The Decadent Cookbook by Jerome Fletcher Alex Martin Medlar Lucan Durian Gray Page A

that he was Sir George’s chef and comprised the entire staff, being the only one who was prepared to still tolerate the old roué’s behaviour. He showed me through the house and into a study. On entering the room, the first thing I noticed was the sickly sweet smell of flowers which hung heavy on the air. Next to the fireplace, on an elegant daybed lay the enormously corpulent old gentleman. Debauchery had exacted its toll. His body was bloated, his cheeks and eyes blood-shot, and his voice was reduced to a gruff, throaty whisper.
    We engaged in conversation for some time. It ranged over several topics, but there was one to which Sir George returned again and again - corruption. I knew that the putrid, the rotten, the diseased, the moribund, the decayed, the cankered, the mouldering had always held a certain fascination for him. Now in his dotage, he had became quite morbidly enthusiastic about this subject. At one point in our conversation he held toward me a copy of the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and asked me to read one of his best-loved poems, entitled Une Charogne .

    Rappelez-vous I’objet que nous vîmes, mon âme,
    Ce beau matin d’été si doux:
    Au détour d’un sentier une charogne infame
    Sur un lit semé de cailloux,

    Les jambes en l’air, comme une femme lubrique,
    Brûlante et suant les poisons ,
    Ouvrait d’une façon nonchalante et cynique
    Son ventre plein d’exhalaisons .

    Le soleil rayonnait sur cette pourriture ,
    Comme afin de la cuire à point ,
    Et de rendre au centuple à la grande Nature
    Tout ce qu’ensemble elle avait joint ;

    Et le ciel regardait la carcasse superbe
    Comme une fleur s’épanouir .
    La puanteur était si forte, que sur l’herbe
    Vous crûtes vous évanouir.

    Les mouches bourdonnaient sur ce ventre putride
    D’où sortaient de noirs bataillons
    De larves, qui coulaient comme un épais liquide
    Le long de ces vivants haillons.

    (Do you remember, my love, the object we saw on that wonderful, calm summer morning. Just off the path lay a vile corpse on a bed of pebbles. It had its legs in the air like a slut. It was smouldering and sweating out poisons. Its fume-filled belly was opened up in a brazen, shameless manner. The sun beat down on this rotting meat, as if to cook it just right, and to give back to great Nature a hundredfold what she had joined together. The sky looked down on this proud carcass which was opening out like a flower. The stench was so strong that you thought you were going to faint. The flies buzzed around its putrid guts from which streamed battalions of black larvae, like thick liquid pouring over these living rags.)

    The poem continues in this vein until the end where it becomes a sort of Memento mori. The poet reminds his love that she too will one day be in this state.

    - Et pourtant vous serez semblable à cette ordure,
    A cette horrible infection,
    Etoile de mes yeux, soleil de ma nature,
    Vous, mon ange et ma passion.
    Oui! telle vous serez, ô la reine des grâces,
    Après les derniers sacrements,
    Quand vous irez, sous I’herbe et les floraisons grasses
    Moisir parmi les ossements.

    Alors, ô ma beauté! dites à la vermine
    Qui vous mangera de baisers,
    Que j’ai gardé la forme et l’essence divine
    De mes amours décomposés!

    (And yet, you, Star of my Eyes, Sun of my Nature, my Angel and my Passion, you will come to resemble this obscenity, this horrible infection. Yes, this is how you will end up, O Queen of the Graces, after the last rites, when you will lie under the grass and the thickly-growing flowers, mouldering among the bones. So, my Beauty, tell the worms as they eat you with their kisses, that I have retained the form and divine essence of our decomposed love.)

    I must admit I found the subject matter rather disturbing, but Sir George was obviously delighted with the reading. He sank back in his pillows with a sigh of almost voluptuous contentment. Then he suggested that I might like to stay for a little lunch.