Don Tarquinio: A Kataleptic Phantasmatic Romance (Valancourt eClassics)

by Frederick Rolfe

  DON TARQUINIO

  A KATALEPTIC PHANTASMATIC ROMANCE

  By

  FR. ROLFE (BARON CORVO)

  NEVE ME IMPEDIAS NEVE LONGIUS PERSEQUARIS

  VALANCOURT BOOKS

  Don Tarquinio by Fr. Rolfe (Baron Corvo)

  First published London: Chatto and Windus, 1905

  First Valancourt Books edition 2014

  This digital edition copyright © 2014 by Valancourt Books

  Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia

  http://www.valancourtbooks.com

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher, constitutes an infringement of the copyright law.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  DON TARQUINIO

  I

  II

  III

  IIII

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  VIIII

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIIII

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XVIIII

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIIII

  XXV

  TO

  H. R.

  FROM

  HIS AFFECTIONATE BROTHER

  To some, Love comes so splendid and so soon,

  With such wide wings, and steps so royally,

  That they, like sleepers wakened suddenly

  Expecting dawn, are blinded by His noon.

  To some, Love comes so silently and late,

  That all unheard He is; and passes by,

  Leaving no gift but a remembered sigh,

  While they stand watching at another gate.

  But some know Love at the enchanted hour:

  They hear Him singing like a bird afar:

  They see Him coming like a falling star:

  They meet His eyes—and all their world’s in flower.

  Ethel Clifford.

  PROLOGUE

  Dear Herbert:

  When the last century was a-dying, a certain idiot asked me to write the history of one day in the life of a man of fashion in the era of the Borgia. It was to include every single act and deed of his during a given four-and-twenty hours: because it was wanted for a magazine, which proposed to publish a series of such histories illustrating the manners and customs of the Smart Set in all ages.

  Of course I instantly thought of the holographs which Don Tarquinio Giorgio Drakontoletes Poplicola di Santacroce wrote for the edification of his son Prospero. They purport to have been written about 1523-1527, as the leisurely effort of a man of unbounded energy very anxious to express himself; and there was one of them which certainly seemed pat to my purpose. It actually did describe all Don Tarquinio’s doings on one day in 1495, from (a little before) 6 p.m. to 6 p.m. round the clock. It was very exciting and very comical.

  So I did it. But it was by no means easy: as you’ll readily understand when I hint that the frightful man wrote an Italian jargon of his own, which was all Greek where it wasn’t Latin. No doubt the fashion of his age was to write macaronics: but consider his English tralator’s difficulties!

  And then again, think what it means to boil down a book into a magazine article. You see, the terms of my commission were that I was to set down everything the gentleman did. But he did such a lot. And he explained it all so voluminously, with a wealth of detail which simply could not be omitted.

  And of course my version was rejected. It was a mere category—not a story. I myself could see that.

  I put the thing in a cupboard with curses, on the idiot who had invited me to do a useless thing, on myself for being ass enough to waste four months in trying to make a sow’s ear out of a silken purse—I mean, in attempting to compress a piece of real and serious and elaborate history, and an amazingly amusing character study, and a breathlessly intricate story of adventure, into a merely ephemeral ten pages or so of journalism.

  There the papers lay until a week ago, when I had just finished my new book, and was rummaging among my belongings with the idea of tidying-up before beginning something fresh.

  They looked as though they might be interesting.

  I took them out; and conned them over.

  Little by little I saw what an accented fool I had been not to let Don Tarquinio tell his own tale, in his own quaint acute humorous sensuous conscientious way. For it’s all nonsense to say that the Fifteenth Century can’t possibly speak to the Twentieth, because it is the Fifteenth and not the Twentieth, and because those two centuries haven’t got a Common Denominator. They have. It’s Human Nature.

  And, so, since you’re always bothering me to write a book which is not about silly Catholic clergymen, or incomprehensible antiquities, or abnormal modernities—for once I’ll let my Waterman’s Ideal be his Barnum, and tralate to you Don Tarquinio’s holograph.

  You’ll find him and his fellows just as deliciously and comically silly, and just as haphazardly and unexpectedly wise, and just as good, and just as bad, as the people whom you meet every day of your life, who always go such a frightfully long way round in their endeavours to attain their objects,—and not a bit like the disagreeably unnatural people in ordinary books who persistently do the right thing in the right way at the right moment.

  In short, if you’re interested in human beings, these are your ones.

  Read what Tarquinio says of himself, and his plight and his longings. Mark how he tells the story of his fortunate day. Learn how he risked his life to win release from the Great Ban, anxious to act as a prince should, and to live, and to love.

  From Crabs Herborough,

  On the Feast of Saint Mildred.

  DON TARQUINIO

  I

  During the present year, the first of the paparchy of Clement,[1] Messer Francesco Guicciardini and Messer Paolo Giovio came from Fiorenza, bringing to me their well-written manuscripts: to the end that I might read the same, and praise them or vituperate them, as well for the purity of letters as for the good of the race of men.

  But the said manuscripts ought to be burned; and no copy of them ought to be preserved. These scribes are, as I have said, of Fiorenza; and they have written of events which took place in the City[2] when they were little boys. They have no means of knowing these events, except from hearsay. They have dared to write that which they have heard: for they certainly never saw. But we know well that it is impossible for any man of Fiorenza truthfully to intreat of Roman events, by cause of the hatred, indelible, Carthaginian, which all Fiorentini always bear to us Romans. And I myself do know these their histories to be false and shameful: for I indeed was concerned in the making of history here in the City, at the same time of which these men have dared to write mendaciously.

  Messer Francesco is a rather vain vacuous man, incapable of dealing with grave matters. I believe that he wisheth to be honest: but his shallow mind causeth him to collect gossip, without testing its truth, as may be seen in the manuscript which he will not burn, where They say, and It is said, and I am told that, and other suchlike forms are reiterated.

  Messer Paolo, on the other hand, hath written gossip as though it were history: nor hath he deemed it right to qualify his assertions in t
he manner of the aforesaid Messer Francesco. Moreover, when I plainly showed him how that, to mine own knowledge, certain of his allegations were false, he audaciously responded in these three words, saying:

  “The people wish to be deceived. I will deceive them in return for gold sequins.[3] And, after an hundred years, my mendacity will have become verity.”

  The said Messer Paolo thus hath confessed himself to be a liar, flagrant, impenitent. So long as he was content to write of those things of which he had cognition, for example the Book About Fishes[4] which lately hath been printed, so long he was worthy of observance as a rather rustic pagan man who diligently used his little ability. But, seeing that he not only hath written many falsehoods but also openly hath boasted of the same, let him and his dead be anathema.

  It appeareth to me that the writing of history is a simple matter. Let each man, from the age of puberty, write of the things which happen to himself. So few men can write that not more than enough will be written. Also, some men, having been born under benignant stars, will rise: while others, having been born under malignant stars, will fall. The writings of the first will live; and their successors will profit by reading what they have written. The writings of the second die and disappear with the corruptible carcase of their writers.

  Wherefore I myself will write the history of one day of mine own life, in order that thou, my son, mayst learn the true method of writing history: that is to say, with knowledge, with a share in the fact, with truth as before the priest, with accurate descriptions of persons and things, but chiefly without any desire of persuading. But the four stumbling-blocks to truth, which the Anglican mage[5] invented, must be avoided, and they are:

  The influence of fragile or unworthy authority:

  Custom:

  The imperfection of undisciplined senses:

  Concealment of ignorance by ostentation of seeming wisdom.

  Furthermore, as to what truth is, I will say that, apart from the truths of our most holy faith which are of divine revelation and therefore not to be questioned, the truth is that which every man may acquire from the apprehensive nature of perfectly cultivated senses: or, as Zeno the Stoic saith, the test of truth is the Kataleptic Phantasm. For this cause, o Prospero, I will write history for thee from the evidence of my proper senses alone, and not from the idle reports of ungoverned and ungovernable tongues.

  I will choose to write the history of the day on which I was delivered from disability, of the day on which Alexander, magnificent, invincible, made me what I now am. I will write the history of my fortunate day. On that day, many things were done in which I had no little share. Of these things I will write. But, to know the history of that day absolutely as the Ruler of Olympos[6] knoweth it, needs must that The Prince[7] and the Cardinal of Ferrara, and Prince Gioffredo Borgia of Squillace, and innumerable other persons, should be moved as I am moved, and should be capable as I am capable, and should write as I will write. Nevertheless, seeing that none of these have written, thou shalt be content to take the history of that day from me, thy loving father. It will be a good enough history, seeing that I assisted at its making and that I wish to tell the truth.

  Thou shalt know, o virginal Prospero,[8] that, in the year MCCCCLXXXXV after the Admirable Parturition of the Mother-Maid, our house was suffering for its sins. For xij years before, on the ninth day of the kalends of March, mine uncle and our baron Madonno Francesco, the same who was the model for Messer Simone Fiorentini’s[9] image of our primate Saint George of Seriphos, had been stabbed in a brawl by one of the infamous Dellavalle. We instantly had leagued with Orsini against this our hereditary enemy and Colonna; and had comported ourselves in such wise that, during iij months, the blood of those monsters befouled every gutter in the City. But, when we were in the very article of ridding this land of those reptiles, even as Saint George our said progenitor ridded his Isle of Seriphos of the pterodactyl, for very few of them remained alive, then our Lord the Paparch[10] reinforced them with the bands of His Own house of Dellarovere and with those of Riarj to which He was allied by the marriage of His sister. Then indeed we tolerated many evils. His said Sanctity expelled us all from the City, man, woman, priest, and child, encumbering us with the Great Ban so that we never should return; and, further, He ordained the demolition of our palace on Catinari.[11] It was done; and for this same cause my cousin now buildeth that new palace where we shall live.

  Marcantonio, my said cousin, being mine equal in age, retired to Fiorenza. Being of a singular habit of mind, anxious to evade the society of most men, and not having a taste either for war or for letters, he became a disciple of Messer Lionardo da Vinci that miracle of genius, who loved him as Sokrates loved Phaidon for his beautiful hair: with whom he studied the arts, fortifications, architecture, painting, and the construction of ingenious machines whereby men might fly with wings like bats or swim with webbed feet like tritons.

  We of the junior branch made way to our castle of Deira by Squillace in the Kingdom,[12] which thou never hast seen but shalt see. That demesne formerly was denominated Greater Greece,[13] by cause that while yet the City was no more than a cluster of Alban shepherds’ huts on Campidogho[14] and Latium a kingdom, numbers of our progenitors took ship from Athens, violet-crowned, immortal, and founded states and cities on these shores.

  But at Deira we fortified ourselves, drawing fighting men and youths apt to war from among the natives; and, by cause that the arteries of these were filled with the blood of Athenian heroes mixed with the blood of those fierce Northmen, who also settled in our vicinity about the time when our castle was a-building, that is to say about the year ML since our Fructiferous Redemption, our potency became superior to that of all other barons of the said Kingdom. But, though we lived in peace, shewing ourselves rather dangerous to any who would have been our enemies, yet we maintained ourselves with all the incessant stringency of siege, at first in preparation for an assault by the Riarj, with our ancient foes, (which never was delivered, I suppose by cause that the whole orb of earth knew that we were very gravely to be feared being driven to bay;) and even afterward, when Xystus had migrated to The Lord and the Riarj and the Dellarovere had lost their predominance, we abated none of our precautions, seeing that we were ignorant concerning the manner in which the new paparch Innocent[15] would use Himself toward us.

  In those xij years, o Prospero, thy father passed from the care of nurses to boyhood and even to the gate of adolescence. I am not to intreat of those years now, nor of the manner in which I spent them. But I will say that, having something of the solitary habit of Marcantonio, and being not entirely engrossed by martial exercises or by human letters as all my fellows were, I learned to think; and thinking made me chafe, by cause that I deemed it to be a terrible sacrilege against the Maker of the World that I should be compelled to waste my life among the rustics of Deira, I being fit in mind and body to equal any patrician in the City. My syllogism was the syllogism of the Alexandrian mages:

  Intelligence must be Active:

  God is Intelligent:

  Therefore, of His Nature He must create: for a force which engendereth nothing is not a force.

  God is the Creator:

  In His Own Image He created Me:

  Therefore, I also must Create.

  But at Deira I was as a bird in a cage, as a prisoner in a dungeon, as a scorpion in a circle of fire:[16] nor was there any release for me. Wherefore the new adolescence of me, exquisite, ebullient, very grievously did chafe.

  But by chance, on the festival of Saint Valentine in the year MCCCCLXXXXV, there occurred to me the Most Illustrious Lord Cardinal-Δ. of Santa Lucia in Silice alias in Orfea, the Prince Ippolito d’Este of Ferrara. He came with an admirable company out of Syracuse where he had been buying wrestlers: for he was very curious in every kind of human monster, and his collection of athletes was without rival. He himself also was by way of being abnormal: for he was of the age of xvij years, and during ij years he had worn the vermilion hat.
He was tall of frame and supple of sinew and mighty of limb, having fortified his adolescence with archery and other exercises. Grace and charm bloomed on the face of him. His olive-coloured skin glowed with healthful pallor. His bright black eyes gleamed with grave tranquillity, meriting praises. His whole aspect was most basilical. He was an expert swimmer; and, with whatsoever weapons he adroitly strove, he did inure himself to heat and cold and night-long vigils.[17]

  Thou shalt know, o my rosy Prospero, that there are two kinds of beauty, videlicet the beauty of the body and the beauty of the soul. The latter is to be preferred: for it is permanent; and he who possesseth psychical beauty is like the immortal gods, divine ones inhabiting heavenly mansions. Yet this kind of beauty is not easily perceived. Wherefore the possession of the other kind is much to be desired: by cause that physical beauty maketh the world to turn round and to stand at gaze, whereby perception of psychical beauty, if any there be, is facilitated. Hence, physical beauty is the more important: although, unless to it be added psychical beauty, it is liable to become invalid when its first effect should have faded. But the Cardinal of Ferrara had both kinds of beauty, even as I the present scribe have both kinds of beauty.