The Raven Series: Frederick Rolfe (Baron Corvo)
For every young Catholic gentleman, no library is complete without a work by Frederick Rolfe the self styled Baron Corvo. Described by Time magazine as a, 'freakishly talented eccentric', Rolfe, after a somewhat troubled youth, grew into a literary polymath in later life before he succumbed to alcoholism and a plethora of other unsavoury activities. Nevertheless, much of his life went with the territory of being a young Catholic artist. Rolfe's infamous, Hadrian VII (1904) remains one of the few books that I re-read time and time again - no seminarian should be without a copy. It's genius represents a literary parallel with similar cultural shifts in late nineteenth century Europe: what Pugin and Hardman did to imagine ecclesiastical architecture as it would have been without the Reformation, Rolfe provided a narrative utopia of Catholic England without the nasty hangover of the Elizabethan Settlement: the canonisation of Mary Queen of Scots, the papal golden rose to Empress Victoria - a 'do it yourself' vade mecum to the Reconversion of England - Victoriana style.
A few years ago, I was contacted by a PhD student in Sydney, Australia, who asked for information as to Rolfe's links with the English Catholic Diaspora and the Ecclesiastical Missionary Infrastructure on the Continent. At first I was horrified to think that Rolfe had anything to do with Douai, Lisbon, Valladolid et. al. However, after years of communication with Robert Scoble, the latter provides a convincing narrative of Rolfe the man - a literary hero and a deeply misunderstood yet troubled man. Yet another English Catholic in dire need of historiographical rehabilitation.
Anyone interested in Rolfe should take a look at Scoble's series of monographs on the author - published by James Callum books - some of these are sold out already.
[Rolfe the Jacobite]
For the full series and more information click here.
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2 comments:
You're so right to say that Rolfe is in dire need of historiographical rehabilitation. I've read the three biographies of him and they all portray him as an ingrate and madman. It's interesting that he gets a better press from his fellow Catholics. You rightly praise Hadrian, but to my mind his masterpiece is the Toto story collection, In His Own Image, a breathtaking conflation of Catholicism and paganism. I must read some of the Raven series to see if Rolfe is treated as sympathetically as he deserves.
The fellow is utterly fascinating. I note his emergence now to wider scrutiny; though; I had been aware of his writings well before the millennium (c1970’s I think) at which time I obtained varied publications by and about him where years later the books are stashed away in boxes that I must retrieve if my gammy hip will allow. ‘Fr. Rolfe’ was so talented, driven, self-possessed, suspicious, destructive of friendships, tactlessly unpleasant in his demands of others, vengeful, spiteful, relentless in vitriol spat from the enormous Waterman fountain pen he reputedly wielded, paranoid, desperately tragic. Even so, he is the sort one would have liked to have known. Of course, were it possibly, totally prepared that he would turn on one at a moments notice for some imagined slight he would accuse you of dealing him from which he could not let go. I suppose one might describe him today the archetypal ‘loner’.
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