Max Markham is the author of Indigo Bird – An Erotic Novel. For more information on the author and his work, please visit Max Markham’s Section on this website.
This article is part of a series of posts about my favorite top ten gay Englishmen.
Frederick William Rolfe, better known as Baron Corvo, was an English writer, artist and eccentric. Like Somerset Maugham, I hesitated over including him in this series, given that in real life, had we been contemporaries, I would probably have hated him. Although capable of an ingratiating charm, he was basically profoundly unpleasant, quarrelling with those who were unwise enough to befriend him, and usually biting the hand that had fed him. In 1913 his death in Venice was a matter of relief, rather than regret, to most of his acquaintances. Nevertheless Rolfe’s place in gay literature is quite an important one. Much of his work is still in print. Although he died in poverty, one step ahead of his creditors, he might, had he lived, have collected good royalties from at least one of them: Hadrian VII. This is his best-known work.
Rolfe was born in London, the son of a piano manufacturer. Interestingly, his descent appears to have been pure Anglo-Saxon, with no admixture of Norman, Huguenot or other later immigrant blood. He was proud of this heritage. He left school at the age of fourteen and became a teacher. He taught briefly at the King’s School, Grantham, where the then headmaster, Dr Ernest Hardy, later Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, became a lifelong friend. Dr Hardy helped Rolfe to earn extra cash by marking exam papers. As a result Rolfe was often at Oxford and may have met T E Lawrence as an undergraduate at Jesus College. Rolfe had a good knowledge of Latin, although his Greek was less good than he liked to pretend. Rolfe spoke with an exaggerated “Oxford” accent and sometimes gave the impression that he might have been an Oxford man.
Rolfe converted to Roman Catholicism in 1886. He felt a strong divine vocation to the priesthood, which persisted throughout his life, although it was never realised. In 1887 he was sponsored to train at St Mary’s College, Oscott and in 1889 was a student at the Scots College in Rome. He was thrown out due to his failure to concentrate on priestly studies and his erratic behaviour. Rolfe however believed that he had been the victim of a “plot”; i.e. of constructive dismissal. At this stage he entered the circle of the Duchess Sforza Cesarini, an Englishwoman married to an Italian noble, whose sons he tutored and who, he claimed, had adopted him as a grandson and given him the use of the minor title of “Baron Corvo”. This became his chief nom-de-plume. More often he abbreviated his own name to “Fr. Rolfe”, which might imply that he really was a priest. Rolfe’s conversion was not a good career move; it excluded him from teaching in all Anglican and State schools (the vast majority of schools in England) and confined him to teaching in Catholic schools, where he seems eventually to have been black-listed, and to work as a private tutor.
Rolfe spent most of his life as a freelance author; mainly in England but partly in Italy. Despite his undeniable talent, he never made a decent living from this work and relied heavily on benefactors for support. But he had a tendency to fall out spectacularly with the people who tried to help him. Eventually, out of money and out of luck, he died in Venice from a stroke on October 25, 1913. He is buried in the island cemetery of San Michele. Rolfe’s life provided the basis for The Quest for Corvo by A J A Symons, a kind of biographical detective story, considered one of the best literary biographies of the twentieth century. Rolfe’s lush, decadent style had some unlikely admirers, including Maundy Gregory, Lloyd George’s honours salesman and a murderer; A J A Symons himself; Ronald Firbank and John Buchan, of all people. Buchan described it as “caviar”. Even so, it was a later generation that finally came to appreciate Rolfe’s originality and style, long after his death.
Frederick Rolfe accepted his homosexuality, associated and corresponded with a number of other gay Englishmen, although, in the aftermath of the Oscar Wilde scandal (1895), life in the UK for gay men had become anything but easy. This may account, with other factors, for his preference for living in Italy. His novels and short stories contain pederastic elements, but his former male pupils recalled in later life that there had never been any hint of impropriety in his relations with them. In a private letter written late in his short life, he stated: ‘My preference was for the 16, 17, 18 and large.’ How often he really enjoyed this ideal is uncertain. Those of whom it has been suggested that they might have had sexual relations with Rolfe, include Aubrey Thurstans, Sholto Douglas, John ‘Markoleone’, Ermenegildo (Zildo) Vianello and other Venetian gondoliers. They were all sexually mature young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one (with the exception of Douglas, who was much older). The idealised young men in his fiction are of a similar age. In addition there were passionate but unconsummated friendships with various young and youngish men. Corvo combined working-out (he kept himself very fit) with voyeurism; especially in places where men were permitted to swim naked, like Parson’s Pleasure near Oxford or Sandford Lasher.
Rolfe’s best-known works are:
Hadrian the Seventh (1904), This is Rolfe’s most famous novel. An English Catholic, George Arthur Rose, having originally been rejected for the priesthood, finds himself the object of a highly improbable change of mind on the part of the Roman church hierarchy, who elect him to the papacy. Rose takes the name Hadrian VII and embarks upon a programme of ecclesiastical and geopolitical reform. He takes the name of Hadrian VII in honour of the only English Pope, Nicholas Breakspear (Adrian or Hadrian IV). He takes the opportunity to review his past life and to reward or punish friends and acquaintances according to what he believes to be their just desserts. Hadrian’s short reign is brought to an end when he is assassinated by a Pope-hating Protestant, and the world breathes a sigh of relief. George Arthur Rose, the gay, chain-smoking Pope, is a self-portrait; many of the characters are recognisable, and indeed recognised themselves when the novel was published. The novel is fascinating to non-Catholics for its accurate description of little-known Roman procedures, including the choice of a Pope from outside the Curia, when the Cardinals have reached deadlock. This novel has been dramatised and filmed with success. It was made into a stage-play by Peter Luke, opening at the Mermaid Theatre, London, in 1968 and starring Alec McCowen as Hadrian. The later Broadway production starred first McCowen, then Roderick Cooke, and finally, Barry Morse.
Stories Toto Told Me (1898), a collection of six short stories; later expanded to thirty-two and republished as In His Own Image (1901), in which ‘Don Friderico’, who is by implication a Roman priest, and his teenage Italian acolytes embark on long walking tours in the Italian countryside. The youths’ leader, the sixteen-year-old Toto, recounts tales of saints behaving much like the Greek gods on Olympus, often meddling in the affairs of mortals, with results both tragic and ludicrous. The fables are richly Catholic and superstitious; the saints who figure in them are hedonistic, revengeful and not especially saintly.
The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole (written 1910–1913, published 1934) is set in Venice and starts another autobiographical hero, Nicholas Crabbe. It has three interlocking plots: Crabbe’s efforts to get his books published, in the face of obstacles placed in their way by his friends and agents in England; his rescue of a sixteen-year-old girl, Zilda, from the Messina earthquake and employment of her as his assistant and gondolier, dressed in male garments to avoid scandal; and the transcendent beauty of Venice itself and the role it plays in the lives of its votaries. Extracts from the novel’s beautiful descriptions of Venice appear regularly in guidebooks and modern anthologies. Unlike Rolfe’s other novels, this one ends happily, with a lucrative book contract and a declaration of love. Marriage to the slim, boyish Zilda is clearly on the cards.
Other novels by Rolfe include Don Tarquinio (1905), Don Renato (1909), The Weird of the Wanderer (1912), and Hubert’s Arthur (published posthumously in 1935). Both The Weird and Hubert’s Arthur were collaborations with Harry Pirie-Gordon. These works are set in previous centuries, and the principal protagonist in each is not Rolfe’s alter ego, although there is a strong degree of identification.
Rolfe also wrote shorter fiction, history and poetry. He was a copious letter-writer, but a definitive edition of his letters has yet to be produced. Examples of his elegant calligraphy still turn up in manuscript sales.
Despite his priestly vocation, Rolfe seems to have dabbled in black magic and to have at least been acquainted with some of the magicians of his period, like Montague Summers. I felt distinctly bad vibrations when I stood near his tomb on San Michele in 1999. I have not been back since.
The Indigo Bird
An Erotic Novel by Max Markham
James Graveney, a young Major in a respectable regiment, is outwardly conventional. In private James is bisexual, with a strong urge for his own sex. Gay sex, however, is illegal in the Army, so he is discreet about this.
James’ world is turned upside-down when he meets Lieutenant Richard Finch. Richard is intelligent, charismatic and exceptionally handsome. He doesn’t mess around. He gets what he wants, and is completely unscrupulous about how he gets it. Richard will stop at nothing to achieve this, including Machiavellian deception and a cunning and brutal murder. James starts responding to Richard, cautiously at first, then gets swept along on the great love affair of his life.
The Indigo Bird is a rollercoaster of surprises set against backdrops varying from the jungles of Belize to London, the English countryside, and Ireland, and the scene is set for more shocks and adventures. [Read more...]
The Indigo Bird is available through Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords.com, Amazon Kindle US, Amazon Kindle UK, and any other good bookstore.
