How had he
squandered
his money?
Baudelaire - Poems and Prose Poems
But she was to blame, she has
confessed; she had quite forgotten the boy in the flush of her second
love. He could not forget, or forgive what he called her infidelity to
the memory of his father. Hamlet-like, he was inconsolable. The good
Bishop of Montpellier, who knew the family, said that Charles was a
little crazy--second marriages usually bring woe in their train. "When a
mother has such a son, she doesn't re-marry," said the young poet
Charles signed himself Baudelaire-Dufays, or sometimes Dufais. He wrote
in his journal: "My ancestors, idiots or maniacs . . . all victims of
terrible passions"; which was one of his exaggerations. His grandfather
on the paternal side was a Champenois peasant, his mother's family
presumably Norman, but not much is known of her forbears. Charles
believed himself lost from the time his half-brother was stricken. He
also believed that his instability of temperament--and he studied his
"case" as would a surgeon--was the result of his parents' disparity in
years.
After his return from the East, where he did not learn English as has
been said--his mother taught him as a boy to converse in and write the
language--he came into his little inheritance, about fifteen thousand
dollars. Two years later he was so heavily in debt that his family asked
for a guardian on the ground of incompetency. He had been swindled,
being young and green.
How had he squandered his money? Not exactly on
opera-glasses, like Gerard de Nerval, but on clothes, pictures,
furniture, books. The remnant was set aside to pay his debts. Charles
would be both poet and dandy. He dressed expensively but soberly, in the
English fashion; his linen dazzling, the prevailing hue of his
habiliments black. In height he was medium, his eyes brown, searching,
luminous, the eye of a nyctalops, "eyes like ravens"; nostrils
palpitating, cleft chin, mouth expressive, sensual jaw, strong and
square. His hair was black, curly, glossy, his forehead high, square and
white. In the Deroy portrait he wears a beard; he is there what Catulle
Mendes nicknamed him: "His Excellence, Monseigneur Brummel! " Later he
was the elegiac Satan, the author of L'Imitation de N. S. le Diable; or
the Baudelaire of George Moore: "the clean-shaven face of the mock
priest, the slow cold eyes and the sharp cunning sneer of the cynical
libertine who will be tempted that he may better know the worthlessness
of temptation. " In the heyday of his blood he was perverse and
deliberate. Let us credit him with contradicting the Byronic notion that
ennui could best be cured by dissipation; in sin Baudelaire found the
saddest of all consolations. Mendes laughs at the legend of Baudelaire's
violence, of his being given to explosive phrases. Despite Gautier's
stories about the Hotel Pimodan and its club of hasheesh-eaters, M.
Mendes denies that Baudelaire was a victim of the hemp.
confessed; she had quite forgotten the boy in the flush of her second
love. He could not forget, or forgive what he called her infidelity to
the memory of his father. Hamlet-like, he was inconsolable. The good
Bishop of Montpellier, who knew the family, said that Charles was a
little crazy--second marriages usually bring woe in their train. "When a
mother has such a son, she doesn't re-marry," said the young poet
Charles signed himself Baudelaire-Dufays, or sometimes Dufais. He wrote
in his journal: "My ancestors, idiots or maniacs . . . all victims of
terrible passions"; which was one of his exaggerations. His grandfather
on the paternal side was a Champenois peasant, his mother's family
presumably Norman, but not much is known of her forbears. Charles
believed himself lost from the time his half-brother was stricken. He
also believed that his instability of temperament--and he studied his
"case" as would a surgeon--was the result of his parents' disparity in
years.
After his return from the East, where he did not learn English as has
been said--his mother taught him as a boy to converse in and write the
language--he came into his little inheritance, about fifteen thousand
dollars. Two years later he was so heavily in debt that his family asked
for a guardian on the ground of incompetency. He had been swindled,
being young and green.
How had he squandered his money? Not exactly on
opera-glasses, like Gerard de Nerval, but on clothes, pictures,
furniture, books. The remnant was set aside to pay his debts. Charles
would be both poet and dandy. He dressed expensively but soberly, in the
English fashion; his linen dazzling, the prevailing hue of his
habiliments black. In height he was medium, his eyes brown, searching,
luminous, the eye of a nyctalops, "eyes like ravens"; nostrils
palpitating, cleft chin, mouth expressive, sensual jaw, strong and
square. His hair was black, curly, glossy, his forehead high, square and
white. In the Deroy portrait he wears a beard; he is there what Catulle
Mendes nicknamed him: "His Excellence, Monseigneur Brummel! " Later he
was the elegiac Satan, the author of L'Imitation de N. S. le Diable; or
the Baudelaire of George Moore: "the clean-shaven face of the mock
priest, the slow cold eyes and the sharp cunning sneer of the cynical
libertine who will be tempted that he may better know the worthlessness
of temptation. " In the heyday of his blood he was perverse and
deliberate. Let us credit him with contradicting the Byronic notion that
ennui could best be cured by dissipation; in sin Baudelaire found the
saddest of all consolations. Mendes laughs at the legend of Baudelaire's
violence, of his being given to explosive phrases. Despite Gautier's
stories about the Hotel Pimodan and its club of hasheesh-eaters, M.
Mendes denies that Baudelaire was a victim of the hemp.
