4                                Miriam ]. Benkovitz

But Dawkins and Rolfe did not get on. Rolfe expected his host
to relish "loafing elaborately" and to relish paying for it, but
Dawkins was a modest, prudent man with simple tastes. Within a
month the two quarreled, and Dawkins, leaving £30 with Rolfe
to enable him to complete his holiday and return to Faigland, went
to Rome. The two men never met again, nor did Rolfe go back
to England. Instead, he commenced the rest of his life, some five
years of struggle to live at anyone's and everyone's expense.

Within a month, the £30 Dawkins had given Rolfe was gone
and his debts were mounting daily. Fie appealed first to Dawkins
and finally managed to extract another £15 from him. Meanwhile,
before October ended, Rolfe had got £25 frinn Barnard & Taylor
in keeping with an agreement they had with him about life insur¬
ance. That same month be received £12.10 from Harry Pirie-
Gordon, sent so that Rolfe could return to England. There, he
said, he meant to finish his book Hubert's Arthur and work with
the priest Robert Hugh Benson on one about Thomas a Beckett.
Then, having acquired cash, Corvo said he could return to Venice
and open a photography business. But of course be never left
Venice. By mid-November be had spent every thing sent him, he
owed more than £30, and he was busy maintaining his status with
his landlord Evaristo Barbieri at the Hotel Belle Vue.

Corvo's writing contributed most to his credibility. In summer
and early autumn, he took bis papers and notes with him aboard
the sandolo and there seated in a cane arm chair, put his huge
Waterman fountain pen to use. When the weather worsened,
Rolfe worked after dinner, that is, from about eight in the evening
to one in the morning, in the salo7ie of the hotel. He was compos¬
ing a diatribe against the cheap journalism of Harmsworth, Lord
Northcliffe, and preparing a fair copy of Hubert's Arthur.

While he labored on these two projects, Rolfe attracted the
notice of Canon and Mrs. Lonsdale Ragg, also English residents
at the Hotel Belle Vue. In a letter to Pirie-Gordon, Rolfe lumped
the Raggs with " a pack of English" who, he said, were running