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

THE QUEST FOR CORVO

AN EXPERIMENT IN BIOGRAPHY

A. J. A. SYMONS

VALANCOURT BOOKS

The Quest for Corvo
by A.J.A. Symons

Originally published London: Cassell, 1934

First Valancourt Books digital edition 2014

Copyright © 1934 by A.J.A. Symons

Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia

http://www.valancourtbooks.com

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher, constitutes an infringement of the copyright law.

CONTENTS

TO

SHANE LESLIE

Prefatory Note to the Original Edition

It will be apparent to any reader of the following pages that I am under heavy obligations to many friends and correspondents. Most of these debts are acknowledged, explicitly or by inference, in the course of my narrative; a certain number, however, require separate statement, and accordingly I take this opportunity to offer thanks to Messrs Vyvyan Holland and Vincent Ranger, whose careful reading of the proofs of this book has saved it from many errors; to Mr Shane Leslie, Mr Desmond MacCarthy, and Sir John Squire, who have for many years recognized Baron Corvo’s powers as a writer, and encouraged me in my task; to Mr D. Churton Taylor, who has spared no pains in ransacking both his office files and his memory; to Mr Stephen Gaselee, by whose kindness I was permitted to examine certain papers referring to Corvo contained in the Foreign Office files and in the Consulate at Venice; to Mr E. F. Benson for permission to print letters written by his brother; to Miss Kathleen Rolfe for permission to print letters written to her father; to Mr John Holden for a letter which had the length and merits of an independent essay; to my wife, always my patient listener; to Trevor Haddon for his interesting ‘intermission’; to Mr J. Maundy Gregory for many favours and his share in the Quest; to Mr and Mrs Philip Gosse, in whose garden the last chapter was written; to Mr Brian Hill and Dr Geoffrey Keynes, by whose assent I had access to the Corvo papers of the late A. T. Bartholomew; to Dr G. C. Williamson and Mr R. H. Cust for suggestions and the loan of material; to Mr G. Campbell, formerly Consul at Venice; to Mr Grant Richards, Professor R. M. Dawkins, Mrs van Someren, Mr Sholto Douglas, Canon Ragg and the many others who have supplied me with personal reminiscences, particularly Mr Harry Pirie-Gordon; and finally to Mr Ian Black, without whose practical assistance the writing of this book would have been delayed at least a year. Alone among the characters the Rev. Stephen Justin is presented under a fictitious name.

I have ventured to call
The Quest for Corvo
‘an experiment in Biography’ to signify that it is an attempt to fulfil those standards which I endeavoured to set up in an essay on biographical tradition published by the Oxford University Press in 1929.
[1]

CHAPTER I: THE PROBLEM

My quest for Corvo was started by accident one summer afternoon in 1925, in the company of Christopher Millard. We were sitting lazily in his little garden, talking of books that miss their just reward of praise and influence. I mentioned
Wylder’s Hand,
by Le Fanu, a masterpiece of plot, and the
Fantastic Fables
of Ambrose Bierce. After a pause, without commenting on my examples, Millard asked: ‘Have you read
Hadrian the Seventh
?’ I confessed that I never had; and to my surprise he offered to lend me his copy – to my surprise, for my companion lent his books seldom and reluctantly. But, knowing the range of his knowledge of out-of-the-way literature, I accepted without hesitating; and by doing so took the first step on a trail that led into very strange places.

Millard comes into this story more than once; and a short digression regarding him will not be out of place. I am glad, indeed, to pay his memory the tribute of these words, for to me at that time, living in the country by preference, in London by profession, he was one of the compensations of town, as he must have been to many others. His queer character and odd way of living offered unending contradictions and problems for an intelligent observer; nevertheless I could rely on him to provide literary conversation, and a glass of Val de Pe
ñ
as, at almost any hour of the day or night. Contrariety was perhaps his most consistent attribute. At Oxford he flouted the authorities in acts of noisy folly; in early manhood he became an enthusiastic Jacobite, ostentatiously laying his white rose at King Charles the First’s feet every year, and acknowledging Prince Rupert of Bavaria as his rightful sovereign; in later years he became an ardent Socialist, wore flaming ties, and (to the astonishment of yokels) sang ‘The Red Flag’ very loudly in quiet country inns. Yet, despite his Oxford antics, he took a good degree; despite his Jacobite feelings he fought very loyally for King George; and his Socialist views did not prevent him from incarnating most of the Conservative virtues.

His history was a sad one, though he never obtruded it. He had filled many posts with ability. Turn by turn he was schoolmaster, assistant-editor of the
Burlington Magazine,
secretary to Robert Ross, record-clerk in the War Office. Under the pen-name of Stuart Mason he compiled a bibliography of the writings of Oscar Wilde, under his own a catalogue of the work of Lovat Fraser; and each remains a model of its kind. But what had been folly at Oxford became criminal misdemeanour in later life, and he felt the lash of the law; it was, indeed, his imprisonment that taught him Socialism and sympathy with the working man. After the War he became a dealer, in a small way, in rare and unusual books; and by this means, a small pension, and a legacy of £100 a year which his friend Ross had left him, he lived. Nevertheless he was (for such a man) painfully poor. He lived entirely alone (unless the tits he fed counted for company) in a small bungalow hidden behind a Victorian villa in Abercorn Place, reached by descending area steps and walking round the side of the house. His establishment consisted of a sitting-room (with bookshelves modelled on those of Aubrey Beardsley) in which he kept his stock, a small bedroom, also lined with books, a tiny kitchen-bathroom, and a shed or shelter in which, during fine weather, he slept in open air.

If Millard could have maintained this bungalow without financial cares he would have been completely happy; but though his tastes were simple, his simplicity was of the sort that is satisfied only with good things. He would buy salmon for his supper, carry it home in greased paper, and cook it himself; but it must be Scotch, and a prime cut. Bread and cheese would suffice for his lunch, but the cheese must be a choice Stilton. Modern beer was his despair; and he abhorred in equal measure imported meat, and credit accounts. In the matter of wine he was less exacting: he relied upon a reasonable Val de Pe
ñ
as, which he bought cheaply from a shipper friend, and drank at any hour that pleased him. Indeed, despite his cramping poverty, he contrived to live almost entirely as he pleased. He rose early or late, and idled or worked, according to his mood. When the successful sale of a book brought him a profit, he would live in perfect contentment until the money was gone; not till then would he look about for more. Much of his time he spent in correspondence with literary Americans on points of bibliographical research: he had an eighteenth-century appetite and aptitude for that pastime. But he would instantly interrupt any work in favour of conversation with a friend; and his love of poetry and close acquaintance with nineteenth-century English literature made his conversation particularly agreeable to me.

In person this natural philosopher was a striking figure. More than six feet tall, always hatless, dressed in dark blue shirt, grey flannel trousers, and green jacket (all of which he mended and patched with his own hands when necessary), he had an air and dignity which never left him. A deep voice and abundant, greying, curling hair, set off this confident carriage; he was perhaps the most self-possessed man I have ever known. He was certainly the most self-sufficient: not only did he live alone, he made his own bed, washed his own dishes, cooked his own meals, and even, I believe, sometimes made his own clothes. A queer character in modern London; but such was the man to whom I owe my first knowledge of the life and work of Baron Corvo. Alas, that he did not live to learn the end of the story.

The title-page of
Hadrian the Seventh,
dated 1904, proclaimed it to be the work of Fr. Rolfe, of whom I had never heard. I began to read it filled with curiosity as to Millard’s reason for departing from his principle that a man who wants to read a book should buy it; but before I had turned twenty pages my curiosity deepened into gratitude for his recommendation: I felt that interior stir with which we all recognize a transforming new experience. As soon as I had finished the story I read it through again, only to find my first impression enhanced. It seemed to me then, it seems to me still, one of the most extraordinary achievements in English literature: a minor achievement, doubtless, but nevertheless a feat of writing difficult to parallel; original, witty, obviously the work of a born man of letters, full of masterly phrases and scenes, almost flabbergasting in its revelation of a vivid and profoundly unusual personality.

From the absence of any indication to the contrary on the title-page of the tattered first edition that Millard had lent me, I inferred that this remarkable experiment in fiction was its author’s first book: first novel, at least. The plot, though well conceived and executed, gives evidence, in some details, of inexperience and an unpractised hand. Nevertheless the story is astonishing in its depth and force, and survives the summarization which is necessary to display its effect on me when I first read it.

The ‘Prooimion’ reveals George Arthur Rose vainly endeavouring to work while almost prostrate from the pain of an arm on the tenth day of vaccination. His work is writing; and from the detailed description of his possessions and surroundings which follows, it becomes credible as well as clear that this poor, lonely and misanthropic sufferer in a suburban bed-sitting-room is a remarkable man as well as a struggling author. There are many characters in literature intended to impress such a conviction on the reader’s mind; very few succeed. But George Arthur Rose, suffering from pain as from a personal affront, sitting in his low, shabby brocade armchair, with a drawing-board tilted on his knee, and his little yellow cat asleep on the tilted board; with two publisher’s dummies at his hand, one a compendium of phrases transcribed in his archaic script, the other a private dictionary compiled by forming Greek and Latin compounds to enrich his English vocabulary (which includes such ‘simple but pregnant’ formations as ‘hybrist’ and ‘gingilism’); who counts the split infinitives in the day’s newspaper while he dines on soup, haricot beans, and a baked apple; who carefully preserves the ends of his cigarettes so that he may break them up and make a fresh cigarette when he has sufficient quantity; whose mantelpiece holds, with other queer things, the cards of five literary agents, and another inscribed
Verro precipitevolissemevolmente
; whose garret windows are always open to the full; who exists in terrified anticipation of the postman’s knock; this man starts to instant life in Fr. Rolfe’s pages, for the best of all reasons (as I discovered later): because he was Fr. Rolfe himself.

The action opens with an unexpected visit to this impoverished eccentric from a Cardinal and a Bishop. In the long, electric conversation that follows, many things become apparent. George Arthur Rose is a Catholic, and a rejected candidate for priesthood, still smarting from the bitter injustice done him twenty years before, when his superiors decided against his vocation. Nevertheless Rose has never wavered in his personal confidence in that Call which his fellow-Catholics have neither recognized nor tolerated. After leaving the theological college under a cloud, he has contrived to keep himself alive by shift after shift, though time and again betrayed by friends of his own faith. Still, after twenty years, he holds an undiminished belief that he has a Divine Vocation to the priesthood, an unswerving resolution to attain it. All this is implied to the reader in the course of Rose’s verbal fencing with the two priests, which is conducted by the author with a skill not far short of Meredith’s at his best. The feline figure of Rose, sore, suspicious, ready to take offence at any slighting word, immovably convinced of the justice of his cause, moves alive in front of us; we can hear his voice.

The motive for the ecclesiastical visit is disclosed. A tardily penitent friend of George Arthur Rose, aware of the shameful treatment that has been meted to him, has urged a reconsideration of his case. Thus prompted to an examination of this forgotten matter, the Cardinal in turn has been struck by Rose’s long faithfulness to his Call, and has in turn become convinced that a great wrong was committed twenty years before, when Holy Orders were refused to one who has since signally shown by his devotion that he deserved them. And so he has come to make belated amends, and to invite the outcast to prepare himself for reception into the ranks of the clergy.

Rose, who has been the dominating figure throughout the long interview, treats the proposal with magnificent coolness. He makes conditions. He must have a written admission of the wrongs that have been done him, and a sum of money equal to that which he has lost by his unpaid labours for Catholics who have defrauded him. The Cardinal is prepared; both points are conceded. And then Rose is at last moved from his chill reserve. He casts the acknowledgement of his injuries into the flames, not wishing, as he says, to preserve a record of his superior’s humiliation; and he gives back to charity half the sum presented in restitution. And he agrees to attend next day to receive from his Eminence’s hands the four Minor Orders. ‘Meanwhile, I will go and have a Turkish bath, and buy a Roman collar, and think myself back into my new – no – my
old
life.’ So ends one of the most unusual interviews in fiction.

The conclusion of the chapter is not less unusual. We stand behind the scenes and witness the admission of the candidate to priesthood. Word by word we hear his confession and examination. We hear his inner thoughts expressed, his avowal of belief; and with him we receive the blessing: ‘ego te absolvo
✠
in nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti. Amen. Go in peace and pray for me.’ The preliminaries are passed through without hitch, and the novice is to say his first mass in the private chapel, with the Bishop as his assistant and the Cardinal to serve him. After storm, this is indeed calm and peace for the man of wrongs.

*

The scene shifts abruptly to Rome, where the Papal Conclave is sitting to select a Pope. Here, too, we have a description which, though not unique, is rare in English literature. The method of procedure is carefully described, Scrutiny by Scrutiny; the Cardinals taking part are named, and the voting given. Unacquainted though I was with modern religious history, I guessed as I read, rightly, that many of the skilfully-sketched figures were portraits of real men.

After many vain attempts, there is still a deadlock: no member of the Sacred College can secure the necessary majority. The Way of Scrutiny having failed, the Way of Compromise is adopted: nine Cardinals are chosen by lot as compromissaries and invested with ‘absolute power and faculty to make provision of a pastor for the Holy Roman Church’. Still they are confronted by a clash of interests which prevents decision; still no certainty is felt of the suitability of any of the remaining Cardinals (the nine compromissaries have relinquished their own chances by accepting office). Providence intervenes. Struck by Rose’s likeness to one of the compromissaries, the English Cardinal tells the story of his amazing persistence in his vocation despite the hardships and trials of twenty years. The story makes a deep impression: far deeper than its narrator anticipates. Rose seems, to those who hear the tale of his tribulations and steadfastness, more than mortal clay. ‘You owe it to that man to propose him for the Paparchy,’ says one of the listeners; and so it comes about that he who was for so long rejected is taken to be the corner stone: George Arthur Rose is chosen as Pope.

There may seem, in this summary, to be more improbability in that turn of the story than there is as Rolfe presents it. He handles the problem of making anything so unlikely seem probable with skill. When Rose, attending the Cardinal in Rome, not knowing what is in store for him, learns with amazement that the choice has fallen on him, the reader also is agreeably astonished; for though he has been shown the breakdown of the Way of Scrutiny, and the necessity of Compromise, the secret of the selection is kept from him – as it is from Rose, until, in the Sistine Chapel, he hears an intense voice from the gloom reciting (in Latin) the question: ‘Reverend Lord, the Sacred College has elected thee to be the successor of St Peter. Wilt thou accept pontificality?’