The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography (Valancourt eClassics)
Page 29
Stimulated by his success, I renewed my own researches; and it was my hand and not his that retrieved the two remaining testaments of Fr. Rolfe’s ill-rewarded but persistent toil. Multiplied inquiries in America traced at last that friend (Mr Morgan Akin Jones) to whom the manuscript of Hubert’s Arthur was sent by the direction of its author shortly before his death.
A great deal might be said concerning this long and fascinating product of the unlucky friendship of Prospero and Caliban which, when it attains its birthright of paper and ink, will add lustre to Baron Corvo’s posthumous renown. On the first page is written ‘Leniency is respectfully requested for the manual work of this MS. It was done by day and by night in a small fishing boat on the Venetian lagoon with the natural interruptions of storms, bad weather, and occasional overwhelming weariness.’ Yet it is written in unfaltering and faultless script on the finest hand-made paper, crudely but stoutly bound (probably by the author’s hand) in thick vellum. That note, with its pathetic implication, and pointed contrast with the unusual magnificence of the manuscript (in these days of typewriters and poor paper), was one of Fr. Rolfe’s last signals of invitation to the reluctant publishers before whom he cast his pearls.
Hubert’s Arthur, at least, is in its way a pearl; and again I wondered why none of those to whom it was submitted took their chance. Perhaps it was too long, or too strange, or too full of heraldry or incident, or too arch, or too well written; for it is all these things. It is Rolfe’s one exercise in English history, into the stream of which it will one day itself pass. Since I have already printed the summaries of both the authors of Hubert’s Arthur, there is no need to say more here concerning that queer masterpiece. John Buchan, who read it for one publisher, wrote to Rolfe: ‘the more I look at it the more I admire it, and the more convinced I am that no publisher in Britain could make a success of it’; Maurice Hewlett, who read it for another, implored him to make a more usual use of his great gifts. Their commendation came too late, when less than a year of life was left to him, and only a holocaust of his ‘enemies’ would have appeased his chronic wrath against the world and against himself.
Last of all his works to come to light was The One and the Many, which stands midway between Hadrian the Seventh and The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole in the autobiographical trilogy wherein Rolfe recorded his adult life. If time does bring him the fame that his temperament merited and his temper prevented, this exercise in autobiography may join the other two in print, though it is inferior to either as a work of art. John Lane, Grant Richards, and Henry Harland make a trio of villains drawn with Rolfe’s usual brushful of acid; and the minor enemies who make up the ‘many’ are also recognizable. There are many brilliant passages of his saturnine irony, many beautiful paragraphs, many pages of self-revelation and utter self-deception. But the background lacks the interest of his other canvases, and the scale of his personalities is slight. Nevertheless it was a deep satisfaction to discover it in the depths of a literary agent’s cupboard of unretrieved MSS. It was a deeper satisfaction still to know that every one of the works which had been left and lost in obscurity when Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe died suddenly and alone at Venice had been collected together by sympathetic hands, and that, alone of living men, I had read every line of every one. Nothing was left to be discovered; the Quest was ended. Hail, strange tormented spirit, in whatever hell or heaven has been allotted for your everlasting rest!