The quality of a good biography combines contextual research with primary evidence to bring the person and times to life. Andrea di Robilant did that when he came across the letters of his Venetian great-great-great-great-grandmother, Lucia Mocenigo. Historian Margaret MacMillan, author of Nixon in China & Paris 1919, wrote in Uses and Abuses of History (Penguin, 2008, p. xi) that “it is wiser to think of history, not as a pile of dead leaves or a collection of dusty artifacts, but as a pool, sometimes benign, often sulphurous, which lies under our present, shaping [us].” Di Robilant went wading into that pool and the result was a forthright biography of his 83 year old ancestor and the perils of the lesser nobility inexorably caught in turbulent historical events.
Lucia was like a guileless Forrest Gump, accidentally near historical people and events, from Napoleon and Josephine to Empress Maria Theresa and Lord Byron. Di Robilant wove a compassionate story of a woman doggedly attempting to keep her family and her life intact while a revolution tossed them about.
Venice and the Fortunes of Its Elite
Lucia’s Memmo family had been founding members of the Venetian Republic and her father was an ambassador and candidate for the position of Doge. Her fiancé Alvise was a Mocenigo, a wealthy and influential scion of nobili. Their marriage in 1787 when she was 16, two years before the outbreak of the French Revolution, was a microcosm of the changes in store during that tumultuous era.
Venice was caught in the waxing and waning of geopolitical fortunes between France and Austria. Lucia’s father and later her husband continually tried to balance the family’s fortunes by attempting to back the right horse, with only modest success. For instance
- The Venetian Republic appointed Alvise as governor to Verona but while there, their two year old son died, leaving Lucia grief stricken
- in 1795 Napoleon invaded the Venetian Republic; Alvise negotiated with him and entertained Josephine when the French occupied Venice, but when Austria re-occupied the city Alvise was castigated
- Alvise used Lucia to curry favour alternately with the Austrian court and the French nouveau elite.
Vienna and Courtly Life
Lucia and Alvise' relationship was not smooth and they often drifted in separate lives, once not seeing each other for 28 months (p. 138). In fact, Lucia had taken her own lover, a Colonel Plunkett. She became pregnant by him and went to a convent to keep the pregnancy secret. But Plunkett died in battle only two days after his son was christened. Lucia gave the boy to a friend to raise, having hidden the birth to avoid being ruined.
Alvise had been traveling and returned to announce that the family would go to Vienna; he was backing the Austrians now. Dutifully Lucia did her best on limited finances to help her husband with connections and revive his influence. She visited Schonau and toured with the Empress Maria Theresa, managed the household finances on a shoestring, and after a year and a half and 114 strategic courtesy calls "she had restored the Mocenigo name to respectability without appearing eager or calculating" (p. 161).
In 1805, Napoleon was at his zenith, defeating the Austrians at Ulm and the Russians at Austerlitz. French troops occupied Lucia's apartments in Vienna. Alvise, working on his Italian estate was in the right place at the right time however. In an about face, he secured a governorship under Napoleon's step-son Eugène and a sinecure for Lucia as a lady-in-waiting to Eugène's wife.
Napoleonic Functionairies in Milan and Paris
In Milan, Lucia performed her duties as required, being in attendance from morning until night in a whirlwind. But she was not enthusiastic about being separated from her son (Alvise had adopted him), his education and family. Alvise also worked 14 hour days but in admiration of Napoleon, writing "I am working for the hero of all times" (p. 207).
In 1810, Napoleon divorced Eugène's mother, Josephine and remarried. Lucia as a lady-in-waiting wrote of her observations of Napoleon first hand and of her visits to Josephine. The next few years, Lucia juggled her duties in Milan and Paris as well as enduring various ailments and overseeing her son's education.
Her letters bear witness to the end of Napoleon's Empire
- from her small apartment she saw the "exhausted, poorly clad" French troops straggle through Paris at the end of March 1814 and several folks wearing the royalist white brocade
- she was presented to Louis XVIII, who remembered that he was welcomed in exile in Verona by Alvise. She wrote that "his expression was so friendly that he seemed genuinely pleased to see me after nineteen years" (p. 258)
- she dressed in mourning and drafted a letter of condolence to Eugène when his mother Josephine died, noting that Napoleon had not been told while in exile on Elba.
Lucia returned to Venice. The city had suffered a great deal from floods, sieges and general disrepair.
Venice Again and A Matron's Care
The biggest concern was keeping the family together, secure and healthy at the end of a deluge, as it were. Lucia endured the death of her husband, rejoiced at the Austrian ennobling of her son, managed the country estate, and became a grandmother. She was even at the centre of an opera buffo, caused by renting rooms to Lord Byron in Palazzo Mocenigo to help pay expenses, but at a cost. Byron had several histrionic mistresses ensconced there and tried to break his lease.
Lucia was as firm with Byron as she had been determined and resourceful throughout her life. She was more than a casual observer during the Napoleonic Era and as di Robilant tells it, would any of us have fared as well?
TLE101
James Ellsworth - Now I am a Feature Writer for Suite 101 where I have almsot 60 articles. Also I am contributing regularly to Senior Living magazine.
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