The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography (Valancourt eClassics)

by A. J. A. Symons

  I remember reading some years ago an article by D. H. Lawrence praising Hadrian the Seventh. Another who praised the book to me was Charles Whibley. What he liked was what he called the description of a ‘rotten’ life in London. Yet Whibley had no good to say of George Gissing, who has done that kind of thing supremely well, I think.

  I hope that these random notes will be of some use. It has given me some pleasure to recall Rolfe, and made me forget for an hour or two my wretched condition in all ways and my smashed up frame.

  With all good wishes

  Vincent O’Sullivan

  CHAPTER 6: THE REJECTED PRIEST

  It was less necessary for me to rely upon correspondence in regard to Rolfe’s second bid for the priesthood than for his first; for that manuscript of several pages already mentioned as handed to me by Mr Leslie was an eye-witness account of the career of ‘The Rev F. W. Rolfe’ at Rome. It was written by Canon Carmont of Dalbeattie, and contradicts the impressions of Vincent O’Sullivan. I did not find the inconsistence of the two accounts surprising, however: evidently the reactions to Rolfe of those who met him depended less on what he did and was than on the temperament of the observer. O’Sullivan, himself a writer of distinction in later years, already interested in literature and art, sympathized with the queer student’s feeling for form and surface; whereas Canon Carmont, a priest concerned with other things, is impatient at what he considers trivialities, and a personality preoccupied by interests he did not share.

  My acquaintance with F. W. Rolfe dates from about October 1889, and lasted for rather over six months – the period during which he was at the Scots College, Rome. I know little of his after career, beyond what might be derived from a casual reading of an attack made on him in the Catholic Times, an article by ‘Baron Corvo’ in the Wide World, and one or two of his books, especially Hadrian the Seventh, in which he was good enough to make me a Cardinal. Previous to his coming to the Scots College he had been for a time at Oscott; before that a sort of an assistant master at a school for boys at Oban, established by the late Lord Bute. He had been accepted as a candidate for the priesthood by the late Abp W. Smith, then Metropolitan at Edinburgh, and was sent to Rome to study. At that time he must have been about thirty years of age. As he insisted on having entire liberty to make ‘afternoon calls’ on his friends in Rome, the Rector, Dr Campbell, rather unwisely allowed him to ‘wear the black soutane’, which made him exempt from all but the fundamental rules of the College. (The students’ costume, as you are possibly aware, is a purple soutane, black ‘soprano’, etc.) Thus privileged, he might have lived in the College with next to no intercourse with the ordinary students. On the contrary, he tried to mix with them a great deal. The first impression he made on us was his tendency to ‘swank’ – a detestable word that I must use, it is so apt. He talked in a vague way of the importance and status of his family, who apparently had severed connection with him when he became a Catholic. Some weeks after his arrival he developed an attack of what he was pleased to call gout, and I recollect his anathematizing his ancestry. ‘Oh, that beast of a grandfather’, he would exclaim during a twinge of his malady. We fancied he was a vegetarian, as he invariably refused meat at meals. Afterwards we understood that he had no dislike for flesh meat, but imagined the meat served in the College to be horseflesh. In the restaurants of Rome he often made up for his abstinence, the friend who paid on these occasions being a man called Thirstanes – tutor in an English or American family then in Rome.

  He possessed a large fund of stories and anecdotes – of the anti-Anglican type – a few also of a slightly Rabelaisian cast. I have heard some funny ‘Anglican Confession’ stories in my time, but none so ingenious and ornamental as his. Some of his stories were really good: a certain ‘cheese’ story almost challenged Mark Twain. He was wont to condemn the alleged laxity of the Roman Communion in the matter of truthfulness, and its subdistinguishing the lie. He himself, brought up as a strict Anglican, had all the Anglican horror of lying and equivocation of every description. He seemed to be quite serious about it, which surprised us, as he was universally regarded as about the biggest liar we had ever met.

  Everything about him suggested one who dabbles. His room was a miniature museum. A fine stand-camera betokened the photograph enthusiast, though I don’t remember his doing any photography. He had a number of pictures said to be painted by himself. I was and am no judge, and I don’t know what their artistic worth might be. There was something distinctive about them, a sort of affectation which repelled me. He sang, nicely enough, being endowed with a pleasant but not very strong tenor voice, and could play the piano. Musically I could diagnose him. He had a ‘good ear’, and could read music a little, but there was a bizarre something about his improvised accompaniments that made it evident to me that his technical knowledge of harmony was practically nil, and his understanding of the art very superficial. He used to toy with triolets and fidgetty trifles of that sort. He wrote articles weekly to the long-defunct Whitehall Review. His parade of Greek in Hadrian the Seventh I regard as swank pure and simple. I don’t believe he knew any. I presume he had enough Latin to follow the drift of the theological lectures. But I had my doubts at the time. Once he came to me, Gury in hand, demanding to know the meaning of ‘eccur’. I expounded. ‘Then why can’t he say “et cur”?’ But I don’t think he interested himself much in the course of studies he was supposed to be pursuing, and his attendance at lectures left something to be desired. In innumerable ways he said and did odd things, both in and outside the College, and for a time, no doubt, it was very interesting. But we were a set of young cubs, ignorant and opinionated, with none of the tolerance and understanding that age brings, and mixing in the world. And so a certain savage annoyance and scorn towards Rolfe slowly grew up among the students. When we began to hear stories from outside the College, which indicated that his presence among us was making us a subject for gossip and comment, the annoyance became rage, and the end was in sight.

  Rolfe was no student. He gave no indication of any real piety beneath the surface – if there was any ‘beneath’. No earnestness and fineness of purpose, no discernible interest in the souls of others – so we judged. His general laxity and carelessness lowered the tone of the college. And then the inevitable ‘What is this man doing here?’ We put our ideas regarding him before the Rector, and the Rector expelled him. He got a fortnight to look about him, a week was added to that, three days, one day more, then his departure. I quite assented to the action the students took, though I took no leading part, and looking back I do not regret, and would not alter that attitude. If Rolfe had any vocation for the priesthood at all – I don’t think he had – he certainly had none for the missionary work of the Scottish province, and he would only have proved an encumbrance and a nuisance, at the best. At the worst he might have been a positive menace, and a danger. After his expulsion Fr Mackie O.P. gave him three days’ hospitality. Later he got in tow with an Oscott contemporary – an Italian principe, whose name I forget – though it may have been Sforza-Cesarini.

  A word or two of my personal views concerning Rolfe. He seemed to me to have a keen sense of externalities of all kinds, little or no apprehension of the inward spirit that is in most things. He painted and photoed and wrote about the outsides of things. He tinkered with triolets, because they are a manner, a form – nothing else. Nobody with anything to say would say it in triolets. I am convinced that a critical reading of his various books would serve to show that he had a very clear and discerning eye for outside values and superficialities – and little else. My rather dim recollection of Don Tarquinio, for example, is a sort of movie – a cinema picture. The moral and intellectual and spiritual status of the Don and the young Cardinal is a blank in my mind, and, I suspect, in the book also. Forms, manners, colours, sounds, shapes, and, beyond, a region of vague uninteresting shadows – a sort of spiritual and intellectual myopia – there, I hold, you have the key to all Rolfe. Everything he said or did
or wrote should be considered in the light of that. In his tenacious desire for the priesthood was nothing sinister, nothing elevated or fine, – he saw himself doing picturesque things in a picturesque way. He did me the honour of making me a Cardinal, not because we were intimate or friendly – we were not – not because of anything unusual in my character or abilities – there is not – but I imagine because he saw something in me that satisfied his artistic sense, though what that could be I myself am utterly unable to divine. This limitation of his imagination to the external may have increased his power of dealing with what he could apprehend, for there seems no doubt that he was a man of ability.

  There was in him little pride, in the better sense of the term. He did not disdain to beg. In fact he seemed to consider that he had a right to expect assistance and favours from those in a position to grant them – I have heard him say so. As to gratitude – less said the better.

  There was a sort of ruthless selfishness in him which led him to exploit others, quite regardless of their interest or feelings or advantage. This trait, in small matters, I saw many instances of. He was dressy and particular about his appearance. Church matters were mostly a matter of millinery to him.

  There was little or no warmth or affectionateness in him. Probably this was why he was so selfish and self-centred. No geniality. His humour, such as it was, was of a thin and rather sardonic kind. I don’t know if he could be called revengeful – perhaps not. The short descriptions of the students in Hadrian are certainly not friendly in tone, and might perhaps be regarded as a payment of old scores. I doubt it. I fancy he loathed most of them for the same reason that he apparently liked me – artistic sense.

  Take him all in all, he was not very human: he was a sort of subspecies. He must have been very tough and elastic, or he would have been utterly crushed and destroyed by the opposition and enmity he met with, and did so much to excite. Was there an element of greatness in him to account for this? Or was it perhaps something more analogous to that appalling saying of Parolles ‘If my heart were great ’twould burst at this. . . . Simply the thing I am shall make me live’?

  This is rather a hasty and scrappy account – written at one sitting – midnight oil. If there is any point you think I can elucidate further, don’t hesitate to say so. I shall willingly do what I can.

  This article of Canon Carmont’s is evidence of an exceptional memory, and of the strong impression that Rolfe made on those who met him. And, despite the Canon’s evident lack of sympathy with his eccentric fellow-student, he gives a true picture of a remarkable man. I could imagine very clearly this unusual divine, with his passion for fine clothes, his distinctive paintings, bizarre musical accompaniments, verses, articles, photography, fabulous stories and artistic sense. Out of place, no doubt, in the Scots College at Rome: not fitted, as Vincent O’Sullivan said, for the dirty work of a large parish; but a man of character and accomplishments nevertheless, not to be matched in a day’s march; a man who would have adorned the court of a mediaeval prince or pope, or won esteem in one of the less rigorous monasteries in the days when a fine manuscript was regarded as a worthy occupation for a lifetime. He was conscious, obviously, of his manifold abilities, and regarded the rewards that he exacted from the world (on credit!) as no more than his due: ‘he seemed to consider that he had a right to expect assistance and favours from those in a position to grant them’. I found myself in disagreement with many of the views expressed by Canon Carmont in his diagnosis. He seems to me too hard on the fancy which embodies itself in the triolet; too censorious of Rolfe’s acute sense of surfaces; singularly modest in his failure to understand Rolfe’s unreturned liking for himself; too incredulous of Rolfe’s Latin (he had taught it in Winchester Modern School, and, at Oscott, written at least one Latin poem); wrong in thinking that there was ‘no warmth or affectionateness’ in the tantalized author of Hadrian the Seventh; and wrong again in his view that there was ‘nothing elevated or fine behind Rolfe’s tenacious desire for priesthood’. I wrote to something like that effect, and in the course of his letter giving me permission to publish his account, Canon Carmont observes with great fairness:

  As the years roll by I find I have better insight. At the time when I knew Rolfe I was hardly fit to form any reliable judgment on him. I had no experience of mankind, and was swayed by impulsive and immature prejudices. I came to the conclusion that he was merely a clerical adventurer, and I could see no good and nothing remarkable in him. About eighteen years ago, when Fr Martindale S.J. was writing his Life of R. H. Benson, I wrote for him a similar account of Rolfe, and Fr Martindale rather took exception to the uncharitableness of its tone.

  In later letters Canon Carmont amplified one or two points for my benefit:

  There was a universal prejudice against Rolfe in the College. His eccentricities of conduct made the institution a subject of unfavourable comment in other colleges . . . I may mention one item. Rolfe ordered £20 of clothes from a tailor called Giomini – I acting as interpreter. When Giomini realized that he wasn’t going to be paid, he came and annexed £20 worth of Rolfe’s effects. The students bitterly resented this transaction as a humiliation of the College. . . . As to further reminiscences, the only one that occurs to me is [that] Rolfe had in his room a large sheet of cardboard, marked with ink into irregular compartments each of which contained a motto, epigram or atrocity culled from Catholic or Anglican hymnology. . . . One day Cary-Elwes (deceased Bishop of Northampton) and I paid a surreptitious visit to Rolfe’s room while he was out for the purpose of studying these curiosities. I read them out while Cary-Elwes scribbled them down. Some time later Cary-Elwes gave me his copy, which I probably still have, though I tremble at the task of unearthing it. . . . In person Rolfe was about 5 ft 7 in. in height – perhaps slightly less. He was pale, rather demure and ascetic in expression, wore eye-glasses, smoked rather heavily.

  From Dr Clapperton at the Scots College I obtained a list of Rolfe’s surviving contemporaries (to all of whom I wrote) and also a note of two of those mottoes mentioned by Canon Carmont; the first a reference to the College fare, ‘And he ate nothing in those days’, the second a reference to his companions, ‘And he lived with beasts’. It is also remembered that he was reported for saying that he was like Newman in that he had nothing to learn when he entered the Catholic Church.

  From Fr Stuart, of Fauldhouse, I received an interesting note:

  St John’s, Fauldhouse,

  West Lothian

  Dear Mr Symons,

  I do not think that I can add anything to what Canon Carmont has told you about Mr Rolfe. He has doubtless told you of many of his eccentricities – his musical ability and his gift of song, his weird sermons in the refectory, with their stinging hits at our somewhat uncultivated Scottish manners, and his own rather scant treatment of respect; his saying his office in his bath; and so on. I really think it was genius on the very border. I’m sorry I cannot give more details, as it’s such a long time since we were together in Rome.

  With best wishes for success in your undertaking

  Yours very sincerely

  John L. Stuart

  Perhaps the truest summing up of all was sent me by the Rev Provost Rooney, of Peebles, who was Vice-Rector of the Scots College when Rolfe was expelled:

  He was most amiable despite all his little eccentricities – with ever and always an element of mystery in and around his elusive character.

  *

  Before his rejection from the Scots College, Rolfe adopted, by anticipation, the titular dignity of orders, and joined the Royal Historical Society, and the Royal Society of Literature, as ‘The Rev F. W. Rolfe’. And early in 1890 Mr Elkin Mathews announced among his ‘New Books’:

  Will be published shortly, medium 8vo, finely printed on handmade paper, in a limited edition, with Etchings

  THE STORY OF S. WILLIAM:

  THE BOY MARTYR OF NORWICH

  From forty contemporary and subsequent Chronicles, all of which are given in f
ull, with copious Notes and Translations, etc. etc.

  by THE REV FREDERICK WILLIAM ROLFE,

  Late Professor of English Literature and History at S. Marie’s College of Oscott.

  This historical study never appeared, and was probably never written.

  Rolfe left a record of his stay at the Scots College in Chapter XV of Hadrian the Seventh, wherein George Arthur Rose revisits, as Pope, ‘St Andrew’s College’, scene of his second discomfiture.

  The hateful memory of every nook and corner, in which, as a student, he had been so fearfully unhappy, surged in his mind: the gaudy chapel where he had received this snub, the ugly refectory where he received that, the corridor where the Rector had made coarse jests about his mundity to obsequious grinners, the library where he had found impossible dust-begrimed books, the stairs up which he had staggered in lonely weakness, the dreadful gaunt room which had been his homeless home, the altogether pestilent pretentious bestial insanity of the place.

  And Rolfe drew his own portrait in that chapter of Hadrian also, as Jameson, the fastidious and reserved student, mocked by his fellows for excessive personal cleanliness, who lives on bread and water and boiled eggs because he has been in the College kitchen and seen – things; who, like his creator, is very much alone.

  CHAPTER 7: THE NOWT OF HOLYWELL

  No exact information has ever come to light regarding Rolfe’s movements in the months immediately following his dismissal in mid 1890 from the Scots College. It is clear that he found a refuge with the Sforza-Cesarini family, but what the length of his stay was, and what his position in the household, remain obscure. It may be that during this uncertain interval he began to write a book – there is evidence in one of his later letters to justify the inference. Was he Keeper of the Archives, as he sometimes boasted afterwards? What is certain is that at most this Roman vacation lasted less than a year, though during it he gained a lasting insight into Italian history and character. Then, armed with the Duchess’s allowance and the title of Baron Corvo, the rejected priest reappears at Christchurch in 1891. The reader is already acquainted, by Mr Jackson’s narrative, with the passage of his stay there, and with its sequel in the following year, when, desperate, much in the mood in which young men join the Foreign Legion, the Baron went to Aberdeen. The prolonged futility of that tragic farce described by the Free Press kept him in the North till 1894. Then (it may be remembered) he was left stranded in London after Champion’s departure for Australia. Time was passing; he was thirty-four.