Gina Sobrero, An Italian Baroness in Hawai‘i
Who would have thought that an Italian bride would travel from the Mediterranean to a Pacific Island kingdom a hundred years ago! But that is what Maria Carolina Isabella Luigia Sobrero did.
Born in Palermo in 1863, the beautiful young noblewoman, known as Gina Sobrero, met and married the brilliant, handsome Hawaiian Robert Wilikoki Wilcox. He was an officer in the Italian Army. From a chiefly line himself through his mother (his father was a sea captain), Wilcox was one of the talented young scholars whom King Kalakaua sent abroad to study and prepare for leadership of the Hawaiian nation.
Sobrero’s marriage in 1887 occurred just prior to the Bayonet Constitution, forced upon the king by a cabal who curbed his powers and increased their own. The new cost-cutting government recalled Wilcox, and Gina traveled back to Hawai‘i with him by sailing vessel and by train.
She arrived in the fall of 1887, and life was not what she envisioned. Her husband was caught up in the politics and intrigues of the times. Although befriended by Princess Lili‘uokalani, Gina was homesick and lonely—and pregnant. She left the Islands in February of 1888, and her daughter was born in San Francisco. Gina suffered not just the disillusionment of an unhappy marriage between two people from totally different cultures, but in the ship's crossing back to Europe, her infant daughter suddenly died.
Gina remained in Italy until her death in Rome in 1912. An accomplished journalist, she published articles and books under the byline of “Mantea.” She had kept a diary about her Hawaiian experience. This was printed as Espatriata—The Expatriate—and is the basis of the translation published by the Hawaiian Historical Society in 1991: An Italian Baroness in Hawai‘i: The Travel Diary of Gina Sobrero, Bride of Robert Wilcox.