My quest for Corvo was started by accident one summer afternoon in 1925, in the company of Christopher Millard. We were sitting lazily in his little garden, talking of books that miss their just reward of praise and influence...Millard asked: “Have you read Hadrian the Seventh?” I confessed that I never had...and by doing so took the first step on a trail that led into very strange places.
By thus serendipitously discovering the Baron Corvo's little known Hadrian the Seventh – a lightly veiled, and apparently brilliantly original, autobiography-as-revenge-novel – author A. J. A. Symons found himself obsessed with the idea of tracking down the rest of Corvo's literary works. In a way that seems only possible in 1925 Britain, Symons wrote letters to everyone he thought might have information on, or might be in possession of the works of, this Baron Corvo, and in return, he received countless detailed replies, invitations for tea, and the provision of further names for correspondence. The more that Symons learned about Corvo, the more he realised that he was on the trail of a truly original character; and while at first Symons' interest was solely in tracking down the rest of Corvo's missing novels, he eventually realised that he had assembled the details of a life thoroughly worthy of a popular biography. The subtitle of The Quest for Corvo is “An Experiment in Biography”, and that's the piece that makes this an enduringly fascinating read: in what was apparently a ground-breaking move for the time, Symons relates the details of his “quest”, and by placing himself firmly at the center this biography of another man, and by quoting at length from the letters he received and the interviews he conducted, the whole reads like a fascinating detective story. In this case, truth certainly is stranger than fiction and Symons invented the ideal method to explore a strange and tortured life. Thoroughly enjoyable read.
My interest in the early years of the eminent is far less than that which the tradition of biographical writing painfully imposes on its devotees. The facts of infancy may be vital when they refer to a prodigy such as Mozart, interesting when relevant to a rebel such as Shelley, valuable when they show the growth of a man out of his place, as Poe; but in Rolphe's case, I felt like his childhood was by much the least interesting part of his life.“Baron Corvo” was but one of the pen names used by British artist/writer Frederick Rolfe (he did spend time with an Italian countess in his youth, and she may or may not have conferred this lesser baronic title upon him), and at some point after being expelled from the second Catholic seminary he attended, he began signing his letters as “Fr Rolfe” (“Fr” is apparently an accepted shortform for “Frederick”, but he was likely trying to give the impression of having been ordained). Although acknowledged as a talented painter and photographer – for which he was never commercially successful – Rolfe eventually took to writing. And although his literary works were highly praised by those who understood their unique genius, Rolfe was such a prickly, disputant, self-defeating paranoiac that he pretty much scuttled every business deal he managed to make. Throughout his adult life, Rolfe lived barely above subsistence, working in great bursts of energy when he could find a sponsor, but as he would always eventually insult his benefactors or borrow more than he could ever hope to repay, he seemed to spend more of his time writing appeals for money than writing anything publishable. He died – penniless and friendless – at fifty-one in Venice, after having lived his last few months in a borrowed gondola. Much much more happened in Rolfe's life than this bare biography implies.
But The Quest for Corvo is equally about Symons' experience, and the twists and turns his investigation took merit their place in the narrative. Again, I was so impressed by how helpful his correspondents were – what lovely manners to sit down and write out everything you remember about someone at a stranger's request – and I was pleased that Symons quoted these letters at length. Here are some impressions of Rolfe, as remembered by his former acquaintances, and I delighted in their turns of phrase. Canon Carmont, who knew Rolfe at Scots College (seminary) in Rome, wrote:
There was a sort of ruthless selfishness in him which led him to exploit others, quite regardless of their interest or feelings or advantage. This trait, in small matters, I saw many instances of. He was dressy and particular about his appearance. Church matters were mostly a matter of millinery to him.Temple Scott, who attempted to get Rolfe's translation of Omar Khayyam published, wrote:
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.Harry Pirie-Gordon, erstwhile collaborator with and longtime sponsor of Rolfe, wrote:
He asserted that he understood in part the language of cats; and events so far bore out his claim, that when, in the moonlight, he muttered his incantations on the lawn, strange cats as well of those of the household abandoned their prowls to rub purringly against his legs.Symons' quest led him to discover a great deal about Corvo/Rolfe – he even attempts a formal psychoanalysis of his subject, which must have been even more intriguing in its day (and especially with Symons' nonjudgmental acceptance of his subject's mostly-repressed homosexuality) – and near the very end of this narrative, Symons has a chance meeting with an extremely wealthy man (Maundy Gregory, who purported to be a member of the Secret Service) and this late-in-the-game benefactor unearthed Rolfe's last two missing novels for him:
It was a deep satisfaction to discover (The One and the Many) 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 that 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!The Quest for Corvo is a fitting biography of a deserving subject, a genre-busting (in its day) experiment in telling a life story, and an intriguing detective story that reveals quite a bit about Symons (and according to the introduction to my edition, this Symons was a bit of a character himself). Totally satisfying.
