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The Venice Letters
96 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1967
About the author
Frederick Rolfe
58 books52 followersEnglish writer, novelist, artist, fantasist and eccentric. Rolfe is also known as Baron Corvo. His best known work is the novel Hadrian the Seventh.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 20, 2025
"Baron Corvo's notorious Venice Letters are among the few intimate and revealing biographical documents of any writer to remain unpublished in full, Corvo's extraordinary descriptions of his homosexual - or, more accurately, pederastic - activities Venice are given in direct language, in detail, and with utter honesty, in this correspondence with his friend Masson Fox in England. Amadeo who stripped laughing in a sleepy wine-shop, Piero 'like a white flash' in his eagerness in a charcoal-warmed inn bedroom at snowy Burano, and other 'young Venetians poised on lofty poops out on the white lagoon' are portrayed with a fine sponteneity and freedom. As Pamela Hansford Johnson (as she is certainly unknown to anyone, even in the UK, under sixty I refer you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_... - Liam) has written of the Venice Letters, 'there is something splendid, almost mythological, about their ramping sexuality; it was so extremely whole hearted, as everything about him was.'
"But the lettersare not only an addition to sensual literature; they also describe the unpleasant social behavior of the declining English colony in Venice in the years 1909-1910, and Corvo's life of hardship and starvation in the bitter Venice winters. In doing so, they describe the true selves of the people whom Rolfe satirised with such witty cruelty and accuracy in his novel 'The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole'. That novel (whose title was intended as a pun) can now, with the publication of the 'Venice Letters', be seen as a brilliant imaginative extension of both his daily life and of his homosexual activities." From the jacket flyleaf of the 1974 hardback edition.
Who now remembers Frederick Rolfe? He was famous for his first biography 'The Search for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography' by A.J.A. Symons published in 1934. It is a classic in itself both for resurrection the name of Rolfe (an completely forgotten author of the 1890s whose 'Stories Toto told me appeared in the first 'Yellow Books') but also as an exploration of 'biography'. People first learnt of the 'Venice Letters' from Symons heady purple prose:
"...what shocked me about these letters was not the confession they made of perverse sexual indulgence... but that a man of education, ideas, something near genius, should have enjoyed without remorse the destruction of the innocence of youth, that he should have been willing for a price to traffic in his knowledge of the dark byways of that Italian city...’
Of course he was writing in 1934 and Symons himself had plenty of skeletons in his background and his 'shock', to me, rings a false note of protesting too much. In his book, Symons quoted only seven words from the 25 letters, post cards and telegrams - and quoted them incorrectly. But from 1934 until 1974 - a period of 40 years - anyone writing about Corvoe had to be content with Symons' shocked attitude of the letters - never having read them themselves.
Well in 1974 they were finally published. There was a 'Corvo' revival in the 1960s and 70s with his novel Hadrian VII made into a successful London and Broadway play and new editions of Rolfe's work and several biographies were also published. But since then, except for extremely hard-to-obtain and expensive works by Robert Scroble, there has been nothing.
The fact that the word 'homosexual' is all over this and other works about Corvo from the 1970s is indication of just how long ago all this was. I wouldn't say Corvo should be called gay but the idea that all of us non 'straight' people could comfortably be lumped under that term is analogous, if not quite as offensive, as the way 'N' word was applied to a ridiculous broad category of non 'white' peoples.
The 'Venice Letters' are fascinating within the context of Rolfe's life, but they hardly shocking as erotic literature though they would be problematic today because the boys were young, which is fine if you are going to be as censorious about young boys doing hard, dangerous, ill paid work. For some reason adolescent boys having sex upsets modern readers tender mercies but they accept them going up chimneys or dying of the cold in doorways with equanimity.
That mine will be only the second review on GR (as of March 2025) suggests that the Rolfe caravansarier of the past has ended. If you are interested in Rolfe this is a must read but if you are not ithey are a curiosity at best.
"But the lettersare not only an addition to sensual literature; they also describe the unpleasant social behavior of the declining English colony in Venice in the years 1909-1910, and Corvo's life of hardship and starvation in the bitter Venice winters. In doing so, they describe the true selves of the people whom Rolfe satirised with such witty cruelty and accuracy in his novel 'The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole'. That novel (whose title was intended as a pun) can now, with the publication of the 'Venice Letters', be seen as a brilliant imaginative extension of both his daily life and of his homosexual activities." From the jacket flyleaf of the 1974 hardback edition.
Who now remembers Frederick Rolfe? He was famous for his first biography 'The Search for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography' by A.J.A. Symons published in 1934. It is a classic in itself both for resurrection the name of Rolfe (an completely forgotten author of the 1890s whose 'Stories Toto told me appeared in the first 'Yellow Books') but also as an exploration of 'biography'. People first learnt of the 'Venice Letters' from Symons heady purple prose:
"...what shocked me about these letters was not the confession they made of perverse sexual indulgence... but that a man of education, ideas, something near genius, should have enjoyed without remorse the destruction of the innocence of youth, that he should have been willing for a price to traffic in his knowledge of the dark byways of that Italian city...’
Of course he was writing in 1934 and Symons himself had plenty of skeletons in his background and his 'shock', to me, rings a false note of protesting too much. In his book, Symons quoted only seven words from the 25 letters, post cards and telegrams - and quoted them incorrectly. But from 1934 until 1974 - a period of 40 years - anyone writing about Corvoe had to be content with Symons' shocked attitude of the letters - never having read them themselves.
Well in 1974 they were finally published. There was a 'Corvo' revival in the 1960s and 70s with his novel Hadrian VII made into a successful London and Broadway play and new editions of Rolfe's work and several biographies were also published. But since then, except for extremely hard-to-obtain and expensive works by Robert Scroble, there has been nothing.
The fact that the word 'homosexual' is all over this and other works about Corvo from the 1970s is indication of just how long ago all this was. I wouldn't say Corvo should be called gay but the idea that all of us non 'straight' people could comfortably be lumped under that term is analogous, if not quite as offensive, as the way 'N' word was applied to a ridiculous broad category of non 'white' peoples.
The 'Venice Letters' are fascinating within the context of Rolfe's life, but they hardly shocking as erotic literature though they would be problematic today because the boys were young, which is fine if you are going to be as censorious about young boys doing hard, dangerous, ill paid work. For some reason adolescent boys having sex upsets modern readers tender mercies but they accept them going up chimneys or dying of the cold in doorways with equanimity.
That mine will be only the second review on GR (as of March 2025) suggests that the Rolfe caravansarier of the past has ended. If you are interested in Rolfe this is a must read but if you are not ithey are a curiosity at best.
November 12, 2016
Boeiende en beklijvende smeekbrieven die schandeschrijver Rolfe (alias Baron Corvo) tussen 1909 en 1910 vanuit Venetië richtte aan zijn mecenas Charles Masson Fox, een rijke houthandelaar uit Falmouth die Corvo had leren kennen in de gondelstad en tot gids had gediend. De 25 brieven, uitstekend vertaald door pleitbezorger van het eerste uur Geerten Meijsing, schetsen de erbarmelijke omstandigheden waarin Corvo tijdens zijn laatste levensjaren in Venetië probeerde te overleven. Het zijn schrijnende smeekbedes om hulp en geld, maar lijken in eerste instantie geschreven om Fox te behagen: een groot deel zijn zinnenprikkelende en onverbloemde beschrijvingen van de erotische avonturen van Corvo met Venetiaanse jongens. De brieven geven niet alleen een indringend beeld van het leven aan de zelfkant in het Venetië van rond de eeuwwisseling, maar illustreren ook de grillige persoonlijkheid van hun auteur: zijn paranoia, zijn eeuwige strijd om de rechten van ongeschreven werk binnen te halen, zijn misprijzen voor de kunstwereld en zijn eigenwaan als misbegrepen en verguisd literair genie. Het wordt zoeken geblazen naar nog meer werk van deze 'fou littéraire'.
June 11, 2025
Whatever you think of Rolfe's moral character you gotta give some credit to the man who can write a sentence like "his rod was rigid and ready."
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews