Read The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography (Valancourt eClassics) for Free Online Page A

nobleman, and in this month’s issue of the magazine he is presented with the customary editorial flourish which, at the head of an article, is understood to give a keener relish to the tale. The new writer tells a story of his experiences with great minuteness, but there are many experiences of his much more striking than the statements of the Wide World Magazine, which it would be well for the world to know. The article in question is entitled How I was Buried Alive and is ‘By Baron Corvo’ – though no quotation marks will be found beside his name anywhere in the Magazine to indicate that he is not the real quality. And the patent of nobility is further endorsed in the serious editorial statement already mentioned, in which the story is described as ‘Baron Corvo’s fearful experience described in minute detail by himself and illustrated with drawings done under his own supervision’. A picture of a youngish man is given in the front of the article as a photo of Baron Corvo. It may be said that it is a very good photo, and has been recognized by many people in Aberdeen and neighbourhood, who can tell something regarding him vastly more interesting than what appears in the Wide World Magazine under His Excellency’s signature. . . . The merit of [that] story lies in its being an actual experience of this nobleman, and . . . it will be well, for many reasons, to indicate how far His Excellency the Baron Corvo is to be taken au sérieux.
    And first as to title. People will look in vain in the peerage of this or any other country for the lineage of Baron Corvo. But ‘the Baron’ has not now used the title for the first time; nor does he use it without being well warned by those with whom he was acquainted as to the complications likely to result if he persisted in doing so. It was all right so long as he employed the title to those who knew what value to put upon it, but he has been fond of subscribing himself in formal communications ‘very truly, Corvo’, and even as ‘Frederick Baron Corvo’. Those who knew him pointed out the folly, to say the least of it, of this kind of thing.
     
    So far the attack had proceeded with menacing restraint. Now, however, the author opened his hand. Evidently he was well informed; for he turns to the Christchurch incident, and relates in detail how ‘the Baron’ had attempted to purchase Gleeson White’s property and was ‘treated seriously in the negotiations – for a while’. He gives, too, the text of a taunting and sarcastic letter written to Rolfe by Mrs White which concludes:
     
    ‘As regards your persistence in maintaining that you could buy our property, I can only hope you were self-deceived. No other excuse can justify the extreme and unnecessary worry you have caused us both. Are you leaving on Saturday? An absurd report has reached me that you are to be sold up then and are going to the workhouse. Under the circumstances I hope your old friend Mr T. and your priest will come to the rescue – but how about that £100you have told us repeatedly you have still at your London bank under your real name Rolfe? which let me advise you to re-adopt for the future, for the very fact of your assuming a new and foreign title has, I find now, given rise from the first to suspicions here and elsewhere. . . . Deeply regretting that you have made it impossible for us to assist you further, I am, etc. etc.’
    This [continues the article] shows something of the nature of the Baron, and it may simply be added that the title Baron Corvo, as His Excellency told on various occasions to those who knew him, is ‘a distinction I picked up in Italy’.
     
    Having (it must be admitted, quite skilfully) thus thrown cold water on ‘His Excellency’s’ rank, the unknown commentator asks ‘Who, then, is Baron Corvo?’, a rhetorical question which he proceeds to answer:
     
    This gentleman is Frederick William Rolfe, and his history prior to his emergence in Aberdeen may