1960
Ann’s stay in Tricarico was originally designed as a temporary measure to allow her time to write and to provide a supervisor for the nursery building. By the beginning of 1960 the nursery had been officially opened and Ann’s writing project seems to have been placed in a bottom drawer but there is no mention in the Vassar archives of closing down the ‘branch office’ in Tricarico. Signora Armento continued to look after the apartment during Ann’s absences which were to grow longer and more frequent as the year progressed.
Ann did not return to Italy until February 4th but there was no urgency to return to Tricarico. She immediately joined Gianna on a trip to Perugia, Assisi and Milan. The trip involved some SCF business but from Ann’s account in her letters it seems to have been more of a pleasure trip. By the 16th they were back in Ortona but Ann did not return to Tricarico until the 19th. There had been no disasters during her absence and she rapidly attended to any outstanding business. Six days later she was free to accompany Gianna on two inspection tours of southern projects from the 25th to the 29th and from the 5th to the 19th March.
Having an experienced and trusted social worker with her on these trips must have been a great asset for Gianna and if she needed an excuse to keep the Tricarico base this was it. Ann’s reports were professional and thorough and the two women worked well together:
....for business purposes we are one and the same person. (2/3/60)
Most of Ann’s letters to her parents at this time are taken up with arrangements for her mother’s visit to Italy; her father was to stay at home. The last inspection tour ended in Ortona and on the 21st Ann drove to Urbino en route for Venice where her mother’s ship from the USA was due to dock on the 23rd. During the first 3 months of 1960 Ann had spent a total of 11 days in Tricarico. There is no mention of any work being done on the book.
Ann’s mother remained in Italy for 2 months and they toured most of the major cities. They also spent time in Tricarico and Ortona where Gianna was able to renew her friendship with Mrs. Cornelisen who she had not seen since her visit to Maine in 1955. It would be intriguing to know if the visit caused Gianna to reflect further on the fractured relationship with her own mother who had not visited (or been invited) since 1949 when she came to ‘vet’ Ernest as a future son in law.
Mrs Cornelisen left Italy at the end of May and Ann returned to Tricarico on June 3rd just before a film crew arrived in Ortona to shoot an SCF promotional film:
Gianna writes that the film crew are horrible and have kept saying it doesn’t matter what they photograph because after all they can write the commentary when they get back to England. This is a bit of a blow to Di Iacovo because he thought they were going to use a script he wrote 2 years ago for a proposed film (preliminary footage with the goats was shot in Civitaluparella in 1958). Strangely enough last week before I left I told them that I doubted they intended to use any material sent in by any of us least of all a fixed script.......they both treated me as if I were too cynical to live, now G’s moaning.
However, Gianna must have spent a certain amount of time with the film unit because one of the crew became attracted to her:
One of the Englishmen proposed to her....he wants to work in India which he has done before. I gather she turned him down but thought him very nice. In the process Di Iacovo got so jealous that he is now packing his things and has gotten a room in Pescara. (18/6)
Di Iacovo’s jealousy would seem to support the theory that he too was attracted to Gianna and had at some time made this known; hence the seduction technique ‘pre-view’ which Gianna sent to Ann soon after she arrived back in Italy. A week later, Ann confirmed that Professor Di Iacovo had finally resigned from the SCF:
Di Iacovo has gone and is trying to get a job in Rome. The thing that did him in is that the film crew did not even ask him to go with them to do the film, so what was to have been his special project was done by Gianna. The men apparently were hardly civil. (27/6)
It is hard not to feel some sympathy for Di Iacovo even though, according to Ann, he might have lacked political skills and behaved insensitively at times. Again, we only have Ann’s version of the story. For the first 10 months of his employment he enjoyed Gianna’s support but after Ann’s return to Italy he was caught in an emotional tangle between two formidable, emotionally stressed women. That he survived so long can only have been due to a combination of his pride, stubborness and Gianna’s support. At this time it is not known what became of him.
It is easy to see how the film was the last straw for Di Iacovo. It is called ‘Above the Sangro’ and describes a young girl’s first communion in the village of Civitaluparella. The Save the Children Fund has recently built a washing facility in the village but the people are poor and there is still a need for further aid. It is a promotional film appealing for donations towards the work of the SCF but it is very much a film of its time: the ‘sell’ is so soft as to be almost non-existent and the first communion celebrations are treated with saccharine sentimentality. By far the best sequences are those with the goatherd and his flock which Gianna and Di Iacovo shot 2 years previously, although they have nothing to do with the main themes of the film. It shows all the signs of having been made very cheaply: there is no synchronised sound, just some poor FX dubbing and a female narrator playing the part of a young woman who has left the mountain village. The English script and the voice-over are sentimental in tone and the voice is clearly that of a much older woman with an exaggerated ‘foreign accent’.
Ann’s stay in Tricarico was originally designed as a temporary measure to allow her time to write and to provide a supervisor for the nursery building. By the beginning of 1960 the nursery had been officially opened and Ann’s writing project seems to have been placed in a bottom drawer but there is no mention in the Vassar archives of closing down the ‘branch office’ in Tricarico. Signora Armento continued to look after the apartment during Ann’s absences which were to grow longer and more frequent as the year progressed.
Ann did not return to Italy until February 4th but there was no urgency to return to Tricarico. She immediately joined Gianna on a trip to Perugia, Assisi and Milan. The trip involved some SCF business but from Ann’s account in her letters it seems to have been more of a pleasure trip. By the 16th they were back in Ortona but Ann did not return to Tricarico until the 19th. There had been no disasters during her absence and she rapidly attended to any outstanding business. Six days later she was free to accompany Gianna on two inspection tours of southern projects from the 25th to the 29th and from the 5th to the 19th March.
Having an experienced and trusted social worker with her on these trips must have been a great asset for Gianna and if she needed an excuse to keep the Tricarico base this was it. Ann’s reports were professional and thorough and the two women worked well together:
....for business purposes we are one and the same person. (2/3/60)
Most of Ann’s letters to her parents at this time are taken up with arrangements for her mother’s visit to Italy; her father was to stay at home. The last inspection tour ended in Ortona and on the 21st Ann drove to Urbino en route for Venice where her mother’s ship from the USA was due to dock on the 23rd. During the first 3 months of 1960 Ann had spent a total of 11 days in Tricarico. There is no mention of any work being done on the book.
Ann’s mother remained in Italy for 2 months and they toured most of the major cities. They also spent time in Tricarico and Ortona where Gianna was able to renew her friendship with Mrs. Cornelisen who she had not seen since her visit to Maine in 1955. It would be intriguing to know if the visit caused Gianna to reflect further on the fractured relationship with her own mother who had not visited (or been invited) since 1949 when she came to ‘vet’ Ernest as a future son in law.
Mrs Cornelisen left Italy at the end of May and Ann returned to Tricarico on June 3rd just before a film crew arrived in Ortona to shoot an SCF promotional film:
Gianna writes that the film crew are horrible and have kept saying it doesn’t matter what they photograph because after all they can write the commentary when they get back to England. This is a bit of a blow to Di Iacovo because he thought they were going to use a script he wrote 2 years ago for a proposed film (preliminary footage with the goats was shot in Civitaluparella in 1958). Strangely enough last week before I left I told them that I doubted they intended to use any material sent in by any of us least of all a fixed script.......they both treated me as if I were too cynical to live, now G’s moaning.
However, Gianna must have spent a certain amount of time with the film unit because one of the crew became attracted to her:
One of the Englishmen proposed to her....he wants to work in India which he has done before. I gather she turned him down but thought him very nice. In the process Di Iacovo got so jealous that he is now packing his things and has gotten a room in Pescara. (18/6)
Di Iacovo’s jealousy would seem to support the theory that he too was attracted to Gianna and had at some time made this known; hence the seduction technique ‘pre-view’ which Gianna sent to Ann soon after she arrived back in Italy. A week later, Ann confirmed that Professor Di Iacovo had finally resigned from the SCF:
Di Iacovo has gone and is trying to get a job in Rome. The thing that did him in is that the film crew did not even ask him to go with them to do the film, so what was to have been his special project was done by Gianna. The men apparently were hardly civil. (27/6)
It is hard not to feel some sympathy for Di Iacovo even though, according to Ann, he might have lacked political skills and behaved insensitively at times. Again, we only have Ann’s version of the story. For the first 10 months of his employment he enjoyed Gianna’s support but after Ann’s return to Italy he was caught in an emotional tangle between two formidable, emotionally stressed women. That he survived so long can only have been due to a combination of his pride, stubborness and Gianna’s support. At this time it is not known what became of him.
It is easy to see how the film was the last straw for Di Iacovo. It is called ‘Above the Sangro’ and describes a young girl’s first communion in the village of Civitaluparella. The Save the Children Fund has recently built a washing facility in the village but the people are poor and there is still a need for further aid. It is a promotional film appealing for donations towards the work of the SCF but it is very much a film of its time: the ‘sell’ is so soft as to be almost non-existent and the first communion celebrations are treated with saccharine sentimentality. By far the best sequences are those with the goatherd and his flock which Gianna and Di Iacovo shot 2 years previously, although they have nothing to do with the main themes of the film. It shows all the signs of having been made very cheaply: there is no synchronised sound, just some poor FX dubbing and a female narrator playing the part of a young woman who has left the mountain village. The English script and the voice-over are sentimental in tone and the voice is clearly that of a much older woman with an exaggerated ‘foreign accent’.
Stills from 'Above the Sangro'.
When I sat down to watch the film in a tiny viewing room at the British Film Institute in London I immediately recognised Civitaluparella, the village where I had spent the summer as a member of a work party decorating the nursery only 3 years after the film was shot. Also, the voice of the narrator was strangely familiar. Could it be Gianna? The timbre and accent are familiar. I searched Ann’s letters of the period for confirmation but could only find a reference to a visit Gianna made to London in August but the script for the film was not ready (the reason she went). (23/8). Gianna’s physical presence in connection with the script would only be required if she was to record the narration. She was in London again later in the year and would have had the opportunity to record the voice over. Maybe.
Di Iacovo’s departure left Gianna with a problem: she knew that Ann would now expect to be invited back to live and work in Ortona but was uncertain about whether this was the right thing to do. As usual she became worried and fretful. Ann wrote:
I have a strange impression that Gianna may actually resign this time. She has become very worried over her financial state and I presume her age as well and has been saying that she must get out now while she still can start some other job in England. She is terrified of having to close up here....get a good job for Ida and Sorino, get the centres taken on by the Italian agencies etc. She told me the other night that the worse thing was she was very susceptible to nice Englishmen and she was afraid she would do the thing I did. Go back (and) meet someone who seemed attractive and wanted to take care of her and she’d marry him. I have also found out why I wouldn’t be welcome in Ortona and it fits so well with Gianna’s disposition. She says she found out when I left that she had become completely dependent on me after three years and she has no intention of ever letting herself be dependent on anyone except possibly a husband. (2/8)
Ann was in limbo: her job status remained undefined and the Fund had made no offer of a permanent position. She was unsure of the future, alone in an isolated southern town and full aware that her parents’ wish was that she should return home and return to the life of the upper middle class Chicago lady that she had abandoned on her divorce. In her letters to her parents she began to muse about taking an Adriatic cruise before finishing her Italian ‘sojourn’ in the autumn and returning to America.
Gianna was summoned to London on the 14th August. She may have intended resigning but did not do so when she discovered that the Fund had started a pension scheme for her. She also negotiated a salary for Ann without contract or strings.....when I’m here I’m paid.....If I want to take off anywhere I’m free to do so and will not be paid for the time I am on my own adventures. (23/8) The Fund would continue to pay for the upkeep of her car and all her expenses.
Suddenly the future looked much more secure for both of them and on her return Gianna announced that she would like to take a month off and tour England, something Ann had been considering for some time. It was agreed that they should set off by car at the end of September after finishing work at an exhibition in Milan. They arrived in Dover on the 27th and began a 19 day tour of England visiting Brighton, Chichester, Wells, Wales, Gloucester, the Lake District, Cambridge and London. They sent cards to Ann’s parents from all these places. They were happy in each other’s company and Ann was enchanted by the scenery, the history and the friendliness of the people. Gianna wrote to Ann’s parents from Dover as they left England on the 16th October:
We’ve had a lovely holiday and we both regret leaving this green and pleasant land.
The one cloud hanging over the trip was that Gianna had not told her mother that she would be in England and refused to go to Lincoln to visit her. Ann tried to persuade her but she was absolutely determined that she would not do it. That if she did she would have to give up the rest of the trip to watching television with her mother and listening to her mother yapping. (22/10). The old lady was therefore surprised when she was contacted by the Midland Bank about a travellers’ cheque in Gianna’s name which had been presented in Wells, Somerset and which Gianna had failed to countersign. As Mrs G had been told that Gianna was on a short trip to France she naturally thought the cheque must have been stolen. On her return to Italy Gianna was faced with having to explain the situation to Cooks who issued the cheque, the Midland Bank which was trying to find out where Gianna was, and to her mother. Unfortunately, Ann does not relate how Gianna wriggled out of this but Mrs Guzzeloni must have eventually suspected, not for the first time, that she had been slighted by her only child.
Ann returned to Tricarico on 26th October. Winter was approaching and even though improvements had been made to the apartment the conditions were harsh and uncomfortable. As Gianna had discovered in Ortona, life for a single woman in the south was lonely and she described the town as this isolated hole. (30/10). Despite being given a salary and contract her enthusiasm for Tricarico had waned. Furthermore, with the nursery now open her main reason for being there had gone. Tricarico had served its purpose in giving her a position when she needed to escape from America and the embarrassment of her divorce. By the 5th November she was back with Gianna in Ortona to interview teachers for the nursery. In the USA the Presidential elections were about to take place. She wrote to her staunchly Republican parents:
I’m more convinced every day that he (Kennedy) is the worst thing that could happen to us at this point.....not only because he is catholic but because the states does not need a brash young man at this particular juncture......if Kennedy wins I honestly think it will be a sad day....it will be by so little margin too....but then I guess that is what happens with universal suffrage.
What Gianna made of these views is not reported in the letters. When she met Ernest they were both idealistic socialists and it would be surprising if her politics in 1960 matched Ann’s. However, this did not get in the way of their relationship and in November they spent two weeks together visiting and writing reports on projects in Calabria. Ann followed this with a long trip escorting Australian Fund supporters before returning to Tricarico on the 25th. But now her work there held few challenges. She remained in Tricarico for just over 3 weeks before leaving for Rome to spend Christmas with Gianna at the Dinesen. During the entire year she had only spent only a few weeks in Tricarico and had not resumed work on her book.
Ann and Gianna had a joint family present opening ceremony in their hotel room on Christmas Day and both women wrote ‘thank you letters’ to the Cornelisen’s in America. There is no record of gifts sent or received from Mrs Guzzeloni in England.
They spent the rest of the holiday, as usual, catching up with all the latest films, attending the opera and joining friends for dinner parties. A new friend was Nina Beckwith, an American who worked for the Rome bureau of CBS. She was the same age as Ann, spoke excellent Italian and, according to Ann, was lots of fun. Nina had been in Rome for several years and had a wide circle of friends. She introduced Ann to a younger, more metropolitan set and suddenly life in Ortona and Tricarico began to look provincial.
During the holiday Ann decided that she had had enough of Tricarico and would resign from the SCF. On New Year’s Eve she wrote to her parents that she had decided to leave Italy for good and would return to the States by the end of April. She would be free from the middle of March but will spend at least a month here in Rome first.
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Di Iacovo’s departure left Gianna with a problem: she knew that Ann would now expect to be invited back to live and work in Ortona but was uncertain about whether this was the right thing to do. As usual she became worried and fretful. Ann wrote:
I have a strange impression that Gianna may actually resign this time. She has become very worried over her financial state and I presume her age as well and has been saying that she must get out now while she still can start some other job in England. She is terrified of having to close up here....get a good job for Ida and Sorino, get the centres taken on by the Italian agencies etc. She told me the other night that the worse thing was she was very susceptible to nice Englishmen and she was afraid she would do the thing I did. Go back (and) meet someone who seemed attractive and wanted to take care of her and she’d marry him. I have also found out why I wouldn’t be welcome in Ortona and it fits so well with Gianna’s disposition. She says she found out when I left that she had become completely dependent on me after three years and she has no intention of ever letting herself be dependent on anyone except possibly a husband. (2/8)
Ann was in limbo: her job status remained undefined and the Fund had made no offer of a permanent position. She was unsure of the future, alone in an isolated southern town and full aware that her parents’ wish was that she should return home and return to the life of the upper middle class Chicago lady that she had abandoned on her divorce. In her letters to her parents she began to muse about taking an Adriatic cruise before finishing her Italian ‘sojourn’ in the autumn and returning to America.
Gianna was summoned to London on the 14th August. She may have intended resigning but did not do so when she discovered that the Fund had started a pension scheme for her. She also negotiated a salary for Ann without contract or strings.....when I’m here I’m paid.....If I want to take off anywhere I’m free to do so and will not be paid for the time I am on my own adventures. (23/8) The Fund would continue to pay for the upkeep of her car and all her expenses.
Suddenly the future looked much more secure for both of them and on her return Gianna announced that she would like to take a month off and tour England, something Ann had been considering for some time. It was agreed that they should set off by car at the end of September after finishing work at an exhibition in Milan. They arrived in Dover on the 27th and began a 19 day tour of England visiting Brighton, Chichester, Wells, Wales, Gloucester, the Lake District, Cambridge and London. They sent cards to Ann’s parents from all these places. They were happy in each other’s company and Ann was enchanted by the scenery, the history and the friendliness of the people. Gianna wrote to Ann’s parents from Dover as they left England on the 16th October:
We’ve had a lovely holiday and we both regret leaving this green and pleasant land.
The one cloud hanging over the trip was that Gianna had not told her mother that she would be in England and refused to go to Lincoln to visit her. Ann tried to persuade her but she was absolutely determined that she would not do it. That if she did she would have to give up the rest of the trip to watching television with her mother and listening to her mother yapping. (22/10). The old lady was therefore surprised when she was contacted by the Midland Bank about a travellers’ cheque in Gianna’s name which had been presented in Wells, Somerset and which Gianna had failed to countersign. As Mrs G had been told that Gianna was on a short trip to France she naturally thought the cheque must have been stolen. On her return to Italy Gianna was faced with having to explain the situation to Cooks who issued the cheque, the Midland Bank which was trying to find out where Gianna was, and to her mother. Unfortunately, Ann does not relate how Gianna wriggled out of this but Mrs Guzzeloni must have eventually suspected, not for the first time, that she had been slighted by her only child.
Ann returned to Tricarico on 26th October. Winter was approaching and even though improvements had been made to the apartment the conditions were harsh and uncomfortable. As Gianna had discovered in Ortona, life for a single woman in the south was lonely and she described the town as this isolated hole. (30/10). Despite being given a salary and contract her enthusiasm for Tricarico had waned. Furthermore, with the nursery now open her main reason for being there had gone. Tricarico had served its purpose in giving her a position when she needed to escape from America and the embarrassment of her divorce. By the 5th November she was back with Gianna in Ortona to interview teachers for the nursery. In the USA the Presidential elections were about to take place. She wrote to her staunchly Republican parents:
I’m more convinced every day that he (Kennedy) is the worst thing that could happen to us at this point.....not only because he is catholic but because the states does not need a brash young man at this particular juncture......if Kennedy wins I honestly think it will be a sad day....it will be by so little margin too....but then I guess that is what happens with universal suffrage.
What Gianna made of these views is not reported in the letters. When she met Ernest they were both idealistic socialists and it would be surprising if her politics in 1960 matched Ann’s. However, this did not get in the way of their relationship and in November they spent two weeks together visiting and writing reports on projects in Calabria. Ann followed this with a long trip escorting Australian Fund supporters before returning to Tricarico on the 25th. But now her work there held few challenges. She remained in Tricarico for just over 3 weeks before leaving for Rome to spend Christmas with Gianna at the Dinesen. During the entire year she had only spent only a few weeks in Tricarico and had not resumed work on her book.
Ann and Gianna had a joint family present opening ceremony in their hotel room on Christmas Day and both women wrote ‘thank you letters’ to the Cornelisen’s in America. There is no record of gifts sent or received from Mrs Guzzeloni in England.
They spent the rest of the holiday, as usual, catching up with all the latest films, attending the opera and joining friends for dinner parties. A new friend was Nina Beckwith, an American who worked for the Rome bureau of CBS. She was the same age as Ann, spoke excellent Italian and, according to Ann, was lots of fun. Nina had been in Rome for several years and had a wide circle of friends. She introduced Ann to a younger, more metropolitan set and suddenly life in Ortona and Tricarico began to look provincial.
During the holiday Ann decided that she had had enough of Tricarico and would resign from the SCF. On New Year’s Eve she wrote to her parents that she had decided to leave Italy for good and would return to the States by the end of April. She would be free from the middle of March but will spend at least a month here in Rome first.
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