Richard Barham Middleton

Unhappy with that, he affected a Bohemian life at night – he is mentioned, in disguised terms, in Arthur Ransome's Bohemia in London.

He moved out of his parents' house into rooms in Blackfriars and joined the New Bohemians, a club where he acquired literary contacts, including Arthur Machen, Louis McQuilland (1880–1946) and Christopher Wilson.

Shortly afterwards, Harris published Middleton's poem "The Bathing Boy":[3] I saw him standing idly on the brim Of the quick river, in his beauty clad, So fair he was that Nature looked at him And touched him with her sunbeams here and there So that his cool flesh sparkled, and his hair Blazed like a crown above the naked lad.

He spent his last nine months in Brussels, where in December 1911, at age 29, he took his life by poisoning himself with chloroform, which had been prescribed as a remedy for his condition.

[5] His literary reputation was sustained by Edgar Jepson and Arthur Machen, the latter in an introduction to Middleton's collection The Ghost Ship and Other Stories,[6] and later by John Gawsworth.