It is indeed in the Notebooks and sketchbooks—manuscripts that preserve sparse yet precious elements of historical support for the journey in Gallura—that we find the following entry:

“31 October 1829. Left La Maddalena at 11:30 for Tempio, in the company of Mr Craig [* William Sanderson Craig, who also accompanied Captain Smyth on his famous journey in Sardinia]. We embarked in his boat and sailed to the opposite shore, aided by a fresh breeze from the north-west. On landing, the horses were already waiting for us.

We passed through wild and lonely tracks in a beautiful country as far as Baldo, about 12 miles. No road: only a footpath, and in some places not even that. The character of Sardinia soon begins to reveal itself: few people are seen, and those few generally keep apart.”

The watercolours and sketches mark the stages of a journey from La Maddalena to Tempio, following the customary route taken by travellers of those years: from La Maddalena (or Corsica) to Palau, then a halt in the Porto Pollo area, and afterwards the advance into the magnificent mountainous Gallura, retracing the Liscia River upstream, passing through Baldu, Luogosanto, Lu Sfussatu, Pulchiana, and finally arriving at Tempio. All the stages are impressed in the images.

Only two images fall outside the itinerary summarily described by Light: those of Terranova/Olbia and Arzachena. One possible hypothesis—no more than that—is that after reaching Tempio, Light and Craig retraced their steps towards Arzachena, and from there made a final stage to Olbia.

And then, in the notebook, there is preserved the extraordinary story of Don Gavino Pes of Tempio—extraordinary in every sense, for reasons that will now be explained.

Don Gavino Pes’s unfaithful wife and his clemency — an improbable story.

“Don Gavino Pes (Cavaliere) of Tempio, now deceased last year—1830—[** which indicates that the account was written in 1831, that is, about two years after the journey in Gallura] had married a beautiful young woman in whom he placed the utmost trust. After about six years of marriage, she fell in love with another Cavaliere from the same town, and an affair followed.

Her maid, who held her master in great esteem, told him that she suspected her mistress of betraying him.

Don Gavino was not easily persuaded; nevertheless, arrangements were made. He pretended that he had to visit one of his shepherds, and his wife prepared the necessary provisions.

As agreed with the maid, he instead returned home after midnight. The girl opened the door for him: they found the unfaithful wife together with her lover; they were in bed together.

Taking a candle, Don Gavino entered the room silently and found them in a deep sleep. He spread his cloak over both of them and placed his sword upon it. Then he left. The following morning he returned to his wife at the hour he had said he would come back. She was in complete confusion.

He said — “Did you find my cloak and my sword?”

She could not answer.

“It was I,” said he, “who placed them there. I could have believed that the whole world might be turned upside down [written in Italian in the original], but I could never have believed you unfaithful to me. I wish to act with kindness: I placed my sword on the bed to prove that it was I; any other man would have killed you, but I ask you to take back the dowry you brought me and leave me forever.”

She withdrew to a convent and died after three years. Afterwards he became a priest and died a year ago.”

NOTE. The passage in question is difficult to read and decipher in the original notebook. For this purpose I made use of artificial intelligence tools (in particular Google Gemini), which I consulted repeatedly over several days, verifying the correspondences here and there myself. The story that emerges is the one reported above. It would nevertheless be desirable for a scholar (perhaps an Australian one) to transcribe the manuscript into modern English.

Why is this an invented story? A piece of fiction?

The story of Don Gavino Pes of Tempio is highly—indeed excessively—implausible, and would have raised more than a smile within the mentality of Sardinians and Gallurese people of the time. A Pes betrayed by his wife who actually forgives her belongs squarely to the realm of fiction. A Gallurese man (and likewise a Barbaricino, and many others) in those nineteenth-century years would have killed both her and her lover on the spot. If there was one point—attested in both literature and history—on which there was no compromise, it was marital honour. (Women, too, were sometimes killed in Gallura to safeguard honour, as in the case of the Tempio woman Maddalena Demuro, who was even acquitted: see Lena. Una storia corsa.)

In short, the story is far removed from the customs and social codes of Gallura and Sardinia—above all from the code of honour. This is not to say that the occasional rare indiscretion could not occur even then; but not in such a manner, and certainly not with the servant’s knowledge. Hardly believable—even today.

And then… Don Gavino Pes returns home at night, places his cloak and sword on the bed (his own bed) where his wife is sleeping with her lover, and quietly leaves. Impossible. Beautiful, perhaps, but fictional. Nineteenth-century fiction set in Gallura, with a British aristocratic flavour.

Finally, there is no record of any nobleman named Gavino Pes in Tempio in the 1830s. Light knew the name and reputation of the poet Don Gavino Pes (1720–1795), and perhaps learned that he “sang” of women who did not return his affection, of “unfaithful” lovers—but this story is almost certainly his own invention, that of William Light.

DON GAVINO PES = WILLIAM LIGHT. A narrative transposition of a painful personal and autobiographical episode.

In the story attributed to the Tempio cavalier Don Gavino Pes, one finds an astonishing series of objective and verifiable coincidences relating to the life of William Light.

His wife—of distant noble origins—left him for another officer. They separated in 1832.
(It should also be borne in mind that this very brief account was written in 1831, two years after the journey in Gallura: the chronology fits perfectly.)

– The passage states that she was young (and indeed, when he married her, Mary Bennet, 1804–1878, was twenty years old);

– that she was beautiful (and in one book there is even the title of a paragraph devoted to her which describes her as exceptionally attractive: “A beautiful wife”);

– that at the time of the betrayal they had been married “for about six years” (Light married Bennet on 16 October 1824).
Connected with the duration and end of the marriage there is also another strongly suggestive element: that “Don Gavino [that is, ‘that’ William Light] had died in 1830”;

– that she “formed an attachment to another Cavaliere from the same place” (and in fact his wife’s new partner was also an English officer);

– and finally that she should take back the dowry she had brought him (this detail too—the financial dowry brought by his wife—is recorded in biographies of Light).

Everything corresponds perfectly.

It seems remarkable that William Light—who a few years later, in 1836, moved to South Australia, having been sent by the British government to assist the settlement of new British colonists, and who became famous to posterity as the founder of the city of Adelaide (which today counts about one and a half million inhabitants), and to whom the city has always paid great honours (see HERE and HERE)—should have transposed and concealed such an intimate and personal episode in a short passage within one of his many travel notebooks (moreover one that survived the fire in his house), relating to one of the many places he visited in his journeys around the world—indeed, in that concerning the distant and little-known Gallura of some two hundred years ago—assuming the guise of a certain Don Gavino Pes of Tempio Pausania.

Yes, it seems incredible; yet the overall historical analysis and interpretation strongly lead to this conclusion: the Don Gavino Pes of William Light’s notebooks is none other than William Light himself; the story of Don Gavino Pes is the personal story of William Light.

Below: William Light and his wife Mary Bennet.

Retouched photograph. See HERE for the original.

WILLIAM LIGHT IN GALLURA (Sardinia) — FOUNDER OF ADELAIDE

From:

• Sketches – Artwork

• Notebooks and sketchbooks – Manuscript

by WILLIAM LIGHT

October – November 1829

«31 October 1829. Left La Maddalena at 11:30 for Tempio, in the company of Mr Craig [* William Sanderson Craig, who also accompanied Captain Smyth on his famous journey in Sardinia]. We embarked in his boat and sailed to the opposite shore, aided by a fresh breeze from the north-west. On landing, the horses were already waiting for us.

We passed through wild and lonely tracks in a beautiful country as far as Baldo, about 12 miles. No road: only a footpath, and in some places not even that. The character of Sardinia soon begins to reveal itself: few people are seen, and those few generally keep apart.»

WILLIAM LIGHT A CAGLIARI E QUARTU SANT’ELENA

Nell’immagine:

Poesia e Canti: In alto a destra leggiamo i primi versi di una celebre canzone marinaresca di Allan Cunningham: “A wet sheet and a flowing sea / And a wind [that] follows fast”.  (Curiosamente, chi scrive sembra aver trascritto i versi a memoria o con varianti personali).

Inventario e Liste: Sotto la poesia troviamo una lista della spesa o un inventario di vestiario (forse per una sosta a terra): 1/2 dozzina di camicie; 3 gilet (waistcoats); 6 paia di calze; 1 seta nera.

Calcoli Matematici: Sulla destra sono presenti delle moltiplicazioni (es. $176 \\times 8 = 1408$), che suggeriscono la gestione di pagamenti, distanze o razioni.