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

tell me something:
     
    Bishop’s House,
    Shrewsbury
    My dear Sir,
    I fear I cannot tell you much about poor Rolfe at Oscott, although he had a room next but one to me. I am afraid we boys looked upon him as a poseur. Before he came to Oscott he was heralded as an ‘Oxford man’, and we looked forward to such a one who would take interest in cricket; and when we found he took no interest in games, and when rumour went round that he had not been at the University but had lived there for a short time in the City, his stock fell badly. He was to me personally very kind, but most of his fellow-students in ‘Divinity’ were afraid of his caustic tongue and his unmistakable sense of superiority.
    He came out to Rome early in 1889 (I think) and lived for a short time at the Scots College. As the English College men and Scots went to the same University I saw a little of him there, but he was just the same F. W. R. The morning that I remember best was after he had had a stormy interview the night before with the Rector of the Scots College – Mgr Campbell. I think the cause of it must have been that Rolfe had not paid for his pension and had been given hurried notice to quit. Rolfe said to me, ‘The man is fully paid really. He has seized a meerschaum pipe that I value at forty pounds.’
    That week he went to live with the Sforza-Cesarini. One of the family – Mario – was at Oscott when he was there. I don’t think I ever saw him afterwards. I am afraid these are trivialities, but they are the only memories I have of him. He was at Oscott about a year only.
    Yours sincerely
    Ambrose
    Coadj: Bp: of Shrewsbury
     
    Finally, I was delighted to receive the following:
     
    Oscott College
    Birmingham
    Dear Mr Symons,
    I was a contemporary of Rolfe’s at Oscott, though not in the same year. I was a senior boy: he was a junior master. This was in 1887-88, I think. Later on, I knew him rather better, when he was living in Holywell. This would be some ten years later. He certainly caused astonishment and talk at Oscott and elsewhere in this period. I am not sure that I should care to write down recollections of him. One remembers so easily the oddities of a man – and I should not care to write what may be a caricature rather than a portrait. However, if you could find it convenient to come to Oscott (where I should be delighted to entertain you) I could talk for a couple of hours about him, and you might sift what seemed needful for your purpose. We can be easily approached from Birmingham, and I really think you would get better value from a chat between supper and bedtime than if I tried to commit my impressions to writing.
    Yours faithfully
    J. Dey
     
    I jumped at this chance of a visit to Oscott, which I knew well by the description of another of my idols, George Moore, who also had been an unsuccessful student at the famous Catholic College. I wrote to Mgr Dey (present Rector of Oscott) to propose a date; and when the appointed time came, set off by car, full of hope that I might be able to discover in a lumber-room or loft some of those paintings mentioned by my correspondents. I arrived in full sunshine. Oscott College is a vast red-brick Pugin-Gothic structure, superbly placed on top of a tableland commanding a long stretch southwards. The entrance is from the back by a long drive which winds amid shrubberies and gardens to the front, so that I was quite unprepared for the sight that awaited me at my journey’s end. Standing with my back to the College entrance, I looked out over the edge of the tableland past a small farm with its fields and buildings, to a full, a panoramic, an appalling view of the slate roofs of Birmingham’s suburb, Erdington. Compared with the trim walk, lawn and shrubbery amid which I stood, compared with the farm below, it looked like a vast, hastily-set-up mining camp, built by men devoid of all sense of form and dignity, concerned only with a temporary covering while the ore lasts. Such