02/04/2019
The Irish Beauty from Ballynatray, County Waterford, who became a Sicilian Princess.
THE IRISH BEAUTY WHO BECAME A SICILIAN PRINCESS
Ballynatray, County Waterford, Ireland
Selma Hall, Sliema, Malta
Royal Palace of Caserta, Campania, Italy
Villa Marlia, near Lucca, Tuscany, Italy
The woman in this portrait was Her Royal Highness Penelope Caroline, Princess of Capua. For the first 20 years of her life, this slender Irish beauty was better known as Penelope Smyth.
Penelope was the daughter of Grice Smyth, a Protestant gentleman who lived in Ballynatray House on the Waterford side of the River Blackwater outside Youghal.
As a young woman, Penelope was introduced to Carlo, Prince of Capua, younger brother of Ferdinand II, King of the Two Sicilies. The Prince and the King hailed from the great Bourbon dynasty that had ruled over so much of Europe for 300 years, and whose name is now famously recalled in the Bourbon whiskey of the American South.
Penelope and the Prince hit it off immediately. Their love seems to have been entirely genuine but they came under immense pressure due to the differences in class between a Prince of the House of Bourbon and an Irish commoner.
The couple eloped to Scotland and were married at Gretna Green in 1836. However, King Ferdinand refused to give his all-important recognition to his brother's marriage because Penelope was not of Royal blood. He knew how poorly it would go down with all the other women at his court in Naples if this Irish girl was suddenly classed as their aristocratic superior.
To try and sway the king, Penelope and Carlo were married on a further three occasions - in Madrid, Rome and London.
But Ferdinand would not budge.
By the autumn of 1836, Europe was awash with rumours that Carlo was planning to overthrow Ferdinand and install his Irish bride as Queen of Sicily.
However, the truth was that Carlo and Penelope had little taste for the limelight. Despondent and hurt, they abandoned Naples and made their way to the Mediterranean island of Malta where they built a palace called Selma Hall in the town of Sliema.
They remained as exiles in Malta for the next fourteen years, raising a son Francesco, the Count di Mascali, (1837–1862) and a daughter, Vittoria di Borbonne (1838–1895).
Meanwhile, Ferdinand became ever more absolutist. In 1848, he earned the nickname ‘Ferdinand the Bomber’ when he violently suppressed a rebellion in Sicily by bombing the port of Messina. He died in 1859, shortly before the kingdom of the Two Sicilies collapsed in the wake of Garibaldi's invasion. His son Francis II was deposed in March 1861.
Victor Emmanuel II, who became King of the newly united Italy, formally recognized the marriage of Penelope and Carlo, shortly after the latter's death in 1862. Penelope was granted the royal residence of Marlia, a neo-classical villa near Lucca in Tuscany, where she died in 1882.
A tablet on the wall of St Mary’s Collegiate Church in Youghal, County Cork, reads as follows:
‘In memoriam Her Royal Highness Penelope Caroline, Princess of Capua, daughter of Grice Smyth of Ballynatray, Co. Waterford, born 19th July 1805, died 13th December 1882. The beloved wife and faithful widow of His Royal Highness Carlo Ferdinando di Borbonne, Prince of Capua, who died 2nd April 1862. This memorial devoted to a devoted and lamented mother is erected by her loving and beloved son and daughter, His Royal Highness Prince Francesco Carlo di Borbonne and her Royal Highness Victoria Augusta Ludovica Isabella Amelia Philomina Helena Penelope did Borbonne Capua.
Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord’.
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