The death of Mr. A. V. A. Symons was recorded
in Tuesday's papers. Little more than a week ago, as it happened, I was discussing with Sir Norman Birkett Symons' unique book The Quest for Corvo—or rather was listening to Sir Norman's enthusiastic appreciation of it, for I had not then read it myself. Baron Corvo was the name assumed, with or without justification, by a singular but unquestionably gifted individual named F. W. Rolfe, who published in 1904 a remarkable novel called Hadrian the Seventh. The quest for Corvo is the story of how Symons, hearing of the man and his novel by accident, set himself to investigate the strange and chequered career of Rolfe down to his death in a Venetian lodging-house. When a leading silk can praise Sym collection and marshalling of his evidence in the terms Norman Birkett used I need add no commendation of my os But one minor coincidence has its interest. " Just after I read Corvo for the first time," Sir Norman said, " I deci to send it off to a friend who was ill. Then, as I was beginning to pack it up, I stopped and read the whole thing thro again." (It is not a short book.) That was Birkett on The Quest for Corvo. Naturally I acquired the book (you can get for sixpence) and began to read it for myself. On the page of the first chapter Symons describes his discover, of Corvo's Hadrian the Seventh. " As soon as I had finished the story," he writes, " I read it through again." Of Symor, himself much more could be written—of his directorship of tix First Edition Club, his secretaryship of the Wine and Food Society and other varied activities—and no doubt it will be.
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