BAUDELAIRE, Charles (1821-1867)

BAUDELAIRE, Charles (1821-1867)

Autograph letter signed « Charles » to his mother, Madame Aupick
[Paris], « Wednesday » [28th October 1863], 1 p. in-8°
Tiny repair with Japan paper on lower margin, without affecting the text
One word crossed off by Baudelaire

Baudelaire announces to his mother, not without bitterness, the transfer of his rights for the complete translation of his Œuvres d’Edgar Poe to his publisher Michel Lévy

« Ma chère mère,
J’espérais une lettre de toi ce matin. Ce voyage s’est-il effectué sans ennuis et sans accident, et surtout comment te portes-tu ? [Madame Aupick avait rendu visite à son fils à Paris durant le mois d’octobre]
Oui, l’affaire Lévy est vidée. J’abandonne demain tous mes droits à venir pour une somme de 2000 francs payables dans une dizaine de jours. Ce n’est même pas la moitié de ce qu’il me faut. Il faut donc que la Belgique paie le reste. Je vais écrire en Belgique pour un traité (car je me défie des Belges), un traité disant le prix de chaque leçon, combien de leçons en tout, et combien de leçons par semaine.
Le Poe donnait (à moi) un revenu de 500 [francs] par an. Michel [Lévy] a donc traité la question comme on traiterait de la vente d’un fonds d’épicerie. Il paie simplement quatre années du produit. Je t’embrasse. Écris-moi.
Charles »

The contract was signed between Charles Baudelaire and Michel Lévy frères three days later, on November 1, 1863 (which fell on a Sunday, no doubt to facilitate the accounts).
The transfer of all his rights to Lévy includes: Extraordinary Stories; New Extraordinary Stories; The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket; Eureka (not yet published); Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (not yet published).
The publisher took advantage of the bleeding financial situation in which Baudelaire was, increasingly driven into debt. In another letter to his mother of 25 November, Baudelaire also admitted that Lévy “undertook to divide this money among some of [his] creditors”. This treatise is all the more terrible for him because of all his works published during his lifetime, only Poe’s translations were successful in bookstores.
The “lessons” evoked here by the poet were in fact lectures that he gave the following year, when he was settled in Brussels. He pronounced a total of five, hoping to attract the attention of Albert Lacroix (1834-1903), the publisher of Les Misérables. They did not meet with the expected success.