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New Notes on C.A. Bristed, Poe, and Baudelaire

Did Bristed know Poe as a conversationalist, as implied in Asselineau’s commentary about the visit to the unknown American early in the 1850’s? If indeed the two had met in pub-lishing circles or if Poe was able to have a few moments of “pri-vate conversation” with the wealthy New Yorker, Bristed would have had a basis for making the judgment reported by Asselineau. We do know that Bristed wrote about the art of conversation. In an 1850 essay for the Literary World on “New York Society and the Writers Thereon,” he comments on the “increasing sybaritism” of American society. This may be a sign of materiał progress, but it is “decidedly antagonistic” to “real cultivation” and “increases the difficulty of bringing intellect into its proper place.” Bristed distinguishes between civilization and cultivation, indicating that an extemal form of Parisian civilization had been imported to New York, but not true cultivation of intellect. He then continues, “There is indeed one species of intellectual display for which there is much room in fashionable society, as in the most purely literary circles, and which is congenial to the former as to the latter - we mean corwersational talent ”ⁿ

Bristed and Baudelaire

Bristed, then, is a strong candidate as the recipient of a visit ffom Baudelaire and Asselineau. By an analysis of the essays reprinted by Bristed in his 1858-1859 volume, Pieces of a Broken-Down Critic, James Patty has been able to establish that Bristed was present in Paris ffom the early 1850’s through 1855. (Bristed published an account of the coup d’etat of 1851, for example.) Additional evidence indicates that he was regularly in Paris into the 1860’s. A diary, located at Yale University, places

¹¹ “New York Society and the Writers Thereon,” Pieces, I, 245.

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