Hadrian the Seventh

by Frederick Rolfe

  “Your Holiness means that they should be agreed: that they should unite forces?” Ferraio asked.

  “It is Our will and Our hope to be reconciled with the King of Italy.”

  “But is His Majesty willing?”

  “We know not: but We have shewn that We will not block the way.”

  “Certainly the Pope and the King together would have almost unbounded influence for good,” Ferraio reflected.

  “Then Your Holiness does not think the Temporal Power to be worth fighting-for?” Sterling concluded.

  Hadrian’s eyes no longer were half-shut. “No,” He answered. “Try, Venerable Fathers, to believe that the time has come for stripping. We have added and added; and yet we have not converted the world. Ask yourselves whether we really are as successful as we ought to be: or whether, on the whole, we really are not abject and lamentable failures. If we are the latter, then let us try the other road, the road of simplicity, of apostolic simplicity. At least let us try. It’s an idea; and for Our Own part We are glad to have a chance of realizing it, the idea of simplicity, going to the root of the matter.”

  “Your Holiness is not afraid of going too far?” inquired Talacryn.

  “William Blake says that truth lies in extremes. To the humdrum champion of the so-called golden mean, (which generally is a great deal more mean than golden), that maxim is nothing less than scandalous. All the same, it is as sound as a bell, Eminency, and nowhere does it ring more soundly than in the principle of the union of Church with State.”

  As they were going in to dinner, Mundo whispered to Fiamma “Have we a saint or a madman for a Pope?”

  “Two-thirds of the one and one-third of the other,” replied the radiant Archbishop of Bologna.

  After one of the receptions of English pilgrims, Hadrian privately received an unusual visitor in the last antechamber. She was brought in by a gentleman, who remained outside one of the doors during the interview, while his fellow guarded the outside of the other. It was as secret an audience as ever has been deigned to a sovereign; and it was accorded to a woman of the lower-middle class, about sixty years old, who looked like an excessively worthy cook. She flopped on her knees when the Pontiff came to her: mentioned her joints when assisted to rise; and made bones about using the chair which He placed for her. Hadrian’s manner was absolutely divested of pontificality. No one would have taken him for anything but a plain Englishman, perhaps of a slightly superior type, and perhaps rather oddly attired. He spoke kindly and easily; and gradually brought His guest from a glaring twitching state of terror and obsequious joy to her honest ordinary self.

  “Ee-e-h,” she burbled, “but I can never tell Your ’oly Majesty what I felt when I knew that You was going to let me come and see You. Oh thank You and God bless You, Sir. And I always knew You ’ld come to it. And, O ’oly Father, ain’t You very ’appy to think of all the good You’re doing? Just fancy that ever I should say that to Your ’igh ’oliness and me sitting on one of your own chairs. God bless You Mr. Rose, Sir, as if You was my own boy. Well now, I knew in a minute who it was that sent it me. Why ’oly Father? Why because Your ’oly ’ighness named that very amount years ago as what You ’ld give me if You was paid properly. Yes ’oly Father: I’ve done what You wished me. I got it cheaper than we thought because it’s been empty so long. Thirteen ’undred pound cash on the nail for the ’ouse: a ’undred for doing it up: four ’undred and two for furniture and things: and please ’oly Father I’ve brought the change.”

  She lugged out a great bank-bag containing one hundred and ninety-eight English sovereigns.

  “Oh but, you dear good soul, you shouldn’t have done that. It was all yours.”

  “All mine, ’oly Father? But I tell You I got it cheaper than we thought.”

  “Well then you see you’re a hundred and ninety-eight pounds to the good. You have the house and the furniture; and, if you can get the lodgers, you’re safe for life.”

  “If I can get lodgers, ’oly Father? Why I’m filled up, and turning them away.”

  “Good! Well, put that in the bank for the winter.”

  “But then I shall have oceans of money I’ve made in the summer, ’oly Father.”

  “Look here, Mrs. Dixon. Do you remember cooking two dinners one Christmas Day? One, we ate. The other, you carried under your apron to some carpenter who was out of work. Don’t you remember who caught you pretending that you weren’t spilling the gravy on your frock?”

  “Oh, Mr. Rose, Sir, how You do recollect things!”

  “Well now, you stinted yourself then, didn’t you?”

  “Well perhaps a little.”

  “Now don’t stint yourself any more; and give away as many dinners as you like. See?”

  The tears were streaming from her glaring eyes and running down her kitchen-scorched cheeks. She certainly was looking frowsy.

  “See? I should think I did. Mr. Rose Sir, if I say it to Your face, saint was what I always said of You. Dear! Dear! To think of me giving way like this. Well, well, You’re too good for this world, Your Majesty. Oh and I’ve taken the liberty of bringing you a jar of pickled samphire like what You used to fancy. I’ve picked it and did it up myself with my own ’ands;—and I thought perhaps You wouldn’t mind ’aving this antimacassar which I’ve worked for You, ’oly Father. I knew all Your ’oly chairs ’ld be red, because I’ve seen pictures of them; and I thought that the grey and the orange would brighten up a dark corner for You.”

  Hadrian thanked her kindly; and took her little offerings as though He prized them more than His tiara; and made her infinitely happy.

  “Well now I won’t detain Your Majesty, because I know there must be no end of grand people waiting about to see You, and me occupying Your time like this, ’oly Father. So I’ll just ask You to pray for me and give me a blessing; and thank You Sir for all You’ve done for me, and I’ll say a prayer for You every day as long as I’m spared.”

  She got on her knees: and the Pontiff blessed her. Then He said,

  “When do you go back, Mrs. Dixon?”

  “Well, Your ’oly Majesty, I was thinking of looking about a bit while I’m ’ere, so as to have plenty to say to the lodgers: but I can’t stay more than a week longer.”

  Hadrian wrote on a card, The bearer, Mrs. Agnes Dixon, is Our guest. Receive and assist her. He signed it; and gave it to her, saying, “You know this place is full of lovely things, pictures and so on. And there are heaps of sacred relics in the churches. Well now, that card will admit you to see everything.”

  “Will they let me see the fans?”

  “Which fans?”

  “Them they fan You with when You’re glorified?”

  “Oh yes. Shew that card to the gentleman who is going to take you down stairs and tell him what you want to see.”

  “Will they want me to give the card up at the door?”

  “No. Not if you want to keep it.”

  “Ah well, I’ll see everything; and I’ll keep the card till I’m laid out, ’oly Father. Oh what ever can I say! You’ll excuse me Sir, and I’m an honest woman: but I must kiss Your ’oly Majesty’s anointed ’and. Oh bless You, my dear, bless You!”

  Hadrian paced through and through the apartment as soon as He was alone. “Dear good ugly righteous creature,” He commented. Passing the safe in the bedroom, He let-out with His left and punched the iron door. “That’s what use you are,” He said; and put glycerine on His bleeding knuckles. Catching a glimpse of His face in the mirror, “Beastly hypocrite” He sneered at Himself.

  Very disagreeable talk went on in Ragna’s circle. The pontifical acts of Hadrian were vile enough, but His private ones were simply criminal. A Pope who asked you the hour and the date and the place of your birth, drew diagrams on paper, and then told you your secret vices and virtues, was a practisant of arts unholy. Doubtless that frightful yellow cat, which He took into the gardens every morning, was His familiar spirit. It had cursed Cacciatore in a corridor, almost articulately
. Balbo, the chamberlain, was prepared to swear two things, which he had gathered from the gentlemen of the secret chamber. First, that His Holiness stood under a tap in His bedroom every morning and evening, and sometimes during the day as well. Undoubtedly that was to allay the fervence of the demon who possessed Him. Secondly, that His Holiness sat up half the night writing or reading, and yet the pontifical waste-paper basket always was empty. Not even a torn shred of paper remained. But then, the ashes in the fireplace. Ah! The disposition was to refer to lunacy, or stupidity, or knavishness, or vileness, whatsoever was novel to the understanding. The Pontiff’s aggressive personality, His ostentatious inconsistency, His peculiarly ideal conception of His apostolic character, His moral earnestness, His practical and uncomfortable embodiment of His views in His conduct, caused Him to be as loathed by Ragna’s set as He was loved by the nine and the six. He was accused of an anarchistical kind of enthusiasm. When He heard that, He said “We are conservative in all Our instincts, and only contrive to become otherwise by an effort of reason or principle, as We contrive to overcome all Our other vicious propensities.”

  That was considered an additional indecorum. His quaintly correct and archaic diction exasperated men who had no means of expressing their thoughts except in the fluid allusive clipped verbosity of the day. Objections were made to His hendecasyllabical allocutions by mediocrities who could not away with a man who discoursed in ithyphallics. His autocratic dogmatism, which really was due to His entire occession by His office, shocked the opportunist, irritated the worldly-prudent. Outside in the world too, He was by no means a complete success. People, who were not of His Communion, thought it rather a liberty that a Pope should have the Authorized Version at His fingers’ ends. At first, a lot of fantastic instabilities prepared to hail Him as a Reformer: but He gave dire offence to them, and to all pious fat-wits, by flatly refusing His countenance to any kind of Scheme or Society. “The Church suffices for this life,” He said; and His sentence “Cultivate, and help to cultivate individuality, at your own expense if possible, but never at the expense of your brother,” was highly disapproved of. Where did the Rights of Man come in? But then Hadrian was quite certain that Christians actually had no worldly “rights” at all. Arraigned on the question of superstition by the stolidly common-sense Talacryn, He said “Extra-belief, superstition, that which we hope or augur or imagine, is the poetry of life;” and His utterance was regarded as almost heretical. His utter lack of personal swagger or even dignity, His habit of rolling and smoking continual cigarettes, His natural and patently unprofessional manner, offended many outsiders who only could think of the Pope as partaking of the dual character of an Immeasurably Ambitious Clergyman and a Scarlet Impossible Person. He had enemies at home and abroad. And He remained quite alone, psychically detached: to a very great extent unconscious of, certainly uninterested in, the impression which He personally was creating; and altogether uninfluenced by any other mind or any other creature.

  A parcel of curial malcontents waited-on the Pope; and poured forth flocculent interrogations and sophomoric criticisms to their hearts’ content. Hadrian sat perfectly motionless except for an occasional twinkle of His ears—a muscular trick which He had forced Himself to learn for the disconcerting of more than usually oxymorose fools. He was mute: He was grave. He looked, with large omniscient imperscrutable eyes, with the countenance open, with the thoughts restrained. Cavillers recited grievances—His refusal to wear the pontifical pectoral-cross of great diamonds, or any gems except His episcopal amethyst, was one;—and appended sentences beginning “Now surely——” or “And the scandal——,” or “Ought we not rather——” He was mute: He was grave: He was attentive. His intelligent silence had its calculated effect of causing errancy from points which primarily had been deemed important. Anon, only one objection remained: an objection to the new form of pontifical stole. No one complained of its colour. Red was canonically correct. But the silk should have been satin. Also, the pattern of the gold embroidery was uncommon. A rich design, of conventional foliage and grotesques enclosing armorials and keys, was what custom demanded. (Hadrian had no armorials. Years before, while discussing heraldic blazons with an aged clergyman, he had burst out with “My shield is white.” “Keep it so,” the other replied. And Hadrian’s shield was Argent.) But this narrow strip, no wider than a ribbon, severely adorned with little fylfot crosses (“a Buddhist emblem” Berstein sneered) in little rectangular panels, with no expansive ends, and a scanty fringe, was hardly at all the kind of stole to inspire either the admiration or the homage of the faithful. Still Hadrian sat immobile, great-eyed, all-absorbent; and let them furiously rage, and imagine very vain things. And at the end of three-quarters of an hour, He merely murmured “Your Eminencies have permission to retire;” and stalked into the secret chamber.

  It was felt that something ought to be done. Ragna put a case to Vivole and Cacciatore. The Oecumenical Council of the Vatican stood adjourned since 1870: but, if the Sacred College should demand—— They found the notion excellent: communicated it to Berstein, and the French: plumed themselves; and went about mysteriously with their noses in the air. And there were intrigues in holes and corners.

  Hadrian went up to the Church on the Celian Hill; and conferred diaconate on Percy Van Kristen. The Passionists liked that one for his stately shyness which did not wear away. It was the mark of a soul verisimilar to his patron’s own, of a soul knit to no other: but, whereas the soul of Hadrian had been torn out of seclusion and bitterly buffeted by the world, the soul of Percy Van Kristen preserved its pristine tenderness. The Pope perforce went armed. His deacon remained by the altar.

  The consistory was summoned for the twenty-fourth of May. That morning Hadrian woke just on these words of a dream, Oecumenical Council, Pseudopontiff, Heretic. A man with an active brain like His naturally suffers much unconscious cerebration. Very often it happened to Him vividly to dream some scrap or other of something apparently unconnected with the present. He used to wonder at it: mentally note it: generally forget it. Now and then, an event (of which it was the tip) immediately followed; and He scored. Hadrian named to the consistory the Lord Percy of New York as Cardinal-deacon of St. Kyriak-at-the-Baths-of-Diocletian. His Eminency became resplendent in vermilion, tall, refined, reticent, with dark wide dewy eyes. He was admired in silence. The Pope by some accident turned His gaze to Ragna: he had such an aspect as caused His Holiness to look more intently. Ragna’s great strong jaw moved as though to munch; and his glance defiantly shifted. “Your Eminency is free to address Us,” the Supreme Pontiff said to Him.

  “I wish rather to address the Sacred College,” Ragna answered, rising.

  Hadrian had an intuition: His face became austere, His voice deliberate. “On the subject of an Oecumenical Council where you may denounce Us as pseudopontiff and heretic?”

  Ragna hurriedly sat down twitching. Berstein and Vivole muttered of divination and necromancy.

  “That generally is done,” the Pope continued in the tone of one merely selecting fringe for footstools,—“That generally is done by oblique-eyed cardinals” (He meant ‘envious’ but He used the Latin of Horace) “who cannot accustom themselves to new pontiffs. Rovere ululated for an Oecumenical Council when he found Our predecessor Alexander antipathetic; and there be other examples. But Lord Cardinals, if such an idea should present itself or should be presented to you, be ye mindful that none but the Supreme Pontiff can convoke an Oecumenical Council, and also that the decrees of an Oecumenical Council are ineffective unless they be promulgated with the express sanction of the Supreme Pontiff. Who would sanction decrees ordaining his own deposition? Who could? If We pronounce Ourself to be a pseudopontiff, what would be the value of such pronunciation? Ye were Our electors. We did not force you to elect Us. If We be Pontiff, We will not, and, if We be pseudopontiff, We cannot, depose Ourself. We are conscious of your love and of your loathing for Our person and Our acts. We value the one; and regret the other. But ye vol
untarily have sworn obedience to Us; and We claim it. ‘Subordination,’ so the adage runs” (He was citing the Greek to every Latin’s disgust) “ ‘is the mother of saving counsel.’ Nothing must and nothing shall obstruct Us. Let that be known. And We should welcome co-operation. Wherefore, Most Eminent Lords and Venerable Fathers, let not the sheep of Christ’s Flock be neglected in order that the shepherds may exchange anathemas.”

  Mundo and Fiamma rose by impulse: went to the throne; and renewed their allegiance. The new cardinals mixed with the others and began to talk, while the rest of the Compromissaries approached the Pontiff. Orezzo moved that way with eight Italians. Then the seven brought each a companion. When, at last, the Benedictine struggled to his feet, opposition died. Ragna toed the line.

  “His Holiness has averted a schism,” said Orezzo to Moccolo.

  “One has to admire even where one hardly approves.”

  “And to hobble-after even when one cannot keep-up-with the pace.”

  “Saint or madman?” Mundo repeated to Fiamma.

  “One-third saint, one-sixth madman, one-sixth genius, one-sixth dreamer, one-sixth diplomatist——”

  “No. All George Arthur Rose plus Peter,” Talacryn put in. “He said as much Himself to me once, whatever!”

  Hadrian went out to take the air. Under His cloak He carried a pickle bottle, the label of which He had washed off and destroyed. As He went along, He picked up a trowel left by some gardener in a flower-bed. He found a solitary corner filled with rose-acacias and lavender-bushes behind the Leonine Villa. He looked up at the cupola of St. Peter’s and saw no Americans levelling binoculars. Then He dug a little hole; and buried pickles; and hid the bottle a few yards away beneath the bee-hives by the lavender-bushes, mauve-bloomed, very sweet to smell. The solemn odour stimulated his brain; and He returned to chat with His gentlemen. They were engaged in physical exercises in a parlour. The Italian, who was one of nature’s-athletes, with so tremendous a power of chest-inflation that his ribs seemed unconnected with his sternum, interminably floated down and up and down to the floor on one leg, with the other leg and both arms extended rectangularly before him. The Englishman, a student, graceful and slim but not muscular, watched him and would imitate. His sinews had not the elastic force rhythmically to lower and raise him. He could get down but not up. He often lost balance, and rolled over in frantic failure. “You must have thighs made of whipcord and steel to do it,” he was saying. Then they saw their visitor and attended. Hadrian asked what the exercise was and whence it came.