GARIBALDI’S ROMANCE.

Shannon News, 12 October 1923, Page 1

GARIBALDI’S ROMANCE.

THREE TIMES MARIED.

The death, in extreme old age, in the little island of Caprera, of Donna Francesca Garibaldi, widow of the famous Italian patriot; has given many French and Italian writers a peg on which to hang again what one of Garibaldi’s English biographers has called “'.a love story of nearly ten years of married life which. none or the world’s famous legends of lov e sur passes in romance and beauty.” But. the heroine of that episode was not Francesca Garibaldi (says the “Man-; Chester Guardian”), but Arifta, the beautiful brazilian, whom Garibalai first saw through a telescope from the deck of a gunboat, wooed, won, and carried away despite the opposition or her friends ,and of another man to whom she had been plighted without affection. The romance ended In n tragedy, for Anita died in Garibaldi's arms among the marshes of Ravenna, “ a martyr to Italy and to him.” It was many years later, after Garibaldi’s unfortunate second marriage to the Marchesa Guisepina, a marriage followed almost immediately by a complete and final separation, that Francesca Amosino came on the scene as a nurse to the children of his daughter Teresa. She soon became his companion and the sharer of his adventures, but it was not until, ISSO, and after prolonged and conflicted pro ceedings in divorce, that he got the freedom that enabled him to marry her. And that was within two years of his death. For over 40 years Donna Francesca had remained in Caprera, the jealous guardian of her husband’s home and memory. A French paper relates that not long before her death she received a visit from. Signor Mussolini, who assured her that the creed of Garibaldi and Fascism were equally compatible with love for Italy.