Mathilde Verlaine in bed

Mathilde Verlaine née Mauté met Symbolist poet Paul Verlane when she was sixteen years old, most likely at a literary salon in Paris in 1869. Verlaine, a violent alchoholic yet charismatic and intensely talented, wooed the young woman and married her the following year. The couple had a son, Georges, but Verlaine had lost interest in his wife by 1872 and began a tempestuous relationship with fellow poet Arthur Rimbaud. Mathilde and her child moved away from Paris to escape Verlaine's temper and rapid descent into addiction and destitution.