Baldwin, James. Les élus du Seigneur. Paris: La Table Ronde, 1957. First French edition. 262 p; 20.5 cm. Crease to front cover; otherwise a very good copy in illustrated wrappers. Housed in a custom clamshell case.

Inscribed by the author to Jean Berdin, "Je voudrais bien aprofondir cette histoire de note d'hotel un de ces jours! Amicalement, Jimmy B."

Having moved to France in 1948, James Baldwin wrote most of his works in exile, beginning with his autobiographical first novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953), a powerful portrait of adolescence set against a deep historical backdrop of family, religion, and racial violence. While not as explicit in its treatment of homosexuality as Giovanni's Room (1956), set in part in the gay bars of Paris, Go Tell it on the Mountain does address the protagonist's confusion over his emerging sexual identity. This translation of Baldwin's novel, rendered by Maud Vidal and Henri Hell, represents his introduction to French readers. It made an immediate splash.

Jazz clubs were as important as gay bars to Baldwin's life as an expatriate. Baldwin probably met Jean Berdin (1929-2011) through the writer and jazz musician Boris Vian. Berdin was a jazz drummer known to aficionados as Berdindin (a reference to the sound of sticks rapping a snare drum). He was a musical partner of Vian and a close friend of Billy Strayhorn, whom he hosted when the latter was in Paris. Charlie Parker also visited him, and when he died in March 1955, Berdin wrote a lyrical obituary: "The Bird has fallen, thundering, from the summit he had attained, and never more will his wings open for a new flight."

Berdin was also gay. A lighthearted biographical sketch by Vian (where he calls himself "a scurrilous and obscure individual") refers to Berdin's "secret vice" and "sensational neckties," and this may have been a coded reference to his sexuality. A more overt joke may be found in Vian's short story, “Surprise-partie chez Léobille” (1965): determined to sabotage a party, a violent thug tries to force a young man named Berdindin to have sex with a woman at the gathering. When Berdindin refuses, the thug whips off his pants. "No!" Berdindin screams. "I don't want to! .... Anything, but not that ... Not a woman!" The thug turns to another man and tells him to get undressed "and take care of the guy. I'll take care of the woman."

Although Berdin is not mentioned in any biography of Baldwin, the inscription is suggestive of a sexual encounter. Baldwin was comfortable conversing in French (see this video of Baldwin being interviewed on Les élus du Seigneur), though his command of the language was not perfect. The word "aprofondir" (to deepen) is not used idiomatically here, and Baldwin appears to be intentionally vague in what was likely intended as a veiled reference to a private intimacy. Translated back to English, the inscription reads: "To Mr. Jean Berdin, I would very much like to deepen the chronicle of [our?] hotel bill someday."

Most of Baldwin's archived correspondence is under seal, so we will need to wait to see if there is further evidence of his relationship with Berdin. Could the White Frenchman have been one of the inspirations for the character of Rufus Scott, the bisexual jazz drummer at the center of Another Country (1961)? 

Even if Berdin and Baldwin enjoyed a romantic liaison, the drummer's absence from the historical record of the writer's life suggests that the relationship was not a lasting one. But this seems to have been par for the course in the Bohemian demimonde.  Complaining to Nat Hentoff of his endless "one nighters" Baldwin sighed, "I'm like a jazz musician."

Selected References

• Berdin, Jean. "Bird of Paradise," in: Jazz Magazine, no. 5 (Avril 1955), pp. 17, 20.
• Bobia, Rosa. The Critical reception of James Baldwin in France (New York: Peter Lang, 1997)
• Braggs, Rashida K. "Boris Vian and James Baldwin in Paris." in Jazz diasporas: race, music, and migration in post-World War II Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016) 125–156.
• Campbell, James. Talking at the gates: a life of James Baldwin (New York: Viking, 1991)
• -----. Exiled in Paris: Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett, and Others on the Left Bank (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)
  
• Hajdu, David. Lush life: a biography of Billy Strayhorn (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996)
• Vian, Boris. "Jean Berdin," Jazz-Hot, No. 31 (March 1949), in Vian, Ecrits sur le jazz (Paris: Livre de Poche, 2012)
• -----.  “Surprise-partie chez Léobille." La Revue de Poche no. 4 (June 1965). Translated by Peter Hodges as "Léobille's Party," in Alistair Rolls, ed., If I say if: the poems and short stories of Boris Vian (University of Adelaide Press, 2014), pp. 123-32.