Governess - Born in 1887 in Angrogna
They named me Madeleine like my mother, and this is the only thing that links me to her, other than the life that she gave me, because I was very young when, due to her depression, she had to be sent to the mental hospital in Torino, which she never again left. I have a few more memories of my father. He told us about the time when, as a young man, he had been a soldier in the Piedmontese army in the Abruzzi.
I order to ease the difficulties of my father, who was alone with my sisters and me, I was put in the Waldensian Orphanage in Torre Pellice. Soon after, I lost my father, too, and his brother, Etienne Bonnet, pastor of Angrogna and director of the orphanage, became my guardian.
In the orphanage and at school I heard about young Waldensian women who traveled the world as governesses, one even going to St. Petersburg to the family of a dignitary of the Tsar, another to the royal family in Greece, a number of them to America. At that time I realized that I, too, would like to travel and take care of children, and at the age of eighteen, I set off.
I never crossed the ocean, but I traveled all over Europe with the families I worked for, and I met a lot of people from different countries. I was very proud of “my” children, who often, as adults, became important people, like the Agnellis of Villar Perosa, the Fiat people.
We Waldensian girls were very sought-after as governesses because of our honesty, morality, and education and because we knew French. I never married, and I never had a house of my own. I read a lot, taking advantage of the well-stocked libraries in the houses where I worked. Besides French, which I learned at home and school, I studied English on my own, which allowed me to have relationships with people that I met in my travels.
I loved to read poetry and passages from literature in their original languages. I copied out many of them in my notebooks. I always wrote my notes and comments in three languages to keep in practice.
When I was no longer able to travel, I retired to the Asilo in San Germano (Home for the Elderly). There, as long as I could, I spent most of my time helping the elderly people who were not self-sufficient.
At the Asilo I had a little attic room, small but all my own. I covered the walls with photos and newspaper clippings of all my grown children and of the beautiful places that I had been. As long as I could, at every new birth I sent “my” families booties and little sweaters that I made myself.
Now and then I would leaf through my souvenir albums, full of drawings and thoughts of the many people that I had met, thanking the Lord for having given me such a rich life. In one of these notebooks, among 116 thoughts and memories of friendly people, 25 are in Italian, 35 in French, 55 in English, 15 in German, 2 in Latin, and 4 in other languages. How many fantastic women I met! Yes, women, because except for a few cousins, those who wrote in my notebooks are all women!
Madeleine died in 1970 at the Asilo in San Germano Chisone.
Extract from Waldensian Cultural Centre Foundations’s brochure
www. fondazionevaldese.org