The island of Elba is a magical place where Violetta and I land tiny, for the first time by plane. There are no asphalted roads on the estate and Grandma Luisa drives us around with her five dogs in an American jeep that we love. We have very funny adventures among partridges and barn owls, with two friends: Andrea, son of Celestino, Grandma’s driver, and Bruno, son of the gamekeeper, who is secretly in love with Violetta. Many games take place in hammocks in front of the house. Or on the beach, where Grandma often organises parties worthy of the ‘Great Gatsby’.
In Elba, Grandma Luisa plans to give her estate to our father. Then, unfortunately, she has second thoughts and so ends up losing all that remains of the Quintavallefortune.
“(…) He [Uncle Giuseppe Venosta], like many members of the family, is also an original type: a friend [Orna Nofarber] told me that in the 1970s, when he joined Grandma Luisa on summer holidays at the estate she then owned on the island of Elba, the uncle jokingly introduced himself as ‘duke’, from where no one knows. In that guise he would go to the butcher in Capoliveri who, upon entering the shop, would rush to kiss his hand. (…)” (p. 86).
Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, Umberto Quintavalle, his maternal great-grandfather, bought the splendid estate on the Elba promontory (now part of the Tuscan Archipelago National Park), and every early autumn he hosted relatives, friends and acquaintances for rich hunting trips in its woods. The estate passed to her daughter Luisa, my paternal grandmother, who was then married in her second marriage to Marquis Niccolò Theodoli; my grandmother sold it, which was a pity. As the postcards and family photos show, it was a lovely place; and another piece of our memories was gone.
Today it is part of a tourist group that also produces wine.
In one of the photos, Aunt Diana is holding one of Grandma Luisa’s ‘historical’ dogs, the dachshund Uchi, whom I adored.
External Bibliography:
Tenuta delle Ripalte website, Costa dei Gabbiani, Elba Island.
