Meeting Corvo and Weeks in Georgetown: A Guest Post by Fogus

  

Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe, better known as Frederick Rolfe, or better yet still Baron Corvo, was a British writer, artist, photographer, and eccentric. Born in London in 1860 and passing away in Venice in 1913, he's discussed more frequently for his flamboyant lifestyle and often outrageous behavior than for his literary works. However, his undeniable talent as a writer continues to captivate readers. His flamboyance alone, nor even the strength of his writing, could fully explain the century-long fascination by a "Corvo Cult" with the minutest details of his life and works. This fascination, explored in depth by Robert Scoble in The Corvo Cult (2014), has attracted many intriguing figures, but few of them pursued their quests for the Corvine as obsessively as Donald Weeks (1921–2003).

Weeks penned the biography Corvo: Saint or Madman? (1972), an exasperating read in my experience. Donald Weeks (né Norman Donald Jankens) was also a writer and artist who worked in graphic design, and lived the first part of his life in Detroit, Michigan, before eventually moving to London to live out his final days as a researcher for Gale Publishing, eclectic writer for The Tragara Press, and bibliophile. Like many before and after him, Weeks' obsession with Rolfe germinated from a read of A.J.A. Symons' seminal experiment in biography, The Quest for Corvo (1934).

Recently, I had the good fortune to examine the “Frederick W. Rolfe, Baron Corvo Collection” (Identifier: GTM-141102.1) held in the Georgetown University Booth Family Center for Special Collections located in Washington, DC. The collection included 4 document cases filled with various photographs, drawings, letters, and ephemera related almost entirely to Baron Corvo collected by Donald Weeks. Although Georgetown doesn't hold Weeks' entire collection related to Baron Corvo, the cases available offer a fascinating exhibit of a life-long obsession. Myself a bibliophile, I was immediately struck by the 2-page typewritten inventory that Weeks created, indexed by "Woolf numbers" — the entry numbers in Cecil Woolf's A Bibliography of Frederick Rolfe, of which I have the 2nd edition published in the Soho Bibliographies series (1972). It's unclear when Weeks created the inventory, but his collection continued to grow beyond the confines of the typewritten page onto a further 2-pages of hand-written items. While the collection at Georgetown held a few of the items listed in the inventory, a bulk of the material is ephemera related to various Corvine functions and Weeks' own correspondence to friends and family regarding his quests.

I'll avoid going into exquisite detail about the contents of the collection in this post, but will instead briefly describe a couple items of particular interest. First, the collection contained an announcement and order form dated in 1967 for a Victim Press publication entitled Corvo's Venice by Victor Hall, having an introduction by Timothy d'Arch Smith, priced at $6 plus $0.25 postage. The marketing copy states that the book had three parts: a sequence of captioned prints, or sketches from photographs by Corvo of Venice, followed by a reprinting of the prose piece "Venetian Courtesy", and concluded by 16 photographs of Corvo's place of death in October 1913 and relevant environs near the Palazo Marcello, Venice. 

 

 

I was unable to find much information about this publication beyond this announcement, but I'm struck by the macabre possibilities in the concluding section of the book. In that same macabre spirit, also in the collection is a hand-drawn map by Weeks of San Michele Island, Rolfe's final burial site. The drawing is made for maximum utility for visitors and belies the gravity of that monument to human mortality. The scrawled rectangular box containing the letter "A" does little to express the foreboding "boat landing" used to receive visitors to the small island crypt. As a matter of practical course, Weeks recommends that visitors present the island attendants with a piece of paper having only the name "ROLFE, F W" rather than attempting to ask after the burial site's location in broken Italian. Useful advice indeed!

The collection is fascinating and it compelled me to spend numerous days in the Georgetown reading room, despite the beautifully sunny December weather in DC. There are many more items of interest to Corvines and bibliophiles, but I'll defer further explorations for another day.

(Fogus)