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conveyancing transaction. You will be met at station by barouche with white horse. Baron Corvo.’ The young solicitor hurried off with visions of an important client, but his illusions were dispelled when he found that the ‘barouche with white horse’ was only the station fly drawn by a fleabitten grey hack.
    Corvo had proposed to complete the purchase by the sale of his own properties at Bristol and Oxford; but these proved to be already mortgaged to the hilt; and so the deal was off. Moreover, rumour began to be busy with the Baron’s name. His debts to local tradesmen were mounting skywards; the Duchess’s allowance ceased; and it was said that Baron Corvo was not a Baron at all, but only Frederick Rolfe. The gossip thickened; and some time between December 1891 and June 1892 ‘Baron Corvo’ vanished from Hampshire, leaving his paintings, his brushes, and his debts to look after themselves.
    Nevertheless the Baron regarded himself as the injured party. The last that Mr Jackson heard of him was an extract from a letter to a friend, written by Rolfe ten years later:
     
    If you are writing to K-J, you should say this: he made a ghastly blunder; and there is no evidence before me that he ever has attempted or desired to set it right. Were I aware of any such disposition on his part, I hope I am not ungenerous enough to withstand him. But at present he appears to me as an avoidable person, expressing opinions based on no sure warranty and obviously false to facts. I much regret it; for, though I owe my ten years’ hell to him, I like his personality. Please do not give him the slightest unnecessary information about me or my doings.
     
    This Christchurch story was disturbing in its implications. Mr Jackson seemed to have no doubt that Rolfe’s plan had not been an honest one; and mentioned that he had thought it necessary to warn his friends against any financial dealings with ‘the Baron’. Still, I had heard one side of the story only; I needed further material for any judgement. The material was at hand. From the file in which he had kept Corvo’s letters, Mr Jackson produced two long newspaper cuttings, dated 1898, taken from the Aberdeen Free Press. He had noticed them at the time of their appearance, and kept them as curiosities. To me they were almost as engrossing as Millard’s Venice letters: a wonderful piece of luck at the outset of my labours. Here was a detailed account, seen through the eyes of an enemy, of the early adventures of the erratic being whose life I had set myself to trace. As I read it, I began to understand Rolfe’s embittered later years, to glimpse the inner misery of his life.

CHAPTER 3: THE NEWSPAPER ATTACK
     
    The ostensible cause of the articles which Mr Jackson left with me for study was a pseudo-reminiscence by Rolfe, published in the Wide World Magazine, a monthly that for a short time, and very rashly, guaranteed the veracity of its contributors. The tall stories of Louis de Rougemont which appeared in its pages brought, however, so much ridicule upon its assertion that it provided nothing but the truth that the claim was speedily withdrawn. In the last number to carry the short-lived guarantee there appeared the harmless and entertaining fiction, to which I shall refer later, which afforded Rolfe’s enemy his opening point.
    The first part of the attack is headed
     
    BARON CORVO
    MORE ‘WIDE WORLD’ ADVENTURES
    EXTRAORDINARY STORY
    A NOBLEMAN FROM ABERDEEN
     
    and opens thus:
     
    The world was recently startled by the discovery by the Wide World Magazine – a new periodical devoted to the promulgation of true statements of thrilling adventure – of a greater than Robinson Crusoe in the person of M. Rougemont, and a little later the public was equally amused when it was shown what manner of man that great explorer and anthropologist really is. Being about done with the Rougemont affair, the Wide World Magazine has discovered another personage. This time it is a