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

Catholics. . . . He did not hesitate to attempt even the highest flights, as the following communication will show: ‘Baron Corvo presents compliments to Sir Henry Ponsonby, and is desirous to offer Her Majesty the Queen a small picture of the Nativity at Christmas. It is his own work, and is quite unique, being photographed from the living model by magnesium light. He would be very grateful to Sir Henry Ponsonby for directions as to the necessary form to be observed on these occasions.’
    But, after all, it was to Roman Catholics that [Corvo] chiefly made his epistolary appeals. One of those upon whom he bestowed unsleeping attention was the late Roman Catholic Bishop of Aberdeen, Hugh Macdonald. Writing to the Bishop on one occasion acknowledging the loan of £1, which the kind-hearted Bishop had sent him, Rolfe wrote: ‘My Lord Bishop – I regret that I have made a mistake as to the funds at your Lordship’s disposal, but I was informed . . . that a sum of £4,600 had been inherited by the Catholic Cathedral clergy “for the relief of the Catholic poor”. I repeat my apologies for having troubled your Lordship about a matter on which I was misinformed.’ The note from the Bishop in reference to this matter was pointed and not without a touch of ecclesiastical humour: ‘My dear Mr Rolfe, As I told you on Saturday, I have no funds at my disposal for the relief of the Catholic poor. No such sums have been left lately, so that you must have been misinformed. May our Lord help you out of your difficulties, for I have no faith in submarine photography. Hugh C. SS. R. Bishop of Aberdeen.’
    But the further adventures of Baron Corvo must wait for another day.
     
    Not, however, for long. One article did not satisfy the spleen of Rolfe’s first biographer. He returned to the attack in the next issue of the Aberdeen Free Press, pleading, in the fashion that I recognized, that ‘It will be well’ to give some further particulars of the Baron’s residence in Aberdeen. It is unnecessary to repeat in full all the instances he gives of the ways in which Rolfe struggled to keep his head above water. He appealed all round for aid to finance inventions of which there is no longer any record. Perhaps a hint of one can be gleaned from the letter to Sir Henry Ponsonby quoted above, and another to Mr W. Astor in which Rolfe claims to have ‘invented a portable light by which I can dispense with the sun’. His reference is to photography by magnesium light, at that time (the early nineties) still a novelty. It is charitable, and reasonable, to suppose that Rolfe, who, even in the admission of the Aberdeen writer, was an ‘expert’ photographer, had stumbled upon some advance, or improvement, on the methods then employed. Even his other inventions, so called, seem to have had at least prima-facie claims. They so far impressed Commander Littledale, then in charge of H.M.S. Clyde, that the Commander undertook to bring some of Rolfe’s submarine schemes before the United Service Institution; though even that minor triumph brings its sting, for
     
    this [news] was, of course, instantly communicated to friends with the additional information that [Rolfe] wanted funds ‘to conduct the experiments before the experts, which will mean two if not three fortunes to me’. But that matter also passed away.
     
    He made a similar hit in approaching Lord Charles Beresford, who gave him an appointment, but
     
    immediately a shoal of letters was sent out – one to the Bishop of Shrewsbury, another to the Bishop of Aberdeen, others to the Duke of Norfolk, to Mr W. T. Stead, to Mr Gleeson White, etc. etc., intimating that Lord Charles Beresford had expressed his interest in the invention, and would these lords and gentlemen help in the matter of finance. But none of them rose to the occasion.
    The Baron was no more successful in an application to the Illustrated London News and a similar one to the Graphic, to be commissioned to proceed