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By Root 878 0

—legitimate objections, one might add, for rumour had it in Venice that Memmo had accumulated enormous debts during his tenure in Rome. The rumours were exaggerated by interested parties, but money, as Memmo well knew, was a serious problem. “I wouldn’t want us to fall on our backside at this crucial point, making a ridiculous spectacle of ourselves and jeopardising my daughter’s future,”29 he told Chiarabba. But it was not just the money: the Mocenigos were raising issues of lineage that infuriated Memmo. There had been a Memmo doge as early as ad 979, well before the Mocenigos had even appeared in Venice! “I honestly cannot imagine what they can object to,” he said in exasperation, “apart from the fact she wasn’t born a Mocenigo.”30

Memmo had to guard himself from his own brothers, who were constantly pulling the rug from beneath his feet, making it all the more difficult for him to carve out a decent dowry from a much reduced Memmo estate. And Alvise, with all his haste, was proving a less effective ally than expected. “He is young and wants everything at once, whereas I know that on every issue I must move only if we are sure to be on firm ground,” he told his agent. Memmo conceded he was not entirely blameless, especially during his early approaches, “when I operated as if Alvise did not have a father or an uncle.” But Alvise had shown himself quite “incapable of dealing with his family,” and Memmo “absolutely” insisted on “reconciliation with the Mocenigos.”31

The deal needed more work, and Memmo instructed Lucia to return to her old routine—not exactly the easiest thing, given the circumstances. She resumed her grammar and composition lessons with Abbé Sintich, her French lessons with Madame Dupont, and her lessons of philosophy and architecture, which Memmo supervised. The days were now longer. If Lucia finished her morning classes early, she and Paolina and Madame Dupont would sometimes go out for a walk at the edge of the city, towards the Roman ruins along the Appian Way, or else in the direction of the Vatican, in the hope of catching sight of the papal cavalcade. The afternoons were usually devoted to music and singing and to social visits. The girls also took riding lessons at the Villa Borghese. Before their trip to Naples, Memmo had escorted Lucia to dinners and balls; but after receiving Alvise’s marriage proposal, he curtailed her evening engagements. Occasionally, she was allowed to go to the nearby Teatro Valle, the only theatre where the family kept a box.

Memmo seldom entertained at home for he was too mindful of the expenses. But he occasionally gave a lavish dinner to acquit himself in one go of the many he had enjoyed during the year. He had opened up Palazzo San Marco to honour King Gustav III of Sweden, for example, and he had thrown a memorable ball for the Duke and Duchess of Curlandia. Now Memmo decided to give a dinner with dancing and musical entertainment on Easter night, in honour of the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland. It was their second visit to the Eternal City. The duke had come to Rome in the 1770s with his morganatic wife Lady Anne Luttrell, much to the irritation of his brother, King George III. Back then Pope Pius VI had received the duke, but he had only agreed to meet Lady Luttrell in the papal gardens as if by chance. Now, ten years later the duke was back in Rome with his travelling court, and with Lady Anne firmly established as the Duchess of Cumberland (this time the Pope granted her an official audience). They rented a palazzo on Via Condotti, just off Piazza di Spagna, an area known as the English ghetto on account of the many milordi inglesi who took lodgings there during their Grand Tours. The Cumberlands spent extravagant sums of money, commissioned paintings from Italian and foreign artists, and worked their way through the palaces of the Roman aristocracy.

Memmo applied himself with special diligence to give his guests an evening worthy of their rank. Palazzo San Marco was scrubbed from top to bottom. The cracks in the wall were filled in or camouflaged. For once