Balzac

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

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/.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21