Weird of the Wanderer — Frederick Rolfe

Rolfe spent most of his life as a freelance writer, mainly in England but eventually in Venice. He lived in the era before the welfare state, and relied on benefactors for support. But he had an argumentative nature and had a tendency to fall out spectacularly with most of the people who tried to help him and offer him room and board. Eventually, out of money and out of luck, he died in Venice from a stroke on 25 October 1913. He was buried on the Isola di San Michele, Venice. The mummy -- which is not less than nineteen hundred years old -- is that of a very handsome lad indeed, of about nineteen years of age, and most magnificently made. There is absolutely no trace of decay about it; and it looks as fresh and feels as soft (though of course it's cold) as the body of a young sleeper. Another curious thing about it is that it does not appear to have been eviscerated. . . .