With Baudelaire in Brussels, #06
Baudelaire invites Barral to his room for lunch; he has some unkind things to say about Belgian cooking and coffee.
To mark the 160th anniversary of Georges Barral’s trip to Brussels and his five-day visit with the poet Charles Baudelaire, I am publishing my translation of the first four days from his memoir on Substack. You can find the previous instalments here.
The Géant had left the cobblestones of Brussels yesterday, around dusk. Its trip was fairly short. It crossed Belgium diagonally from the north-east to the south-west, landing between Ypres and the sea a little before midnight. We returned to Brussels the next morning. We had not left Belgium. The King’s wish had been granted, and Baudelaire’s prediction had come true. Warned of our return by telegraph, Mrs. Nadar, her son Paul, the author of Les Fleurs du mal, as well as a few friends — notably Jean Rousseau, the editor of Figaro, and Bérardi, head of the Indépendance Belge — were waiting for us to arrive at the Gare du Nord train station. Baudelaire notices us immediately. He rushes towards me with open arms, while Nadar embraces his wife and child. Baudelaire wastes no time in reminding me that I am invited to lunch.
“I am taking young Barral from you,” he says to Nadar. Nadar consents under the condition that I am to be returned before evening, since he will need my help in writing letters.
“It is agreed,” replies Baudelaire. “I will give your secretary back to you on time and in good condition.”
We laugh, and separate. Nadar goes off arm in arm with his family, taking a carriage to the Hôtel des Étrangers. Baudelaire and I leave on foot.
We cross the Place Rogier, following rue Neuve to the Place de la Monnaie, then take rue de l’Écuyer to the Saint-Hubert Gallery, finally reaching the poet’s home on rue de la Montagne, at the Hôtel du Grand Miroir.
I knew Les Fleurs du mal fairly well. “You were destined to stay here,” I said.
Surprised, Baudelaire looks at me.
“Yes, it was meant to be. In your sonnet La Musique, you included the name of your future residence.”1
Looking at the golden letters on the front of the hotel, I recite in a low voice:
I feel the tremblings of all passions known
To ships before the breeze;
Cradled by gentle winds, or tempest-blown
I pass the abysmal seas
That are, when calm, the mirror level and fair
Of my despair!I emphasize the fateful word that has struck me and Baudelaire smiles, astonished by my youthful memory.
“Follow me,” he says. “I have ordered a simple and elegant meal to celebrate the prodigal son’s return. They should bring it to my room precisely at noon, where we can chat in peace. I want to know your exact impressions in order to reproduce them in a prose poem, Lost in the Air ! So I am going to subject you to a gruelling interrogation. I hope you will find some agreeable compensation in the menu, which I have put together with the help of the chef.
“It will consist of the following: First of all, there will be no hors-d’oeuvres. They are unheard of here.
We will get straight to things with an omelette à la française, which is to say with a stuffed belly, since the Belgian omelette is as flat as the rest. It is an omelette made with rabbit’s blood. Hunting season is open, so that is a sure thing, and it will not be a reddish brown colour. It will be padded with little mushrooms, picked near Paris, that have been lightly sautéed beforehand.
“Next we will move on to quails from the Mosel vineyards, cooked quickly in a pan, wrapped in slices of bacon, and presented on a flavourful puff pastry. We shall finish with a fresh vegetable or with a nice French salad. All this will be cooked in the finest butter from Flanders, which is to say Dixmude, and by a culinary artist. I think you will like it! For dessert, you have your choice of old Roquefort cheese, pears, grapes, and nuts. And the most important thing, the wine! I have chosen a Corton, the real thing. We will have some proper cognac to accompany our coffee, which will be a mocha, of Arab origin and imported by the British. And here there will be a little provision for the gourmets — the coffee will flow through a French filter, and not some Flemish sack. This is in order to avoid the revolting chicory with which the Belgians have destroyed their sense of taste and smell.”
We advance by tiny steps, stopping at each course as Baudelaire grabs the lapels of my frock coat to emphasize his points. In this way we climb two floors on a steep and narrow staircase with steps that have been painted a glossy yellow.
Baudelaire stops and puts the key into a small door bearing the number 39. We enter into the poet’s room. I am distressed by the paucity of the furnishings. There is a fake mahogany bed with a green eiderdown cover, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a tattered sofa, a worn-out armchair, two tired looking wicker chairs, and a little carpet. There is no clock over the mantelpiece.
Instead, there is a lamp with a lamp shade. A table strewn with papers and books is pushed against a wall, and this wall is covered with a discoloured fabric. A pedestal table shines brightly in the middle of the room, lit up by a window of some height. The place setting has been prepared elegantly. The tablecloth is a dazzling white and of a fine fabric, soft to both the touch and to the eye.
“It is linen,” notes Baudelaire. “Beautiful almond coloured linen, woven near Courtais from flax that has been soaked in the waters of the Lys or the Yperlée. The richness of a table linen sharpens the appetite. What’s more, we will be eating French food. The chef is Parisian. He knows that I am a fellow countryman. He looks after me, since my stomach rebels against the heavy, indigestible slop they serve in Brussels.”
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The lines from La Musique are taken from F. P. Sturm’s 1906 translation of Les Fleurs du mal.