and working in the London East End missions at Canning Town and Toynbee Hall – he remained committed to liberal social causes all his life. He then embarked on a career devoted to literary journalism. After joining the staff of the Daily News in 1902, he was its literary editor between 1906 and 1912, when he became editor of the New Weekly . As a member of a prominent literary club of the day, the Square, he forged acquaintance, which in several cases ripened into friendship, with Galsworthy, Yeats, Walter de la Mare, Ford Madox Fordand suchlike literary giants of the day, who seem to have thought well of him.
Ford whimsically addressed him as ‘James’ when feeling formal, and ‘Scottie’ at moments of affection. Rolfe noted Ford as appearing to have pink eyes – in truth they were light blue – sandy hair, ‘and looking rather like a guinea-pig’. One evening as they emerged from a dinner and walked together along Gerrard Street, Ford murmured wryly: ‘Oh, who would go into dark Soho/to chatter with dank-haired critics?’ He then turned laughing to his companion and said that he forgave him for being himself one of that breed, for Rolfe was always so kind to his books. For a time the young man was a lodger in Ford’s rooms in Holland Park, where he listened for hours to the novelist extolling the virtues of his literary heroes, Flaubert and Henry James – ‘the great panjandrum’, as he called him. Rolfe was unconvinced when Ford asserted that he had taught Joseph Conrad how to write. But his relationship with the novelist became one of the most important in his life.
Rolfe was a regular attender at Edward Garnett’s Wednesday-evening soirées. He dined with Galsworthy in Addison Road, to discuss how best to further the novelist’s enthusiasm for a National Theatre, and later stayed with him at his house in Devon. Hardy, whom Rolfe encountered several times, once took him for a walk around Dorchester, pointing out to the enthralled young man places which had inspired passages in the Wessex novels. He showed him the house in which he had imagined Henchard, the Mayor of Caster-bridge, to live; the grey Palladian mansion which he appointed to Lucetta Templeman; the church and other landmarks woven into his fiction. As they passed one cottage, Hardy said that it held deeply sinister associations in his mind: ‘When I was a boy, the hangman lived there. When very young I would hurry past it in fear. But later I watched it, still a little frightened, but fascinated. When the hangman himself put his head out of the upper window, I have never forgotten the dreadful impression which it made on me. I gazed at it for a moment with fear and wonder, then scampered off.’ At a later meeting, when Rolfe sought to quiz Hardy about his novels,he was dismissive: ‘If I am to be remembered at all,’ he said, ‘I should like it to be for my poetry.’
Rolfe wrote an account of dinner with Algernon Charles Swinburne at his home, The Pines on Putney Hill, richly adorned with paintings by Rossetti and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, in 1908, the year before the poet’s death. When the young man arrived with a friend, Swinburne’s longstanding companion Theodore Watts-Dunton announced that they would sit down without their frail host.
When soup was over, he made a sign to us. We waited, listening, expectant. Then a slow tap-tap on the stairs in the hall. Swinburne was coming down, one step at a time – a solemn, prolonged tap…tap…tap…as one foot followed the other. He opened the door himself: small, slight – he seemed to be all head and eyes, wisps of hair on his face and scarcely any on his scalp. But although his voice was a little shrill, it was vigorous; he greeted us heartily, ate heartily, and talked robustly. His deafness made it necessary to repeat every sentence. When Swinburne got the point a glint of understanding lit up his eyes, and he began at length to answer and expound the
Ford whimsically addressed him as ‘James’ when feeling formal, and ‘Scottie’ at moments of affection. Rolfe noted Ford as appearing to have pink eyes – in truth they were light blue – sandy hair, ‘and looking rather like a guinea-pig’. One evening as they emerged from a dinner and walked together along Gerrard Street, Ford murmured wryly: ‘Oh, who would go into dark Soho/to chatter with dank-haired critics?’ He then turned laughing to his companion and said that he forgave him for being himself one of that breed, for Rolfe was always so kind to his books. For a time the young man was a lodger in Ford’s rooms in Holland Park, where he listened for hours to the novelist extolling the virtues of his literary heroes, Flaubert and Henry James – ‘the great panjandrum’, as he called him. Rolfe was unconvinced when Ford asserted that he had taught Joseph Conrad how to write. But his relationship with the novelist became one of the most important in his life.
Rolfe was a regular attender at Edward Garnett’s Wednesday-evening soirées. He dined with Galsworthy in Addison Road, to discuss how best to further the novelist’s enthusiasm for a National Theatre, and later stayed with him at his house in Devon. Hardy, whom Rolfe encountered several times, once took him for a walk around Dorchester, pointing out to the enthralled young man places which had inspired passages in the Wessex novels. He showed him the house in which he had imagined Henchard, the Mayor of Caster-bridge, to live; the grey Palladian mansion which he appointed to Lucetta Templeman; the church and other landmarks woven into his fiction. As they passed one cottage, Hardy said that it held deeply sinister associations in his mind: ‘When I was a boy, the hangman lived there. When very young I would hurry past it in fear. But later I watched it, still a little frightened, but fascinated. When the hangman himself put his head out of the upper window, I have never forgotten the dreadful impression which it made on me. I gazed at it for a moment with fear and wonder, then scampered off.’ At a later meeting, when Rolfe sought to quiz Hardy about his novels,he was dismissive: ‘If I am to be remembered at all,’ he said, ‘I should like it to be for my poetry.’
Rolfe wrote an account of dinner with Algernon Charles Swinburne at his home, The Pines on Putney Hill, richly adorned with paintings by Rossetti and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, in 1908, the year before the poet’s death. When the young man arrived with a friend, Swinburne’s longstanding companion Theodore Watts-Dunton announced that they would sit down without their frail host.
When soup was over, he made a sign to us. We waited, listening, expectant. Then a slow tap-tap on the stairs in the hall. Swinburne was coming down, one step at a time – a solemn, prolonged tap…tap…tap…as one foot followed the other. He opened the door himself: small, slight – he seemed to be all head and eyes, wisps of hair on his face and scarcely any on his scalp. But although his voice was a little shrill, it was vigorous; he greeted us heartily, ate heartily, and talked robustly. His deafness made it necessary to repeat every sentence. When Swinburne got the point a glint of understanding lit up his eyes, and he began at length to answer and expound the
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