Claretta: Mussolini's Last Lover by R. J. B. Bosworth

Author:R. J. B. Bosworth [Bosworth, R. J. B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Presidents & Heads of State, Women, History, Europe, Italy, Modern, 20th Century
ISBN: 9780300214277
Google: qGEbDgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0300214278
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2017-01-15T00:38:35.546000+00:00

6

THE WINTER OF A PATRIARCH AND HIS DUCESSA

On 29 August 1943 Il Messaggero carried a banner headline: ‘Filmed: a life as it was lived.’ A subheading added ‘The Petacci family in Novara prison – How the fortune of Claretta Petacci and Miria di San Servolo was made and passed on.’ In the small print of wartime, the front-page story was lavish in details. It began with the looting on the morning of 26 July of the medical practice of Francesco Saverio Petacci on the Via Nazionale. Furniture, books, white medical gowns, microscopes and stethoscopes had all rained down onto the street below. The crowd, it was reported, had joined the assault with ‘knowing laughter and graphic commentary’. How, the paper asked artlessly, could someone who had written in its pages attract such hostility? Such a short time before, Dr Petacci’s contributions had ‘aroused scant or no interest’, the account continued in more sardonic vein, even when, for example, they had respectfully attributed the following remarkable skills to his ‘benefactor’ (in the coy phrasing of the time):

intuitive power (that is, the ability to foresee events), concentration, analysis, calculation, judgement, readiness in planning and decision-making, wide perspective, solid memory, iron will, self-control, energy, tenacity, firmness, resolution, imperturbability, a proper approach to all great issues, administrative skill, loyalty, eloquence, staunch psychic resistance and an excellent arterial system for nerves, lungs and brain.1

As a result of such ample ‘knowledge’, Il Messaggero observed, Dottor F.S.P. had been ‘well looked after and protected’ before July 1943 by ‘a personage of the highest status’. Yet that altissimo personaggio had not cared so much about the doctor’s medical science as about his ‘cute daughter, Claretta by name’. She had presented herself one day to this ‘most elevated personage’ [still unnamed in the article] on the Roman Lido in a ‘teeny bathing costume that allowed view of her by no means displeasing figure’ and ‘bronzed bosom’. Once introduced, this young woman had gushed about the poetry she had been accustomed to send him, while adding guilelessly that she loved flowers. In all honesty the man had struggled to remember her verses. But the next day they were back in contact and soon ‘the personage’ was inviting Claretta to ‘visit his garden’ at the Villa Torlonia, not a tiring trip since her house lay on the Via Spallanzani. In gratitude the man in question organised an exhibition of Claretta’s paintings at the Collegio Romano in the Campus Martius, although, since Claretta had talked of art but not actually painted, the family had to rush around to hire someone else to daub some artwork that could be shown. The hired hand did so at a rate of four paintings per day.

Thereafter their mutual infatuation ‘spread with the fury of a fire’. The protector, despite being of a certain age, was ‘completely smitten’. Claretta, as a ‘worthy daughter’ of her family, did not want to keep the altissimo personaggio for herself alone but happily shared him with her sister, the bel canto singer and film star ‘Miria di San Servolo’.

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