Seven Men [Excerpts‪]‬

When a history of the 1890s leaves Enoch Soames out of its index, the omission feels like a second failure. But Max Beerbohm remembers the poet—and the strange bargain that made him impossible to forget.

Published in 1919, Beerbohm’s tale opens amid the cafés and artistic circles of the 1890s. A young narrator watches Oxford’s newest sensation, Will Rothenstein, command attention; then, at the Café Royal, a pale, shabby poet approaches him, orders absinthe, and speaks grandly of art, life, and a book of poems that may have no title—though he hopes for his portrait on its cover. Enoch Soames is at once faintly absurd and unexpectedly poignant: a writer desperate to matter in a world already crowded with names. Beerbohm’s cool, affectionate wit leaves one question hanging: what was the bargain that fixed Soames in his memory?

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