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

sights, alas, are common enough in England now. My indignation at Erdington was still alert when Mgr Dey came to meet me: tall, handsome, dignified, becassocked, with the smile of humour in his eyes and on his lips. I expressed my regret at the grim spectacle before us; and he answered with a sigh that there had not been a single house in sight when he and Rolfe first came to Oscott.
    Before turning into the Rector’s study to talk, I walked with him round the College. Architecturally it is not remarkable, but it houses some fine things, mainly the gift of a former Earl of Shrewsbury. The Library has some good illuminated manuscripts, and in the Museum are a number of magnificent fifteenth and sixteenth century vestments, heavy velvet gleaming still with gold thread, ornamented and embroidered with superb panels showing the passions and passings of the saints. They had been on show even in Rolfe’s day, I learned; I could imagine how his mediaeval mind must have revelled in their rich, unsubdued display. We walked through long corridors hung with pictures, to Mgr Dey’s study; there he set himself at my service, and, without prompting, told me all that he could remember of Rolfe.
    They had met in 1887 at Oscott, which was then (as I knew from Fr Jackson’s letter) a secular Catholic College, and not, as now, exclusively a seminary for those preparing for the priesthood. Rolfe was a member of the limited class of ‘divines’ receiving instruction for ordination. His fees were paid by the (then) Bishop of Shrewsbury; Mgr Dey could not tell me how the Bishop had come to take Rolfe up. Rolfe had certainly proved no ordinary student: he developed an inordinate passion for painting, and three sides of his bedroom wall were covered by a remarkable picture of the burial of St William of Norwich, in which the corpse was carried by a hundred and forty-nine bearers dressed in varied vestments, but all alike contrived as to countenance in Rolfe’s own image! Even the Saint (what could be seen of him) was marked with Rolfe’s nose. This unconventional divinity student sported fanciful meerschaum pipes, and carried quite the largest tobacco pouch Mgr Dey had ever seen. He was ruthlessly ragged by the students, though he had his friends, including Mgr Dey himself. After the greater part of a year had passed, Rolfe left Oscott at the instance of the Bishop, who was dissatisfied with the progress of his protégé, and not prepared to pay for him to indulge his hobby of painting. So far as Mgr Dey knew, not a single one of his canvases survived in the College.
    Several years later young Fr Dey was astonished to receive a letter claiming Oscott acquaintance, and inviting a visit, from a ‘Fr Austin’ of whom he had no remembrance. Eventually, however, he discovered that this pseudonym covered the identity of his former friend Rolfe, and, mystified by the change of name, sought him out at Holywell in Wales. There he found the erstwhile student lodged in a schoolroom, engaged in painting banners for the local priest. His circumstances were miserable, his complaints numerous, chief among them being the poor pay for his work, and the shabby behaviour of his priest-employer. Cardinal Vaughan also, it appeared, had disappointed (Rolfe’s word was ‘defrauded’) the unlucky painter, by abandoning a promised, or half-promised, contract for ecclesiastical pictures, on the ground that all his funds were needed for Westminster Cathedral. I was particularly interested in this part of Mgr Dey’s narrative: it filled in the one substantial gap in Rolfe’s pre-literary career, and explained the position of George Arthur Rose at the opening of Hadrian, where he is shown as suffering poverty through the defalcations of his Catholic employers. Evidently he had laboured under a deep grievance: how well-founded, my informant could not say. All that he could add to my knowledge of the Holywell episode was that in the end Rolfe had moved his quarters