Stories Toto Told Me

by Frederick Rolfe

Frederick Rolfe, who early in his career also published under the name "Baron Corvo," became famous for his Hadrian the Seventh (1904), in which an Englishman is unexpectedly elected Pope, and later became infamous for his writings on his love for Venetian boys. But it was with the "Toto" stories, first published in John Lane's fin de siècle literary journal The Yellow Book, that Corvo achieved his first and most widespread authorial success. In these tales, an Italian peasant youth ingenuously recounts to his English master six poignant and often funny stories dealing with Heaven, saints, morality, and religion. First published in volume form in 1898 and long out of print, Stories Toto Told Me remains one of the most remarkable achievements of one of the strangest and most talented of English writers.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, 19th Century

254 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1898

About the author

English writer, novelist, artist, fantasist and eccentric. Rolfe is also known as Baron Corvo. His best known work is the novel Hadrian the Seventh.

Reviews

[Tony Vacation · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stories Toto Told Me is an odd taste of chaste Catholicism with passing hints of coy sensuality. Everyone’s favorite fake baron, Frederick Rolfe, has created a strange and svelte collection of saintly fables that are delivered in the framework of an androgynous pageboy who amuses his Italian master with his gift for storytelling. While stirrings of the homoerotic sashay playfully through these heavenly fantasies, the collection still comes off as a sincerely devout work of fiction, and show off Rolfe’s flair for well-integrated Italian phrases and his expansive knowledge of sacramental matters.

[Kyle C · Rating 4 out of 5]

These six stories, with their eccentric Catholic irreverence and puerile heterodoxy, are the nascent material of Rolfe's brilliant Hadrian the Seventh. The latter is a masterpiece of Catholic satire in which a poor Englishman, repeatedly rejected for ordination, becomes pope by serendipity and, with a compelling brand of fervent but quixotic piety, reforms the papal states. These stories have a similar tone. Among my favorites: "Beata Beatrice and the Mamma of San Pietro", which tells the story of Toto's hidden love of an androgynous youth and digresses into a moral tale about the greedy mother of Saint Peter; and "About the Heresy of Fra Serafico", in which Toto comforts his brother accused of heresy by telling the story of Fra Serafico who was indicted for heresy by a Jesuit, though as it turns out, his words came from Saint Gregory and then from Saint Paul himself. The stories almost always involve a legalistic but somewhat befuddled Eternal Father dealing with his quirky cadre of saints, and there is a lot of in-house banter about Jesuits and Capuchins.

The stories are sometimes Aesopic and fabulistic, other times comic and ridiculous (for example Sts. Peter and Paul competing for the best church in Rome). Although not explicitly homoerotic, Rolfe's gaze often falls on male nudity: saint Sebastian's lithe unclothed body, the androgynous Beatrice who is gendered female but looks male, and the boy in "About One Way in Which Christians Love One Another" who enjoys himself (unclear if a euphemism) naked in the peach orchards. Rolfe is a bizarre figure of English Catholicism and queer history, a kind of Venetian side-story running adjacent to the Oxford Movement.

[Fahad Khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite simply one of the funniest things I've ever read.

[Jorge Molinero · Rating 2 out of 5]

Leído para el máster. Empieza siendo más divertido de lo que termina por ser.

[meri · Rating 3 out of 5]

los dejes pedófilos … no sé, no quiero ponerme moralista pero me chirría

[Blanca · Rating 4 out of 5]

stay tuned chicas

[Meanderer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I approached this book with low expectations. The sensuality (teenage boys) and way of thinking (catholic theology and Italian folk stories) of the author were strange to me. It was difficult at times to maintain my interest in the stories. In its best parts there was a gentleness and lightness to the tales. In others, it seemed like clever silliness and an opportunity to indulge somewhat unpleasant fantasies.