Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings - Mary F. Sandars
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Balzac does not appear to have made any objection to these
arrangements, though his legal studies cannot have been congenial to
him; but they were only spoken of at this time as a finish to his
education--old M. de Balzac, _homme de loi_ himself, remarking that no
man's education can be complete without a knowledge of ancient and
modern legislation, and an acquaintance with the statutes of his own
country. Perhaps Honore, wiser now than in his school-days, had learnt
that all knowledge is equipment for a literary life. He certainly made
good use of his time, and the results can be seen in many of his
works, notably in the "Tenebreuse Affaire," which contains in the
account of the famous trial a masterly exposition of the legislature
of the First Empire, or in "Cesar Birotteau," which shows such
thorough knowledge of the laws of bankruptcy of the time that its
complicated plot cannot be thoroughly understood by any one unversed
in legal matters.
Honore was very well occupied at this time, and his mother must have
felt for once thoroughly satisfied with him. In addition to his study
of law, he had to follow the course of lectures at the Sorbonne and at
the College of France; and these studies were a delightful excuse for
a very fitful occupation of his seat in the lawyer's office. Besides
his multifarious occupations, he managed in the evening to find time
to play cards with his grandmother, who lived with her daughter and
son-in-law. The gentle old lady spoilt Honore, his mother considered,
and would allow him to win money from her, which he joyfully expended
on books. His sister, who tells us this, says, "He always loved those
game in memory of her; and the recollection of her sayings and of her
gestures used to come to him like a happiness which, as he said, he
wrested from a tomb."
Other recollections of this time were not so pleasant. Honore wished
to shine in society. No doubt the two "immense and sole desires--to be
famous and to be loved"--which haunted him continually, till he at
last obtained them at the cost of his life, were already at work
within him, and he longed for the tender glances of some charming
_demoiselle_. At any rate he took dancing-lessons, and prepared
himself to enter with grace into ladies' society. Here, however, a
terrible humiliation awaited him. After all his care and pains, he
slipped and fell in the ball-room, and his mortification at the smiles
of the women round was so great that he never danced again, but looked
on henceforward with cynicism which he expresses in the "Peau de
Chagrin." That wonderful book, side by side with its philosophical
teaching, gives a graphic picture of one side of Balzac's restless,
feverish youth, as "Louis Lambert" does of his repressed childhood.
Neither Louis Lambert nor the morbid and selfish Raphael give,
however, the slightest indication of Balzac's most salient
characteristic both as boy and youth--the healthy _joie de vivre_, the
gaiety and exuberant merriment, of which his contemporaries speak
constantly, and which shone out undimmed even by the wretched health
and terrible worries of the last few years of his life. In his books,
the bitter and melancholy side of things reigns almost exclusively,
and Balzac, using Raphael as his mouthpiece, says: "Women one and all
have condemned me. With tears and mortification I bowed before the
decision of the world; but my distress was not barren. I determined to
revenge myself on society; I would dominate the feminine intellect,
and so have the feminine soul at my mercy; all eyes should be fixed
upon me, when the servant at the door announced my name. I had
determined from my childhood that I would be a great man. I said with
Andre Chenier, as I struck my forehead, 'There is something underneath
that!' I felt, I believed the thought within me that I must express,
the system I must establish, the knowledge I must interpret." In
another place in the same book the bitterness of his social failure
again peeps out: "The incomprehensible bent of women's minds appears
to lead them to see nothing but the weak points in a clever man and
the strong points of a fool."
Reading these words, we can imagine poor Honore, a proud,
supersensitive boy, leaning against the wall in the ball-room, and
watching enviously while agreeable nonentities basked in the smiles he
yearned for. It was a hard lot to feel within him the intuitive
knowledge of his genius; to hear the insistent voice of his vocation
calling him not to be as ordinary men, but to give his message to the
world; and yet to have the miserable consciousness that no one
believed in his talents, and that there was a huge discrepancy between
his ambition and his actual attainments.
In 1820 Honore attained his majority and finished his legal studies.
Unfortunately the pecuniary misfortunes which were to haunt all this
generation of the Balzac family were beginning--as old M. de Balzac
had lost money in two speculations, and now at the age of seventy-four
was put on the retired list, a change which meant a considerable
diminution of income. He therefore explained to his son--Madame
Surville tells us--that M. Passez, to whom he had formerly been of
service, had in gratitude offered to take Honore into his office, and
at the end of a few years would leave him his business, when, with the
additional arrangement of a rich marriage, a prosperous future would
be assured to him. Old M. de Balzac did not specify the nature of the
service which was to meet with so rich a reward; and as he was a
gentleman with a distinct liking for talking of his own doings, we may
amuse ourselves by supposing that it had to do with those Red
Republican days which he was not fond of recalling.
Great was Honore's consternation at this news. In the first place,
owing to M. de Balzac's constant vapourings about the enormous wealth
he would leave to his children, it is doubtful whether Honore, who was
probably not admitted to his parents' confidence, had realised up to
this time that he would have to earn his own living. Then, if it
_were_ necessary for him to work for his bread, he now knew enough of
the routine of a lawyer's office to look with horror on the prospect
of drawing up wills, deeds of sale, and marriage settlements for the
rest of his life. He never forgave the legal profession the shock and
the terror he experienced at this time, and his portraits of lawyers,
with some notable exceptions, are marked by decided animus. For
instance, in "Les Francais peints par eux-memes," edited by Cunmer,
the notary, as described by Balzac, has a flat, expressionless face
and wears a mask of bland silliness; and in "Pamela Giraud" one of the
characters remarks, "A lawyer who talks to himself--that reminds me of
a pastrycook who eats his own cakes." It was rather unfair to decry
all lawyers, because of the deadly fear he felt at the prospect of
being forced into their ranks, as there is little doubt that he would
have shrunk with like abhorrence from any business proposed to him.
His childish longing for fame had developed and taken shape, and for
him, if he lacked genius, there was no alternative but the dragging
out of a worthless and wearying existence. Conscious of his powers, it
was a time of struggle, of passionate endeavour, possibly of
bewilderment; with the one great determination standing firm in the
midst of a chaos of doubt and difficulty--the determination to
persevere, and to become a writer at any cost.
He therefore, to his father's consternation, announced his objection
to following a legal career, and begged to be allowed an opportunity
of proving his literary powers. Thereupon there were lively
discussions in the family; but at last the kindly M. de Balzac,
apparently against his wife's wishes, yielded to his son's earnest
entreaties, and allowed him two years in which to try his fortune as a
writer. The friends of the family were loud in their exclamations of
disapproval at the folly of this proceeding, which would, they said,
waste two of the best years of Honore's life. As far as they could
see, he possessed no genius; and even if he _were_ to succeed in a
literary career, he would certainly not gain a fortune, which after
all was the principal thing to be considered. However, either the
strenuousness and force of Honor's arguments, or the softness of his
father's heart, prevailed in his favour; and in spite of the
opposition of the whole of his little world, he was allowed to have
his own way, and to make trial of his powers. The rest of the family
retired to Villeparisis, about sixteen miles from Paris, and he was
established in a small attic at No. 9, Rue Lesdiguieres, which was
chosen by him for its nearness to the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal, the
only public library of which the contents were unknown to him. At the
same time, appearances, always all-important in the Balzac family,
were observed, by the fiction that Honore was at Alby, on a visit to a
cousin; and in this way his literary venture was kept secret, in case
it proved unsuccessful.
Having arranged this, and asserted himself to the extent of insisting
that his son should be allowed a certain amount of freedom in choosing
his career, even if he fixed on a course which seemed suicidal, old M.
de Balzac appears to have retired from the direction of affairs, and
to have left his energetic wife to follow her own will about details.
There was no doubt in that lady's mind as to the methods to be
pursued. Her husband had been culpably weak, and had allowed himself
to be swayed by the freak of a boy who hated work and wanted an excuse
for idleness. Honore must be brought to reason, and be taught that
"the way of transgressors is hard," and that people who refuse to take
their fair share of life's labour must of necessity suffer from
deprivation of their butter, if not of their bread. Her husband was an
old man, and had lost money, and it was most exasperating that Honore
should refuse a splendid chance of securing his own future, and one
which would most probably never occur again. To a good business woman,
who did not naturally share in the boundless optimistic views of M. de
Balzac for the future, the crass folly of yielding to the wishes of a
boy who could not possibly know what was best for him, was glaringly
apparent. However, being a practical woman, when she had done her duty
in making the household--except the placid M. de Balzac--thoroughly
uncomfortable, and had most probably driven Honore almost wild with
suppressed irritation, she embarked on the plan of campaign which was
to bring the culprit back, repentant and submissive, to the lawyer's
desk.
To accomplish this as quickly as possible, it was necessary to make
him extremely uncomfortable; so having furnished his attic with the
barest necessities--a bed, a table, and a few chairs--she gave him
such a scanty allowance that he would have starved if an old woman,
_la mere Comin_, whom he termed his Iris, had not been told to go
occasionally to look after him. In spite of the gaiety of Balzac's
letters from his garret, the hardships he went through were terrible,
and in later years he could not speak of his sufferings at this time
without tears coming to his eyes. Apparently he could not even afford
to have a fire; and the attic was extremely draughty, blasts coming
from the door and window; so that in a letter to his sister he begs
her, when sending the coverlet for which he has already asked, to let
him have a _very_ old shawl, which he can wear at night. His legs,
where he feels the cold most, are wrapped in an ancient coat made by a
small tailor of Tours, who to his disgust used to alter his father's
garments to fit him, and was a dreadful bungler; but the upper half of
his body is only protected by the roof and a flannel waistcoat from
the frost, and he needs a shawl badly. He also hopes for a Dantesque
cap, the kind his mother always makes for him; and this pattern of cap
from the hands of Madame de Balzac figures in the accounts of his
attire later on in his life. It is not surprising that he has a cold,
and later on a terrible toothache; but it _is_ astonishing that, in
spite of cold, hunger, and discomfort, he preserves his gaiety, pluck,
and power of making light of hardships, traits of character which were
to be strikingly salient all through his hard, fatiguing career. In
spite of the misery of his surroundings, he had many compensations. He
had gained the wish of his heart, life was before him, beautiful
dreams of future fame floated in the air, and at present he had no
hateful burden of debt to weigh him down. Therefore he managed to
ignore to a great extent the physical pain and discomfort he went
through, as he ignored them all through his life, except when ill
health interfered with the accomplishment of his work.
Another characteristic which might also be amazing, did we not meet it
constantly in Balzac's life, is his longing for luxury and beauty, and
his extraordinary faculty for embarking in a perfectly business-like
way on wildly unreasonable schemes. With hardly enough money to
provide himself with scanty meals, he intends to economise, in order
to buy a piano. "The garret is not big enough to hold one," as he
casually remarks; but this fact, which, apart from the starving
process necessary in order to obtain funds, would appear to the
ordinary mind an insurmountable obstacle to the project, does not
daunt the ever-hopeful Honore.
He has taken the dimensions, he says; and if the landlord objects to
the expense of moving back the wall, he will pay the money himself,
and add it to the price of the piano. Here we recognise exactly the
same Balzac whose vagrant schemes later on were listened to by his
friends with a mixture of fascination and bewilderment, and who, in
utter despair about his pecuniary circumstances at the beginning of a
letter, talks airily towards the end of buying a costly picture, or
acquiring an estate in the country.
There is a curious and striking contrast in Balzac between the
backwardness in the expression of his literary genius, and the early
development and crystallisation of his character and powers of mind in
other directions. Even when he realised his vocation, forsook verse,
and began to write novels, he for long gave no indication of his
future powers; while, on the other hand, at the age of twenty, his
views on most points were formed, and his judgments matured.
Therefore, unlike most men, in whom, even if there be no violent
changes, age gradually and imperceptibly modifies the point of view,
Balzac, a youth in his garret, differed little in essentials from
Balzac at forty-five or fifty, a man of world-wide celebrity. He never
appears to have passed through those phases of belief and unbelief
--those wild enthusiasms, to be rejected later in life--which generally
fall to the lot of young men of talent. Perhaps his reasoning and
reflective powers were developed unusually early, so that he sowed his
mental wild oats in his boyhood. At any rate, in his garret in 1819 he
was the same Balzac that we know in later life. Large-minded and
far-seeing--except about his business concerns--he was from his youth
a _voyant_, who discerned with extraordinary acuteness the trend of
political events; and with an intense respect for authority, he was
yet independent, and essentially a strong man.
This absolute stability--a fact Balzac often comments on--is very
remarkable, especially as his was a life full of variety, during which
he was brought into contact with many influences. He studied the men
around him, and gauged their characters--though it must be allowed
that he did not make very good practical use of his knowledge; but
owing to his strength and breadth of vision, he was himself in all
essentials immovable.
The same ambitions, desires, and opinions can be traced all through
his career. The wish to enter political life, which haunted him
always, was already beginning to stir in 1819, when he wrote at the
time of the elections to a friend, M. Theodore Dablin, that he dreamt
of nothing but him and the deputies; and his last book, "L'Envers de
l'Histoire contemporaine," accentuated, if possible more than any work
that had preceded it, the extreme Royalist principles which he showed
in his garret play, the ill-fated "Cromwell."
He never swerved from the two great ambitions of his life--to be
loved, and to be famous. He was faithful in his friendships; and when
once he had found the woman whom he felt might be all in all to him,
and who possessed besides personal advantages the qualifications of
birth and money--for which he had always craved--no difficulties were
allowed to stand in the way, and no length of weary waiting could tire
out his patience. He was constant even to his failures. He began his
literary career by writing a play, and all through his life the idea
of making his fortune by means of a successful drama recurred to him
constantly. Several times he went through that most trying of
experiences, a failure which only just missed being a brilliant
success, and once this affected him so much that he became seriously
ill; but, with his usual spirit and courage, he tried again and again.
His friend Theophile Gautier, writing of him in _La Presse_ of
September 30th, 1843, after the failure of "Pamela Giraud," said truly
that Balzac intended to go on writing plays, even if he had to get
through a hundred acts before he could find his proper form.
One part of Balzac never grew up--he was all his life the "child-man"
his sister calls him. After nights without sleep he would come out of
his solitude with laughter, joy, and excitement to show a new
masterpiece; and this was always more wonderful than anything which
had preceded it. He was more of a child than his nieces, Madame
Surville tells us: "laughed at puns, envied the lucky being who had
the 'gift' of making them, tried to do so himself, and failed, saying
regretfully, 'No, that doesn't make a pun.' He used to cite with
satisfaction the only two he had ever made, 'and not much of a success
either,' he avowed in all humility, 'for I didn't know I was making
them,' and we even suspected him of embellishing them afterwards."[*]
He was delightfully simple, even to the end of his life. In 1849 he
wrote from Russia, where he was confined to his room with illness, to
describe minutely a beautiful new dressing-gown in which he marched
about the room like a sultan, and was possessed with one of those
delightful joys which we only have at eighteen. "I am writing to you
now in my termolana,"[+] he adds for the satisfaction of his
correspondent.
[*] "Balzac, sa Vie et ses Oeuvres, d'apres sa Correspondance," by
Madame L. Surville (nee de Balzac).
[+] "H. de Balzac--Correspondance," vol. ii. P. 418.
We must now return to Honore in his attic, where, as in later years,
he drank much coffee, and was unable to resist the passion for fruit
which was always his one gourmandise. He records one day that he has
eaten two melons, and must pay for the extravagance with a diet of dry
bread and nuts, but contemplates further starvation to pay for a seat
to see Talma in "Cinna."
He writes to his sister: "I feel to-day that riches do not make
happiness, and that the time I shall pass here will be to me a source
of pleasant memories. To live according to my fancy; to work as I wish
and in my own way; to do nothing if I wish it; to dream of a beautiful
future; to think of you and to know you are happy; to have as ladylove
the Julie of Rousseau; to have La Fontaine and Moliere as friends,
Racine for a master, and Pere-Lachaise to walk to,--oh! if it would
only last always."[*]
[*] "Correspondance," vol. i.
Pere-Lachaise was a favourite resort when he was not working very
hard; and it was from there that he obtained his finest inspirations,
and decided that, of all the feelings of the soul, sorrow is the most
difficult to express, because of its simplicity. Curiously enough, he
abandoned the Jardin des Plantes because he thought it melancholy, and
apparently found his reflections among the tombs more cheerful. He
decided that the only beautiful epitaphs are single names--such as La
Fontaine, Massena, Moliere, "which tell all, and make one dream."
When he returned home to his garret, fresh interests awaited him.
Sometimes, he tells us in the "Peau de Chagrin," he would "study the
mosses, with their colours revived by showers, or transformed by the
sun into a brown velvet that fitfully caught the light. Such things as
these formed my recreations: the passing poetic moods of daylight, the
melancholy mists, sudden gleams of sunlight, the silence and the magic
of night, the mysteries of dawn, the smoke-wreaths from each chimney;
every chance event, in fact, in my curious world became familiar to
me."
Occasionally on Sundays he would go to a friend's house, ostensibly to
play cards--a pastime which he hated. He generally, however, managed
to escape from the eye of his hostess; and comfortably ensconced in a
window behind thick curtains, or hidden behind a high armchair, he
would pour into the ear of a congenial companion some of the thoughts
which surged through his impetuous brain. All his life he needed this
outlet after concentrated mental labour; and sometimes in a friend's
drawing-room, if he knew himself to be surrounded only by intimates,
he would give full vent to his conversational powers. On these
occasions he would carry his hearers away with him, often against
their better judgment, by his eloquence and verve; would send them
into fits of hearty laughter by his sallies; his store of droll
anecdotes, his jollity and gaiety; and would display his consummate
gifts as a dramatic raconteur. Later in life, after he had raised the
enmity of a large section of the writing world, and knew that there
were many watching eagerly to immortalise in print--with gay malice
and wit on the surface, and bitter spite and hatred below--the
heedless and possibly arrogant words their enemy had uttered in
moments of excitement and expansion, he grew cautious; and sometimes
because of this, and sometimes because he was collecting material for
his work, he would often be silent in general society. To the end,
however, he loved a tete-a-tete with a sympathetic listener--one, it
must be conceded, who would be content, except for the occasional
comment, to remain himself in the background, as the great man wanted
a safety-valve for his own impetuous thoughts, and did not generally
care to hear the paler, less interesting impressions of his companion.
With what longing, in the midst of his harassing life in Paris, he
would look back to the charming long fireside chats he had had with
Madame Hanska; and as the time to meet her again came nearer, with
what satisfaction special tit-bits of gossip were reserved to be
talked over and explained during the long evenings at Wierzchownia!
How he loved to rush in to his sister with the latest news of the
personages of his novels, as well as with brilliant plans to improve
his general prospects; and with what enthusiasm he poured out to
Theophile Gautier, or even to Leon Gozlan, his confidences of all
sorts! Plans, absurd and impossible, but worked out with a
business-like arrangement of detail which, when mingled with
somnambulists and magnetisers, had a weird yet apparently fascinating
effect on his hearers; magnificent diatribes against the wickedness of
his special enemies, journalists, editors, and the Press in general;
strange fancies to do with the world where Eugenie Grandet or Le Pere
Goriot had their dwelling,--all these ideas, opinions, and feelings
came from his lips with an eloquence, a force, and a life which were
all convincing. Yet by a strange anomaly, which is sometimes seen in
talkative and apparently unreserved people, Balzac in reality revealed
very little of himself--in fact, we may often suspect him of using a
flow of apparently spontaneous words as a screen to mask some hidden
feeling. Therefore, when people who had considered themselves his
intimate friends tried to write about him after his death, they found
that they really knew little of the essentials of the man, and could
only string together amusing anecdotes, proving him to have been
eccentric, amusing, and essentially _bon camarade_, but giving little
idea of his real personality and genius.
Even in these early days at the card-parties--where sometimes the
hostess noticed the defection of the two young guests, and, holding a
card in each delicate hand, would beckon them to take their place at
the game, which they would do with humble and discomfited faces, like
schoolboys surprised at a forbidden amusement--M. de Petigny, Balzac's
companion, must have been struck by his openness in some respects and
the absolute mystery with which he surrounded himself in others. Where
he lived, what he was doing, what his life was like--all these facts
were hidden from his companion, till he revealed himself at last, on
the verge of his hoped-for triumph. But, on the other hand, the
sentiments and impressions of which M. de Petigny read afterwards in
Balzac's books seemed to him only a pale, distant echo of the rich and
vivid expressions which fell from his lips in these intimate talks.
Magnetism, in which he had a strong faith all his life, was exercising
his thoughts greatly. It was "the irresistible ascendency of mind over
matter, of a strong and immovable will over a soul open to all
impressions."[*] Before long he would have mastered its secrets, and
would be able to compel every man to obey him and every woman to love
him. He had already, he announced, begun to occupy his fixed position
in life, and was on the threshold of a millennium.