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. Neverthel
ess, 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.
But, though an even more blasting letter followed to remind the recipient that the third day of grace was drawing near, a letter which declared that ‘A stab in the back in the dark is what Spite invariably gives to Scorn’, Fr. Rolfe never explained what he wanted, nor what (short of an instant and substantial cheque) he would have regarded as ‘straight’ behaviour. His fury carried him to the length of applying to the British Consul for repatriation to England, but the third day passed without his leaving Venice. As for Hubert’s Arthur, Mr Pirie-Gordon took the only step which he conceived to be open to him: he washed his hands of all connection with the two books he had helped to write, and returned the manuscripts to his unhinged collaborator. One of these literary curiosities, The Weird of the Wanderer, was, subsequently, published; but the more important of the two, Hubert’s Arthur, he never saw nor heard of again. Naturally I asked for such details of it as he could remember; and his précis made me regret its disappearance more than ever:
46 Addison Avenue, W.11
Dear Symons,
Here is the précis of Hubert’s Arthur as it was when I last worked at it – perhaps Corvo has changed it – I expect that I have forgotten bits here and there. As being professedly ‘a chronicle’, Arthur marries early in the story, as he would have done in real life at that time, and does not have to wait for the heroine until the last chapter as would have been the case had it been a romance. Its style was meant to be an enriched variant upon that of the Itinerarium Regis Ricardi and of William of Tyre, and in my own case was probably influenced by that of Maurice Hewlett.
Best Salaams
Harry Pirie-Gordon
HUBERT’S ARTHUR
(As far as I remember it)
It is an essay in ‘what might have been’ history, carefully worked out and introducing various historical characters who are all made to behave as they might reasonably have done in the circumstances imagined to fit in with the story.
Arthur, Duke of Brittany, instead of being murdered by King John, escapes with the assistance of Hubert de Burgh and takes refuge among the Crusaders in what was then left of the Holy Land. In spite of every obstacle he marries Yolande, the heiress of the kingdom of Jerusalem (who really married the elderly John de Brienne), and becomes King of Jerusalem in her right. He recovers Jerusalem by a coup de main from the Saracens. His best friend is his bastard cousin Fulke, King Richard’s son by Jehane de St Pol (see Maurice Hewlett’s Richard Yea and Nay). After many adventures Arthur returns to resume his Duchy of Brittany, and joins with the King of France against John, doing homage for Normandy, Aquitaine and Poitou as nearest heir to King Richard. There is a civil war in England on John’s death – the Barons are divided into three camps: some favour Henry, son of John, some Louis, son of the King of France, some, under the influence of Hubert de Burgh, now Earl of Kent and Justiciar of England, favour Arthur. The dispute between the two English claimants is settled by a trial by combat in which Arthur and Henry (who is made a bit older than he really was at the time to make a better match of it) fight for the Crown. Arthur wins, is acclaimed King of England as well as of Jerusalem, and forthwith drives the French claimant out of the country, but is killed in so doing. That I think is how I left it, but Corvo may have altered the ending. There was a lot of very carefully prepared contemporary local colour, and a good deal of heraldry. Much attention was given to the accounts of warfare in Palestine and England.
*
Rolfe’s sufferings at this time were not imaginary. He frequented the Monday evening parties of Horatio Brown (biographer of John Addington Symonds, and a leader in the English colony) for the sake, as he said later, of the sandwiches on the sideboard: but took umbrage at some chance remark, and estranged himself by making an opportunity for publicly cutting the indignant Brown. ‘Now the summer is ending and the lagoon is rainy. But I am healthy’, he wrote tauntingly on a postcard to Pirie-Gordon. The authorities of that English hospital which he had formerly helped also fell under his displeasure, presumably through failing to comply with his frantic demands for assistance. He was reduced to offering his services, in the following style, to such few British residents as were not already at arm’s length:
Reale Societa Canottieri Bucintoro
Sir:
I beg leave to apply for a situation as second gondolier. The mismanagement of my English agent who has had charge of my literary property, and the treachery of false friends, compels me to seek instant and permanent means of livelihood. Unfortunately I am not in a position to give references as to either my character or my ability, though I am fairly well known in Venice. I should therefore be willing to serve you on probation for a week; and I assure you that I would serve you well. Requesting the favour of an early and (if possible) an acquiescent response,
I am Sir,
Your obedient servant
Fr. Rolfe
Sigr Williamson
It is not known that anyone was intrepid enough to avail himself of his obedient services. At the height of his desperation he was rescued by Canon Ragg.
I met him by chance and learned that he was reduced to sleeping in the open in that rather fine ‘martial cloak’ in which he fancied himself as looking like the Duke of Wellington. He was very proud and reserved, and correspondingly difficult to help. On some specious excuse I induced him to sup with me at a restaurant.
A visit of Mgr Robert Hugh Benson to Venice gave me a chance of talking over Rolfe’s problem, and Benson and I spent an evening together in a gondola, but nothing substantial came of it. Benson was afraid to touch the case.
During our last weeks in Venice, before leaving for England, we were staying in Palazzo Barbaro, and our own flat was vacant save for the luggage waiting to be transported. We then beguiled Rolfe to think he was doing
us a service if he would use the flat (instead of open air) as a dormitory. Our luggage was ready labelled, and thus he became acquainted with our future address in England.
Far from being grateful, he seemed to resent all benefits. I fancy my crowning offence was introducing him to a representative of Rothschild’s in Paris, a man whom all my friends admired, and who, it was thought, could unravel his financial problems if they could be unravelled at all. They met and had their talk; and for some reason Rolfe’s bitterness seemed to increase from that moment.
For some time after our return to England he maintained a one-sided correspondence, mainly by the medium of insulting postcards, which he sometimes varied by unstamped letters. We refused to take the letters in, and after some months we heard no more of him.
*
Canon Ragg had, however, done Rolfe one more good turn than he knew. In March, just before the patience of Sgr Barbieri ended, he introduced Fr. Rolfe to a friend, Dr van Someren, settled with his young American wife in Venice. The acquaintance was not, at the time, pursued; but one evening in June, after the Raggs had returned to England, Rolfe called to see the Doctor and told him frankly that he was starving.
The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography (Valancourt eClassics) Page 23
