Acclaimed actor Harriet Walter’s home is a treasure-trove of theatrical memorabilia from her career, as well as other souvenirs such as Rudolf Nureyev’s ballet shoes. She says that her mother Xandra and her grandmother Estelle both loved ballet. On her episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, she wants to find out more about Estelle’s Italian ancestry, and also to solve the mystery of her mother’s wartime service in “admiralty intelligence”.
“What I’m anticipating in this is to get into the skin of people, to find out what it was like to be them,” she says. “There’s nothing quite like this show in terms of finding out things you don’t know. That’s quite nerve-wracking, but also exciting.”
Wartime mystery
Harriet starts by finding out more about her mother. She remembers Xandra as “a very sweet woman” with “the most amazing sense of humour” but she was always “slightly belittled” by her husbands.
Harriet doesn’t know much about what her mother did in the Second World War: “She said you would never in a million years tell your best friend, your husband, anybody what you were doing. You just would not do it.”
Old newspapers show that in the 1930s, Xandra Carandini Lee was a debutante. In the 1939 Register, aged 22, she is described as a secretary. An old letter from the Admiralty, meanwhile, offers her work as a “temporary section assistant”.
Intelligence position
To find out more, Harriet goes to London to meet intelligence historian Helen Fry, who shows her Xandra’s newly-declassified file, marked ‘Top Secret’. It says that in 1943, Xandra was put to work under “Captain Denning” on “Operation Neptune” – the D-Day landings.
Xandra had an important role – she was in charge of a team monitoring naval intelligence on Germany’s ship and U-boat movements in the run-up to the landings. Once the landings began in 1944, her section would have been processing hundreds of decoded messages. Harriet never knew any of this because her mother was required to keep her service secret for life.
“I’m rethinking my mother entirely,” Harriet says. “It’s extraordinary how that changes your image of somebody, to think of her in that position of responsibility.”
Aristocratic ancestors
Next, Harriet wants to find out more about Xandra’s mother Estelle. There are lots of family stories about Estelle – she wanted to go on the stage but her father wouldn’t allow it. Her father’s own parents were an opera singer and a dispossessed Italian marquis, who met in Tasmania.
Harriet travels to Modena and Italy and visits the old Carandini palazzo, where she learns that her 2x great grandfather was called Girolamo and was born in 1803. His line of the family lost their wealth because his father married beneath him.
Harriet goes to the former College of Nobles, where Girolamo was educated and records show he took part in a ballet performance as a young boy, which intrigues Harriet, who also loves ballet.
Researcher Maria Laura Frullini shows Harriet some letters that Girolamo’s uncles wrote to his father while he was serving in the army. The letters show that his uncles warned him of the “dangers” of Naples while he was stationed there. However, Girolamo didn’t listen and got into debts that had to be paid off by his uncle by pretending to be richer than he was.
Girolamo was ultimately dismissed from the army and returned to Modena. In 1831, he fought in a rebellion for a united Italy. The uprising failed and Girolamo fled dramatically by sea to France.
Celebrity ancestor
To find out what happened next, Harriet travels to Tasmania. Records show that Girolamo arrived in Tasmania in 1842 as a singer with a company of travelling players. He subsequently set up “a dancing establishment” in Hobart and in 1843 he married Maria Burgess. They then performed together at the Theatre Royal. Maria went on to become a celebrated singer.
However, Girolamo struggled financially, probably because he lived beyond his means, and was repeatedly forced to declare bankruptcy. Harriet thinks that’s why Girolamo’s son, Frank, forbade his daughter Estelle from going on the stage – because he’d grown up with a fear of destitution.
In 1869, Girolamo returned to Modena to visit his family. Sadly, he died while he was there. Despite the loss of her husband, Maria, known as the ‘Nightingale of Tasmania’, continued to tour and perform with her daughters, going to mainland Australia, the USA and India.
“I’m really pleased that I’ve done this,” Harriet says. “It has an extraordinary effect on you. You literally think you’ve gone on a journey into the past.”
