Autumn 1909, and winter, I lived on the open landing of a servant’s stair, chopping and carrying firewood and doing a fattorini’s job. And I managed to write another book. This I offered to assign to Barbieri (to the amount of my debt) if he’d give me any sort of refuge where I could work. The sneers and insults I endure are indescribable. I live in a dark den on the floor of the narrow side-alley, where no sun has ever been, where I have trapped 61 rats since June, served after servants, and without a soul to speak to, and with clothes unchanged since Aug. 1908. And so on. But you act, not in cold blood, but in anger. Oh, my God! Hostile? No: I am not hostile to anyone who has not robbed me of my work, of my means of living, of my tools of trade. Olive-branch? No: if I offer olive-branches, I label myself as a conquered coward, a sucker-up, a toad-eater, the potential spunger you think me. So I wait for olive-branches to be offered to me. It’s no good writing any more. I shall never make you understand. You had a chance of making an equal and a friend. And you threw it away. We were both losers. But I’m the one who suffered.
R.
Weeks and months wore away; the winter of 1910, Rolfe’s third in Venice, passed; and at the end of January 1911 he was again turned out of the hotel. Again he fell ill, but recovered without hospital treatment. On the occasion of his former collapse it happened that Queen Alexandra visited Venice and the Hospital where he lay, and spoke soothing words to the apparently dying man. Moved by Rolfe’s second expulsion, the Italian hotel-secretary wrote to ‘beg Your Majesty to grant Her interest to the English writer, Mr Rolfe, who after being unable to satisfy his living expenses since last Spring is now wandering homeless on the Lido island in this piercing cold’. The kind-hearted Queen sent £10 through the English consul, who thought it well not to let the haggard beneficiary know the source from whence it came. Summer returned, and he was still alive.
During the next few months he seems to have lived on pride and quarrels and sheer determination not to die. Writing from a garret or a gondola, he organized his insults, and showed himself more than ever a master of derogatory nuance. ‘You must not be offended’, he wrote ironically to Mr Taylor, ‘when I say that I could not have believed that a responsible firm of solicitors could have made so meek and ridiculous an admission of failure to act in their client’s interests as your letter of vii June – for which I thank you.’ Later, ‘This is a more formal letter than the one which indignation at your stupidity and my sense of the ridiculous extorted from me yesterday’. To Pirie-Gordon he wrote indignantly, ‘Have I got a job? No. And won’t. How can I get a job in tatters and slippers and no pocket-handkerchiefs? It was your business to get me a job months ago.’ Then it was Mr Taylor’s turn again: ‘The line of unsupported assertion and attempted bluff which you are so misjudged as to use to me only serves to define your unfitness in more glaring colour.’ Sometimes he used a more elaborate sarcasm: ‘As a blameless Erastian and the most blameless of agents you may not know that the Doctor Saint Alphonsus Ligorius lays down in his Moral Theology this axiom . . .’ What he wrote to Benson can only be guessed! Sometimes he varied the note by trying to move Pirie-Gordon to reconciliation:
. . . And, while these lovely things are amusing me, there you all sit snuffling with awful and sinful pomp and dignity at him whom you have plundered and vainly tried to crush. Why continue to think me horrible? For Goodness’ Sake do try to get to the Height of the Comic Cosmic Viewpoint. You must traverse the Valley of the Shadow. The Realm of White Light is only reached through the Ravine of Ultra-Violet despair. Get up on the Comic Cone and peep at yourself in passing. View your meaningless gyrations and senseless circumvolutions in perspective. Stop your sulking; and come out on the blue blue blue (turquoise, sapphire, and sometimes) indigo blue (aquamarine) lagoon. Squatting in your stews, you taint the light-dowered air. And your livers get into your eyes, and your hearts into your boots. People who can’t change their minds are in danger of losing them. It is Mirth alone which keeps men sane. Oh yes – and, Life is Mind out for a Lark. Well, now?
He wrote dozens of letters, all venomous and all different, though he seldom descended to mere abuse. One began ‘Quite cretinous creature’; another ended ‘Bitterest execrations’. ‘Your faithful enemy’ was perhaps his favourite termination. Most of them were marked ‘This is all without prejudice, and I reserve all rights in this and previous communications.’ Meanwhile his pride remained unbroken. One day he met Dr van Someren, who listened to his stories of new outrage and hardships. Rolfe mentioned a sum of 800 lire (about £30) as the amount necessary for his salvation. It chanced that the Doctor, who was on his way back from the bank, had in his pocket exactly the sum named. Impulsively moved by the coincidence, he handed it to Rolfe. Next day his money was returned with the message, ‘I cannot give such a hypocrite the satisfaction of this theatrical gesture.’
Rescue came unexpectedly by post from England. Mr Justin wrote that he had seen Mr Taylor, who seemed a very reasonable man. In consequence, he was certain that the projected financial support could be arranged. Legal formalities took time; meanwhile the kindly clergyman sent his working partner an advance loan.
There ensued for Rolfe a St Martin’s Summer of prosperity. His bond to Mr Taylor was discharged (upon, it must be said in fairness to the much maligned Mr Taylor, terms of great generosity. He had lent over £400 to Rolfe on the security of his books, all claim on which he relinquished for less than a quarter of that sum). The way was clear at last for the man who had so long cried out that, given time and money, he would write and write and write. Both were given him, and he did nothing: it was too late. He made a few beginnings, he recopied his Venetian satire more beautifully than ever, and, since there was no longer an impediment, he accepted the offer for The Weird of the Wanderer. All through 1912 he received cheque after cheque from his partner (or victim) in England; and spent the money without thought of the morrow, wildly and without restraint. He, who had starved on three-centesimi rolls, who had implored to be employed as second gondolier, now flaunted himself on the canals with a new boat and (a privilege usually reserved for royalty) four gondoliers. The sails of his gondola were painted by his own hand; and he dyed his hair (what remained) red. The long days of destitution and unchanged clothes were liberally compensated now, when he became the talk of Venice by his extravagance: it was rumoured that his bedroom was hung with the material of cardinals’ robes. His old debts were paid and he moved freely; but his exactions and excuses were continuous. He wrote for fifty pounds, fifty pounds again, then again for more still; he became an open drain upon his patron’s purse.
Perhaps he knew instinctively that his time was short. Even so, he lived too long. By the beginning of 1913 Mr Justin’s funds were exhausted; he had parted with much more than £1,000; not a penny was recouped from Rolfe’s books; and, reluctantly, Justin resigned himself to lose what he had lent, and warned the spendthrift (concerning whose spendings he was ignorant of all save the total) that he could not go on. Can the infatuated writer have imagined that the golden stream was unabatable? At least he seems not to have preserved a penny against such an ending, for now once more the story of misfortunes starts. Here is his last letter to Mr Justin:
My dear Man:
I’m in an awful state; and I firmly believe that I’m finished if I don’t get relief instanter.
The last fortnight has been a chapter of misfortunes. I’ve been literally fighting for life through a series of storms. Do you realize what that means in a little boat, leaky and so coated with weed and barnacles by a summer’s use, that it is almost too heavy to move with the oar, and behaves like an inebriate in winds or weather? I assure you it’s no joke. And storms get up on this lagoon in ten minutes, leaving no time to make a port. I’m frequently struggling for 50-60 hours on end. Results: I’ve lost about 300 pages of my new MS of Hubert’s Arthur. Parts were oiled by a lamp blown over them: winds and waves carried away the rest. At every possible minute I am rewriting them: but, horrible to say, grey mists flo
at about my eyecorners just through sheer exhaustion. The last few days I have been anchored near an empty island, Sacca Fisola, not too far away from civilization to be out of reach of fresh water, but lonely enough for dying alone in the boat if need be. Well, to shew you how worn out I am, I frankly say that I have funked it. This is my dilemma. I’ll be quite plain about it. If I stay out on the lagoon, the boat will sink, I shall swim perhaps for a few hours, and then I shall be eaten alive by crabs. At low water every mudbank swarms with them. If I stay anchored near an island, I must keep continually awake: for, the moment I cease moving, I am invaded by swarms of swimming rats, who in the winter are so voracious that they attack even man who is motionless. I have tried it. And have been bitten. Oh my dear man you can’t think how artful fearless ferocious they are. I rigged up two bits of chain, lying loose on my prow and poop with a string by which I could shake them when attacked. For two nights the dodge acted. The swarms came (up the anchor rope) and nuzzled me: I shook the chains: the beasts plopped overboard. Then they got used to the noise and sneered. Then they bit the strings. Then they bit my toes and woke me shrieking and shaking with fear.
Now this is what I have done. I am perfectly prepared to persevere to the end. So I have taken the boat to a ‘squero’ to be repaired. This will take a fortnight. When she is seaworthy again, I’ll go out and face my fate in her. Meanwhile I’m running a tick at the Cavalletto, simply that I may eat and sleep to write hard at restoring the 300 odd pages of Hubert’s Arthur. When that is done, the boat will be ready. I will assign that MS to you and send it.
My dear man, I am so awfully lonely. And tired. Is there no chance of setting me straight?
Ever yours
R.
Were these horrors real, or invented in the hope of a further cheque? The letter is not precisely dated, and may have been written early in September 1913; it was not until the 26th of October that death superseded Mr Justin as Fr. Rolfe’s last benefactor.
The British Consul, Mr Gerald Campbell, was called to take charge of the dead man’s belongings, and wrote to his brother:
Your brother had been in good health and spirits of late, and dined at his usual restaurant, Hotel Cavaletto, on Saturday night, leaving there about 9 p.m. with a friend, Mr Wade-Browne, who occupied rooms in his apartment. On Sunday the latter called out to him, but receiving no answer thought that he was still asleep. Towards three o’clock in the afternoon he went into his bedroom and found your brother lying dead upon the bed. He was fully dressed and it would seem that he had died in the act of undoing his boots and had fallen on the bed, knocking down the candle, which, fortunately, went out. The English doctor was called in but could do nothing beyond helping Mr Wade-Browne to notify the authorities and summon your brother’s usual medical attendant. The police came in the evening and removed the body to the Hospital Mortuary and locked up the apartment. The following morning the hospital doctor certified that the cause of death was in all probability heart failure. This diagnosis was subsequently confirmed.
Searching through the dead man’s papers for the address of his relatives, the horrified Consul found letters, drawings and notebooks sufficient to cause a hundred scandals, which showed plainly enough what Fr. Rolfe’s life had been. Even his business affairs were utterly disordered. Herbert Rolfe, who had journeyed from England to bury his brother, could make nothing of them; despite Mr Justin’s help, Fr. Rolfe died, as he lived, insolvent. Horatio Brown was asked to read and advise on the value of the unpublished Venetian satire, but refused; ultimately, all the non-compromising papers were sent to the principal creditor, the unlucky Justin.
By a final irony, the Aberdeen Free Press, apparently forgetful of its onslaught fifteen years before, wrote Rolfe’s epitaph.
AN ENGLISHMAN’S DEATH IN VENICE
MR FREDERICK ROLFE
A Reuter telegram from Venice says that Mr Frederick Rolfe, of London, a writer on historical subjects, has been found dead in his apartments by a friend.
Mr Frederick Rolfe is presumably Frederick William S. L. A. M. Rolfe, the author of Chronicles of the House of Borgia, Hadrian the Seventh, and other works.
Mr Rolfe was well known in Aberdeen. He studied for the priesthood at the Scots College, Rome, but did not pursue a clerical career. Through the influence of Mr Ogilvie-Forbes he came to Aberdeenshire, and resided for a considerable time at Boyndlie. He afterwards lived in Aberdeen, where he became favourably known in literary and musical circles. Subsequently he removed to London, where he wrote extensively under the pen-name of ‘Baron Corvo’, and he came into considerable prominence through an article in a popular monthly, How I was Buried Alive. In London he was highly esteemed for his literary culture and his skill as a writer. He was a man of extraordinary genius and versatility, a clever writer, musician, and artist.
CHAPTER 18: EPITAPH
The twisted career so sharply ended prompts questions which the wisest cannot answer. There is no easy explanation of genius or talent: they exist and we accept them as facets of creative force. Some measure of artistic power or sensibility is inherent in all humanity; ‘genius’ is as good a word as any other to denote those exceptional beings in whom, unaccountably, it rises to full force. And Rolfe was a defeated man of genius.
But although it is beyond the biographer’s power to explain the aesthetic aptitudes and ability of his subject (if his subject possesses them), he may be able to trace and define the character which they accompany. And so, though the peculiar inner energy which possessed Fr. Rolfe is beyond analysis, the external events of his life, and his reactions to them, can be collated and made comprehensible. They make clear the cause of his defeat.
The starting point of his complex character is that he was sexually abnormal, that he was one of those unlucky men in whom the impulses of passion are misdirected. What the causes are of this condition, so frequently disastrous to those whom it encircles, is still debated by authorities. Luckily, it is unnecessary, for the purposes of this inquiry, to decide whether it is a congenital flaw, or an injury of the spirit, or a premature fixation in a juvenile state through which most of humanity passes and emerges unharmed. The fact that Rolfe’s was a difficult birth was regarded by his family, perhaps rightly, as the origin of his eccentricities. But, though inquiry into cause may be neglected, it is essential, if Fr. Rolfe is to be understood, to realize that he did not choose his condition: that it possessed him from early years, and that he was almost powerless to alter it.
The record of ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy shows that homosexual feeling need not bar the development of personality, or stand in the way of a successful life; but Rolfe lived in Victorian England, and must perforce have realized, probably at an early age, that this tendency in himself was in opposition to the world in which he lived. At that point began the long dilemma of his life.
His temperament instinctively prompted the choice of schoolmastership as a career. By proximity he could satisfy his interest in masculine youth, which (again, probably) he did not yet recognize as a form of sexual sensitiveness. But though the nature of his feeling may not have been recognized consciously, beneath the surface his subconsciousness could not be unaware. The resulting unseen, internal conflict brought him, if not a knowledge of his own nature, a knowledge at least of his unusualness. He saw that he was not as other men.
The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography (Valancourt eClassics) Page 25