One of our E-Bikes is called Evelina and although there are many figures with this name who populate the world of history and culture, today we want to talk about Evelina Cattermole.
Born in Florence at the end of the nineteenth century, she immediately showed a particular talent for poetry and an innate sensitivity to writing, even if her first verses perhaps lacked a bit of healthy, youthful naivety. Nevertheless, after many tribulations, she succeeded in establishing herself in the literary field, coming into contact with leading figures in the field at the time who guided her and dedicated admiring compositions to her.
Evelina was, however, always unlucky in love: married to the lieutenant of the Bersaglieri Francesco Eugenio Mancini, and often left alone by him, who was a passionate gambler with whom she lived in Milan, she allowed herself to be enraptured by the charm of the Venetian banker Giuseppe Bennati Baylon with whom she had a clandestine relationship. Unfortunately betrayed by her servants, Evelina was discovered by her husband during a meeting with his lover; Mancini's reaction was merciless: divorce, immediately and dishonourably, and a duel with the usurper of his wife's purity!
Baylon got the worst of it, dying from a pistol shot in that very clash, while Evelina, her heart and soul broken to the core, fled, now dishonoured and abandoned by all she knew.
After a period of great poverty in which she published verses in magazines in order to support herself, and now recovered, she met the man who was to be her end: the Neapolitan painter Giuseppe Pierantoni, an artist without much merit, with whom she began a relationship based solely on Evelina's generosity in supporting him.
The girl, having lost all feeling for her lover, tried several times to free herself and expel this violent character who lived on her shoulders, but without success.
A few days before Evelina was due to leave to move away and leave the man for good, and after the umpteenth argument in his home, Pierantoni grabbed the small handbag revolver that Evelina had received as a gift from his friend Ferruccio Bottini, and shot her in the stomach.
Evelina died after a long agony, leaving behind a sweet memory in all those who had known her and, in memory of a life that never really blossomed, a series of essays and poems in various magazines, as well as I Versi, which she published under the pseudonym of Contessa Lara.
Comments