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

by A. J. A. Symons

  You have taught me the value of loneliness, and many other lessons.

  May I say how much I hope that you will be bringing out another book soon? Only I do entreat you to put the bitterness out of sight. (This also you must forgive.)

  I believe you are in Italy now; I wonder if I can be of the slightest service to you here in England? I am fairly often in London; and should be delighted to do anything for which I was competent.

  Believe me Yours sincerely

  R. Hugh Benson

  When Robert Hugh Benson wrote that letter he was thirty-four, eleven years younger than the unknown author whose work he praised. Benson had recognized much of himself, and more with which he sympathized, in the extraordinary daydream of George Arthur Rose. His temperament corresponded at many points with Rolfe’s. Both shared a feverish energy; both were converts to the Catholic faith; both possessed a many-sided interest in the arts, and a ready pen. But their lives had followed widely different courses. Rolfe, as the reader has seen, was an almost self-educated man who had painfully gathered a mass of intimate and much-prized learning, who had rubbed hard against the corners of the world, endured many privations, and constantly fulfilled the role of outcast. A streak of the sinister was mixed in his composition with many good qualities; he was nevertheless a man of strong original mind, with very various and developed talents. Benson, on the other hand, was descended from ‘a sound stock of Yorkshire yeomanry’, which had gathered, in the passage of generations, association with wealth and power, and an heredity of intellect. This developing stock had flowered in Hugh Benson’s father, a man of imperial, perhaps imperious, nature, a great organizer, a fine scholar, who, after a career of unfaltering success, had been elevated to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. All his children became noticed or notable in the world. Arthur Christopher Benson, after an admired career as an Eton tutor, became Master of Magdalene College at Cambridge, and even better known as the editor of Queen Victoria’s letters and author of numerous volumes of reflective, sentimental essays; Edward Frederick Benson starred a long career with a succession of successful novels; an authority on Victorian scandals and characters, he survived all his brethren. Margaret Benson was also a writer. Even Martin, the first born, who died during his schooldays, was marked at Winchester by ‘extraordinary and precocious intelligence and spirituality’.

  Robert Hugh, or Hugh, as he came to be called, was born in 1871, the youngest son of this able family. At Eton he was distinguished by dramatic imagination, rapid temper, indifference to scholarship, and a peculiar personal vividness. After a happy career at Cambridge, where he practised mesmerism and other amusements, and aspired to the Indian Civil Service, by a characteristic swerve he became imbued with religious ardour, and took Holy Orders. Less than ten years later he felt the call of Rome. His changeover provoked much discussion and feeling in Anglican religious circles: naturally, since the convert was son to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Perhaps his most marked contradistinction from Rolfe was that whereas the latter had spent his life vainly seeking an audience, Hugh Benson at home, at school, at Cambridge, and in the Church had always commanded hearers. There was also this further difference: that Rolfe was a natural writer, who failed; while Benson, with no deep talent for letters, made a success of authorship.

  In 1905, shortly after writing to Rolfe, ‘Father Hugh’ returned to Cambridge, where he was remembered as a student, this time to the Catholic Rectory. Very rapidly he became one of the most regarded personalities in the city. The decoration of his rooms caused much admiration (in the theological sense); so did his eloquent sermons; while his volatility, artistic temperament, and unusual attitudes of mind made him a centre among undergraduates – easily attracted by faith and by extremes. Certain Heads of Colleges feared his entry, as a walk with him was regarded as a step to Rome.

  The friendship and correspondence with Rolfe that followed after Benson’s reading of Hadrian was one of the most interesting events in the lives of either; Benson’s biographer, Fr Martindale, is frank as to the great influence Rolfe for a time exercised over the mind of the tempestuous convert. But, unfortunately, we cannot fully follow that friendship in its flow and ebb; for, when, availing myself of Mr Leslie’s introduction, I sought Fr Martindale, he told me that all the papers he had consulted concerning Hugh Benson had been returned, after the Life was written, to Mr A. C. Benson, from whom they had been borrowed. Assiduous in my quest I applied to Mr E. F. Benson, survivor of the literary brotherhood, only to learn that the correspondence had not been among Arthur Benson’s papers at his death, and presumably, therefore, had been destroyed as of no further consequence after Hugh Benson’s Life was written. Fortunately Fr Martindale transcribed fragments of many in his Life eighteen years ago; and from that and other sources I have pieced together all that can be salved of that intense but fruitless friendship.

  What, we may well wonder, was the suspicious Rolfe’s reply to Fr Benson’s first letter? Knowing his distrust of Roman priests, I cannot believe that it was other than guarded and remote. One sentence survives. Commenting on Benson’s remark that Hadrian had taught him the value of loneliness, Rolfe rejoined ‘May I say that experience has taught me the frightful harm of it when compulsory?’ But Benson’s enthusiasm and frankness soon broke down the barrier of Rolfe’s reserve. In May he wrote that he had put Hadrian among the three books from which he wished never to be separated, though he proposed to paste together certain pages upon Socialists as too wholly sordid. But Rolfe demurred, and Benson agreed to leave the novel that had brought them together ‘unbowdlerized’. Now began a correspondence described by Fr Martindale (probably the only man living who has read it) as ‘somewhat labouredly humorous at first, but afterwards terribly stripped of affectations, especially on Benson’s harassed side’, full of ‘resentments, reconciliations, explanations and confidences’. For once Rolfe had met his match as a correspondent. Letters passed to or fro almost daily, in itself a sign of the importance attached by Benson to this new connection, for he warned even his intimates that he had no time to write more than once a month. He confessed to Rolfe that he was always quarrelling with his best friends; in return Rolfe cast his horoscope, and ascribed the pugnacity of both to the influence of their stars.

  It is doubtful if anyone now knows the circumstances of the first meeting of these two queer men. Both were reluctant to risk a personal encounter for fear of disappointment. The fear seems to have been a vain one, for in August (1905) they set out on a walking tour together, each equipped ‘with a shirt or so, a toothbrush, and a breviary’, intending not to enter large towns but to seek small country inns. No record exists of their itinerary, but imagination is free to invent endless conversations on literature and liturgy, Rolfe’s recitals of his wrongs and hopes, Benson’s talk of his plans. The friendship survived, even seemed cemented by, this ordeal of juxtaposition. Benson’s friends were astonished, and some, indeed, dismayed, at the ascendancy acquired by his strange new acquaintance. Mr Vyvyan Holland, the witty translator of Julian Green, writes:

  As an undergraduate at Cambridge in 1906 I enjoyed, for a short time, a close acquaintanceship with Father Hugh Benson, and quite the most vivid recollection I have of him is of the influence that a mysterious Mr Rolfe seemed to have over him. Father Benson’s description of Rolfe was of a quiet gentle man of great intellectual attainments who spent most of his life in obscure study at Oxford. They were in constant communication with one another.

  At that time Father Benson was deeply absorbed in all questions concerning magic, necromancy and spiritualism, and spent a good deal of his time in reviewing books on these subjects. He had been deeply impressed with Rolfe’s casting of horoscopes. According to Benson, if Rolfe knew the exact place, and the time to the minute, of anyone’s birth, he could lay down a scheme for the conduct of his life, in such matters as when it would be wise to go on a journey, or invest money. Father Benson admitted that he himself had paid a good deal of attention to the rules laid d
own for himself in his own horoscope. He said that Rolfe had evidently devoted a vast amount of time to the study of the stars, had found a number of very obscure books on the subject, including one quite unknown book by Albertus Magnus, and that he probably knew more about astrology than any living man.

  The most interesting story, by far, that Father Benson told me was of an experiment in ‘White Magic’ which he had carried out at Rolfe’s request. Rolfe wrote to him one day in a great state of excitement and told him that he had discovered, either in his Albertus Magnus book or in some mediaeval manuscript, instructions as to how to bring about a certain event. He would not, at that juncture, reveal what that event was, but he implored Father Benson to make the experiment.

  As the experiment consisted mainly in the repetition of certain prayers and in certain periods of religious contemplation, Father Benson saw no harm in carrying it out. Certain rules were also laid down concerning hours of rising and retiring and the avoiding of certain foods and drink. I remember that no alcohol of any sort was allowed! The period for this regime was to be from ten days to a fortnight.

  At the end of the period stated, Father Benson told me that he distinctly saw a white figure whose features were quite indistinguishable, mounted on a horse, ride slowly into the middle of his room and there halt for about half a minute, after which it slowly faded away. He immediately sat down and wrote his impression to Rolfe, who replied by return enclosing what purported to be a transcription of the passage from the book containing the instructions. This said that, if the instructions were faithfully carried out, at the end of ten days or a fortnight the experimenter would see ‘riding towards him the White Knight with visor down’. Benson showed me this at the time and was deeply impressed by the last words, which seemed to explain why he could not distinguish the features of his horseman.

  I give this story as it was told to me. Father Benson had, I think, been delving a little too deeply into mysticism at that time, and struck me as being in a very nervous state. But he undoubtedly believed that he had seen the horseman and that Rolfe’s transcription was honest and genuine. If the story shows nothing else, it undoubtedly shows how great an influence Rolfe then had over Father Benson.

  Some time later, it was agreed that the two should collaborate in a book. Benson had already suggested that they should live together in adjacent cottages, not meeting till 2.30 p.m., the hour when he became tolerant and tolerable. The subject decided upon for collaboration was St Thomas of Canterbury, who was to be the theme of a romantic history contrived by Rolfe’s favourite artifice of transcribing from a pretended contemporary chronicler. The proposal promised several advantages to Rolfe. First, Benson’s name was already well known; his novels commanded a far larger sale than Rolfe’s could hope for. Secondly, and more important, Rolfe’s name bracketed with Benson’s on a title-page would do much to restore him to the goodwill of the authorities of his Church, who viewed with distrust the outcast subject of the newspaper attack, the hero (or villain) of the Holywell scandal, and the author of Hadrian the Seventh. Thirdly, it would fix by a visible bond his relationship with a priest who might easily become a Bishop – in which event Benson had laughingly promised that one of his first acts would be to ordain Fr. Rolfe. In recognition of these advantages, Rolfe refused to take the half-share which Benson equitably offered, and would accept only one-third of the profits which it was hoped were to spring from St Thomas.

  The understanding seems to have been that Benson would do most of the actual writing, Rolfe the necessary research. Part of the never-completed romance survives, much varied from Benson’s original letter of suggestions:

  May 10, 1906

  I propose that the story be told by the monk, in the same kind of way that Don Tarquinio and Richard Raynal do it, a purported translation from Old French. 2. That no female interest enters into it, except in the Platonic love of the monk for a female child of the age of ten years, whom he thinks to be like our Lady, but who turns out to be entirely soulless (?). 3. . . . That the book is written at the command of the King, in the old age of the monk, resembling the other biographies. 4. . . . That the monk has strong and vivid artistic perceptions and is occupied by his community in some branch of handicraft. . . . 5. . . . That we get the vignette scheme by giving extracts only from his book, with caustic comments of our own – not many footnotes – but a good deal of chronicle in our own words. This will enable us to concentrate all our attention upon descriptive word-painting, and to serve up mystical reflections as we should wish to see them done. We can write the historical interludes in a sharp breezy way, which will be an agreeable relief from his musings. 6. My theory in all this is that the artistic object is shown up through the coloured lights of the various personalities. In this way we shall get at least three, the monk’s, yours, and mine. 7. As to the scheme of the book, I suggest three parts.

  1. Begin with the departure of our man (Gervase?) at the age of fifteen years to be page to the Lord Chancellor. (Fortunately Thomas was very intimate with his servants; cf. Thomas of Bosham.) Almost at once Thomas becomes Archbishop, and the part ends with his consecration in 1162.

  2. Begin by description of St Thomas’s life. Gervase becomes novice at Christ Church Convent; attached to Thomas; goes with him to Northampton; row; flight of Thomas; Gervase says good-bye to him at Sandwich in 1164.

  3. Six years have elapsed. Last Christmas. Arrival of Thomas. Martyrdom. First miracles.

  Please send comments some time soon, as I am beginning to warm up about it. Please also remember that my method, when once begun, is to work like lightning, and then to take a rest. I can’t plod at all. I shall start to read hard presently.

  Agreement as to the terms of the collaboration was reached in August 1906, when Rolfe was staying with the Pirie-Gordons. For one reason and another, however, no active steps were taken immediately. Benson always had his hands more or less full, and Rolfe was occupied by his Oxford duties and his lawsuit.

  When the long-protracted case was at last called, on 17 December, Benson was present at the hearing, heard his friend cross-examined, and saw him break down. Hugh Benson would have been less than human, perhaps, if his feeling as to the desirability of Fr. Rolfe as a collaborator had remained unchanged by what he heard. It did not. In any event he had outlived the first flush of his admiration for the author of Hadrian the Seventh.

  In the following year, however (1907), when Rolfe was at Gwernvale with time on his hands, the project was resumed. ‘You once said to me that Plot was your weak point’, Benson wrote. ‘I think there is truth in that. What you can do (Good Lord, how you can!) is to build up a situation when you’ve got it. You are a vignette-, a portrait-, not a landscape-painter, a maker of chords, not of progressions. . . . Therefore I am strongly inclined to collaboration . . . I think I may be able to make a plot sometime in the summer.’ The plot was devised, Benson caught fire again, and a start was made. Rolfe set down all sorts of technical phrases and facts, vignettes of the period and notes of customs, in a small notebook which went backwards and forwards between the two romancers. He sent descriptions and sketches of dresses, maps and plans of places, details of monastic life peculiar to Canterbury, as fuel for the writing fury which possessed his partner. Some time after 30 September, Benson read his beginning aloud to Fr X, who ‘laughed and shook with joy’. Rolfe, too, was writing hard at alternate chapters.

  By October, St Thomas, though not finished, was well under way. And then, unexpectedly, Benson wrote to Rolfe suggesting an alteration to their agreement; or, as the latter phrased it, ‘showed the cloven hoof’.

  He explained that during a recent visit to London, his agent, whom he did not name, had advised him that the proposed romance would have a far greater sale if Benson’s name appeared on the title-page unencumbered with that of a collaborator. Accordingly, since it was the main object of both authors to gain as much money as possible, he proposed to Rolfe that St Thomas should appear as ‘by Robert Hugh Benson’, a
nd that a generous acknowledgement should be made, in a note, of ‘Mr Rolfe’s assistance’. The money arrangements were to stand unaltered; i.e., Rolfe was to receive a third. It cannot be gainsaid that the suggestion was a cool one; and Rolfe very naturally demurred. The point was argued. ‘Benson was very upset by a further refusal’, says his biographer. ‘He offered to make Mr Rolfe a present of all, absolutely, that he himself had hitherto written and discovered, with full leave to publish it as his own.’ But when he did so, ‘he foresaw that Rolfe would refuse this’, as in fact he did. Benson would make no other terms, and finally Rolfe, unwillingly, gave way.

  But though Rolfe agreed to the new terms, the alteration of the agreement revived his sense of persecution in full force. He had, it can hardly be denied, some ground for grievance, since, in fact, the gaining of money had been only a part of the advantage which he looked for from the collaboration; but, as usual, he magnified his grievance into a nightmare, and saw himself again as the priest-hunted Nowt of Holywell surrounded by foes. He expressed this point of view in a letter to Mrs Gordon:

  It is horrible to tell you what I think of Benson. So horrible that I am forcing myself not to come to any definite conclusion about him. I have only his actions before me; and I refuse to pronounce or even to form a final opinion about them. You know that we began the Thomas book in August 1906. It was entirely his own voluntary proposal. He said that if we wrote a book together, it would rehabilitate me publicly among Catholics, make publishers look more favourably on my own works, and get me a decent sum of money. He chose the subject; and offered me half profits. I was so grateful that I refused half and would only accept a third; and I promised to do my very best and to let him have his own way entirely in the book. Then the thing dilly-dallied till last Autumn, when he suddenly began to write in a violent spurt. I tottered after him as best I could. Then, Benson most peremptorily required me to sign a bond agreeing that his name should stand alone as author of the book. He said that his agent (whose name he refused to give) told him that he could make more money this way, and he promised that my share should be ‘several hundreds of pounds with £100 on day of publication’. This proposal was a radical difference to our agreement. The only ambition I have is to be independent. The original agreement was to help me to that. The new proposal kept me a sponger upon other people’s charity. Which I detest with all my heart. . . .