Hadrian the Seventh

by Frederick Rolfe

  “Wumman A’ll dae’t. Who pays for the tea, though?”

  “Sometimes I do; and sometimes whoever I come with.”

  “Well then I’m coming. And I’ll let you know to have a good blow out, plenty o’ scones and bit-cakeys an’ a’ that. I’ll pay; and I don’t mind if it costs me three shilling, so long as ye introduce me to some of these mashers.”

  “Very well. But remember, you’re thinking about becoming Catholic.”

  “A’m not.”

  “Dear me, Mr. Sant, but you must be. Then they’ll take an interest in you and ask you to their parties.”

  “Ah weel then, I am.”

  “Who is this Mr. Sant?” said a Pict to an Erse (who called himself “The” before his surname). The italicized question was asked at a reception in Mrs. O’Jade’s flat on Palazzo Campello, about a fortnight after the previous confabulation.

  “I really don’t quite know, beyond that he’s a friend of that Mrs. Crowe who was converted the other day.”

  “Is he a convert too?”

  “No, not yet: but they say he’s likely to be. They’re both Liblabs, you know.”

  “Oh, yes of course, I read about them in the papers. What a score it will be for the Church! Well, what do you make of him?”

  “Oh he seems earnest enough: but he’s hardly got a word to say for himself. And I don’t think he’s quite a gentleman, you know.”

  Hadrian sat at the end of one of His long bare tables. On both sides of Him were two great numbered baskets. At the other end of the table was a huge leathern sack containing the pontifical mail. At the sides of the table stood the two Gentlemen of the Apostolic Chamber with stilettos. The Pope unlocked the sack; and Sir John and Sir Iulo in turn drew out a handful of letters and displayed them before Him. He scanned the handwriting of each; and named a numbered basket into which the designated missive was cast. When the sack was empty, the contents of the baskets were dealt with. All the letters in the first were addressed “To His Holiness the Pope, Prefect of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition.” Hadrian took the stiletto from Sir Iulo; and slit open each envelope which Sir John presented. Thus they were returned to the basket, and sent to be perused by the Cardinal-Secretary-of-State. The two gentlemen seated themselves at the table: cut-open the envelopes of the second basketful; and pushed them within the Pope’s reach. These were addressed in known handwritings. Hadrian read the letters, and sorted them in separate heaps before Him: each heap was weighted by a miniature ingot of pure copper, the colour of which He immensely admired. Two letters were placed face downwards by themselves. The envelopes from the third basket were opened, and the letters extracted by the gentlemen: Hadrian only looked-at and arranged them. The fourth basket contained newspapers, which Sir John opened and examined for marked paragraphs. If any such were found, Sir Iulo folded the paper open and placed it: otherwise the paper was torn and returned to the basket. Meanwhile the Pope more closely inspected the letters which He had retained. The gentlemen placed a couple of phonographs on the table: inserted new cylinders; and retired. Hadrian got up and locked the doors. He took the little heaps of letters from under the ingots; and spoke into the machine formal acknowledgments of receipt and a short blessing, or definite instructions for detailed responses, until all had received attention except the two letters which lay by themselves, and three others. He unlocked the door. The gentlemen entered; and carried the instruments with the articulate cylinders to Cardinals Sterling, Whitehead, Leighton, della Volta, and Fiamma, who acted as pontifical secretaries in the ninth antechamber. Hadrian Himself wrote to His well-beloved son William, to His beloved son Edmund Earl Marshal of England, and to His beloved son A. Panciera. These being enclosed and addressed, He was left alone. He took the two remaining letters to the easy-chair by the window; rolled and lighted a cigarette; and considered them.

  “Reverend and Dear Sir,

  Since our late esteemed interview when I had the pleasure of addressing your lordship on the subject of Socialism I have been anxiously awaiting the favour of an acknowledgment of same. In case the subject has slipped your memory I should remind you that I informed you previously on behalf of the Liblab Fellowship that we were not averse to give our careful consideration to any proposal that you may see fit to make, with a view to co-operation with us against the horde of cosmopolitan gold-pigs who monopolise the means of existence production distribution and exchange in order to procure a complete change in the entire social organism. I am quite at a loss to understand on what grounds you have not favored me with a direct reply unless there is anything on which you would like farther explanations, in that case I will be most happy to call on you per previous appointment for which I am now waiting at the above address neglecting my business at considerable expense and inconvenience to myself which a man in my humble position compared with yours (!) cannot be expected to incur and common courtesy demands should be made good. I therefore trust that in view of the not altogether pleasant facts that are in my possession your lordship shall see fit to send me a private interview at your earliest convenience. Hopeing that I will not have occasion to feel myself compelled to proceed farther in this matter if you leave me no option but to do so, and assuring your lordship that your valued instructions as to time and place of meeting will have my fullest and promptest attention.

  I remain Sir,

  Yours truly,

  Comrade Jeremiah Sant. L.F.

  P.S. Perhaps I may mention by way of hint that we might be able to come to some arrangement for our mutual advantage not altogether on the above lines, and I beg to advise your most reverent lordship that I would be willing to meet your wishes if the terms are suitable. Asking to hear from you soon and hopping that any misunderstandings may presently be cleared up.

  J.S.”

  “Dearest dearest Georgie

  For although you have no more the old sweet name my heart is ever faithfull and will not let me call you by any other. Does it not remind you of that day of long ago when the floods were out in the meadows and you and I and Joseph were coming home from the Bellamys, and you lifted me in your strong arms and carried me through the water that covered the path. How Joseph laughed. He never thought it worth his while to take care of me as you did. But I knew that it was because you loved me and my heart went out to you then and never has been my own since. If only you knew how deeply I regret the unpleasantness which arose since then I think you would pity me a little. Georgie do forgive me. It is my love which made me mad. I hate myself for what I did and would give the world to undo it. I was a mad fool then. I did not know what I was doing or how you would take it so seriously. Georgie you were always good and I was wicked. But haven’t you punished me enough. Think of what I have suffered all these years apart from you. Every time you have refused to notice me has been like a stab in my heart. Georgie take pity on me. Do you know that I watch your window every day and watch you walk about the town. Several times you have brushed against me in the street without knowing it for I will do nothing to damage you any more, dearest Georgie. I know very well that ladies are not admitted to your palace for I have had myself made a Catholic in order to get a little nearer you, but all priests have housekeepers. Georgie do let me come and be your housekeeper. I promise on my word of honour that I will serve you faithfully in any and every way. We might be so happy. Nothing would give me greater joy than to work my fingers to the bone for you. Georgie do believe me when you see how I am willing to humiliate myself so for you. Of course I never speak of our former relations except that I say I knew you slightly when Joe was alive. But as for love I never mention it for it was nipped in the bud by my wickedness and never has been anything but a trial to me, and I should not wish my love to do you any harm. Don’t think that last sentence means anything spiteful, it is not so indeed but I know you distrust me. I only mean that it would be better for both of us if you would not go on being so cruel heartless dreadful and neglectful of

  Your devoted and distractedr />
  N.

  P.S. I have a suspicion that the man who is with me is no friend of yours. Georgie, be wise and let me see you at least and tell you what I suspect. It is only your welfare I have at heart, don’t refuse me Georgie don’t.”

  Hadrian read these letters through two or three times, noting the yapping and the yowling of the one, the panting and the whining of the other, the barking of both. He turned to the window and looked at nothing until He had finished His cigarette. His thin lips stiffened in scorn and drew downward into the straight inflexible line. His impulse was to make an end of the male animal in a tank of aquafortis, if such a convenience only had formed part of the pontifical paraphernalia: as for the female, he remembered George Meredith’s sentence, and would have liked to squeeze all the acid out of her at one grip and toss her to the divinities who collect exhausted lemons. The next minute, “The dogs, the dirty abject obscene dogs.” He spat suddenly; and carried the letters to the safe in the bedroom where He locked them up. He prohibited Himself from taking further note of them. He was conscious that this course was quite wrong. But there it was. He had a busy afternoon before Him; and He diligently read in His breviary to prepare for Himself a convenient frame of mind. Pursuing His policy of emphasizing the difference between the Church and the World, He had summoned the generals of religious orders. To each of these He wished to say some words of admonition, words which would remain in the memory, and be passed from mind to mind, from mystic to thyrsos-bearer, from general to postulant. He rather enjoyed the sticking of labels on people and things now, because He could do it to some purpose. On the other hand, He had a feeling that He only was touching surfaces. Still, here and there the surface might be soft and capable of receiving impression: or here and there might be a crevice or a gap which He could fill with a cartridge. Somehow, anyhow, His words and acts must be made to penetrate to the roots of things, to influence fundamentals.

  At fifteen o’clock He mounted the small throne. One by one the generals passed into the Presence: heard apostolic words; and passed out again—Servites, Premonstratensians, Augustinians, Cistercians, Carthusians, Oblates, Marists, Passionists, Carmelites, Dominicans. To the General of Trinitarians, He commended Africa; and ordained that twenty friars should preach as of old in the market-places of England, Canada, and Australasia, for African missions. To the General of the Order of Charity, He would not say anything at present concerning the condemned Forty Propositions: but He would say Love your enemies the Jesuits, and “turn not away thine eye from the needy and give none occasion to curse thee.” To the General of Benedictines, He gave command to keep his monks in their monasteries, and to prohibit them from appearing in the correspondence-columns of newspapers, either under their religious names or their renounced secular styles. He reminded the Minister-General of Capuchins of the second minister-general, the apostate Ochino, who had preferred worldly things and had preached polygamy; and also of the fact that playing fast and loose with worldly things continued to produce apostate Capuchins. To the Minister-General of Franciscans, He commended Asia; and ordained that fifty friars should preach as of old in the marketplaces of England, Canada, and Australasia, for Asiatic missions. Then He shewed the grey scapular and cord which He was wearing next to His skin; and asked that the brotherhood should name Him to Blessed Brother Francis as a little brother who was not gay but sad, not lively but weary, and who had but little love. Hadrian, as Brother Serafino of the Third Order, kissed the Minister-General’s naked feet, and begged a blessing. Returning to the throne, the Supreme Pontiff imparted apostolic benediction. And Brother Peter Baptist went out into the noisy antechambers with his clean bright face all-glorious, and light in his serene blue eyes. The Prepositor-general of Jesuits entered with ostentation of the knowledge that, if Hadrian the Seventh was the English White Pope, he himself was the English Black Pope. He had that benevolently truculent manner which women deem adorable. As he made his obeisance, Hadrian noted a little lacquered snuff-box in his hand and a frightful bandanna oozing from the pocket of his cassock. His Holiness instantly carried war into the camp, by reminding Father St. Albans of the bulls of Urban VIII. and Innocent X. which prohibit snuff-taking on pain of excommunication.

  “No doubt those bulls are obsolete: but Your Reverency will have the goodness to abstain from practising the filthy habit in Our Presence.”

  The sallow General pocketed his snuff-box; and produced the stony mild smile which is used upon eccentricity. The Pope remarked that the Company of Jesus appeared to be in a verisimilar position to the Wesleyans, in that they had departed a very long way from the will and spirit of their founder. He used His slowly biting monotone, because He wished to save this General the trouble of misunderstanding Him. He said that, with the word “Borgia” and the word “Nero,” the word “Jesuit” perhaps was the eponym for all that was vilest in the world. That was very undesirable. Not that the good opinion of the world was desirable. Far from that. But Christians ought not to enjoy anything, not even an evil reputation, under false pretences. He wished to do something to rectify the erroneous opinion which the world had formed about the Company of Jesus, to straighten-out the tangle, correcting and directing; and, as men were wont to judge more by actions than by words, He did not propose to beat the air with vain expostulations, explanations, expositions of virtue, and so forth. It had been done a thousand times before. Historic calumnies had been refuted from pulpits and in pamphlets with unanswerable logic: but still the man-in-the-street said “Jesuit” when he meant “a foxy wolf.” The Pontiff was not going to try to persuade the world away from its nonsense. He wished the Company of Jesus to give the world a proximate occasion of persuading itself. Therefore, He proposed to the General, in private, a return to the observance of the good old rule and a cultivation of the saintly spirit of St. Iñigo Lopez de Recalde. He wished the Jesuits to reconsider their position, as it were: to surcease from the—not always mortally sinful—not always tangibly illegal—but perhaps—generally shady transactions——

  The General interrupted. He was prepared to bully.

  Hadrian froze him with a glance of blazing supremacy. “Make no mistake,” the Pope said: “We are not intending Ourself to punish your Company, nor to degrade your Companions who so diligently degrade themselves, nor to confer fictitious and unmerited importance upon you by decrees of dissolution or suppression. We do not forget the badness of the agents in the goodness of the cause nor the goodness of the cause in the badness of the agents.” He was looking through His all-observant half-shut eyes straight at the bridge of the General’s fine nose. That is the most exacerbating form of regard: for, while it holds the hearer rigid and intense, it effectually prevents retaliation. Much may be done with the eye in wordy warfare. You may challenge: you may intimidate: you may quell: but you may do none of these things while your opponent refuses to lend his eye to yours. So this sleek General found. The Pontiff held him with an eye which gazed so nearly into his, that he perforce was obliged to lie in wait for the flicker when his own could seize it. Hadrian knew the dodge. He had not watched and dichotomized men and Jesuits from the observatory and in the dissecting-room of His loneliness during twenty years for nothing. At the end of His sentence, His gaze swept right away. He rose and went to the window. Looking out over the roofs of Golden and Immortal Rome, He continued in a milder tone, “We have cited Your Reverency only to hear Our paternal chiding of your naughty ways, to the end that ye may amend the same, returning of your own free will to the observance of the spirit as well as of the letter of those rules of life and conduct which your Father, St. Ignatius, made for you.”

  He paused. The General, who would have preferred wheeling manure in a barrow at the behest of a novice (A.M.D.G. of course) to listening to this rodent exhortation, took it that the audience was ended; and made shift to get on to his knees.

  But the Pope went on. “For, it is of the nature of all human things to deteriorate; and ye have made yourselves a scorn and hissing am
ong men. The Nouvelle Revue states that ye are in great decadence. The statement may be one of your own devices for distracting the attention of the world from your nefarious machinations. Or it may be a fact. In both cases it is damnable and damnatory.” He paused again.

  “Jube, Domine, benedicere,” the General intoned, with a determination to force the apostolic benediction, and to get back to the Via del Seminario as soon as possible. He felt that he had some very important things to say to his socii.

  But the pitiless voice probed him again: “Wherefore We admonish you that ye set your house in order while ye have time.”

  The General’s oval jaw took an extra lateral crease. His hands twitched and pattered down and up and down in a talpine manner. Suddenly the inflexible fathomless eyes flashed on him. Axioms like sleet tersely lashed him.

  “Remember that ye only exist on sufferance. Dismiss delusions; and see yourselves as ye really are. Strip, man, strip. Search out your own weaknesses: lest, not the Father but, the Enemy discover the sores, and the diamonds, which ye are hiding. For ye do not merit the reputation, which is associated with your name, on the strength of which ye trade.”

  The glossy black priest jerked to his feet: genuflected; and was backing from the white Presence. The Pontiff, whose mood had become quite pythian, stepped up to him, laying a firm hand on the bow of the ribbons of his ferraiuola. “Wince not, dear son. Three-fourths of you trade upon the reputation of your Company for cunning and learning. One-fourth of you is the Christians of the world. At least be frank with yourselves. Let us have more of the flower of your Christianity. Let us have less of your false pretences. Your erudition is showy enough. Oh yes. But it is so superficial. Your machinations are sly enough. Oh yes. But they are so silly. Ye are not geniuses. Ye are not monsters either of vice or of virtue: but only ridiculous mediocrities, always pitifully burrowing, burrowing like assiduous moles, always seeing your pains mis-spent, your elaborate schemes wrecked, except sometimes, when—to complete the metaphor—quite by accident, ye chance to kill a king. This is not to the Greater Glory of God. Then stop. Stop. Here and now.”