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they had changed their shirts and washed properly, then, after setting
the soiled linen aside, she would send it to the washerwomen. She went
round Convents and girl's schools encouraging them to exercise their
skills in needlework on the clothes of don Bosco's poor boys".11
When Canon Laurence entered the Institute of Charity, he asked his
mother to consider don Bosco and his boys as her children in his place. In
1853, before he left for England he made a secret will dated the 22nd April
in which he left don Bosco and his successors at the Oratory of St. Francis
of Sales in Valdocco, the not inconsiderable sum of 70,000 lire.12 During his
stay in England, they corresponded and Gastaldi wrote his Istruzione
Catechistica sul Matrimonio, which don Bosco published in his Catholic
Readings as part of his campaign against the introduction of Civil
Marriage. Don Bosco, for his part, kept Gastaldi informed of what was
happening at the Oratory, and on Italian and family affairs:
"La Signora, your mother, whom I can call mother and mother of
the sons of my house, is continually occupied working for these poor
boys (...) she is tenderly loved by all the boys of the house (...) though
her own cross is your brother Gioanni who no longer wants to follow
her advice; and here I must resume some news which is rather late. Your
brother, the lawyer, last autumn, went to Paris with his fiancé, whose
name is unknown; and your mother fears that he has married her with
only a civil ceremony. Your mother showed herself somewhat offended
that this course should have been taken without her knowledge; for now
things have been patched up (...)".13
The fact that don Bosco was privy to the intimate details of Gastaldi's
11 G.B. LEMOYNE, The Biographical Memoirs (New York 1968), vol. 4, p. 99.
12 G. TUNINETTI, op. cit., p. 133.
13 Archivio Arcivescovile Torino: 14.9.12 Don Bosco to II sig. Canonico D. Lorenzo
Gastaldi Dott. in Teol. dell'inst. della carità, S. Patrick's Liverpool, p. 1. "La Signora sua
madre, che posso chiamar madre mia e madre di tutti i figli della mia casa, è continuamente
occupata per questi poveri giovani. (...) ella è teneramente amata e venerata da tutti i ragazzi
della casa, come ella pure li ama tutti indistintamente nel Signore, e gode abbastanza buona
salute. La sua croce però sta nel fratello Gioanni, che non vuole più secondarla né suoi
consigli: e qui debbo ripigliare una notizia aliquanto indietro. Il fratello l'avvocato lo scorso
autunno andò a Parigi con una Fidanzata, il cui nome è ignoto; e sua madre teme che l'abbia
sposata con solo matrimonio civile. La madre si mostra alquanto offesa di tal cosafatta a sua
insaputa; per allora la cosa fu rappatumata". (My thanks are due to Don Aldo Giraudo for his
transcription of this letter of don Bosco from the Archdiocesan archive which is only partly
quoted in Tuninetti's life but also shows don Bosco's diapproval of the Law of Suppression
which had already passed the elected Chamber but which he hoped would not pass the Senate).
Don Bosco also gave details of the numbers of boarders in the Oratory as 98 with himself and
another priest and ten clerics (students for the priesthood) chosen from the boarders. He also
gave news of his financial situation and of the progress of the Letture Cattoliche of which there
were 12,000 Italian readers and 5,000 French.