“Lonely women do wonders, I am not surprised: they are creatures between angels and men” (incipit)
The addressee is indicated only as “Marchesina adorabile” in the heading and as “ottima Felicia” in the body of the letter, but she is indisputably the Marchioness Felicia Giovio Porro , linked to the lawyer Abbondio Perpenti, who is also mentioned in the letter for some verses written by him that the Marchioness sent to Pellico and which he judges to be of good quality.
“Since 1819, next to her [the Marchioness Felicia Giovio Porro (1781-1849)] there was the lawyer Abbondio Perpenti, who would marry her in 1822, also a man of letters, translator and on occasion a poet, before choosing to pursue a legal career. An oil portrait from 1815, preserved in Palazzo Volpi in Como, portrays the Marchioness at a table, languidly surprised while she was intent on reading a book, with others placed on the desk, because, in fact, the widow of the Marchioness Paolo Innocenzo Porro Odescalchi, married in 1801, was interested in poetry. The relationship with her relative Luigi Porro Lambertenghi facilitated her acquaintance and association with some men of letters, Pellico, who was Porro's tutor, and then Giuseppe Montani when at the beginning of 1820 he moved to fill the vacant position from the friend. Felicia, for her part, as the firstborn of Count Giambattista Giovio, had had, ten years earlier, like the whole family, an intense correspondence with Foscolo” (L. Danzi, Note on Francesco Longhena, in: “Archivio Storico Lombardo”, series 12ma, vol. XXIII, year CXLIV, Milan, 2018, pp. 93-94). Pellico then continues by claiming that it is impossible to devote oneself to poetry in Milan, defined as a “whirling whirlwind that circles men without ever leaving them in peace”, and regrets the tranquility of the countryside and Grumello in particular. He then sends his greetings and those of his brother-in-law and his children, of whom Pellico was tutor, to the Marchioness and her son Galeazzo.
Silvio Pellico was born in Saluzzo on 24 June 1789. After his initial studies in Pinerolo and Turin, his parents sent him to Lyon to gain experience in the commercial sector. Upon his return to Italy in 1809, he settled with his family in Milan, where he found a job as a French teacher at the military college and began to frequent Vincenzo Monti and Ugo Foscolo, forming a special bond with the latter. He began to write tragedies in verse and in 1815 his tragedy Francesca da Rimini was performed for the first time in Milan, a reinterpretation of the Dante episode in the light of the new romantic and Risorgimento influences. In 1816 he moved to Arluno near Milan, to the house of Count Luigi Porro Lambertenghi, where he was tutor to his sons Domenico and Giulio. In 1818 the magazine “Il Conciliatore” was founded, of which Pellico was editor and director. Arrested in 1820 as a Carbonaro, he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. In 1830, after nine years of imprisonment in the Spielberg in Moravia, he was pardoned and freed. From that moment he lived in Turin, keeping away from politics, as the librarian of the Marchioness of Barolo. His most famous work, Le mie prigioni , an account of the hard years of imprisonment, was published in 1832. Pellico died in Turin on 31 January 1854.