Taphophile Tragics # 10 - In the Arms of an Angel

The marker was bordering on taciturn:

Sacred to the memory of
Kate Reynolds Fiaschi
Born Ireland 1850
Died Sydney 1913
A loving wife and a devoted mother
Rest in peace

And yet the statue atop the marker was startlingly beautiful in its celebration of sensuality. Originally, I had thought this to be a straightforward post about a beautiful statue, until from deep in the bowels of Ancestry. com came an altered reality: Catherine Ann Reynolds AKA Sister Mary Regis.

There were three public trees that other researchers had fleshed out, telling me that Kate Reynolds married Thomas Henry Fiaschi in 1876 at Bethel House in George Street North, bore him five sons (one of whom died in infancy) and two daughters, before dying at the relatively young age of 63 (but I would use that adjective, wouldn’t I!).

Sister Mary Regis. Had she been a nun or something?

Searching Ancestry.com would take longer than I had the patience for, so I googled the string of both names as set out above, and BINGO. I chanced upon an article presented by Jonathan Auld at the Hawkesbury Family History group meeting on 9th March 2005 as part of Women’s History Month.

Both Kate’s parents died when she was 14. She was of a devout family and had been promised to the church. She was sent to live with an aunt in Sydney and joined the Sisters of Charity at St Vincent’s Hospital, where she was known as ... yep. As luck would have it, young Thomas Henry Fiaschi was a doctor where Kate was a nursing nun. This is where the sensuality of the carving strikes to the very core of humanity. They fell in love, eloped, and were excommunicated. Kate was the only nun to have ever left the Sisters of Charity.

As the surname hints, he was Italian (born there), their first child being born in Florence when Thomas Henry returned for a short while to complete his medical training. Upon their return to the colony, Thomas Henry set up his practice in Windsor, where they hoped anonymity would be preserved. Children arrived regularly: 1877, 1879, 1889, 1884, 1885, and 1893. The child who died in infancy was second last, explaining the gap. And twenty years later, she was gone.

They had established a vineyard at Sackville called ‘Tizzana’ which Kate ran whilst Thomas Henry was overseas in both the Abyssinian and Boer Wars. Yet their address upon her death was Darling Point, so theirs was a most comfortable existence in terms of goods and chattels.

The statue expresses what words were incapable of. To circle around it, as my camera and I did, is to become dizzy from the sheer ecstasy of love and acceptance; to be in the presence of, indeed, in the arms of, an angel.

Here is one of the most beautiful songs of the modern era, written by the enchanting Sarah MacLauchlan, 'In the arms of an angel'

In the arms of an Angel, fly away from here
From this dark, cold hotel room, and the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie
You're in the arms of an Angel; may you find some comfort here.

I am indebted to Jonathan Auld's 2005 paper for the 'Hawkesbury Crier' for the unlocking of the 'AKA Sister Mary Regis' reference that I discovered deep within the heart of Ancestry.com.

This is my contribution to the Taphophile Tragics community.