For speakers of Italian there are two interesting events taking place at Bagni Di Lucca’s library in the ex-Anglican church.
The first is a conference on 22 November at 4 pm on the hundredth anniversary of Rose Cleveland’s death from the Spanish flu which, it is reputed killed more people than the Great War itself. Rose Cleveland caught the disease when she was a nurse looking after Italian refugees fleeing from the military defeat at Caporetto in 1917.
In Bagni di Lucca’s protestant cemetery are three tombs next to each other. They belong to Rose Elizabeth Cleveland, sister of the US president Stephen Grover Cleveland, Evangeline Whipple author of “A Famous corner of Tuscany” – a largely historical account of Bagni di Lucca and Nelly Erichsen, poet, writer painter and illustrator of Dent’s “Story of…” travel books on Italy.
All these ladies, bound together by bonds of an affection which durst not name itself openly at the time, would need whole separate posts. Briefly, however, Rose Cleveland, aged 44, started a lesbian relationship with a wealthy widow, Evangeline Simpson, with explicitly erotic correspondence. However things cooled off when Evangeline married an Episcopal bishop from Minnesota, Henry Benjamin Whipple. By 1910, after his death, the two women rekindled their relationship and eventually moved to Bagni di Lucca, Italy to live there together. They shared the house with the English illustrator and artist Nelly Erichsen. Rose died at home on November 22, 1918 at 7:32 in the evening during the 1918 flu pandemic. She was buried there in the English Cemetery, and Evangeline was also buried next to Rose in the same cemetery 12 years later.
Each of the tombs bears a small sculpted flower linking the three together.
You can read more about Rose’s life and lesbian relationship in my post at:
https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2014/10/08/a-rosy-relation
With reference to the Spanish flu I should add that my grandfather on my mother’s side was Italian, gained one of the highest military honours, the Medaglia d’Argento al valor militare, for heroic action on the Carso front, was made prisoner and languished in the Spielberg fortress prison in what is now the Czech republic, (the same one where writer and patriot Silvio Pellico endured ten years captivity), for over two years before being freed and returned to Italy where he caught “la spagnuola” and had to spend time in a sanatorium. Luckily he was saved; else I would not be here to write these lines.
The other event is on 17 November at 5 pm, again in Bagni Di Lucca’s library and is a talk about religious and lay life in our Val di Lima between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries.
I
Francis, in the arms of your grandfather; you have not changed.
Francis, my family comes from Gombereto. Both my grandfather and my mother contract the Spanish flu in 1918. Fortunately and surprisingly they both survived.
Osvaldo Barsi
Lucky us else we wouldn’t be here to tell the tale! Are you related to the lady who did the book on the Pieve di Controni? Fascinating read!
Most interesting blog as usual well researched and we have indeed been very lucky to have learnt about so many eccentric people that once lived and maybe are still living in the area. The tomb stones look shiny and new hardly used at all in a way I preferred the aged looking marble with ivy seemed more romantic and UK cemetery in appearance but I suppose that these tombstones will now survive more into the future in fact donations are always welcome from the UK and Italian community to continue the cleaning process of the Bagni di Lucca English Cemetary. My Babbo earned the Bronze Military Cross Croce di Beonzo al Valor Militare at Alamein for saving the radio equipment which he was in charge of also for repairs I always stress how sad that aged 21 he was forced into this role and lost the best years of his life for a futile War effort!