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

with lordly aspirations; though here it ought to be said that for a time he followed Mrs White’s sensible advice, and went under his own name of Frederick William Rolfe. . . . However, he had to depart from Seaton, and a curious story may be told as showing the light in which he was regarded after his departure. A few months afterwards he found his way into the Seaton grounds. Nobody saw him enter; but as he was coming out again by a different gateway, he found the gate locked. ‘Gate’, he shouted to the old woman in the lodge. The old body looked out, inquiring who it was, and, on being told, ‘Well,’ she drily observed, ‘I suppose I may let you out, though I have orders not to let you in’.
    Mr Rolfe, looking about for a friend in need, found one in the Rev. Fr. Gerry, Roman Catholic priest of Strichen (now Dufftown), who kept him for some weeks. Father Gerry found it extremely hard to get rid of him – as did many another – for on the day fixed for his departure the guest usually fell sick and was unable to go.
    About . . . the beginning of November 1892 Mr Rolfe made application to Messrs G. W. Wilson and Co., photographers, to be taken on their staff. He did not care a pin for money. All he desired was opportunity to improve and perfect himself in the photographic art. He was told that no improvers were taken on there; but he persisted, and ultimately on being told that there was a boy’s place vacant, which he might have if he cared to take it, and be subject to the ordinary rules of the works, he accepted. For fully three months he was in Messrs Wilson’s works at 12s. 6d. a week, but merely messing about, coming and going when he liked, pretty much doing what he liked, telling enormous yarns to his fellow-workers of his father’s property in England and abroad – for by this time he was reverting to the use of the baronial title. . . . At length the firm could endure His Excellency no longer and he received his notice. But again the difficulty was to get rid of him. After being told not to come back, he would return and start work smilingly as usual. It was thought advisable, therefore, to send him a formal intimation to his lodgings (which he had not paid for months) that the thing could go on no longer, and he must go. He immediately sent back to Messrs Wilson a letter, of which the following is an extract: ‘Dear Sir, It is a curious thing that at the moment I received your note I was about to carry out an intention I have been forming for some time past, viz. to ask you whether one would be allowed to invest a small sum, say £ 1000, in your business, and to secure a permanent and congenial appointment suited to my capacities. Perhaps it is inopportune now, but I think I had better mention it.’ Even after this he turned up at the works, and had ultimately to be threatened with ejection by the police if he did not clear out. Then Mr Rolfe proposed to sue the firm. He went to one of the principal legal firms in Aberdeen and got them to write to Messrs G. W. Wilson intimating a claim of about £300 for the retention, he said, of certain property of his, and for breach of contract. A single communication from Messrs Wilson showed the lawyers the kind of man with whom they had to deal, and they dropped the case. Mr Rolfe tried to get another to take up the case ‘on spec’, as he put it, but failed, and so that matter passed away.
     
    The expression ‘passed away’ was much favoured by whosoever wrote the attack on Rolfe; indeed, there are many repeated turns of phrase which must have revealed to the victim the identity of his enemy.
     
    The Baron chiefly occupied himself in what he called ‘beating up’ all the well-to-do Catholics, from the Duke of Norfolk downwards, for money to aid him in carrying out schemes which he put forward of colour-photography, submarine photography, new light for instantaneous photography, and all the rest. But he did not confine his attention to