Corvo's Appendix III - A Guest Post by Fogus

While perusing my pipe-leaf-haunted 1931 Modern Library edition of A History of the Borgias, I came across a footnote about the tribulations surrounding Baron Corvo’s original manuscript and its ill-fated Appendix III:

The suppressed “Appendix III on a suggested Criterion of the Credibility of Historians” was a vivid and virulent impeachment of five historians—Pontano, Infessura, Guicciardini, Varchi, and John Addington Symonds—in the matter of admitting the evidence of moral turpitude. Every copy save one was destroyed by a cautious publisher.

The footnote hopelessly compelled me to search for this elusive Appendix III, and a preliminary investigation quickly dispelled the convenient legend of a lone surviving copy. The second edition of Cecil Woolf’s A Bibliography of Frederick Rolfe, Baron Corvo (1972) states that the appendix was printed and numbered but suppressed before publication. Woolf says that the appendix was destroyed save for a few copies that circulated as unbound proof sheets of nine leaves and in three bound proofs. I found a listing in the Autumn 2014 Elysium Books catalog for a 1901 first edition proof from Grant Richards with the Appendix III bound into the book. That copy passed from Richards to Shane Leslie, through A.J.A. Symons and then to Donald Weeks, who owned it until his death in 2004 after which it was sold in auction in 2014. Woolf’s bibliography states that Weeks also owned the proof sheets of the appendix with annotations in Corvo’s hand, but it’s not clear where those leaves are today. A second bound proof passed from Richards to Oliver Brett Esher and was once held in the Martyr Worthy collection, Columbia University. Sadly, it’s not clear if that collection still holds that proof. The third bound proof appears to still be in the Bodleian Library’s special collections at Weston Library, Oxford.

Despite finding locations for the bound proofs, I still found myself in the soup. Given my present circumstances, Oxford and Columbia might as well be on the moon. However, after digging a bit further I came across a reference to P.H. Muir’s Points: Second Series 1866-1934 (1934) which is a collection of disparate bibliographic materials for a wide range of authors. Inside I found a bibliography of Rolfe’s works containing more information about the suppressed appendix, including a facsimile of the first page having deliciously Corvine passages such as: ‘Great men in the world’s history, chiefly men of intellect and men of sovereign rank, have been its victims. At one time or another time, they inadvertently have trodden upon some human worm; and the worm has turned, and stung them.’ The quote starts a scathing attack on the credibility of the aforementioned historians, but it’s difficult to garner the trust of the attack in this singular page. Finding this did nothing but make me yearn for more.

Eventually, my search led me to a revised version of the appendix published as "Suggestion for a Criterion of the Credibility of Certain Historians" in volume 160, issue 4 of the Westminster Review (Oct 1903, pp 402-414). Corvo’s critique starts by stating that claims of homosexuality by the aforementioned historians against Pope Sixtus IV were based on vagueries like “ut fertur vulgo” (as is commonly reported) and “ut dicunt quidam” (as some say) rather than on testimony from credible witnesses. Corvo then takes great pains to refute the accusations against Sixtus IV of favoring his “pages of the bed-chamber” by examining a long list of the people who were promoted. By enumerating proof of age and station for each, Corvo attempted to disprove the accusation that Sixtus rewarded his “puelli delicati.” Corvo then spends numerous paragraphs relitigating the charge of lustful motivation for the promotion of family members to a lesser charge of common nepotism. Finally, he tackles the accusation that Sixtus IV promoted his supposedly base-born young valet Giangiacomo Sclafenati to cardinal. Corvo masterfully uses the historical record to show that Sclafenati was not base-born, nor young when he was promoted, and indeed that he was not even a valet. In short, the essay was clearly an Edwardian-era manifestation of Brandolini's law.

From a modern perspective, Corvo’s linguistic games around the homosexuality charges seem needlessly baroque, but I found that the byzantine use of Latin served two purposes. First, since the original accusations often were in Latin, Corvo’s use serves to give the essay an air of academic precision. Second, Latin formulations like “puerorum amator et sodomita fuit” serve as a linguistic mechanism to navigate fraught taboos of the time. Corvo directly attacks the way that the historian Symonds used “mollific suggestion” and euphemisms to distance the accusations from historical fact. By using the original Latin accusations, Corvo deftly avoids euphemism by using learned distancing instead. In the cases where he felt an absolute requirement for obfuscation he turned to Greek spellings of certain terms that were “too gross” to print outright.

If such veiled utterances were unprintable, then Corvo's appendix, in light of its inevitable suppression, may hint at a form of courageousness on his part. However, I'll try to avoid conjuring virtues that can't be proved, and instead express my admiration for his fiery attempt to contest calumnies typical of the "weapon with which spite is wont to stab the back of scorn." Indeed, the accusations and his defense must have struck very close to home for him and his linguistic devices in the essay are diagnostic of the age in which it was published and indeed the author himself.

(Fogus) 

A New Edition of 'Picture of Nobody' by Philip Owens

In August 2019 I wrote about an unusual interwar novel, Philip Owens’ Picture of Nobody (1936). As I noted, in this ‘Shakespeare is recreated as an impoverished young poet in Nineteen Thirties London. It is not exactly a reincarnation or timeslip fantasy – the book simply takes the character, story and work of the 16th century playwright and reframes them in a setting over three hundred years later.’ Readers contributed helpful information about the author, and I posted further on this in a follow-up note, ‘Picture of Somebody’.

Now, the independent bookseller McNally Jackson has announced pre-orders for a new edition of the book, due out in April, with a foreword by Allen Bratton. This includes an encomium by David Tibet: ‘Truly unlike any other book I have read. Shakespeare and AntiShakespeare, a timeslipping tragicomedy of errors . . . a masterpiece, and a very strange one too.’

The publisher describes it as: ‘A comic yet credible reimagining of the milieu of Elizabethan London in modernist dress, it transcends its premise to provide a poignant portrait, of a Shakespearean mind coming to grips with the twentieth century. Populated by an assortment of characters familiar from Will's life and writing both, it is as much a loving parody as a grim prophecy regarding the fate of genius in "interesting times." ‘

The book is very uncommon in its original edition, so it's good to see this audacious and inventive work rediscovered and newly available, a fitting tribute to Philip Owens' literary legacy.

(Mark Valentine) 

 

Classic, Basic, Unspoilt

About twenty-five years ago, maybe more, a friend told me about a list entitled ‘The Classic, Basic, Unspoilt Pubs of Great Britan’. Its compiler was identified only as ‘RWC’ and it circulated usually in the form of a faded photocopied typewritten sheet. A note explained the author had indeed visited all of the pubs (and more, that did not make the list) to assess their suitability. There was perhaps discernible a South East of England leaning: the very few in the North did not look like the whole picture, and the same could perhaps be said of the South West. But the list was a keen-sighted idea, conscientiously and unobtrusively carried out. 

The Times, evidently rather bewildered, once called it “an obscure list”, but it soon became something of a word-of-mouth success. Real ale and indeed real pub scholars liked the idea, and some went in quest of the chosen inns, or tried to find one that might satisfy the somewhat strict and confessedly idiosyncratic criteria. The idea of the Classic, Basic, Unspoilt Pub was in one way quite simple, being one of those things that you know when you see it, but the essential point was that the pub was just a pub: it was not a restaurant, an amusement arcade, a creche, a games room, or a discotheque.

Usually, the reason for its preservation thus was the stolid determination of the publican not to have any truck with innovation. They were often run by veteran and somewhat formidable landladies much respected by loyal locals. The name behind the list was later revealed to be Rodney Wolfe Coe of Ashford, Kent, and he also seems to have deprecated the internet, which was why originally his list was just known as a paper copy passed about by hand (though scans by others of at least one edition are now online).

New editions of the list came out every so often, but the number on the list began to dwindle as these old pubs were being closed or ‘improved’. When I first saw a copy there were perhaps about 30, later there were about 20, and the last I saw, some years later, had only 11. At some point, I read, there were so few that RWC stopped compiling the list.

I went with my friend P.J. Beveridge to find some of them, rather in the spirit of Jocelyn Brooke searching for The Dog at Clambercrown in his 1955 book of that name. On one occasion we simply couldn’t find the pub we were looking for, despite spiralling around its supposed location, and felt that we were pretty much in Brooke’s story. With The Eagle at Skerne, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, we found it all right, but it was closed. Staring in gave the impression that it had been unchanged for perhaps forty years, with a rudimentary black fireplace, fading wallpaper, red vinyl-topped tables and an air of someone’s front room, with no bar visible. We asked a boy from next door, who happened to emerge, if it ever opened and he looked puzzled. “It doesn’t open, it’s just, kind of like, there,” he said, a remark that seemed oddly profound, as if the mere manifestation of the pub ought to be enough. Alas, soon enough, it wasn’t there, as a pub: and nor were almost all the others.

No doubt this affection, even yearning, for the essential pub, is mixed up with nostalgia for a time that never was. And of course, there is something to be said for the other side. If you are out in the country, it is heartening and cheery to find a pub that serves food. Certain sorts of jukebox playing the pop songs of yesteryear, can also be enjoyable, recalling the soundtrack of our youth. Gentrification can bring a pleasanter, more commodious, if perhaps more anonymous, offering. Even so, the idea of celebrating the pub at its simplest was well worthwhile.

It occurred to me that the ‘Classic, Basic, Unspoilt’ principle could be applied to other things. Museums, for instance, which to qualify would consist simply of obscure objects in glass cases in hushed rooms with creaking floorboards. There would be no audio-visual ‘experiences’ or souvenirs, just a few faded monographs and postcards. Ancient monuments too: these would have as few signs as possible, preferably brief and enigmatic, in a classic font. There would be an admissions kiosk looking like a garden hut, with paper tickets on a roll, and no shop offering heritage chutney. I can imagine the same approach devoted to cafes, gardens, record shops, stationery shops, haberdasheries and other delights.

When some book-collectors talk wistfully about the bookshops of yesteryear, they no doubt have, in their mind’s eye, a certain sort of bookshop which might be thought of as the equivalent of the ‘Classic, Basic, Unspoilt Pub’. Of course, what makes the essential pub is not the same as what is needed for the essential bookshop, but the principle is clear.

Just as the pub list compiler felt it necessary to explain that his choices must all serve real ale, so must the bookshop have proper second-hand books, not remainders or new books, still less souvenirs, gifts or greetings cards. The basic pub has only chairs, tables, stools and a counter, and not much else: the bookshop would simply have shelves and a desk, though stepladders or stools, and possibly a chair or two might be acceptable. However, whereas the classic pub might have at best two or three beers on offer, the classic bookshop would of course be overbrimming with stock, all or most of it uncatalogued, so that finds might be made. The pub arbiter, I think, did not countenance recorded music, wireless or television: ideally, the bookshop should prefer silence or low murmurings. Like the pubs, in the classic bookshop the proprietor would be taciturn, if not brusque. Are there such bookshops still? Certainly: I can think of some, and they seem to have survived in numbers rather better than pubs, but maybe they too are gradually giving way to modernity. Perhaps a Classic, Basic, Unspoilt Bookshops list is needed. 

(Mark Valentine)

Image: The sign for the Sun Inn, Leintwardine, Herefordshire, one of the original Classic, Basic, Unspoilt pubs