Chocolatou
[ SEE PHOTOS BELOW STORY ]The story of Chocolatou began with a mystery photo that I found in a little old antique shop in Larnaca, back in 2016. The store keeper had no idea who the young woman was, only that she once lived in Larnaca and Nicosia and went by the name of ‘Chocolatou.’ After many months searching for answers, I was able to finally track down some members of her family and together with the help of my friends at CVAR, I was able to gather enough information to write her life story which I first posted on my Tales of Cyprus page in 2017.
If you haven’t heard or read the story of ‘Chocolatou’, then please make yourself comfortable and read on.Chocolatou was born Christina Georgallides (Χριστίνα Γεωργαλλίδου) in the village of Aradippou (Larnaca) on the 23rd of April in 1910. Her parents were Maritsou (Maritsa) and Thanasis Georgallides and her younger brother was Evangelos (born 26.3.1912).
By all accounts, the Georgallides family were quite poor. Christina attended primary school until she turned twelve and thereafter, she was required to stay at home to help her mother with various domestic chores and household duties. Her father was a goatherd who worked long hours out in the fields around Aradippou. Unfortunately, not much is known about Chocolatou’s early years, living and growing up in the village.
Apparently, Chocolatou’s mother Maritsou was a lazy woman. Her husband would often would return home from the fields to find that his wife had not prepared any food for him to eat. One day, Thanasis threatened to leave his wife but she laughed and replied, ‘you always say that you will leave me – but you never do.’ She then grabbed their stefana (wedding crowns) and threw them into the courtyard for the goats to eat. In those days, the stefana were made from olive branches and grape vines. Maritsou then packed a few bags and left the village with her young children. They walked to Scala (a distance of around eight miles) and stayed at a house that belonged to the Michalides family. Chocolatou’s mother Maritsou would later marry a local artist named Athanasios who was originally from Agios Sergios, but lived in Scala.Christina Georgallides was blessed with exceptional beauty. It was because of her dark skin and sweet nature that she came to be known as ‘Chocolatou’. eople who knew her as a young girl would say that she was the prettiest girl on the island. She was always a bright young woman who would go on to become one of the most sophisticated and glamorous women in Cyprus. She was always known to be adventurous and charismatic.
Chocolatou’s brother Evangelos Georgallides became a successful businessman who owned and operated one of the first taxi companies in Larnaca. His taxi office was located on the Scala foreshore near the beach. Evangelos was known by the locals as Evangelos Chocolatas to identify him as the younger brother of Chocolatou. He was one of the first Cypriots to own a vehicle in the district which he often used to transport people from place to place but also for medical needs, weddings and funerals.
When Evangelos was around twenty years old, he went to visit his sister at her house in Scala where he met a young and beautiful girl named Evanthia (Vatholou) Ioannou. Evanthia was a dressmaker from Morphou who was sewing a dress for Chocolatou at that time. Evangelos fell instantly in love with Evanthia and they were married sometime in the late 1930s. They had four daughters named Panagiota (Titsa), Maro, Spiroula, and Dimitra, and a son named Niko (Lili).
According to Spiroula, her father Evangelos had a child named Chrysanthos in 1931 with a woman who was working as a servant for Chocolatou before he married her mother Evanthia. Not much is known about Chrysanthos Georgallides other than when he was 26, he migrated to Australia from London by airplane in 1957 and perhaps settled in Sydney.
As Chocolatou grew older, her beauty inevitably attracted the glances and advances of many men in Larnaca. One such man was Gaston G. Mavroides, a prominent merchant and businessman. The Mavroides transport company was well known throughout Cyprus. Gaston was apparently the first person to import the automobile onto the island.
Born in Larnaca in 1885, Gaston was sent overseas by his Greek parents to study at the English Commercial School of Smyrna. Upon his return to Cyprus, the young Gaston became actively involved with the family business selling bicycles. In 1909, he would bring about a revolution in transportation by importing and selling the French Peugeot automobiles. Until then, the transportation of people in Cyprus was predominately done by horse and carriage. According to one source, it would cost one shilling per hour to rent a horse-drawn carriage at that time.
In 1911, during a visit to Greece, Gaston Mavroides met and married Zoe Theocharis. Zoe was the daughter of a Greek merchant named Alexandros Theocharis who was the general agent of the Johnson Railway Line in Piraeus. A year after they were married, Gaston and Zoe welcomed the birth of their son Giorgios on the 15th of September in 1912. Gaston returned to Cyprus with his family where he began a successful association with the American ‘General Motors’ automobile company by importing their popular Chevrolet vehicles during the 1920s. Giorgios (George) Mavroides became a famous painter and educator in Greece.
When Gaston met and fell in love with Chocolatou he was almost forty and she was only fourteen. There is some speculation that he was still legally married to Zoe Theocharis at the time although there is no information to explain how he met Chocolatou. Despite the age difference, her parents immediately agreed for Gaston to marry her believing that she would live a much more prosperous life with him. Unfortunately for Gaston, the Greek Orthodox Church in Cyprus, would not perform the wedding ceremony due to their age difference. Undeterred, Gaston took Chocolatou to Alexandria in Egypt where they were legally married in a civil service towards the end of 1924.
Gaston had always promised to care and look after his teenage bride. True to his word, after returning to Cyprus from Egypt, he arranged for Chocolatou to have many private lessons at home and in this way, she became a very well-educated woman. Chocolatou was fluent in both the English and French languages (very rare at that time) and she could play the piano and sing beautifully. Apparently, her voice was compared to Sophia Vembo, a famous Greek singer who began her career in the 1930s.
It would appear that Chocolatou was not in love with Gaston. She did however, become very fond of him as he was always kind to her and had helped her to become a highly-educated and sophisticated woman.
A year after marrying Gaston, Chocolatou become a young mother. She was only fifteen when her daughter Elsie was born on the 26th of September in 1925. A few years later, she divorced Gaston for reasons unknown. Despite their divorce, Chocolatou and Gaston remained very good friends until he passed away in 1940 at the age of sixty-five.
In 1930, Chocolatou rented her house to the Swedish archaeologist Alfred Westholm and his team during their now famous Swedish Expedition (1927-1931). In the book ‘Swedes of Cyprus’ by Rita Severis there is a letter written by Alfred Westholm where he describes his stay at the home of Chocolatou.
“We left Nicosia and rushed off on the dizzy asphalt road to Larnaca, where, we managed to rent a house very close to the ruins (Bamboula, Kition). It appears a very strange house owned by a plainly dressed but heavily made-up woman named Chocolatou. There are five rooms and a kitchen, a large hall and a long veranda round the inner court. The unfurnished rooms are used by the Greeks and for the belongings of the Expedition and for the incoming crates of pottery (from the nearby ruins). Myself, I sleep in Miss Chocolatou’s excellent double bed, with the most fantastic mattress of coiled springs. Her enormous dressing table and wardrobe are also at my disposal. The bedroom is like a room of a luxurious hotel. Opposite, on the other side of the hall, is the drawing room, very pleasing indeed, with expensive carpets, soft chairs, sofas full of cushions, etc. A tall nargileh (an oriental tobacco pipe) and a gramophone with records (dance music) also belong to the ‘despinis’ (lady). Everything is a luxury that I would never dream of having at an excavation. Everything is very clean and probably quite new. The house has electricity because, even in the outskirts, it is considered that we are living in town. The rent for the whole house with all its equipment is 100 krona (around five pounds) a month. This is quite a lot, but the Expedition pays its share.”
Perhaps as a consequence of her parents’ divorce, Elsie spent most of her childhood in a Catholic boarding school in Larnaca. Despite living away from home, Elsie always spoke highly about her parents and with the greatest admiration. Elsie really loved and adored her parents for showing and allowing her to experience a more cultured and privileged way of life. She knew her father to be a real gentleman – a highly educated and well cultured aristocrat with very good manners. Like her mother, he too played the piano and sang.
After completing secondary school, Elsie went on to become a teacher and worked for a number of schools including the Kykkos’ Gymnasium for Girls in Nicosia. On the 2nd of November in 1947, she married Kyriacos Neocleous who was also a teacher. Kyriacos Neocleous was born on the 11th of December, 1922 in Limassol to Neocleous Constantinou and Augusta Papatheodorou. He went on to become a distinguished author, educator and school principal in Nicosia. In 1952, he set up the 40th Scouts Group and in 1953 he set up the Neocleous Commercial Lyceum in Nicosia. Elsie and Kyriacos had five sons; namely Nelson, Gaston, Hermes (Ermis), Christos and Elmos.
By all accounts, Chocolatou had an interesting but somewhat difficult life. From her early years, she was constantly fending off the taunts and advances of many men. Apart from attracting many admirers from afar, her exceptional beauty and sophistication also caused her no end of disruption and harassment. As fate would have it, Chocolatou was married four times.
Her second husband was a British airplane pilot named Jack (surname unknown). There is absolutely nothing known about this man except that he was serving with the British Forces in Cyprus during the 1940s, perhaps in the Air Force. After the Second World War, Jack wanted to leave Cyprus to return to England, however, Chocolatou refused to leave her beloved island. Instead, she decided to file for divorce and poor Jack had no choice but to returned to England alone and most likely, broken-hearted. On the back on one of his photographs her writes: ‘Christine with all my love. To be with you Dear is my dearest wish. Jack’.
Chocolatou’s third husband was Solis Charalambides who unfortunately was a terrible gambler. Although she asked him many times to quit gambling, Solis always refused. After ten years of marriage Chocolatou once again found herself filing for divorce. They did not have any children.
On the 31st of May, 1947, Chocolatou married Savvas Kyprianou, a successful entrepreneur. Savvas owned the shoe factories in Nicosia named ALFA and GKREKA. Their daughter Oriana was born on the 7th of February 1949.
Chocolatou’s marriage to Savvas had its ups and downs. Like her previous husband. Savvas also liked to gamble and had lost a lot of money over the years. Chocolatou found herself warning another husband that unless he stopped gambling she would leave him. By now, she didn’t fear any consequences. By now, she was a dynamic and strong-minded woman who knew what she deserved and how to be treated.
Chocolatou (Christina Kyprianou) died on Monday the 20th November, 1995 after suffering a heart attack. She was eighty-five years old. In late December 2014, her daughter Oriana passed away from leukemia at the age of 65.
Apart from her exceptional beauty, Chocolatou was also charismatic, intelligent and had a great (some say unique) sense of humour. She is remembered by her grandchildren and nieces as a kind-hearted person who was always reaching out to help needy and the poor. She would befriend anybody without exception, from aristocrats to gypsies.
Chocolatou was especially caring and most loving with her children and grandchildren. Her grandson Christaki remembers her advice. “My grandmother always told me to treat women with great respect,” he recalls. “Never take a girl out for dinner and let her pay the bill,’ she would advise me sternly. ‘Men have to be men!’ She also advised me to never say things to a partner that may spoil the relationship. ‘Always think before you speak,’ she would say. ‘Honesty is good, but if being honest means that you will hurt your partner – then it’s better to avoid it.”
Christaki also recalls his grandmother’s generosity. “She used to give us pocket money all the time and also to our friends. She was known to give big tips to waiters and store employees wherever she went. My grandmother always attracted people to her doorstep – seeking her opinion or approval on various matters.”
Apart from her philanthropic endeavours, Chocolatou also loved and cared for animals. Like a storybook princess she would feed the sparrows in her garden. The birds would fly to her the minute she called them. She always had pet dogs and cats and even horses. Her love for nature was passed on to all her grandchildren.
Chocolatou was certainly a unique woman in many aspects. I only wish I had the good fortunate to have met her during my earlier travels to Cyprus. Nonetheless, I am very proud to have uncovered and documented her life story for Tales of Cyprus.
Thank you.
Costas Emmanuelle
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude and thanks to Chocolatou’s family, especially Christakis and Elmos Neocleous and Maria Christina Patala for helping me to write her life story. I would also like to thank Chocolatou’s nieces, Spiroula and Panayiota and Spiroula’s daughter Christiana Christou and their kind assistance and support. Special thanks to John Michaelides and Rita Severis from CVAR for their valuable contributions.
