Baudelaire and Catherine Crowe

Abstract

BAUDELAIRE AND CATHERINE CROWE In the opening chapter of Les Paradis Artificiels, after likening moments of clear-seeing, of ecstasy to ' une veritable grace?un miroir magique oil l'homme est invite a se voir en beau, c'est k dire tel qu'il devrait et pourrait etre,' Baudelaire continues: 'De meme une certaine ecole spiritualiste , qui a ses reprSsentants en Angleterre et en Am&rique, considere les phenomenes surnaturels, tels que les apparitions de fantomes, les revenants , etc, comme des manifestations de la volont6 divine, attentive a reveiller dans I'esprit de l'homme le souvenir des realit^s invisibles.' It is, perhaps, doubtful whether Baudelaire had read any of the American representatives of this spiritualism1. But with the work of one English exponent he was, on his own confession, familiar. In the passage from the Salon de 1859, which we shall discuss later, he mentions Mrs Crowe by name and quotes some lines from her most important book. Catherine Stevens was born about 1800?some notices give a precise date, 1803?at Borough Green in Kent. In 1822 she married LieutenantColonel Crowe and spent the greater part of her after-life in Edinburgh. It was there no doubt that she came in contact with the Scottish phrenologist , George Combe (1788-1858), the disciple of Spurzheim, author of the System of Phrenohgy (translated into French by J. Fossati, 1836) and The ConstitiUion of Man (1828). She eonfesses, in her Spiritualism and the Age we live in, that she was a disciple of 'that excellent and wise man, who saw further into truth, I believe, than most men that have 1 Edmonds and Dexter, Spiritualism, New York, 1853; Capron, Modern Spiritualism, Boston, 1855; Hare, ExperimentalInvestigationsoftheSpirit Manifestations,New York, 1856, ete. We may recall that the *Rochester Knockings' whichinaugurated the epoch ofmodern spiritualism were firstheard at Hydesville, U.S.A., towards the close of 1848. Victor Hennequin's Sauvons le genrehumain,whichseems to have prompted the spiritualisticcraze in France, was published in 1853. Among other English books of the period on topics akin to those of Mrs Crowe, some of which Baudelaire might conceivably have read, we may mention: Colquhoun, Isis Revelata, 1836; Esdaile, Mesmerism in India, 1842; Elliotson, The Zoist, 1842-56; Braid, Satanic Agency and Mesmerism^ 1842, Neurypnofogy,1843, Magic, Witchcraft, Animal Magnetism, etc.91852; Lee, Report on thePhenomena of Clairvoyance , 1843; Townsend, Facts in Mesmerism, 1844; Atwood, Early Magnetism, 1846, A SuggestiveInquiry intotheHermeticMystery,1850; Davis (The Poughkeepsie Seer), Nature's Divine Revelations,1847; Gregory,Letterson Animal Magnetism,1851. Of French works on these subjects apart from the books of Mesmer, de Puysegur and Deleuze, we may cite: Bertrand, Du Magn4iisme Animal en France, 1828; Gautier, Introductionau Magnitisme, 1840, Histoire du Somnambulisme, 1842; the books of du Potet, particularly La Magie DtvoiUe, 1852; the works of Briere de Boismont, particularly HaUucinations ou Histoire Raisonnee des Apparitions, ete.,1845;JRicard, Traite* Theorique etPhysique du Magn&isme, 1841. The work of Eliphas Levi dates only from 1855. Among other instances in Baude? laire's work the specificreferenceto Briere de Boismont in Fusees, xiv, is indicative of his interestin these topics. [171] G. T. CLAPTON 287 lived upon this earth.' Mrs Crowe wrote two tragedies, Aristodemus (1838) and The Cruel Kindness (1853), which do not appear to have been success? ful, several novels, Susan Hopley (1841), Lilly Daivson (1847), The Adventures of a Beauty, Light and Darkness (a volume of contes fantastiques, 1852), Linny Lockwood (1854), and a number of tales contributed to periodicals. Her novels, in the opinion of Richard Garnett, were by no means devoid of merit. ' They are a curious and not uhpleasing mixture of imagination and matter of fact. The ingenuity of the plot and the romantic nature of the incidents contrast forcibly with the prosaic character of the personages and the impassioned homeliness of the diction. Curiosity and sympathy are deeply excited and much skill is shown in maintaining the interest to the last.' It is to be suspected that, in the ascription to her?by the writers of some biographical notices of a ' morbid and despondent turn of mind,' there lurks merely a personal prejudice against some of her activities. But of the other characteristic attributed to her, the...