The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography (Valancourt eClassics) (16 page)

That was the end. Rolfe had borne criticism with far more patience than I had credited him with possessing, doubtless from deference to a knowledge which he recognized as superior to his own; but at such flat correction his pride took umbrage, and the friendship and correspondence ended, though apparently without vindictiveness on either side.

Behind the literary controversy the letters showed a few darker touches. In one Douglas rejoices that bailiffs no longer perturbed Rolfe’s peace; in others, evidently conscious of his friend’s acute poverty, he enclosed small sums of money, ostensibly to pay for postage, paper, and other expenses incurred by Rolfe on their joint account. Evidently even while the unlucky translator hunted up alternative epithets in his dictionary, the shadow of penury loured darkly overhead.

*

At the time that this association with Sholto Douglas was making its flow and ebb, while Rolfe was mastering the mysteries of Greek and Meleager, he was engaged upon another and hardly less surprising literary task, and severing himself from another friend. The friend was Temple Scott, who, it may be remembered, had left England to act as John Lane’s manager in America, bearing with him Baron Corvo’s blessing, and also an injunction to familiarize American readers with his works and merits. This task Temple Scott was very willing to perform, so far as lay within his power.

The instruments by which the American public was to be made conscious of Corvo as a writer were the
Toto
volume (
In His Own Image
) and a new translation of Omar Khayyam. The second subject owed itself to the recommendation of Harland and of Kenneth Grahame, and to the vast popularity which FitzGerald’s version enjoyed. The early neglect of the Persian masterpiece had been replaced by widespread favour; edition after edition was issued by publisher after publisher. The
Rubaiyat
suited the temperament of a generation in revolt against religious assumptions; Omar’s pagan assertions expressed with poetic completeness the new materialism which had followed Darwin’s doctrines. And so ‘comparative’ versions, ‘illustrated’ versions and new versions, made by those who thought they could better FitzGerald’s classic, or merely wished to make money from the public demand, flooded the market. Not many of the ‘new’ translators knew any Persian; but that simple circumstance seems not to have troubled them. It did not trouble Rolfe.

The mine which these hardy intruders for the most part worked was the virtually complete translation into French of all Omar’s quatrains made by J. B. Nicolas, a French civil servant who spent many years in the East. FitzGerald, in his first version, purposely gives no more than a hundred and one verses; and most of the other English adaptors followed his example in rendering only a selection of stanzas connected by sentiment and idea. Rolfe’s project, in itself a good one, was to make the first translation into English prose of the more than four hundred tetrastichs given by Nicolas. If challenged, it is possible that he would have essayed, by his own peculiar methods, to extract a meaning from the Persian original; by comparison, the task that he set himself was an easy one.

On the advice of Temple Scott, who was to write a Preface for Rolfe’s new version, John Lane agreed to publish the book when completed, and to purchase the copyright for £25. In due course Corvo did complete his task. It cannot have been an easy one; and the finished product, issued to the world in 1903, bears many marks of its eccentric author. Mr Nathan Haskell Dole, an American Omarian who contributed an Introduction, remarks that

Frederick Baron Corvo shows that he is a masterly translator. He often penetrates through the decorative filigree of the French style to something approaching Omar’s own marvellous concentration, condensation. Where, for instance, M. Nicolas, with a humorous lack of humour, declares that the nightingale speaks ‘dans un langage approprié à la circonstance’, the English reads elegantly ‘whispers me with fitting tongue’. The translator often uses a Greek word with cleverness; as in the phrase beginning ‘Initiate in every mystery, now for what new orgies dost thou yearn’, which is Greek from beginning to end, exquisitely veiling the obscenity of the Persian. The phrase ‘un verset plein de lumière’ is luminous as ‘diaphotick verse’; and how elegantly he introduces the Moon as ‘Astrarche’, the Queen of Stars. He speaks of ‘fair Parthenian tresses’ and the Greek word agapema, which means ‘The object of love’, and is neuter, he, by a turn of genius, transforms into a proper name, and a beautiful name at that – ‘the throat of Agapema’.

These praises may be deserved, but it is only by the enthusiastic that Rolfe’s text can be read for pleasure. Apart from the peculiarities of his transliterations, which this time Sholto Douglas did not restrain, there is a heavy formality about his prose version which not even occasional happy turns of phrase can make more than tolerable. ‘If a Stranger be faithful to thee, take him for a Kinsman, if a Kinsman bewray thee, take him for a Stranger,’ is a favourable specimen. ‘God, moulding my Body’s Clay, knew what I would do. Not without His Connivance am I culpable. Then, at the Ultimate Day, will He let me burn in Hell?’ is another. However, for a time, Rolfe was very pleased with his translation, and expected it to make his fortune. ‘The Philistine likes a little obvious recondity’, he wrote to Temple Scott; ‘Don’t you misjudge by glancing. I have invented a new set of English words expressing the Persian idea
via
the Greek language, strictly following philological rule, so that, though these words hit you in the eye, they strike a spark of intelligence in the brain
instanter.
Anyone can see the meaning of Hybristick, and reference to the glossary will show it as the epithet applied by Homer to the suitors of Penelope – rude and tipsy and libidinous and gay and young – wanton, but a much more pregnant word.’ Unfortunately, ‘anyone’ (if he was the average reader) could not. Lane would not go to the expense of printing the glossary, and so Rolfe’s ‘archellenisms’, as a later critic called them, were unappreciated by the Philistines, though they amused students of eccentric words. This new and elaborate version of Omar fell flat in England, and was stillborn in the United States. For this failure the author blamed (not himself but) Lane and Temple Scott. ‘In London I had found him deserving of pity and charity,’ writes the latter; ‘in his letters to me in New York I found him ungrateful and bitterly misunderstanding of kindness and friendly help. Indeed, I found that it was irritating to help him. He curdled the milk of human feeling by an acidity of nature he was unable to sweeten, however he might desire to sweeten it. And I am sure he did so desire. I ceased corresponding with him when I found that he became insultingly suspicious, and that it was impossible to satisfy his demands.’

Before the final break, however, Rolfe sent his friend in America a number of letters which contain illuminating phrases. ‘Do not trouble to tell me anything about your journey,’ he wrote following Temple Scott’s departure; ‘that is the most annoying convention of the traveller. I, when formerly I moved, and had friends (passez-moi le mot) who expected news of my movements, used to find myself after the first few letters inditing the most enormous lies. The tale of little travels, after two repetitions, is perfectly uninteresting to the traveller; indeed, he becomes bound to create.’ ‘I imitate nothing, I cultivate my prominences. Hence my singularity’, he wrote in another moment of self-expansion. Again, ‘Collect and send me as many . . . literary papers, magazines, as you can, anything to keep me from losing my senses. All things considered it takes very little to amuse me; and I am never amused at all; and a man without amusement cannot be serious.’ These letters are for the most part friendly in tone, but at the least transgression beyond the expected the claws show:

Last night [I received] your unsatisfactory letter dated vii June. Unsatisfactory, by reason of divers damnable heresies therein contained.

Item: that you know me now.

You don’t. No one does. I don’t myself. Except that I am what I am at the moment, utterly concentrated on that, and as utterly concentrated on this at the next. You know me?
Anathema sint!

Item: that you have nothing to do with Imagination.

You have. Your own letter gives you the lie. It’s all imagination.
Anathema sint!

Item: that I’m satisfied with my Borgia book.

I’m not. It’s about a third as good as it might be. It wants seventy-eight more medals, a voyage to Rome, Milan, Ferrara, and two years. It’s only a poor starved pretentious thing.
Anathema sint!

Item: that I’m a luxurious sybarite.

That is perfectly infernal. That shows how abominably the insidious calumnies of the
Aberdeen Free Press
have influenced even you. People, accustomed to classify, only can classify. It is such a common thing to say that one uncommon is luxurious. Kindly note that I am not. Strawberries I loathe, and asparagus I merely use. I do pride myself on being dainty, but my daintiness is for the little and the simple. Food doth not worry me, nor clothes. I prefer omelettes, green things, and a gown, to unnatural and splendid opulence. I crave of the unhearing gods a climate, books, precious stones, baths, five slaves, and my naked soul. But strawberries and asparagus forced –
Anathema sint!

The most interesting of the letters sent to me by Mr Temple Scott defines Rolfe’s attitude to love and passion:

I am struck aghast every now and then by the strange thing people call Love. One would be silly to deny it – because every now and then an example crops up of a sensible man or woman having their life tangled up with the life of another in blind mystery. They actually support each the continual presence of the other. Oh, there must be something in it.

But it seems so excessively funny to me. Carnal pleasure I thoroughly appreciate, but I like a change sometimes. Even partridges get tiresome after many days. Only besotted ignorance or hypocrisy demurs to carnal lust, but I meet people who call that holy which is purely natural, and I am stupefied. I suppose we all deceive ourselves. To blow one’s nose (I never learned to do it) is a natural relief. So is coition. Yet the last is called holy, and the first passes without epithets. Why should one attach more importance to one than to the other? I don’t think that I want to know.

Some talk of wickedness, and vulgarly confound the general with the particular. Of course you’re wicked, every instant that you spend uncontemplative of, uncorresponding to, the Grace and Glory of your Maker. That may be forgiven, for that Real Love forgives.

So that, except carnally, I fail to understand the love of man for maid. But carnally – well, of course. Extra-carnally, there is a perfectly possible relation of taste, of admiration of soul, of body.

As for me, I am rotting in my chains, and Nature only looks in at my prison window, and passes by. Mail of icy indifference encloses me, no one touches me where I can feel. I am aloof – alone.

*

The peculiar neurosis under which Baron Corvo suffered had cut him off from almost every friend he had ever made, and every source of income, but he still retained a roof over his head – that Hampstead roof to which he had first been introduced four years earlier as a guest of the friendly Slaughter. Slaughter, however, had left 69 Broadhurst Gardens to serve in the South African War, and did not return. His place as Rolfe’s main benefactor was taken by another boarder, Harry Bainbridge, a young chemist, who for over two years helped Corvo with money and friendship. But now Bainbridge also left the Hampstead haven, and Rolfe became desperate.
[1]
He must have earned and borrowed small sums in one way or another, though how, it is difficult to guess. About this time he enlisted the support of J. B. Pinker, the well-known literary agent; and fortified by a recommendation, sought, but sought in vain, a publisher for the Dom Gheraldo book, now called
Don Renato,
and for the translation of Meleager, and the
Reviews of Unwritten Books,
made in collaboration with Sholto Douglas. He disavowed any desire for fame. ‘I do not burn for literary success, but for commercial success,’ he explained to one reader who considered his unpublished books; ‘I am only waiting to find a publisher with whom I actually can co-operate. It is open to the publisher of my works to invent a personality and to attach that personality’s name to those works. I myself will give you a name for them, if there really is any value in a name.’ It seemed clear that there was not much in ‘Baron Corvo’.

What he longed for above all was some dramatic turn that would make him independent. ‘I am having a frightful time with money worries’, he wrote to a correspondent in America:

The booming in my ears is incessant and the top right of my skull feels like lead. My tongue is furred, mouth foul, and I am always dry. I never touch alcohol: I have not for years. Only once in my life was I drunk and that was an accident when I was six years old. But I think more and more slowly every day. I am really quite useless for brain work, or even for ordinary conversation, from the time I get up till tea time. Of course I can chatter, or write, but the action is merely automatic, no thought inspires or directs, and the result is perisomatic simply. For this there is no cure but rest and freedom from worry. With those I could work out my own salvation. I have not a friend in the world to help me. The literary ‘patron’ no longer exists, or at least he never has manifested himself to me. And, even though the quality and quantity of my work are admired, and predictions daily are made of the brilliant commercial success which will attend my stuff sooner or later, no one ever yet has conceived the idea of investing money in me to keep me alive to do more work and win that commercial success. And I think on the whole that’s it. Nothing but a thousand pounds, I name a sum at random, nothing but a sum, a lump sum, will brush away these cobwebs, which are stifling me, and give me
confidence,
sweet reasonableness, strength to use myself well and aptly. I have none to lean on, and that kills.

The secret lies in the lump. That is quite essential. Little bits are worse than useless, they irritate, they exasperate, they annoy, simply because they prolong my agony, but they are quite useless to do me any real good. With the lump, I could clear off my really paltry embarrassments, go to sleep for a month by some sunny sea and clean my soul of horrible dreams; and then go to work again with vigour, knowing that I had something behind me, that I need not refrain from going for a good long walk when the spirit moves me to it, just because of the necessity of saving boot leather, of saving a clean shirt and collar for the time when I am obliged to go out to see a publisher or comfort my mother and sister. This may give you a faint idea of the restrictions which make me writhe.