6 DECEMBER 1935, Page 28

A Spoiled Priest

Hubert's Arthur. By Frederick Rolfe, Baron Corvo. (Cassell. 10s. 6d.) THE latest work of Frederick Rolfe to be brought into print by Mr. A. J. A. Symons is a laborious experiment in imaginary history. The assumption is that Arthur was not murdered by King John but escaped and, after recovering a treasure left him by Richard Lion-Heart, won the crown of Jerusalem and finally, with the help of Hubert de Burgh, -the chronicler of his deeds, gained the throne of England. Originally Rolfe collaborated with Mr. Pirie-Gordon, but after the inevitable quarrel he rewrote the story alone during the last months of his life. The style, we are told, " was meant to be an enriched variant upon that of the Itinerarium Regis

Ricardi and of William of. Tyre, with an admixture of Maurice Hewlett." Hewlett, alas, in this appallingly long and elaborate fantasy is too much in evidence, and perhaps only a knowledge of the circumstances in which it was written, to be gained from Mr. Symons' biography, gives it interest.

For if Rolfe is to be believed (a very big assumption) he brought this book to its leisurely decorative close at the very time when he claimed to be starving in his gondola on the Venetian lagoons.

" The moment I cease moving, I am invaded by swarms of swim- ming rats, who in the welter are so voracious that they attack even man who is motionless. I have tried it. And haVe been bitten. Oh my dear man you can't think how artful fearless ferocious they are. I rigged up two bits of chain, lying loose' on my prow and poop with a string by which I could shake them when attacked. For two nights the dodge acted. The swarms' came (up the anchor rope) and nuzzled me : I shook the chains : the beasts plopped overboard. Then they got used to the noise and sneered. Then they bit the strings. Then they bit my toes and woke me shrieking and shaking with fear."

The very same day that he was writing this letter (whether truth or fiction doesn't really matter : one cannot doubt the

imaginative vividness of the experience) he was penning, as if he had the whole of a well-fed life before him, some such slow decorative sentimental description as this of the dead St. Hugh singing before -King Arthur : " The pretty eyes were closed, the eyes of the innocent perfectly satisfied happy face of the little red-gleaming head which reposed on the pillow of scarlet. samite ; but the smiling mouth was a little open, the rosy lips rhythmically moving, letting glimpses of little white teeth be seen. . . ."

That to me is the real dramatic interest of llubert's Arthur. For on the whole it is a dull book of small literary merit, though it will be of interest to those already interested in the man, who can catch the moments when he drops the Hewlett

mask and reveals more indirectly than in The Desire and. Pursuit of the Whole his painfully divided personality. Reading his description of St. Hugh, "the sweet and inerrable eanorous voice of the dead," one has to believe in the genuineness of his nostalgia—for the Catholic Church, for innocence. But at the same time one cannot fail to- notice the homosexual and the sadistic element in the lushnesS and tenderness of his epithets.

When he writes in the person of Hubert de Burgh "They would not let me have my will (which was for the life of a quiet clergyman). . . . So once every day since that time, I have cursed those monks out of a full heart," one pities- the spoiled priest ; when he describes Arthur,

" the proud gait of the stainless pure secure in himself, wholly perfect in himself, severe with himself as with all, strong in disgust of ill, utterly careless save to keep high, clean, cold, armed, intact, apart, glistening with candid candour both of heart and of aspect, like a flower, like a maid, like a star," one recognises the potential sanctity of the man, just no .one recognises the ieal!y devilish mind which gives the formula for a throat-cutting with the same relish as in his book on-the Borgias he had translated a recipe for cooking a goose alive. He is an obvious example to illustrate Mr. T. S. Eliot's remark in his study of the daemonic influence : " Most people are anly a very little alive.; and to awaken them to the spiritual 'is a very great responsibility : it is only when they are so awakened that they are capable of real Good, but that at tho same time they become first capable of Evil."

C.RAIIAM GREENS.