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

by A. J. A. Symons

  There are touches of Rolfe’s ironic humour in his summary of the scientific learning of that time. ‘Messer Giambattista della Porta appears to have used his science and magical art to invent “Some Sports against Women”; which will show what the Borgian Era regarded as permissible practical jokes. He says that, if you wish to discover paint on a face, you must chew saffron before breathing on her, and incontinently she yellows: or you may burn brimstone near her, which will blacken mercury sublimate and cerusa (white lead): or you may chew cummin or garlic and breathe on her, and her cerusa or quicksilver will decay. But if that you yearn to dye a woman green you must decoct a chameleon in her bath.’

  A final quotation will show Rolfe’s sympathy for the classic learning of the Renaissance:

  During many years, since the first signs of Muslim activity, fugitives from Byzantium descended upon Italian shores. The glory of Greece had gone to Imperial Rome. The grandeur of Imperial Rome had returned to Byzantium. And now the glory and grandeur of Byzantium was going to Christian Rome. When danger menaced, when the day of stress began to dawn, scholars and cunning artificers, experts skilful in all knowledge, fled westward to the open arms of Italy with their treasures of work. Italy welcomed all who could enlarge, illuminate her transcendent genius: learning and culture and skill found with her not exile but a home, and a market for wares. Scholarship became the fashion. ‘Literary taste was the regulative principle.’ It was the Age of Acquisition. ‘Tuscan is hardly known to all Italians, but Latin is spread far and wide throughout all the world’, says Filelfo. But to know Greek was the real test of a gentleman of that day; and Greek scholars were Italy’s most honoured guests. Not content with the codices and classics of antiquity that these brought with them, Italian princes and patricians sent embassies to falling Byzantium, to search for manuscripts, inscriptions, or carven gems, and bronze, and marble. Greek intaglii and camei graced the finger-rings, the ouches, collars, caps, of Venetian senators, of the lords of Florence, of the sovereigns of the Regno, of the barons and cardinals and popes of Rome.

  Baron Corvo seems after all to have had his way, very largely, in the matter of punctuation and spelling. At least, ‘Sistine’ is ‘Xystine’ throughout; all the characters are referred to by their ceremonial titles (Caesar Borgia, for instance, is not so called, but ‘Duke Cesare de Valentinois’); and all the Popes are accorded capitalized pronouns. Another whim which may be noticed is his avoidance, in the chapter entitled ‘The Legend of the Borgia Venom’, of the word ‘poison’, which only defiles his pages in a quotation. He revived an old form, and for ‘poison’ wrote ‘venom’, for ‘poisoned’ ‘envenomed’, for ‘poisonous’ ‘veneficous’, and ‘venenation’ for ‘poisoning’. This chapter on the Borgian poisons, in which Rolfe refused to believe, is the most interesting in the book, and as ingenious as the lock of a Milner safe. By a pharmaceutical examination of the ingredients and recipes asserted to have been used, Corvo came to the conclusion that the stories of assassination by spiked ring, and the rest of the romantic Borgian murders in similar modes, were merely fabulous; in short, that ‘These Borgia could no more poison artistically, than they could send telegrams’.

  He is equally dexterous in manipulating the theory that Cesare was not the son of Alexander, but of his rival and successor Cardinal della Rovere (defined as a ‘psychic epileptic’), and uses this alternative of paternity to explain Cesare’s strange inactivity after Alexander’s death. Indeed, the whole book is full of ingenious surmises.

  The critics were variously impressed by Rolfe’s queer pages. To one, the ‘breathlessness of his exaggerations, and the freedom of his criticisms’, seemed like ‘an icy shower-bath after the tepid ablutions of average historical research’. Another condemned his ‘mixture of asterisks and hysterics’. Harland, magnanimously sinking his resentment at the ingratitude with which he had been treated, wrote: ‘Your Borgia book is GREAT. To say nothing of the labour and the learning of it – the historic imagination, the big vision, the humour, the irony, the wit, the perverseness, the daring, the tremendously felicitous and effective manner of it. It is like a magnifical series of tapestry pictures of the xv century. Of course I think you are advocatus diaboli, but what an advocate. In any land save England such a book would make its author at once famous and rich. It is GREAT.’

  Equal uncertainty existed as to the identity of the author. Some critics accepted him as Baron Corvo; others, more cautious, as Mr Frederick Baron Corvo, or Mr Corvo simply; while The Bookman, having questioned if the author was Italian, referred to him as ‘the Signor Corvo’. All alike praised his learning and research; and most, the powerful audacity of his style. Even the most unfriendly of his critics conceded that ‘when the mighty family of Borgia is dealt with in future this volume will be a standard work of reference’. Perhaps the best word was spoken by a reviewer who, after noticing the author’s obvious close acquaintance with Catholic ritual, inferred that the Chronicles were written by a man ‘not old in years, but worn with experience and unafraid’, and concluded: ‘Baron Corvo must pardon the many readers he will have interested if they consider him almost as great a problem as the strange family whose fortunes he has traced.’ He was.

  [1] Note: I quote these letters by the courtesy of Mr Grant Richards, who bears no resentment to the memory of the strange being who promised him undying enmity because letters sent to him ‘care of’ the publisher were forwarded instead of refused. As will be seen subsequently, so far from being ‘undying’, Rolfe’s sense of grievance did not last long enough to prevent him from proposing a fresh alliance and more publications to Mr Grant Richards a few years later.

  CHAPTER 10: THE DIVINE FRIEND

  While the feud with Grant Richards was developing to its climax, Rolfe had sunk his resentment and sought fresh work from John Lane, who was persuaded to buy a few more stories concerning Toto for £10. The whole collection was published shortly before the Borgia book under the title In His Own Image, which covers twenty-six new fables in addition to the original half-dozen from the Yellow Book. It cannot be claimed that the later tales are as good as the first; nevertheless most of them are very good. The subjects are not all taken from hagiology in this second selection, though all are more or less religious in theme; but the stories retain Baron Corvo’s peculiar mixture of paradoxical piety, fantastic humour, and sensuous appreciation of the lights, sounds, forms and changes of the world. Even the titles possess that artificial yet naive humour which was one of his best effects, and is sufficiently personal to deserve the epithet ‘Corvine’. Two examples will serve: ‘Why Dogs and Cats always Litigate’; ‘About Doing Little, Lavishly’.

  Taken together, moreover, these Toto stories afford the reader many vivid glimpses of the author’s character, which, though not that of Hadrian, has proved hardly less fascinating to certain temperaments. Robert Hugh Benson, for example, delighted to read them aloud to his visitors, and jokingly referred to them as ‘the fifth gospel’. Rolfe had a gift for gradually disclosing or implying personality; and as through spring and summer Toto narrates his legends and folk-tales, the Baron, who is his audience, comes to life. Perhaps to those who have never felt any admiration, even reluctant, for the Mother of Churches, and her record, and what she stands for, most of these stories will have little appeal; but to those who possess faith, or envy its possessors, they have an airy and amusing charm. Corvo’s central characteristic is, of course, a religious belief and fervour which is tender, profound, childish and childlike in turn, but he reveals far more than that. Indeed, it is surprising how complete a picture of himself he draws.

  What ‘the Baron’s’ exact purpose in Italy was at the time the stories were told does not appear, though we learn that he was a painter, photographer, writer and observer. He is attended by a bodyguard of youths who are both models and servants; and it is their leader, Toto (‘a splendid, wild (discolo) creature from the Abruzzi’), who tells the tales which make the book. To these unlearned peasant lads their mast
er seems a marvel of knowledge, wealth and power; the Baron’s manner to them is that of a benevolent despot to his slaves. He reveals himself in countless ways. He is a priest (he speaks of ‘the clergy, of whom I am, in private life, the least’), and also an epicure (‘Breakfast was ready, under the magnolia tree. I like these late-spring breakfasts in the sun. Guido and Ercole had executed a masterpiece in their simplicity, with three great bowls of beaten brass, one in the middle to support my book, one each at the opposite ends of the table, all filled with damask roses of the darkest purple, fresh, and breathing liquid odours as of cloves celestial. I gave the creatures compliments, and sat down to breakfast. Cocomeri ripieni, Port Salut, olives, perfumed oranges, pitch-flavoured wine, – delicious.’) He is a Royalist; all his emotions are roused by the sight of a college founded by Henry IX, that Cardinal-Bishop, brother of the Young Pretender, who might have been a Stuart King of England. Mary Queen of Scots is another of his idols. He hates the ‘minotaur-manufacturers’ of Lancashire, with (‘until a few years ago’) their tradition of child-labour. He is alarmed by storms and lizards. There is a fine description of ‘the end of an awe-full afternoon’ at Vasto d’ Aimone, when ‘the hot air throbbed in paralysis and apprehension’ before a frightening thunderstorm in which ‘the waves of the sea rode high, and dashed themselves to death against the towered rocks’. Watching the lightning flashes, the sleet and hail, fascinated, from an upper window, the Baron urgently, fervently, and nervously counts over and over the beads hidden in his trouser pocket. He is superstitious to a degree, yet with a sense of his quaint folly; easily moved by beauty, very generous. Perhaps the most revelatory of all the stories is that entitled ‘About Doing Little, Lavishly’. This tells how ‘in early summer, at the very beginning of my explorations along the eastern coast, something happened to rouse me from the lethargy into which temperamental indolence had let me slip, after my life’s great disappointment’. That ‘something’ was the circumstance that the annual procession on the Festival of Corpus Domini was about to be held in the ‘wonderful little walled-city’ in which the traveller found himself. The Baron entered heart and soul into the preparations; he was given his head. So he chose ‘beautiful children from the schools, youths and maidens, men and women, from trade-guilds and confraternities’, and gave to each ‘the character of some god, some angel’. He redrew ancient designs, chose material, and cut garments for their costumes. Then, after rehearsal, himself unseen, he indulged his seeing eye in the splendour of the pageant as it made its way through the flower-decked streets. Later ‘in the starlight, young eyes glittered, and white teeth gleamed on peaches. Never was complex crescentine beauty so discreetly manifested, as in this dim garden, where black cypress soars into the eternal star-sown blue, furnishing grey-green lawns with outlines, indefinite, mysterious, with infinite imperscrutable distances. Against the retirement of this background, the long contours of limbs, of old ivory, or having the transparent nacreous pallor of the flesh of turbot, and the modelling of supple forms, accented by clinging of silk, or revealed by a kithon’s falling folds, undulated in inconstant curves.’ All which pleased the Baron mightily.

  There is another reference to ‘my life’s great disappointment’ in a later story which tells of ‘a single summer night’ when ‘a fire burned for no cause in my brain’. ‘Lying there, as still as death, clutching crucifix and rosary, and the miniature of my dead, my closed eyes saw myself as I was, driven from my road, my life’s career wrecked, blocked, checked – whichever you will – thrown out of my stride, thwarted in my sole ambition, utterly useless. Other men envied the freedom which was mine; they would have welcomed the happiness, and health, and power, which were offered to me in mocking substitution for the bonds I craved.’ Whether or not ‘elevated’ or ‘fine’, in Canon Carmont’s phrase, Rolfe’s desire for the priesthood was certainly ‘tenacious’.

  He reveals another side of himself in the tale ‘About Some Friends’, in which he deplores his loneliness: ‘No one ever loved me well enough to take trouble to find out that which would give me pleasure. No stranger in the street ever said to me, “O, sir, why are you so unutterably sad?” Friends do not to me, as they would that I should do to them. There is some impenetrable mail of ice about me, which only one dead heart ever has been warm enough to melt.’

  It had been agreed that In His Own Image should be dedicated to Henry Harland; but the quarrel put Harland out of court as a dedicatee; and when the volume appeared, it carried instead the inscription:

  Divo Amico

  Desideratissimo

  D. D. D.

  Fridericus

  This dedication, ‘To the Divine Friend, much desired’, did not pass unnoticed.

  *

  By what side-wind did I hear the name of Trevor Haddon as that of one who could tell me much concerning Rolfe if he chose? I started down so many blind alleys at that time that I cannot remember who gave me the hint to write to Haddon at the Savage Club. His answer came from Cambridge:

  11 Little St Mary’s Lane,

  Cambridge

  Dear Mr Symons,

  I have come to live here, where I am busy at work as a portrait painter, and fear there is no prospect of our meeting unless you are in these parts.

  I have a lot to say about Corvo, and in fact I wrote a good deal of it some time ago, as the result of a suggestion from a bookseller-friend of mine, for a pamphlet to be sent to America. But I went abroad for four years, and all my things are in store. I don’t know where my MS is, but of course I could replace it.

  These two points may amuse you. Rolfe lent me the manuscript of a book, the diary of a priest, Dom——(I shall remember the name). It was never published, but it was a most remarkable production. He was going to dedicate it to me, but we quarrelled first.

  I had a large collection of his letters, of the deepest interest from a psychological point of view, but my wife so detested the man that she said she would not stay under the same roof as those letters, and I must destroy them. Like a bloody fool I did not make a package of them and hand them in to my bank, but burnt them. How I have kicked myself since!

  I am quite willing to spin my yarn; this is only a hasty reply to your enquiry. There is this about it, however. I want to treat my recollections in my own way, not to have them kneaded up and confected by another mind. What I write would have to be an intermission by T. H. and to be acknowledged suitably. I might want a little help with names, dates etc.

  Yours sincerely

  Trevor Haddon

  Mr Haddon’s condition accorded very comfortably with the plan that I had already half-formed for this book, and after several meetings he sent me the following ‘intermission’:

  It is a curious experience in these later days to drop one’s line into the almost forgotten waters of thirty years ago and see what one can land. The ’Nineties then were dead though not quite buried; the row of ‘Yellow Books’ was completed on the shelf, Wilde had died in Paris, Henry James was about to desert whiskerdom, Aubrey Beardsley had burned out his marvellous flame; yet even after all those prodigies it was still possible to find new books which proved remarkable as experiences: at least, so I found In His Own Image. A review in the Star newspaper indicated in colourful words that these Toto stories were something quite out of the common, and hinted at an unusual personality behind the tales. I bought the book, and fell at once under the charm of its style and its spirit. Perhaps I was susceptible from personal causes. My Catholicism was then Roman in its orientation, I was newly returned from six months in Italy, and I had a hunger for friendship which responded immediately to a book dedicated to ‘the Divine Friend much desired’. The chapter ‘About Some Friends’ contains some of Rolfe’s most beautiful writing; and here again its opening seemed to me almost a personal appeal. I was attracted, also, by the picture which the book gives of a free, artistic, and apparently opulent life led in ideal surroundings in the Roman Italy I loved so much. More than that, however, was the hint that thi
s interesting personality suffered under a secret sorrow, and almost openly desired a friend who could ‘understand’.

  What is it that attracts us to the personality of an unknown writer, particularly to that of a writer of fiction? He may amuse us, thrill us, or impress us by his penetration into the psychology of his characters, but it is perhaps most of all by his understanding of and sympathy with those frustrations of emotion and buffetings of fortune which are our common lot. Thus it happens that a writer may arouse in us a set of vibrations so personal that we feel that he has shared our suffering, and is releasing in us a sorrow long buried, unvoiced, and unshared, in our own heart. So it was with me, at least; and in this case the author concerned, Corvo, went further: he seemed to invite someone to grasp the hand he held out in his own hope for friendship.

  Knowing, as I did, a similar need, I felt that I could offer such a friendship; so, though it was rather like taking a leap in the dark, I wrote to Baron Corvo, care of John Lane.

  I only half-expected an answer, but I got one. This was what Rolfe wrote:

  ‘I do not know whether to thank you for your letter: or to exsecrate you. I do not know whether to thank you for Hope: or to exsecrate you for another illusion dispelled, for additional matter for Despair. I rejoice that my book has delighted you. But you terrify me when you mention your connections. Then what have you to do with me? Do you not already know me? If you do not, I beg of you to ask all or any of my thirteen worst enemies, whose names and addresses I have written here, to tell you about me. Till you have done this, I have no more to say. In secret I am fled away; and I will live alone, until——. I dedicated my book to the Divine Friend, Much-Desired. I do not know whether you are he – or another.’