SD2432. Recollections of Valentine Cameron Prinsep
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 364–365 (in part).
[Rome]
[ca. February 1861
The winter of ’60–61 I spent in Rome. There I renewed and strengthened my acquaintance with the Brownings into a freindship which lasted in his case until he died in 1889. There, too, I became intimate with the Storys, who lived in the Palazzo Barberini, and were very kind and hospitable.
With my usual luck I met at Rome a French artist, Edouard Brandon. … My studio was the one Leighton occupied when he painted his first picture “Cimabue.” … In the street in which my friend Brandon lived was a small osteria kept by one Luigi, or, as he was called by us, “Gigi”; there we had our meals at a little table in the corner of the public room. …
One evening we sent forth a challenge to the poet of the “Monte” to meet our poet [of the “Trastevere” quarter of Rome] at Gigi’s, and we invited Browning and Story to witness the contest.
Gigi had furnished a first-rate dinner, and his usual tap of excellent wine. The osteria filled in expectation of the contest. The poets arrived and were placed opposite to each other on either side of a table on which stood two “Mezzi” of wine. … Then from the crowd a stalwart carpenter, a constant attendant at Gigi’s, elbowed his way. He leaned over the table, with a hand on the shoulder of each poet, and in a neat couplet he thus addressed the rival bards—
“You two,” he said, “for the honour of Rome, must do your best, for there is now listening to you a great poet from England.”
Having said this, he bowed to Browning and swggered back to his place in the crowd amid the applause of the onlookers.
It is not necessary to recount how the two Improvvisatores poetised, even if I remembered, which I do not. …
On another occasion, when also Browning and Story were our guests, we had a little orchestra (two mandolins, two guitars, and a lute) to play to us. The music consisted chiefly of popular airs. While the musicians were playing “Garibaldi’s Hymn”—an air strictly forbidden by the Papal Government—three blows at the closed door resounded through the osteria. The music stopped in a moment. I saw Gigi looked very pale as he walked down the room to open the door. There was a short parley. Then Gigi returned with a sergeant and two Papal gendarmes, who marched solemnly to the bar, from which drinks were supplied. There was a dead silence while Gigi supplied the guardians of the peace with large measures of wine, which they leisurely imbibed. Then as solemnly they marched out again, with their heads well in the air, looking neither to the right nor the left—most discreet if not incorruptible guardians of the peace. When the door was shut, the music began afresh, but Gigi was uneasy, and was so earnest in his protestations, that we decided we would get carriages and drive to see the Colosseum by moonlight. And so we sallied forth, with the musicians in one carriage and we ourselves in the second, to the great relief of Gigi, to whom it meant, if reported, several months of imprisonment, and complete ruin.
We drove down the Corso, serenading our friends on the way. But we were not allowed to take our music into the Colosseum, beause it was supposed to be consecrated both by the blood of the martyrs and by the Holy Catholic church.
In after years Browning was wont to recount with delight the adventures of this night’s march. “We drove down the Corso in two carriages,” he would say. “In one were our musicians, in the other we sat. Yes! and the people all asked, ‘Who are all these who make this parade?’ At last someone said, ‘Without doubt, these are the fellows who won the lottery,’ and everybody cried, ‘Of course, these are the lucky men who have won!’”
It was at Gigi’s osteria that I heard of the death of poor Mrs. Browning in June of 1861, from the same carpenter I have mentioned. How he heard of it I don’t know, but I remember his saying, “A lady who truly loved our Italy!”
Text: “An Artist’s Life in Italy in 1860,” by Val C. Prinsep, The Magazine of Art (London, 1904), pp. 417–421.
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