From autobiographical notes by Edward Holroyd Pearce (Lord Pearce) 1989:
"When the Long Vacation came in 1948 we went off to Italy to stay with my cousins. My grandmother's sister had travelled about Italy with two beautiful daughters. One had married the Marchese Strozzi and one had married the Marchese Burlamacchi. The latter family which was old and honoured and rather impoverished, had kept up with some of us, particularly my brother and sister. The present Marchese [Maurizio] was a very tall handsome young man of 18. He had stayed in England recently and we had arranged that we should go out and visit him and his white haired mother, Guilietta, with her youthful face and black laughing eyes. The four of us spent the first two nights in Florence with them at an hotel and then went to their villa at Bagni di Lucca, a pleasant homely house set up on the hillside off the winding street. Whenever we wanted a bath we walked across to the little used public baths a hundred yards away where the water was turned on hot from the spring into three or four big marble baths each in a clean cool underground cubicle. The baths were about three or four hundred years old, but their forerunners had been there since Roman times.
Life was sunny and placid and nothing seemed to matter. Guilietta saw fun in everything not least in us. The boys went for walks, while I sat painting on the hot placid hill sides with Erica idling by my side, looking over the chestnut-crested hills nearby, or the bigger, bluer, Apennines in the distance. Sometimes my young cousin drove us very fast for expeditions in his car to Lucca or to nearby villages or hills. At the end of the day we all sat waiting for the evening meal in the enchanting dusk. The time of the meal was 8 o'clock. It arrived at 10. But no one seemed to worry. The boys went once or twice with their cousins to the village dances and tried to make one or two Italian phrases go a long way. The most effective was "parliamo di autre cose" (let us talk about something else) culled from a very ancient phrase book that we had. It would give a new lease of life to the loquacious torrent of an enthusiastic Italian maiden when the stream was beginning to run dry.
Then we went to a big old farm house that they owned near the Carrara mountains close behind Via Reggio. Everything was beautiful with age and disrepair. It had known better days and it had its own chapel. The work was done by the factor and his wife. Each day, when we went to bathe on the blinding hot sand by the blue water of the Mediterranean, the factor rode out on an old motor cycle and provided an elaborate luncheon for us under a huge coloured umbrella by a beach hut with plates and knives and forms and a tablecloth. It was an attractive mixture of picnic and ceremony; a life of grandeur (as it seemed to our egalitarian eyes) coupled with a lack of all suburban comfort. The factor's swarthy bright eyed son, Claudio, aged eight, was in trouble all round. He had just been forbidden to use a gun because twice running he had pulled the trigger and fired off his father's shotgun when his father was carrying it loaded over his shoulder. He had been sent back from school because he would insist on lifting the skirts of the nuns to see if they had legs like other people. He suddenly set to work pelting Bruce from an ambush with green oranges snatched from surrounding trees. Bruce, instigated by us, (since appeasement seemed the wrong treatment) let fly at him, and, being older, got the better of the battle. With some apprehension we saw the Mother come out and drag the intrepid child into a doorway to shelter, as we thought, like some protecting Homeric goddess. But she merely combed his dishevelled hair with a comb that she had in her pocket, straightened his rumpled clothing, and pushed him out again to renew the battle.
One day a sudden storm such as one gets on the Mediterranean tore all the tents and umbrellas askew and drew on an inky blackness lit by flashes of lightning. The beautiful bronzed bodies all rushed for shelter inland. It seemed to us that it would be fun to bathe. The factor, at first incredulous, tried to dissuade us. Then he thought it would be wonderful to be mad along with us and rushed down the beach into the angry waves ahead of us, illuminated by flashes of lightning, shouting with excitement and prancing like a black square muscular little demon lit by the fires of hell."
Note by Alan Ray-Jones:
Guilietta was a great friend of my mother Effie, sister to Edward Pearce. She was a good businesswoman and continued her husband's business when he died.
"When the Long Vacation came in 1948 we went off to Italy to stay with my cousins. My grandmother's sister had travelled about Italy with two beautiful daughters. One had married the Marchese Strozzi and one had married the Marchese Burlamacchi. The latter family which was old and honoured and rather impoverished, had kept up with some of us, particularly my brother and sister. The present Marchese [Maurizio] was a very tall handsome young man of 18. He had stayed in England recently and we had arranged that we should go out and visit him and his white haired mother, Guilietta, with her youthful face and black laughing eyes. The four of us spent the first two nights in Florence with them at an hotel and then went to their villa at Bagni di Lucca, a pleasant homely house set up on the hillside off the winding street. Whenever we wanted a bath we walked across to the little used public baths a hundred yards away where the water was turned on hot from the spring into three or four big marble baths each in a clean cool underground cubicle. The baths were about three or four hundred years old, but their forerunners had been there since Roman times.
Life was sunny and placid and nothing seemed to matter. Guilietta saw fun in everything not least in us. The boys went for walks, while I sat painting on the hot placid hill sides with Erica idling by my side, looking over the chestnut-crested hills nearby, or the bigger, bluer, Apennines in the distance. Sometimes my young cousin drove us very fast for expeditions in his car to Lucca or to nearby villages or hills. At the end of the day we all sat waiting for the evening meal in the enchanting dusk. The time of the meal was 8 o'clock. It arrived at 10. But no one seemed to worry. The boys went once or twice with their cousins to the village dances and tried to make one or two Italian phrases go a long way. The most effective was "parliamo di autre cose" (let us talk about something else) culled from a very ancient phrase book that we had. It would give a new lease of life to the loquacious torrent of an enthusiastic Italian maiden when the stream was beginning to run dry.
Then we went to a big old farm house that they owned near the Carrara mountains close behind Via Reggio. Everything was beautiful with age and disrepair. It had known better days and it had its own chapel. The work was done by the factor and his wife. Each day, when we went to bathe on the blinding hot sand by the blue water of the Mediterranean, the factor rode out on an old motor cycle and provided an elaborate luncheon for us under a huge coloured umbrella by a beach hut with plates and knives and forms and a tablecloth. It was an attractive mixture of picnic and ceremony; a life of grandeur (as it seemed to our egalitarian eyes) coupled with a lack of all suburban comfort. The factor's swarthy bright eyed son, Claudio, aged eight, was in trouble all round. He had just been forbidden to use a gun because twice running he had pulled the trigger and fired off his father's shotgun when his father was carrying it loaded over his shoulder. He had been sent back from school because he would insist on lifting the skirts of the nuns to see if they had legs like other people. He suddenly set to work pelting Bruce from an ambush with green oranges snatched from surrounding trees. Bruce, instigated by us, (since appeasement seemed the wrong treatment) let fly at him, and, being older, got the better of the battle. With some apprehension we saw the Mother come out and drag the intrepid child into a doorway to shelter, as we thought, like some protecting Homeric goddess. But she merely combed his dishevelled hair with a comb that she had in her pocket, straightened his rumpled clothing, and pushed him out again to renew the battle.
One day a sudden storm such as one gets on the Mediterranean tore all the tents and umbrellas askew and drew on an inky blackness lit by flashes of lightning. The beautiful bronzed bodies all rushed for shelter inland. It seemed to us that it would be fun to bathe. The factor, at first incredulous, tried to dissuade us. Then he thought it would be wonderful to be mad along with us and rushed down the beach into the angry waves ahead of us, illuminated by flashes of lightning, shouting with excitement and prancing like a black square muscular little demon lit by the fires of hell."
Note by Alan Ray-Jones:
Guilietta was a great friend of my mother Effie, sister to Edward Pearce. She was a good businesswoman and continued her husband's business when he died.
- 1902 - Birth -
- 1990 - Death -
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PARENT (U) ? | |||
Birth | |||
Death | |||
Father | ? | ||
Mother | ? | ||
PARENT (U) ? | |||
Birth | |||
Death | |||
Father | ? | ||
Mother | ? | ||
CHILDREN | |||
F | Giulia Bevilacqua | ||
Birth | 1902 | ||
Death | 1990 | ||
Marriage | 22 FEB 1925 | to Gualtiero Arturo Burlamacchi , Marchese at Livorno |
PARENT (M) Gualtiero Arturo Burlamacchi , Marchese | |||
Birth | 4 OCT 1896 | Bagni di Lucca | |
Death | 12 SEP 1947 | Bagni di Lucca | |
Marriage | 22 FEB 1925 | to Giulia Bevilacqua at Livorno | |
Father | Adolfo Arturo Burlamacchi | ||
Mother | Lilian Grace Caroline Steward | ||
PARENT (F) Giulia Bevilacqua | |||
Birth | 1902 | ||
Death | 1990 | ||
Marriage | 22 FEB 1925 | to Gualtiero Arturo Burlamacchi , Marchese at Livorno | |
Father | ? | ||
Mother | ? | ||
CHILDREN | |||
M | Adolfo Burlamacchi | ||
Birth | DEC 1925 | Florence | |
Death | 1933 | Florence of meningitis, was buried first in the Strozzi chapel in Soffiano, Florence; then moved to the new Burlamacchi | |
M | Maurizio Burlamacchi | ||
Birth | 14 MAY 1930 | ||
Death | November 2016 | ||
Marriage | 19 APR 1952 | to Tiziana Ravaglia | |
Marriage | 20 NOV 1998 | to Karine Kirilenko | |
Private | |||
Birth | |||
Death | |||
Marriage | 8 AUG 1964 | to Chiara Sergardi | |
Private | |||
Birth | |||
Death | |||
Marriage | to Laura Mungai |
[S20969] | Pio Burlamacchi's CD etc with Burlamacchi family details, 2000 |
1 Giulia Bevilacqua b: 1902 d: 1990
+ Gualtiero Arturo Burlamacchi , Marchese b: 4 OCT 1896 d: 12 SEP 1947
2 Adolfo Burlamacchi b: DEC 1925 d: 1933
2 Maurizio Burlamacchi b: 14 MAY 1930 d: November 2016
3 Gualtiero Burlamacchi b: 11 MAR 1954 d: 1957