Duchess of Aosta elicits sympathy

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November 6, 1900

The New York Times reports today on the Duchess of Aosta, who, despite her own poor health, wanted to return to Rome to nurse her husband, after he suffered an accident.

Although the accident amounted to "very little," the Duke of Aosta will have to remain in bed for a week. The Duchess "announced her intention of returning to Naples to nurse him," although "she was many days distant on her way to the Congo."

Her doctors, who are treating the Duchess for consumption, refused to allow her change her plans, and so "the poor, lonely woman has another grief added to her already heavy burden."

The Duchess is devoted to her husband, "despite the fact that they do not live happily together."

There is much gossip about her trip to Africa, but the truth is that "the Duchess is dying more or less slowly of consumption, and this is her last hope."

The African climate has suited the Duchess well in her illness. Two years ago, she returned from the Sudan and the Italian Masowah colony, but her health declined once she returned to Naples.

It is said that the Duchess may never "see Europe again."

Her sons are now attending school in England, and the Duke of Aosta is expected, once he as recovered, to join her in Africa.

There is perhaps "in the whole annals of the Bourbon family no such tragedy as has been her life." Princess Helene of France married the Duke of Aosta in 1895 "with good prospects of some time being Queen of Italy," or at least seeing her son "by the husband she loves placed on the throne." At the time, Victor Emmanuel, the present king, was "a weak youth and unmarried." Now Helene is "dying alone in a foreign country, bereft of her children and estranged from her husband because of his neglect."

In the first years of her marriage, the Duchess of Aosta was disliked in Italy, and by the King and Queen, "but her magnificent charity and her sorrows and sweetness endeared her to both."

The King has taken her side "so much that decided coolness reigns between the cousins."

Victor Emanuel "has a spotless reputation," and frowns on the Duke of Aosta and his brother, the Count of Turin, due to their lifestyles.