Books

Enoch Soames

The Celestial Lover

A fragment of verse in prose

The Café Strelitz was almost empty.
    Upon a hot midday in July, Don Juan wandered into the Café Strelitz for his breakfast. I know not by what chance he had left the rest of the world to go that day to the Valdau races with[out] him. Whether in search of some adventure…

*    *    *    *    *    *    *

The most fashionable of Restaurants was white with empty tables, for the Prix d’Honneur was being run that afternoon at Valdau—magnificent waiters sat about in magnificent unruffled expectation of the telegrams from the racecourse and rose reluctantly when there came some demand for coffee or the addition.

¶ 1897. Beardsley mentions the story of the Celestial Lover, and an accompanying picture, in several letters, but only this fragment of manuscript, preserved at Princeton, is extant.