A. J. A. Symons
THE QUEST FOR CORVO
An Experiment in Biography
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First published in Great Britain by Cassell 1934
Published in Penguin Books 1940
This edition first published in Penguin Classics 2018
Copyright 1955 by Michigan State University Press
All rights reserved
Cover illustration by Jon Wilson, after an original self-portrait sketched by Frederick Rolfe
ISBN: 978-0-241-31300-8
TO
Shane Leslie
It will be apparent to any reader of the following pages that I am under heavy obligations to many friends and correspondents. Most of these debts are acknowledged, explicitly or by inference, in the course of my narrative; a certain number, however, require separate statement, and accordingly I take this opportunity to offer thanks to Messrs Vyvyan Holland and Vincent Ranger, whose careful reading of the proofs of this book has saved it from many errors; to Mr Shane Leslie, Mr Desmond MacCarthy, and Sir John Squire, who have for many years recognized Baron Corvo’s powers as a writer, and encouraged me in my task; to Mr D. Churton Taylor, who has spared no pains in ransacking both his office files and his memory; to Mr Stephen Gaselee, by whose kindness I was permitted to examine certain papers referring to Corvo contained in the Foreign Office files and in the Consulate at Venice; to Mr E. F. Benson for permission to print letters written by his brother; to Miss Kathleen Rolfe for permission to print letters written to her father; to Mr John Holden for a letter which had the length and merits of an independent essay; to my wife, always my patient listener; to Trevor Haddon for his interesting ‘intermission’; to Mr J. Maundy Gregory for many favours and his share in the Quest; to Mr and Mrs Philip Gosse, in whose garden the last chapter was written; to Mr Brian Hill and Dr Geoffrey Keynes, by whose assent I had access to the Corvo papers of the late A. T. Bartholomew; to Dr G. C. Williamson and Mr R. H. Cust for suggestions and the loan of material; to Mr G. Campbell, formerly Consul at Venice; to Mr Grant Richards, Professor R. M. Dawkins, Mrs van Someren, Mr Sholto Douglas, Canon Ragg and the many others who have supplied me with personal reminiscences, particularly Mr Harry Pirie-Gordon; and finally to Mr Ian Black, without whose practical assistance the writing of this book would have been delayed at least a year. Alone among the characters the Rev. Stephen Justin is presented under a fictitious name.
I have ventured to call The Quest for Corvo ‘an experiment in Biography’ to signify that it is an attempt to fulfil those standards which I endeavoured to set up in an essay on biographical tradition published by the Oxford University Press in 1929.fn1
My quest for Corvo was started by accident one summer afternoon in 1925, in the company of Christopher Millard. We were sitting lazily in his little garden, talking of books that miss their just reward of praise and influence. I mentioned Wylder’s Hand, by Le Fanu, a masterpiece of plot, and the Fantastic Fables of Ambrose Bierce. After a pause, without commenting on my examples, Millard asked: ‘Have you read Hadrian the Seventh?’ I confessed that I never had; and to my surprise he offered to lend me his copy – to my surprise, for my companion lent his books seldom and reluctantly. But, knowing the range of his knowledge of out-of-the-way literature, I accepted without hesitating; and by doing so took the first step on a trail that led into very strange places.
Millard comes into this story more than once; and a short digression regarding him will not be out of place. I am glad, indeed, to pay his memory the tribute of these words, for to me at that time, living in the country by preference, in London by profession, he was one of the compensations of town, as he must have been to many others. His queer character and odd way of living offered unending contradictions and problems for an intelligent observer; nevertheless I could rely on him to provide literary conversation, and a glass of Val de Peñas, at almost any hour of the day or night. Contrariety was perhaps his most consistent attribute. At Oxford he flouted the authorities in acts of noisy folly; in early manhood he became an enthusiastic Jacobite, ostentatiously laying his white rose at King Charles the First’s feet every year, and acknowledging Prince Rupert of Bavaria as his rightful sovereign; in later years he became an ardent Socialist, wore flaming ties, and (to the astonishment of yokels) sang ‘The Red Flag’ very loudly in quiet country inns. Yet, despite his Oxford antics, he took a good degree; despite his Jacobite feelings he fought very loyally for King George; and his Socialist views did not prevent him from incarnating most of the Conservative virtues.
His history was a sad one, though he never obtruded it. He had filled many posts with ability. Turn by turn he was schoolmaster, assistant-editor of the Burlington Magazine, secretary to Robert Ross, record-clerk in the War Office. Under the pen-name of Stuart Mason he compiled a bibliography of the writings of Oscar Wilde, under his own a catalogue of the work of Lovat Fraser; and each remains a model of its kind. But what had been folly at Oxford became criminal misdemeanour in later life, and he felt the lash of the law; it was, indeed, his imprisonment that taught him Socialism and sympathy with the working man. After the War he became a dealer, in a small way, in rare and unusual books; and by this means, a small pension, and a legacy of £100 a year which his friend Ross had left him, he lived. Nevertheless he was (for such a man) painfully poor. He lived entirely alone (unless the tits he fed counted for company) in a small bungalow hidden behind a Victorian villa in Abercorn Place, reached by descending area steps and walking round the side of the house. His establishment consisted of a sitting-room (with bookshelves modelled on those of Aubrey Beardsley) in which he kept his stock, a small bedroom, also lined with books, a tiny kitchen-bathroom, and a shed or shelter in which, during fine weather, he slept in open air.
If Millard could have maintained this bungalow without financial cares he would have been completely happy; but though his tastes were simple, his simplicity was of the sort that is satisfied only with good things. He would buy salmon for his supper, carry it home in greased paper, and cook it himself; but it must be Scotch, and a prime cut. Bread and cheese would suffice for his lunch, but the cheese must be a choice Stilton. Modern beer was his despair; and he abhorred in equal measure imported meat, and credit accounts. In the matter of wine he was less exacting: he relied upon a reasonable Val de Peñas, which he bought cheaply from a shipper friend, and drank at any hour that pleased him. Indeed, despite his cramping poverty, he contrived to live almost entirely as he pleased. He rose early or late, and idled or worked, according to his mood. When the successful sale of a book brought him a profit, he would live in perfect contentment until the money was gone; not till then would he look about for more. Much of his time he spent in correspondence with literary Americans on points of bibliographical research: he had an eighteenth-century appetite and aptitude for that pastime. But he would instantly interrupt any work in favour of conversation with a friend; and his love of poetry and close acquaintance with nineteenth-century English literature made his conversation particularly agreeable to me.
In person this natural philosopher was a striking figure. More than six feet tall, always hatless, dressed in dark blue shirt, grey flannel trousers, and green jacket (all of which he mended and patched with his own hands when necessary), he had an air and dignity which never left him. A deep voice and abundant, greying, curling hair, set off this confident carriage; he was perhaps the most self-possessed man I have ever known. He was certainly the most self-sufficient: not only did he live alone, he made his own bed, washed his own dishes, cooked his own meals, and even, I believe, sometimes made his own clothes. A queer character in modern London; but such was the man to whom I owe my first knowledge of the life and work of Baron Corvo. Alas, that he did not live to learn the end of the story.
The title-page of Hadrian the Seventh, dated 1904, proclaimed it to be the work of Fr. Rolfe, of whom I had never heard. I began to read it filled with curiosity as to Millard’s reason for departing from his principle that a man who wants to read a book should buy it; but before I had turned twenty pages my curiosity deepened into gratitude for his recommendation: I felt that interior stir with which we all recognize a transforming new experience. As soon as I had finished the story I read it through again, only to find my first impression enhanced. It seemed to me then, it seems to me still, one of the most extraordinary achievements in English literature: a minor achievement, doubtless, but nevertheless a feat of writing difficult to parallel; original, witty, obviously the work of a born man of letters, full of masterly phrases and scenes, almost flabbergasting in its revelation of a vivid and profoundly unusual personality.
From the absence of any indication to the contrary on the title-page of the tattered first edition that Millard had lent me, I inferred that this remarkable experiment in fiction was its author’s first book: first novel, at least. The plot, though well conceived and executed, gives evidence, in some details, of inexperience and an unpractised hand. Nevertheless the story is astonishing in its depth and force, and survives the summarization which is necessary to display its effect on me when I first read it.
The ‘Prooimion’ reveals George Arthur Rose vainly endeavouring to work while almost prostrate from the pain of an arm on the tenth day of vaccination. His work is writing; and from the detailed description of his possessions and surroundings which follows, it becomes credible as well as clear that this poor, lonely and misanthropic sufferer in a suburban bedsitting-room is a remarkable man as well as a struggling author. There are many characters in literature intended to impress such a conviction on the reader’s mind; very few succeed. But George Arthur Rose, suffering from pain as from a personal affront, sitting in his low, shabby brocade armchair, with a drawing-board tilted on his knee, and his little yellow cat asleep on the tilted board; with two publisher’s dummies at his hand, one a compendium of phrases transcribed in his archaic script, the other a private dictionary compiled by forming Greek and Latin compounds to enrich his English vocabulary (which includes such ‘simple but pregnant’ formations as ‘hybrist’ and ‘gingilism’); who counts the split infinitives in the day’s newspaper while he dines on soup, haricot beans, and a baked apple; who carefully preserves the ends of his cigarettes so that he may break them up and make a fresh cigarette when he has sufficient quantity; whose mantelpiece holds, with other queer things, the cards of five literary agents, and another inscribed Verro precipitevolissemevolmente; whose garret windows are always open to the full; who exists in terrified anticipation of the postman’s knock; this man starts to instant life in Fr. Rolfe’s pages, for the best of all reasons (as I discovered later): because he was Fr. Rolfe himself.
The action opens with an unexpected visit to this impoverished eccentric from a Cardinal and a Bishop. In the long, electric conversation that follows, many things become apparent. George Arthur Rose is a Catholic, and a rejected candidate for priesthood, still smarting from the bitter injustice done him twenty years before, when his superiors decided against his vocation. Nevertheless Rose has never wavered in his personal confidence in that Call which his fellow-Catholics have neither recognized nor tolerated. After leaving the theological college under a cloud, he has contrived to keep himself alive by shift after shift, though time and again betrayed by friends of his own faith. Still, after twenty years, he holds an undiminished belief that he has a Divine Vocation to the priesthood, an unswerving resolution to attain it. All this is implied to the reader in the course of Rose’s verbal fencing with the two priests, which is conducted by the author with a skill not far short of Meredith’s at his best. The feline figure of Rose, sore, suspicious, ready to take offence at any slighting word, immovably convinced of the justice of his cause, moves alive in front of us; we can hear his voice.
The motive for the ecclesiastical visit is disclosed. A tardily penitent friend of George Arthur Rose, aware of the shameful treatment that has been meted to him, has urged a reconsideration of his case. Thus prompted to an examination of this forgotten matter, the Cardinal in turn has been struck by Rose’s long faithfulness to his Call, and has in turn become convinced that a great wrong was committed twenty years before, when Holy Orders were refused to one who has since signally shown by his devotion that he deserved them. And so he has come to make belated amends, and to invite the outcast to prepare himself for reception into the ranks of the clergy.
Rose, who has been the dominating figure throughout the long interview, treats the proposal with magnificent coolness. He makes conditions. He must have a written admission of the wrongs that have been done him, and a sum of money equal to that which he has lost by his unpaid labours for Catholics who have defrauded him. The Cardinal is prepared; both points are conceded. And then Rose is at last moved from his chill reserve. He casts the acknowledgement of his injuries into the flames, not wishing, as he says, to preserve a record of his superior’s humiliation; and he gives back to charity half the sum presented in restitution. And he agrees to attend next day to receive from his Eminence’s hands the four Minor Orders. ‘Meanwhile, I will go and have a Turkish bath, and buy a Roman collar, and think myself back into my new – no – my old life.’ So ends one of the most unusual interviews in fiction.
The conclusion of the chapter is not less unusual. We stand behind the scenes and witness the admission of the candidate to priesthood. Word by word we hear his confession and examination. We hear his inner thoughts expressed, his avowal of belief; and with him we receive the blessing: ‘ego te absolvo ✠ in nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti. Amen. Go in peace and pray for me.’ The preliminaries are passed through without hitch, and the novice is to say his first mass in the private chapel, with the Bishop as his assistant and the Cardinal to serve him. After storm, this is indeed calm and peace for the man of wrongs.
The scene shifts abruptly to Rome, where the Papal Conclave is sitting to select a Pope. Here, too, we have a description which, though not unique, is rare in English literature. The method of procedure is carefully described, Scrutiny by Scrutiny; the Cardinals taking part are named, and the voting given. Unacquainted though I was with modern religious history, I guessed as I read, rightly, that many of the skilfully-sketched figures were portraits of real men.
After many vain attempts, there is still a deadlock: no member of the Sacred College can secure the necessary majority. The Way of Scrutiny having failed, the Way of Compromise is adopted: nine Cardinals are chosen by lot as compromissaries and invested with ‘absolute power and faculty to make provision of a pastor for the Holy Roman Church’. Still they are confronted by a clash of interests which prevents decision; still no certainty is felt of the suitability of any of the remaining Cardinals (the nine compromissaries have relinquished their own chances by accepting office). Providence intervenes. Struck by Rose’s likeness to one of the compromissaries, the English Cardinal tells the story of his amazing persistence in his vocation despite the hardships and trials of twenty years. The story makes a deep impression: far deeper than its narrator anticipates. Rose seems, to those who hear the tale of his tribulations and steadfastness, more than mortal clay. ‘You owe it to that man to propose him for the Paparchy,’ says one of the listeners; and so it comes about that he who was for so long rejected is taken to be the corner stone: George Arthur Rose is chosen as Pope.
There may seem, in this summary, to be more improbability in that turn of the story than there is as Rolfe presents it. He handles the problem of making anything so unlikely seem probable with skill. When Rose, attending the Cardinal in Rome, not knowing what is in store for him, learns with amazement that the choice has fallen on him, the reader also is agreeably astonished; for though he has been shown the breakdown of the Way of Scrutiny, and the necessity of Compromise, the secret of the selection is kept from him – as it is from Rose, until, in the Sistine Chapel, he hears an intense voice from the gloom reciting (in Latin) the question: ‘Reverend Lord, the Sacred College has elected thee to be the successor of St Peter. Wilt thou accept pontificality?’
Now the fun begins. Unexpected though the transformation is, Rose instantly adjusts himself, and shows his will to rule. He is not in the least abashed by the extraordinary dignity conferred upon him, and carries himself with enigmatical equanimity all through the long ceremony of consecration. At the conferring of the episcopal ring he annoys the Cardinals by demanding an amethyst instead of the proffered emerald. When asked what pontifical name he would choose:
‘Hadrian the Seventh’: the response came unhesitatingly, undemonstratively.
‘Your Holiness would perhaps prefer to be called Leo, or Pius, or Gregory, as is the modern manner?’ the Cardinal-Dean inquired with imperious suavity.
‘The previous English pontiff was Hadrian the Fourth; the present English pontiff is Hadrian the Seventh. It pleases Us; and so, by Our Own impulse, We command.’
Then there was no more to be said.
Hadrian’s next act is to require the opening of a blocked window looking out over the city, one of those blocked up in 1870 in the dispute between the Papal and temporal powers, and not opened since. And, despite the protests of the Cardinals, opened it is, and from it a tiny-seeming figure in silver and gold, radiant in the sun, gives the Apostolic Benediction to the City and the World.
It is not necessary to follow the story in detail through all its convolutions to the end. During his two decades of wandering misery, George Arthur Rose, driven in upon himself, has had plenty of time in which to clarify his theories and wishes; now he has the chance to give them effect, and he does. He breaks the self-imposed Papal obligation of remaining within the Vatican walls by walking in procession to his coronation. He astonishes the world by an Epistle to all Christians, and by a Bull in which, on the text that ‘My Kingdom is not of this World’, he makes formal and unconditional renunciation of all claim to temporal sovereignty. He denounces Socialism and the principle of equality in an Epistle to the English; and in further demonstration of the unworldliness which should be the mark of God’s minister, sells the Vatican treasures for a vast sum, which he gives to the poor. Not the least interesting part of this section of the book is the interview which he gives to the Italian ambassador for the discussion of the world’s political future. Some of Fr. Rolfe’s guesses were very far from the fact, but looking back at them, as I did, after twenty years, the real shrewdness of his observation was very clear.
Such a story is obviously a difficult one to bring to a conclusion; and Fr. Rolfe, with less plausibility than in other parts of his fantasy, relies upon the machinations of a disappointed woman and a corrupt Socialist agitator. The conspiracy between them, with blackmail based on a knowledge of Hadrian’s early life as its main object, is frustrated; and the baffled Comrade, in a fit of rage, shoots the Pope as he is returning to the Vatican. ‘How bright the sunlight was, on the warm grey stones, on the ripe Roman skins, on vermilion and lavender and blue and ermine and green and gold, on the indecent grotesque blackness of two blotches, on Apostolic whiteness and the rose of blood.’ The final words are worthy of their author: ‘Pray for the repose of his soul. He was so tired.’
The style in which Hadrian the Seventh is written is hardly less remarkable than the story it tells. Fr. Rolfe shares his hero’s liking for compound words; and his pages are studded with such inventions or adaptations as ‘tolutiloquence’, ‘contortuplicate’, ‘incoronation’, ‘noncurant’, ‘occession’, and ‘digladiator’. In constructing his sentences he sets his adverbs as far before both parts of the verb as he can; and though he often lapses into learning and Latin, the most homely expressions are not disdained in his elaborate paragraphs. But these peculiarities do not rob him of a real eloquence; as, for instance, when describing Hadrian’s private visit to St Peter’s:
They passed through innumerable passages and descended stairs, emerging in a chapel where lights burned about a tabernacle of gilded bronze and lapis lazuli. Here He paused while His escort unlocked the gates of the screen. Once through that, He sent-back the guard to his station; but He Himself went on into the vast obscurity of the basilica. He walked very slowly: it was as though His eyes were wrapped in clear black velvet, so intense and so immense was the darkness. Then, very far away to the right, He saw as it were a coronal of dim stars glimmering – on the floor they seemed to be. He was in the mighty nave; and the stars were the ever-burning lamps surrounding the Confession. He slowly approached them. As He passed within them, He took one from its golden branch, and descended the marble steps. Here, He spread the cloak on the floor; placed the lamp beside it; and fell to prayer. Outside, in the City and the World, men played, or worked, or sinned, or slept. Inside, at the very tomb of the Apostle, the Apostle prayed.
And Fr. Rolfe also has the secret of a staccato brilliance, of phrases that tell as much as the paragraphs of others; of such expressions as ‘that cold white candent voice which was more caustic than silver nitrate and more thrilling than a scream’; ‘miscellaneous multitudes paved the spaces with tumultuous eyes’; ‘they mean well; but their whole aim and object seems to be to serve God by conciliating Mammon.’
Perhaps above all the astonishments of Hadrian the Seventh I ought to put its revelation of a temperament. Hadrian, as he is presented by his creator, is a superman in whom we are compelled to believe. The felinity of his retort, his ready command over words, the breadth of his vision, the noble unworldliness of his beliefs and bearing, his mixture of pride and humility, of gentle charity and ruthless reproof for error, his sensitiveness to form and hatred of ugliness, his steadfast and touching confidence in God and in himself; all these things unite to create a character as difficult to match as the story of his exploits.
Those who are susceptible to literary influence will have no difficulty in imagining the effect of Hadrian the Seventh upon my imagination and my interest. Other occupations seemed colourless by contrast with the necessity of learning more about Fr. Rolfe. Was he alive or dead? What else had he written? How was it that I had never heard of a man who had it in his power to write such a book as Hadrian the Seventh? Many years before (though I was, of course, unaware of the circumstance) a similar enthusiasm overcame Robert Hugh Benson after he had thrice read Hadrian. Benson’s admiration moved him to write a glowing letter to the author, which brought the two together in hectic friendship and enmity. Some such step occurred to me; but first I went to see Millard.
Millard was pleased by my pleasure, and began to talk in his discursive fashion. Had I realized that the book was really an autobiography, that Rose was Rolfe himself, that half the incidents were based on his experiences, and most of the characters drawn from living men? Actually I had not; but, with that duplicity which we practise even to our oldest friends, I disguised my blindness. We talked round and round. I gathered that Rolfe was dead, that he was a spoiled priest, and that, rather mysteriously, he had written other books under the title or pseudonym of Baron Corvo. The news that Rolfe was Baron Corvo struck a chord of remembrance: vaguely I recalled having read a short story by that author which had seemed to me so excellent that I had intended, but forgotten, to seek out more of his work. Then from one of his tin boxes (Millard was a great man for files and cases, and could put his hand at a moment on any scrap or book, despite the seeming disorder of his shelves and floor) my friend produced a morocco-bound quarto. ‘Since you are becoming interested in Rolfe you had better read these too’, was his comment. The few sentences that caught my eye as I turned the pages were arresting; and I would have begun my reading then and there; but in his gently autocratic way Millard insisted upon my paying attention to his remarks, and not to the book, which I could read at leisure. I left the bungalow half-stifled with curiosity.
How well I remember that midnight when, alone in my tiny study, I sat down to read Millard’s mysterious book. It contained, I found, typescripts of twenty-three long letters and two telegrams, forming a series addressed from Venice in the years 1909–10 to an unnamed correspondent; and as I read my hair began to rise. Here, described with the frank felicity of Hadrian the Seventh, was an unwitting account, step by step, of the destruction of a soul. The idealism of George Arthur Rose, the generous sentiments and hopes for man and the world which distinguish Hadrian, were not to be found in these pages. On the contrary, they gave an account, in language that omitted nothing, of the criminal delights that waited for the ignoble sensualist to whom they were addressed, in the Italian city from which his correspondent wrote. Only lack of money, it appeared, prevented the writer from enjoying an existence compared with which Nero’s was innocent, praiseworthy, and unexciting: indeed, it seemed that even without money he had successfully descended to depths from which he could hardly hope to rise. Throughout all the letters one purpose was visible: they were an entreaty to their recipient to bring his wealth to a market where it would buy full value. Rolfe could answer for the wares he offered: he had tested them, and he would willingly be guide to this earthly paradise. An undercurrent of appeals for immediate aid, for money, money, money, ran through the series, mixed with odd fragments of beautiful description, and sudden, bitter attacks on individuals with whom Fr. Rolfe had been concerned in one way or another. It would have seemed impossible that this could be the private correspondence of the author of Hadrian the Seventh had not the signature of his style rung in every sentence. What shocked me about these letters was not the confession they made of perverse sexual indulgence: that phenomenon surprises no historian. But that a man of education, ideas, something near genius, should have enjoyed without remorse the destruction of the innocence of youth; that he should have been willing for a price to traffic in his knowledge of the dark byways of that Italian city; that he could have pursued the paths of lust with such frenzied tenacity: these things shocked me into anger and pity. Pity; for behind the ugliness of their boasts and offers, these letters told a harrowing story of a man sliding desperately downhill, unable to pay for clothes, light or food; living like a rat in the bottom of an empty boat, slinking along side streets in misery at frustrated talents and missed chances, with no money in his pocket or meat in his belly, who had come at last to convince himself that every man’s hand was against him. With the letters were two telegrams, one of them from the English consul to say ‘Fr. Rolfe in hospital dangerously ill asks you wire ten pounds urgent necessities’. The errant Catholic was given the last Sacrament but recovered from that illness brought on by exposure and lack of food. The last of all the letters in point of date was perhaps the saddest. As despair deepened in the heart of the lost Englishman in Venice, his demands decreased; and in the end he subdued all his persuasiveness to plead for five pounds. ‘For God’s sake send me five pounds’, concluded the concluding letter. Five pounds … A slip in Millard’s hand ended the story: ‘Rolfe died two years later, 1913, aetat 53.’
It took me two hours to read those extraordinary letters; and when I had, I was unable to sleep. I could not banish from my mind the thought of that gifted and intellectual man dragged down by his kink of temperament to perish in shame, want and exile. Horrible though the letters were, they possessed all the graces of the book that had so charmed me: the spirit and the content differed, not the style. As I lay restlessly turning from side to side, I realized suddenly that my curiosity was still unslaked. What was the course and cause of this tragic decline? In Hadrian and the letters I had (what I took to be) the opening and the close of a career. What story lay in between? The desire to know swelled in me so urgently that I almost rose from bed to telephone to Millard that I was coming back; only the certainty of being roundly and rightly cursed in his heavy voice deterred me. But I went next morning.