It took place on 30 July 1896. After a honeymoon—a month spent partly along the Adriatic coast and partly in Vienna—they moved into the large, somewhat pretentious villa of Livia’s parents, in the outlying industrial town of Servola, where the Veneziani paint factory was also located. At first, Ettore and Livia occupied an independent apartment on the third floor of the villa. Later they moved downstairs and formed a single household with Olga and Gioachino, the senior Venezianis.

Svevo’s in-laws played important roles in his life (and, to some extent, in his fiction). Gioachino is clearly the model for the ebullient, great-hearted Giovanni in La coscienza di Zemo.

Olga—to whom Svevo sometimes referred, behind her back, as “the dragon”—was the moving force in the family and in the business (which, though founded by Gioachino, was to some extent descended from the chemicals firm of her father). It was Olga who ordered the workmen about, and it was she who—alone—mixed the secret ingredients of the formula for the underwater paint, used to protect the hulls of ships (including many naval vessels), that the Veneziani company produced and successfully marketed throughout Europe.

Despite Svevo’s occasional ridiculous jealousy, the marriage was profoundly happy, and in 1897 Livia became pregnant; in that same year Svevo began a second novel, which he called Il carnevale di Emilio (Emilio’s Carnival,later retitled Senilità). After the birth of their daughter, Letizia, Livia fell seriously ill, and Svevo decided to be baptized. On Livia’s recovery they went through a marriage ceremony in church, though there is no evidence that Svevo took his new religion seriously.

Amid repeated vows to give up smoking, Svevo developed briefly another vice: gambling on the Exchange. In the spring of 1898, when he had lost 1,000 florins, he wrote out a solemn oath to give up trading and added that, to recoup the loss, he would “do without tobacco, coffee, and wine for the next ten years!” As he meticulously dated his frequent written resolutions to give up smoking, so he solemnly dated this sheet of paper: “7 March 1898.”

Three months later, L’Indipendente began publishing Senilità in installments, and in the autumn of 1898, again at the author’s expense, Vram brought out the volume. Again it caused no stir. Not for the first time, Svevo thought of giving up writing. But for him, writing was a vice as deeply rooted as smoking, and though he later claimed he had stopped writing for a long period, he was not telling the whole truth. While it was many years before he essayed another novel, he constantly wrote little stories, fables, observations.

His life at the bank continued to be unhappy, and, at just about this time, his supplementary teaching position at the Revoltella fell through. Unexpectedly, Olga invited—or commanded—him to work for the family firm. He was initiated into the secret of the paint formula. Veneziani submarine paint was in demand far beyond Trieste, and the family set up branches, first in Italy (at nearby Murano), then in England. Svevo was often deputed to organize and control these outposts of Olga’s empire. To Olga’s satisfaction (and his own), he proved good at his job; and in the course of time, he achieved financial ease. He and Livia and their daughter could live in near-luxury. In his leisure moments—partly as a substitute for writing—he devoted himself to the violin. His success as a musician was less than brilliant, but he was able to put together an amateur quartet, which performed at social gatherings at their hospitable Veneziani villa.

His foreign travels were putting his command of languages to the test, and he felt that his English, in particular, needed improvement. Toward the end of 1906, Svevo was told of a young tutor, James Joyce, an Irishman who had been in Trieste since the previous March and had achieved a certain popularity, especially among the Jewish haute bourgeoisie. Since the penniless Joyce and his wife, Nora, often had to change dwellings, Joyce taught his pupils at their homes. Sometime in the autumn of 1906 he and Svevo began meeting, with reciprocal pleasure.

Joyce had recently managed (like Svevo, at his own expense) to publish a collection of his poems, Chamber Music, and was completing the stories of Dubliners, for which he was having trouble finding a publisher. He was also trying to get on with his more ambitious work, the novel then thought of as Stephen Hero. He showed his work to Svevo, and at one of their meetings actually read aloud his great story “The Dead” to Livia and Ettore, who immediately felt its power. After the reading, Livia went into the garden, picked some flowers, and handed the bouquet to Joyce as a sign of her admiration.

Eventually Svevo confessed to his young teacher that he also had—or had once had—literary ambitions. Joyce asked to read Una vita and Senilità and was profoundly impressed. He even quoted some passages of the latter work from memory to the thrilled author. (Svevo, it must be added, became one of several sources of “loans” to the young Irishman.)

Joyce discussed his own work more and more freely with Svevo. As he began planning Ulysses, he frequently consulted his pupil about Jewish beliefs and practices; and thus Svevo contributed to the characterization of Leopold Bloom. Livia—or, at least, her much-admired long blond tresses—was later a model for the personification of Dublin’s river Liffey, as Anna Livia Plurabelle.

As the First World War began, Joyce had to leave Trieste, but from his exiles—first in Switzerland and later in Paris—he kept in touch with his friend.