continued, ought to be a constitutional monarchy, with an hereditary Royal Family, a House of Lords extraordinarily powerful and representing property, etc., with all possible guarantees of heredity and privilege; then she should have a second, elective assembly to represent every interest of the intermediary mass separating high social positions from what was called the people. The bulk of the laws and their spirit should tend to enlighten the people as much as possible–the people that had nothing–workmen, proletaries, etc.–so as to bring the greatest number of men to that condition of well-being which distinguished the intermediary mass; but the people should be left under the most puissant yoke, in such a way that the individual units might find light, aid, and protection, and that no idea, no form, no transaction might render them turbulent. The richer classes must enjoy the widest liberty practicable, since they had a stake in the country. To the Government he wished the utmost force possible, its interests being the same as those of the rich and the bourgeois, viz. to render the lowest class happy and to aggrandize the middle class, in which resided the veritable puissance of States. If rich people and the hereditary fortunes of the Upper Chamber, corrupted by their manners and customs, engendered certain abuses, these were inseparable from all society, and must be accepted with the advantages they yielded.
This conception of the classes and the masses which he afterwards set forth more fully in his /Country Doctor/ and /Village Cure/, partly explains why all his best work, besides being impregnated with fatalism, has such a constant outlook on the past. It was a dogma with him rather than a philosophy, and was clung to more from taste than from reasonable conviction. He believed in aristocratic prerogative, because he believed in himself, and ranked himself as high as, or rather higher than, the noble. This was at the bottom of his doctrine; but he was glad all the same to have his claim supported by such outward signs of the inward grace as were afforded by vague genealogy and the homage of the great. Duchesses were his predilection when they were forthcoming; failing them, countesses were esteemed.
The Duchess d’Abrantes–one of his early admirers–to whom he dedicated his /Forsaken Woman/, was herself a colleague in letters; and he was able to render her some service through his relations with publishers. Their correspondence shows them to have been on very friendly terms. In one of his letters to her, he insisted on his inability to submit to any yoke, and rebutted her insinuation that he permitted himself to be led–possibly the Duchess’s hint referred to Madame de Berny. “My character,” he said, “is the most singular one I have ever come across. I study myself as I might another person. I comprise in my five feet two every incoherence, every contrast possible; and those who think me vain, prodigal, headstrong, frivolous, inconsistent, foppish, careless, idle, unstable, giddy, wavering, talkative, tactless, ill-bred, impolite, crotchety, humoursome, will be just as right as those who might affirm me to be thrifty, modest, plucky, tenacious, energetic, hardworking, constant, taciturn, cute, polite, merry. Nothing astonishes me more than myself. I am inclined to conclude I am the plaything of circumstances. Does this kaleidoscope result from the fact that, into the soul of those who claim to paint all the affections and the human heart, chance casts each and every of these same affections in order that by the strength of their imagination they may feel what they depict? And can it be that observation is only a sort of memory proper to aid this mobile imagination? I begin to be of this opinion.”
Balzac appears to have been introduced to the Duchess d’Abrantes about the year 1830, when he was engaged in writing his /Shagreen Skin/, which, out of the numerous pieces of fiction produced within this and the next twelve months, added most to his notoriety, though inferior to such stories as the /House of the Tennis-playing Cat/, and even to the /Sceaux Ball/ in the more proper qualities of the novel.
The /Shagreen Skin/ is the adventure of a young man who, after sowing his wild oats and losing his last crown at the gaming table, goes to end his troubles in the river, but is prevented from carrying out his intention by being fortuitously presented with a piece of shagreen skin, which has the marvellous property of gratifying its possessor’s every wish, yet, meanwhile, shrinks with each gratification, and in the same proportion curtails its possessor’s life. On this warp of fairy tale, the author weaves a woof of romance and reality most oddly blended. The imitations of predecessors are numerous. The style is turgid, the thought is shallow, the sentiment is exaggerated. But very little of the sober characterization soon to be manifested in other books is displayed in this one. The best that can be said is that the thing has the same cleverness as the /Physiology/, with here and there indications–and clear ones–of the novelist’s later power. He himself grossly overestimated it, as, indeed, he overestimated not a few of his poorer productions–maybe because they cost him greater toil than his masterpieces, which generally, after long, unconscious gestation, issued rapidly and painless from him.
An amusing expression of this self-praise has come down to us in the puff he composed on the occasion of a reprint of the /Shagreen Skin/ by Gosselin in 1832. “The /Philosophic Tales/ of Monsieur de Balzac,” it announced, “have appeared this week. The /Shagreen Skin/ is judged as the admirable novels of Anne Radcliffe were judged. Such things escape annalists and commentators. The eager reader lays hold of these books. They bring sleeplessness into the mansions of the rich and into the garret of the poet; they animate the village. In winter they give a livelier reflection to the sparkling log, great privileges to the story-teller. It is nature, in sooth, who creates story-tellers. Vainly are you a learned, grave writer, if you have not been born a story-teller, and you will never obtain the popularity of the /Mysteries of Udolpho/ and the /Shagreen Skin/, the /Arabian Nights/, and Monsieur de Balzac. I have somewhere read that God created Adam, the nomenclator, saying to him: You are the story-teller. And what a story-teller! What verve and wit! What indefatigable perseverance in painting everything, daring everything, branding everything! How the world is dissected by this man! What an annalist! What passion and what coolness!
“The /Philosophic Tales/ are the red-hot interpretation of a civilization ruined by debauch and well-being, which Monsieur de Balzac exposes in the pillory. The /Arabian Nights/ are the complete history of the luxurious East in its days of happiness and perfumed dreams. /Candide/ is the epitome of an epoch in which there were bastilles, a stag-park, and an absolute king. By thus taking at the first bound a place beside these formidable or graceful tale-tellers, Monsieur de Balzac proves one thing that remained to be proved; to wit, that the drama, which was no longer possible to-day on the stage, was still possible in the story–that our society, so dangerously sceptical, /blase/, and scornful, could yet be moved by the galvanic shocks of this poetry of the senses–full of life and colour, in flesh and blood, drunk with wine and lust–in which Monsieur de Balzac revels with such delight. Thus, the surprise was great, when, thanks to this story-teller, we still found among us something resembling poetry–feasts, intoxication, the light o’ love giving her caresses amidst an orgie, the brimming punch-bowl crowned with blue flames, the yellow-gloved politician, scented adultery, the girl indulging in pleasure and love and dreaming aloud, poverty clean and neat, surrounded with respectability and happy hazard–we have seen all this in Balzac. The Opera with its lemans, the pink boudoir and its flossy hangings, the feast and its surfeits; we have even seen Moliere’s doctor reappear, such need has this man of sarcasm and grotesqueness. The further you advance in the /Shagreen Skin/–vices, lost virtues, poverties, boredom, deep silence, dry-as-dust science, angular, witless scepticism, laughable egotism, puerile vanities, venal loves, Jewish second-hand dealers, etc.–the more astonished and pained you will be to recognize that the nineteenth century in which you live is so made up. The /Shagreen Skin/ is /Candide/ with Beranger’s notes; it is poverty, luxury, faith, mockery; it is the heartless breast, the brainless cranium of the nineteenth century–the century so bedizened and scented, so revolutionary, so ill-read, so little worth, the century of brilliant phantasmagorias, of which in fifty years’ time nothing will be seizable except Monsieur de Balzac’s /Shagreen Skin/.”
On account of its sensationalism, the /Shagreen Skin/ had a success of curiosity equal, and, if anything, superior to that of the /Physiology/. The author, however, had to defend himself against the charge of copying foreign literature–Hoffman’s tales in particular. One of his correspondents, the Duchess de Castries, who subsequently flattered him and flirted with him, wrote to him incognito, taking exception to certain statements he had made in each of his two popular works. Replying to her, he for the first time spoke of his desire to develop his fiction into a vast series of volumes destined to make known to posterity the life of his century.
Great schemes were always to be Balzac’s day-dreaming, one chasing the other in his fancy. They filled his thoughts, and in his heart were his constant aim, far more than to be loved, for all he asserted of this last desire. If literature was the one means he resorted to in his efforts to attain them, this was because every other means deceived his expectation, and not because he deliberately preferred it to all others. He owned the fact without reservation. In the case of a man whose literary achievement was so high, such slighting of letters has its significance, and is curious. Taken in conjunction with other evidence furnished by his letters, it proves that genius, though sometimes clearly the pure, simple moving of a spirit that cannot be resisted, is also–and perhaps as often–a calculating partnership, and that the work of art is a compromise. Would Balzac have written better if his motive had been single? It is not certain.
During these early days of his popularity, a seat in the Chamber of Deputies was his will o’ the wisp. Aided by the /Dilecta’s/ friends, he offered himself as a candidate in two constituencies, Angouleme and Cambrai, after publishing his pamphlet: /An Inquiry into the Policy of Two Ministries/. With a view to shining in the future Parliament, he sharpened his witticisms, rounded his periods, polished his style, exercised himself in opposing short phrases to others of Ciceronian length, endeavouring the while to put poetry and observation into a new subject. At least these things were in his mind, as his communication to Berthoud of the Cambrai /Gazette/ testified. His intention was to become an orator, he said. Had he been elected, he might have become the rival of Thiers. They were about the same age. Then France might have had two “little bourgeois” instead of one, unless one of the two had knocked the other out. But whether conquering or conquered, Balzac the politician would have swallowed up Balzac the novelist, and /Eugenie Grandet/ would never have been written. Why he failed at the polls is not clear. Probably he did not possess enough suppleness to please his party. To tell the truth, we do not learn definitely to which party he belonged. He was quite capable of constituting one by himself.
These preoccupations hindered him somewhat in carrying out his engagements with publishers and editors, so that he did not always get the money he counted on. Yet he worked hard. His habit, at this time, was to go to bed at six in the evening and sleep till twelve, and after, to rise and write for nearly twelve hours at a stretch, imbibing coffee as a stimulant through these spells of composition. What recreation he took in Paris was at the theatre or at the houses of his noble acquaintances, where he went to gossip of an afternoon. It was exhausting to lead such an existence; and even the transient fillips given by the coffee were paid for in attacks of indigestion and in abscesses which threw him into fits of discouragement. When suffering from these, he poured out his soul to his sister or Madame Carraud, complaining in his epistles that his destiny compelled him to run after fame and deprived him of his chance to meet with the ideal woman. Madame de Berny, with all her devotion, did not satisfy him now. “Despairing of ever being loved and understood by the woman of my dreams,” he tragically cried, “having met with her only in my heart, I am plunging again into the tempestuous sphere of political passions and the stormy, withering atmosphere of literary glory.” But the “she” of his dreams, he added, must be wealthy. He could not conceive of marriage and love in a cottage. It must be admitted that from his sources of affection as from his sources of ambition there was a gush which was rather muddy.
Altogether, the year of 1832 was an irritating one for Balzac. A rich match he had hoped to make fell through. A second attempt of his to enter the Chamber of Deputies ended in defeat. His books, after their first season or two of favour, were selling but poorly in France, although pirated editions were issued and had a large circulation abroad. Impatiently he meditated plans for doubling and tripling his revenue. He would emigrate–he would recommence publishing–he would turn playwright. Amid these three solicitations he moved in a circle without reaching a conclusion. And fortune, while he was hesitating, did not come to his door. In default of her visit, not all the flattering epistles he received from ladies in Russia and Germany– three and four a day, he asserted–were an adequate compensation. A journey undertaken for the benefit of his health to Sache, Angouleme, and Aix forced him to borrow from his mother again, instead of paying back the capital he owed her. His unfinished manuscripts he had taken with him, but he found it difficult to get on with them: “I was going to start work this morning with courage,” he wrote to her, “when your letter came to upset me completely. Do you think it possible for me to have artistic thoughts when I see all at once the tableau of my miseries displayed before me as you display them? Do you think I should toil thus, if I did not feel it?”
The novelist’s relations with his mother force the attention of any one that studies his life. Their two natures were contrary; there were often conflicts between them. As a child, he seems not to have comprehended the affection underlying the maternal severity, and to have entertained a dread of the latter which never entirely left him. According to his friend Fessart, he used to confess he always experienced a nervous trembling whenever he heard his mother speak; and the effect was in some sort the numbing of his faculties when he was in her presence. Her generous abnegation at the time of his bankruptcy was a revelation to him; his gratitude for it was sincere; and from that date onwards, during a number of years, his letters to her evinced it, yet not consistently; the old distrust recurs, and also a growing tendency to utilize her as a servant in his concerns. Having once dipped in her purse, he did not hesitate to hold out his hand, on each occasion that his needs, real or fancied, prompted him, being confident of requiting her in the future. His refrain was ever the same: “Sooner or later, politics, journalism, a marriage, or a big piece of business luck will make me a Croesus. We must suffer a little longer.” And he finished by exhausting her last penny of capital, and reduced her to depend on an allowance he gave her, irregularly–an allowance which, when he died, had to be continued to her from the purse of another. Madame Balzac was sacrificed to his improvidence and stupendous egotism; nor can the tenderness of his language–more frequently than not called forth by some fresh immolation of her comfort to his interests–disguise this unpleasing side of his character and action. While he was recouping his strength and spirits, on the 1832 holiday, she was in Paris negotiating with Pichot of the /Revue de Paris/, with Gosselin and other publishers, arranging for proofs, and also for an advance of cash. Even his epistolary good-byes were odd mixtures of business with sentiment. After casting himself– through the post–on her bosom and embracing her with effusion, he terminated by: “Pay everything as you say. On my side, I will gain money by force, and we will balance the expenses by the receipts.”
The book that cost him the greatest efforts during the year of 1832 was his /Louis Lambert/, already mentioned in the second chapter. Writing about it to his family from Angouleme he explained that he was attempting in it to vie with Goethe and Byron, with /Faust/ and /Manfred/. It was to be a conclusive reply to his enemies, and would make his superiority manifest. Some day or other it would lead science into new paths. Meantime it would produce a deep impression and astonish the Swedenborgians. Whether the members of this sect were astonished, history does not record. Those who were most so were the novelist’s friends, and Madame de Berny among the number. But their wonder was not a eulogium. First of all, the hero–his /alter ego/–is a very poor replica of Pascal; and the exalting of Lambert’s intelligence, which was mere self-praise, jarred on them the more, as they truly loved him. The /Dilecta/, whom he had asked to pass her frank opinion on it, did not hesitate to tell him some hard truths: “Goethe and Byron,” she said, “have admirably painted the desires of a superior mind; when reading them, one aggrandizes them by all the space they have perceived; one admires the scope of their view; one would fain give them one’s soul to help theirs to cover the distance that separates them from the goal they aspire to reach. But, if an author comes and tells me he has attained this goal, I no longer see in him, however great he may be, more than a presumptuous man; his vanity shocks me, and I diminish him by all the height to which he has tried to raise himself. . . . I would therefore beg you, dearest, to cut out of your /Lambert/ everything that might suggest these singular ideas; for instance: ‘The admirable combat of thought arrived at its greatest force, at its vastest expression’ . . . ‘The moral world, whose limits he had thrown back for himself,’ cannot be tolerated. Write, dearest, in such a manner that the whole crowd may perceive you from everywhere, by the height at which you will have placed yourself; but do not cry out for people to admire you; for, on all sides, the largest magnifying-glasses would be directed towards you; and what becomes of the most delicious object seen by the microscope!”
The lesson was a severe one. Though it did not cure Balzac of his author’s vanity–nothing could cure him of that–it did, for a while at least, direct his endeavours towards fiction of a more objective kind.
What he was now capable of in characterization treated objectively he showed in his /Colonel Chabert/ and the /Cure of Tours/, both of which were published in the same twelvemonth as /Louis Lambert/. These stories are exceedingly simple in construction. The Cure is a priest whose joys and ambitions are modest and innocent. Having reached the age when indulgence in ease and comfort is excusable, he finds himself suddenly deprived of them through unwittingly offending his landlady. She, an old maid, as inwardly shrewish as outwardly pious, utilizes the Abbe Birotteau and another clergyman, who both lodge with her, to attract the good society folk of Tours to her evening receptions. After due experience of these gatherings, the Abbe plays truant, finding it more agreeable to spend his leisure with friends elsewhere. His absence causes the landlady’s guests to grow remiss and finally to desert her; so, to revenge herself, the slighted dame, proceeding by petty pin-pricks, makes the Abbe’s life a burden to him, and, ultimately enlisting the brother clergyman in her schemes of annoyance, works on his jealousy with such cleverness that their victim’s career is blasted and blighted. Dependent on the development of the characters, the plot is adroitly and naturally elaborated. Nowhere is there any forcing of the note; and, in alternate flow, humour and pathos, of a saner sort than in some of the author’s previous work, run and ripple throughout. With deeper pathos the novelist tells in /Colonel Chabert/ the virtues of a man of obscure origin, whose nobleness meets with but scanty recognition, since it conducts him to the almshouse in his old age. So vivid is the sober realism of this fine story that the public believed the relation to be plain, unvarnished facts, and were astonished at the writer’s daring to reveal them in all their detail.
Balzac’s autumn trip was prolonged as far as Annecy and Geneva. He had intended going on to Italy in company with the Duke de Fitz-James. The latter journey, however, was ultimately abandoned, as he did not succeed in raising the thousand crowns it required. Travelling on the top of a coach, he had rather a serious accident when going to Aix. He was climbing up to the front seat just as the horses set off, and, having missed his footing, fell with all his weight against the iron step. The strap, which he clutched in his fall, saved him from coming to the ground; but the impact of his eighty-four kilograms caused the sharp iron to enter the flesh of his leg pretty deeply. This wound took some time to heal, and the annoyance it cause him was aggravated by an additional malady in his stomach which he tried to deal with by consulting a mysterious quack in Paris, sending him through his mother, two pieces of flannel that he had been wearing next his skin. The doctor was to examine No. 1 flannel, and by it to determine the seat and the cause of the affection, as well as the treatment to be followed; then he was to examine No. 2, and to give certain instructions as to its further use. Balzac asked his mother to touch the flannels only with paper, so as not to interfere with their effluvia. This belief of his in magnetism of an occult kind was an inheritance. His mother, it has already been said, was a mystic. Her books of this doctrine comprised more than a hundred volumes of Saint- Martin, Swedenborg, Madame Guyon, Jacob Boehm, and others. All these writers he was familiar with. Throughout his life, the influence of their teaching and his mother’s firm belief remained with him. On his conduct and practice their effect was harmless; but in his literary work they were a disturbance, and, wherever they intruded, detracted from its quality.
Happily, he was beginning to be tempted more and more by the artistic side of things in his daily experience. Of the lesser novels composed before the end of 1832, several were directly inspired by incidents brought to his knowledge. The /Red Inn/ was related to him by a former army surgeon, a friend of the man that was unjustly condemned and executed. An /Episode under the Terror/ was narrated by the hero himself. /A Desert Attachment/ was the outcome of a conversation with Martin, the celebrated tamer of wild beasts. On the other hand, /Master Cornelius/ was written to correct the false impression of Louis XI. which he considered Walter Scott had given to his readers in /Quentin Durward/, this making him very angry. His curiosity concerning facts and realities of every description led him to seek an interview with Samson the executioner. Calling one day to see the Director of Prisons, he found himself in presence of a pale, melancholy-looking man of noble countenance, whose manners, language, and apparent education were those of one polished and cultured. It was Samson. Entering into conversation with this strange personage, the novelist listened to the particulars of his life. Samson was a royalist. On the morrow of Louis XVI.’s execution he had suffered the utmost remorse, and had paid for what was probably the only expiatory mass said on that day for the repose of the King’s soul.
Like other /litterateurs/, Balzac took up many subjects which he did not go on with. He had this peculiarity besides, that he often asserted some book to be completed which was either not begun at all or was in a most unfinished condition. While on the Angouleme and Aix excursion, he spoke especially of /The Three Cardinals/, /The Battle of Austerlitz/ (afterwards often alluded to simply as the /Battle/), and /The Marquis of Carrabas/. Not one of these was ever written. They were abandoned perhaps on account of other work, or else because the execution was less easy than the conception. Napoleon, who would have been a central figure in the /Battle/, is incidentally introduced in the /Country Doctor/, which was begun in 1832.
Probably, also, to this same date should be assigned the bizarre and even comical expression of hopes and fears for the future which Balzac confided to his sister Laure. In order to force himself to take exercise, he used to correct his proofs either at the printer’s or at her house. Sometimes the weather, to the influence of which he was very susceptible, sometimes his money-tightness, or his fatigue from protracted work would cause him to arrive with lack-lustre eyes, sallow complexion, glum expression and irritable temper. Laure essayed to console and brighten him.
“Now don’t try to comfort me,” he answered on one occasion. “I’m a dead man.”
And the dead man began to drawl out his tale of woe, gradually rousing up as he talked, and, at last, speaking excitedly. But the dolent accents returned as he opened his proofs and read them.
“I shall never make a name, sis.”
“Nonsense! with such books, any one could make a name.”
He raised his head; his features relaxed; the sombre tints vanished from his face.
“You are right, by Jove! . . . these books must live. . . . Besides, there is Chance. It can protect a Balzac as well as it can a fool. Indeed, one has only to invent this chance. Let some one of my millionaire friends (and I have a few), or a banker not knowing what to do with his money, come and say to me: ‘I am aware of your immense talent and your anxieties; you need such and such a sum to be free; accept it without scruple; you will pay it back some day or other; your pen is worth my millions!’ That’s all I require, my dear sister.”
Laure, being accustomed to the appearance of these illusions which brought back his cheerfulness, never exhibited any surprise at such soaring notes. Having created the fable, her imaginative brother continued:
“Those people spend such sums on whims. . . . A handsome deed is a whim, like any other, and gives joy perpetually. It is something to say: ‘I have saved a Balzac.’ Humanity has good impulses of the sort; and there are people who, without being English, are capable of like eccentricities. ‘Either a millionaire or a banker,’ he cried, thumping on his chest, ‘one of them I will have.'”
By dint of talking he had come to accredit the thing, and gleefully strode about the room, lifting and waving his arms.
“Ah! Balzac is free! You shall see, my dear friends, and my dear enemies, what his progress is.”
In fancy, he entered the Academy! From there it was only a step to the House of Peers. He beheld himself admitted thither. Why shouldn’t he be a member of the Upper Chamber? This and that person had been created a peer. Then he was appointed a minister. There was nothing extraordinary about it. Presidents existed. Were not people who had boxed the compass of ideas the fittest to govern their fellows? A programme, a policy was evolved and carried out; and, as everything was going on smoothly, he had time to think of the millionaire friend or banker who had assisted him. The generous Maecenas should be rewarded. He understood the novelist, had lent him money on the security of his talent, had enabled him to obtain his well-deserved honours. The benefactor should now have his share in the honour, a share in the immortality.
After a peregrination of this magnitude and dreams to match, he alighted from his Pegasus, and spoke as an ordinary mortal–he had enjoyed himself, and his fit of the dumps was exorcised. Putting the last touch to his proof-correcting, he left the house with his face wreathed in smiles.
“Good-bye,” he said to his sister, at the door; “I am off home to see if the banker is there, waiting for me. If he isn’t, I shall find some work to do all the same; and work is my real money-lender.”
CHAPTER V
LETTERS TO “THE STRANGER,” 1831, 1832
One has little doubt in deciding that, of the two spurs which goaded Balzac’s labours, his desire for wealth acted more persistently and energetically than his desire for glory. In his conversations, in his correspondence, money was the eternal theme; in his novels it is almost always the hinge on which the interest, whether of character, plot, or passion, depends. Money was his obsession, day and night; and, in his dormant visions, it must have loomed largely.
Henry Monnier, the caricaturist, used to relate that, meeting him once on the Boulevard, the novelist tapped him on the shoulder and said:
“I have a sublime idea. In a month I shall have gained five hundred thousand francs.”
“The deuce, you will,” replied Monnier; “let’s hear how.”
“Listen, then,” returned his interlocutor. “I will rent a shop on the Boulevard des Italiens. All Paris is bound to pass by. That’s so, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Well, what next?”
“Next, I will establish a store for colonial produce; and, over the window, I will have printed, in letters of gold: ‘Honore de Balzac, Grocer.’ This will create a scandal; everybody will want to see me serving the customers, with the classical counter-skipper’s smock on. I shall gain my five hundred thousand francs; it’s certain. Just follow my argument. Every day these many people pass along the Boulevard, and will not fail to enter the shop. Suppose that each person spends only a sou, since half of it will be profit to me I shall gain so much a day; consequently, so much a week; so much a month.”
And thereupon, the novelist, launched into transcendental calculations, soaring with his enthusiasm into the clouds.
It was the same Henry Monnier who, meeting him another time on the Place de la Bourse, and having had to listen to another of such mirific demonstrations about a scheme from which both were to derive millions, answered drily:
“Then lend me five francs on strength of the affair.”
Noticing this sort of monomania, in an article which he wrote in the short-lived /Diogenes/, during the month of August 1856, Amedee Roland said of Balzac:
“His ambition was to vie in luxury with Alexandre Dumas and Lamartine, who, before the Revolution of 1848, were the most prodigal and extravagant authors in the five continents. For anything like a chance of finding his elusive millions, he would have gone to China. Indeed, on one occasion, he took it into his head he would start, together with his friend, Laurent Jan, and go to see the great Mogul, maintaining that the latter would give him tons of gold in exchange for a ring he possessed, which came, so he asserted, right down from Mahomet. It was three o’clock in the morning when he knocked at Laurent Jan’s door to inform his sleeping friend of his project; and the latter had the greatest difficulty in dissuading him from setting off forthwith in a post-chaise for India, of course, at the expense of the monarch in question.”
In justice, however, to Balzac, it should be stated that not a few of his suggestions were sensible enough, and contained ideas which, if properly put into execution, could have yielded profitable results. As a matter of fact, some were subsequently exploited by people who listened to them, or heard of them. A scheme of his for making paper by an improved process, which he tried to realize in 1833, and which he induced his mother, his sister’s husband, and other friends to support with their capital, anticipated the employment of esparto grass and wood, which since has been adopted successfully by others and has yielded large fortunes to them. The scheme was perhaps premature in Balzac’s day, not to speak of his small business capacity, which was in an inverse ration to his inventiveness.
From one of his conceptions, at least, there issued an important benefit to the entire literary profession. Already, in the previous century, Beaumarchais had attempted to establish a society of authors, whose aim should be to protect the rights of men of letters. His efforts then met with no response. Balzac revived the proposal, and coupled with it others tending to improve the material and style of printing of books. He had to contend with the hostility of certain publishers and the indifference of many authors. But his endeavours were ultimately understood and appreciated; and, not long afterwards, in 1838, the Societe des Gens de Lettres was founded.
In connection with this campaign, which he waged for a while alone, there was also his elaboration of the arrangement, first accepted by Charpentier, which consisted in fixing the percentage of the author’s royalty on the octavo, three-franc-fifty volume at one-tenth of the published price. One of his discussions with Charpentier on the subject was overheard in the Café of the Palais Royal by Jules Sandeau’s cousin, who happened to be playing a game of billiards there. After the departure of Balzac and the publisher, the cousin remarked that a paper had been forgotten; and, on reading it through, with his partner in the game, saw a crowd of figures that were so many hieroglyphics to them. When the paper was restored to the novelist by Jules Sandeau, who lived in the same set of flats as Balzac, it transpired that the figures were the calculation of the sum that the writer might obtain on the decimal basis, if a hundred thousand copies of any one of his works were sold.
Two of the novelist’s most important books appeared in 1833, his /Country Doctor/ and /Eugenie Grandet/. The former he disposed of to a new publisher, Mame, who was to print it, at first, unsigned, his old publisher Gosselin having pre-emption rights, that had not been redeemed. Referring to it in a letter to Mame, towards the end of 1832, he said: “I have long been desirous of the popular glory which consists in selling numerous thousands of a small volume like /Atala/, /Paul and Virginia/, the /Vicar of Wakefield/, /Manon Lescaut/, etc. The book should go into all hands, those of the child, the girl, the old man, and even the devotee. Then once, when the book is known, it will have a large sale, like the /Meditations/ of Lamartine, for instance, sixty thousand copies. My book is conceived in this spirit; it is something which the porter and the grand lady can both read. I have taken the Gospel and the Catechism, two books that sell well, and so I have made mine. I have laid the scene in a village, and the whole of the story will be readable, which is rare with me.” How high his hopes of its quality and saleableness were (the two things were oddly mixed up in his mind), he imparted to Zulma Carraud. “The /Country Doctor/ has cost me ten times more labour than /Louis Lambert/,” he informed her. “There is not a sentence or an idea in it that has not been revised, re-read, corrected again and again. It’s terrible. But when one wishes to attain the simple beauty of the Gospel, surpass the /Vicar of Wakefield/ and put the /Imitation of Jesus Christ/ into action, one must spare no effort. Emile de Girardin and our good Borget (his co-tenant at the time) wager the sale will be four hundred thousand copies. Emile intends to bring out a franc edition, so that it may be sold like a Prayer Book.”
What with his writing for the /Revue de Paris/, to which he was contributing /Ferragus/, and the pains he gave himself with the /Country Doctor/, he was unable to deliver the latter work to Mame at the date stipulated, and the publisher brought a lawsuit against him, the first of a series of legal disputes he was destined to wage with publishing firms and magazine editors during his agitated life.
Notwithstanding the advertisement produced him by the lawsuit, the /Country Doctor/ fell flat in the market. Most of the newspapers spoke contemptuously of it. One reason given was its loose construction, there being no plot, and the two love stories being thrust in towards the end to explain the doctor’s altruism and the vicarious paternity of the Commandant Genestas.
This officer, who is stationed not far from the village close to the Grande-Chartreuse, pays a few days’ visit to a Doctor Benassis there, under pretext of consulting him professionally. While on the visit he is initiated into the transformation that has been wrought by the doctor in the habits of the people and their homes and surroundings–a regeneration accomplished quietly and gradually, vanquishing hostility and lethargy and converting the peasant’s distrust into love. The placing of the Commandant’s adopted child under the doctor’s care, and Benassis’ death, which occurs shortly after, form rather a lame conclusion to the love stories, which are mysteriously withheld to tempt the reader to go on with his perusal. For all its dogmatism in religion and politics, its long arguments in defence of the author’s favourite opinions, and its defective construction, the novel, if one can call it a novel, is one of Balzac’s best creations. The pictures of country scenes are presented with close fidelity to nature and also with real artistic arrangement. There are, moreover, delineations of rustic character that are truer to life than many of the more celebrated ones in the rest of the novelist’s fiction; and, in the episode entitled the Napoleon of the people,–the narration of an old soldier of the First Empire,–there is a topical realism that makes one regret the never-achieved /Battle/. Add to these excellences the writer’s having put into his work, for the nonce, a sincere aspiration towards the idea; and, despite flaws, the whole can be pronounced admirable.
It was just about the time the /Country Doctor/ was published that he began to dwell upon the advantages he might secure by connecting the characters in his novels and forming them into a representative society. Excited by the perspective this plan offered if all its possibilities were realized, he hurried to his sister’s house in the Faubourg Poissonniere.
“Salute me,” he exclaimed joyfully: “I’m on the point of becoming a genius!”
And he commenced to explain his thought, which seemed to him so vast and pregnant with consequence as to inspire him with awe.
“How fine it will be if I can manage the thing,” he continued, striding up and down the drawing-room, too restless to stay in one place. “I shan’t mind now being treated as a mere teller of tales, and can go on hewing the stones of my edifice, enjoying, beforehand, the amazement of my short-sighted critics, when they contemplate the structure complete.”
At length, Honore sat down and more tranquilly discussed the fortunes of the individuals already born from his brain, or, as yet in process of birth. He judged them and determined their fate.
“Such a one,” he said, “is a rascal, and will never do any good. Such another is industrious, and a good fellow; he will get rich, and his character will make him happy. These have been guilty of many peccadilloes; but they are so intelligent and have such a thorough knowledge of their fellows that they are sure to raise themselves to the highest ranks of society.”
“Peccadilloes!” replied his sister. “You are indulgent.”
“They can’t change, my dear. They are fathomers of abysses; but they will be able to guide others. The wisest persons are not always the best pilots. It’s not my fault. I haven’t invented human nature. I observe it, in past and present; and I try to depict it as it is. Impostures in this kind persuade no one.”
To the members of his family he announced news from his world of fiction just as if he were speaking of actual events.
“Do you know who Felix de Vandenesse is marrying?” he asked. “A Mademoiselle de Grandville. The match is an excellent one. The Grandvilles are rich, in spite of what Mademoiselle de Belleville has cost the family.”
If, now and again, he was begged to save some wild young man or unhappy woman among his creations, the answer was:
“Don’t bother me. Truth above all. Those people have no backbone. What happens to them is inevitable. So much the worse for them.”
This absorption in the domain of fancy was so complete at times as to cause him to confuse it with the outside world. It is related that Jules Sandeau, returning once from a journey, spoke to him of his sister’s illness. Balzac listened to him abstractedly for a while, and then interrupted him: “All that, my friend, is very well,” he said to the astonished Jules, “but let us come back to reality; let us speak of /Eugenie Grandet/.”
It was the second great book of 1833; and, on the whole, exhibits the novelist at his best. Eulogiums came from friends and enemies alike. The critics were unanimous, too unanimous, indeed, for the author, who detected in their chorus of praise a reiterated condemnation of much of his previous production. At last, it even annoyed him to hear his name invariably mentioned in connection with this single novel. “Those who call me the father of Eugenie Grandet seek to belittle me,” he cried. “I grant it is a masterpiece, but a small one. They forbear to cite the great ones.”
His ill-humor was, of course, of later growth. While /Eugenie Grandet/ was being written, between July and November of 1833, Balzac was quite content to estimate it at its higher value. During the period of its composition, he had fallen, perhaps for the first time in his life, sincerely in love with the woman he ultimately married; and it is appropriate to notice here the synchronism of the event with his high- water mark in fiction. As he confessed to Zulma Carraud, love was his life, his essence; he wrote best when under its influence. There were, be it granted, other contributory causes to make this rapidly written story what we find it to be. The place, the date, the people, the incidents were all close to his own life. Saumur and Tours are neighbouring towns; and ’tis affirmed that the original of the goodman Grandet, a certain Jean Niveleau, had a daughter, whom he refused to give in marriage to Honore. Maybe tradition has embroidered a little on the facts, but there would seem to be much in the narration that belongs to the writer’s personal experience. His sister found fault with his attributing so many millions to the miser. “But, stupid, the thing is true,” he replied. “Do you want me to improve on truth? If you only knew what it is to knead ideas, and to give them form and colour, you wouldn’t be so quick to criticize.”
As is usual, when the interest is chiefly characterization, Balzac does not give us a complicated plot. We have in Grandet a self-made man, who has amassed riches by trade and speculation, and lives with his wife and daughter in a gloomy old house, with only one servant as miserly as the master. Eugenie’s hand is sought by several suitors, and in particular by the son of the banker des Grassins and the son of the notary Cruchot, these two families waging a diplomatic warfare on behalf of their respective candidates. Into this midst suddenly comes the fashionable nephew Charles Grandet, whose father has, unknown to him, just committed suicide to escape bankruptcy. Eugenie falls in love with her cousin, and he, apparently, with her; but the old man, unsoftened by his brother’s death, using it even as a further means of speculation, gets rid of the unfortunate lover by gingerly helping him to go abroad. Years pass, and Eugenie’s mother dies, while she herself withers, under the miser’s avaricious tyranny. At length, old Grandet pays his debt to nature, and Eugenie is left with the millions. Until now she had waited for the wandering lover’s return; but he, engaging in the slave-trade, has lost all the generous impulses of his youth, and comes back only to deny his early affection and marry the ill- favoured daughter of a Marquis. Eugenie takes a noble revenge for this desertion by paying her dead uncle’s debts, which Charles had repudiated, and she marries the notary’s son, who leaves her a widow soon after.
Everything in the tale is absolutely natural, extraordinary in its naturalness; and the reactions of its various persons upon each other are traced with fine perception. There is not much of the outward expression of love–in this Balzac did not excel–but there is a good deal of its hidden tragedy. Moreover, the miser’s ruling passion is exhibited in traits that suggest still more than they openly display; and all the action and circumstance are in the subdued tone proper to provincial existence. The introductory words prepare the reader’s mind for what follows:–
“In certain country towns there are houses whose aspect inspires a melancholy equal to that evoked by the gloomiest cloisters, the most monotonous moorland, or the saddest ruins. . . . Perhaps, in these houses there are at once the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of the moorland, and the bones of ruins. Life and movement are so tranquil in them that a stranger might believe them uninhabited if he did not suddenly see the pale, cold gaze of a motionless person whose half-monastic face leans over the casement at the noise of an unknown step. . . .”
And the shadow persists even in the love-scene.
“Charles said to Eugenie, drawing her to the old bench, where they sat down under the walnut trees: ‘In five days, Eugenie, we must bid each other adieu, for ever perhaps; but, at least, for a long while. My stock and ten thousand francs sent me by two of my friends are a very small beginning. I cannot think of my return for several years. My dear cousin, don’t place my life and yours in the balance. I may perish. Perhaps you may make a rich marriage.’–‘You love me,’ she said.–‘Oh yes, dearly,’ he replied, with a depth of accent revealing a corresponding depth of sentiment.–‘I will wait, Charles. Heavens! my father is at his window,’ she said, pushing away her cousin, who was approaching to kiss her. She escaped beneath the archway; Charles followed her there. On seeing him, she withdrew to the foot of the staircase and opened the self-closing door; then hardly knowing where she was going, Eugenie found herself near Nanon’s den, in the darkest part of the passage. There, Charles, who had accompanied her, took her hand, drew her to his heart, seized her round the waist, and pressed her to himself. Eugenie no longer protested. She received and gave the purest, sweetest, but also the entirest of all kisses.”
The foregoing and others, equally well drawn, are figures in the background. Standing out in front of them, and in lurid relief, is the central figure of the miser, represented with the same mobility of temperament noticeable in George Eliot’s creations–a thing exceptional in Balzac’s work. Grandet, as long as his wife lives is reclaimable–just reclaimable. Subsequently, he is an automaton responsive only to the sight and touch of his gold.
The dedication of /Eugenie Grandet/ is to Maria; and Maria, portrayed under the features and character of the heroine, was, we learn, an agreeable girl, of middle-class origins, who, in the year of 1833, attached herself to Balzac and bore him a child.
This liaison was running its ephemeral course just at the time when accident made him acquainted with his future wife. On the 28th of February 1832, his publisher Gosselin handed him a letter with a foreign postmark. His correspondent, a lady, who had read, she said, and admired his /Scenes of Private Life/, reproached him with losing, in the /Shagreen Skin/, the delicacy of sentiment contained in these earlier novels, and begged him to forsake his ironic, sceptical manner and revert to the higher manifestations of his talent. There was no signature to this communication; and the writer, who subscribed herself “The Stranger,” begged him to abstain from any attempt to discover who she was, as there were paramount reasons why she should remain anonymous. Balzac’s curiosity was keenly aroused by so much mystery, and he tried, but in vain, to get hold of some clue that might conduct him to the retreat of the /incognita/. After a lapse of seven months, a second epistle arrived, more romantic in tone than the first; and containing, among obscure allusions to the lady’s surroundings and personality, the following declaration: “You no doubt love and are loved; the union of angels must be your lot. Your souls must have unknown felicities. The Stranger loves you both, and desires to be your friend. . . . She likewise knows how to love, but that is all. . . . Ah! you understand me.”
A third letter followed this one shortly afterwards, asking the novelist to acknowledge its receipt in the /Quotidienne/ journal, which he did, expressing in the advertisement his regret at not being able to address a direct reply. At last, in the spring of 1833, the fair correspondent made herself known. She was a Countess Evelina Hanska, wife of a Polish nobleman living at Wierzchownia in the Ukraine. She further allowed it to be understood that she was young, handsome, immensely rich, and not over happy with her husband. This information sufficed to set Balzac’s imagination agog. At once, he enshrined the dame in the temple of his ideal, poured out his heart to her, and told her of his struggles and ambitions, meanwhile fashioning a realm of the future in which he and she were to be the two reigning monarchs.
Madame Hanska was also a Pole. She belonged to the noble Rzewuska stock and was born in the castle of Pohrebyszcze between 1804 and 1806. Owing to family reverses, her parents, who had several other children to provide for, were glad to meet with a husband for her in the Count Hanski, who was twenty-five years her senior. The marriage took place between 1818 and 1822, and four children, three boys and a girl, were its issue; but, the boys all dying in infancy, the young mother was left with her little daughter Anna to bring up, and with the desires of a rich, cultured woman, who did not find in her home- circle the wherewithal to satisfy them.
Of her own charms she had spoken truly. Daffinger’s miniature of her, painted when she was thirty, represents her as abundantly endowed by nature; and Gigoux’ pastel of 1852, which is less faithful and shows her considerably older, still gives substantially the portrait that Barbey d’Aurevilly sketched of her after Balzac’s death: “She was of imposing and noble beauty, somewhat massive,” says this writer. “But she knew how to maintain, despite her embonpoint, a very great charm, which was enhanced by her delightful foreign accent. She had splendid shoulders, the finest arms in the world, and a complexion of radiant brilliancy. Her soft black eyes, her full red lips, her framing mass of curled hair, her finely chiselled forehead, and the sinuous grace of her gait gave her an air of abandon and dignity together, a haughty yet sensuous expression which was very captivating.”
Fascinated by Balzac’s masterly delineation of her sex, and longing to learn more about the man who had appealed to her so powerfully, she contrived a journey to Switzerland in 1833, in which her husband and child accompanied her. Switzerland was a land easier for a noble Russian subject to obtain permission to visit. Neufchatel was the place of sojourn chosen, since there was the home of Anna’s Swiss governess, Mademoiselle Henriette Borel, who had played an intermediary’s role in the beginning of the adventure.
As soon as he had news of the party’s arrival, Balzac posted off, concealing from every one the reason for his sudden departure. It had been agreed that the meeting should be on the chief promenade; and there, on a bench, with one of the novelist’s books on her lap, Madame Hanska sat with her husband, when he came up and accosted her. One account states that the Countess having, in her excitement, allowed a scarf to drop and hide the book, he passed her by more than once, not daring to speak till she took up the scarf. The same account adds that the lady, remarking the little, stout man staring at her, prayed he might not be the one she was expecting. But no written confession of the Countess’s exists to prove that such a thought damped her enthusiasm.
Balzac’s impression was recorded in a letter to his sister. “I am happy, very happy,” he wrote. “She is twenty-seven, possesses most beautiful black hair, the smooth and deliciously fine skin of brunettes, a lovely little hand, is naive and imprudent to the point of embracing me before every one. I say nothing about her colossal wealth. What is it in comparison with beauty. I am intoxicated with love.” The one drawback to the meeting was Monsieur Hanski. “Alas!” adds the writer, “he did not quit us during five days for a single second. He went from his wife’s skirt to my waistcoat. And Neufchatel is a small town, where a woman, an illustrious foreigner, cannot take a step without being seen. Constraint doesn’t suit me.”
Evidently, during the Neufchatel intercourse, some sort of understanding must have been reached, based on the rather unkind anticipation of the Count Hanski’s death. At that time, the gentleman’s health was precarious. He survived, however until 1841, meanwhile more or less cognizant of his wife’s attachment and offering no opposition. He even deemed himself honoured by Balzac’s friendship. How rapid the progress of the novelist’s passion was for the new idol may be judged by the letter he despatched to Geneva, two or three months later, in December, whilst he was correcting the proofs of /Eugenie Grandet/. “I think I shall be at Geneva on the 13th,” he wrote. “The desire to see you makes me invent things that ordinarily don’t come into my head. I correct more quickly. It’s not only courage you give me to support the difficulties of life; you give me also talent, at any rate, facility. . . . My Eve, my darling, my kind, divine Eve! What a grief it is to me not to have been able to tell you every evening all that I have done, said, and thought.”
The visit to Geneva was paid, and lasted six weeks, the novelist quitting Switzerland only on the 8th of February 1834. From this date onward, a regular correspondence was kept up between them, compensating for their seeing each other rarely. The project of marriage, more tenaciously pursued by Balzac than by his Eve, was yet no hindrance to his fleeting fancies for other women. These interim amours have a good deal preoccupied his various biographers, partly because of the undoubted use he made of them in his novels, and partly also because of the trouble he gave himself to establish among circles outside his own immediate entourage the legend of his being a sort of Sir Galahad, leading a perfectly chaste life and caring only for his literary labours. Says Theophile Gautier:–
“He used to preach to us a strange literary hygiene. We ought to shut ourselves up for two or three years, drink water, eat soaked lupines like Protogenes, go to bed at six o’clock in the evening, and work till morning . . . and especially to live in the most absolute chastity. He insisted much on this last recommendation, very rigorous for a young man of twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. According to him, real chastity developed the powers of the mind to the highest degree, and gave to those that practised it unknown faculties. We timidly objected that the greatest geniuses had indulged in the love passion, and we quoted illustrious names. Balzac shook his head and replied: ‘They would have done much more but for the women.’ The only concession he would make us, regretfully, was to see the loved one for half-an-hour a year. Love letters he allowed. They formed a writer’s style.”
George Sand speaks much to the same effect in her reminiscences. She believed in the legend.
“Moderate in every other respect,” she says, “he had the purest of morals, having always dreaded wildness as the enemy of talent; and he nearly always cherished women solely in his heart and in his head, even in his youth. He pursued chastity on principle; and his relations with the fair sex were those merely of curiosity. When he found a curiosity equal to his own, he exploited this mine with the cynicism of a father-confessor. But, when he met with health of mind and body, he was as happy as a child to speak of real love and to rise into the lofty regions of sentiment.”
Unfortunately for the preceding testimony, a flat contradiction is given to it not only by the recorded facts of the novelist’s life, but by his sister, who knew better than George Sand and Gautier that Balzac’s profession of sublimer sentiments did not exclude a more mundane feeling and practice. Commenting on George Sand’s generous panegyric of her brother, she adds: “It is an error to speak of his extreme moderation. He does not deserve this praise. Outside of his work, which was first and foremost, he loved and tasted all the pleasures of this world. I think he would have been the most conceited of all men, if he had not been the most discreet. Confident in himself, he never committed the least indiscretion in his relations with others, and kept their secrets, though unable to keep his own.”
The Viscount Spoelberch de Lovenjoul is still more explicit in his short book on Balzac and Madame Hanska, entitled /Roman d’Amour/. Speaking of the novelist’s various liaisons and love escapades, which were covered up with such solicitude from the eyes of the world, he remarks that Balzac, while vaunting himself, in argument, of having remained chaste for a number of years, owned to his sister that the truth was quite different. The novelist did his utmost, continues Monsieur de Lovenjoul, to foster the tradition of his hermit-like conduct; and to all the jealous women with whom he entertained friendly relations he asserted that his morals were as spotless as those of a cenobite. Ever and everywhere he abused the credulity of those who flattered themselves they were his only love.
Madame de Berny was not among the credulous ones, nor yet so resigned as the simple /bourgeoise/ Maria, who, to quote Balzac’s own words, “fell like a flower from heaven, exacted neither correspondence nor attentions, and said: ‘Love me a year and I will love you all my life.'” Though forced to accept the transformation of her relations with her young lover into a purely platonic friendship, she made occasional protests against being supplanted by younger rivals–the imperious Madame de Castries among the number. The birth and growth of his affection for Madame Hanska she appears to have felt and resented to a greater degree than his previous infidelities to her. Not even its maintenance, for the time being, on the plane of pure sentiment, dispelled her jealous thoughts. Being apprized of Balzac’s dedication of a portion of the /Woman of Thirty Years Old/ to his Eve, she insisted on his expunging the offending name, while the sheets were in the press. Whether her fretting over his transferred allegiance hastened her end it is impossible to say with any certainty; yet one cannot help being struck by the fact that the serious phase of the malady that killed her almost coincided with the beginning of their separation.
Madame Hanska, although she started with a supposition of his loving another, became exacting also, in proportion as her admirer’s professions of loyalty conferred the right upon her. Rumours reached her now and again, and sometimes precise information, of her place being usurped by another. And, later, as will be again mentioned, a breach occurred between them which was nearly final. By his various mistresses, Balzac had four children, including /Maria’s/ little daughter, two of whom survived him.
All this notwithstanding, it would be a mistake to assume that he was a deliberate woman-hunter, and wasted his energies in licentiousness. His immense industry and productiveness are enough to prove that such lapses were more the natural outcome of his having so constant a bevy of lady worshippers about him, and occurred as opportunity offered only. On the other hand, it must be admitted that woman’s counsels, woman’s encouragements, woman’s caresses and help were very necessary to him; and he drew largely on the capacities, material and moral, of the Marthas and Maries that crossed his orbit, attracting him or themselves attracted.
The twelvemonth which was marked by the achievement of his most perfect novel also brought him into regular business relations with Werdet, destined to be one of his biographers, who now became his chief publisher and remained so during several years. Incorrect in many details which lay outside his own ken, and which he had gleaned from hearsay or books hastily written, Werdet’s own book, a familiar portrait of Balzac, is nevertheless a valuable document. If the author was unable to fathom the whole of the genius and character of the man he described, he yet sincerely appreciated them; and not even the soreness he could not help feeling when ultimately thrown aside, destroyed his deep-rooted worship of him whom he regarded as one of the highest glories of French literature.
Werdet, when he was introduced to the writer of the /Physiology of Marriage/, had already tried his luck at publishing, but had been compelled to abandon the master’s position and to enter as an employee into the house of a Madame Bechet, who was engaged in the same line of business. Having read and liked some of Balzac’s earlier works, he persuaded the firm to entrust him with the task of negotiating a purchase of the exclusive rights of the novelist’s /Studies of Manners and Morals in the Nineteenth Century/. The negotiation was carried through in 1832, and a sum of thirty-six thousand francs was paid to Balzac. This was the writer’s real beginning of money-making. Twelve months after, Werdet resolved to start once more on his own account. He had only a few thousand francs capital. His idea was to risk them in buying one of Balzac’s books; and then, if successful, gradually to acquire a publishing monopoly in the great man’s productions. Distrusting his own powers of persuasion, he enlisted the good offices of Barbier, the late partner of the Rue des Marais printing-house, who was a /persona grata/ with the novelist. Together, they went to the Rue Cassini; and Barbier set forth Werdet’s desire.
“Very good,” replied the great man. “But you are aware, Monsieur, that those who now publish my works require large capital, since I often need considerable advances.”
Proudly, young Werdet brought out his six notes of five hundred francs each, and spread them on the table.
“There is all my fortune,” he said. “You can have it for any book you please to write for me.”
At the sight of them Balzac burst out laughing.
“How can you imagine, Monsieur, that I–I–de Balzac! who sold my /Studies of Manners and Morals/ not long ago to Madame Bechet for thirty-six thousand francs–I, whose collaboration to the /Revue de Paris/ is ordinarily remunerated by Buloz at five hundred francs per sheet, should forget myself to the point of handing you a novel from my pen for a thousand crowns? You cannot have reflected on your offer, Monsieur; and I should be entitled to look upon your step as unbecoming in the highest degree, were it not that your frankness in a measure justifies you.”
Barbier tried to plead for his friend, and mentioned that, in consideration of Werdet’s share in the transaction with Madame Bechet, a second edition of the /Country Doctor/ might be granted him for the three thousand francs. But Balzac, retorting that whatever service had been rendered was not to himself but by himself, dismissed his visitors with the words:
“We have spent an hour, gentlemen, in useless talk. You have made me lose two hundred francs. For me, time is money. I must work. Good- day.”
They left, and Barbier, to comfort his friend, prophesied that, in spite of this reception, Balzac would enter into /pourparlers/ with him, and that Werdet had only to wait, and news would be received from the Rue Cassini shortly. He was not mistaken. Three days elapsed and then Werdet had the following note sent him:–
“SIR,–You called upon me the other day when my head was preoccupied with some writing that I wanted to finish, and I consequently did not very well comprehend what was your drift. To-day, my head is freer. Do me the pleasure to call on me at four o’clock, and we can talk the matter over.”
Werdet waited nearly a week before he paid the requested visit. In quite another tone, the novelist discussed the proposed scheme, promised to use his influence on the young publisher’s behalf, and gave him the /Country Doctor/ for the price offered.
Thenceforward, a familiar guest in the dwelling of the Rue Cassini, Werdet described it in detail, when composing his /Portrait Intime/. It was part of a two-storied /pavilion/ (as the French call a moderate-sized house) standing to the left in a courtyard and garden, with another similar building on the right. From the ground-floor a flight of steps led up to a glass-covered gallery joining the two buildings and serving as an antechamber to each. Its sides were hung in white and blue-striped glazed calico; and a long, blue-upholstered divan, a blue and brown carpet, and some fine china vases filled with flowers, adorned it. From the gallery the visitor proceeded into a pretty drawing-room, fifteen feet square, lighted on the east by a small casement that looked over the yard of a neighbouring house. Opposite the drawing-room door was a black marble mantelpiece.
The /salon/ gave access to the bedroom and the dining-room, the latter being connected with the kitchen underneath by a narrow staircase. A secret door in the /salon/ opened into the bathroom with its walls of white stucco, its bath of white marble, and its red, opaque window- panes diffusing a rose-coloured tint through the air. Two easy-chairs in red morocco stood near the bath.
The bedroom, having two windows, one towards the south and the observatory, the other overlooking a garden of flowers and trees, was very bright and cheery. The furniture, with its shades of white, pink, and gold, was rich and handsome. A secret door existed also in this chamber, hidden behind muslin hangings; it led down the same narrow staircase already mentioned to the kitchen, and thence out into the yard. Nanon, Balzac’s cook, less discreet than Auguste, the valet-de- chambre, had tales to tell Werdet about certain lady visitors who arrived by means of this private staircase into the daintily arranged bedroom.
The study, of oblong shape, about eighteen feet by twelve, had likewise two windows affording a view only over the yard of the next house, which, being lofty, made the room dark, even in the sunniest weather. Here the furniture was simple, the principal piece being an exceedingly fine ebony bookcase, with mirrored panels. It contained a large collection of rare books, all bound in red morocco and set off with the escutcheon of the d’Entragues family. Among them were nearly all the authors who had written on mysticism, occult science, and religion. Opposite the bookcase, between the windows, was a carved ebony cabinet filled with red morocco box-cases, and on the top of the cabinet stood a plaster statuette representing Napoleon I. Across the sword-sheath was stuck a tiny paper with these words written by the novelist: “What he could not achieve with the sword I will accomplish with the pen. Honore de Balzac.”
On the mantelpiece decorated with a mirror, there was an alarum in unpolished bronze, together with two vases in brown porcelain. And on either side of the mirror hung all sorts of woman’s trifles; here, a crumpled glove, there a small satin shoe; and, further, a little rusty iron key. Questioned as to the significance of this last article, the owner called it his talisman. There was also a diminutive framed picture exhibiting beneath the glass a fragment of brown silk, with an arrow-pierced heart embroidered on it, and the English words: /An Unknown Friend/. In front of a modest writing-table covered with green baize was a large Voltaire arm-chair upholstered in red morocco; and about the room were a few other ebony chairs covered in brown cloth.
Within his sanctum Balzac worked clad in a white Dominican gown with hood, the summer material being dimity and cashmere; he was shod with embroidered slippers, and his waist was girt with a rich Venetian-gold chain, on which were suspended a paper-knife, a pair of scissors, and a gold penknife, all of them beautifully carved. Whatever the season, thick window-curtains shut out the rays of light that might have penetrated into the study, which was illuminated only by two moderate- sized candelabra of unpolished bronze, each holding a couple of continually burning candles.
The installation of these various household necessaries and luxuries was progressive and was associated closely with the heyday period of his celebrity. It was during 1833 that the metamorphosis was mainly effected, for Werdet relates that, in the month of November, he found Balzac, one afternoon, superintending the laying down of some rich Aubusson carpets in his house. Money must have been plentiful just then. Learning accidentally on this occasion that his publisher had no carpet in his drawing-room, the novelist surprised him the same evening by sending some men with one that he had bought for him. This present Werdet suitably acknowledged a short time after; and, throughout the period of their intimacy, there were a good few compliments of the kind exchanged, which appear to have cost the man of business dearer than the man of letters.
To tell the truth, Balzac had a knack of presuming that something he intended doing was already done. One notorious example was the white horse he asserted, in presence of a number of guests assembled in Madame de Girardin’s drawing-room, had been given by him to Jules Sandeau. The animal in question, he said, he had bought from a well- known dealer; the celebrated trainer Baucher had tested it and declared it to be the most perfect animal ever ridden. For nearly half-an-hour the speaker expatiated on the points of this wonderful steed, and thoroughly convinced his audience of the gift having been already bestowed. A few evenings later, Jules Sandeau met Balzac at the same house, and the subject was of course reverted to by their mutual friends. As the novelist asked him whether he liked the horse, Jules, not to be outvied, answered with an enumeration of its qualities. But he never saw the animal for all that.
Another instance equally amusing was furnished at a dinner given in honour of Balzac by Henri de Latouche, who had not then broken with him. At dessert, the host sketched the plan of a novel he intended to write, and Balzac, who had been drinking champagne, warmly applauded; “The thing,” he said, “is capital. Even summarily related, it is charming. What will it be when the talent, style, and wit of the author have enhanced it!” Next evening, at Madame de Girardin’s, he reproduced, with his native fire and power of description, the narration he had heard the night before–reproduced it as his own– persuaded it was his own. Every one was enthusiastic, and complimented him. But the matter was bruited abroad. Latouche recognized in Balzac’s proposed new novel the creation he had himself unfolded; and wrote a sharp protest which, for once, forced its recipient to distinguish fact from fiction, and what was his share, what another’s, in the output of ideas. Yet he might be excused for some of his frequent fits of forgetfulness, since he sowed his own conceptions and discoveries broadcast, and often encountered them again in the possession of lesser minds who had utilized them before he could put them into execution.
In the year of 1833, the novelist’s correspondence alludes to several books which, like others previously spoken of, were never published, and probably never written. Among these are /The Privilege/, /The History of a Fortunate Idea/, and the /Catholic Priest/. Meanwhile, he did add considerably to his /Droll Tales/, the first series of which appeared in the same twelve months as /Eugenie Grandet/. These stories –in the style of Boccaccio, and of some of Chaucer’s writing–broad, racy, and somewhat licentious, albeit containing nothing radically obscene, were meant to illustrate the history of the French language and French manners from olden to modern days. Only part of the project was realized. They are told with wit and humour that are nowhere present to the same degree in the rest of the novelist’s work, and in their colouring, as Taine justly remarks, recall Jordaens’ painting with its vivid carnation tints. At this time the author was occupied with /Bertha Repentant/ and the /Succubus/, which, however, were published only three years subsequently.
CHAPTER VI
LETTERS TO “THE STRANGER,” 1833, 1834
If Balzac’s intimates, careful of his future, had besought him to jot down in a diary the detailed doings of his every-day life, with a confession of his thoughts, feelings, and opinions, in fine an unmasking of himself, he would surely have urged the material impossibility of his fulfilling such a task, over and above the labours of Hercules to which his ambition and his necessities bound him. And yet he performed the miracle unsolicited.
From the day when he quitted Neufchatel to the day when he arrived at Wierzchownia, on his crowning visit in 1848, he never ceased chronicling, in a virtually uninterrupted series of letters to Madame Hanska, closely following each other during most of this long period, a faithful account of his existence–exception made for its love episodes–which, having fortunately been preserved, constitutes an almost complete autobiography of his mature years. When the end of the correspondence shall have been given to the public, three volumes, at least, will have been taken up with the record–a record which taxed his time and strength, indeed overtaxed them, causing him to encroach unduly on his already too short hours of sleep. The motive must have been a powerful one that could induce him to make so large a sacrifice. Whether it was love alone, as he protested again and again, or love mixed with gratified pride, or both joined to the hope of enjoying the vast fortune that loomed through the mists of the far-off Ukraine, the phenomenon remains the same. Certainly some great force was behind the pen that untiringly wrote in every vein and mood these astonishing /Letters to the Stranger/.
In those up to the year 1834 that were, properly speaking, private, the tone rises to a pitch of lover-passion that could hardly fail to alarm, even whilst they flattered the one to whom his devotion was addressed. Although Balzac’s brief sojourns in Madame Hanska’s vicinity had resulted in no breach of the marriage law, there was too much implied in his assumption of their betrothal to please the husband, if any of these lover’s oaths should fall under his notice. And this was what just did happen before many months had gone by. In consequence of some accident which is not explained, the Count had cognizance of two epistles that reached his wife while both were staying at Vienna; and, for some time, it seemed as though the intercourse would be definitely severed. A humble apology was sent to the Count, the letters being passed off as a joke; and the interpretation was, fortunately for Balzac, accepted. Madame Hanska was offended as well as her husband, or, at any rate, she affected to be. It appears some negligence had been committed by the novelist in forwarding the incriminating epistles. However, being cleared in her husband’s eyes, she yielded her forgiveness.
Balzac’s policy, after this mishap, was to keep on the best terms possible with Monsieur Hanski, who, to use the Frenchman’s English expression, suffered from chronic blue devils. After leaving his new friends at Geneva, the novelist procured the Count an autograph letter from Rossini, this great composer being a favourite at Wierzchownia. To his new lady-love he sent an effusion of his own in verse, having small poetic merit, but pretty sentiment.
During the Geneva intercourse, he did his best to familiarize Eve with all the names and characters of the people he knew, since his interests were to be hers, or, at any rate, so he flattered himself. She learnt to distinguish the people who were for him from those who were against him. Of these latter there were a goodly number, some made enemies by his own fault, through over-susceptibility or unconscious arrogance. Both causes were responsible for the quarrel occurring about this time between him and Emile de Girardin, which was never entirely healed, in spite of the persevering efforts of Emile’s wife, better known as Madame Delphine Gay. “I have bidden good-bye to the Gays’ molehill,” he informed Madame Hanska. It was pretty much the same with his estrangement from the Duke de Fitz-James, which, however, was followed by a speedy reconciliation, for the Duke was offering, a few months later, to support him again in a political election. The unsatisfactory state of his health, and some family troubles, decided him to defer his candidature to the end of the decade, by which date he hoped to have written two works–/The Tragedy of Philippe II./ and /The History of the Succession of the Marquis of Carrabas/–which should implant his conception of absolute monarchic power so strongly in the minds of his fellow-citizens that they would be glad to send him to Parliament as their representative. Other political articles and pamphlets of his, he asserted, would enable him by 1839 to dominate European questions.
Werdet has a great deal to say about his idol’s over-weening exaction of homage, leading him to be himself guilty of acts of rudeness towards others, thus alienating their sympathies. The publisher relates one scene that he witnessed at the offices of William Duckett, proprietor of the /Dictionary of Conversation and Reading/. The office door was suddenly opened and Balzac stalked in with his hat on his head. “Is Duckett in?” he curtly asked, addressing in common the chief editor, his sub, and an attendant. There was a conspiracy of silence. Evidently, this was not the novelist’s first visit, and his style was known. Again the question was put in the same language and manner, and again no one replied. Advancing now a step, and speaking to the chief editor, he repeated his question for a third time. Monglave, who was an irritable gentleman, being accosted personally, answered briefly: “Put your question to the sub-editor.” There was a wheel-about, and another peremptory inquiry, to which the sub, imitating his chief, replied with “Ask the attendant.” At present boiling with rage, Balzac turned to the porter and thundered: “Is Duckett in?” “Monsieur Balzac,” returned the attendant, “these gentlemen have forbidden me to tell you.” Threatening to report the affair to Duckett, the novelist withdrew, pursued by the mocking laughter of the chief editor and the sub; but, on second thoughts, he deemed it more prudent to let the matter drop.
Another example of this peculiar assumption of superiority occurred not long after at a dinner given by Werdet in honour of a young author, Jules Bergounioux, whose novels were being much read. Among the guests were Gustave Planche, Jules Sandeau, and Balzac. During the meal the conversation, after many assaults of wit and mirth, fell on the necessity of defending writers against the piracy and mutilation of their books in foreign countries, more especially in Belgium. All expressed their opinion energetically, young Bergounioux like the rest, he happening to class himself with his fellows in the words–/we men of letters/. At the conclusion of his little speech, Balzac uttered a guffaw: “You, sir, a man of letters! What pretension! What presumption! You! compare yourself to us! Really, sir, you forget that you have the honour to be sitting here with the marshals of modern literature.”
This exhibition and others similar were natural to the man. He could not help them. It was impossible for him not to be continually proclaiming his own greatness. “Don’t tax me with littleness,” he said in one of his letters to Delphine Gay, in which he justified his breaking with her husband. “I think myself too great to be offended by any one.”
The domestic troubles alluded to above, which were worrying Balzac in 1834, had partly to do with his brother Henry, a sort of ne’er-do- well, who had been out to the Indies and had returned with an undesirable wife, and prospects–or rather the lack of them–that made him a burden to the other members of the family. Madame Balzac, too, was unwell at Chantilly; and her illnesses always affected Honore, who, at such moments, reproached himself for not being able to do more on her behalf. Not that his year’s budget was a poor one. The seventy thousand francs at which he estimated his probable earnings for the twelvemonth were not on this occasion so very much beyond the truth, if his author’s percentages were included. Werdet–the illustrious Werdet, who, he said, somewhat resembled the /Illustrious Gaudissart/ –bought an edition of his philosophic novels for fifteen thousand francs; and, besides two principal books to be mentioned further on, both of which appeared before the close of the year, there were parts of /Seraphita/ and /The Cabinet of Antiques/ which the /Revue de Paris/ was publishing as serials. His notorious quarrel and lawsuit with this Review was yet to come. But there was storm in the air even now. /Seraphita/, the subject inspired by Madame Hanska and dedicated to her, was but little to the taste of Buloz the editor; and he declared to Balzac, who was making him wait for copy, that it was hardly worth while taking so long and making so much fuss over a novel which neither the public nor he, the editor, could understand. Happily the dear Werdet was at hand to arrange the difficulty. Though in the same case as Buloz, and failing altogether to comprehend the subject or its treatment, he took over /Seraphita/ in 1835 and published it.
Next to politics, as a means of gaining name and fame more quickly, Balzac esteemed play-writing. The esteem was purely commercial. In his heart of hearts he rather despised this species of composition, entertaining the notion that it was something to be done quickly, if at all, and utilizable to please the groundlings. Yet, because he saw that there was money in it, he turned his hand to it, time after time, and, for long, had to abandon it as constantly. In 1834 he formed a partnership with Jules Sandeau and Emmanuel Arago, with the idea of risking less in case of failure. In addition to the tragedy already spoken of, he tried two others–/The Courtiers/ and /Don Philip and Don Charles/, the latter modelled on Schiller’s /Don Carlos/. The /Grande Mademoiselle/ was a comic history of Lauzun; and his /Prudhomme, Bigamist/, was a farce, in which a dummy placed in a bed seemed to him capable, with a night’s working on it, of bringing down the house. Vaguely he felt, and vaguely he confessed to his sister, what he had seen and confessed thirteen years earlier, that the drama was not his forte. But, anchored in the conviction that he ought finally to succeed in everything he undertook, he returned to the attempt with magnificent pluck and perseverance.
His colleague for the nonce, Sandeau, he considered to be a protege of his; and used him a while as a kind of secretary. In this year especially he showed much solicitude about him. There was nothing to excite his jealousy in the author of /Sacs et Parchemins/, who was not elected to the Academy until nearly the end of the decade in which Balzac died. On the contrary, his pity was aroused by Sandeau’s precarious position and by the recent separation between Madame Dudevant and this first of her lovers, who did his best to commit suicide by swallowing a dose of acetate of morphia. Luckily the dose was so large that Sandeau’s stomach refused to digest it. George Sand herself Balzac admired but did not care for at this time. He would talk to her amiably when he met her at the Opera; but, if she invited him to dinner, he invented an excuse, if possible, for not going. “Don’t speak to me,” he would say, “of this writer of the neuter gender. Nature ought to have given her more breeches and less style.”
His opinion, however, did not prevent him, in 1842, from accepting her help. An article had come out in her /Revue Independante/, without her knowledge, attacking him violently. She wrote to apologize; and Balzac called on her, to explain, as he informed Madame Hanska, how injustice serves the cause of talent. She told him then that she should like to write a thorough study of him and his books; and he made as though he would dissuade her, saying that she would only get herself in bad odour with his critics. Still she persisted, and he accordingly asked her to compose a preface for an ensuing publication of his whole works, the preface to be a defence of him against those who were his enemies. Whether this notice was written before the novelist’s death is uncertain. At any rate, it was not printed until 1875, when it appeared in her volume /Autour de la Table/.
It was difficult for Balzac to be fair towards those men of letters among his contemporaries who excelled in his own domain; yet his judgment, when unwarped, was fine, keen, and, in many instances, endowed with prophetic sight. For instance, in placing Alfred de Musset as a poet above Victor Hugo or Lamartine, he daringly contradicted the opinions of his own day, and anticipated a criticism which is at present becoming respectable if not fashionable. On the other hand, his estimate of /Volupte/, Sainte-Beuve’s just then published novel, which he was soon to imitate and recreate in his /Lily in the Valley/, was manifestly prejudiced. He called it a book badly written in most of its parts, weak, loosely constructed, diffuse, in which there were some good things, in short a puritanical book, the chief character of it, Madame Couaen not being woman enough. His opinion, which he imparted to Madame Hanska, he apparently took no trouble to conceal, for Sainte-Beuve was evidently aware of it when he treated Balzac very sharply in an article of this same year of 1834. From that date, the celebrated lecturer looked with coldness and disfavour on the novelist, and even in his final pronouncement of the /Causeries du Lundi/, shortly after Balzac’s death, he meted out but faint praise.
Something has been said in a previous chapter of the novelist’s belief in certain occult powers of the mind, with which the newly discovered action of magnetism seemed to him to be connected. At first, his ideas on the subject were a good deal mixed. When, in 1832, a terrible epidemic of cholera was spreading its ravages, he wrote to Doctor Chapelain, suggesting that somnambulism–he would have called it hypnotism to-day–should be employed to seek out the causes of the malady, and a test applied to prove whether its virtues were real or chimerical. In 1834, he had come to pin his faith to the healing powers of magnetism. “When you or Monsieur Hanski or Anna are ill,” he wrote to Eve, “let me know. Don’t laugh at me. At Issoudun, facts recently demonstrated to me that I possess very large magnetic potency, and that, either through a somnambulist” (he meant a hypnotist) “or through myself, I can cure persons dear to me.” To all his friends he reiterated the same advice–magnetic treatment, which he declared his mother capable of exercising as well as himself. Madame Balzac’s initiation into the science was due to the Prince of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfurst, Bishop of Sardica, who, in his several visits to Paris between 1821 and 1829, wrought wonderful cures by the simple imposition of hands. As the lady used to suffer from a swelling in the bowels whenever she ate raw fruit, the Bishop, hearing of it, came one day to see her, and applied his method, which cured her. Balzac, being a witness of the miracle, became an ardent investigator in this new branch–or rather old branch revived–of therapeutics. Thenceforward, his predilection for theories of the occult went hand in hand with his equally strong taste for the analytic observation of visible phenomena; and not infrequently he indulged in their simultaneous literary expression. The composing of /Seraphita/ was carried on at the same time as his /Search for the Absolute/ and /Pere Goriot/.
Both of these two novels were finished and published in 1834. In the /Search for the Absolute/, we have Balthazar Claes, a man of wealth and leisure, living in the ancient town of Douai, and married to a wife who adores him and who has borne him children. Claes’ hobby is scientific research; his aim, the discovery of the origin of things which he believes can be given him by his crucible. In his family mansion, of antique Flemish style, which is admirably described by the novelist at great length, he pursues his tireless experiments; and, with less justification than Bernard Palissy, encroaches by degrees on the capital of his fortune, which melts away in his furnace and alembics. During the first period of his essays, his wife tries to have confidence in his final success, herself studies all sorts of learned treatises, in order to be able to converse with him suitably and to encourage him in his work; but, at last, unable to delude her own mind any longer, she weeps with her children over the approaching destruction of their home, and the grief wears her out and kills her. Luckily the daughter, Marguerite, is made of sterner stuff than her mother. And, with her brother, she toils to pay her father’s debts and to keep the home together. At the end, Claes himself dies, still absorbed in his chimera, and his last words are an endeavour to formulate the marvellous revelation which his disordered brain persuades him he has now received.
“‘Eureka!’ he cried with a shrill voice, and fell back on his bed with a thud. In passing away, he uttered a frightful groan, and his convulsed eyes, until the doctors closed them, spoke his regret not to have been able to bequeath to science the key of a mystery whose veil had been tardily torn aside under the gaunt fingers of Death.”
The /Search for the Absolute/ may be classed with /Eugenie Grandet/ in the category of the novelist’s best creations. Though Claes is, as much as Grandet, and perhaps more, an abnormal being, his sacrifice of every duty of life to the pursuit of the irrealizable is common enough in humanity. By reason of the novelist’s intense delineation, his figure shows out in monstrous proportions; but these are skilfully relieved by the happier fates of the children. The lengthy descriptions of the opening chapter he defended against his sister Laure’s strictures, asserting that they had ramifications with the subject which escaped her. His presentment, too, of Marguerite he said was not forced, as she thought. Marguerite was a Flemish woman, and Flemish women followed one idea out and, with phlegm, went unswervingly towards their goal. The labour the book had cost him he owned to Madame Hanska. Two members of the Academy of Sciences taught him chemistry, so that he might be exact in his representation of Claes’ experiments; and he read Berzelius into the bargain. Moreover, he had revised and modified the proofs of the novel no fewer than a dozen times.
As Werdet tells, the real work of composition, with Balzac, hardly commenced until he had a set of galley proofs. What he sent first to the printer, scribbled with his crow’s-quill, was a mere sketch; and the sketch itself was a sort of Chinese puzzle, largely composed of scratched-out and interpolated sentences; passages and chapters being moved about in a curious /chasse-croise/, which the type-setters deciphered and arranged as they best could. Margins and inter-columnal spaces they found covered with interpolations; a long trailing line indicated the way here and the way there to the destination of the inserted passages. A cobweb was regular in comparison to the task which the printers had to tackle in the hope of finding beginning, middle, and end. In the various presses where his books were set up, the employees would never work longer than an hour on end at his manuscript. And the indemnity he had to pay for corrections reached sometimes the figure of forty francs per sixteen pages. Numerous were the difficulties caused on this score with publishers, editors, and printers. Balzac justified himself by quoting the examples of Chateaubriand, Ingres, and Meyerbeer in their various arts. To Buloz, of the /Revue de Paris/, who expostulated, he impatiently replied: “I will give up fifty francs per sheet to have my hands free. So say no more about the matter.” It is true that Buloz paid him 250 francs per sheet for his contributions.
Indeed, the novelist’s own method of work was a reversal of the natural alternation of regular periods of activity and repose. He not only, as he told all his correspondents with wearisome iteration, burned the midnight oil, but would keep up these eighteen or twenty hours’ daily labour for weeks altogether, until some novel that he was engaged on was finished. During these spells of composing he would see no one, read no letters, but write on and on, eating sparingly, sipping his coffee, and refreshing his jaded anatomy by taking a bath, in which he would lie for a whole hour, plunged in meditation. After his voluntary seclusions, he suddenly reappeared in his usual haunts, active and feverish as ever, note-book ready to hand, in which he jotted down his thoughts, discoveries, and observations for future use. On its pages were primitively outlined the features of most of the women of his fiction.
One of these prolonged /claustrations/, in October 1834–the day was Sunday–he interrupted by a call, most unexpected, on Werdet. His face was sallow and gaunt with vigil. He had been stopped in the description of a spot, he explained, by the uncertainty of his recollections, and must go into the city in order to refresh them. So he invited Werdet to accompany him in playing truant for the day. The morning was spent in the slums, where he gathered the information required; and the afternoon they whiled away in listening to a concert at the /Conservatoire/. Here he was welcomed by the fashionables of both sexes, notwithstanding his shabby costume, which he had donned in view of his morning’s occupation. On quitting the concert room, he carried Werdet off to dine with him at Very’s, the most expensive and aristocratic restaurant in Paris. The place was full of guests; and those who were in proximity to the table where the two newcomers sat down were astounded to see the following menu ordered and practically consumed by one man, since Werdet, being on diet, took only a soup and a little chicken: A hundred oysters; twelve chops; a young duck; a pair of roast partridges; a sole; hors d’oeuvre; sweets; fruit (more than a dozen pears being swallowed); choice wines; coffee; liqueurs. Never since Rabelais’ or perhaps Louis XIV.’s time, had such a Gargantuan appetite been witnessed. Balzac was recouping himself for his fasting.
When the repast, lengthened out by a flow of humorous conversation, was at length terminated, the nineteenth-century Johnson asked his Boswell if he had any available cash, as he himself had none. Werdet confessing only to forty francs, the novelist borrowed a five-franc piece from him and thundered out his request for the bill. To the waiter who presented it he handed the coin, at the same time returning the bill with a few words scribbled at the foot. “Tell the cashier,” he cried, “that I am Monsieur Honore de Balzac.” And he stalked out with Werdet, whilst all the diners present stared admiringly after the great man.
But the evening was not yet finished. In the garden of the Palais- Royal, then more frequented by society than to-day, they met Jules Sandeau and Emile Regnault. And, as they were near a gambling-saloon, Balzac, who had an infallible system for breaking the bank, proposed to Jules that he should go and try his luck. A twenty-franc piece was wheedled out of Werdet for the experiment, which proved a fiasco. Next, the novelist, to convince his companions of the accuracy of his theory, which he further detailed, went and borrowed forty francs from his heraldic engraver, and sent Sandeau and Regnault into the saloon again. Alas! fate was once more unkind. They returned minus their money. To console themselves, they went to the Funambules Theatre, to see Debureau act in the /Boeuf Enrage/, and Balzac laughed so loud that he and his party had to leave the theatre. On the morrow Werdet was called upon to pay the restaurant-keeper sixty-two francs, and to reimburse the engraver the forty francs loan, which sums, together with what he had himself advanced, ran Balzac’s debit for the day up to one hundred and twenty-seven francs.
In /Pere Goriot/, the publication of which came close at the heels of the /Search for the Absolute/, Balzac traces the gradual impoverishment of a fond father by his two daughters, married, the one to a nobleman, the other to a banker, and whose husbands, when they have received the marriage dowry, give their father-in-law, who is a plebeian, the cold shoulder, and forbid their wives to see him unless in secret. Goriot’s daughters, losing in their grand surroundings the little filial affection they ever had, exploit the old man’s worship of them shamelessly. If they visit him in the boarding-house to which he has retired, after selling his home to endow them more richly, it is solely to get from him for their pleasures the portion of his wealth he has retained for his own wants. And he never refuses them, but sells and sells, until, at last, he is reduced to lodge in the garret of the boarding-house and eat almost the refuse of the table. Around this tragic central figure are grouped the commensals of the Vauquer /pension/, Rastignac, the young law-student, with shallow purse and aristocratic connections; Bianchon, the future great-gun in medicine, at present walking the hospitals and attending lectures and practising dissections; Victorine Taillefer, the rejected daughter of a guilty millionaire; Mademoiselle Michonneau, the soured spinster, who ferrets out the identity of her fellow-boarder Vautrin, and betrays to justice this cynical outlaw installed so quietly, and, to all appearance, safely, in the /pension/, where Madame Vauquer, the traipsing widow, lords it serenely, attentive only to her profits.
Of these subsidiary characters, two, Vautrin and Rastignac, furnish a second interest in the story parallel to that of Goriot and his daughters, and constituting a foil. Under the influence of Paris surroundings and experience, Rastignac passes from his naïve illusions to a state of worldly wisdom, which he reaches all the more speedily as Vautrin is at his elbow, commenting with Mephistophelian shrewdness on his fellow-men and the society they form. Himself a man of education, who has sunk from high to low and is branded with the convict’s mark, Vautrin is yet capable of affection of a certain kind; but, in the mind and heart of the youth he would fain advantage, he is capable only of inculcating the law of tooth and claw. “A rapid fortune is the problem that fifty thousand young men are at present trying to solve who find themselves in your position,” he says to Rastignac. “You are a single one among this number. Judge of the efforts you have to make and of the desperateness of the struggle. You must devour each other like spiders in a pot, seeing there are not fifty thousand good places. Do you know how one gets on here? By the brilliance of genius or the adroitness of corruption one must enter the mass of men like a cannon-ball, or slip into it like the plague. Honesty is of no use.” Having a tempter about him of Vautrin’s calibre, strong, undauntable, as humorous as Dickens’ Jingle, but infinitely more unscrupulous and dangerous, Rastignac is gained over, in spite of his first repulsion. The nursing and burying of Pere Goriot are his last acts of charity accorded to the claims of his higher nature, and even these are sullied by his relations with one of Goriot’s daughters. Standing on the cemetery heights, and looking down towards the Seine and the Vendome column, he flings a defiance to the society spread beneath him, the society he despises but still wishes to conquer.
In this novel many social grades are gathered together, and the reciprocal actions of their representative members are rendered with effective contrast and a good deal of dramatic quickness. The chief theme, though so painful, is developed with less strain and monotony than in some other of the novelist’s works by reason of a larger application, conscious or unconscious, of Shakespeare’s practice of intermingling the humorous with the tragic. Even the comic is not entirely absent, Madame Vauquer especially supplying interludes. The novelist himself chuckled as he put into her mouth a mispronunciation of the word /tilleul/,[*] and explained to Madame Hanska, whose foreign accent in speaking French suggested it, that he chose the fat landlady so that Eve should not be jealous.
[*] English linden, or lime-tree.
Balzac’s too great absorption in his writing forced him more than once in this year to go into the country and recuperate his health. During the earlier months he spent a short time with the Carrauds at Frapesle, which was a favourite sojourn of his, and, later on, at Sache, a pleasant retreat in his native Touraine. His iron constitution was not able always to resist the demands continually made upon it; and his abuse of coffee only aggravated the evil. To Laure he acknowledged, while at Sache, that this beverage refused to excite his brain for any time longer than a fortnight; and even the fortnight was paid for by horrible cramps in the stomach, followed by fits of depression, which he suffered when suddenly deprived of his beloved drink. In his /Treatise of Modern Stimulants/ he describes its peculiar operation upon himself. “This coffee,” he says, “falls into your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army on the battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive full gallop, ensign to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent, deploying charge; the artillery of logic hurry up with their train and ammunition; the shafts of wit start up like sharp- shooters. Similes arise; the paper is covered with ink; for the struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just as a battle with powder.”
When he tells us how Doctor Minoret, Ursule Mirouet’s guardian, used to regale his friends with a cup of Moka mixed with Bourbon coffee, and roasted Martinique, which the Doctor insisted on personally preparing in a silver coffee-pot, it is his own custom that he is detailing. His Bourbon he bought only in the Rue Mont Blanc (now the Chaussee d’Antin), the Martinique, in the Rue des Vieilles Audriettes, the Moka at a grocer’s in the Rue de l’Universite. It was half a day’s journey to fetch them.
The /Tigers/ or /Lions/, of the Loge Infernale at the Opera, have already been spoken of. It was in this year that Balzac, as belonging to the Club, gave a dinner to its members, the chief guest being Rossini. Nodier, Sandeau, Bohain, and the witty Lautour-Mezeray were also present. He doubtless wore on the occasion his coat of broadcloth blue, made by his tailor-friend Buisson, with its gold buttons engraved by Gosselin, his jeweller and goldsmith. On his waistcoat of white English /pique/ twined and glittered the thousand links of the slender chain of Venice gold. Black trousers, with footstraps, showing his calves to advantage, patent-leather boots, and his wonderful stick, which inspired Madame Delphine Gay to write a book, completed the equipment.
This stick was certainly in existence in 1834, being mentioned in the correspondence with Madame Hanska during that year. Werdet, however, connects its origin with the novelist’s imprisonment, two years later, in the Hotel de Bazancourt, popularly known as the Hotel des Haricots, which was used for confining those citizens who did not comply with Louis-Philippe’s law enrolling them in the National Guard and ordering them to take their turn in night-patrol of the city. Balzac was incurably recalcitrant. Nothing would induce him to encase himself in the uniform and serve; and, whenever the soldiers came for him, he bribed them to let him alone. Finally, these bribes failed of their effect, and an arrest-warrant was issued against him. In his ordinary correspondence two experiences of his being in durance vile at the Hotel des Haricots are mentioned, one in March 1835, another in August 1836. The latter of these is differently dated in the /Letters to the Stranger/, the end of April being given, unless, indeed, there were two confinements close together, which is hardly probable. What is most likely is, that Werdet has confused two things, the story of the lock of hair, properly belonging to 1836, and the making of the stick, which belongs to 1834. Here is his narration:–
The publisher one day received a note requesting him to go at once to the prison and to take with him some money. He went with two hundred francs, and found Balzac, in his Dominican’s dress, installed in a small cell on the third story, busily engaged in arranging papers. Part of the money brought was utilized to order a succulent dinner, which Werdet stayed and shared in the smoky refectory below. Both prisoner and visitor were very merry until the door opened and Eugene Sue, the popular novelist, entered, himself also a victim of the conscription law. Invited to join in the meal, Sue declined, saying that his valet and his servant were shortly to bring him his dinner. This repulse damped Balzac’s spirits until the arrival of a third victim, the Count de Lostange, chief editor of the /Quotidienne/, who sat down willingly to table. Then Balzac forgot Sue’s rudeness, and the mirth was resumed. Notwithstanding the efforts of the novelist’s influential friends, the Count de Lobau, who was responsible for the arrest, showed himself inexorable, and a second day was spent in captivity, which Werdet came again towards evening to enliven. A whole pile of perfumed epistles sent by feminine sympathizers was lying on the table, and the publisher had to open them and read them aloud to his companion. When a third day’s confinement was decided on by the authorities, Werdet arranged to celebrate it by a dinner that should merit being put on record. He therefore secured the presence of some intimates of the novelist, among them being Gustave Planche and Alphonse Karr; and at 5 P.M., eight people were assembled in the cell, with Auguste, Balzac’s valet, to serve them. The restaurant-keeper Chevet’s menu of exquisite dishes was suitably moistened with excellent champagne sent by a Countess, and, when the feast was in full progress, Balzac took a scented parcel from among his presents and asked permission to open it. The authorization being granted, he undid the parcel, and disclosed a mass of long, fair, silky hair threaded into a gold ring that was set with an emerald. On the gift was an inscription in English: /From an unknown friend/. A great discussion ensued. One irreverent speaker opined that the thing was a hoax, and that the hair had come from a wig-maker’s; but his blasphemy was shouted down. Another proposed that Balzac should cut off his own long, flat locks (it was in 1834 that he began to let them grow) and should send them addressed to the Unknown Fair One. Poste Restante. But this suggestion, too, was not approved. The locks were proclaimed to be national property, and to be cut off only by the passing of a special law. Next, the ring was discussed; and here it was that Balzac, struck with a brilliant idea, announced his intention of ordering Gosselin, the goldsmith, to manufacture a marvellous hollow stick-knob in which a lock of the blond hair should be inserted, and all over the top of the knob were to be fixed diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, topazes, rubies, chosen out of the many he had had given him by his rich lady-enthusiasts. On the morrow, he was released, after spending, during the few days he had been locked up, five hundred and seventy francs in refreshment for himself and visitors.
CHAPTER VII
LETTERS TO “THE STRANGER,” 1835, 1836
The Rue des Batailles, whither Balzac removed his household goods in 1834, was one of those old landmarks of Paris which have disappeared in the opening up and beautifying of the city. Commencing at the fortifications, it penetrated inwards along the waste ground of the Trocadero, and crossed the Rue Chaillot at a point which has since become the Place d’Iena. Its direction from there was very nearly the same as that of the present Avenue d’Iena. No. 12, where Balzac had his flat, probably occupied the site whereon now stands the mansion of Prince Roland Bonaparte. From its windows a good view was obtained of the Seine, the Champ de Mars, the Ecole Militaire, and the Dome of the Invalides.
As a matter of fact, the house of the Rue des Batailles was for a time a supplementary dwelling rented by the novelist, so Werdet says, as a hiding-place from the myrmidons of the law. The flat in the Rue Cassini was retained, and its furniture also; and an arrangement was made with the landlord by which a notice-board hung continually on the door, with the words: “This apartment to let.” In reality the tenant often sojourned there still, and his cook stayed on the premises to look after them, and serve her master with meals, whenever he wished to work in his old study without being disturbed. At the Rue des Batailles he lived under the pseudonym of Widow Brunet, so that temporarily the sergeant-major of the National Guard was outwitted.
The second flat, when he took it, was composed of five small rooms; but an army of workmen was summoned; and what with the pulling down of partitions and their reconstruction on a more commodious plan, the place was metamorphosed into four luxuriously furnished chambers, the study being fitted up as a sort of boudoir. One of its walls was a graceful curve against which rested a large, real Turkish divan in white cashmere, its drapery being caught and held with lozenge-shaped bows of black and flame-coloured silk. The opposite wall formed a straight line broken only by a white marble chimney-piece pinked out in gold. The entire room was hung in red stuff as a background, and this was covered with fluted Indian muslin, having a top and bottom beading of flame-coloured stuff ornamented with elegant black arabesques. Under the muslin the red assumed a rose tint, which later was repeated in the window curtains of muslin lined with taffety, and fringed in black and red. Six silver sconces, each supporting two candles, projected from the wall above the divan, to light those sitting or lying there. From the dazzlingly white ceiling was suspended an unpolished silver-gilt lustre; and the cornice round it was in gold. The carpets of curious designs were like Eastern shawls; the furniture was lavishly upholstered. The time-piece and candelabra were of white marble incrusted with gold; and cashmere covered the single table, while several flower-stands filled up the corners, with their roses and other blooms. This study, which Balzac himself has left us a description of in his novel /The Girl with the Golden Eyes/, was soon abandoned as a workroom for another more simple and austere, up under the roof. The latter, however, he likewise began, being tormented by the desire of change, to adorn almost as fantastically.
Throughout the time that Werdet continued to be Balzac’s publisher, and up to the end of 1836, when their active business relations ceased, it is difficult to be quite accurate in speaking of their relations and the things spoken of by both in which they were mutually concerned. There is frequent discordance in their narration of the same event, and one is often embarrassed in trying to reconcile them. On the one hand, it is certain that Balzac was not always exact in his statements; on the other, Werdet’s memory, in the seventies, when he wrote his /Portrait Intime/ of the novelist, was as certainly now and again treacherous. An example of such discrepancy is furnished by the information given concerning /Seraphita/, which Werdet says he bought from Buloz at the end of 1834, and for which he had to wait till December 1835. He even makes it a reproach that the novelist, after being extracted from a dilemma, should have dealt with him so cavalierly. Now, from documents published by the Viscount de Lovenjoul, there must be a mistake in Werdet’s dates. During the year of 1835, the /Revue de Paris/ published, after long delay, some further chapters of /Seraphita/; and not until the end of November in this same twelvemonth was the treaty signed which rendered Werdet possessor of the book.
/Seraphita/, or /Seraphitus/–the name is designedly spelt both ways in different parts of the book–is an attempt on the novelist’s part to represent in fiction the dual sex of the soul. The scene is laid in the fiords of Norway. There, in a village, we meet with a person of mysterious nature who is loved simultaneously by a man and a woman, and who is regarded by each as being of the opposite sex. By whiles this hermaphrodite seems to respond to the affection of each admirer, and by whiles to withdraw on to a higher plane of existence whither their mortality hinders them from following. To the old pastor of the village, /Seraphita-Seraphitus/ talks with assurance of the essence of phenomena and the invisible world, but, forsooth, only to initiate the shades that visit spiritualistic /seances/, and to say what is either obscure verbiage, or a hash-up of philosophies often digested without much sustenance derived from them. In the end, this dual personage vanishes from our mundane atmosphere, translated bodily to heaven; and leaves his or her lovers to repair their loss–just like a forlorn widow or widower–by making a match based on rules of conduct laid down by the departed one.
/Seraphita/ was Balzac’s pocket Catholicism. He had another Catholicism, entirely orthodox, for the use of the public at large. Esoterically understood, his novel teaches a doctrine of mysticism, intuitionalism, and materialism combined. Plotinus, the Manicheans, and Swendenborg are borrowed from without reserve. Ordinary reason is despised. He believes himself for the nonce inspired, like the Pope when launching bulls. “The pleasure,” he writes, “of swimming in a lake of pure water, amidst rocks, woods, and flowers, alone and fanned by the warm zephyr, would give the ignorant but a weak image of the happiness I felt when my soul was flooded with the rays of I know not what light, when I listened to the terrible and confused voices of inspiration, when from a secret source the images streamed into my palpitating brain.” On the contrary, he holds–and this does not square well with the preceding–that the soul is an ethereal fluid similar to electricity; that the brain is the matrass or bottle into which the animal transports, according to the strength of the apparatus, as much as the various organisms can absorb of this fluid, which issues thence transformed into will; that our sentiments are movements of the fluid, which proceeds from us by jerks when we are angry, and which weighs on our nerves when we are in expectation; that the current of this king of liquids, according to the pressure of thought and feeling, spreads in waves or diminishes and thins, then collects again, to gush forth in flashes. He believes also that our ideas are complete, organized beings (the theosophic notion) which live in the invisible world and influence our destinies; that, concentrated in a powerful brain, they can master the brains of other people, and traverse immense distances in the twinkling of an eye. In short, he anticipates not a little of the science of the present day, yet mixing up the true and false in his guesses by the very exuberance of his fancy. At the close, he gives us his vision of the universe: “They heard the divers parts of the Infinite forming a living melody; and, at each pause, when the accord made itself felt like a huge respiration, the worlds, drawn by this unanimous movement, inclined themselves towards the immense being who, from his impenetrable centre, sent everything forth and brought it back to himself. The light engendered melody, the melody engendered light; the colours were light and melody, the movement was number endowed with speech; in fine, all was at once sonorous, diaphanous, mobile; so that, all things interpenetrating each other, distance was without obstacles, and might be traversed by the angels throughout the depths of the infinite. There was the fete. Myriads of angels all hastened in like flight, without confusion, all similar, yet all dissimilar, simple as the field-rose, vast as worlds. They were neither seen to come nor go. On a sudden, they studded the infinite with their presence, just as the stars shine in the indiscernible ether.”
The fundamental error of /Seraphita/ is its hybridity, not to speak of its pretentious psychology. It is neither flesh nor fowl; and, exception made for some fine passages, more at the beginning than in the rest of the book, it jars and irks, and amazes, but does not captivate or persuade.
It had a great success when it came out in book form. People were