Dame Iris Margaret Origo, Marchesa Origo, DBE, née Cutting, was an English-born biographer and writer. She lived in Italy and devoted much of her life to improving the Tuscan estate at La Foce, near Montepulciano, which she bought with her husband in the 1920s. During the Second World War, she persistently sheltered refugee children and helped many escaped Alliedprisoners of war and partisans, in defiance of Italy's fascist regime and Nazi occupation forces.
Origins and upbringing
Origo was born at Beechwood Cottage, Birdlip, Gloucestershire, England, to the diplomat William Bayard Cutting Jr., who came from an extremely wealthy and philanthropic New York family and to Lady Sybil Cuffe. Her parents travelled widely after their marriage, particularly in Italy, where her father contracted tuberculosis. Her father travelled the globe in search of relief from the symptoms of tuberculosis that would kill him in 1910, at the age of 29. Before he died, he wrote to his wife that he wanted their young daughter to grow up in Italy, "free from all this national feeling which makes people so unhappy. Bring her up somewhere where she does not belong, so she cannot have it." Iris and her mother settled in Italy, buying the Villa Medici in Fiesole, one of Florence's most spectacular villas. There they formed a close friendship with Bernard Berenson, who lived not far away at I Tatti. Iris was briefly enrolled at school in London, but was largely educated at home, by Professor Solone Monti and by a series of French and German governesses. In April 1918 her mother remarried, to the architectural historian Geoffrey Scott, also of the Berensonian circle. She divorced him in 1926 and took a third husband, the essayist Percy Lubbock.
Personal life
Iris Cutting travelled to England and the United States, so as to be launched into society in both countries. In 1922, she met Colin Mackenzie, a young Scottish businessman working in Milan; a romantic correspondence was followed by a passionate affair. On 4 March 1924, Iris married Antonio Origo, an illegitimate son of Marchese Clemente Origo. They moved to their purchased estate, La Foce, near Chianciano Terme in the Province of Siena. It was in an advanced state of disrepair, but their hard work, care and attention managed to transform it. Their son, Gian or Gianni Clemente Bayard, died of meningitis at the age of seven. They also had two daughters, Benedetta and Donata.
Writing career
After the death of her son, Iris Origo began a writing career with a well-received biography of Giacomo Leopardi, published in 1935. A reviewer noted that "an unobtrusive scholarship gives alimentation to a deft power in narrative, and the style is always alive and sometimes very beautiful." She followed this in 1938 with a life of Cola di Rienzo, a 14th-century populist revolutionary and would-be dictator in Rome. After discovering love letters between Byron and the Countess Teresa Guiccioli she wrote "The Last Attachment" about their relationship. "The Merchant of Prato" is about everyday 14th-century life, a book Origo wrote after examining a huge cache of medieval documents. The Origos spent the Second World War at La Foce caring for refugee children, and after Italy surrendered, helping escaped Allied prisoners of war trying to cross German lines or simply survive. After the war, she divided her time between La Foce and Rome, where the Origos had bought an apartment in the Palazzo Orsini, and devoted herself to writing. War in Val d'Orcia was her first book to be popular as well as a critical success. Her 1957 book The Merchant of Prato was found to be a valuable source for students of Italian city and mercantile life, based on research in the archives of the merchant Francesco di Marco Datini. She also cast light on a little-known facet of medieval and early Italian life in an article, "The Domestic Enemy: the Eastern Slaves in Tuscany in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries". The Origos holidayed at Gli Scafari, a house built by the architect Cecil Pinsent for Iris's mother, at Lerici on the Gulf of Spezia. Antonio Origo died on 27 June 1976. Iris Origo died at her estate in Tuscany on 28 June 1988, aged 85.
