These photos were taken by Joan and Sid in June of 1979 while they were on the Isle of Capri, Italy for my parents' wedding. Film photography does an excellent job of capturing the Capri light and the colors...As amazing as digital photography is, it just can't quite compare.
Jonathan and I traveled to Capri in August of 2010. You can see some of my own photos of Capri here.
It's a day for beautiful, turn-of-the-century photographs of our families. The top photo is Jonathan's great-grandmother Eliza (back left) and her sisters. The middle photo is my great-grandmother Tina and her family. She is front and center. The bottom photo is my other great-grandmother Elsie and her sister Myrtle. Eliza's family lived in Prentiss County, Mississippi, Tina's family lived in Naples, Italy and Elsie's family lived in Lancaster, Ohio. The time period would be about the same for all of them. What would they have thought if they had known they would be linked together someday?
My great-grandfather Raoul de Forcade was born in 1886 in Verona, Italy. He was raised in Naples, attended the University of Florence and spent a year in Vienna. He served as a calvary officer in the Italian army, and was dashing man who greatly enjoyed the bachelor lifestyle -- to be specific, my aunt mentioned he enjoyed duels and the company of opera dancers. His mother Adele nagged him to settle down and get married, but he ignored her pleas.
My great-grandmother was born in 1901 and was one of nine children. She was a very well-rounded young lady who rode horses, played the piano and spoke French. She met my great-grandfather for the first time when she was 17 or 18 years old. She was riding with some friends when her horse shied and threw her. My great-grandfather saw her and went over to help. Instead of playing the part of the damsel in distress, she was angry and only wanted to get back on the horse. A few years later, she spent the day at the beach with the wife of a calvary colonel. They were excellent swimmers and decided to swim a long way from the shore. While they were swimming, a boat full of officers approached and asked if they needed help. They accepted the invitation to be pulled into the boat. Ironically, my great-grandfather was among them.
After their second meeting, Raoul started writing to Tina. Occasionally he introduced her to his mother at parties. His mother liked her very much, but she didn't approve of an engagement because my grandmother wasn't a member of the Italian aristocracy. Eventually, he resorted to extreme measures to win her approval -- he informed his mother that he wanted to marry one of his opera dancer girlfriends! Suddenly the lovely girl with an independent nature wasn't such a bad match after all, and his mother insisted that he reconsider the lovely Tina. They were married and moved to Verona. My grandmother arrived 10 and a half months later. She is in the bottom photograph.
The Meridian Star, 1949
Following the war, my grandparents moved from Italy to Meridian, Mississippi.
Modern day Italy and Mississippi couldn't be more different, so I can only imagine what a transatlantic move from Naples to Meridian would have been like in the late 1940s. It sounds incredibly romantic, but I'm sure it was also really, really difficult.
If my grandmother struggled, she didn't let it show. She and my grandfather lived in Meridian until 1954, and then they spent the next 36 years in Naples. In 1990, they retired to Booneville, Mississippi, where they lived until my grandfather's death in 2002. After his passing, my grandmother returned to Naples, where she is spending her retirement surrounded by family, friends, books and her memories.
To this day, she only talks about her years in Mississippi with fondness.
If you're curious as to what life was like in Meridian during that time, then you'll enjoy these articles from the Meridian Star that were written when my great-grandmother visited from Naples in 1949. At that time, my grandparents were pregnant with my father, their first child and my great-grandmother's first grandchild.
The Meridian Star, 1949
Weren't they stylish? It's hard to believe these photos are more than 60 years old! My grandmother was (and still is) her mother's daughter. They look so happy to be together.
I wonder if my great-grandmother wrote about her trip....I must ask my aunt about that!