lineage: She was the illegitimate child of an Italian mother and a British baronet father. At a time when patricians submitted contracts to a legal panel to have their prospective marriages approved—a protective measure that kept the classes from mixing—Giustiniana’s dubious social standing made it impossible for her to become Andrea’s wife.
Among modern scholars of the era, the two figures—and their affair—are famous. Giustiniana became a published author, and Andrea made his mark in politics, serving as governor of Padua and ambassador to Constantinople. The letters were an exciting find, a significant addition to the body of knowledge concerning their relationship. A Venetian Affair is comprised of Andrea’s recovered letters, as well as a collection of formerly unpublished dispatches from Giustiniana to him. Di Robilant, a journalist based in Rome, has bolstered their correspondence with scholarship, drawing on a variety of other sources to flesh out his narrative. The result is a lavish reconstruction of their romance and the controversy that resulted, a fascinating work of narrative history that’s opulent, atmospheric and oh so rococo. Presenting a decadent portrait of Venice and its aristocratic inhabitants, the book is peppered with duels, masked balls and illicit assignations—all to be expected in a book in which Casanova, the proto-gigolo, appears.
“Venice could seem such a hostile place—a watery labyrinth of mirrors and shadows and whispers,” Di Robilant writes. In this voyeuristic society, where the private inevitably became public, Andrea’s romance with the 16-year-old Giustiniana is characterized by intrigue from the start. To woo openly was to risk ruin, and so after their initial meeting at the home of a mutual friend, the smitten Andrea employs agents to obtain information as to his love’s whereabouts and to take messages to her. The pair also devise a system of cues so that they can communicate secretly in public. On a crowded street, or from their seats at the opera, they converse via gesture: “Touch your hair if you’re going to the Ridotto,” Andrea writes to Giustiniana. “Nod or shake your head to tell me whether you plan to go to the piazza.”
Of their many obstacles to love, none was greater than Mrs. Anna, Giustiniana’s mother, a shrewd, ruthless woman who knew of their affair and, realizing the relationship could only sully her daughter’s chances with other suitors, forbade Andrea to visit the Wynne household. Ironically enough, her daughter’s betrothal to another might have solved the lovers’ problems. Because liaisons among the married were approved—nay, applauded—by Venetian society’s omnipotent upper tiers, it would’ve been perfectly acceptable for Giustiniana to wed someone else and continue her tryst with Andrea.
Engaging in their own bit of husband-hunting, the lovers orchestrate a couple of desperate schemes involving hapless bachelors—significantly older gentlemen with enormous fortunes who might provide pretense for their affair. But the ruses fail, and just when Venice’s inflexible fathers are about to bend and allow the two to marry legally, a dark secret from Mrs. Anna’s past surfaces, forcing the Wynnes to leave Italy altogether. The lovers, needless to say, are devastated.
For two years, the Wynnes travel across Europe, but Giustiniana eventually returns to Venice. The reader, however, is denied a picture of her reunion with Andrea, for no factual record of it exists; all letters from the period are lost. Consequently, there is a sort of black hole at the center of the book. But the author manages to fill the silence with intelligent supposition, logical inferences based on the material he does have access to. Skillfully balancing letters with his own narration, Di Robilant gives his characters ample opportunity to speak for themselves, producing an irresistible tale of two innocents wounded by Cupid’s ill-aimed arrows.
Luckily, both of them knew how to compose a good letter. The couple’s dispatches are engaging, lively and poetic, and they particularly show Giustiniana to advantage. As a writer, she’s remarkable; as a heroine, she’s ahead of her time, consistently courageous, invariably undaunted, even though all of Venice seems to oppose her union with Andrea. About the social barriers that keep them apart, Giustiniana wisely writes, “The distance between us is always the same, whether we are separated by a mile, or by the thickest wall.”
As the reader comes to realize, theirs was not an affair of two, but an affair of many. They were, of course, outnumbered in the end, the only possible outcome, it seems, for a story of star-crossed lovers. The Bard himself couldn’t have planned it better.
