Rimbaud and Verlaine’s London home should have its blue plaque now
|
Version 0 of 1. With the announcement that the homes of Oscar Wilde, Benjamin Britten and Anne Lister are to be relisted by Historic England (Report, 23 September), one hopes that the house where the French symbolist poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud lodged in Royal College Street, Camden Town, north London, for some months in 1873 will not be forgotten. It was here that Rimbaud wrote his most iconoclastic verse and where the tempestuous relationship between these two men who rented a room from a Mrs Smith famously ended with a slap across the face with a fish bought in Camden market, a dash across the Channel and a gunshot in Brussels. In danger of being demolished, this building was spot-listed by English Heritage and Camden council, and in particular by an astute council planning and conservation officer, Ruth Bloom. In the 1990s the professor, critic and poet Philip Hobsbaum made efforts, brave at the time, to have the house nominated as worthy of a blue plaque. In 2004 this was agreed, in no small measure due to the lobbying of the English Heritage committee by Stephen Fry and David Starkey. As the result of an excellent campaign, supported by figures such as Julian Barnes, Lisa Appignanesi, Christopher Hampton and Simon Callow, the building was generously acquired by a private individual in the name of the Rimbaud & Verlaine Foundation, a charity. When sufficient funds are raised, it will become a “poetry house”, seeking to promote Anglo-French cultural exchange with residencies, events and educational programmes. It is hoped that, following the many efforts to save the building, it will belong to the same Pride of Place project as the homes of other notable LGBTQ residents, and that its deserved and agreed blue plaque will finally be installed.Gerry HarrisonKilmaley, County Clare, Ireland • Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com |