The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography (Valancourt eClassics) (19 page)

Dear Mr Grant Richards:

If you should wish to have a book or books of mine, I do hope that you will not hesitate about asking. I should be glad indeed to repeat my last offer to you, if I knew that you desired it. Pray do not misunderstand me any more. I mean you nothing but well.

Faithfully yours

Fr. Rolfe

and in a later letter this olive branch was followed up:

I have the typescript of two novels, and the manuscript of a poetry-book, ready for the printer; and I shall have two more novels ready in the course of this year. They are at the disposal of any publisher (and I feel that Fate would do admirably and suitably in making you mine) who would give me a 15 per cent royalty on the first thousand, and a rising royalty thereafter.

I was able to discover what these works offered to Mr Richards  were, from a letter that Rolfe wrote to Mrs Pirie-Gordon:

I have on my table waiting for publication
The Songs of Meleagros of Gadara:
Greek and English, the only complete collection in the world,
Reviews of Unwritten Books,
a series of 24 witty, learned, but quite easily understood essays on such delightful subjects as Caesar’s
Life of Napoleon,
a novel about Don Tarquinio’s relations called
Don Renato
(or,
An Ideal Content
)
,
and a modern novel about friendship and literary life called
Nicholas Crabbe
(or,
The One and the Many
)
.

Not a single one of those books was known to survive, at that period of my inquiry. It is certainly surprising that no publisher should have accepted them, for the terms which Rolfe proposed were not onerous, while his subjects and treatment (as I hope to prove to the reader’s satisfaction) were far more interesting than those of most of the books which find their way into print. But luck, and the times, were against him.

Fortune had stood him in good stead, however, and found him good friends, in the Pirie-Gordons. All through the year he remained at Gwernvale. ‘Here I am, living comfortably (it is true) on the hospitality of friends, writing myself blind, but not earning a penny so far’, he wrote to his mother. ‘Not earning a penny’ was the literal truth. No royalties had accrued from
Hadrian the Seventh
or
Don Tarquinio,
and as Mr Taylor began to be anxious about his investment, Rolfe began to be anxious about his future. He was nearing fifty. Early in 1908 he wrote from Gwernvale a long letter to Mrs Pirie-Gordon, who was still abroad:

Dear Mrs Pirie-Gordon:

Let me first wish you a happier New Year; and I do that from the bottom of my heart. Next, the only reason why I have not written yet to thank you for your Christmas present is that I have been waiting from day to day for news of a certain kind to send you. None has come; and I cannot wait any longer. I cannot tell you how profoundly moved I was by your gift, the silver ankh. I instantly perceived how you, and Harry, must have thought hard till you thought my thoughts. The evidence was of many kinds, the ankh itself, the size, the metal, and above all the adornment of it, as never an ankh has been adorned before, with my sign of the crab, and my moon, and my cross-potent-elongate, all of which make it my very very own. Such interest in ME, shown by such an exactly intimate knowledge of my secret and not more than half-formed desire and taste, has never been shewn before. The effect is almost to strike me dumb. Thank you, I do: but thanks express but feebly what I feel.

On the top of the ankh came Japanese silk handkerchiefs from Miss Handley, embroidered in red with my own R. and label. And again I am stricken dumb.

And all this has made me begin to notice the hundred thousand ways, little and large, in which you all watch my words for indications of my tastes and wants in order that you may gratify them. Do you know that even a special dish of angelica was provided for my Christmas dessert?

And I can do nothing adequate in return. That makes these favours hard to bear. But what makes it harder still is the knowledge that you dear kind souls,
who have given me so long the hospitality which not a single Catholic would dream of giving
, are adding to my burdens all unconsciously. You are giving me lovely things which I like so much that it will be a most bitter wrench to me to part from them. And I believe that there is nothing else before me but to part from everything. And I know that my nature will make me fight and struggle to retain; and as each thing is torn from me I shall have a pang each time. Pray then make it
easier
and not harder by not planting in me seeds which circumstances are going to tear up by their tender roots. This is not ingratitude by any means, but the truest gratitude: for, now that I know how eager you are to please me, I can freely tell you how to please me better. So I say, do not give me luxuries at all which it will hurt me to lose, and help me to live so that I have nothing which can be taken from me.

. . . I have asked Mr Taylor to advance me something to live on while I go on writing. If he had done so, I should have asked you to take me into your family, letting me contribute what I have to the common fund, until by uninterrupted work I could earn enough to discharge my obligations. I should beg you to let me live here, a great deal more simply than I do now, not interfering, nor even considered, a help and not a hindrance, left entirely to myself to do my work. If this could have been done, I am quite convinced that I could make good and permanent headway. But Taylor, though he has not definitely refused, has said nothing for a fortnight, and hope deferred has made me sick. I really am tired of it all. I have so many really good irons in the fire; and now that I have to leave them I don’t feel a bit like beginning this fearful twenty years all over again. Besides, I can’t even if I would. There is no one else who cares. And it is no good. So I am just drifting now until one thing or another happens.

But, whether anything happens or not, do please believe me that I am most thankful to you three and to Miss Handley for hospitality, generosity, forbearance, and the very truest friendship. You have made me feel no alien while I am here.

Yes: now that I have written it down I am in love with the idea, very much in love, for it seems like a clear light on a dark path: but yet never so much in love that I could persist in liking it if you (any of you) were to say that you didn’t. Of course it’s easy to see that it would make things jolly easy for me; and on that account it’s selfish. I should have a certain and most pleasant home among the dearest people, who looked upon me as one of the family, joyful with their ups and suffering with their downs; and at present (as you’re perfectly aware) I haven’t got anybody really particular to care for and to care for me. And you have perhaps perceived that I
positively fester with unused and unusual human sympathy.
And of course I could go on writing like a house on fire with such certainty and such interest behind me. And if I did go on writing, and
persistently persevering at the various schemes begun,
OF COURSE I am bound to succeed rather sooner than later. And as for my Rites – I walked to Aber and back fasting, but for an orange returning, on Christmas day – I really would regularize my life. I really would scratch a bicycle from somewhere, learn to ride, and go to Mass on Sundays and holidays. How lovely it would be to be able to do that regularly without having anything at all to do with Roman Catholics. But it is not entirely selfish. If it had been that, I don’t think I should have mentioned it, or indeed allowed it to occupy my mind at all. You know I really could make myself useful, and (eventually) offer (not an equivalent for the kindness which took pity on a drifter but) an equivalent for the expense involved. You see, I only want one thing in the world. And that I may not have. So I am free from what is called Ambition. I am just too old and too tired to care for Fame. The real fun, which I enjoy, is moving others. I infinitely prefer the background for my own performances. There is more room there for real gymnastics than on the top where youngsters sweat and struggle for public applause. Oh yes: I could be a jolly good deal more useful in the background as referee, as agent, as generally dependable person. Now you have thought me cold, have assured me of friendship. I presume on the latter to be suddenly quite hot. Does it please you? If Taylor will help, may I talk the business part over with Mr Gordon with any hope of acceptance? Don’t hesitate to say No. I thoroughly understand everything. But do say Yes if you possibly can.

Rolfe was not rebuffed. Mrs Pirie-Gordon, who perhaps understood him better than he understood himself, replied that there was no need to consider ‘business arrangements’ or ‘definite terms’, since she was well content that he should remain at Gwernvale as a guest; and that in that contentment her family concurred. To the darker parts of his letter, which I quote elsewhere, she was equally tactful. There is no doubt that, had Rolfe so chosen, he might have continued to live with the Gordons for many years. But, on the horizon, there were looming new quarrels and a new friend: a combination which, within a few months, was to transport him to Italy, to Venice, and death: to the beginning of his last ‘new life’. Before that, however, there befell him two minor pieces of good fortune, though he was not destined to benefit very deeply from either. The first was the acceptance, by a publisher, Francis Griffiths, of Maiden Lane, of two of those unpublished works for which he had so long sought a market:
Don Renato,
that priest’s diary which so powerfully impressed Mr Trevor Haddon, and the translation of Meleager produced in collaboration with Sholto Douglas. His second stroke of luck, based on the first, was a successful application for money to Mr Taylor, who agreed to make a further advance of something over £100 (he had already provided £200 and the costs of the action), to be secured by these new publications and a life insurance. On the insurance proposal form the applicant gave his full name as Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe, which he explained thus: ‘I was baptized iii Jan. 1886 at St Aloysius, Oxford, receiving the names “Frederick William”. “Serafino” was conferred by Bishop Hugh Macdonald in Aberdeen Cathedral on my profession in the third order of St Francis. “Austin Lewis Mary” were conferred by Cardinal Manning in the chapel of Archbishop’s House, Westminster, at my confirmation.’ Unluckily, these welcome gifts of fortune were outweighed by his quarrel with Robert Hugh Benson, and its consequences.

CHAPTER 14: ROBERT HUGH BENSON

Rolfe’s friendship with Robert Hugh Benson requires a special chapter and a retrospect. It preceded that with Pirie-Gordon, for it began in February 1905, when Benson sent the author of
Hadrian the Seventh
a letter of enthusiastic praise:

Llandaff House, Cambridge

My dear Sir,

I hope you will allow a priest to tell you how grateful he is for
Hadrian the Seventh.
It is quite impossible to say how much pleasure it has given me in a hundred ways; nor how deeply I have been touched by it.

I have read it three times, and each time the impression has grown stronger of the deep loyal faith of it, its essential cleanness and its brilliance.

You say yourself that where there is no disagreement there is no activity (only you say it much better), and of course there are things that cannot appear the same to two people. It is possibly, though not certainly, impertinent of me to say that; but I hope you will forgive it for the sake of the very real admiration I feel.

You have taught me the value of loneliness, and many other lessons.

May I say how much I hope that you will be bringing out another book soon? Only I do entreat you to put the bitterness out of sight. (This also you must forgive.)

I believe you are in Italy now; I wonder if I can be of the slightest service to you here in England? I am fairly often in London; and should be delighted to do anything for which I was competent.

Believe me Yours sincerely

R. Hugh Benson

When Robert Hugh Benson wrote that letter he was thirty-four, eleven years younger than the unknown author whose work he praised. Benson had recognized much of himself, and more with which he sympathized, in the extraordinary daydream of George Arthur Rose. His temperament corresponded at many points with Rolfe’s. Both shared a feverish energy; both were converts to the Catholic faith; both possessed a many-sided interest in the arts, and a ready pen. But their lives had followed widely different courses. Rolfe, as the reader has seen, was an almost self-educated man who had painfully gathered a mass of intimate and much-prized learning, who had rubbed hard against the corners of the world, endured many privations, and constantly fulfilled the role of outcast. A streak of the sinister was mixed in his composition with many good qualities; he was nevertheless a man of strong original mind, with very various and developed talents. Benson, on the other hand, was descended from ‘a sound stock of Yorkshire yeomanry’, which had gathered, in the passage of generations, association with wealth and power, and an heredity of intellect. This developing stock had flowered in Hugh Benson’s father, a man of imperial, perhaps imperious, nature, a great organizer, a fine scholar, who, after a career of unfaltering success, had been elevated to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. All his children became noticed or notable in the world. Arthur Christopher Benson, after an admired career as an Eton tutor, became Master of Magdalene College at Cambridge, and even better known as the editor of Queen Victoria’s letters and author of numerous volumes of reflective, sentimental essays; Edward Frederick Benson starred a long career with a succession of successful novels; an authority on Victorian scandals and characters, he survived all his brethren. Margaret Benson was also a writer. Even Martin, the first born, who died during his schooldays, was marked at Winchester by ‘extraordinary and precocious intelligence and spirituality’.

Robert Hugh, or Hugh, as he came to be called, was born in 1871, the youngest son of this able family. At Eton he was distinguished by dramatic imagination, rapid temper, indifference to scholarship, and a peculiar personal vividness. After a happy career at Cambridge, where he practised mesmerism and other amusements, and aspired to the Indian Civil Service, by a characteristic swerve he became imbued with religious ardour, and took Holy Orders. Less than ten years later he felt the call of Rome. His changeover provoked much discussion and feeling in Anglican religious circles: naturally, since the convert was son to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Perhaps his most marked contradistinction from Rolfe was that whereas the latter had spent his life vainly seeking an audience, Hugh Benson at home, at school, at Cambridge, and in the Church had always commanded hearers. There was also this further difference: that Rolfe was a natural writer, who failed; while Benson, with no deep talent for letters, made a success of authorship.

In 1905, shortly after writing to Rolfe, ‘Father Hugh’ returned to Cambridge, where he was remembered as a student, this time to the Catholic Rectory. Very rapidly he became one of the most regarded personalities in the city. The decoration of his rooms caused much admiration (in the theological sense); so did his eloquent sermons; while his volatility, artistic temperament, and unusual attitudes of mind made him a centre among undergraduates – easily attracted by faith and by extremes. Certain Heads of Colleges feared his entry, as a walk with him was regarded as a step to Rome.

The friendship and correspondence with Rolfe that followed after Benson’s reading of
Hadrian
was one of the most interesting events in the lives of either; Benson’s biographer, Fr Martindale, is frank as to the great influence Rolfe for a time exercised over the mind of the tempestuous convert. But, unfortunately, we cannot fully follow that friendship in its flow and ebb; for, when, availing myself of Mr Leslie’s introduction, I sought Fr Martindale, he told me that all the papers he had consulted concerning Hugh Benson had been returned, after the
Life
was written, to Mr A. C. Benson, from whom they had been borrowed. Assiduous in my quest I applied to Mr E. F. Benson, survivor of the literary brotherhood, only to learn that the correspondence had not been among Arthur Benson’s papers at his death, and presumably, therefore, had been destroyed as of no further consequence after Hugh Benson’s
Life
was written. Fortunately Fr Martindale transcribed fragments of many in his
Life
eighteen years ago; and from that and other sources I have pieced together all that can be salved of that intense but fruitless friendship.

What, we may well wonder, was the suspicious Rolfe’s reply to Fr Benson’s first letter? Knowing his distrust of Roman priests, I cannot believe that it was other than guarded and remote. One sentence survives. Commenting on Benson’s remark that
Hadrian
had taught him the value of loneliness, Rolfe rejoined ‘May I say that experience has taught
me
the frightful harm of it when compulsory?’ But Benson’s enthusiasm and frankness soon broke down the barrier of Rolfe’s reserve. In May he wrote that he had put
Hadrian
among the three books from which he wished never to be separated, though he proposed to paste together certain pages upon Socialists as too wholly sordid. But Rolfe demurred, and Benson agreed to leave the novel that had brought them together ‘unbowdlerized’. Now began a correspondence described by Fr Martindale (probably the only man living who has read it) as ‘somewhat labouredly humorous at first, but afterwards terribly stripped of affectations, especially on Benson’s harassed side’, full of ‘resentments, reconciliations, explanations and confidences’. For once Rolfe had met his match as a correspondent. Letters passed to or fro almost daily, in itself a sign of the importance attached by Benson to this new connection, for he warned even his intimates that he had no time to write more than once a month. He confessed to Rolfe that he was always quarrelling with his best friends; in return Rolfe cast his horoscope, and ascribed the pugnacity of both to the influence of their stars.

It is doubtful if anyone now knows the circumstances of the first meeting of these two queer men. Both were reluctant to risk a personal encounter for fear of disappointment. The fear seems to have been a vain one, for in August (1905) they set out on a walking tour together, each equipped ‘with a shirt or so, a toothbrush, and a breviary’, intending not to enter large towns but to seek small country inns. No record exists of their itinerary, but imagination is free to invent endless conversations on literature and liturgy, Rolfe’s recitals of his wrongs and hopes, Benson’s talk of his plans. The friendship survived, even seemed cemented by, this ordeal of juxtaposition. Benson’s friends were astonished, and some, indeed, dismayed, at the ascendancy acquired by his strange new acquaintance. Mr Vyvyan Holland, the witty translator of Julian Green, writes:

As an undergraduate at Cambridge in 1906 I enjoyed, for a short time, a close acquaintanceship with Father Hugh Benson, and quite the most vivid recollection I have of him is of the influence that a mysterious Mr Rolfe seemed to have over him. Father Benson’s description of Rolfe was of a quiet gentle man of great intellectual attainments who spent most of his life in obscure study at Oxford. They were in constant communication with one another.

At that time Father Benson was deeply absorbed in all questions concerning magic, necromancy and spiritualism, and spent a good deal of his time in reviewing books on these subjects. He had been deeply impressed with Rolfe’s casting of horoscopes. According to Benson, if Rolfe knew the exact place, and the time to the minute, of anyone’s birth, he could lay down a scheme for the conduct of his life, in such matters as when it would be wise to go on a journey, or invest money. Father Benson admitted that he himself had paid a good deal of attention to the rules laid down for himself in his own horoscope. He said that Rolfe had evidently devoted a vast amount of time to the study of the stars, had found a number of very obscure books on the subject, including one quite unknown book by Albertus Magnus, and that he probably knew more about astrology than any living man.

The most interesting story, by far, that Father Benson told me was of an experiment in ‘White Magic’ which he had carried out at Rolfe’s request. Rolfe wrote to him one day in a great state of excitement and told him that he had discovered, either in his Albertus Magnus book or in some mediaeval manuscript, instructions as to how to bring about a certain event. He would not, at that juncture, reveal what that event was, but he implored Father Benson to make the experiment.

As the experiment consisted mainly in the repetition of certain prayers and in certain periods of religious contemplation, Father Benson saw no harm in carrying it out. Certain rules were also laid down concerning hours of rising and retiring and the avoiding of certain foods and drink. I remember that no alcohol of any sort was allowed! The period for this regime was to be from ten days to a fortnight.

At the end of the period stated, Father Benson told me that he distinctly saw a white figure whose features were quite indistinguishable, mounted on a horse, ride slowly into the middle of his room and there halt for about half a minute, after which it slowly faded away. He immediately sat down and wrote his impression to Rolfe, who replied by return enclosing what purported to be a transcription of the passage from the book containing the instructions. This said that, if the instructions were faithfully carried out, at the end of ten days or a fortnight the experimenter would see ‘riding towards him the White Knight with visor down’. Benson showed me this at the time and was deeply impressed by the last words, which seemed to explain why he could not distinguish the features of his horseman.

I give this story as it was told to me. Father Benson had, I think, been delving a little too deeply into mysticism at that time, and struck me as being in a very nervous state. But he undoubtedly believed that he had seen the horseman and that Rolfe’s transcription was honest and genuine. If the story shows nothing else, it undoubtedly shows how great an influence Rolfe then had over Father Benson.

Some time later, it was agreed that the two should collaborate in a book. Benson had already suggested that they should live together in adjacent cottages, not meeting till 2.30 p.m., the hour when he became tolerant and tolerable. The subject decided upon for collaboration was St Thomas of Canterbury, who was to be the theme of a romantic history contrived by Rolfe’s favourite artifice of transcribing from a pretended contemporary chronicler. The proposal promised several advantages to Rolfe. First, Benson’s name was already well known; his novels commanded a far larger sale than Rolfe’s could hope for. Secondly, and more important, Rolfe’s name bracketed with Benson’s on a title-page would do much to restore him to the goodwill of the authorities of his Church, who viewed with distrust the outcast subject of the newspaper attack, the hero (or villain) of the Holywell scandal, and the author of
Hadrian the Seventh.
Thirdly, it would fix by a visible bond his relationship with a priest who might easily become a Bishop – in which event Benson had laughingly promised that one of his first acts would be to ordain Fr. Rolfe. In recognition of these advantages, Rolfe refused to take the half-share which Benson equitably offered, and would accept only one-third of the profits which it was hoped were to spring from
St Thomas.

The understanding seems to have been that Benson would do most of the actual writing, Rolfe the necessary research. Part of the never-completed romance survives, much varied from Benson’s original letter of suggestions:

May 10, 1906

I propose that the story be told by the monk, in the same kind of way that Don Tarquinio and Richard Raynal do it, a purported translation from Old French. 2. That no female interest enters into it, except in the Platonic love of the monk for a female child of the age of ten years, whom he thinks to be like our Lady, but who turns out to be entirely soulless (?). 3. . . . That the book is written at the command of the King, in the old age of the monk, resembling the other biographies. 4. . . . That the monk has strong and vivid artistic perceptions and is occupied by his community in some branch of handicraft. . . . 5. . . . That we get the vignette scheme by giving extracts only from his book, with caustic comments of our own – not many footnotes – but a good deal of chronicle in our own words. This will enable us to concentrate all our attention upon descriptive word-painting, and to serve up mystical reflections as we should wish to see them done. We can write the historical interludes in a sharp breezy way, which will be an agreeable relief from his musings. 6. My theory in all this is that the artistic object is shown up through the coloured lights of the various personalities. In this way we shall get at least three, the monk’s, yours, and mine. 7. As to the scheme of the book, I suggest three parts.