Tresca and Flynn

Abstract

Gossip among radicals suggested that when Tresca and Flynn first met in May 1912, she was involved romantically with Joe Ettor.¹ If so, with Ettor in jail, Tresca had an easy time sweeping Flynn off her feet. Subsequent activities together in 1912 and 1913 solidified the political and personal partnership that would endure until 1925. Recalling the year they met, Flynn wrote that “he was then a tall, slender, handsome man in his mid-thirties, and I was deeply in love with him.”² Indeed, Flynn’s memoirs and the many poems she dedicated to him indicate that Tresca was the great love of her life. Tresca had expressed his romantic sentiments during the Ettor-Giovannitti agitation with several inscriptions in the copy of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s The Maidens of the Rock?, which he gave her as a gift. The November 17 inscription reads: “Suppose at some time you read this book some flame is kindled in your heart—remember at this time mio dolce cuore, sogno, Speranza, luce dell’anima mi? [my sweet heart, dream, hope, light of my soul]—one heart has the same flame for you alone.”³ Flynn’s reciprocating gift was Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portugues?, with poignant passages underlined. This was the little volume that Tresca lost during the hotel workers’ strike.⁴