The Memoires of Casanova, Complete

J >> Jacques Casanova de Seingalt >> The Memoires of Casanova, Complete


'Sans mystere point de plaisirs,
Sans silence point de mystere.
Charme divin de mes loisirs,
Solitude! que tu mes chere!

Then there are a number of more or less complete manuscripts of some
extent. There is the manuscript of the translation of Homer's 'Iliad, in
ottava rima (published in Venice, 1775-8); of the 'Histoire de Venise,'
of the 'Icosameron,' a curious book published in 1787, purporting to be
'translated from English,' but really an original work of Casanova;
'Philocalies sur les Sottises des Mortels,' a long manuscript never
published; the sketch and beginning of 'Le Pollmarque, ou la Calomnie
demasquee par la presence d'esprit. Tragicomedie en trois actes, composed
a Dux dans le mois de Juin de l'Annee, 1791,' which recurs again under
the form of the 'Polemoscope: La Lorgnette menteuse ou la Calomnie
demasquge,' acted before the Princess de Ligne, at her chateau at
Teplitz, 1791. There is a treatise in Italian, 'Delle Passioni'; there
are long dialogues, such as 'Le Philosophe et le Theologien', and 'Reve':
'Dieu-Moi'; there is the 'Songe d'un Quart d'Heure', divided into
minutes; there is the very lengthy criticism of 'Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre'; there is the 'Confutation d'une Censure indiscrate qu'on
lit dans la Gazette de Iena, 19 Juin 1789'; with another large
manuscript, unfortunately imperfect, first called 'L'Insulte', and then
'Placet au Public', dated 'Dux, this 2nd March, 1790,' referring to the
same criticism on the 'Icosameron' and the 'Fuite des Prisons. L'Histoire
de ma Fuite des Prisons de la Republique de Venise, qu'on appelle les
Plombs', which is the first draft of the most famous part of the Memoirs,
was published at Leipzig in 1788; and, having read it in the Marcian
Library at Venice, I am not surprised to learn from this indignant
document that it was printed 'under the care of a young Swiss, who had
the talent to commit a hundred faults of orthography.'



III.

We come now to the documents directly relating to the Memoirs, and among
these are several attempts at a preface, in which we see the actual
preface coming gradually into form. One is entitled 'Casanova au
Lecteur', another 'Histoire de mon Existence', and a third Preface. There
is also a brief and characteristic 'Precis de ma vie', dated November 17,
1797. Some of these have been printed in Le Livre, 1887. But by far the
most important manuscript that I discovered, one which, apparently, I am
the first to discover, is a manuscript entitled 'Extrait du Chapitre 4 et
5. It is written on paper similar to that on which the Memoirs are
written; the pages are numbered 104-148; and though it is described as
Extrait, it seems to contain, at all events, the greater part of the
missing chapters to which I have already referred, Chapters IV. and V. of
the last volume of the Memoirs. In this manuscript we find Armeline and
Scolastica, whose story is interrupted by the abrupt ending of Chapter
III.; we find Mariuccia of Vol. VII, Chapter IX., who married a
hairdresser; and we find also Jaconine, whom Casanova recognises as his
daughter, 'much prettier than Sophia, the daughter of Therese Pompeati,
whom I had left at London.' It is curious that this very important
manuscript, which supplies the one missing link in the Memoirs, should
never have been discovered by any of the few people who have had the
opportunity of looking over the Dux manuscripts. I am inclined to explain
it by the fact that the case in which I found this manuscript contains
some papers not relating to Casanova. Probably, those who looked into
this case looked no further. I have told Herr Brockhaus of my discovery,
and I hope to see Chapters IV. and V. in their places when the
long-looked-for edition of the complete text is at length given to the
world.

Another manuscript which I found tells with great piquancy the whole
story of the Abbe de Brosses' ointment, the curing of the Princess de
Conti's pimples, and the birth of the Duc de Montpensier, which is told
very briefly, and with much less point, in the Memoirs (vol. iii., p.
327). Readers of the Memoirs will remember the duel at Warsaw with Count
Branicki in 1766 (vol. X., pp. 274-320), an affair which attracted a good
deal of attention at the time, and of which there is an account in a
letter from the Abbe Taruffi to the dramatist, Francesco Albergati, dated
Warsaw, March 19, 1766, quoted in Ernesto Masi's Life of Albergati,
Bologna, 1878. A manuscript at Dux in Casanova's handwriting gives an
account of this duel in the third person; it is entitled, 'Description de
l'affaire arrivee a Varsovie le 5 Mars, 1766'. D'Ancona, in the Nuova
Antologia (vol. lxvii., p. 412), referring to the Abbe Taruffi's account,
mentions what he considers to be a slight discrepancy: that Taruffi
refers to the danseuse, about whom the duel was fought, as La Casacci,
while Casanova refers to her as La Catai. In this manuscript Casanova
always refers to her as La Casacci; La Catai is evidently one of M.
Laforgue's arbitrary alterations of the text.

In turning over another manuscript, I was caught by the name Charpillon,
which every reader of the Memoirs will remember as the name of the harpy
by whom Casanova suffered so much in London, in 1763-4. This manuscript
begins by saying: 'I have been in London for six months and have been to
see them (that is, the mother and daughter) in their own house,' where he
finds nothing but 'swindlers, who cause all who go there to lose their
money in gambling.' This manuscript adds some details to the story told
in the ninth and tenth volumes of the Memoirs, and refers to the meeting
with the Charpillons four and a half years before, described in Volume
V., pages 428-485. It is written in a tone of great indignation.
Elsewhere, I found a letter written by Casanova, but not signed,
referring to an anonymous letter which he had received in reference to
the Charpillons, and ending: 'My handwriting is known.' It was not until
the last that I came upon great bundles of letters addressed to Casanova,
and so carefully preserved that little scraps of paper, on which
postscripts are written, are still in their places. One still sees the
seals on the backs of many of the letters, on paper which has slightly
yellowed with age, leaving the ink, however, almost always fresh. They
come from Venice, Paris, Rome, Prague, Bayreuth, The Hague, Genoa, Fiume,
Trieste, etc., and are addressed to as many places, often poste restante.
Many are letters from women, some in beautiful handwriting, on thick
paper; others on scraps of paper, in painful hands, ill-spelt. A Countess
writes pitifully, imploring help; one protests her love, in spite of the
'many chagrins' he has caused her; another asks 'how they are to live
together'; another laments that a report has gone about that she is
secretly living with him, which may harm his reputation. Some are in
French, more in Italian. 'Mon cher Giacometto', writes one woman, in
French; 'Carissimo a Amatissimo', writes another, in Italian. These
letters from women are in some confusion, and are in need of a good deal
of sorting over and rearranging before their full extent can be realised.
Thus I found letters in the same handwriting separated by letters in
other handwritings; many are unsigned, or signed only by a single
initial; many are undated, or dated only with the day of the week or
month. There are a great many letters, dating from 1779 to 1786, signed
'Francesca Buschini,' a name which I cannot identify; they are written in
Italian, and one of them begins: 'Unico Mio vero Amico' ('my only true
friend'). Others are signed 'Virginia B.'; one of these is dated, 'Forli,
October 15, 1773.' There is also a 'Theresa B.,' who writes from Genoa. I
was at first unable to identify the writer of a whole series of letters
in French, very affectionate and intimate letters, usually unsigned,
occasionally signed 'B.' She calls herself votre petite amie; or she ends
with a half-smiling, half-reproachful 'goodnight, and sleep better than
I' In one letter, sent from Paris in 1759, she writes: 'Never believe me,
but when I tell you that I love you, and that I shall love you always: In
another letter, ill-spelt, as her letters often are, she writes: 'Be
assured that evil tongues, vapours, calumny, nothing can change my heart,
which is yours entirely, and has no will to change its master.' Now, it
seems to me that these letters must be from Manon Baletti, and that they
are the letters referred to in the sixth volume of the Memoirs. We read
there (page 60) how on Christmas Day, 1759, Casanova receives a letter
from Manon in Paris, announcing her marriage with 'M. Blondel, architect
to the King, and member of his Academy'; she returns him his letters, and
begs him to return hers, or burn them. Instead of doing so he allows
Esther to read them, intending to burn them afterwards. Esther begs to be
allowed to keep the letters, promising to 'preserve them religiously all
her life.' 'These letters,' he says, 'numbered more than two hundred, and
the shortest were of four pages: Certainly there are not two hundred of
them at Dux, but it seems to me highly probable that Casanova made a
final selection from Manon's letters, and that it is these which I have
found.

But, however this may be, I was fortunate enough to find the set of
letters which I was most anxious to find the letters from Henriette,
whose loss every writer on Casanova has lamented. Henriette, it will be
remembered, makes her first appearance at Cesena, in the year 1748; after
their meeting at Geneva, she reappears, romantically 'a propos',
twenty-two years later, at Aix in Provence; and she writes to Casanova
proposing 'un commerce epistolaire', asking him what he has done since
his escape from prison, and promising to do her best to tell him all that
has happened to her during the long interval. After quoting her letter,
he adds: 'I replied to her, accepting the correspondence that she offered
me, and telling her briefly all my vicissitudes. She related to me in
turn, in some forty letters, all the history of her life. If she dies
before me, I shall add these letters to these Memoirs; but to-day she is
still alive, and always happy, though now old.' It has never been known
what became of these letters, and why they were not added to the Memoirs.
I have found a great quantity of them, some signed with her married name
in full, 'Henriette de Schnetzmann,' and I am inclined to think that she
survived Casanova, for one of the letters is dated Bayreuth, 1798, the
year of Casanova's death. They are remarkably charming, written with a
mixture of piquancy and distinction; and I will quote the characteristic
beginning and end of the last letter I was able to find. It begins: 'No,
it is impossible to be sulky with you!' and ends: 'If I become vicious,
it is you, my Mentor, who make me so, and I cast my sins upon you. Even
if I were damned I should still be your most devoted friend, Henriette de
Schnetzmann.' Casanova was twenty-three when he met Henriette; now,
herself an old woman, she writes to him when he is seventy-three, as if
the fifty years that had passed were blotted out in the faithful
affection of her memory. How many more discreet and less changing lovers
have had the quality of constancy in change, to which this life-long
correspondence bears witness? Does it not suggest a view of Casanova not
quite the view of all the world? To me it shows the real man, who perhaps
of all others best understood what Shelley meant when he said:

True love in this differs from gold or clay
That to divide is not to take away.

But, though the letters from women naturally interested me the most, they
were only a certain proportion of the great mass of correspondence which
I turned over. There were letters from Carlo Angiolini, who was
afterwards to bring the manuscript of the Memoirs to Brockhaus; from
Balbi, the monk with whom Casanova escaped from the Piombi; from the
Marquis Albergati, playwright, actor, and eccentric, of whom there is
some account in the Memoirs; from the Marquis Mosca, 'a distinguished man
of letters whom I was anxious to see,' Casanova tells us in the same
volume in which he describes his visit to the Moscas at Pesaro; from
Zulian, brother of the Duchess of Fiano; from Richard Lorrain, 'bel
homme, ayant de l'esprit, le ton et le gout de la bonne societe', who
came to settle at Gorizia in 1773, while Casanova was there; from the
Procurator Morosini, whom he speaks of in the Memoirs as his 'protector,'
and as one of those through whom he obtained permission to return to
Venice. His other 'protector,' the 'avogador' Zaguri, had, says Casanova,
'since the affair of the Marquis Albergati, carried on a most interesting
correspondence with me'; and in fact I found a bundle of no less than a
hundred and thirty-eight letters from him, dating from 1784 to 1798.
Another bundle contains one hundred and seventy-two letters from Count
Lamberg. In the Memoirs Casanova says, referring to his visit to Augsburg
at the end of 1761:

I used to spend my evenings in a very agreeable manner at the house of
Count Max de Lamberg, who resided at the court of the Prince-Bishop with
the title of Grand Marshal. What particularly attached me to Count
Lamberg was his literary talent. A first-rate scholar, learned to a
degree, he has published several much esteemed works. I carried on an
exchange of letters with him which ended only with his death four years
ago in 1792.

Casanova tells us that, at his second visit to Augsburg in the early part
of 1767, he 'supped with Count Lamberg two or three times a week,' during
the four months he was there. It is with this year that the letters I
have found begin: they end with the year of his death, 1792. In his
'Memorial d'un Mondain' Lamberg refers to Casanova as 'a man known in
literature, a man of profound knowledge.' In the first edition of 1774,
he laments that 'a man such as M. de S. Galt' should not yet have been
taken back into favour by the Venetian government, and in the second
edition, 1775, rejoices over Casanova's return to Venice. Then there are
letters from Da Ponte, who tells the story of Casanova's curious
relations with Mme. d'Urfe, in his 'Memorie scritte da esso', 1829; from
Pittoni, Bono, and others mentioned in different parts of the Memoirs,
and from some dozen others who are not mentioned in them. The only
letters in the whole collection that have been published are those from
the Prince de Ligne and from Count Koenig.



IV.

Casanova tells us in his Memoirs that, during his later years at Dux, he
had only been able to 'hinder black melancholy from devouring his poor
existence, or sending him out of his mind,' by writing ten or twelve
hours a day. The copious manuscripts at Dux show us how persistently he
was at work on a singular variety of subjects, in addition to the
Memoirs, and to the various books which he published during those years.
We see him jotting down everything that comes into his head, for his own
amusement, and certainly without any thought of publication; engaging in
learned controversies, writing treatises on abstruse mathematical
problems, composing comedies to be acted before Count Waldstein's
neighbours, practising verse-writing in two languages, indeed with more
patience than success, writing philosophical dialogues in which God and
himself are the speakers, and keeping up an extensive correspondence,
both with distinguished men and with delightful women. His mental
activity, up to the age of seventy-three, is as prodigious as the
activity which he had expended in living a multiform and incalculable
life. As in life everything living had interested him so in his
retirement from life every idea makes its separate appeal to him; and he
welcomes ideas with the same impartiality with which he had welcomed
adventures. Passion has intellectualised itself, and remains not less
passionate. He wishes to do everything, to compete with every one; and it
is only after having spent seven years in heaping up miscellaneous
learning, and exercising his faculties in many directions, that he turns
to look back over his own past life, and to live it over again in memory,
as he writes down the narrative of what had interested him most in it. 'I
write in the hope that my history will never see the broad day light of
publication,' he tells us, scarcely meaning it, we may be sure, even in
the moment of hesitancy which may naturally come to him. But if ever a
book was written for the pleasure of writing it, it was this one; and an
autobiography written for oneself is not likely to be anything but frank.

'Truth is the only God I have ever adored,' he tells us: and we now know
how truthful he was in saying so. I have only summarised in this article
the most important confirmations of his exact accuracy in facts and
dates; the number could be extended indefinitely. In the manuscripts we
find innumerable further confirmations; and their chief value as
testimony is that they tell us nothing which we should not have already
known, if we had merely taken Casanova at his word. But it is not always
easy to take people at their own word, when they are writing about
themselves; and the world has been very loth to believe in Casanova as he
represents himself. It has been specially loth to believe that he is
telling the truth when he tells us about his adventures with women. But
the letters contained among these manuscripts shows us the women of
Casanova writing to him with all the fervour and all the fidelity which
he attributes to them; and they show him to us in the character of as
fervid and faithful a lover. In every fact, every detail, and in the
whole mental impression which they convey, these manuscripts bring before
us the Casanova of the Memoirs. As I seemed to come upon Casanova at
home, it was as if I came upon old friend, already perfectly known to me,
before I had made my pilgrimage to Dux.

1902




TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

A series of adventures wilder and more fantastic than the wildest of
romances, written down with the exactitude of a business diary; a view of
men and cities from Naples to Berlin, from Madrid and London to
Constantinople and St. Petersburg; the 'vie intime' of the eighteenth
century depicted by a man, who to-day sat with cardinals and saluted
crowned heads, and to morrow lurked in dens of profligacy and crime; a
book of confessions penned without reticence and without penitence; a
record of forty years of "occult" charlatanism; a collection of tales of
successful imposture, of 'bonnes fortunes', of marvellous escapes, of
transcendent audacity, told with the humour of Smollett and the delicate
wit of Voltaire. Who is there interested in men and letters, and in the
life of the past, who would not cry, "Where can such a book as this be
found?"

Yet the above catalogue is but a brief outline, a bare and meagre
summary, of the book known as "THE MEMOIRS OF CASANOVA"; a work
absolutely unique in literature. He who opens these wonderful pages is as
one who sits in a theatre and looks across the gloom, not on a
stage-play, but on another and a vanished world. The curtain draws up,
and suddenly a hundred and fifty years are rolled away, and in bright
light stands out before us the whole life of the past; the gay dresses,
the polished wit, the careless morals, and all the revel and dancing of
those merry years before the mighty deluge of the Revolution. The palaces
and marble stairs of old Venice are no longer desolate, but thronged with
scarlet-robed senators, prisoners with the doom of the Ten upon their
heads cross the Bridge of Sighs, at dead of night the nun slips out of
the convent gate to the dark canal where a gondola is waiting, we assist
at the 'parties fines' of cardinals, and we see the bank made at faro.
Venice gives place to the assembly rooms of Mrs. Cornely and the fast
taverns of the London of 1760; we pass from Versailles to the Winter
Palace of St. Petersburg in the days of Catherine, from the policy of the
Great Frederick to the lewd mirth of strolling-players, and the
presence-chamber of the Vatican is succeeded by an intrigue in a garret.
It is indeed a new experience to read this history of a man who,
refraining from nothing, has concealed nothing; of one who stood in the
courts of Louis the Magnificent before Madame de Pompadour and the nobles
of the Ancien Regime, and had an affair with an adventuress of Denmark
Street, Soho; who was bound over to keep the peace by Fielding, and knew
Cagliostro. The friend of popes and kings and noblemen, and of all the
male and female ruffians and vagabonds of Europe, abbe, soldier,
charlatan, gamester, financier, diplomatist, viveur, philosopher,
virtuoso, "chemist, fiddler, and buffoon," each of these, and all of
these was Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt, Knight of the Golden
Spur.

And not only are the Memoirs a literary curiosity; they are almost
equally curious from a bibliographical point of view. The manuscript was
written in French and came into the possession of the publisher
Brockhaus, of Leipzig, who had it translated into German, and printed.
From this German edition, M. Aubert de Vitry re-translated the work into
French, but omitted about a fourth of the matter, and this mutilated and
worthless version is frequently purchased by unwary bibliophiles. In the
year 1826, however, Brockhaus, in order presumably to protect his
property, printed the entire text of the original MS. in French, for the
first time, and in this complete form, containing a large number of
anecdotes and incidents not to be found in the spurious version, the work
was not acceptable to the authorities, and was consequently rigorously
suppressed. Only a few copies sent out for presentation or for review are
known to have escaped, and from one of these rare copies the present
translation has been made and solely for private circulation.

In conclusion, both translator and 'editeur' have done their utmost to
present the English Casanova in a dress worthy of the wonderful and witty
original.




AUTHOR'S PREFACE

I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of
my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free
agent.

The doctrine of the Stoics or of any other sect as to the force of
Destiny is a bubble engendered by the imagination of man, and is near
akin to Atheism. I not only believe in one God, but my faith as a
Christian is also grafted upon that tree of philosophy which has never
spoiled anything.

I believe in the existence of an immaterial God, the Author and Master of
all beings and all things, and I feel that I never had any doubt of His
existence, from the fact that I have always relied upon His providence,
prayed to Him in my distress, and that He has always granted my prayers.
Despair brings death, but prayer does away with despair; and when a man
has prayed he feels himself supported by new confidence and endowed with
power to act. As to the means employed by the Sovereign Master of human
beings to avert impending dangers from those who beseech His assistance,
I confess that the knowledge of them is above the intelligence of man,
who can but wonder and adore. Our ignorance becomes our only resource,
and happy, truly happy; are those who cherish their ignorance! Therefore
must we pray to God, and believe that He has granted the favour we have
been praying for, even when in appearance it seems the reverse. As to the
position which our body ought to assume when we address ourselves to the
Creator, a line of Petrarch settles it:

'Con le ginocchia della mente inchine.'

Man is free, but his freedom ceases when he has no faith in it; and the
greater power he ascribes to faith, the more he deprives himself of that
power which God has given to him when He endowed him with the gift of
reason. Reason is a particle of the Creator's divinity. When we use it
with a spirit of humility and justice we are certain to please the Giver
of that precious gift. God ceases to be God only for those who can admit
the possibility of His non-existence, and that conception is in itself
the most severe punishment they can suffer.

Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do
everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his
actions to be ruled by passion. The man who has sufficient power over
himself to wait until his nature has recovered its even balance is the
truly wise man, but such beings are seldom met with.

The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim
before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has
been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the
wind wherever it led. How many changes arise from such an independent
mode of life! My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days
I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world,
either physical or moral, good comes out of evil just as well as evil
comes out of good. My errors will point to thinking men the various
roads, and will teach them the great art of treading on the brink of the
precipice without falling into it. It is only necessary to have courage,
for strength without self-confidence is useless. I have often met with
happiness after some imprudent step which ought to have brought ruin upon
me, and although passing a vote of censure upon myself I would thank God
for his mercy. But, by way of compensation, dire misfortune has befallen
me in consequence of actions prompted by the most cautious wisdom. This
would humble me; yet conscious that I had acted rightly I would easily
derive comfort from that conviction.