Roman love affair

Press, 20 August 1983, Page 18

Roman love affair

The Prince and the Wild Geese. By Brigid Brophy. Hamish Hamilton, 1983. 62pp. Illustrations. $18.50. (Reviewed by Diane Prout) Despite the title and the cover illustration of a mid-nineteenth century gentleman, this is not a recently discovered manuscript of a fairy tale by the likes of William Thackeray or Oscar Wilde. “The Wild Geese” are not princes in disguise waiting for their Nordic sister to break the spell, but Irish Catholic expatriates driven by hard times to seek their fortunes on the Continent.

There really was a pririce — a Russian diplomat (Prince Gregoire Gagarin, to give the French version of his unspeakable Russian name). And the princess? She was one Julia Taaffe, feted, flattered and fancied by the beau monde of Rome in the summer of 1832, partly because of her beauty and partly because of her exotic Irish background which was, like the Scots, very fashionable that year. Gagarin, no more immune to Julia’s charms than all her other swains, fell in love with her, and through the record of his drawings and letters to her, Brigid Brophy traces the bittersweet relationship which, unlike real fairy stories, did not have a happy

ending. Julia Taaffe, who later went on to become Mrs Theobald McKenna, bequeathed Gagarin’s illustrations to a great-niece for family posterity. The letters in which the Prince declared or repressed his true feelings for Julia were not, for the most part, kept. Brigid Brophy speculates that possibly the capricious gaiety of her nature did not care to entertain the idea of a more serious suit. The drawings were, however, valued and annotated, despite their satirical nature and it is principally through them that the author plays the role of social historian and critic of an age when, after the death of Napoleon, nothing was heroic any more. “In the conviction that nothing would ever again be as exciting as Napoleon, Europe took up and cultivated, usually under the name spleen, the sensation of irritable boredom.” The death of Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1830 and the adoption by men of trousers had put an end to grandeur in portraiture “since men might look elegant or worthy, but not heroic.”

Gagarin woos his Julia with sketch after sketch of scenes of social life in Rome. His style is similar to Thackeray’s with whom Brophy

compares him several times; light, delicate and with a certain scratchiness. Trained in the studio of Karl Bryulov in Rome without the implication that he would ever need to earn his living as an artist (or as anything) he was probably introduced to Julia Taaffe through Horace Vernet, Director of the Academic de France and collector of proteges such as Mendelssohn the year before. However they met, Gagarin fell captive and in each whimsical offering makes some sardonic — and possible jealous — comments on Julia’s powers to shape

men’s lives and affect their conduct. Julia is a female Cupid slaying legions of suitors, an unassailable rose, surrounded by creeping caterpillars who aspire to the virginal petals and as the victor of all time, is carried in triumph into Rome above a crowd who features Julius Caesar, Frederick The Great, Saladin and Montezuma. Sometimes the artist lugubriously caricatures himself (although always at pains to depict himself in a favourable stance). Generally he stands aloof, observing, recording. Brigid Brophy has sensitively chartered the progress of a poigant love affair in prose which is as elegant and informed as the social milieu she recreates.