Silvia was born in 1896, two years after her older sister Carolina (called Lina, 1894), and three years before her brother Peppino (1899).
The letters that remain to us show her to be very attached to her family, to her parents, to her sister, who worked in a Swiss boarding school as a governess until she married a man the family really disliked, and to her brother, to whom she wrote affectionate letters full of the words she could not say to him verbally, because Peppino, peppino, it seems, is not prone to confidences and stiffens(I am sorry I have never spoken to you of your ‘affection’ [Marianne Maire], but only once that I have admired with sympathy the photographs you have in your room, did you give me such a dry answer that I immediately regretted my poor sentence.(…). Letter from Silvia Caprotti to her brother Peppino Caprotti, Prina (SV), 4 August 1923].
Nevertheless, the two brothers got along well, and had ‘long chats’, as Silvia writes in several letters. And now, if only he weren’t so far away, studying at a French weaving school, he would surely help her to make a lot of plans for my new house, which will be modest at first but not without every comfort (…).
In 1922, in fact, Silvia became engaged to Ernesto Thomas, who in that very year founded in Brusimpiano, on Lake Lugano, the wool mill that still bears his name and produces fabrics of the highest quality that are renowned worldwide (see https://www.ethomas.com/storia ). The factory lifts the economy of the entire area, and this merits Thomas, among other things, the dedication of an avenue. The engagement enchants Silvia, who writes to her brother: (…) Do you know that I am only now beginning to get used to the idea of being engaged? It still seems impossible to me that people love me so much and for real! (…), and Ernesto’s parents are incredibly affectionate and kind, wanting their future daughter-in-law to visit them often, also so that she can see her “Nino” more often (Letter from Silvia Caprotti to her brother Peppino, Ponte [Albiate], 29 November 1922).
Silvia and Ernesto Thomas were married in the summer of 1923 (Letter from Amedeo Tanzi to Bernardo Caprotti, Silvia’s father, my great-grandfather, Milan, 14 June 1923). The preparations for the imminent wedding did not, however, distract the bride from following Peppino’s affair with Marianne Maire, the young Frenchwoman he met in the Vosges while attending the textile school in Épinal, a town near Nancy. She comments on the engagement invitations, and from her we know that the happy almost-boyfriend had decided to ‘freshen up’ the family home: (…) I’m glad that the work is proceeding quite rapidly [sic] and that you are pleased with it: has my room started yet? I’m glad that the house is being tidied up a bit, because at least when your loved ones come, it will look a bit neat and tidy – and if the crooked corridors and cracks in them say it’s old, there will be something to show that you care about keeping it tidy. (…). (Letter from Silvia Caprotti to her brother Peppino Caprotti, Prina, 4 August 1923).
Aunt Silvia”, who is also present in the life and affection of her nieces and nephews, Peppino’s children, spent her whole life in Brusimpiano, where she died very old in 1994.
Sources:
Albiate (MB), Villa San Valerio Archives, Giuseppe Caprotti, letters from his sister Silvia, 1911 – 1931, b. 171.
Bibliography:
M. GERLETTI, Quando il patron di Esselunga pescava a Brusimpiano, ‘VareseNews’, 3 October 2016.
E. Thomas official website
