Details
BAUDELAIRE, CHARLES. Autograph letter signed twice ("Ch. Baudelaire," second signature on address panel) to the writer Paul Meurice in Paris; [Paris, c. 20 October 1859]. 1 page, 4to, integral address leaf, original seal, small tear to upper corner of address leaf; modern folding cloth chemise and half morocco slipcase.
Baudelaire reminds Meurice of a promised favor, probably tickets to a performance of Meurice's drama Le Roi de Bohème, performed at the Ambigu-Comique on 21 October: "Soyez assez bon pour ne pas m'oublier, et si vous voulez ou si vous pouvez être tout à fait
généreux, donnez moi de quoi emmener quelqu'un avec moi (une dame). Cependant il faut que cela ne vous gêne. Tout à vous. Présenter
mes respects à Madame Meurice." The lady in question was presumably Baudelaire's former companion the creole Jeanne Duval, with whom he had been recently reconciled after a rupture of several years.
The playwright and novelist Paul Meurice (1820-1905) was perhaps best-known as protégé and close friend of Victor Hugo, whose liberal journal L'Evénement Meurice edited until its condemnation after the 1851 coup d'état. During the period 1858-59 Baudelaire corresponded fairly frequently with Meurice, who lent the poet money on occasion and interpreted the silences of the great Hugo (exiled in Guernsey), idolized by Baudelaire, for whose literary essay Théophile Gautier (1859) Hugo provided a prefatory letter.
Published in the Correspondance, ed. Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler, Paris: Pléiade 1973, vol. I, p. 611.
Baudelaire reminds Meurice of a promised favor, probably tickets to a performance of Meurice's drama Le Roi de Bohème, performed at the Ambigu-Comique on 21 October: "Soyez assez bon pour ne pas m'oublier, et si vous voulez ou si vous pouvez être tout à fait
généreux, donnez moi de quoi emmener quelqu'un avec moi (une dame). Cependant il faut que cela ne vous gêne. Tout à vous. Présenter
mes respects à Madame Meurice." The lady in question was presumably Baudelaire's former companion the creole Jeanne Duval, with whom he had been recently reconciled after a rupture of several years.
The playwright and novelist Paul Meurice (1820-1905) was perhaps best-known as protégé and close friend of Victor Hugo, whose liberal journal L'Evénement Meurice edited until its condemnation after the 1851 coup d'état. During the period 1858-59 Baudelaire corresponded fairly frequently with Meurice, who lent the poet money on occasion and interpreted the silences of the great Hugo (exiled in Guernsey), idolized by Baudelaire, for whose literary essay Théophile Gautier (1859) Hugo provided a prefatory letter.
Published in the Correspondance, ed. Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler, Paris: Pléiade 1973, vol. I, p. 611.