Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings - Mary F. Sandars
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[*] "Balzac en Pantoufles," by Leon Gozlan.
Balzac, deprived of Lassailly's valuable assistance, worked on alone;
and at first everything seemed likely to go well with "L'Ecole des
Menages."[*] The Renaissance, a new theatre which had opened on
November 8th, 1838, with the first representation of Victor Hugo's
"Ruy Blas," seemed willing to take Balzac's play to follow this; and
M. Armand Pereme, a distinguished antiquary whom Balzac had met at
Frapesle, was most active in conducting the negotiations. However, in
the end the Renaissance refused the drama. Balzac was terribly
dilatory, and irritated every one by not keeping his engagements, and
he was also high-handed about the arrangements he considered necessary
to the success of his tragedy. His unfortunate monetary
embarrassments, too, made it necessary for him to ask for 16,000
francs before the play was written, a request which the Renaissance
Theatre was rather slow in granting. However, the real reason for the
rejection of the drama, which took place on February 26th, 1839--just
at the time when Balzac was in despair because the wall at Les Jardies
had fallen down--was want of money on the part of the managers of the
theatre. The only thing that could save the Renaissance from ruin was
a great success; and Alexandre Dumas, with whom the directors had
formerly quarrelled, had now made peace with them, and had offered
them "L'Alchimiste," which would be certain to attract large
audiences. They accepted this in place of Balzac's play, and "L'Ecole
des Menages," of which the only copy extant is in the possession of
the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, has never been acted.
[*] See "L'Ecole des Menages" in "Autour de Honore de Balzac," by the
Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul.
Balzac was in terrible trouble about the rejection of the drama from
which he had hoped so much. He wrote to Madame Carraud[*] in March,
1839: "I have broken down like a foundered horse. I shall certainly
require rest at Frapesle. The Renaissance had promised me 6,000 francs
bounty to write a piece in five acts; Pereme was the agent, everything
was arranged. As I wanted 6,000 francs at the end of February, I set
to work. I spent sixteen nights and sixteen days at it, only sleeping
three hours out of the twenty-four; I employed twenty workmen at the
printer's office, and I managed to write, make and compose the five
acts of 'L'Ecole des Menages' in time to read it on February 25th. The
directors had no money, or perhaps Dumas, who had not acted fairly to
them, and with whom they were angry, had returned to them; they would
not hear my piece, and refused it. So here I am, worn out with work,
sixteen days lost, 6,000 francs to pay, and nothing! This blow has
crushed me, I have not yet recovered from it. My career at the theatre
will have the same course as my literary career, my first work will be
refused. A superhuman courage is necessary for these terrible
hurricanes of misfortune."
[*] "Correspondance," vol. i. p. 454.
In the midst of his troubles, he thought with bitter regret of Madame
de Berny, who would have understood everything, and have known how to
help and console him. He was in a miserable state, was chased like a
hare by creditors, and was on the point of lacking bread, candles, and
paper. Then to add to his misery would come a sensible letter from the
far-distant Madame Hanska, blaming his frivolity and levity; and, in
his state of semi-starvation, poor Balzac would be almost driven
frantic by words of reproach from his divinity.
A little earlier than this he had found time for an enormous amount of
work which would seem completely out of his province, and had written
letter after letter in the _Siecle_, and spent 10,000 francs, in
defence of Peytel, a notary of Belley, who had been condemned to death
on August 26th, 1839, for the murder of his wife and servant. Peytel
appealed against his sentence, and Balzac, who had met him several
times, espoused his cause with vehemence. There did not seem to be
much satisfactory defence available for the prisoner, who admitted the
fact that while driving in a carriage not far from Belley, he had shot
both his wife and the coachman. Balzac, however, was urgent in
upholding Peytel's contention that his crime had been homicide, not
murder, and brought forward the plea of "no premeditation." His
energetic efforts were of no avail: Peytel was executed at Bourg on
November 28th, 1839, and Balzac, who had espoused his cause with
quixotic enthusiasm, was genuinely sorry. He wrote to Madame Hanska in
September: "I am extremely agitated by a horrible case, the case of
Peytel. I have seen this poor fellow three times. He is condemned; I
start in two hours for Bourg." On November 30th he continues: "You
will perhaps have heard that after two months of unheard-of efforts to
save him from his punishment Peytel went two days ago to the scaffold,
like a Christian, said the priest; I say, like an innocent man."[*]
[*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."
Another disappointment this year was the fact that Balzac considered
it his duty, after presenting himself as candidate for the Academie
and paying many of the prescribed visits, to retire in favour of
Victor Hugo. As early as 1833 he had aspired to become some day "un
des Quarante," and he then said half jokingly to his sister: "When I
shall work at the dictionary of the Academy!"[*] He was never destined
to receive the honour of admittance to this august body, though after
his first attempt in 1839, when he himself withdrew, he again tried
his fortune in 1843 and in 1849. His normal condition of monetary
embarrassment was one reason for his failure, and no doubt some of the
members of l'Academie Francaise disapproved of certain of his books,
and perhaps did not admire his style. At any rate, as his enemy
Saint-Beuve expressed it concisely: "M. de Balzac est trop gros pour
nos fauteuils," and while men who are now absolutely unknown entered
the sacred precincts without difficulty, the door remained permanently
closed to the greatest novelist of the age.
[*] "Balzac, sa Vie et ses Oeuvres," par Mme. L. Surville (nee de
Balzac).
CHAPTER XII
1840 - 1843
"Vautrin"--_La Revue Parisienne_--Societe des Gens-de-Lettres
--Balzac leaves Les Jardies, and goes to the Rue Basse, Passy
--Death of M. de Hanski--"Les Ressources de Quinola"--"La
Comedie Humaine"--Balzac goes to St. Petersburg to meet Madame
Hanska--Her reasons for deferring the marriage.
The sad fate of "L'Ecole des Menages" did not long discourage Balzac.
At the beginning of 1840 he made an engagement to provide Harel, the
speculative manager of the Theatre Porte-St-Martin, with a drama. The
play was accepted before it was written; and in order to be near the
theatre Balzac established himself in the fifth floor of the house of
Buisson, his tailor, at the corner of the Rue Richelieu. His
proceedings were, as usual, eccentric. One day Gautier, who tells the
story, was summoned in a great hurry, and found his friend clad in his
monk's habit, walking up and down his elegant attic, and shivering
with impatience.
"'Here is Theo at last,' he cried, when he saw me. 'You idler! dawdle!
sloth! gee up, do make haste! You ought to have been here an hour ago!
To-morrow I am going to read to Harel a grand drama in five acts.'
"'And you want my advice,' I answered, settling myself comfortably in
an armchair, ready to submit to a long reading.
"From my attitude Balzac guessed my thought, and said simply, 'The
drama is not written.'
"'Good heavens!' said I: 'well, then you must put off the reading for
six weeks.'
"'No, we must hurry on the drama to get the money. In a short time I
have a large sum of money to pay.'
"'To-morrow is impossible; there is no time to copy it.'
"'This is the way I have arranged things. You will write one act,
Ourliac another, Laurent-Jan the third, De Belloy the fourth, I the
fifth, and I shall read it at twelve o'clock as arranged. One act of a
drama is only four or five hundred lines; one can do five hundred
lines of dialogue in a day and the night following.'
"'Relate the subject to me, explain the plot, sketch out the
characters in a few words, and I will set to work,' I said, rather
frightened.
"'Ah,' he cried, with superb impatience and magnificent disdain, 'if I
have to relate the subject to you, we shall never have finished!'"[*]
[*] "Portraits Contemporains--Honore de Balzac," by Theophile Gautier.
After a great deal of trouble, Gautier managed to persuade Balzac to
give him a slight idea of the plot, and began a scene, of which only a
few words remain in the finished work. Of all Balzac's expected
collaborators, Laurent-Jan, to whom "Vautrin" is dedicated, was the
only person who worked seriously.
In two months and a half of rehearsals Balzac became almost
unrecognisable from worry and overwork. His perplexities became public
property, and people used to wait at the door of the theatre to see
him rush out, dressed in a huge blue coat, a white waistcoat, brown
trousers, and enormous shoes with the leather tongues outside, instead
of inside, his trousers. Everything he wore was many sizes too big for
him, and covered with mud from the Boulevards; and it was an amusement
to the frivolous Parisians to see him stride along in these peculiar
garments, his face bearing the impress of the trouble and overstrain
he was enduring. He was at the mercy of every one. The manager hurried
and harried him, because the only hope of saving the theatre from
bankruptcy was the immediate production of a successful play. The
actors, knowing the piece was not finished, each clamoured for a part
to suit his or her peculiar idiosyncrasies, and Balzac was so
overburdened, that occasionally in despair he was tempted to abandon
his play altogether.
There was tremendous excitement in Paris about the approaching first
representation of "Vautrin"; and foreign politics, banquets, and even
the burning question of reform, paled in interest before the great
event. All the seats were sold beforehand; and as there was a rush for
the tickets, Balzac and Harel chose their audience, and thought that
they had managed to secure one friendly to Balzac. Unfortunately,
however, the seats were sold so early that many of them were parted
with at a profit by the first buyers, and in the end a large
proportion of the spectators were avowedly hostile to Balzac. March
14th, 1840, was the important date, and Balzac wrote to Madame Hanska:
"I have gone through many miseries, and if I have a success they will
be completely over. Imagine what my anxiety will be during the evening
when 'Vautrin' is being acted. In five hours' time it will be decided
whether I pay or do not pay my debts."[*]
[*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."
He was very nervous beforehand, and told Leon Gozlan that he was
afraid there would be a terrible disaster.
The plot of the play is extraordinary and impossible. Vautrin, the
Napoleon among convicts, who appears in several of Balzac's novels, is
the hero; he had declared war against society, and the scene of the
drama, with Vautrin as the principal figure, passes in the
aristocratic precincts of the Faubourg St. Germain. The theatre was
crowded for the performance, and the first three acts, though received
coldly, went off without interruption. At the fourth act, however, the
storm burst, as Frederick Lemaitre, who evidently felt qualms about
the success of his part, had determined to make it comic, and appeared
in the strange costume of a Mexican general, with a hat trimmed with
white feathers, surmounted by a bird of paradise. Worse still, when he
took off this hat he showed a wig in the form of a pyramid, a coiffure
which was the special prerogative of Louis Philippe! The play was
doomed. The Duke of Orleans, who was in one of the boxes, left the
theatre hurriedly; and it was difficult to finish the performance, so
loud were the shouts, hisses, and even threats. The next day the
following official announcement appeared in the _Moniteur_: "The
Minister of the Interior has interdicted the appearance of the drama
performed yesterday at the Theatre of the Porte St. Martin under the
title of 'Vautrin.'" Balzac's hated foes, the journalists, of course
rejoiced in his downfall, and accentuated the situation by declaring
the piece to be not only disloyal, but revoltingly immoral. On the
other hand, Victor Hugo, George Sand, and Mme. de Girardin, stood
firmly by him, and Frederick Lemaitre, to whom Balzac evidently bore
no malice for his large share in the disaster, was, he said,
"sublime."
Leon Gozlan went to see Balzac the day after the performance, and
found him outwardly calm, but his face was flushed, his hands burning,
and his lips swollen, as though he had passed through a night of
fever. He did not mention the scene of the night before, but talked
eagerly of a plan to start a large dairy at Les Jardies, and to
provide Paris and Versailles with rich milk. He had several other
equally brilliant schemes on hand: he intended to grow vines,
cultivate vegetables, sell manure; and by these varied means to assure
himself of an income of eighteen thousand francs.
The Director of the Beaux-Arts was sent to offer Balzac money to make
up for his loss; he says, however: "They came to offer me an
indemnity, and began by proposing five thousand francs. I blushed to
my hair, and answered that I did not accept charity, that I had put
myself two hundred thousand francs in debt by writing twelve or
fifteen masterpieces, which would count for something in the glory of
France in the nineteenth century; that for three months I had done
nothing but rehearse 'Vautrin,' and that during those three months I
should otherwise have gained twenty-five thousand francs; that a pack
of creditors were after me, but that from the moment that I could not
satisfy all, it was quite indifferent to me whether I were tracked by
fifty or by a hundred, as the amount of courage required for
resistance was the same. The Director of the Beaux-Arts, Cave, went
out, they tell me, full of esteem and admiration. 'This,' said he, 'is
the first time that I have been refused.' 'So much the worse,' I
answered."[*]
[*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."
Balzac became very ill with fever and brain neuralgia the day after
the performance of "Vautrin," and Madame Surville took him to her
house and nursed him. When he left his bed it was, of course to find
his affairs in a worse condition than ever, and he was, as he
described himself, "a stag at bay." His friendship with Madame
Visconti was a consolation to him in his troubles; he described her to
Madame Hanska, who did not quite appreciate these raptures, as "one of
the most amiable of women, of infinite and exquisite goodness. Of
delicate, elegant beauty, she helps me to support life." Nevertheless,
no friendships made up for the want of a wife, and home, the two
things for which he yearned; and he writes sadly: "I have much need
now of having my wounds tended and cured, and of being able to live
without cares at Les Jardies, and to pass my days quietly between work
and a wife. But it seems as if the story of every man will only be a
novel to me."[*]
[*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."
His despondency did not abate his powers of work, as from April to
December he published "Z. Marcas," "Un Prince de la Boheme," and
"Pierre Grassou"; while in 1841, among other masterpieces, appeared
"La Fausse Maitresse," "Une Tenebreuse Affaire," "Un Menage de
Garcon," "Ursule Mirouet," and "Les Memoires de deux Jeunes Mariees."
He was almost at the end of his courage however, and talked seriously
in the case of failure in his new enterprise--the _Revue Parisienne_
--of going to Brazil on some mad errand which he would undertake
because it _was_ mad; and of either coming back rich or disappearing
altogether.
A monthly magazine, of which one man was to be director, manager,
editor, besides being sole contributor, was a heroic attempt at making
a fortune; and this was what Balzac contemplated, and accomplished for
a short time in the _Revue Parisienne_. His mode of working was not
calculated to lessen the strain to which he subjected himself, as,
never able to start anything till pressed for time, he left the work
till near the end of the month, when the printers were clamouring for
copy. Then there was no pause or slumber for him; his attention was
concentrated on his varied and difficult subjects till the moment when
he rushed with disordered garments to the printer's office. There,
seated anywhere--on the corner of a table, at a compositor's frame, or
before a foreman's bureau--he became completely absorbed in the
colossal labour of reading and correcting his proofs. The first number
of the _Revue Parisienne_ appeared on July 25th, 1840; but it was only
continued for three months, as Balzac decided that the task was too
much for him. During its short life however, it furnished a
magnificent and striking example of his extraordinary powers and
mental attainments; as each of the numbers was the size of a small
volume, and he provided novels, biography, philosophy, analysis, and
criticism, and treated brilliantly each subject he attacked.
A question in which Balzac took the greatest interest was that of the
rights of authors and publishers, under which Louis Philippe did not
meet with much respect. Not only did the Belgians reproduce French
works at a cheap rate by calmly dispensing with the duty of paying
their authors; but publishers in the provinces often followed this
pernicious practice, and it was difficult to prosecute them. A
striking instance of this injustice was to be found in the case of
"Paroles d'un Croyant," by M. de Lamennais, of which ten thousand
pirated copies were sold in Toulouse, where only five hundred of the
authorised edition had been sent by the publisher. No redress could be
obtained because, though the fact was certain, legal proofs were
apparently lacking; but in consequence of this glaring infraction of
the rights of both author and publisher, on December 28th, 1838,
Balzac became a member of the Societe des Gens-de-Lettres. This
Society, which was insignificant when he first joined it, owed
everything to his reputation, and to the energy with which he worked
for its interests. On October 22, 1839, he spoke at Rouen in its
behalf, in the first action brought by it against literacy piracy.
Later in the same year he was elected President, and in May, 1840,
he drew up the masterly "Code Litteraire de la Societe des
Gens-de-Lettres"[*] to which reference has already been made. On
September 5th, 1841, however, in consequence of a dispute concerning the
drawing up by the Gens-de-Lettres of a manifesto to be presented to the
deputies composing the Law Commission on Literary Property, Balzac
withdrew from the Society. The ostensible reason for his resignation
was, that at a committee meeting to discuss the Manifesto, doubts were
thrown on his impartiality; but it seems probable from his letter[+]
that some unwritten ground for complaint really caused his withdrawal.
After Balzac's death, the Society des Gens-de-Lettres acknowledged
with gratitude the debt owed him as one of the founders of the
Society, and the help received from his intelligence and activity.
[*] This may be found in the Edition Definitive of Balzac's works, or
in "Balzac Chez Lui," by Leon Gozlan.
[+] "Correspondance," vol. ii. p. 20.
In 1840, before he ceased to belong to the Societe des Gens-de-Lettres,
he had left Les Jardies; and had hidden himself under the name of
Madame de Brugnolle, his housekeeper, in a mysterious little house at
No. 19, Rue Basse, Passy; to which no one was admitted without many
precautions, even after he had given the password. Behind this was a
tiny garden where Balzac would sit in fine weather, and talk over the
fence to M. Grandmain, his landlord. In his new abode he established
many of his treasures: his bust by David d'Angers, some of the
beautiful furniture he was collecting in preparation for the home he
longed for, and many of his pictures, those treasures by Giorgione,
Greuze, and Palma, which were the delight of his heart. With great
difficulty, by publishing books and articles in quick succession, he
had prevented the sale of Les Jardies by his creditors. As he had no
money to pay cab fares this entailed rushing from Passy to Paris on
foot, often in pouring rain; with the result that he became seriously
ill, and found it necessary to recruit in Touraine and Brittany.
On June 15th, 1841, a fictitious sale for 15,500 francs was made of
Les Jardies, which had cost Balzac 100,000 francs; but he did not
really part with the villa till later, when he had decided that it
would not be suitable ultimately as a residence. To add to his
troubles, he found it necessary to take his mother to live with him,
an arrangement which gave rise to many little storms, and made writing
a difficult matter. Madame Visconti's society gave him no consolation
at this time,--he was disappointed in her; and decided that his abuse
of Englishwomen in the "Lys dans la Vallee," was perfectly justified.
Fortunately, he was now feeling tolerably cheerful about money
matters; as he had paid off the hundred thousand francs he owed from
his treaty in 1836, and hoped in fifteen months to have made
arrangements for discharging all his debts; while three publishers,
Dubochet, Furme, and Hetzel & Paulin, had undertaken to publish a
complete edition of his works with engravings. This was to be the
first appearance of the long-dreamt-of "Comedie Humaine," the great
work of Balzac's life.
However, for a time even this took secondary place, as on January 5th,
1842, a letter with a black seal arrived from Madame Hanska; and gave
the important news of the death of M. de Hanski, which had taken place
on November 10th, 1841. Balzac's letter in answer to this is pathetic
to any one cognisant of his subsequent history. He begins with
confidence:[*] "As to me, my dear adored one, although this event
enables me to reach what I have desired so ardently for nearly ten
years, I can, before you and God, say in justice, that I have never
had anything in my heart but complete submission, and that in my most
terrible moments I have not soiled my soul with evil wishes." Further
on, he tells her that nothing in him is changed; and suddenly seized
with a terrible doubt from the ambiguous tone of her letter, he cries,
in allusion to a picture of Wierzchownia which always hung in his
study: "Oh! I am perhaps very unjust, but this injustice comes from
the passion of my heart. I should have liked two words for myself in
your letter. I have hunted for them in vain--two words for the man
who, since the landscape in which you live has been before his eyes,
has never continued working for ten minutes without looking at it."
[*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."
He longs to start at once to see her, but from the tone of her letter
he gathers that he had better wait until she writes to him again, when
he begs for the assurance that her existence will henceforward belong
to him, and that no cloud will ever come between them. He is alarmed
about her anxiety on the subject of her letters. They are quite safe,
he says, kept in a box like the one in which she keeps his. "But why
this uneasiness now? Why? This is what I ask myself in terrible
anxiety!" He finishes with "Adieu, my dear and beautiful life whom I
love so much, and to whom I can now say 'Sempre medesimo.'"
Madame Hanska, in reply to this letter, objected strongly to the
breach of "les convenances" which would be committed if Balzac came to
see her early in her widowhood; and it was not till July 17th, 1843,
that he was at last permitted to meet her in St. Petersburg, and then
he had not seen her since his visit to Vienna, eight years before.
However, he was now full of happy anticipations, and it was with the
greatest enthusiasm that he looked forward to the appearance of "Les
Ressources de Quinola," which had been accepted by the Odeon, and on
which he founded the most extravagant hopes. The long night of trouble
was nearly over, and a late happiness would dawn upon him, heralded by
a brilliant success at the theatre, which would not only free him from
debt, but would also enable him to offer riches to the woman he loved.
At the first hearing of this play in the green-room of the Odeon, the
company had been rather disenchanted as we know, because, after
reading four acts admirably, Balzac was forced to improvise the
unwritten fifth, and this he did so badly that Madame Dorval, the
principal actress, refused to act. However, on the same day Lireux,
the director of the Odeon, came to the Restaurant Risbeck, where
Balzac was dining with Leon Gozlan, and said that he would accept the
play. Balzac at once insisted that for the first three representations
he must have command of the whole of the theatre, but he promised that
Lireux should share the receipts with him, and these he said would be
enormous. He also stipulated that for his three special performances
no journalists should be admitted, there being war to the knife
between him and them. As the place of Balzac's abode was being kept
strictly secret for fear of his creditors, the time of the rehearsal
each day was to be communicated to him by a messenger from the
theatre, who was told to walk in the Champs Elysees, towards the Arc
de l'Etoile. At the twentieth tree on the left, past the Circle, he
would find a man who would appear to be looking for a bird in the
branches. The messenger was to say to him, "I have it," and the man
would answer, "As you have it, what are you waiting for?" On receiving
this reply the emissary from the Odeon would hand over the paper, and
depart without looking behind him. The only comment that Lireux, who
appears to have been a practical man, made on these curious
arrangements was, that if the twentieth tree had been struck by
lightning during the night, he supposed that the servant must stop at
the twenty-first, and Balzac assented gravely to this proposition.