Literary interlude

An English Catholic paint­er came to paint the Pope’s por­trait. Hadrian knew him for a vul­gar and offi­cious liar: detested him; and, at the first applic­a­tion, had refused to sit for him. His Holiness was not at all in love with His Own aspect. It annoyed him because it just missed the ideal which He admired; and He did not want to be per­petu­ated. Also, He loathed the cad’s Herkomeresque-cum-Cameraesque tech­nique and his quite earthy ima­gin­a­tion: from that palette, the spir­itu­al, the intel­lec­tu­al, the noble, could not come. But, He thought of the man’s pinched ask­ing face, of his dread­ful nag­ging wife, of his children—of the rejec­tion of all his pic­tures by the Academy this year, of the fact that he was being sup­planted by young­er grander minds. Ousted from live­li­hood! Horrible! Love your enemies! Ouf! The Pomtiff would give six sit­tings of one hour each, on the con­di­tion that He might read all the time.

The priv­ilege alone was an ines­tim­able advert­ise­ment. Alfred Elms looked upon him­self as likely to become the fash­ion. Hadrian sat in the garden for six sies­tas; and he read in Plato’s Phaidon, which is the per­fec­tion of human lan­guage, until His lin­ea­ments were com­posed in an expres­sion of keen gentle fas­ti­di­ous rap­ture. Elm’s pro­fes­sion­al efforts of con­ver­sa­tion were annulled quietly and inci­sevely. The Pope blessed him and hand­fuls of ros­ar­ies at the end of every sit­ting. Sometimes His Holiness was so elated with the beauty of the Greek of His book, that He even was able with a little self-compulsion to utter a few kindly and intel­li­gent cri­ti­cisms of the paint­er­’s work. That was start­lingly real, mirror-like. The var­ied whitenes of marble and flan­nel and vel­lum and the healthy pal­lor of flesh, gained pur­ity from the notes of the reddish-brown hair and the trans­lu­cent viol­et of the amethyst. The clean light of the thing was admir­ably rendered. The paint­er could delin­eate, and tint with his hand, that which his eyes beheld, with blame­less accur­acy. What his eyes did not see, the soul, the mind, the habit of his mod­el, he as accur­ately omit­ted. Hadrian made him glad with a com­pli­ment on the per­fec­tion of the con­nec­tion between his dir­ect­ive brain and his exec­ut­ive fin­gers. At the end of the last sit­ting also He gave him two hun­dred pounds, and the pic­ture, and a writ­ten indul­gence in the hour of death. The paint­er went away quite happy, and with his for­tune made. He nev­er knew how vehe­mently his work was detested, how pro­foundly he him­self was scorned. 

—Fr. Rolfe (Baron Corvo), Hadrian The Seventh, 1904