Marconi My Beloved. Maria C. Marconi
of really great importance but also of light-heartedness and harmony we spent together: his great discoveries, the journeys in far-off countries, meeting many people who today are part of history, being received with the magnificent welcome usually reserved for royalty and heads of state, welcomed with open arms by huge crowds applauding our arrival. All these events, with full details, I have described in these pages.
The happy years went by but at a certain moment we both began to realise that the Lord was going to part us after He had willed that we should love each other so deeply. In the last days of Guglielmo’s life, before his sudden death from a heart-attack, he looked deep into my eyes after embracing me tenderly and said: “You will have Elettra and she will remind you of me”.
Dearest Guglielmo, you were right. You did indeed leave me a living reminder of yourself: our beloved Elettra.
I should like, simply and spontaneously, to write down the truth that comes from my heart and which our daughter Elettra can read over again and keep as a record of her great father and as a testimony of the faithfulness of spirit and mind which her mother always cherished and kept alive in her heart for her husband Guglielmo Marconi even after his death.
Rome, June 1993.
MY LIFE WITH GUGLIELMO
On 20th July, 1962, the 25th anniversary of my beloved Guglielmo’s death, my daughter Elettra and I attended a solemn commemorative Holy Mass in the Cathedral of San Pietro in Bologna, celebrated by Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro the Archbishop of the city in the presence of many dignitaries and a crowd of citizens of Bologna. I was deeply moved and Elettra and I felt very close to our dearest Guglielmo.
Whenever Guglielmo and I went into the cathedral he always wanted to stand with me for a moment or two in front of the font. As I looked at it that day I remembered the words my husband had said to me with a pensive smile on his face: “Look! That is where I was baptised when I was a newborn baby”. Although his father Giuseppe Marconi was a Catholic, Guglielmo had been brought up in the Anglican faith by his mother Annie Jameson Marconi who belonged to the Anglican High Church which in the Church of England is the nearest to the Catholic faith.
While Elettra and I were deep in prayer, each one immersed in her own memories, I saw the whole of my life with Guglielmo in my mind’s eye with a clarity which made everything seem vivid and alive. I remembered his face, his smile, our first meeting, his honest proud character and all those qualities which made us understand each other perfectly right from the start. I thought of the faith that by God’s grace I helped to light and keep burning more and more brightly in his soul which was already so full of God-given greatness and goodness. Finally my mind went back with love and tenderness to our wedding day.
My first meeting with Guglielmo Marconi, by which time he was already free from his first marriage, took place in 1925 during a party on board his yacht the Elettra which was anchored at Viareggio. I was with some friends from Florence and Rome, among whom was the Duchess Ravaschieri and her daughter Ornella. I was introduced to Marconi who looked at me with interest and gave me a particularly charming smile. As for myself I was immediately fascinated by his great personality and charm and his rather English elegance. I was struck by his aura of genius and I realized that here was an exceptional man. The look in his eyes told me that the first spark of the great love which would eventually unite us for the rest of our lives had already been lit. I was wearing a long red velvet evening dress with a red rose pinned to one shoulder. What a wonderful evening it was.
Not long afterwards Guglielmo and I met again in Rome. I was a close friend of Maria Cristina del Drago, who gave afternoon parties in her palace in Via Quattro Fontane. Her mother Princess Elika was a very charming woman who always invited a select group of friends to those events; the atmosphere was always pleasant and the conversation amusing. After her death her son and daughter Rodolfo and Maria Cristina kept up their mother’s custom and entertained in the same style.
Guglielmo Marconi was made a Senator of the Kingdom of Italy when he was just forty years old, the minimum age allowed by the law. He came to Rome from time to time in order to fulfill his duties at the Italian Senate and he used to stay for two or three days at the Grand Hotel. He was always glad of the opportunity to visit his friends Prince and Princess del Drago and it was in the pleasant atmosphere of one of their parties that I met Guglielmo again. During the afternoon I realised that his gaze was fixed upon me and this made me very happy. I was struck at once by the look in his eyes: it was penetrating, compelling and yet full of humanity and feeling. He possessed a mysterious force of attraction which drew people to him and a marvelous sense of humour; everyone enjoyed his company. There was a kind of electric current between us right from the beginning and we understood each other perfectly. As time went by we fell deeply in love and we knew that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. Guglielmo often said to me that apart from his mother I was the only person who understood him and he felt truly happy only when he was with me. It was no sacrifice for me to dedicate myself to him completely and I did my best to help him as much as I could. I wanted to transmit my own joie de vivre to him.
Guglielmo loved beauty: everything that was beautiful in nature, in man, and in art; he admired the works of such geniuses as Dante, Michangelo, Raffaello, Galileo, Shakespeare and Verdi. When we were in Rome his favourite walks were in the gardens of Villa Borghese, the Pincio and the Gianicolo where he enjoyed looking at the view of the eternal city below us. We went to see Tasso’s oak-tree in remembrance of the great poet. Although he was a very great scientist, Guglielmo was also very romantic. We had the same tastes and the same kind of character. We felt a profound affinity which kept us close and made our happiness complete. No disagreement ever cast a shadow over our marriage and we lived in perfect harmony until the end of his life. I was always at his side, supporting him when he was worried and comforting him with my love when things went wrong. We faced every problem calmly and sensibly; this attitude was innate in both of us because we had been brought up like this by our parents and to this day I am grateful to them for the moral strength they instilled in us.
Guglielmo had an exceptional personality. He understood me and this is why we were so happy together. His love and gratitude were my reward for all my care. Above all he trusted me completely; he always wanted to know what I thought and listened to my opinions. He was a man with a thousand interests and with his sense of humour he usually found something to make him laugh. He was curious about everything that went on around him and took an interest in all the important events of the day. His comments on every topic were always kind. In fact he wanted everything to turn out for the best and he thought that every question should be considered from an optimistic point of view. He dealt with every difficulty at once as he did not think there was any point in waiting. “Never put things off”, he always said. Guglielmo had many exceptional qualities that I did not find in other men and his sensitivity and intuition made him understand me at once.
I have many letters that Guglielmo wrote to me from London and elsewhere, before and during our engagement, which show his renewed interest in the Catholic faith. They are profound and interesting. Each of them reflects his nobility of mind and his exceptional human and spiritual values. I always remember a phrase in a letter he wrote to me from London on Christmas Eve, 1926. “...Dear Cristina, whatever happens, you have been the Angel of my conversion, of my redemption, an Angel like the one that stopped St. Paul on the road to Damascus, (...)”. When we were married he did not write so often because we were always together and he could tell me his thoughts and feelings personally. To have found someone in whom he could confide and whom he could trust completely was essential to him. I have about two hundred of his letters. They show a youthful spontaneous spirit and intense emotion which he himself was surprised by and which filled him with joy and optimism about his life and work. As for me I felt very proud to be the source of this happiness that he longed for and deserved so much.
Guglielmo wanted to make a thorough study of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church and he found in my sweetness and my ideals the wisdom, serenity and faith in God which he had missed up until then. “I feel like a ship that has found a safe harbour”, he said to me one day. I spoke to him about my faith openly and lovingly; I advised him to study the New Testament together with the commentaries of great scholars. I also gave him