The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography (Valancourt eClassics) (25 page)

. . . 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 float 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 attractiveness of Catholic priesthood to one so circumstanced can easily be understood. Set among those who had voluntarily embraced celibacy, his abnormality became, not a possible vice, but a sign of Vocation. Hence it came about that the young student, whose unsuitability for holy orders was recognized by his fellows almost without exception, aspired to ordination. Yet, despite the disbelief of those who were well able to judge, there is no reason to suppose that Rolfe was other than sincere in his conviction that he was fitted by nature for the robe he hoped to wear. And perhaps he was. Perhaps, if he had been given the authority of orders, he would have been able (reinforced by this external prop) to dismiss all sexual feeling, and regard the dismissal as a consequence of the privilege. His early life was passed in an atmosphere of devotion which he shared. ‘When I was a Protestant boy of fifteen I was very fervent. I went to confession, said the rosary, used the Garden of the Soul for a prayer-book. A few years later I became unfaithful to my Vocation, played the fool . . . but I never relinquished my Divine Gift. At twenty-four I became intensely earnest. At twenty-five I suddenly realized that I was on the wrong road . . . and Peter had the key. I realized it one Saturday morning at Oxford; and on Sunday I made my homage to Peter . . . A Jesuit received me into the Church at 24 hours notice.’

Unfortunately (or perhaps, when all is counted, fortunately) there existed in his nature, also, the talent and need for artistic expression. This need (as Vincent O’Sullivan has acutely noticed) found satisfaction in those extravagances which led him into debt, as well as in his paintings and aesthetic accomplishments. Largely in consequence of his undue indulgence of it, his superiors decided that he had no Vocation, and sent him back into the world of ordinary men.

This rejection must have been a tremendous blow to Rolfe. He knew very well his unfitness to pass unnoticed among ordinary men (since indeed he was not ordinary), and he had set his heart on the dignity and mystery of spiritual rank. What remained? Only one course, to deny the rightness of the verdict; to assert that it was the Athenians who had lost him, not he the Athenians; and this, the easiest way, he took. It was the first stage of the
paranoia
that darkened his life. On the fact of his un-ordinariness (which his subconsciousness could not ignore) he built up a phantasy picture of an abnormal Rolfe (abnormal since he had a priestly Vocation) thwarted unreasonably by those who should have known the truth. Here are his own words: ‘I believe that somebody carelessly lied, that someone clumsily blundered, and that all concerned were determined not to own themselves, or anyone else but me, in the wrong. A mistake – a justifiable mistake seeing that I am an abnormal creature and my superiors about as commonplace a gaggle of fatwitted geese as this hemisphere produces – was made; and, by quibbles, intimidations, every hole and corner means conceivable, it has been perpetuated.’ In this mood he came back to England; and from it, he distilled the title or pseudonym of Baron Corvo. That artifice disguised the disappointing fact that he, who had left for Rome to assume the distinguished title of Reverend, had returned plain Mr Rolfe.

Had his career as a painter been crowned with success, time might have smoothed the smart of his rejection. But he failed, he was driven from pillar to post, from Christchurch to Aberdeen and Holywell. He could not deny to himself the reality of this further failure; but it could be explained if not only his Superiors, but
all
Catholics, were, somehow, either unreasonably in league and set against him, or likely at any moment to become so. Here again are his own words. ‘I myself am a Roman Catholick not even on speaking terms with any other Roman Catholicks, for I find the Faith comfortable and the Faithful intolerable. . . . I am desperately in terror of Catholicks; never (with one exception) having met one who was not a slanderer (in the double sense of Herodotus) or an oppressor of the poor (in the sense of Psalm cix, 15, A.V.) or a liar.’ This was the second stage of his
paranoia.

Circumstances forced a life of repression on him, until he attained that extraordinary command over his countenance and conversation remarked at Holywell by John Holden. Were those adventures at Rhyl true, or were they make-believe as a further disguise for his real temperament? If Rolfe did seek out those women of the street there, it was a desperate effort on his part to combat his abnormal feelings, and it failed.

At last he found the true vent for his talent, and became a writer in London. He defended his own character in whitewashing the Borgias, but still disappointment crossed his hopes. His work brought him neither rest nor money; he could only exist by incurring debt. ‘I sit in my bedroom during ten months in each year. This is mitigated by occasional plunges for pearls in the British Museum, an hour for Mass and strolls on the Heath on holidays, an hour a day for dumb-bells after the West Point system. And for two months I generally am at Oxford (strictly speaking more out of a boat than in at Sandford Lasher) reading exam, papers. But I have no communion with my fellow creatures. I loathe it and I crave it.’

As he grew older he became intolerably conscious of the lack of emotional satisfaction in his life. His derision of love to Temple Scott, and assertion of satiety, was, I am convinced, the disdain of the fox for the grapes out of reach. He spoke of himself more truly in
Hadrian
as a ‘haggard shabby shy priestly-visaged individual’, mortally afraid of his fellow men, whom he despised and envied. To attract their notice he wore his heart on his sleeve in the
Toto
stories, but failed to find ‘the divine friend much-desired’, in Sholto Douglas or Trevor Haddon. He strove to make a substitute for affection in collaboration as a form of intimacy. So the pattern of his life was shaped.

He sought by fresh starts to exorcise the past, not realizing that he carried the cause of his woes within. He pictured impossible situations in which ambiguous figures thawed that mail of icy reserve which ‘only one dead heart ever has been warm enough to melt’. Had there been even one dead heart? He was powerless to translate such dreams into fact; but at least he could express his disappointment if not his desires. ‘On these lines, he was becoming self-possessed, self-reliant, strong and potent.’ His forbidden love was a source of weakness, but hate could make him strong. That was the third stage.

The friendship with Benson was of a deeper order than the rest. The lonely Rolfe had been sought out, had been praised, had been admitted as his superior, by one who had won the coveted, delusory haven of holy orders, and might be the means of bringing the never-relinquished panacea within reach of the thirsty sufferer. So at first he felt. Afterwards, as Benson recovered from his first enthusiasm, and asserted his natural dominance, Rolfe’s warmth diminished; and when he was, as he felt, ‘betrayed’, shut off from even literary association (which, to him, meant so much more than the mere writing of a book in collaboration), his liking turned to rage for which Venice was a violent, but ineffective, cathartic.

Instead, he indulged, at last, his passion. The mask still clung, but the repression disappeared. He warmed both hands before the fire of such love as money and flattery could buy. But his delusions were still necessary to compensate his prolonged disappointment; and he retained them to the end. Yet, though he repaid succour with scorn and kindness with ingratitude, it is unjust, in reviewing his career, to withhold admiration and pity. It is very difficult to be just to Frederick William Rolfe. He had so many gifts, and industry above all; but what he had to sell found no price in the market-place. His brilliant books, expressed in prose as exquisite as the hand and as brightly coloured as the inks with which it was written, brought him trivial sums and no security. For his
Toto
stories thirty pounds, for his
Borgia
history not quite fifty, for translating
Omar
twenty-five; for the rest, nothing. He never, during his lifetime, received a penny in respect of
Hadrian the Seventh
or
Don Tarquinio,
for the publishers specified that there should be no royalties on the first six hundred copies, and so neither book had earned any money when Rolfe died. Small reward, it must be conceded; is it a wonder that he took such revenge as he could upon a world which ignored what he was, and what he offered, or that the books by which readers know him are but an earnest of what he might have written, and less than half of what he did write? Behind his fury and lack of financial scruple, behind his inconvenient insistence on the artist’s right to live at the expense of others, behind the excesses into which his repressed nature tempted him, there remains an intense soul which maintained its faith, and expressed its aspirations in many excellent words and works.

*

He was capable of queer kindnesses. In 1928 I received a letter which made me rub my eyes, for though it was addressed to me the handwriting was plainly Rolfe’s. I was almost frightened as opened it.

London Hospital,

Whitechapel, E.1

Dear Sir,

Probably it will surprise, possibly it will interest you to see that the calligraphy of Frederick William Rolfe still lives. When I was a little boy of 6 or 7, Rolfe was an occasional visitor to the house. I remember him as a man of charming manners to a child, who knew all about magic and charms, who wore strange rings and told fascinating histories.

He wrote me a few letters, on the occasions of my birthdays, which were so unlike any others I ever received both in substance and in script that they were preserved in an old cupboard. When I was about 16 I came across them. At that time my own handwriting was almost illegible, ill-formed, very small and ugly. I was so struck by the beauty of Rolfe’s that I at once set myself to copy the script. In two months I was fairly proficient in the style, and in a year it had become my normal writing, but as you can detect the fine edge of its beauty has been lost in passing through my hand.

Yours faithfully

John Bland

It is not only the evil that men do that lives after them! Rolfe deserves a kinder epitaph than the belated
amende
of the
Aberdeen Free Press.
Who could improve on his own: ‘Pray for the repose of his soul. He was so tired.’? Or, as he once wrote to a friend who accused him of selfishness: ‘Selfish? Yes, selfish. The selfishness of a square peg in a round hole.’