Literary Rogues (11 page)

Despite their chilly reunion, Baudelaire dreamed of moving from Paris to his mother's country estate, where he wouldn't be bothered by meetings with editors, publishers, and writer friends. In other words, everything that had so long attracted him to the city now repelled him and was keeping him from putting pen to paper. “
I detest Paris
and the cruel life I have led there for over sixteen years, which has been the one obstacle standing in the way of the fulfillment of all my projects,” he wrote. This was, however, just the latest excuse for his lackluster writing career.

Poets have long been known to suffer for their art and dramatize that suffering. “I have myself
an inner weight of woe
, that God himself can scarcely bear,” wrote poet Theodore Roethke, with only modest exaggeration. For Baudelaire, there was only one way to relieve this existential suffering: “
One must always be intoxicated
. That is the point; nothing else matters.… Intoxicated with what? With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please.” Baudelaire skipped the virtue, relying mostly on wine and opium for his own intoxication.

While Baudelaire was a student, a physician had prescribed him laudanum as part of a treatment program for syphilis. Predictably, like Coleridge, De Quincey, and countless other patients, Baudelaire quickly picked up on opium's pleasures. “
Here in this world
, narrow but so filled with disgust, only one familiar object cheers me: the vial of laudanum, an old and terrifying friend,” he wrote in his poem “La Chambre Double” (“The Double Room”).

Like De Quincey, he couldn't help but praise the drug even as he condemned it. Opium and other “
poisonous stimulants seem to me
not only one of the most terrible and most dangerous means at the disposal of the Prince of Darkness in his attempt to enlist and enslave mankind, but also one of his most perfect devices.” It was only natural that Baudelaire should translate De Quincey's
Confessions of English Opium-Eater
into French. Baudelaire tacked his own commentary on hashish onto the back of the translation and called the volume
Les paradis artificiels—
artificial paradises.

Baudelaire had harsh words for hashish, the drug he had tried with Balzac at the Parisian hashish club. “
Hashish, like all other solitary delights
, makes the individual useless to mankind, and also makes society unnecessary to the individual,” Baudelaire wrote. “What hashish gives with one hand it takes away with the other. It gives power to the imagination and takes away the ability to profit by it.”

The book was a minor hit, but Baudelaire's excessive moralizing on hashish did not help him reach a wide audience eager for tales of decadent drug use. His revised edition of
Les fleurs du mal
, with twenty new poems that sprouted in place of the six banned by authorities, was released in 1861 to little fanfare.

Additionally, Baudelaire found himself lumped together with Algernon Charles Swinburne, a British poet whose earthy poetry similarly outraged critics. When Swinburne published
Poems and Ballads
in 1866, an anonymous critic accused him of following in Baudelaire's footsteps “as a slave to his own devil,
a dandy of the brothel
.” The critic accused Swinburne and Baudelaire of being part of a “school of verse-writers spreading the seeds of disease,” nicknaming them “The Fleshly School” because of their obsessions with desires of the flesh. The two poets never corresponded; Baudelaire was too wrapped up in himself to truly be part of any larger artistic community.

Baudelaire sought refuge from his disappointments by doubling down on his religious beliefs. Although he had always been a devout Catholic, few would have guessed it based on his poetry and behavior. As one reviewer had written about the first edition of his book, “The poet who caused the flowers to blossom has only two alternatives to choose from:
to blow out his brains
… or to become a Christian!”

Part of the reason he turned to the Catholic faith with a renewed vigor was that the burden of his own guilt over drugs and sex was simply unbearable for him to carry on his own. Past moral failures affected his daily life: he couldn't shake his opium addiction, and he felt the complications from syphilis on his fragile nervous system almost every day.

His love-hate relationship with sex is best dramatized in a story told by Léon Cladel. Toward the end of Baudelaire's career, he acted as something of a mentor to Cladel (a terrifying thought). They met in cafés to discuss life, love, and literature. During one meeting, the pair was joined by a beautiful young blonde who was starstruck in the presence of Baudelaire, whose infamy following his obscenity trial was not without its perks. The three of them retired to Baudelaire's nearby hotel room, where the woman began stripping her clothes off for the men. Cladel, sensing he had overstayed his welcome, bid the woman and his mentor good night. However, as he closed the door upon exiting, he overheard Baudelaire telling the woman, “Right,
now you can get dressed again
.” Was Baudelaire taking the moral high ground in his relations with women following his spiritual reawakening? Or had his venereal diseases left him unable to perform in the bedroom?

The one person who could have answered this question, his mistress of mistresses, Jeanne Duval, died in 1862 from complications of syphilis. Baudelaire never learned of her fate.

Weakened by years of laudanum use and sick with syphilis, Baudelaire suffered a stroke while vacationing in Belgium in 1867. He died in a nursing home a short while later at the age of forty-six. In a final indignation, the poet was buried beside his deceased stepfather; Baudelaire's name appears on their shared gravestone almost as a footnote beneath his stepfather's name and long list of civil service accomplishments. Baudelaire's mother lamented her son's early passing, saying that if he had accepted his family's guidance, “he would not have
won himself a name in literature
, it is true, but he should have been much happier.”

French authorities officially reversed the decision to suppress Baudelaire's poetry in 1949, and the banned poems were reinstated to
Les fleurs du mal
a hundred years after their first publication.

“One had, in the late eighties and early nineties, to be
preposterously French
.”

—
VICTOR PLARR

T
he mid-1800s saw the onset of a new conservative movement in England, ushered in by a change of leadership in the royal family. The Victorian era lasted from Queen Victoria's crowning on June 20, 1837, until her death on January 22, 1901. It was an affluent and peaceful time. The “enlightened” morals that had accompanied the Enlightenment were reined in, as romanticism and mysticism gave way to religious evangelism.

Youth, of course, would have none of it.

Long-haired young men such as Robert Louis Stevenson declared they were ready to “
disregard everything our parents have taught us
.” Stevenson's parents were less than happy with his behavior: “You have rendered
my whole life a failure
,” his father told him. His mother dramatically added, “This is
the heaviest affliction
that has ever befallen me.” While Stevenson would eventually go on to write the gothic horror novel
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
, he was also notable as a harbinger of things to come as the Victorian era of expansion and prosperity wound down.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a new generation of writers with wild hair and even wilder prose emerged with the intent to scandalize the populace. The press branded the cadaverously thin, pale young men “decadent.” The youths adopted the name and wore it as a badge of honor. The poor working class watched with wonder as the Decadents, who appeared to them to have been born with all the advantages in the world, revolted. As Arthur Symons, editor of the Decadent-friendly journal
The Savoy
, observed, “The desire to ‘
bewilder the middle classes
' is in itself middle-class.” Many of the Decadents were French, and those who weren't were obsessed with French culture.

Arthur Rimbaud
(1854–1891)—pale, disaffected, young, middle-class, and French—fit the decadent bill perfectly. Victor Hugo called him an “
an infant Shakespeare
,” and for good reason: Rimbaud produced his best work as a teenager, and by age twenty-one had given up on literature altogether.

As a child, Rimbaud ran away from home multiple times to escape his overbearing mother. When he turned sixteen, Rimbaud entered his rebellious teenage phase: he drank alcohol, stole books, spoke rudely to adults, and grew his hair long. “Parents:
You have caused my misfortune
, and you have caused your own,” he wrote in a tantrum. In summary, he acted like an adolescent. Unlike your average teenage rebel, however, Rimbaud was an absurdly good poet.

Rimbaud started writing poetry in his early teens, encouraged by a tutor his family had hired, and published his first poem when he was only fifteen. Like many of his contemporaries, he believed that he had to “derange” his senses to achieve true, poetical vision. “
The sufferings are enormous
,” he wrote to his former teacher Georges Izambard, “but one must be strong, be born a poet, and I have recognized myself as a poet.” He believed in “art for art's sake,” a phrase coined by French poet Désiré Nisard earlier in the century. When one of Rimbaud's friends encouraged him to write to
Paul Verlaine
(1844–1896), Rimbaud sent the established poet some of his poems.

Verlaine replied with a one-way ticket to Paris. “
Come, dear great soul
,” Verlaine wrote back. “We are waiting for you; we desire you.”

Verlaine's unhappy childhood can best be summed up with this anecdote: although he was the only child in his family to survive childbirth, his mother held on to her miscarried fetuses. Once, in a fit of rage, Verlaine smashed the jars containing the pickled corpses of his brothers and sisters. Let's just say that tensions flared after this incident. To say he was happy to leave home for college is an understatement.

He started college with the goal of becoming a lawyer, gave up, and settled for a bachelor's degree. What he really wanted was to be a poet like Charles Baudelaire. But after his father, favorite aunt, and beloved cousin all died, Verlaine spent his early twenties in a drunken haze. “
It was upon absinthe that I threw myself
, absinthe day and night,” he wrote, calling the green-colored liquor a “vile sorceress.”

Since the mid-eighteenth century, European distilleries had been churning out new and novel intoxicating spirits such as brandy, gin, and rum. The Decadents' drink of choice, however, was
la fée verte
: absinthe—the Green Fairy. The anise-flavored liquor was extremely high in alcohol (ranging from 55 percent to 72 percent by volume) and was alleged to have hallucinatory effects. “
The first stage of absinthe
is like ordinary drinking,” Oscar Wilde wrote. In the second stage of drunkenness, “you begin to see monstrous and cruel things, but if you can persevere you will enter in upon the third stage where you see things that you want to see, wonderful curious things.” While many creative types indulged in absinthe for inspiration, the high alcohol content led many of them, including Verlaine, to become run-of-the-mill alcoholics. He worked at an office during the day and spent his nights drinking, “not always
in very respectable places
.”

Things turned around for Verlaine after he published his first book in 1866. In 1870, he married Mathilde Mauté de Fleurville. His new in-laws conveniently provided them with lodgings and support.

When Rimbaud arrived in Paris at Verlaine's behest, they fell into each other's arms and didn't leave each other's sight. Verlaine later blamed their explosive relationship on the younger man, claiming that Rimbaud had “
diabolical powers of seduction
.” It's difficult to believe this was the case, for while the older poet had had homosexual experiences in the past, this was Rimbaud's first such relationship.

They bonded over hashish and absinthe, shocking Paris literary circles with their illicit relationship. Verlaine soon abandoned his young wife and infant son to accompany Rimbaud to London. Leaving his family behind was probably for the best. Verlaine once tried to set his wife on fire; another time, he threw their infant son against the wall. (Thankfully, the child survived.)

Verlaine and Rimbaud lived together in poverty, scraping by with teaching gigs and a meager allowance from Verlaine's mother. Verlaine's drinking, which had caused a rift within his family, poisoned his relationship with Rimbaud. Verlaine and Rimbaud argued constantly, while rumors of their homosexual relationship spread through town.

One day, Verlaine showed up on his friend Camille Barrère's doorstep, his face streaked in tears, “
People are saying I'm a pederast
, but I'm not! I'm not!” he pleaded. Of course this was a lie. Not only were Verlaine and his underage protégé romantically involved, they were also fond of swordplay: they frequently sparred in their apartment using long knives wrapped in towels to avoid causing serious injury. This was but a prelude to the violent turn their relationship was about to take.