"Baron" Accepts Luncheon Invitation

[Frederick Rolfe, "Baron Corvo" to Grant Richards, publisher]

[London]

xviiij Mar. 1901

Dear Sir:

I do not want to appear ungracious, nor do I ever eat lunch, and you know that to interrupt my work even for a couple of hours is a grave inconvenience; indeed, I actually have not been outside this house since the exsequies of the Divine Victoria: but I feel that something is due to you on account of the exasperation which you have endured from the idiomata of Slaughter*; and therefore, if you can meet me on friendly terms, remembering all the while that my mind is concentrated on the xvi not the xx century, and if you agree to consider our conversation as privileged and in no wise binding, I will be at Romano's between 1 and 2 on Tuesday or Wednesday next. . . .

Faithfully yours
Frederick Baron Corvo

*Edward J. Slaughter, who supposedly mismanaged Corvo's affairs.

-from The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography by A. J. A. Symons (London: Cassell, 1934) p. 120.