Front cover of The Painter of Modern Life and Other Stories by Charles Baudelaire (1964), published by Phaidon Press. The title essay first appeared in the Figaro in instalments on 26 and 28 November and 3 December 1863. It had been written between November 1859 and February 1860 and promised, or offered, to several other periodicals in the meantime (from Bibliographical Notes in this edition).
Field Notes
I'd come across flâneurs long ago: detached watchers of society, especially the cities growing fat with societal changes from land-based agricultural work to an industrial modern life caused, in England, by successive legislation - The Enclosure Acts, The Corn Laws and Poor Laws - the mechanisation of farm work and the growing demand for labour in the factories and mills. I hadn't really understood but they called to me and then, at the end of last year, they came back for me.
Monday 20th October 2025
Yesterday I slept the sleep of recovery. Long, hot, exhausted, heavy lids, heavy limbs, the dull ache left from manipulation - so gentle, so demanding in the aftermath.
It rains intermittently, heavy showers shoved by gusts of wind. There was a person on the track on Sunday, on the line between Wye and Minster. At half past two on a chilly Sunday afternoon, someone walked off the platform in front of a train. We knew when the 15:07 was cancelled and then the 15:46 and the 16:07. A major incident was all that was said at first, and then piece by piece, the story came.
It was cold and blustery on that bare transit stop designed to bring prosperity to this forgotten toe of England. Shelters built at regimented intervals, no toilets, no warm muggy café with steamed up windows and bright lights, the whole place black and grey, a modern monolith striding across roads, rivers, fields.
I had been on my way to supper at The Ivy and then to a performance of Medieval music in the Cathedral. Already a test of endurance, sad and shocked ...
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... at the loss of life, I went home. I didn't sleep that day, made supper, ate well, watched vaguely lovable characters solve crimes and make a nuisance of themselves.
Weighed down, I ticked off the minutiae, sidings cleaned, flu jab received, a visit, six months late, to the osteopath. Unpacking in the morning, folding away the summer clothes, hiding the suitcases beneath the bed.
Such a relief to finally get here after months of waiting to be well enough. Everywhere clean, ordered, inviting, pots and pains waiting to be used, the hand painted cup and saucer waiting for the coffee, the soft bed waiting for my bones.
The flânerie thread continues, the amazing library opening its stores like the libraries of my youth: filled with wonder, sitting for hours at the long reading desks in the closed room of the Reference Library: books to read but not borrow.
I might have the origin story: The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays by Charles Baudelaire. The history of the book is almost as interesting as its contents. Published in 1964 in London SW7 - South Kensington, north ...
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... of the Fulham Road, up to Kensington Gore and the boundary with Hyde Park. Rubbing shoulders with the Albert Hall, Imperial College, the great museums. It cost 34 shillings and has been continually issued since 2 March 1965.
Inside, the Editor's Note sets out its lineage: "All footnotes ... included between an asterisk and the initial 'C.B.' are Baudelaire's own". It sends a frisson through me.
Opposite the title page a coloured plate has been pasted in after the book was printed. In the front, the label of the County Library, under the auspices of the Kent Education Committee. Now, along with History and Heritage, under the governance of Leisure and Community. Is that right that stripping of Education?
In the back, the old pocket for holding the borrowing card. Watching nimble fingers riffle through the rows of borrowing cards, so dexterous, such speed and agility, made me want to be a librarian.
The light is coming outside, still dark when I started writing, another eight minutes to sunrise for this part of south England. The place warm and cosy, breakfast awaits. Another day starts.
Field Notes
I was delighted to find The Modern Painter, Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project and The situationists and the city, a collection of the Situationist International's key essays on urbanism and the city, all available to borrow from my local library. Not an academic library behind a pay wall, but available free to anyone with a library card.
References
The Modern Painter and Other Essays (1964), Charles Baudelaire, Phaidon Press, London.
The Arcades Project (2002), Walter Benjamin, Harvard University Press, London.
The situationists and the city (2009), Tom McDonough (ed), Verso, London.
Previous Posts in This Series
On Pens, Diaries, Mrs Dalloway and Oliver Cromwell - Friday 10 October 2025
On Rain before the Code - Friday 3 October 2025
On Transitions - Friday 26 September 2025
On Bringing New Audiences - Saturday 20 September 2025
On Liminal Spaces - Saturday 13 September 2025