A Bold and Dangerous Family Read online

  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

  10 June

  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.