The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography (Valancourt eClassics) (22 page)

This proposal perturbed the Pirie-Gordons. They knew Rolfe’s circumstances, and something, though by no means all, of his nature: enough to appreciate the hopelessness of his plan, and also to realize that a flat denunciation of it would strengthen his impracticable determination. So, in a tactful letter, Harry suggested that his collaborator should come back to England to discuss ways and means, to consider how much capital would be needed to make a start in a small way. Reluctantly Rolfe agreed. ‘It is annoying to have to waste time and money coming to England to get money,’ he wrote, ‘but, of course, I see that there is no other way. So, as you are all so very good as to have me, expect me very soon . . . then I will finish
Hubert
and write that infernal Benson book, and do what else is necessary to return here in February 1909. Only, I firmly abhor from the notion that one might “begin small”. For success, one must begin as one means to continue.’ And he asked for his fare back. He got it. He also got another £15 from Dawkins. But his departure for England continued to be delayed. First his excuse was that Professor Dawkins had created so bad an impression of the English by his niggardly treatment of the boatmen of Venice that he had felt constrained to set the matter right at his own expense. Then he admitted that he had used his passage money to pay his hotel bill. Then ‘I was all ready to start last Sunday week for England, ticket taken and insurance . . . Suddenly other unexpected liabilities to the extent of £20 sterling odd came in. I could not pay. Wrote to the last man I knew, begging. On Sunday he refused. So I am another week to the bad though I live on 40 pallanche a day all told; and fresh bills have come in making it now impossible for me to get away under £32 sterling. I am sure there are no more. As I said, so far, I have maintained a singularly honoured reputation and my credit is unimpaired. To leave obscurely or in disgrace will annul the excellent foundations which I have laid here . . . I am unable to finish
Hubert’s Arthur
until I have consulted you on various points of heraldry (and of good taste). I fear that I shall within the next few days find myself without money or friends or future in this foreign country. I am much annoyed by this.’

His friends in England were mystified by his manoeuvres. They knew that he had little or no money, and that without money he could not stop in Venice; yet in Venice he seemed determined to remain. Summer does not last for ever, even in Italy; Fr. Rolfe was no longer living in a boat, but in an hotel on credit, with a mounting bill. What was to be done? Pirie-Gordon was anxious for his return, anxious to complete the book in which he was collaborating; but it seemed useless to send more money to be spent in defeating the purpose for which it was intended. Benson, perhaps, desired his collaborator’s return less: tired of waiting, he had used the notes on St Thomas compiled by himself and Rolfe as the basis of a short biography about to be published over his own name.

Rolfe seems to have banked his hopes on Mr Taylor, who, since he had granted one loan on the strength of an insurance policy, would, he supposed, grant another on the strength of more insurance. But again Rolfe had misread the situation. Mr Taylor had made that final loan as a last hope; and had taken the insurance policy as cover
faute de mieux,
to set against the loss in which the whole transaction seemed likely to involve him. The effect of that meeting in Lincoln’s Inn Fields four years before had long ago worn off; and the solicitor, who had not received a penny from the ‘security’ of
Hadrian
or
Don Tarquinio,
had no longer any belief in the likelihood of his loans and costs being repaid from royalties earned by Rolfe’s books. He looked (as events proved, rightly) solely to the insurance policy for ultimate reimbursement; and, as he realized very well, he might have to pay premiums on that for many years. So, when faced by appeals for funds from Venice, he naturally wrote to say that he could make no more advances.

Even then Rolfe refused to return to the friends who would have supported him.

Well [he wrote to Harry Pirie-Gordon] I have told Taylor in effect that if he stops now, he loses all he has done so far. If he doesn’t mind, that’s his affair. Anyhow I’m tired out of trying to make bricks without straw. And I am not trying any more. A friend in need is a friend indeed. . . .

I have the habit of taking the air this way. There’s a small English
Ospedale
on Giudecca – English staff, patients chiefly sailors. I go over every afternoon in a
sandalo
and row convalescents about in the sun. They think no end of me. So does the matron, Miss Chaffey. Now Lady Layard (Queen of England in Venice), who adores the hospital, does so too. I choke ’em all off. What’s the good of making new friends when you may be denounced at the
questura
for debt any day? I don’t know what my expenses at the hotel are. I always burn the bills as I can’t pay them.

What was to be done? It is a proof of the sincerity of young Pirie-Gordon’s friendship that even now he did not abandon patience with his errant collaborator. ‘I cannot help thinking that we ought to do something for Rolfe’, he wrote to Mr Taylor, and suggested that, through the solicitor, he, Benson and Dawkins should remit a small sum – 45 lire, then nearly £2, weekly – to Rolfe’s landlord, – sufficient to keep Rolfe in modest style in Venice for three more months, by which time, he hoped, his friend would return to his senses, and home.

But the suggestion proved a useless one. Rolfe’s landlord refused to consider such an arrangement until the matter of what was already owing – approximately £40 – was dealt with, and warned Mr Taylor that Rolfe’s expenditure (which was ‘not excessive for a gentleman of even moderate means’) was double the proposed allowance. Letters of explanation went backwards and forwards, but no acceptable compromise was found, and in the end the sums subscribed for Rolfe’s benefit were returned to the three subscribers, Benson, Pirie-Gordon, and Dawkins.

The wheel had turned again. Rolfe was in the process of making new friends, but his old ones were not allowed to forget him. The familiar artillery of insulting letters was called into action. If the folly of the man is obvious, it is also tragic. Once more, torn by the distortion of his biassed vision, he saw himself playing the hero’s part in the drama of The One and the Many. His batteries were turned first on Benson, who received almost daily pages of abuse, in which he was called many names skilfully calculated for their wounding truth or half-truth. Prominent among them was the charge of being a ‘sadimaniac’. Another of Rolfe’s grievances was that when these erstwhile friends had agreed each to return the other’s letters, Benson’s letters to Rolfe had been sent back to him; but (taking heed from the violence of Rolfe’s tone that worse might follow) Benson had retained Rolfe’s letters to himself, ‘as a protection’. Hence it came about that, years later, Fr. Martindale had the advantage, denied to me, of reading both sides of the correspondence, which passed through the scale from fervent to frantic, from affection to hate.

The next object of attack was Mr Taylor. His main offence, naturally, lay in cutting off supplies; but almost level with it in Rolfe’s view was his action in writing to the Venetian landlord with the proposal for a weekly payment. ‘You have had an absolutely free hand in managing my affairs’, the client wrote, mild at first; ‘if they are unproductive, that can only be due to your mismanagement. Badly as I managed them myself before you took them over, I did contrive to make something of them. But you seem to have done nothing . . . I have yet to learn that you have even taken any steps whatever to quicken my publishers’ energies in regard to my books. . . . Your failure to keep to your agreement . . . ought to have opened my eyes to your indifference to my interests . . . I feel that my present position is entirely due to your negligence . . . Under these circumstances, I am desirous either of completely revising the nature of our connection, or of breaking it off and transferring my obligations and my assets to more capable administration. I shall therefore be glad to hear what you suggest.’ Nothing was, nothing could be, suggested, and so Rolfe refused to pass the proofs of his two books in the press (
Don Renato
and
Meleager
) and registered a protest against them with the Publishers’ Association.

Meanwhile Pirie-Gordon was not overlooked. He received a short note (enclosing a letter from the long suffering Venetian landlord threatening application to the Police failing payment of his bill) intimating that only a remittance by telegram could save the voluntary exile from prison. The bluff failed; no money was sent, by telegram or otherwise: so a later letter conveyed the information:

I am now simply engaged in dying as slowly and as publicly and as annoyingly to all of you professing and non-practising friends of mine as possible. Since Saturday (this is Thursday) I have contrived to cadge two lunches Tuesday and Wednesday and afternoon tea every day. Also I have scratched up a few walnuts and oranges. I have not slept in bed since Friday. Next Sunday I shall have exhausted these amenities. Then I shall steal the
sandalo
from the Bucintoro Club as usual, and go a little way on the lagoon, flying the two English flags, and taking an elaborate diary of my passion, with my passport, and select correspondence with all of you dastards, and play about till the end. You have made a show of me, and you shall have full value in return.

The principal drawback to this attitude was that, to give it effect, Rolfe had actually to die; and, as he knew very well, he was not of the stuff from which suicides are made. Despite his dismal expressions, and the utter penury to which he was by now reduced, he still clung to life and credit. No doubt he went ‘a little way out’ in the Club
sandalo
; but if so he returned. What he did in fact was to copy the letter in his letter book. It was important, in the wordy warfare which he was opening by this long-range bombardment, not to repeat himself.

CHAPTER 16: THE VENETIAN OUTCAST

What, meantime, had been happening in Venice? The letter to Pirie-Gordon proclaiming suicide is dated April 1909; Rolfe had got through his first Venetian winter by a skilful manipulation of credit and excuses. It was a remarkable feat; but his credit had several buttresses. In the first place, Rolfe had paid handsomely while he could, and was positive that he would not be long without funds. In the second, landlords of hotels in seasonal places welcome regular residents; and since ‘Mr Rolfe’ had expressed his intention of remaining permanently, Signor Barbieri, proprietor of the Hôtel Belle Vue et de Russie, had no wish to lose this customer, unless there was good cause. Further, Rolfe received many letters from England, mostly written on thick or official paper, the more hopeful-seeming of which he showed to the landlord, who saw that this ‘English’ had friends who were concerned on his behalf. But what proved the most convincing demonstration to the Italian hotel-keeper of the truth of his queer guest’s claim to have property in England, which would presently be profitable, was Mr Taylor’s official letter (enclosing cheque in advance) offering, on behalf of Benson, Dawkins, and Pirie-Gordon to make a regular payment in respect of Rolfe for three months. Rolfe’s anger when he heard of the proposal was genuine and impressive; but the return of the money, on which he insisted, was more impressive still, and convinced Sgr Barbieri that if he waited he would be paid. So, through the winter, he continued to allow credit for food and housing to the eccentric Englishman.

In the course of that winter, On 28 December 1908, occurred the famous Messina earthquake which left thousands homeless. As a member of the Royal Bucintoro Rowing Club, Rolfe played an energetic part in the relief measures organized by the citizens of Venice. The Club boats (one of them under Rolfe’s care) went from house to shop begging for food, clothes, and building material for the sufferers. He spent a busy and happy fortnight carrying mixed cargoes, casks of semolina, flasks of wine, blankets and old clothes to the Barracks of San Zaccaria, which was converted into a temporary warehouse.

His election to the Bucintoro Club owed itself to an amusing incident arising from his passion for swimming, and rowing in the ‘mode Venetian’. One day, turning a corner of the Grand Canal too sharply, he fell overboard while smoking a pipe. Swimming strongly under water, he came up unexpectedly far from his boat, looking extremely solemn, with his pipe still in his mouth. On climbing back into the
sandalo
, he calmly knocked the wet tobacco out of his pipe; refilled from his rubber pouch, which had kept its contents dry; borrowed a light; and with the single word
Avanti
went his way. Such impassivity charmed the Venetian onlookers; word went round of this incident, which, coupled with his aquatic fervour, gained him membership of the Bucintoro, a useful privilege, since he could use the Club boats and clubhouse.

During the winter, while Signor Barbieri’s tolerance persisted, Rolfe became an observed figure at the Hôtel Belle Vue. Though he kept very much to himself, he was constantly to be seen armed with his vast fountain pen and oddly-shaped manuscript books (one, which survives, is twice as tall as foolscap, though no greater in width; but even those which were less extreme in dimensions were nevertheless unusual). The beauty of his script, his benevolence in rowing convalescents round Venice, and his passion for water-sports, were all remarked; he became, as at Holywell, a ‘man of mystery’ by his almost ostentatious reticence: and, naturally, other English residents, in and out of the hotel became curious concerning their reserved fellow-countryman. Not least among the curious was Canon Lonsdale Ragg, Anglican chaplain to the English colony.

The Canon was wintering with his wife in the Hôtel Belle Vue, working on the final draft of a study in ecclesiastical history,
The Church of the Apostles.
Both Canon and Mrs Ragg were impressed and interested by the silent author (for such Rolfe was known to be) who for week after week seemed at pains to avoid their society. So marked a desire for privacy could only be broken by Rolfe himself; and one day he broke it. He left an exquisitely written note in the hall, asking in brief and formal phrases for an interview.

At the subsequent meeting, Rolfe gave reasons for his standoffishness and his note. Both, he explained, were due to the difficulties in which he was plunged by the unscrupulous actions of his agent in England, and the perfidy of his friends. While his affairs were entangled he had preferred to make no new acquaintances; but they had now reached such a pass that he felt justified by desperation in approaching one who, though professing a different form of faith, was nevertheless a Christian and an Englishman, and (probably) able to diminish his abysmal ignorance of business affairs, and advise concerning the best action to be taken. Like the Wedding-Guest, the Canon could not ‘choose but hear’.

Rolfe then disclosed those circumstances of which the reader is aware, but set them in a very different light. His troubles began, in this account, when he lost his lawsuit against Col. Thomas. In order to meet the costs of that case, he told the interested Canon, he had been forced to pledge his present and future work in favour of his solicitor, who had undertaken to collect the royalties earned by the various books so assigned, and make the author a modest allowance on which to live. Letters from Mr Taylor supporting these statements were produced. But now Mr Taylor, moved by his own cupidity and by the malevolent counsels of the Rev. Robert Hugh Benson and Mr Pirie-Gordon (who wished to force him to write books for them), had ceased to pay what he had promised, or to deliver any accounts showing the position. For months, Rolfe said, he had withstood this tyranny, refusing to return to England to act as ‘ghost’ so that others should get fame, determined to remain in Venice, where he felt well and able to do good work. To resist the coercion to which he was subjected he had pawned all that he could pawn, and overdrawn at the bank. Yet, notwithstanding, he had been unable, for some time, to pay his bill, and now he was threatened with ejection from the hotel. What should he do?

Canon Ragg, though flattered by this appeal to his business sense, was (not surprisingly) at a loss for a ready answer. Rolfe, however, supplied his own. What was required, he pointed out, was a new agent who would extricate his affairs from the malfeasance of his present one, administer them as they should be administered, and make him that small allowance for lack of which he was now in need. The Canon agreed that such a solution would be excellent if it could be attained and promised to think the matter over.

How much of his distorted version of the facts did Rolfe believe? In a way, the whole. The psychology of
paranoia
is now well documented, if not well understood. It is in part an exaggeration of the normal human power to believe what is known to be untrue. Who is there who does not reject and conceal from himself certain disagreeable facts which, if accepted consciously, would unfavourably affect the course of life? The coward who performs acts of heroism rather than admit to himself the fact of cowardice is a well-worn example of the process at one end of the scale, as the thief who retains his own self-respect and sense of honesty is of the other. This ability to suppress what it is undesirable for the mind to dwell upon is part of the basis of personality, and expresses itself in those unreasonable (but satisfactory) prejudices which we retain even after they have been logically disproved. Within limits it is a beneficent gift. But there are those in whom early circumstances or later misfortune unduly widen the limits within which this power can safely operate; and then arises a ‘fixed idea’ which, despite all evidence to the contrary, becomes the point from which reasoning proceeds. Whatever conflicts with this ‘fixed idea’ and the (perfectly logical) consequences which would necessarily follow, is flatly regarded by the sufferer as non-existent or untrue.

We may see a perfect working of this mental weakness in Rolfe’s confidence to Canon Ragg. He had, it is true, more than one delusional ‘fixed idea’; but that which at this period of his life dominated him (for which subsequently I hope to show the cause) was that his books
must
be successful, and that if they were not, any failure was due to ‘the malignant spite of his foes’. The whole of his dealings with Mr Taylor were conditioned by this belief. While he received the much-discussed ‘allowance’, he regarded the solicitor as assured of repayment, since he held an assignment of these (certain-to-be-successful) books. When payments ceased, largely for the reason that the expected royalties did not accrue, Rolfe sought an explanation of the fact (which could not be denied) in some human agency; and soon found one. If his books did not sell as they ought to do, it was in the first instance, the fault of the publisher, who (ever-ready suspicion prompted) had, doubtless, sinister reasons for not pushing and promoting sales. In the same way, if his agent did not harass the publisher into performing his duty, it was again because, from sinister reasons, he did not choose to do so. The more Rolfe pondered the behaviour of Fr Benson and Mr Taylor, the more certain he was that he was right.

Such self-conviction gave him force when relating his wrongs to his new benefactor. For Canon Ragg became his benefactor. Whatever doubts he may have had of some details of Rolfe’s story, he accepted it as substantially true. He was so far convinced, indeed, that he took the venturesome step of assuring the hotel-keeper of his confidence in Rolfe’s bona-fides; and so the impending eviction was postponed. When it loomed again, the Canon, who meanwhile had become fascinated by the intense, solitary exile, himself guaranteed Rolfe’s board for a time. ‘There was something extremely attractive about him, as well as something repellent,’ Canon Ragg wrote to me from Bordighera, whither my letter of inquiry had pursued him; ‘and the attraction was dominant when he would allow it to be. He struck me as a man of genius, or very near it. We became friends and talked literature for hours at a time. He pressed me to accept for a book on which I was then engaged the system of punctuation which he claimed to have derived from Addison. A short time after he left the hotel, and I saw nothing more of him for a time.’

To say that Rolfe ‘left the hotel’ was a polite euphemism: he was thrust forth. By the end of April his indebtedness was over £100; and Signore Barbieri would wait no longer. Nor would he allow the defaulter to take his ‘effects’ away. Now began a purgatory during which Rolfe, deprived even of his letter books, tramped or rowed idly about by day, and slept at night in a boat borrowed from the Bucintoro Club. The Club became, in fact, his headquarters. Luckily (for literature, if not for himself) during his stay at the Hôtel Belle Vue he had finished
Hubert’s Arthur.

That much-discussed work had continued to be the subject of acid correspondence between the collaborators. Even Rolfe found difficulty in regarding Harry Pirie-Gordon as an enemy: he preferred to think of him as having been misled by the wicked Benson. ‘Oh, what a feeble person you are to let yourself be blown about by people who have other interests, instead of sticking loyally to your spontaneously-chosen partner’, he wrote, and it expressed his attitude. Nevertheless, the completed
Arthur
was sent to Pirie-Gordon in England, on the assumption that he would immediately be able to publish it; Rolfe was desperate. But no welcome cheque arrived by return, or any, post; instead, he learned that the romance on which he set so much store was being corrected by a Quaker critic, to enhance its chance of finding a market. At once a stormy letter protested against ‘Your Quaker . . . rooting and snouting in my lovely Catholic garden’. ‘The notion of your intermittent playing with the
magnum opus
of a starving man is more than I can stand’, he added. More letters went backwards and forwards. No arrangement had been made as to the division of any moneys that might be produced by the two books written by Rolfe and Pirie-Gordon, and now all proposals for an agreement drove Rolfe to fury. He would not take a half-share, he would not take the whole, he would not allow his name to appear on the books, he would not say what he wanted. ‘I have not slept in a bed nor changed my clothes for fifteen nights’, he wrote; ‘God knows where I shall sleep to-night. The weather is cold and wet. In this fortnight I have had 5 lunches, 2 dinners, 3 breakfasts, and afternoon teas only. I have been 39 clear hours with nothing to eat or drink. I do not stand it quite so well as I stood my last Roman Catholic persecution. I was 12 years younger then. But I am not weakening in will.’ Rolfe convinced himself at last that Pirie-Gordon too was actively conspiring with Benson against his peace, and issued an incoherent ultimatum.

This is the last chance which I give you and your people of behaving straightly and treating me decently. I will treat you all most generously if you accept this offer. [Otherwise] nothing will stop me, as nothing stopped me when I deliberately ruined my own Borgia book, as nothing stopped me when I deliberately went into the workhouse for similar reasons. I will be quite open with you. I shall circularise all the publishers concerning
Hubert’s Arthur
and the other book so that they never shall be published and I will come straight back to Crickhowel workhouse and die there or give your father the pleasure of committing me to gaol. I have your threats. Now you have mine. I have not eaten since Thursday midday. I have no chance of eating till Sunday 8 a.m. I have no roof over my head and no bed to sleep in. From Sunday I am certain of a meal a day for three days. After that I shall act.