Free The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography (Valancourt eClassics) by A.J.A. Symons Page A

from 1887 to 1890, from twenty-seven to thirty, was dated, and might be documented. His period in Christchurch, and his vicissitudes in Aberdeen, lasting from 1891 to 1894, were also plain enough. From that point my knowledge was more hazy. He had found his way to Wales, how or why I knew not; he had become a writer; and, four years after the end of his adventures in Aberdeen, he had endured the newspaper attack. With what consequences? Was it that which had provoked the suspicions and touchiness clouding his later years? I knew very little of his life as an author beyond what could be gleaned from the letters to his family. In 1904-5 he was busily engaged in writing; in 1913 he died.
    I made a similar mental tabulation of his writings. The first was Stories Toto Told Me, published in 1898 after a previous appearance in The Yellow Book. Rolfe had been moved by their success to write more, and so form his second book, In his Own Image. The same year (1901) had seen his Chronicles of the House of Borgia. Then in 1903, 1904, 1905, his translation of Omar, Hadrian the Seventh, and Don Tarquinio had successively appeared. After that, nothing till 1912 (a gap concurrent with that in his biography), when his last-published work, The Weird of the Wanderer, seemed to have fallen flat. The ground on which I should question Mr Leslie began to be clear.
    It was with a certain excitement that I rang Mr Leslie’s bell: I knew him well by name, by his writings, by the commendations of friends, but we had never met. His smile of welcome was reassuring after the reserve of Mr Rolfe; and I discovered with delight at lunch that my host (though he grieved me by leaving his excellent hock untasted) shared my own sense of verbal humour, and neither reserved all his intelligence for his writings, nor all his cordiality for those whom he knew well. Moreover, voices have always been one of my tests for new acquaintances: Mr Leslie’s intonations charmed my ear.
    As to helping me, he was wholly at my service, though he thought Rolfe’s life impossible to write. As before I was asked, what did I want to know? I put my questions under two heads: first: Rolfe’s life at Oscott and Rome; secondly, his last years. As to the second, Mr Leslie professed himself hardly wiser than I; he knew little more as to how Rolfe spent his time in Venice than could be derived from those letters belonging to Millard which I had read for myself. Regarding Rome and Oscott, however, he could be more helpful. He handed me a manuscript of several pages, written by a contemporary of Rolfe’s at the Scots College, and numerous addresses of Catholics who had known Rolfe at one time or another in his life. In particular he recommended me to approach Fr Martindale, S.J., biographer of Robert Hugh Benson. Concerning Benson, Mr Leslie gave me a few details, which I reserve for their appropriate chapter. I left him with the feeling that my quest for Corvo had made me a new friend.
    I will not impede this narrative with an account of my numerous letters beseeching information from those who had been, or might have been, at either of his two clerical colleges with Rolfe. Some came back marked ‘Gone Away’; some to whom I wrote were dead; some refused to help me. But I did not draw all blanks, as will be seen.
     
    Abbot’s Salford
    Near Evesham
    Dear Sir,
    I am afraid that I cannot send you much information concerning Frederick Rolfe that will be of value. I will, however, tell you what I can remember, in the hope that you may possibly be able to pick out something which may perhaps corroborate some piece of information you already possess.
    I left Stonyhurst College in 1885 and came to Oscott in that year, while it was still a lay-College under the presidency of Mgr Souter. It was about that time, before Oscott was changed into a seminary, that Rolfe arrived and joined the ‘Divines’. The ‘Divines’ were the Church students of the College, wearing the cassock and biretta