After having sealed the letter he has just written to Sainte-Beuve to assure him that he took no part in a derogatory article written by one of his friends, Baudelaire gets up from his desk and opens the window to let the salty sea air into his office. Before moving to his mother's villa, Charles had procrastinated a lot.
Under various pretexts.
An article to finish for a review.
The hope of obtaining the direction of a theater that would allow him to have a stable income or to receive the Legion of Honor that Mérimée had dangled in him before stepping back.
Read also Baudelaire, the spleen of modernity: fatherless at 5, Charles under the rule of General Aupick
In October 1858, he made a brief foray into Normandy to "
see the local
". He was charmed by it and nicknamed it the toy house. Everything pleases him. The site on the cliff, the view of the estuary, the garden, the two rooms that his mother intended for him. In January, Charles finally decides to join
Caroline Aupick's
“
bonbonnière
”. Since then, his stomach, his intestines have left him in peace. Or almost. He has no more headaches and he works to "
fix sixteen years of laziness
". He now wants to "
mint money without respite, no longer having a pretext to compromise with work
".
Baudelaire got down to the translation of
Opium
by De Quincey and three new texts by Poe.
He also wrote a literary review on Théophile Gautier and composed some new poems for his
Fleurs du mal
for a second edition.
Read also Baudelaire, the spleen of modernity: the revolt of the South Seas
Did the inhabitants of Honfleur hardly welcome him?
Baudelaire doesn't care.
He knows that they have nicknamed him "
the Done-of-Good
" and chatter all the better about his all-too-frequent forays into Mr. Allais's pharmacy to buy his drugs.
On the other hand, he had the good fortune to meet on a coastal path Eugène Boudin who took him to the Saint-Siméon farm where he works with Jean-François Millet and Frédéric Bazille.
Baudelaire was dazzled by his skies "
crumpled with colors
", and his "
tumultuous
"
clouds
with changing architecture.
To read also Michel De Jaeghere: "Baudelaire, the alchemist of the pain"
In the evening, Charles usually keeps his mother company. As in the days when she had rented the white house in Neuilly, they watch, in silence, the sun go down beyond the horizon. They never evoke the memory of General Aupick, but his widow insists that her tableware is always laid at the table. Which seems ridiculous to his son. But he avoids telling her.
Over time, however, Baudelaire discovers the disadvantages of living far from Paris. He complains because he does not receive the salary for his work quickly enough. At the beginning of March, unable to stand it any longer, he left to look for his due. He will stay six weeks in the capital because we are slow to pay him, because he agreed to write a Salon for the Revue française, because he is happy to find his friends, but also because he must take care of Jeanne. She is stricken with a paralysis attack. He now treats her as if she were his sister or a child and will place her in a nursing home.
On April 20, Baudelaire returned to Honfleur where he wrote his study on the Salon. The exhibition turned out to be disappointing. However, it offers him the opportunity to reaffirm his attachment to pure art, the one that creates "
a suggestive magic
" as do the clouds of Boudin. He also took the opportunity to assert that photography, which participated for the first time in the event, is not an art but “
a new industry
”, the refuge of failed or too lazy painters.
His health recovered. His work is progressing. But the more time passes, the more Baudelaire grows gloomy. He is annoyed by the "
pettiness
" shown by his mother. Of his bourgeois ideas. Tight. And then he definitely misses Paris. He longs for newsrooms, publishing houses, theaters, booksellers, libraries, museums. With whom to speak in Honfleur about his project to study Spanish painting?
In June, he couldn't stand it any longer and returned to the “
infamous
”
capital
.
He settled there at the Hôtel de Dieppe.
He complains to his mother of his existence which has once again become a nightmare, of his health which is again failing.
Caroline urges her to come back to Honfleur.
He will only be returning in December.
Briefly.
Cover of the Figaro Hors-Série Baudelaire, the spleen of modernity Étienne Carjat, 1861
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