Les Fleurs du mal

First edition, printed on vélin d’Angoulême, with the usual typographical errors, and containing the six banned poems; one of the few author’s copies “intended for friends who render no literary services”.

Full bordeaux red morocco binding, spine with five raised bands richly decorated with multiple gilt- and blind-tooled fillets; third-state covers; boards framed with multiple blind-tooled fillets; marbled endpapers; gilt turn-ins; all edges gilt; marbled paper slipcase with morocco border; signed binding by Semet & Plumelle.

Precious presentation copy inscribed in ink by the author on the dedication page, addressed to Paul Meurice, playwright, journalist, and close collaborator of Victor Hugo, « à Paul Meurice, témoignage d’amitié. Ch. Baudelaire » [“To Paul Meurice, in token of friendship. Ch. Baudelaire”].

Featuring twenty autograph corrections by the author to the printed dedication and four poems* :

• At the dedication: two pencil corrections to the last words of the first line. Baudelaire adds a plural to “es langueS françaiseS,” “es” being, in fact, the contraction of “en les.” A surprising syntactical correction, sacrificing coherence, which the author later amended in 1861 to “Magicien es Lettres Françaises”.
•  “La muse vénale”, p. 29: one ink correction to the final word of the last line of the first tercet, “Guère S,” one of the earliest misprints corrected by Baudelaire, which had nevertheless escaped him on the proofs, as with the following.
•  “Le chat”, p. 110: one ink correction in the second line of the sixth quatrain, “au” logically changed to “un.”
•  “Don Juan aux enfers”, p. 43: three ink corrections to the third line of the third tercet. The first, a simple misprint, “errant S,” had already troubled Baudelaire on the proofs, but its earlier correction had not been carried over.
• The other two, “leS rivageS,” are not orthographic corrections but represent one of the very first poetic variants, absent from most presentation copies, foreshadowing the forthcoming complete revision of Les Fleurs du mal and the new original edition of 1861.
• "Le reniement de Saint Pierre", p. 217: a pencil correction on the fourth line of the second quatrain. The “D” replacing the “C” in “Cieux” is underlined three times. Curiously, the proofs reveal the exact opposite: “Les Dieux” was then corrected with a “C,” equally emphatically underlined. Anti-clerical remorse or altered alliteration? This correction, found in only a few copies, drew the poet’s attention to another misprint, still intact in our copy, later corrected in subsequent presentation copies: “au X doux bruit.”
• Baudelaire also inscribed a large “C” in pencil on pp. 52, 73, 91, 187, 191, and 206, at the head of the six poems condemned on 20 August 1857 for removal from copies in circulation. He transferred the same “C.” to the table of contents, opposite the six incriminated titles: Les Bijoux, Le Léthé, À celle qui est trop gaie, Lesbos, Femmes damnées: À la pâle clarté, and Les Métamorphoses du Vampire.

In total, twenty autograph interventions by Charles Baudelaire.

The brilliant friend

This exceptional inscription by Charles Baudelaire to Paul Meurice, Victor Hugo’s surrogate brother, bears the rare witness to the first encounter between the two giants of French literature.

History records only four major interactions between Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo: they had an early but unremarkable meeting in 1840 at the request of Baudelaire who was still a schoolboy. The gift of Les Fleurs du mal constituted their first successful encounter. This was followed, two years later, by Hugo’s controversial preface on Théophile Gautier. Finally, in 1865, Baudelaire appealed once more to Hugo to intercede with publisher Lacroix and Verboeckhoven, to no avail. Four moments in a quarter-century: a missed appointment, a perfect accord, a romantic duel, and manifest disdain.

What sets the two encounters at the zenith of literature apart from the prosaic failure of the other two is the intervention of a Hermes: Meurice was that discreet and devoted servant of the arts, a “paragon of dedication,” much like his dramatic hero Fanfan la Tulipe, whose true author, in the utmost discretion, would be forgotten. Yet, until the discovery of this copy, nothing indicated the existence of such an early “friendship” between Baudelaire and Meurice, nor the pivotal mediating role it played between Hugo and Baudelaire.

Reunion

Signed copies of the 1857 Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire rank among the most prestigious bibliophilic treasures and have long held a distinguished place in major private collections. Fully referenced, compared, and analysed, they have inspired a substantial bibliographical literature. The number of inscribed copies, around fifty-five, has been established based on copies known with certainty, those recorded in a catalogue or at auction, presumed copies, citations in correspondence, and estimated examples, either announced by the author or evident from other sources.

Occasionally, a previously unknown copy appears on the market. Such a discovery often sheds light on a little-known friendship of the poet, or his self-interested manoeuvres as he was perpetually indebted — both frequently intertwined in Baudelaire’s life.

Rarely, a Baudelaire dedication emerges unexpectedly, lacking any documentation to contextualise it.

The presentation to Paul Meurice is absent from all catalogues, from the correspondence, as well as from the poet’s lists which he sent to De Broise of copies he intended to gift. The correspondence between Baudelaire and Meurice prior to this dedication offers no explanation for this sudden evidence of “friendship,” which would nonetheless be confirmed in later exchanges.

Before 1857, Baudelaire knew Paul Meurice primarily through his theatre, which the poet had long admired. In 1854, he requested from a third party “two good places for the eternal Schamyl.” Perhaps he met Meurice on that occasion, for two years later he directly requested “two tickets to see [his] Avocat,” in terms marked by courtesy: “Dear Sir, Allow me to accept the gracious offer you once made me and which I had discreetly declined […] I will come to thank you, bringing the Nouvelles histoires, since you know how to appreciate everything.”

In the next recorded exchange, dated 1859, Meurice had become a “dear friend” and was granted the distinguished honour of counting among the poet’s esteemed correspondents.

From the “Dear Sir” of 1856 to the “friendship’s testimony” of the Fleurs du mal dedication in 1857, a relationship had formed hitherto unknown to us, just as this copy itself remained undiscovered until recently.

Madame bovary is (also) meurice

The answer to this gap may perhaps be found in Flaubert’s biography. In April 1857, he indeed entrusted Madame Bovary to Paul Meurice, to be forwarded to Victor Hugo : 

“Although I have not the honour of knowing you personally, I take the liberty of handing you a copy of a novel which I beg you to forward to Mr. Hugo.”

By August, he was concerned that his messenger had still not delivered his precious parcel, today known to bear the simple yet flawless inscription: « Au Maître » [“To the Master”]. It was at precisely the same time that Baudelaire and Flaubert maintained a correspondence — unfortunately incomplete — concerning their respective works and the disheartening trials they faced. Which of the two had suggested calling on Paul Meurice to intercede with Hugo? Flaubert seems to have entrusted his work to Meurice very early, yet Baudelaire had already exchanged with the same valued intermediary. It is likely, however, that both works were submitted together, judging from Hugo’s responses, all dated 30 August 1857.

It is therefore highly likely that Hugo’s “faithful factotum” had received these two original works, among the most precious in French literature, dedicated to the master. And, in the manner of Flaubert, who asked Meurice to be “kind enough also to accept another [copy] enclosed,” Baudelaire thus expressed his gratitude through this precious, until recently unknown, copy, of which Meurice is the esteemed recipient.

Henceforth, as Baudelaire would indeed write to Hugo, Meurice had become their “mutual friend.”

In the shadow of the shadow-man

In 1859 the poet would again find himself indebted to Paul Meurice for his invaluable intercession in securing the luminous preface Victor Hugo granted to a work which, for all its brilliance, spared him no criticism. Meurice would become one of Baudelaire’s closest confidants, and his wife, Éléonore, an intimate of the poet. Their correspondence grew long and affectionate, and after Baudelaire’s stroke she remained at his bedside, with Mme Manet, playing excerpts from Tannhäuser for him.

The fragmentary correspondence between Meurice and Baudelaire nevertheless reveals the central place Victor Hugo occupied in their friendship:

◊ “The letter from M. Hugo was not at my mother’s.” (Letter to Paul Meurice, 7 August 1859);

◊ “I do hope M. Meurice will think to set a Légende [des siècles] aside for me.” (Letter to Madame Meurice, 29 September 1859);

◊ “In two places in this packet you will find […] passages relating to M. Hugo. If you think it worthwhile, you may let him know.” (Letter to Paul Meurice, 9 October 1859);

◊ “Have you received Delâtre’s parcel for M. Hugo?” (Letter to Paul Meurice, 21 December 1859);

◊ “I forward Le Salut public to M. Paul Meurice, who will unfailingly see it on to Guernsey.” (Letter to Armand Fraisse, 18 February 1860);

◊ “My regards to Vacquerie.” (Letter to Paul Meurice, 30 March 1861);

◊ “Has Meurice sent a proof to Victor Hugo?” (Letter to Alphonse Legros, 6 December 1862);

◊ “I have seen Mme Meurice about Legros, who has made a fine portrait of Hugo.” (Letter to his mother, 13 December 1862);

◊ “I am charged with conveying to you the kind regards of M. Charles Hugo. — They say his father is to come and live here.” (Letter to Mme Meurice, 3 February 1865).

If Hugo’s shadow pervades the letters exchanged by Baudelaire and Meurice, it is most likely because Meurice himself engineered the only successful moments of contact between these two prominent figures of French poetry.

In 1840, the nineteen-year-old bachelor had already attempted to approach that otherwise unapproachable genius, sensing even then the need for an intermediary:

“I may be rather bold in sending you these praises, willy-nilly, through the post; but I wished to tell you, directly and simply, how deeply I love and admire you, and I tremble at the thought of seeming ridiculous.”

No reply to this ingenuous declaration of affection is known, yet the young man did secure, at about the same time, a brief and disappointing meeting which left him with only the poorest of impressions. Thus, when he sent his first poetic work seventeen years later, accompanied by a “noble letter”, he no doubt took certain precautions to ensure that it reached Hugo in exile — and to preserve some hope of receiving a response.

Paul Meurice was, unmistakably, the essential go-between — perhaps the sole one — linking the condemned poet to his illustrious counterpart in exile. Ghost-writer for Dumas, and responsible for stage adaptations of works by Victor Hugo, George Sand, Alexandre Dumas, and Théophile Gautier, Meurice employed his unobtrusive talent in the service of the foremost artists of his time. Yet it was his unique bond with Victor Hugo that secured him a decisive position in the history of French literature. More than a companion, Paul — with Auguste Vacquerie — came to stand in place of Hugo’s lost brothers: “I have lost my two brothers; he and you, you and he, have taken their place; only I was the youngest — now I have become the elder, and that is all the difference.”

To this brother in spirit — who had served as witness at his wedding, alongside Ingres and Dumas — the exiled poet entrusted the care of his literary and financial interests. It was he, again with Vacquerie, whom Hugo named executor of his will. After Hugo’s death, Meurice founded the Maison Victor Hugo, still one of the most renowned literary house-museums in existence.

Say it with flowers

Nevertheless, in the absence of this dedication, there was no basis to establish him so early as Baudelaire’s intermediary to Hugo.

The copy destined for Hugo appears in Baudelaire’s list to De Broise alongside other eminent Anglo-Saxon authors:

“Tennyson
Browning                           
ENGLAND
De Quincy
Victor Hugo

Should I be unable to ascertain the addresses of these gentlemen, M. Fowler, an English bookseller in Paris, will see to delivering the copies.” (Letter to Eugène De Broise, 13 June 1857)

None of these copies has ever been traced, suggesting that the printer failed to carry out this rather complex task. Even if the said Fowler could have assisted Baudelaire in reaching his English colleagues, it is unlikely that he played any role in “delivering” the copy to Victor Hugo.

Hugo’s reply confirms that he did indeed receive the precious item intended for him, together with a “noble letter.”

Yet the precise circumstances of this delivery remain entirely unknown. Neither Baudelaire’s letter nor the copy presented has survived. It has been said to be within the Jacques Doucet Library, although the copy seems at most to have been glimpsed at a bookseller’s, and the supposed text of the dedication, “À M. Victor Hugo, C. B.”, is highly questionable.

That a still unknown poet, who had met the most celebrated writer of his time “only twice, and that almost twenty years ago,” should sign “C. B.” — at a time when, in 1857, he reserved these initials solely for his two muses, Madame Sabatier and Marie Daubrun — may appear surprising. That he should offer no homage or expression of deference toward the very figure he spoke so highly of to his mother just days earlier: “I care nothing for all these fools, and I know that this volume, with its virtues and its faults, will find its place in the memory of the educated public, alongside the finest poetry of V. Hugo, Th. Gautier, and even Byron,” seems equally improbable.

To Baudelaire, of course, nothing was impossible. By his own admission, in 1859 he displayed the “prodigious impropriety” of sending Hugo the pages of his article on Théophile Gautier, which severely criticised the recipient, “without enclosing a letter, any homage, or any expression of respect and fidelity.” Contrite, he then asked Paul Meurice to rectify the matter — with remarkable success.

Thus, in 1861, when sending his second edition of Les Fleurs du mal, he was not sparing in his “Testimony of Admiration, Sympathy and Devotion,” and the signature C. B. on this copy reflected a new-found complicity (this inscription was unfortunately erased, except for the signature and a single initial). Even the copy of his Théophile Gautier article, which he ultimately refrained from sending, initially bore a warm presentation: “as a testimony of admiration.” The vandal who erased this inscription was none other than Baudelaire himself, the copy remaining, despite — or perhaps because of — this defacement, one of the most emblematic witnesses of the tumultuous relationship between Baudelaire and Victor Hugo.

Whether it was the 1857 dispatch, marked by improbable laconicism, the 1861 copy, now ghostly, or the telling repentance over Théophile Gautier in 1859, the volumes Baudelaire sent to Victor Hugo seem to reflect the very destiny of their relationship: an impossible encounter. As Victor Hugo would later summarise at the poet’s death:

“I met rather than knew Baudelaire. He often shocked me, and I must have offended him frequently. […] He is one of the men I regret.” (Letter to Asselineau, March 1869)

stars and disasters

In 1857, Paul Meurice, the “mutual friend” of Baudelaire and Hugo, nonetheless offered these two incompatible geniuses their only moment of genuine community.

The well-known double trials of 1857 — that of Flaubert, who secured the acquittal of his Madame, and that of Baudelaire, whose mephitic bouquet was to be deprived of its most sulphurous fumes — are familiar. Yet a third major literary trial occurred that year, one that should have eclipsed those of the two young, unknown writers: that which Victor Hugo brought to defend his rights over the opera Rigoletto, adapted from Le Roi s’amuse, censored twenty-five years earlier.

If Flaubert prevailed before the law, Victor Hugo, like Baudelaire, yielded to its authority. In his letter of thanks to the poet, Hugo mingles poetic with political judgement:

“Let me end these few lines with a note of congratulation. One of the rare decorations the current regime can bestow, you have just received. That which it calls its justice has condemned you in the name of that which it calls its morality; this is one more crown. I shake your hand, poet.” (30 August 1857)

The proscribed found a reflection of himself in the damned, and this was perhaps the only occasion on which the destinies of the solar artist and the crepuscular poet were aligned.

Until now, the sole remnant of this fleeting communion was the letter of endorsement from the Master, preserved at the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris.

The “testimony of friendship” to Hugo’s “brother” was the only indirect response Baudelaire could offer to his adversary, a father-figure who would haunt his life, and perhaps his poetry:

“Race of Cain, ascend to heaven,
And cast God down upon the earth!”
(Translated by William Aggele)