Word: corvo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe, alias Baron Corvo, was born in 1860 with (it would appear) a hole in his head. It was by no means the usual cranial gap of infancy but, according to those who had felt it, a "perceptible hole." Though markedly intelligent, he never caught hold at school. He quit at 15 and bounced about such places as Oxford, probably on allowance from his father, a piano manufacturer. At 26, after taking a few places as schoolmaster, he was converted to Roman Catholicism and entered preparation for the priesthood...
...rich repertory of ecclesiastical jokes, ran up bills with a tailor, was expelled again as "lacking vocation." Convinced he had been dealt foul, Rolfe cursed the Church and went on cursing it energetically for the rest of his life-while remaining a Catholic. He borrowed a title, Baron Corvo, took it to Scotland and began to dine out in great pretension. The canny Scots, however, would not con. Soon he was back on his rent, and the landlord meant business. "They entered the Baron's bedroom," ran an account in the Aberdeen Free Press, "and the Baron was given...
...There has never been, a Hadrian VII-except in "Baron Corvo's" brilliant, perverse novel about an English Pope who chose that title...
...debunkers' view of history. And at each point they found that Columbus' account rang true. Columbus had noted that as he approached the Azores the seaweed turned brown, disappeared a day before he reached port. So found Professor Morison & party 447 years later. They saw on Corvo Island in the Azores the fantastic rock formation that Columbus had seen through fog and mist and which seemed to him to point west. Twenty days from the Canaries to Trinidad-it had taken Columbus 26-convinced the seafaring Professor that Columbus was a very fine seaman, who "could...
...adopted the Frenchman as his son under the name Prince Karl Johan. In the eight years which ensued before Sweden's old King died, the Crown Prince consolidated his position, became one of Sweden's popular figures, and this priceless asset the House of Bernadotte de Ponte Corvo has skilfully conserved for more than 100 years under five bourgeois and uniformly popular kings: Karl XIV, his only son Oscar I, his eldest son Karl XV who left no male heir, and his brother Oscar II, father of the present Gustaf...