Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
List of Illustrations
Principal Characters
Chronology
Preface
Chapter 1: A Watery Childhood
Chapter 2: Donne Emancipate
Chapter 3: Defining la Patria
Chapter 4: Becoming a Man
Chapter 5: The Dark Seraphim
Chapter 6: Planting a Tree
Chapter 7: Moral Choices
Chapter 8: ‘Non Mollare’
Chapter 9: Breaking Free
Chapter 10: Defying the Barbarians
Chapter 11: Il Confino
Chapter 12: The Island of Winds
Chapter 13: Not Even the Flies Escape
Chapter 14: To Be an Exile
Chapter 15: Just One Heart
Chapter 16: Dancing for Liberty
Chapter 17: A World of Moral Richness
Chapter 18: A Free Man Again
Chapter 19: A Corneillian Tragedy
Postscript
Acknowledgements
Sources and Select Bibliography
Notes
Index
About the Author
Also by Caroline Moorehead
Copyright
About the Publisher
Dedication
To Penny
Carlo and Nello
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
List of Illustrations
Principal Characters
Chronology
Preface
Chapter 1 A Watery Childhood
Chapter 2 Donne Emancipate
Chapter 3 Defining la Patria
Chapter 4 Becoming a Man
Chapter 5 The Dark Seraphim
Chapter 6 Planting a Tree
Chapter 7 Moral Choices
Chapter 8 ‘Non Mollare’
Chapter 9 Breaking Free
Chapter 10 Defying the Barbarians
Chapter 11 Il Confino
Chapter 12 The Island of Winds
Chapter 13 Not Even the Flies Escape
Chapter 14 To Be an Exile
Chapter 15 Just One Heart
Chapter 16 Dancing for Liberty
Chapter 17 A World of Moral Richness
Chapter 18 A Free Man Again
Chapter 19 A Corneillian Tragedy
Postscript
Acknowledgements
Sources and Select Bibliography
Notes
Index
About the Author
Also by Caroline Moorehead
Copyright
About the Publisher
List of Illustrations
BNCF – Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Fondo Pannunzio
ISRT – Istituto Storico della Resistenza in Toscana
Carlo and Nello (courtesy of BNCF)
Amelia and her sons (family collection)
Amelia Pincherle at the time of her marriage (courtesy of ISRT)
Amelia and her husband Joe Rosselli (courtesy of ISRT)
Carlo, as a boy in Florence (courtesy of ISRT)
Amelia and Aldo, in military uniform (courtesy of ISRT)
A post-war occupation of the factories in Piedmont (Wikimedia Commons)
A band of squadristi, off on a ‘punitive raid’ (Wikimedia Commons)
Mussolini and his followers, during the March on Rome (Wikimedia Commons)
Filippo Turati and Anna Kuliscioff (Centro Espositivo Sandro Pertini)
Piero Gobetti (Wikimedia Commons)
Gaetano Salvemini (courtesy of BNCF)
Salvemini, Carlo Levi and Carlo at the Fabian summer school (courtesy of ISRT)
Mussolini addresses his supporters from a balcony in Rome (Keystone-FranceGamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Giacomo Matteotti (Wikimedia Commons)
The Lancia car in which Matteotti was kidnapped (Wikimedia Commons)
The Disperata, one of Florence’s most brutal squadre (Wikimedia Commons)
A ‘punitive expedition’ against a socialist trade-union headquarters (Wikimedia Commons)
Nello in his early twenties (courtesy of BNCF)
Carlo in his early twenties (courtesy of BNCF)
Giovanni Amendola (Wikimedia Commons)
Giovanni Becciolini (Rito Simbolico Italiano)
Arturo Bocchini (Wikimedia Commons)
Lorenzo da Bove, Turati, Carlo, Sandro Pertini and Ferruccio Parri in Calvi (Centro Espositivo Sandro Pertini)
Nello in Venice with Maria (family collection)
Small boys marching in their Balilla uniforms (Luana Allevi)
Mussolini inspects a group of young fascist girls (Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)
Carlo’s wife Marion and their first child Giovanni (courtesy of BNCF)
Nello’s house on Ustica with a crowd of confinati (courtesy of Centro Studi e Documentazione Isola di Ustica)
Nello and his second daughter, Paola (courtesy of ISRT)
Maria with Paola and Silvia (family collection)
The Club della Fuga on Lipari (courtesy of ISRT)
Francesco Fausto Nitti, Carlo and Emilio Lussu (courtesy of ISRT)
Mussolini’s love of Roman antiquity (Ullstein Bild/Ullstein Bild via Getty Images)
L’Apparita, the Rosselli house at Bagno a Ripoli above Florence (family collection)
Filippo Turati and the Italian exiles in Paris (Centro Espositivo Sandro Pertini)
Giovanni Bassanesi (courtesy of ISRT)
Mussolini with his wife Rachele and their five children (Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo)
Ernesto Rossi and his mother Elide (courtesy of ISRT)
Umberto Cevo with his youngest child (courtesy of ISRT)
Salvemini with Mirtillino (courtesy of ISRT)
Turati (courtesy of ISRT)
Zio ‘Giù’ Zabban (courtesy of ISRT)
Marion, Zia Gì and Mirtillino (courtesy of ISRT)
Mussolini, Hitler and the King and Queen of Italy (Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo)
Marion, Mirtillino and Carlo (courtesy of ISRT)
Nello and Carlo with two of their children (courtesy of ISRT)
Carlo and Marion at Bagnoles-de-l’Orne, May 1937 (courtesy of BNCF)
Carlo and Nello (family collection)
Andrea, Silvia, Paola, Aldo and Melina (family collection)
Amelia at Quainton in Buckinghamshire (family collection)
Nello’s four children at Quainton (family collection)
The family in the United States (family collection)
Mirtillino and Ferruccio Parri (courtesy of ISRT)
Principal Characters
The Family
Amelia Pincherle Rosselli, playwright
Joe Rosselli, musicologist
Aldo, their eldest son, known as ‘Topinino’, born in 1895
Carlo, born 1899
Nello, born 1900
Marion Cave, Carlo’s wife
Their children, Giovanni (‘Mirtillino’), Melina and Andrea
Maria Todesco, Nello’s wife
Their children, Silvia, Paola, Aldo and Alberto
Gabriele Pincherle, Amelia’s brother
Alberto Moravia, Amelia’s nephew
Giulio and Giorgina Zabban, honorary uncle and aunt
Their anti-fascist circle
Giovanni Bassanesi, pilot
Riccardo Bauer, economist
Piero Calamandrei, jurist
Gina Lombroso, writer
Emilio Lussu, friend on Lipari
Francesco Fausto Nitti, friend on Lipari
Ferruccio Parri, journalist
Ernesto Rossi, teacher
Gaetano Salvemini, historian
Filippo Turati, socialist leader
Mussolini’s Men
Italo Balbo, ras of Ferrara
Arturo Bocchini, head of police
Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law and foreign minister
Carlo del Re, spy
Amerigo Dumini, fascist henchman
Dino Segre (‘Pitigrilli’), spy
Tullio Tamburini, leader of squadristi in Florence
Chronology
1870
16 January
Amelia Pincherle born in Venice
1892
3 April
Marriage of Amelia to Joe Rosselli
1898
29 October
Premier of Amelia’s first play, Anima
1903
October
Amelia Rosselli and her sons, Aldo, Carlo and Nello, arrive in Florence
1921
May
Mussolini wins thirty-five seats in parliament
1922
28 October
March on Rome, after which Mussolini becomes prime minister
1924
April
General elections give the fascists a majority
Giacomo Matteotti kidnapped and murdered
1925
3 January
Mussolini’s speech to parliament and start of his dictatorship
1926
5 November
Passing of the ‘most fascist’ laws: opposition parties dissolved, anti-fascist organisations closed down, censorship increased, penalties for trying to leave the country illegally. Appointment of Arturo Bocchini as head of police
25 November
A new law ‘for the defence of the State’ sets up the Special Tribunal with severe penalties – including death – for any opposition activity
1929
11 February
Concordat between the Italian state and the Vatican
1935
3 October
Italian invasion of Ethiopia
1936
5 May
Italian troops enter Addis Ababa
9 May
Declaration of Italy’s African empire; Victor Emmanuel III becomes Emperor of Ethiopia
July
Start of the Spanish Civil War
1937
January
Italy leaves the League of Nations
1939
22 May
Mussolini and Hitler sign the Pact of Steel and become Axis partners
1940
10 June
Italy declares war on France and Britain
1943
25 July
Overthrow and imprisonment of Mussolini
8 September
Armistice with the Allies announced
23 September
Mussolini sets up the Repubblica Sociale Italiana in Salò
1945
27 April
Mussolini executed by Italian partisans
Preface
On 30 May 1924, a tall, elegant man in his late thirties, lean but not bony, with thinning, slightly curly hair, and very blue eyes set off by an equally blue sapphire on his watch chain, rose in the Chamber of Deputies in the Italian parliament in Rome and delivered an excoriating attack on Mussolini and the newly elected Fascist Party. His name was Giacomo Matteotti and he was a socialist from the Po Valley. He had recently brought out a book in which he analysed Mussolini’s speeches, pointing out their inaccuracies and inconsistencies, and had devoted 42 pages to a list of some 2,000 separate assaults committed by Mussolini’s fascists between November 1922 and October 1923 – murder, beatings, arson, destruction of the homes and offices of left-wing opponents, and the forcible administration of castor oil. He had come to the Chamber, he said, to denounce the voting irregularities of the recent elections, the atmosphere of intimidation in which they had been conducted, and to call for them to be declared invalid.
Matteotti spoke for two hours, against a background of jeers, threats, bullying and calls for his removal. He told the Chamber that he was preparing a dossier of fascist crimes which would include evidence of bribes accepted by the fascists from an American oil company in exchange for the right to control the distribution of petrol in Italy, in which Mussolini’s brother Arnaldo was complicit; and that he would soon be presenting it to parliament. He spoke calmly, without hyperbole; but he was implacable and he loved spare, precise facts. In Italy’s political world, where daily business had become a matter of obfuscation, deals, lies and evasions, and the many different opposition parties were weak and fighting among themselves, Matteotti was a rare honest man.
As he left the Chamber, he said to a colleague: ‘Now you may prepare my funeral oration.’
Mussolini, sitting at the back, had kept largely silent while Matteotti spoke. Afterwards, bursting into the office of the secretary of the Fascist Party, he shouted: ‘If you weren’t all a pack of cowards, no one would have dared make that speech . . . People like Matteotti . . . should not be allowed to circulate.’
At 3.30 on the afternoon of 10 June, Matteotti left his home at 40 Via Pisanelli on the banks of the Tiber. It was very hot and the streets were almost deserted. A black Lancia pulled up alongside him. A small boy playing with friends reported later that he had seen a man hit in the face and carried, struggling, into a car. Matteotti disappeared. A few hours later, Amerigo Dumini, leader of a semi-official terror squad with a string of political murders to his name, appeared in Mussolini’s office carrying a small piece of bloodstained upholstery from the Lancia.
Next day, 11 June, Mussolini publicly denied all knowledge of any crime, saying that since Matteotti had recently been given a passport, he had probably gone abroad – a claim vehemently denied by Matteotti’s wife, Velia. On 12 June, while journalists gathered outside, Mussolini told parliament that though he still knew nothing, he was beginning to suspect foul play. He spoke of a ‘diabolical outrage’.
Banks of flowers piled up on the spot where Matteotti had been kidnapped. A cross was painted on the wall in red. In the Piazza del Duomo in Milan cars, carts and buses stopped while people knelt to pray. To prevent further criticism and rumour, Mussolini prorogued parliament and visited the king to tender his resignation. The king refused it. The number of the Lancia was reported to the police by a vigilant caretaker, the car traced and found to be spattered with blood. Matteotti’s bloodstained trousers were discovered in Dumini’s briefcase; he and his associates were arrested.
On 17 August, a road mender inspecting pipes on the Via Flaminia, fifteen miles outside Rome, discovered a jacket. It was identified as belonging to Matteotti. Nearby, in a shallow ditch, was his body, decomposed and bearing clear stab marks. Isabella, Matteotti’s mother, identified what remained of her son.
A sense of horror and disgust spread around Italy. The Italians had grown accustomed to daily violence, as fascist leaders despatched their black-shirted squadristi on punitive raids against editors and publishers, union representatives and uncorrupt lawyers and judges, beating those who opposed Mussolini into silence. But this cold-blooded murder was something different. Even previous supporters of the fascists expressed shame and indignation. No one could quite believe that Italians were capable of such a deed. Within fascist circles, there were accusations, counter-attacks, a feeling of panic.
Mussolini, with ruthlessness and great subtlety, survived. But no Italian ever forgot the moment when fascism itself seemed to stumble.
In 1924, having endured five years of strikes, impotent governments, street-fighting and the poverty that followed the First World War, the Italians were exhausted. Mussolini’s opponents were weak and disorganised. In the wake of the Matteotti murder they met, they talked, they discussed setting up a broad-based coalition to challenge Mussolini; but no o
ne gave the order to move and no one could agree on what to do. They had won a great moral victory; but they failed to translate it into a political one. Scattered in ones and twos around the country, however, in universities, lawyers’ and editors’ offices and publishing houses, were individuals for whom Matteotti’s death was a defining moment, the start of twenty years of struggle inside Italy and abroad, conducted against overwhelmingly stronger forces, with many casualties along the way. Anti-fascist resistance was born and it would end only with Mussolini’s death.
And for one Florentine family – ardent followers of Mazzini, hero of the Risorgimento, full of strong feelings about duty, responsibility and courage – the murder of Matteotti was the day their lives changed, and there would be no going back. It turned them into bold anti-fascists, heedless of their own safety, as uncompromising as Matteotti himself, a man they had revered and believed capable of saving Italy from violent, unprincipled rule. Their names were Amelia, Carlo and Nello Rosselli.
Amelia and her sons
CHAPTER ONE
A Watery Childhood
Venice 1870
Amelia Pincherle was born on the second floor of the Palazzo Boldù on the Grand Canal, Venice, between the Ca’ d’Oro and the Rialto, on 16 January 1870, the year that saw the unification of Italy in the final act of the Risorgimento. All through her childhood she would sit on a step on the balcony, the sun shimmering on the grey water, watching the gondolas and the funeral barges with their biers of black and gold, and fittings in the shape of sea horses, harps and dolphins, making their way to the island of San Michele. As dusk fell, and the man arrived with his long pole to light the gas lamps, the Grand Canal turned red and the swallows appeared; from her stone step, still warm from the sun, she followed them as they circled and dipped. What she would remember later, when she came to write her memoirs, were the cries of the gulls, and in the winter, the rain against the windowpanes, the sea that could be heard but not seen, with its dull, distant roar.