Lucia (12 page)

My poor, beloved Papa, in spite of all his pain, he must have thought I would feel anxious without a letter from him. But of course I renounce what brings consolation only to me. I beg him not to weary himself by writing just to satisfy my longing to have news of him. To hear that he is well again is all that my heart desires, so that I may continue to dream of hugging him—and you—somewhere on the way back home.
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By January, Lucia was receiving daily accounts from Paolina “that truly make me feel as if I were with you.” The general outlook was not discouraging. Despite her entreaties, Memmo sent her a few “very lively and tender lines that gave me real comfort.” But the delay caused by the long distance the post had to cover created a false impression. The situation had in fact worsened. By the time Lucia received that last note from her father, he was already dead.

Fearful of the impact Memmo’s death might have on Lucia and the baby, Alvise left immediately for Vienna. He had already planned to be with Lucia when she delivered and with that in mind he had obtained a six-month leave of absence from his government duties. Now he hastened his departure in order to be the one to tell Lucia about her father’s death. He reached Vienna in less than a week despite a difficult crossing of the Alps in the dead of that frigid winter. The moment Lucia saw Alvise on the doorstep at Kohlmarkt, her happiness was crushed by what she read in his eyes. A feeling of complete devastation swept over her. Memmo had been the pillar of her life ever since her mother had died when she was only a little girl. And the pain was made all the more acute by the guilt she felt for not having been at his side. There were, of course, very good reasons why she had remained in Vienna, but that did not lessen the laceration she felt—and had felt for weeks. “My situation has been so cruel—forced to stay here in order to fulfil my duty as a mother and thus compelled to forget my duty as a daughter,”
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she wrote to her sister in desperation. Worried about Lucia’s health, Doctor Vespa ordered her to stay in bed.

But all I really want now is to be in your arms, Paolina. Oh God! Please tell me what I must do to stop thinking about dear Papa all the time, because no matter how hard I try, everything reminds me of him and I cannot bear it any more. I was so impatient to come back to Venice with my little baby. Now I can see that coming home will be the most difficult time of my life. And his sweet plan to meet me halfway, to surprise me somewhere on my return journey…It is lost for ever.
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The “oppressive weight” of the loss did not lift for weeks. The pain renewed itself “every moment of the day.” And just as Paolina was constantly worried about how Lucia was managing in Vienna, Lucia worried about Paolina’s “anxiety” about her. Their only thoughts were for each other. “What will happen to us when I come back?” Lucia asked, as she struggled to imagine her life without the reassuring presence of her father. During his illness, Memmo had tried his best to avoid upsetting his daughters excessively, especially Lucia, who was so far away. He had encouraged them to look ahead, and think of the children they were carrying in their wombs. And in the end “the thought that Papa would have forbidden us to torment ourselves in this way for the sake of our innocent babies,” helped Lucia to regain her balance.
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As she began her seventh month, Alvise’s presence made it easier to focus again on the child she was carrying. Doctor Vespa encouraged him to take his wife out for short walks or for carriage rides around town to get some fresh air and do some shopping: a crib, swaddling cloth, baby clothes, bottles, pans and even a beautiful dummy made of blown glass. So when the sun shone and the avenues glistened in the snow, Lucia, looking quite beautiful in her black mourning
andrienne,
a flowing loose gown, would venture out into the city bustle holding on to Alvise’s arm. She was grateful to have him by her side. His leave of absence might slow down his career a little bit, but how would she have managed without him? She was also “quite happy” that Alvise’s decision to take a pause in his work had been approved not only by the Mocenigos but by the ruling authorities as well. “I was sure such a friendly gesture towards me, in such a delicate moment for the family, would be applauded by the more sensitive people we know,” she wrote to Paolina. “But I also needed to hear the public applause following the inevitable suspension of his civil career, and having heard it, I can now look forward to all the good things his loving care and his experience will provide me with.”
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Doctor Vespa still came by every day, bringing his usual share of Viennese gossip and the latest news on the empress’s pregnancy. In mid February the talk of the town was Maria Theresa’s latest escapade to a carnival party dressed up as an oyster-andmacaroni vendor. But apart from the occasional titbit from the doctor, Lucia did not know much about what went on beyond Kohlmarkt. She remained very much confined. Carnival festivities were out of the question, and she agreed to her shopping forays with Alvise mostly out of necessity. She took her mourning seriously, and wore black at home as well.

Her conversation with Paolina—for this is what it was, a continuous, daily dialogue by mail—was really the centre of her life. Lucia informed her sister:

Doctor Vespa says you will give birth before you think. I don’t exactly know when I am due. I am always made to worry. Everyone tells me I should be wary of the eighth month, which, thank goodness, will soon be over. Meanwhile I’ve ordered the hard, embroidered mattress we will use when I deliver. I’ve already hired the woman who will watch my baby. God willing, I’ll be well enough to provide the rest.
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Lucia felt very strongly about nursing the baby herself. In the past, the infants of the aristocracy had been put in the care of wet-nurses. Lucia’s generation, influenced by the new literature on childbirth and childcare generated by the ideas of the Enlightenment, was interested in a closer, more intimate relationship between mother and child. In Lucia’s case it was not merely an intellectual point of view. She yearned to breastfeed her child in order to fulfil the maternal instinct she felt growing in her. In this respect, she had a strong ally in Doctor Vespa, who, like many male obstetricians of the time, wanted to reduce the role of midwives and wet-nurses—in large measure to enhance his own authority and control. “He is encouraged by the fact that milk serum has started to ooze out of my right breast first,” she informed Paolina.
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Her sister had mixed feelings about breastfeeding her second-born; she remembered it had been a rather painful experience the first time. If she decided to go ahead anyway, she explained, she would probably breastfeed only the first few days, and then pass the child to the care of a wet-nurse. Lucia, under the influence of Doctor Vespa, argued against the idea of switching midway.

If you are not willing to raise the child with your own milk all the way, then you should think twice since changing to an inferior milk after such a short while would certainly be harmful for the child; and to suddenly interrupt your breastfeeding after allowing the milk to reach its natural flow would be harmful to you.
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As to why this was so, Lucia was forced to admit Doctor Vespa was “rather short on details.” Memmo had raised his daughters to be always curious and inquisitive in order to improve their knowledge. But the doctor simply said Paolina’s plan was “folly” and that she should not go ahead with it and that Lucia should tell her so. “I asked him if he could explain to me the reason behind his belief, as we are used to doing all the time, but he merely replied that we should just trust him because what he said was solidly grounded.”

B
y the end of March, Paolina, being one month ahead of her sister, was about to deliver at any moment. Lucia was in a state of utter fretfulness. She filled her letters with short, nervous questions. How was Paolina feeling? When did she expect to give birth? Was she in any pain? What had she decided to do about her milk? Was the bloodletting reducing her blood discharges? It is hard to imagine anyone being more anxious over a sister’s impending delivery. “Now I’m sure of it,” she wrote on 20 March, unable to stand the excitement any longer. “I know you’ve delivered. But what have you delivered?…Oh I am so happy…And you are such a strong girl I needn’t worry.” She assumed Paolina was breastfeeding the first few days, and she urged her once again not to give up. “I would be so happy if you decided to continue giving your own milk to the little baby,” she insisted. “It is better for him as it comes from the same body that has already nurtured him. It’s lighter, more easily digestible than the one of a stranger, whose milk thickens over time.”
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It turned out Paolina had not yet given birth when Lucia wrote her this letter but she had by the time she received it: another girl was born and she was christened Isabella, like their mother.
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Despite the fatigue, Paolina made the effort of sending a short note to her sister a few hours after delivery in order to reassure her. In one of those curious double-takes caused by the slowness and irregularity of communications, Lucia could rejoice all over again:

Bravo! Hurrah! So, my dear sister, you have happily delivered and those few lines you sent me gave me infinite pleasure because it means you are in good health. I am so happy! I hug you with all my heart, and my two nieces as well. I so much want to see the first-born again, and the second one, who bears our mother’s name, I will love her so.
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Of course, Paolina’s husband, Luigi, was hoping for a son, an expectation Lucia well understood given the pressure she herself had felt from the Mocenigos. “I too was wishing for a little boy,” she wrote to her brother-in-law in a consolatory postscript, “but my prayers will not be useless and you will soon have one, I am sure.”

Lucia was so caught up in the emotional turmoil surrounding Paolina’s delivery that she had managed to put aside momentarily the fears about her own pregnancy. They came back to her even more strongly now that she was next in line. “I must tell you what scares me most as my own delivery approaches,” she confessed to her sister. “It is the awful pain I will have to endure: it terrifies me. And I know what a coward I can be in such a situation.”
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Her fear was compounded by the possibility that Doctor Vespa might not actually be at her side when the time came. After passing by to see her every day for months, he was now telling her that since the empress was also entering the last phase of her pregnancy, he would be on call at all times.

Lucia had seen the imperial carriage passing below her window just a few days before, when the empress had arrived from the country to spend the last part of her pregnancy in Vienna. “I actually enjoyed the splendid spectacle,” she told Paolina. “The cortège passed right in front of our house, followed by parents and friends and twenty-four postilions. The streets and windows were crowded with people. Everyone applauded and shouted hurrahs. The trumpets blared. It was all very beautiful and moving.” Still, Lucia was “immensely distressed” at the possibility of not being able to count on Doctor Vespa when she delivered. And the outlook was not encouraging. “Just yesterday the Empress told Vespa she had been on the point of calling him the night before. She’d woken up with terrible pains that had forced her to get out of bed and walk up and down the room, though luckily the pain had subsided.” Next day, Lucia added with a touch of irritation, the empress felt so much better “she went off to the theatre in an excellent mood.”
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The Viennese custom, at a time of mourning, required one to wear white in lieu of black after the first six weeks, except for a black veil over one’s head. Lucia consented to change her attire with the greatest reluctance. “Our loss has been so devastating,” she told her sister, “that I would like my outward appearance to continue expressing my sadness.”
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In her mind, the death of her father was still so indissolubly bound with the birth of her child that she even feared her enduring grief might somehow affect the newborn. She was afraid of pain, but more than anything else she was afraid of giving birth to a weak or diseased child. “I would be utterly crushed if, albeit for a noble reason, the creature I shall soon give birth to were unhealthy.” And she revealed to Paolina “that right after our terrible misfortune, I felt the baby trembling as he moved inside me. I hope to God my baby will not have to live in agony.”
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The regular post left once a week, but Lucia made a point of writing every day, often picking up the letter where she had left it the night before, in order to give her sister a precise account of what she was going through. She registered every movement of the child, checked her nipples for more traces of serum, took down Doctor Vespa’s latest advice—when he came to see her. Everything was ready; it was just a matter of waiting with Alvise at her side. “I begin my letter to you today,” she wrote to Paolina on 9 April, “even though I might have to interrupt at any moment. Now is when it should all be happening if the counting has been exact. But I haven’t felt any of the premonitory signs yet.” The next morning, she began: “No news as far as I am concerned…”
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The letter was left unfinished. Later that day Lucia delivered a healthy-looking baby boy who was christened Alvise, and instantly nicknamed Alvisetto to distinguish him from his father.

Alvise was ecstatic and Lucia, though exhausted, was happy and relieved. After six years of marriage and three major miscarriages, she had produced at last the heir the Mocenigos had been anxiously waiting for. Everything had gone well. Lucia had delivered in bed, as planned, and Doctor Vespa had arrived just in time to supervise the delivery and savour his triumph. Lucia recovered very quickly and Vespa dispensed her from lying in the dark the first few days—a practice he often required on the grounds that daylight made it difficult to rest. He decided not to truss up her belly, as was usually done. “If the binding is too tight it prevents the normal functioning of the uterus, and if it is too loose it is useless,” he explained. “Besides, it creates excessive heat around the lower parts, which is never a good thing.”
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Vespa made sure Lucia was all settled and rushed off to attend to the empress’s needs.