Refugees from a Century's End

The following oddment was recently extracted word for word from an untitled work in progress dating from about 1979, possibly a few years later, before being subject to versification, with further minor corrections being made at a later date. It was intended to be a fantastic tale, set in an imaginary small town in southern Spain in which men and women nightly frequented a club by the name of El Club Romanticowith the intention of living out their wildest romantic desires, and powerfully informed by the subject - a fascination of mine at the time - of the French Romantic extremists of the 1830s, such as Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval and Philothée O'Neddy, who could be said to have constituted the very first artistic avant-garde of the Modern Age. I'd first read of them in Enid Starkie's classic biography of Baudelaire, a book which I think I eventually dispensed with; as I did a once treasured copy of Les Fleurs du Mal. They were not alone.

The boy was aged about eighteen

Pale and pensive

Weary and frail in appearance.

He could have been

Stendhal's Julien Sorel,

Senancour's Obermann

Or Chateaubriand's melancholy hero,

Embraced by a generation

And about whom Sainte Beuve said:

"Rene, c'est moi".

Tortured by a new mal de siecle,

He sought refuge

In the "Club Romantico".

Two young men,

One dark, the other fair,

Drifted past. The first,

Whose black hair

Hung in ringlets over his shoulders

Wore a small pointed beard,

Black velvet tails,

A white linen shirt

Loosely fastened at the neck

By a thin pink taffeta tie.

The second wore a tight coat

That opened onto a silk crimson waistcoat

And a lace jabot, white trousers

With blue seams

And a wide-brimmed black hat.

In one of his hands

He carried a long thin pink-coloured pipe.

They were soon joined

By some of their dandiacal companions.

The band had stopped playing. Instead a figure in cape and gloves.