Tiretta

I am currently trying to work on the extremely colourful life and times of Eduardo Tiretta. This post will be a fragmentary one. My intention is to bring to light a few things that I have recently found out about our man. It will by no means be a complete reflection of my research. I must thank Tintin da for first drawing my attention and interest to the figure of Tiretta and for the Casanova connection.

Tiretta was born in 1726. He was, as is commonly known, Calcutta's Civil Architect and Surveyor of Roads, and the man behind Calcutta's first 'purpose-built bazar'. One of the most colourful sides to his story is the fact that in 1762-63 he spent a fair amount of time with one Jacques Casanova. In his memoirs Casanova writes:

In the beginning of March, 1757, I received a letter from my friend Madame Manzoni, which she sent to me by a young man of good appearance, with a frank and high-born air, whom I recognized as a Venetian by his accent. He was young Count Tiretta de Trevisa, recommended to my care by Madame Manzoni, who said that he would tell me his story, which I might be sure would be a true one. The kind woman sent to me by him a small box in which she told me I should find all my manuscripts, as she did not think she would ever see me again.

I will leave it to the reader to follow the duo down their debauched path and their many exciting exploits, but two things are too tempting to let slip. Here's an excerpt from a conversation between host and guest.

Next day Tiretta came in, and said he had only just returned.
"You have been sleeping out, have you, master profligate?"
"Yes, I was so charmed with the she-pope that I kept her company all the night."
"You were not afraid of being in the way?"
"On the contrary, I think she was thoroughly satisfied with my conversation."

"[S]atisfied with my conversation" my foot! The conversation is, I suppose, what earned Tiretta the nickname "Count Six-times" and led to the following conversation between the "charming niece" and Casanova himself.

[Casanova] "Possibly, but the fact is that I was humbled by a circumstance I dare not tell you."
["charming niece"] "I think you are laughing at me with your 'dare not tell you.'"
"God forbid, mademoiselle! I will confess, then, that I was humbled because Madame Lambertini made me see that my friend was taller than myself by two inches."
"Then she imposed on you, for you are taller than your friend."
"I am not speaking of that kind of tallness, but another; you know what I mean, and there my friend is really monstrous."

Some time later Casanova notes, "If he had behaved well he might have become a rich man, but he got involved in some conspiracy and had to fly, and afterwards experienced many vicissitudes of fortune. I heard from one of his relations that he was in Bengal in 1788, in good circumstances, but unable to realize his property and so return to his native country. I do not know what became of him eventually."

Apart from the raunchy details, let me offer three findings. Firstly, the only known existing visual portrayal in James Gillray's 1792 painting, The Bengal Levee, possibly after a sketch by James Moffat (courtesy: British Library):

That person with the crooked nose right there is supposed to be Eduardo Tiretta, "greeting Father Parthanio, a Greek priest." 1792, when this was painted, was also the year that Tiretta was introduced to the girl who would be his wife - Angelique de Carrion of Serampore, then only 14 years old.

Angelique died in June 1796 at childbirth. (For these details I am indebted to Peter Robb's Sex and Sensibility: Richard Blechynden's Calcutta Diaries, 1791-1822, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011.) She was buried in the Portuguese Church cemetery, which was meant for Catholics. Tiretta ran into trouble with those in charge for reasons I will not go into here and decided to re-inter his wife's corpse. He purchased a plot of land and called it Tiretta's Burial Ground. It came also to be known as the French Burial Ground. I can't find on the internet any mention of where that was, so I went in search and found it in two places, named two different things. In the map attached to the Monumental Register of Graves it was called Tiretta's Burial Ground. In the 1854 "Plan of Calcutta" it is referred to as the French Burial Ground. This is where it was.

And thirdly, and lastly for today, the advertisement for "Tiretta's Lottery" whereby he gave up many of his holdings in the city, including parts of (if not the whole) market. It was bought by a man named Weston, but we don't remember him that well. Rather depressing this.

[Please cite appropriately if you wish to use any of this information.]