Judith Summers - Casanovas Women: The Great Seducer and the Women He Loved

Non-fiction

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Fiction

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I, Gloria Gold

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Frogs and Lovers

The Great Seducer and the Women He Loved

JUDITH SUMMERS

Copyright 2006 by Judith Summers

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR

ISBN: 978-1-59691-122-2 (hardcover)

First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2006
This e-book edition published in 2010

E-book ISBN: 978-1-59691-705-7

www.bloomsburyusa.com

For Donald

Throughout my life, cultivating the pleasures of my senses was my main occupation; I have never found any other more important. Feeling that I was born for the opposite sex, I have always loved it, and I have done everything I could to make myself beloved by it.

Giacomo Girolamo Casanova

By his own estimation Giacomo Casanova made love to several hundred women during his lifetime, of which around one hundred and fifty are separately mentioned in his twelve-volume memoir. Any book about the women in his life must therefore either be extremely long or extremely selective. I have taken the latter option and made a very personal choice, which is to write about the women whom I consider were the most important to him or the most interesting. Since Casanova discreetly disguised the names of many of his lovers, their real identities are often a matter of conjecture. In some cases the proof seems overwhelming, but in other cases the jury is still out. I have chosen to go with the person I consider to be the most likely candidate; others may of course disagree with me.

It would not have been possible to write this book without the Robert Laffont/Bouquins edition of Casanovas twelve-volume autobiography, Histoire de ma Vie. Brilliantly edited by Francis Lacassin, it contains almost everything anyone interested in Casanova wants to know, including the integral text of the memoirs. It is this Bouquins three-volume paperback edition that I have referenced in my footnotes, referring to each quotation by the Bouquins volume number, followed by the page number.

Past and present Casanova scholars have trawled scrupulously through the archives of Europe before me in order to pin down the adventurer and his women, and I am deeply indebted to their research. I would particularly like to thank Helmut Watzlawick; Jean Louis Andr for his articles on Henriette; Furio Luccichenti; Pablo Gnther; and most of all Marco Leeflang, for his help and encouragement throughout this project.

Thanks to my agent Clare Alexander; and to Rosemary Davidson, Mary Instone and Erica Jarnes at Bloomsbury Publishing in London, and Kathy Belden at Bloomsbury, New York; Dr Jiri Wolf of the Casanova Study Room at the Museum Duchcov; Matteo Sartorio of the Museo Teatrale alia Scala, Milan; Filippo de Vivo, for his advice on eighteenth-century Venice; Andr Maire of the Archives Municipales de Lyon; Bernard Terlay of the Muse Granet in Aix-en-Provence; Ann-Marie Hodgkiss and Heather Baim of the Princess Helena College, Hertfordshire; Donald Clarke; Gabriella Massaglia; the Biblioteca Spadoni at La Pergola Theatre in Florence; Enrico Tellini of the Teatro San Carlo in Milan; Roy Harrison of the City of Westminster Archives; Martin L.Thompson, for his photograph of Sophia Williams; and Martina Vaclavkova, the most delightful Czech translator one could wish for.

Without the kindness and wonderful hospitality of my friend Eva Kolokova I would probably still be lost somewhere on the road between Prague and Duchcov. Without Donald Sassoon to help me with the most tricky translations, my nose would still be buried in French and Italian dictionaries. And without my sister Sue Summers encouragement I might still be floundering in mid-book despair.

I owe a great debt of thanks to my brother-in-law, Philip Norman, for all the time and effort he very generously put in to helping me edit this book. His advice was invaluable, as it always is. And last but by no means least, thanks to my son Joshua for putting up with my erratic moods and preoccupations with such good grace, and for reminding me, when necessary, that there is more to life than books.

Judith Summers, London, April 2006

IT IS A PERFECT setting for love, or at least seduction: a bench in an ivy-covered arbour in the grounds of a French chateau. A fountain of cherubs stipples the surface of a stone carp pool, while swallows swoop above, fishing the air for gnats. Beyond the water, an avenue of yew trees leads the eye between velvet lawns towards distant hills. Hidden somewhere in the foliage, a blackbird serenades the approaching dusk with his clear sweet melody.

The late evening sunlight pours over Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt, gambler, adventurer and self-confessed libertine. It warms his long muscular limbs through his lace-trimmed shirt and silk knee breeches and glints off his diamond coat buttons and the jewelled buckles on his shoes. He feels relaxed and light-headed, and is experiencing a moment of exquisite happiness. For sitting beside him in this bucolic idyll is a young dairymaid, the most alluring he has ever seen. Emerald eyes and rose-pink lips smile shyly at him from a face every bit as well-chiselled and delicate as that of a French princess. A mass of long raven hair, fastened on top of her head with a single hair pin, tumbles loosely on to her shoulders in suggestive disarray. Two well-formed breasts, each the perfect size to fit in one of Casanovas large palms, strain against the bodice of her calico dress, and her hands and arms, which are bare up to the elbows, are as flawless and pale as cream.

Casanova breathes in the faint odour of the dairymaids sweat, a smell as fragrant as cut grass. He has been aching to possess this treasure from the first moment he saw her two days ago. Since then he has paid her assiduous yet very correct attention, treating her not at all like the servant she is but like the grand lady she was obviously born to be. She has responded with commendable humility and discretion which has redoubled his feelings for her, and he can tell by the way she blushes when she looks at him that she is as smitten by him as he is by her.

He expected no less. Unusually tall, as handsome as a prince and as dark-skinned as a North African, Casanova is aware that he has the kind of presence that stops both men and women in their tracks. At the age of thirty, he is a vital predatory animal in his prime. Coupled with his larger-than-life personality he has a surprising sensitivity, and an unquenchable thirst for all that life has to offer, good or bad. With one notable, damaging exception his own mother women like, love or adore Casanova, and one has only to spend a few minutes with him to understand why. As well as good looks he possesses the rare gift of befriending women. He has the knack of addressing them as if they were his equals, and undressing them as if they were his superiors. Unlike many men of his day, he knows what motivates and pleases women and is in tune with their fears, hopes and desires. Sometimes cannily, sometimes unconsciously, Casanova uses his instinctive understanding of the female sex to get what he wants from them. In his long career as a womaniser he learned early on that he has only to be a sympathetic listener to worm his way into a heart or underneath a skirt.