Mademoiselle Mori: A Tale of Modern Rome (Margaret Roberts)

Overview

Mademoiselle Mori: A Tale of Modern Rome (2 vols, London, John W. Parker and Son, 1860; Tauchnitz reprint, Leipzig, 1862) is the first novel of the English writer Margaret Roberts (1833-1919), published anonymously; she never published under her own name, according to the Victorian Research Web. It is set in Rome in the years of Pius IX's election and the revolution of 1848-49, and tells of Irene, a young orphan with a gift for singing who is taken in by a wealthy English widow and wants to become a cantatrice. Roberts wrote it, according to the Orlando project, working in Rome and partly in Italian, and it became her best-known book. (Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles; Victorian Research Web, "show author" 1824.)

Identification

The diary footnote (062.0546) calls the novel "unidentified". It is identifiable with high confidence: the 1860 text on the Internet Archive (vol. 1, checked) contains the heroine Irene, her friend Leone (a liberal), the widowed English patroness Mrs Dalzell, the young Count Clementi called "Pietrucchio", whose uncle is Monsignore Clementi, and Irene's wish "to be a great cantatrice"; and it opens on the Rome of 1846. These match all the details Marie gives: an English novel set in Rome in '46 with Pius IX not yet pope, an orphan of sixteen who wants to sing, a young count, nephew of a monsignor, called Pietruccio, and a liberal named Leone. The title is "Mademoiselle Mori"; Marie writes "Mari".

Marie and this work

On 22 June 1876, in Nice, she is "vivement intéressée par la lecture d'un roman anglais : Mademoiselle Mari. Cela se passe en 46... Quant à l'histoire amoureuse, elle commence exactement comme la mienne." The theatre, the stares of a young count who is the nephew of a monsignor, and the longing to be a singer remind her of her own story with Pietro Antonelli, nephew of the cardinal; she says the heroine resembles her only in her voice (062.0546). Because the novel is about Rome, her heart beats "et je m'écrie qu'il n'y a rien de plus grand, de plus étrangement poétique, de plus splendide que Rome."

The "hero", she says, is "une canaille papiste" (062.0560): the book teaches her the customs of Roman courtship, bouquets sent through the chambermaid, a carriage following under the window. On 23 June (062.0575) she tells the plot: the hero is Pietruccio, Count Clementi, nephew of the cardinal who "faisait crier le peuple" before Pius IX; he pretends to be a liberal, "c'est sans doute pour trahir", and Irene loves Leone. "Ce roman me soigne. On se donne des rendez-vous sur l'escalier. Comme moi" (062.0591). On 24 June (062.0692) she reads the countess-mother of the book as a copy of Camilla Folchi, Countess Antonelli, a mother who is the slave of her husband; on 25 June (062.0709) she admits that "par vanité" she cannot belittle Antonelli, who must remain "un homme important et un roman sérieux" for her readers.

Sources

The glossary has no earlier entry for this novel; the footnote at 062.0546 can now name it.