Trelawny, Zella

(GREECE)
BORN 1826 - DIED 8 May 1906, Hove, East Sussex

Daughter of the adventurer E.J. Trelawny and his child bride Tarsitza, the younger sister of the bandit chief Odysseus Androutzos. Zella inherited her father's temperament and in later years she remembered several examples of this. She was brought up in Italy by an English lady named Jane Boccella, who had married an Italian marquis. When she was at school she pulled the Duke of Lucca's nose and when the gardener couldn't keep her away from the forbidden fruit he bound her hands. But then she just bit the fruit from the branches.

In the 1830s she came to England where she was cared for by Trelawny and his mother Mrs Brereton. On a continental tour she met the South American doctor Jose Olguin. She married him and lived with him in Italy. She sometimes visited Trelawny in England. She was the mother of Ramona Zella Olguin and Olivia Dolores Olguin. In the early 1850s she and her husband feel into debt. Trelawny refused to help and they emigrated to Argentina. But this wa temporary, because in the 1870s they lived in London. There she was visited by Trelawny but they quarreled and this marked the end of their relationship.

Family
• Father: Trelawny, Edward John

Sources
• Armstrong, Margaret, Trelawny, A Man's Life, Robert Hale, London, 1941
• Norman, Sylva, Flight of the Skylark, Max Reinhardt, London, 1954
• St Clair, William, Trelawny, The Incurable Romancer, Vanguard Press, New York, 1977


Tresca, Henri

Published: 01 Jan 2006
Last update: 27 Apr 2021