Evening star., 1948-08-08
Novel Depicts
FontosticLne
Of BoudeIoire
THE MIDNIGHT GARDENER
BY Max White. (Harper, $3.50.
Reviewed by
CARTER BROOKE JONES.

Reviewed by
CARTER BROOKE JONES.
In France a century ago the
arts were turning in new dlrec-
lions, under the impetus OF
some towering talents.
Flaubert was soon to write
madame Bovary," a harbinger
of the new realism. The prolific
Hugo was making an enormous
success. Balzac was poking about
Paris gathering material for the
Human Comedy" Manet and
others were beginning to paint in q
style that later was called impress
sionism. In music. Chopin's febrile
genius was Pickering out, and Ber-
lioz was smashing the classical
forms and recasting them In new
idoms.
1t was the era when Bohemia was
o separate city. The Latin quarter
swarmed with students, poets, paint
ersAsome trying earnestly to pro-
duce. others hopeless hacks or po-
seurs too lazy to work for a living
Murger, who lived in that period,
immortalized the attic artists IN La
Vie de Boheme," which lives for us
In Puccini's operate setting.
Probably the strangest literary
figure of the day was Charles Bau-
deloire He wandered about with
Bohemians and went to their par
ties, but he was not quite OF them,
He was too nearly what then was
called a dandy. Though he was
desperately poor throughout his
brief career, he liked clean linen
and decent food too well to live IN
the dishevelled squalor they af-
fected. He usually managed,
through one expedient or another
to look like gentleman. He worked
when he felt like it. He must nave
seemed to many a dilettante. His
best friends. all able men, knew his
gifts. But even they hardly guessed
that later generations would call
him one Of Frances greatest poets.
Logical Patterns.
Mr. White has written an absorb
ing novel around the thwarted life
of Baudelaire. A biographical novel
necessarily is a set of free variations
on a theme, but the author seems
to have stuck closely to the known
facts about the poet, enlarging and
embellishing in logical patterns.
The story opens in 1842, when
Baudelaire was 81. He was coming
into what at that time was regarded
as a modest fortune, left him by his
father. His mother, for whom he
held a too-slavish devotion, had re-
married, and Charles hated his
stepfather, Gen. Aupick, afterward
q leading diplomat and finally a
senator. The general wanted Charles
to 20 into some business or pro-
fession, but the boy long had plan
ned to live his own life and write.
So he left home the day he got his
patrimony and furnished an apart
ment. He soon took up with Jeanne,
the mulatto girl from the West
Indies, who was destined to be a
part of his life almost to the end.
He was attracted to the girls tiger
ish beauty. Later women Of culture
and intelligence Jeanne had
neither-allured him. Yet Baude-
laire's entire feeling for women was
artistic and companionable for he
was almost completely without SEN
sual fervor.
Parental Restraint.
The poet also was entirely i'm
practical. He lived in a luxury be-
yond his means, and soon made
deep inroads into his capital. The
primitive Jeanne, dissatisfied with
their platonic relationship, was un-
faithful on many occasions, and
Baudelaire knew it, but he kept her
as he might have held an objet
dart. outfitting her lavishly. His
mother and stepfather, alarmed at
reports of the debts he was running
up. got a court order naming a
lawyer as guardian-such things
could be done in that day-and after
that a meager sum, income on the
remaining principal, was doled out
monthly. This meant moving into
q cheap hotel room. 1t meant, IN
effect, years of struggle against
poverty and debtors prison, humil-
iating and often futile appeals to
his mother and to the lawyer for
extra money.
Baudelaire, meanwhile. was writ
ing, but he could not find a pub
Usher. Editors were afraid to print
his strange, exotic poems. His first
book, oddly enough, was transla-
ton of some tales by Poe, genius
of the macabre for whom Baude-
laire felt q kinship. To ease his
troubled mind, Baudelaire took to
alcohol. then opium. which, like
De Quincy, he wrote about in
"Artifcial Paradises." When, years
later his masterpiece, THE Flowers
of Evil" finally was published, stupid
authorities had him hailed into
court and fined for offending public
morality
Untimely Ending.
Mr.. White has wisely ended his
novel as Baudelaire left Paris for
Brussels. His health was failing,
but we've been spared the disinte-
grafton that set in at Brussels He
returned to Paris to die in his
middle 40s.
The Midnight Gardener" con-
tains not only a sympathetic por-
trait of Baudelaire, but an inter-
esting view of the times, introducing
some of the more arresting artistic
figures. If the central character
sometimes is battling. probably it's
not the novelists fault, but because
Baudelaire was like that. The talk
often is stilted, but perhaps people
so expressed themselves in that
epoch of rococo elegance and dis
ingenious discourse.