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The Royal College Street home of Rimbaud and Verlaine
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French say ‘save poets’ house’
Cultural attaché enters row over Rimbaud and Verlaine’s Camden home
THE home of two of France’s greatest poets is lying derelict and faces an uncertain future after plans to sell the site to a group of French writers fell through.
Number Eight, Royal College Street, was the home to Arthur R who fled Paris in 1873 when their love affair became public knowledge.
Now the French literary attaché to Britain Herve Furrage is calling on owners the Royal Veterinary College to safeguard the house’s future. It is currently on English Heritage’s at-risk register, and due to be sold at an auction in February.
Mr Furrage said the importance of the poets was similar to William Wordsworth or Samuel Taylor Coleridge – and the French government would support plans to use the site as a permanent memorial to their literary endeavours.
But now the building is due to be sold to the highest bidder and look set to be turned into private homes, with a guide price of around £500,000 each.
He said: “This is an important matter for people in France. Verlaine is seen as one of the main poets of the period, and Rimbaud has become a literary and cultural icon. His influence has continued on through the decades.”
He added that their Camden Town garret was crucial to their work. He said: “They wrote some of their best known pieces here. London was more influential to them than anywhere else, even Paris.
“Camden was a major influence – so this house is very important. We want to support any plans to mark their time there as much as we can.”
While in London, the pair wrote poetry that has become recognised as some of the most important in French literature.
Last year, a campaign by former Labour councillor Gerry Harrison to turn the Grade-II listed building into a cultural centre won the support of actor Simon Callow and writer Julian Barnes.
The home was due to be sold along with two neighbouring properties to an unnamed buyer, believed to be a group of French writers backed by a multi-millionaire interested in French literature. The new owner planned to rent out two of the three buildings and turn Rimbaud and Verlaine’s house into a literary centre.
But the New Journal has learned the buyer did not have funds available and was unable to meet the time frame needed by the College.
Actor Simon Callow said: “In a way, it would be wonderful to preserve the house in which they loved, wrote and fought in its present form: there is some kind of poetic rightness in the dilapidation of the façade, something true to the rackety destinies of the two writers.
But realistically speaking it needs to be restored. Perhaps it might become an archive or study centre, or at the very least a place in which the lives and work of the great poètes maudits are remembered and celebrated.”
English Heritage asked permission to put a Blue Plaque on the façade of the house – but the College refused, as they expected the building to be sold to new owners.
A College spokesman confirmed they had hoped to sell the properties to a group of unnamed French writers.
They accepted a bid in September, but legal paper work confirming they had the cash to buy it still had not been completed in December.
The spokesman said: “They are lying empty and getting in a worse state of repair. They are not suitable to be used for halls of residence for students so we are putting them up for auction.”
Mr Harrison said he hoped plans for a literary centre would be resurrected.
He said: “It would make a great venue for a cultural centre and we hope some one will step forward and raise the money to both safeguard its future and celebrate the poets’ time in London.”
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