The longest, without exception, of Balzac's books, and one which
contains hardly any passage that is not very nearly of his best,
_Illusions Perdues_ suffers, I think, a little in point of composition
from the mixture of the Angouleme scenes of its first and third parts
with the purely Parisian interest of _Un Grand Homme de Province_. It
is hardly possible to exaggerate the gain in distinctness and lucidity
of arrangement derived from putting _Les Deux Poetes_ and _Eve et
David_ (a much better title than that which has been preferred in the
_Edition Definitive_) together in one volume, and reserving the
greatness and decadence of Lucien de Rubempre for another. It is
distinctly awkward that this should be divided, as it is itself an
enormous episode, a sort of Herodotean parenthesis, rather than an
integral part of the story. And, as a matter of fact, it joins on much
more to the _Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes_ than to its actual
companions. In fact, it is an instance of the somewhat haphazard and
arbitrary way in which the actual division of the _Comedie_ has
worked, that it should, dealing as it does wholly and solely with
Parisian life, be put in the _Scenes de la Vie de Province_, and
should be separated from its natural conclusion not merely as a matter
of volumes, but as a matter of divisions. In making the arrangement,
however, it is necessary to remember Balzac's own scheme, especially
as the connection of the three parts in other ways is too close to
permit the wrenching of them asunder altogether and finally. This
caution given, all that is necessary can be done by devoting the first
part of the introduction entirely to the first and third or Angouleme
parts, and by consecrating the latter part to the egregious Lucien by
himself.
There is a double gain in doing this, for, independently of the
connection as above referred to, Lucien has little to do except as an
opportunity for the display of virtue by his sister and David Sechard;
and the parts in which they appear are among the most interesting of
Balzac's work. The "Idyllic" charm of this marriage for love, combined
as it is with exhibitions of the author's power in more than one of
the ways in which he loved best to show it, has never escaped
attention from Balzac's most competent critics. He himself had
speculated in print and paper before David Sechard was conceived; he
himself had for all "maniacs," all men of one idea, the fraternal
enthusiasm of a fellow-victim. He could never touch a miser without a
sort of shudder of interest; and that singular fancy of his for
describing complicated legal and commercial undertakings came in too.
Nor did he spare, in this wide-ranging book, to bring in other
favorite matters of his, the _hobereau_--or squireen--aristocracy, the
tittle-tattle of the country town and so forth.
The result is a book of multifarious interest, not hampered, as some
of its fellows are, by an uncertainty on the author's part as to what
particular hare he is coursing. Part of the interest, after the
description of the printing office and of old Sechard's swindling of
his son, is a doubling, it is true, upon that of _La muse du
Departement_, and is perhaps a little less amusingly done; but it is
blended with better matters. Sixte du Chatelet is a considerable
addition to Balzac's gallery of the aristocracy in transition--of the
Bonaparte _parvenus_ whom perhaps he understood even better than the
old nobility, for they were already in his time becoming adulterated
and alloyed; or than the new folk of business and finance, for they
were but in their earliest stages. Nor is the rest of the society of
Madame de Bargeton inferior.
But the real interest both of _Les Deux Poetes_, and still more of
_Eve et David_, between which two, be it always remembered, comes in
the _Distinguished Provincial_, lies in the characters who gave their
name to the last part. In David, the man of one idea, who yet has room
for an honest love and an all-deserved friendship, Balzac could not go
wrong. David Sechard takes a place by himself among the sheep of the
_Comedie_. Some may indeed say that this phrase is unfortunate, that
Balzac's sheep have more qualities of the mutton than innocence. It is
not quite to be denied. But David is very far indeed from being a good
imbecile, like Cesar Birotteau, or a man intoxicated out of
common-sense by a passion respectable in itself, like Goriot. His
sacrifice of his mania in time is something--nay, it is very much; and
his disinterested devotion to his brother-in-law does not quite pass
the limits of sense.
But what shall we say of Eve? She is good of course, good as gold, as
Eugenie Grandet herself; and the novelist has been kind enough to
allow her to be happier. But has he quite interested us in her love
for David? Has he even persuaded us that the love existed in a form
deserving the name? Did not Eve rather take her husband to protect
him, to look after him, than either to love, honor, and obey in the
orthodox sense, or to love for love's sake only, as some still take
their husbands and wives even at the end of the nineteenth century?
This is a question which each reader must answer for himself; but few
are likely to refuse assent to the sentence, "Happy the husband who
has such a wife as Eve Chardon!"
The central part of _Illusions Perdues_, which in reason stands by
itself, and may do so ostensibly with considerably less than the
introduction explanatory which Balzac often gives to his own books, is
one of the most carefully worked out and diversely important of his
novels. It should, of course, be read before _Splendeurs et Miseres
des Courtisanes_, which is avowedly its second part, a small piece of
_Eve et David_ serving as the link between them. But it is almost
sufficient by and to itself. _Lucien de Rubempre ou le Journalisme_
would be the most straightforward and descriptive title for it, and
one which Balzac in some of his moods would have been content enough
to use.
The story of it is too continuous and interesting to need elaborate
argument, for nobody is likely to miss any important link in it. But
Balzac has nowhere excelled in finesse and success of analysis, the
double disillusion which introduces itself at once between Madame de
Bargeton and Lucien, and which makes any _redintegratio amoris_ of a
valid kind impossible, because each cannot but be aware that the other
has anticipated the rupture. It will not, perhaps, be a matter of such
general agreement whether he has or has not exceeded the fair license
of the novelist in attributing to Lucien those charms of body and
gifts of mind which make him, till his moral weakness and
worthlessness are exposed, irresistible, and enable him for a time to
repair his faults by a sort of fairy good-luck. The sonnets of _Les
Marguerites_, which were given to the author by poetical friends
--Gautier, it is said, supplied the "Tulip"--are undoubtedly good and
sufficient. But Lucien's first article, which is (according to a
practice the rashness of which cannot be too much deprecated) given
likewise, is certainly not very wonderful; and the Paris press must
have been rather at a low ebb if it made any sensation. As we are not
favored with any actual portrait of Lucien, detection is less possible
here, but the novelist has perhaps a very little abused the privilege
of making a hero, "Like Paris handsome, and like Hector brave," or
rather "Like Paris handsome, and like Phoebus clever." There is no
doubt, however, that the interest of the book lies partly in the vivid
and severe picture of journalism given in it, and partly in the way in
which the character of Lucien is adjusted to show up that of the
abstract journalist still farther.
How far is the picture true? It must be said, in fairness to Balzac,
that a good many persons of some competence in France have pronounced
for its truth there; and if that be so, all one can say is, "So much
the worse for French journalists." It is also certain that a lesser,
but still not inconsiderable number of persons in England--generally
persons who, not perhaps with Balzac's genius, have like Balzac
published books, and are not satisfied with their reception by the
press--agree more or less as to England. For myself, I can only say
that I do not believe things have ever been quite so bad in England,
and that I am quite sure there never has been any need for them to be.
There are, no doubt, spiteful, unprincipled, incompetent practitioners
of journalism as of everything else; and it is of course obvious that
while advertisements, the favor of the chiefs of parties, and so
forth, are temptations to newspaper managers not to hold up a very
high standard of honor, anonymity affords to newspaper writers a
dangerously easy shield to cover malice or dishonesty. But I can only
say that during long practice in every kind of political and literary
journalism, I never was seriously asked to write anything I did not
think, and never had the slightest difficulty in confining myself to
what I did think.
In fact Balzac, like a good many other men of letters who abuse
journalism, put himself very much out of court by continually
practising it, not merely during his struggling period, but long after
he had made his name, indeed almost to the very last. And it is very
hard to resist the conclusion that when he charged journalism
generally not merely with envy, hatred, malice, and all
uncharitableness, but with hopeless and pervading dishonesty, he had
little more ground for it than an inability to conceive how any one,
except from vile reasons of this kind, could fail to praise Honore de
Balzac.
At any rate, either his art by itself, or his art assisted and
strengthened by that personal feeling which, as we have seen counted
for much with him, has here produced a wonderfully vivid piece of
fiction--one, I think, inferior in success to hardly anything he
has done. Whether, as at a late period a very well-informed,
well-affected, and well-equipped critic hinted, his picture of the
Luciens and the Lousteaus did not a little to propagate both is
another matter. The seriousness with which Balzac took the accusation
perhaps shows a little sense of galling. But putting this aside, _Un
Grand Homme de Province a Paris_ must be ranked, both for comedy and
tragedy, both for scheme and execution, in the first rank of his work.
The bibliography of this long and curious book--almost the only one
which contains some verse, some of Balzac's own, some given to him by
his more poetical friends--occupies full ten pages of M. de
Lovenjoul's record. The first part, which bore the general title, was
a book from the beginning, and appeared in 1837 in the _Scenes de la
Vie de Province_. It had five chapters, and the original verse it
contained had appeared in the _Annalaes Romantiques_ ten years earlier
with slight variants. The second part, _Un Grand Homme de Province_,
likewise appeared as a book, independently published by Souverain in
1839 in two volumes and forty chapters. But two of these chapters had
been inserted a few days before the publications in the _Estafette_.
Here Canalis was more distinctly identified with Lamartine than in the
subsequent texts. The third part, unlike its forerunners, appeared
serially in two papers, _L'Etat_ and _Le Parisien_, in the year 1843,
under the title of _David Sechard, ou les Souffrances d'un Inventeur_,
and next year became a book under the first title only. But before
this last issue it had been united to the other two parts, and had
appeared as _Eve et David_ in the first edition of the _Comedie.