Giuseppe Tartini - Lettere e documenti / Pisma in dokumenti / Letters and Documents - Volume / Knjiga / Volume II

250 1. Tartini in Prague to his brother Domenico in Piran Prague, 2 November 1713 [recte 1723]. I did not omit, immediately upon my arrival in Prague, to write to you via Venice, and give you news about my state, my arrival, my earnings and, in brief, about everything, and I am very surprised that you did not receive the letter. In future I shall write to you via Trieste, as I am doing now, and you shall also do the same; for the safe delivery of the letters you shall use the address of the house of Signor Conte Filippo Kinski. 1 Now, coming to our interests, I tell you that all I can earn in a year net of all expenses consists of little more than four hundred ducats, and without any hope of earning a penny more while I have this job; which does not give me more than two hundred ongari a year; but I don’t think I shall stay here, where it may take eight or ten years to put together four or five thousand ducats; my idea is to go to England next year, where I am sure that in two or three years I can earn a couple of thousand zecchini ; and I am sure of this; but one must calculate that if I now deprive myself of the money to give it to our brother, then I shall not have any for the journey, for which one needs at least a hundred ongari , at the absolute least. But here it is necessary that we do our sums well and you too. If I give you money, I can only give you four hundred ducats a year, and I must remain without money so to speak, with the risk both of illness and of a thousand other situations which can happen to those who are away from home and in foreign countries; in addition, I also don’t know whether four hundred ducats can be enough for you to maintain the place at S. Basso, 2 I think my dear brother, and I beg you not to take this badly because I am speaking for the good and for the security of our interests; I think that, given that there are disagreements with my wife, to whom both you and my sister-in-law have said with crystal clarity that I had no business either in the house or in the property, or on the land, and given that some time I must return to Piran and certainly together with my wife who, good or bad she may be, I have to take as she is, and one needs patience; I also would expect every day to hear the same to be said to me by you or my sister-in-law. And then although I believe without doubt, from what I feel inside, to have much more love for you than you for me, this would be the situation that would cause me to die in three days of passion, because rather than disturb you either with arguments or other things, by God I would prefer to go begging for bread for the love of God. But on the other hand you may well believe that after having toiled like a donkey and spent half my life earning an amount of money so as not to have difficulties in my old age, if God wishes me to reach it, I indeed do want to rest and to 1 Count Philip Joseph Kinsky was chancellor at the court of Charles VI of Bohemia. Tartini stayed in his service in Prague for roughly three years. 2 The church of St. Basso in Strunjan, demolished in 1957, was adjacent to Villa Tartini. Sau – Macchi, 2014: p. 91.