Cecilia Maria de Candia

Cecilia Maria de Candia (born 24 December 1853, Brighton, England – d. 26 May 1926, Bordighera, Italy), later Mrs Godfrey Pearse, was a British-Italian writer, amateur singer and society hostess. She was the daughter of two famous opera singers, Giulia Grisi and the Cavaliere don Giovanni Matteo de Candia, who sang under the popular name of Mario the tenor.

In her childhood, she traveled extensively with her parents, who moved their main home from Florence to Paris, and after moving seasonally to the UK eventually they settled in London in 1869 for good. Maria Cecilia grew up surrounded by the artistic elite of Europe, the friends and colleagues of her parents, opera singers, musicians, designers, art lovers, royalty and the social elite of the time. The de Candia family was part of the Italian nobility, and at birth, Cecilia Maria was registered as Cecilia Maria de Candia, and Noble Lady (it: Nobile Donna) of the United Kingdom of Italy.

On 29 February 1872, at St Pauls, Wilton Grove in the City of London UK, took place the marriage of Cecilia Maria de Candia and Sir Godfrey Robarts Pearse a "fencing champion", descendant of the Baron Robartes. The marriage, civil union and registry took place at St. George's Hanover Square Jan 1872. They lived first in London, and some seasons in Brighton; eventually the new family started to spend time in Paris, at Cecilia's sisters, and also in Italy at the de Candia's residences. They were good friends and correspondents of the famous Scottish painter James McNeill Whistler.

Her main attraction to writing was developed during her early years of adolescence, she was a passionate and romantic young lady, always in love with the music and lyrics of the day. She took her passion as an inspiration to write alongside her trips across Europe.
Some of her earliest works were kept by her tutors, she also wrote poems that were converted into paintings by some famous artists of the day. After her marriage to Sir Robarts Pearse, she started to dedicate her time to gardening and eventually created some interesting texts relating the Victorian herbalistic knowledge to cooking, other times she dedicated her writings to the `fantasy world of nature` and finally explored the biographical and historical field of writing composing some powerful books among them the following ones were saved.
Most of her work was signed Maria Cecilia, or M.C. and only her published work was signed as Mrs. Godfrey Pearse.
Not all of her work was published, many just became manuscripts from films or other writers work since she seldom participated as a shadow writer, her main body of work currently available by publishing houses are these three books, that were well enjoyed by London readers:

• The Romance of a Great Singer: A Memoir of Mario (1910) (with Frank Hird)
• The Kitchen Garden and the Cook: An Alphabetical Guide to the Cultivation of Vegetables (1913)
• The Enchanted Past (1926).

After sharing homes in London and seasonal time in a Mediterranean residence in the Ligurian region, bordering Monaco and Piemonte, she decided to conduct research work for her next book at her father's home—the Villa Salviati in Tuscany collecting old letters and pictures; short time after she contracted an illness and died at her Mediterranean cottage in Bordighera, Italy.

Some of her research and writings were sent to her younger sister living in Paris, the book she was working on was a text related to the life of one of her oldest sisters Rita de Candia, a British of Italian nobility living in Berlin during World War I; the draft of the life of Rita de Candia became the partial inspiration for the character of "Jean Ross" in the film Christopher and His Kind.