Vie de Bohème: A Patch of Romantic ParisWilliams, Orlo
History
Vie de Bohème: A Patch of Romantic Paris
Williams, Orlo
Paris (France) -- Intellectual life; Paris (France) -- Social life and customs
top of his voice, repeating incessantly any word which took his
passionate fancy, and filling all the neighbourhood with his din. He
would wake up a friend without compunction at three in the morning to
show him a moonlight effect on the Seine; one moment he would be
inventing sauces to make brill appetizing, and the next he would be
plotting to smack Gustave Planche's face for having spoken slightingly
of Victor Hugo. The _cénacle_ composed of Louis de Cormenin, Le
Poitevin, Du Camp, and himself often dined at Dagneaux's, one of the
better restaurants of the Quartier Latin, and stayed talking ceaselessly
till the doors were closed. Their ambitions were as wild as their
conversation; Flaubert and Du Camp seriously determined to learn
everything between the ages of twenty-one and thirty, to produce great
works till forty, and then to retire into the country. Except for the
fact that, according to his friend, Flaubert disdained the women whom
his beauty attracted, this was a promising beginning for Bohemia. As the
world knows, fate decreed otherwise, and he retired to develop in that
close intellectual atmosphere with Louis Bouilhet and Du Camp, of which
the latter says: "Living as we did, in solitude, we exchanged only the
same set of ideas apart from all criticism, so that things in general
lost their right proportion in our minds."
Flaubert's life in the Rue de l'Est was, at best, only a tentative
pathway in Bohemia, like one of those tracks in a suburb that give hope
of leading somewhere, but change their mind _en route_. It is too small
a digression to be distracting, and I entered upon it, among other
reasons, because its little adventure coincides in date with those
movements in the central market-place yet to be touched on. One more
alley, however, must be taken on the way, for it is, indeed, only just
off the market-place. The name upon its wall is that of Charles
Baudelaire, a well-known figure whose exact relation to Bohemia is,
nevertheless, not so easy to determine. He began very much in the manner
of Flaubert, coming as a student to the Quartier Latin and residing at a
not very strictly kept _pension_ near the Panthéon between 1839 and
1841, his eighteenth and his twentieth years. I need not repeat the
distinction made between student life--_das Burschenleben_--and
out-and-out Bohemianism. Baudelaire filled his days to their fullest
extent, mixing together indiscriminately the enjoyments of student,
dandy, and _viveur_, so far as his means allowed. It was only at the end
of this time that his determination to take up literature scandalized
his stepfather and caused his enforced sea voyage. When he returned in
1842 he had come of age and possessed a capital of 75,000 francs. He set
about spending this money with a gusto and in a manner not unworthy of
the golden age of Bohemia. He had various lodgings till he settled for
two years in a beautiful apartment in the old Hôtel Pimodan on the Île
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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