Venice, November 1580.
One Monday evening, at supper, Montaigne receives a messenger: Veronica Franco is sending him a gift, a book of letters she has written.
The travel journal records the scene in a single line, tip included.
Le Lundy à souper, la Signora Veronica Franca, janti fame Venitiane, envoïa vers lui pour lui presanter, un livre de Lettres qu’elle a composé ; il fit donner deux escus audict home.
On Monday evening, at supper, Signora Veronica Franco, a Venetian gentlewoman, sent someone to present him with a book of letters she had written. He gave the messenger two écus.
The book’s dedication is dated 2 August, and its title is Lettere familiari a diversi: fifty letters by Veronica Franco, poet and courtesan of Renaissance Venice.
The recipients are almost all left unnamed, except two: Henry III, king of France, and the painter Tintoretto.
These are letters she chose and revised herself for print, and some of them show the book as it takes shape. What we read, then, is the portrait of herself that Veronica Franco chose to give to the public.
The book is dedicated to Cardinal Luigi d’Este, of the powerful family that ruled Ferrara. We know nothing about their relationship, but dedicating a book to a powerful patron was the norm.
She calls it a uolume di lettere giouenili, a volume of youthful letters.
She is about thirty-four, with just over a decade left to live. Are these letters from her youth, written years earlier? Or is this customary modesty? A few lines earlier she also describes herself as a donna inesperta delle discipline, et pouera d’inuentione, e di lingua” (a woman untrained in the disciplines, and poor in invention and in language).
There is an oddity.
One letter, the one that begins “La cariteuole humanità uostra,” is printed twice, and the two versions don’t match. The spelling changes, the punctuation, and some of the words. At one point, for example, a word appears on p. 34 that isn’t there on p. 10:
p. 10: l’alto cospetto del uostro ualore / the lofty sight of your virtue
p. 34: l’alto cospetto del uostro celeste ualore / the lofty sight of your heavenly virtue
From here on, I’ll focus on a small selection from the letters I read while preparing my next article: three out of fifty, in the order they appear in the book, in which Veronica talks about being a courtesan.
Or rather, about what she chose to say about it.
Letter 18 - “Poi ch’io non posso ricambiarui…”
Veronica Franco replies to a man who has declared his love for her and tried to win her over with gifts and increasingly generous offers.
She explains that she cannot return his feelings, because her affection lies elsewhere, and she rejects the idea that her resistance is a tactic to get more.
She finds it offensive that he thinks he can "buy" her love: while acknowledging the social and economic gap between them, she insists that her feelings and her will are not for sale.
The letter, then, is a defense of her own sincerity and autonomy against a commercial view of love.
Using the art of flattery, which is neither impossible nor very difficult, I could have planted a false belief in your mind, so as to make use of you whenever the occasion arose, for you are, after all, a gentleman of great standing, from whom I could expect help and favor in many ways.
And without risking anything on my side, I could have put myself in a position to draw from you as much profit as you yourself can see I know of, from the proposal brought to me and the offers you have made me; all the more so because, once benefits begin to flow, love has neither limit nor restraint.
I did not want to do it, so as not to deceive you, since I cannot love you in return. On other occasions, when I have modestly made this same intention known to you, you showed that you did not believe my words meant what they said; instead, believing whatever your desire led you to believe, you glossed my speech as if I were resisting your requests only to inflame your wishes further and to spur you to raise your offer, as indeed you have done, and by a great deal.
So I did not want to fail in this duty of honesty, which is natural to me and my habit; and with these lines I assure you once more that my mind is unchanged, a mind you plainly wrong by charging me with greed, when you believe you can buy my love with rewards.
That love, though it is the love of a woman who cannot match one of your rank in wealth, or in certain other respects, is not that of a common woman who, for an agreed price, would pledge any part of her body, let alone her whole soul; nor that of some other woman who, falsely taken for one by you, against her own good conduct, should deserve on your opinion to be abhorred in your eyes, even while you loved her.
And the reason that consoles me in the displeasure I feel at seeing myself courted by you with an ever-rising price, as if you were striking a bargain — and, to tell the truth, an extravagant one — for my person, which is worth very little, is this: if you are content that it be known and said that you love so much a woman you consider venal, then I too can bear to be thought one by you […]
Note — Veronica doesn't deny that she could profit from this man. She even explains how, through flattery, and says she has chosen not to.
Then she draws the line: hers is not the love of a uil femina (basically, a prostitute) who per conuenuto prezzo, for an agreed price, pledges any part of her body.
She closes with an ironic concession: if he is content to have it said that he loves a venal woman, she can bear to be thought one.
Open questions — Where, for Veronica, does the line fall between a courtesan and a uil femina? And where did it fall in the society of her time?
Letter 20 - “Se l’adempimento del uostro desiderio…”
A gentleman is courting Veronica through a woman acting as his go-between.
Veronica replies that if it were up to that messenger, so skilled and so passionate, he would already have what he wants. But her circumstances are such that she cannot, and must not, be in command of her own will: she has to choose what she least wants and give up what she most desires.
If her goodwill is not enough for him, let him take comfort in the messenger's zeal, so insistent that it becomes a nuisance in a life that, Veronica writes, is bound by constraints at odds with her freedom.
As a sensible gentleman, he should accept this as an excuse for both the messenger and herself. If fortune ever allows it, she will prove to him by her actions that she has no wish to remain in his debt.
Meanwhile, she reminds him that a true lover yields to the will of the woman he loves: in love, whoever endures most gains most, and whoever gives way most wins.
But since my circumstances are such that I cannot, and must not, be in command of my own will, be content that, for all the effectiveness of the service done to me on your behalf and for all the virtue of your own merits, I choose what I would least wish and abstain from what I most desire.
And if my goodwill and ready willingness are not enough for you, take your satisfaction from your go-between and her efforts, so zealous that at times they prove troublesome and importunate, given the circumstances of my life, which is hemmed in and confined by things wholly contrary to my freedom.
Since you know this, being a discreet gentleman of sound judgment, it ought to serve as an excuse for both your agent and myself: she does not fail in her duty, and I do all I can.
Note — Veronica says twice she is not free: she cannot, and must not, be padrona del mio arbitrio, in command of her own will, and her life is ristretta in cose del tutto contrarie alla mia libertà, confined by things wholly contrary to her freedom.
She never says what binds her. Nor is the refusal final: if fortune allows, she will repay his love.
In the previous letter, her love could not be bought. Here it is her will that does not belong to her.
Open questions — What are i termini in ch'io mi truouo, the circumstances she finds herself in? Another lover? An arrangement, or the very condition of her trade?
Letter 22 - “Che ui siate andata dolendo…”
Veronica writes to a mother who goes around complaining because Veronica no longer receives her at home. She explains the reason in writing, as a last attempt. If the mother listens, their friendship will be closer than before; otherwise it will end.
The case concerns the daughter, but Veronica addresses the mother: if the girl became a prostitute (femina del mondo), the mother would be her procuress, and the fault would be above all hers.
She reminds her that she urged her more than once to protect her daughter’s virginity. She had offered to have the girl taken into the Casa delle Zitelle and to help the mother with her own means.
The mother had accepted, then suddenly changed course. The girl, until then modestly dressed, appeared with bleached, curled hair, make-up and her bosom exposed, as is done so that the goods find buyers. Veronica could barely recognize her. The mother took her reproaches as malice, and Veronica has avoided her ever since.
Then the practical argument. The daughter is not very beautiful and has little grace in conversation, while as a courtesan even a woman who is beautiful and cultivated struggles to succeed. Trusting to fortune is the worst choice. And even with fortune on her side, that life remains miserable: being at the mercy of many, at the risk of being robbed, killed or infected.
It means eating with someone else’s mouth, sleeping with someone else’s eyes, moving at someone else’s desire. It is the worst misfortune in the world, and on top of that it costs the damnation of the soul.
The mother must not make herself the butcher of her daughter’s flesh.
Veronica renews her offers of help and urges her to put things right while there is still time: once the stone is thrown into the water, it is hard to fish it out. Otherwise the mother will lose her friends, and perhaps one day the daughter herself, once she understands the wrong done to her, will run from her.
…who, even looking at the matter in carnal terms, is so lacking in beauty, to say no more, for my eyes do not deceive me, and has so little grace, and so little spirit in conversation, that you will ruin her, thinking you will make her happy in the courtesan's profession, in which even a woman who is beautiful, and has manners, and judgment, and knowledge of many accomplishments struggles to succeed; let alone a young woman who lacks many of these things, and in some does not rise above mediocrity: […] supposing that fortune were wholly favorable and kind to you in this, this is a life that, whatever the outcome, is always wretched; it is too unhappy a thing, and too contrary to human nature, to bind one's body and one's labor to a servitude that is frightening just to think of; to give oneself as prey to so many, at the risk of being stripped, of being robbed, of being killed; that one man, in one day, can take from you everything you have gained with many, over a long time, with so many other dangers of abuse, and of contagious and frightful diseases.
To eat with someone else's mouth, to sleep with someone else's eyes, to move at someone else's desire, always heading for certain shipwreck of one's means and of one's life: what greater misery?
Note — The Casa delle Zitelle, where Veronica offers to have the girl taken in, was a Venetian institution founded around 1560 for girls whose poverty put them at risk of ending up in prostitution.
Veronica, too, had been brought into the trade by her mother, Paola Fracassa, a courtesan herself. In the Catalogo de tutte le principal et più honorate cortigiane di Venetia, a printed list of addresses and fees that appeared around 1565, her entry names her mother as her pieza, that is, her go-between.
Nowhere in the letter does Veronica say she is a courtesan. She lists what the trade requires, its risks and what can be lost in a day, but she does so in the infinitive ("darsi in preda," "mangiar con l'altrui bocca") or in the third person ("chi sia bella").
There is only one shift. The letter addresses the mother as voi, the formal "you," and for one sentence it switches to tu, the familiar one: "ch'un solo un dì ti toglia quanto con molti in molto tempo hai acquistato."
Open questions — Why does a courtesan choose to print, in the book in which she presents herself to the public, a letter that describes her trade as servitude? Was it rare or common for a mother to bring her daughter into that trade in the Venice of her time?