Zeffirino Emilio Costanzo

MB married Zeffirino Emilio Costanzo , a young Sicilian who had been living in London for several years before they met.

MB 's first child, a daughter, was born during a bitterly cold winter in a hill-town in Sicily, where she and her husband were living with his family.

MB 's daughter, her eldest child, died of meningitis at the age of five months; she and her husband were devastated.

MB 's first husband died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-three, after she had nursed him for close to a year through the last stages of his illness.

MB 's husband was given an appointment abroad by his firm, and they left England to live in the Lucca region of Italy, a short distance from Florence.

MB returned to England to live on a farm in Kent with her husband , who was seriously ill with tuberculosis, and their young baby daughter.

Leaving her six-week-old son in Torquay with her old family nurse, MB , still weak and ill from childbirth, set sail for Tuscany to nurse her terminally ill husband .