Charles Baudelaire, His Life

I am writing to you beforehand, for precaution, because I have so strong a presentiment that I shall not have the pleasure of finding you.

I wrote recently to M. Dalloz a letter couched as nearly as possible like the following:

"Render account of the 'Paradis artificiels'! I know Messrs. So-and-so, So-and-so, etc., on the 'Moniteur.'"

Reply of Dalloz:

"The book is worthy of Sainte-Beuve. (It is not I speaking.) Pay a visit to M. Sainte-Beuve about it."

I should not have dared to think so. Numerous reasons, of which I guess part, perhaps estrange you from it, and perhaps also the book does not please you.

However, I have more than ever need of being upheld, and I ought to have given you an account of my perplexity.

All that has been said about this essay has not any common sense, absolutely none.

P.S. – A few days ago, but then for the pure need of seeing you, as Antæus had need of the Earth, I went to the rue Montparnasse. On the way I passed a gingerbread shop, and the fixed idea took hold of me that you must like gingerbread. Note that nothing is better in wine at dessert; and I felt that I was going to drop in on you at dinner-time.

I sincerely hope that you will not have taken the piece of gingerbread, encrusted with angelica, for an idle joke, and that you will have eaten it in all simplicity.

If you share my taste, I recommend you, when you can get it, English gingerbread, very thick, very black, so close that it has neither holes nor pores, full of ginger and aniseed. It is cut in slices as thin as roast beef, and can be spread with butter or preserve. Yours always. Love me well… I am passing through a great crisis.

Baudelaire to Sainte-Beuve

    End of January, 1862.

Still another service that I owe you! When will this end? And how shall I thank you?

The article had escaped me. That explains to you the delay before beginning to write to you.

A few words, my dear friend, to paint for you the peculiar kind of pleasure that you have obtained for me. Many years ago I was very much wounded (but I said nothing) to hear myself spoken of as a churl, an impossible and crabbed man. Once, in a wicked journal, I read some lines about my repulsive ugliness, well designed to alienate all sympathy (it was hard for a man who has loved the perfume of woman so well). One day a woman said to me: "It is curious, you are very presentable; I thought that you were always drunk and that you smelt evilly." She spoke according to the tale.

Now, my friend, you have put all that right, and I am very grateful to you for it – I, who have always said that it was not sufficient to be wise, but that above all it was necessary to be agreeable.

As for what you call my Kamtschatka, if I often received encouragements as vigorous as that, I believe that I should have the strength to make an immense Siberia of it, but a warm and populous one. When I see your activity, your vitality, I am quite ashamed; happily, I have sudden leaps and crises in my character which replace, though very inadequately, the action of sustained willingness.

Must I, the incorrigible lover of the "Rayons jaunes" and of "Volupté," of Sainte-Beuve the poet and novelist, now compliment the journalist? How do you arrive at this certainty of pen which allows you to say everything and makes a game of every difficulty for you? This article is not a pamphlet, for it is a righteousness. One thing struck me, and that is that I found again there all your eloquence in conversation, with its good sense and its petulances.

Really, I should have liked to collaborate in it a little – forgive this pride – I should have been able to give you two or three enormities that you have omitted through ignorance. I will tell you all this in a good gossip.

Ah, and your Utopia! the great way of driving the "vague, so dear to great nobles," from elections! Your Utopia has given me a new pride. I, also, have done it, Utopia, reform; – is it an old revolutionary movement that drove me, also, long ago, to make schemes for a constitution? There is this great difference, that yours is quite viable and that perhaps the day is not far off when it will be adopted.

Poulet-Malassis is burning to make a pamphlet of your admirable article…

I ask you to promise to find some minutes to reply to the following:

Great trouble, the necessity of working, physical ills, have interfered with my proceedings.

At last I have fifteen examples of my principal books. My very restricted distribution list is made.

I think it is good policy to put up for the Lacordaire chair. There are no literary men there. It was first of all my own design, and, if I had not done so, it was not to disobey you and not to appear too eccentric. If you think my idea good, I will write a letter to M. Villemain before next Wednesday, in which I will briefly say that it seems to me that the choice of a candidate must not only be directed by the desire of success, but must also be a sympathetic homage to the memory of the deceased. Besides, Lacordaire is a romantic priest, and I love him. Perhaps I shall slur over the word "romantic" in the letter, but not without consulting you.

It is imperative that this terrible rhetorician, this so grave and unkindly man, should read my letter; this man who preaches while he talks, with the expression and the solemnity (but not with the good faith) of Mlle. Lenormand. I have seen this lady in the robe of a professor, set in her chair, like a Quasimodo, and she had over M. Villemain the advantage of a very sympathetic voice.

If, by chance, M. Villemain is dear to you, I at once take back all that I have just said; and, for love of you, I shall do my best to find him lovable.

However, I cannot help thinking that, as a papist, I am worth more than him … even though I am a very-much-suspected Catholic.

I want, in spite of my tonsure and my white hairs, to speak to you as a little boy. My mother, who is very much bored, is continually asking me for novelties. I have sent her your article. I know what maternal pleasure she will draw from it. Thank you for me and for her.

    Your very devoted.

Baudelaire to Sainte-Beuve

    Monday evening, 3rd February, 1862.

My dear friend, I am trying hard to guess those hours which are your leisure hours, and I cannot succeed. I have not written a word, in accordance with your advice; but I am patiently continuing my visits, in order to let it be well understood that I want, with regard to the election in replacement of Father Lacordaire, to gather some votes from men of letters. I think that Jules Sandeau will speak to you about me; he has said to me very graciously: "You catch me too late, but I will go and find out if there is anything to be done for you."

Twice I have seen Alfred de Vigny, who has kept me three hours each time. He is an admirable and delightful man, but not fitted for action, and even dissuading from action. However, he has shown me the warmest sympathy.

You do not know that the month of January has been a month of fretfulness and neuralgia for me… I say this in order to explain the interruption in my proceedings.

I have seen Lamartine, Patin, Viennet, Legouvé, de Vigny, Villemain (horror!), Sandeau. Really, I do not remember any others. I have not been able to find either Ponsard, or M. Saint-Marc Girardin, or de Sacy.

At last I have sent a few copies of some books to ten of those whose works I know. This week I shall see some of these gentlemen.

I have written an analysis, such as it is, of your excellent article (without signing it; but my conduct is infamous, is it not?) in the "Revue anecdotique" As for the article itself, I have sent it to M. de Vigny, who did not know it, and who showed me that he wished to read it.

As for the talkers of politics, among whom I shall not be able to find any pleasure, I shall go the round of them in a carriage. They shall have only my card and not my face.

This evening I have read your "Pontmartin." Pardon me for saying to you, "What lost talent!" In your prodigality there is at times something which scandalises me. It seems to me that I, after having said, "The most noble causes are sometimes upheld by bumpkins," I should have considered my work finished. But you have particular talents for suggestion and divination. Even towards the most culpable beasts you are delightfully polished. This Monsieur Pontmartin is a great hater of literature…

I have sent you a little parcel of sonnets. I will next send you several packets of reveries in prose, without counting a huge work on the "Painters of Morals" (crayon, water-colour, printing, engraving).

I do not ask you if you are well. That is sufficiently apparent.

I embrace you and shake you by the hands. – I leave your house.

Baudelaire to Sainte-Beuve

    15th March, 1865.

Dear friend, I take advantage of the "Histoires grotesques et sérieuses" to remind myself of you. Sometimes, in the mornings, I talk about you with M. Muller, of Liège, by whose side I take luncheon, – and in the evening, after dinner, I am re-reading "Joseph Delorme" with Malassis. Decidedly, you are right; "Joseph Delorme" is the old woman's "Flowers of Evil." The comparison is glorious for me. Have the goodness not to find it offensive to yourself.

And the Preface of the "Vie de César?" Is it predestinarian enough?

    Yours always.

BRUXELLES, RUE DE LA MONTAGNE, 28.