Wasn’t that a death-bed revelation for you? The old man had been a New York newsboy, had gone West, made his pile in rum; then sunk the shop for good and all. He never talked about his early life, or where he came from; he bragged of his daughter’s fine acquaintances, of his son-in-law’s manners—but when his hour was come, he wished to lie in the consecrated ground of his native land!
Never shall I forget the only visit I ever received from the prince of solitaries, poor old Galli, the mad painter. He came in with his dauntless, threadbare air, made a sweeping bow, and paid me an elaborate compliment. His business, however, was plainly not with me.
“I have come, Signorino Jacca, to ask the favor of a few old clothes.”
He said it in such a spirited fashion that we felt the favor was conferred rather than asked. I wish I could make you see Galli! He has the hall mark of genius stamped upon him. Eyes like live coals, hair—when J. first remembers him blue-gray, now a rich silver—worn long, growing in masses with big waves, like the head of Zeus at the Vatican. He tries in every way to keep up the pace of his youth; instead of walking he shambles along at a funny bear’s trot; “having less time than I once had,” he said to J., “I cannot afford to walk slowly like some people of my age, so I am obliged to run.”
Galli is a Milanese, a descendant of those blond barbarians from the North, the Lunghe Barbe. There is something ardent and free about him, a starriness of the eyes, a breezy, untrammelled quality of mind which suggests some far-off Teutonic ancestor. Among the dead level of the people one meets, Galli stands out a marked man. As to the madness—was Ludwig of Bavaria really mad, or a poet born in the wrong place? Mad or sane, Galli is interesting: once you recognize that a man cannot be both ordinary and extraordinary, cannot possess common sense and uncommon sense, the vagaries of genius cease to annoy!
Whenever I hear the artists talking of Galli, I listen and try to remember what they say: some day his history must be written; the material will be found in the memories of people who knew him, not “in the files”; he is not one the journalists delight to honor.
No one seems to know Galli’s age. He might have been born in 1819—so many remarkable people were born that year that I often wonder if there is not something in astrology, after all. When he was young, Galli went to England with good letters of introduction. He was soon spoken of as a painter “with the right stuff in him—imagination, ideality, the artistic temperament,” all the rest of it. As he was a well-bred man, he had a social as well as an artistic success, and became a fashionable portrait painter. He played his little part in the fascinating drama of the London life of his day. It must have been a wonderful time, when all that was best in the English race came to the surface. Sympathy for Italy was at its height, the great scheme for the unification was growing silently and strongly. England, the mighty ally, was helping Italy prepare for the struggle. Looking back at the England of that day, one seems to see a whole army of Raleighs spreading their cloaks before the feet of the young Queen Victoria. All England seems to have shared in the youth, the hope, the courage of the Queen. With Galli, the romantic Italian, the universal enthusiasm became personal; he fell in love, not with the sovereign, but with the woman, which makes all the difference.
He began to neglect his work, to spend all his time and money in hansom cabs, pursuing her whenever she went abroad. The police investigated his case, found him to be harmless and respectable, were content to keep an eye upon him, until that day when he tried to drive up to the private entrance of Buckingham Palace where the Queen was living. That was going too far even for the patience of Scotland Yard. Galli was arrested and given twenty-four hours to get out of England or into Bedlam. He left for the continent the same day, came to Rome, hired for his studio an old building, once the orange house of the Palazzo Borghese. It is built under a cliff, from the top of which ivy and madre selva (mother of the wood—we call it clematis) hang over in trailing masses. One day a large snail from the ivy crawled through a broken pane of the window to the studio wall, down the wall, and up again, leaving a damp, slimy track which formed something like the letter V. A friend coming in surprised Galli standing staring at the wall with open mouth and eyes.
“Why, man, what are you looking at?”
“At the letter.”