of saying something smart. But poor Monsieur Werdet was not in a
position to be witty; and, moreover, he knew but too well what was
coming next. All he ventured to say was:
"But I am afraid you have no money."
"You can raise some," replied his illustrious friend. "Borrow--deposit
stock in trade--get me two thousand francs. Everything else I can do
for myself. Werdet, I will hire a postchaise--I will dine with my
dear sister--I will set off after dinner--I will not be later than
eight o'clock--click clack!" And the great man executed an admirable
imitation of the cracking of a postilion's whip.
There was no resource for Monsieur Werdet but to throw the good money
after the bad. He raised the two thousand francs; and away went Balzac
to catch his runaway genius, to bask in the society of a female angel,
and to coin money in the form of manuscripts.
Eighteen days afterwards a perfumed letter from the author reached the
publisher. He had caught his genius at Vienna; he had been
magnificently received by the aristocracy; he had finished
"Séraphita," and nearly completed the other book; his angelic friend,
Carissima, already loved Werdet from Balzac's description of him;
Balzac himself was Werdet's friend till death; Werdet was his
Archibald Constable; Werdet should see him again in fifteen days;
Werdet should ride in his carriage in the Bois de Boulogne, and meet
Balzac riding in his carriage, and see the enemies of both parties
looking on at the magnificent spectacle and bursting with spite.
Finally, Werdet would have the goodness to remark (in a postscript)
that Balzac had provided himself with another little advance of
fifteen hundred francs, received from Rothschild in Vienna, and had
given in exchange a bill at ten days' sight on his excellent
publisher, on his admirable and devoted Archibald Constable.
While Monsieur Werdet was still prostrate under the effect of this
audacious postscript, a clerk entered his office with the identical
bill. It was drawn at one day's sight instead of ten; and the money
was wanted immediately. The publisher was the most long-suffering of
men; but there were limits even to his patient endurance. He took
Balzac's letter with him, and went at once to the office of the
Parisian Rothschild. The great financier received him kindly; admitted
that there must have been some mistake; granted the ten days' grace;
and dismissed his visitor with this excellent and sententious piece of
advice:
"I recommend you to mind what you are about, sir, with Monsieur de
Balzac. He is a highly inconsequent man."
It was too late for Monsieur Werdet to mind what he was about. He had
no choice but to lose his credit, or pay at the end of the ten days.
He paid; and ten days later, Balzac returned, considerately bringing
with him some charming little Viennese curiosities for his esteemed
publisher. Monsieur Werdet expressed his acknowledgments; and then
politely inquired for the conclusion of "Séraphita," and the
manuscript of the new novel.
Not a single line of either had been committed to paper.
The farce (undoubtedly a most disgraceful performance, so far as
Balzac was concerned) was not played out even yet. The publisher's
reproaches seem at last to have awakened the author to something
remotely resembling a sense of shame. He promised that "Séraphita,"
which had been waiting at press a whole year, should be finished in
one night. There were just two sheets of sixteen pages each to write.
They might have been completed either at the author's house or at the
publisher's, which was close to the printer's. But, no--it was not in
Balzac's character to miss the smallest chance of producing a
sensation anywhere. His last caprice was a determination to astonish
the printers. Twenty-five compositors were called together at eleven
at night, a truckle-bed and table were set up for the author--or, to
speak more correctly, for the literary mountebank--in the workshop;
Balzac arrived, in a high state of inspiration, to stagger the sleepy
journeymen by showing them how fast he could write; and the two sheets
were completed magnificently on the spot. By way of fit and proper
climax to this ridiculous exhibition of literary quackery, it is only
necessary to add, that, on Balzac's own confession, the two concluding
sheets of "Séraphita" had been mentally composed, and carefully
committed to memory, two years before he affected to write them
impromptu in the printer's office. It seems impossible to deny that
the man who could act in this outrageously puerile manner must have
been simply mad. But what becomes of the imputation when we remember
that this very madman has produced books which, for depth of thought
and marvellous knowledge of human nature, are counted deservedly among
the glories of French literature, and which were never more living and
more lasting works than they are at this moment?
"Séraphita" was published three days after the author's absurd
exhibition of himself at the printer's office. In this novel, as in
its predecessor--"Louis Lambert"--Balzac left his own firm ground of
reality, and soared, on the wings of Swedenborg, into an atmosphere of
transcendental obscurity impervious to all ordinary eyes. What the
book meant, the editor of the periodical in which part of it
originally appeared, never could explain. Monsieur Werdet, who
published it, confesses that he was in the same mystified condition;
and the present writer, who has vainly attempted to read it through,
desires to add, in this place, his own modest acknowledgment of
inability to enlighten English readers in the smallest degree on the
subject of "Séraphita." Luckily for Monsieur Werdet, the author's
reputation stood so high with the public, that the book sold
prodigiously, merely because it was a book by Balzac. The proceeds of
the sale, and the profits derived from new editions of the old novels,
kept the sinking publisher from absolute submersion; and might even
have brought him safely to land, but for the ever-increasing dead
weight of the author's perpetual borrowings, on the security of
forthcoming works which he never produced.
No commercial success, no generous self-sacrifice, could keep pace
with the demands of Balzac's insatiate vanity and love of show, at
this period of his life. He had two establishments, to begin with;
both splendidly furnished, and one adorned with a valuable gallery of
pictures. He had his box at the French Opera, and his box at the
Italian Opera. He had a chariot and horses, and an establishment of
men servants. The panels of the carriage were decorated with the arms,
and the bodies of the footmen were adorned with the liveries, of the
noble family of D'Entragues, to which Balzac persisted in declaring
that he was allied, although he never could produce the smallest proof
in support of the statement. When he could add no more to the
sumptuous magnificence of his houses, his dinners, his carriage, and
his servants; when he had filled his rooms with every species of
expensive knick-knack; when he had lavished money on all the known
extravagances which extravagant Paris can supply to the spendthrift's
inventory, he hit on the entirely new idea of providing himself with
such a walking-stick as the world had never yet beheld.
His first proceeding was to procure a splendid cane, which was sent to
the jeweller's, and was grandly topped by a huge gold knob. The inside
of the knob was occupied by a lock of hair presented to the author by
an unknown lady admirer. The outside was studded with all the jewels
he had bought, and with all the jewels he had received as presents.
With this cane, nearly as big as a drum-major's staff, and all a-blaze
at the top with rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires, Balzac
exhibited himself, in a rapture of satisfied vanity, at the theatres
and in the public promenades. The cane became as celebrated in Paris
as the author. Madame de Girardin wrote a sparkling little book all
about the wonderful walking-stick. Balzac was in the seventh heaven of
happiness; Balzac's friends were either disgusted or diverted,
according to their tempers. One unfortunate man alone suffered the
inevitable penalty of this insane extravagance: need it be added that
his name was Werdet?
The end of the connexion between the author and the publisher was now
fast approaching. All entreaties or reproaches addressed to Balzac
failed in producing the slightest result. Even confinement in a
sponging-house, when creditors discovered, in course of time, that
they could wait no longer, passed unheeded as a warning. Balzac only
borrowed more money the moment the key was turned on him, gave a
magnificent dinner in prison, and left the poor publisher, as usual,
to pay the bill. He was extricated from the sponging-house before he
had been there quite three days; and, in that time, he had spent over
twenty guineas on luxuries which he had not a farthing of his own to
purchase. It is useless, it is even exasperating, to go on
accumulating instances of this sort of mad and cruel prodigality: let
us advance rapidly to the end. One morning, Monsieur Werdet balanced
accounts with his author, from the beginning, and found, in spite of
the large profits produced by the majority of the works, that
fifty-eight thousand francs were (to use his own expression) paralysed
in his hands by the life Balzac persisted in leading; and that
fifty-eight thousand more might soon be in the same condition, if he
had possessed them to advance. A rich publisher might have contrived
to keep his footing in such a crisis as this, and to deal, for the
time to come, on purely commercial grounds. But Monsieur Werdet was a
poor man; he had relied on Balzac's verbal promises when he ought to
have exacted his written engagements; and he had no means of appealing
to the author's love of money by dazzling prospects of banknotes
awaiting him in the future, if he chose honestly to earn his right to
them. In short, there was but one alternative left, the alternative of
giving up the whole purpose and ambition of the bookseller's life, and
resolutely breaking off his ruinous connexion with Balzac.
Reduced to this situation, driven to bay by the prospect of
engagements falling due which he had no apparent means of meeting,
Monsieur Werdet answered the next application for an advance by a flat
refusal, and followed up that unexampled act of self-defence by
speaking his mind at last, in no measured terms, to his illustrious
friend. Balzac turned crimson with suppressed anger, and left the
room. A series of business formalities followed, initiated by Balzac,
with the view of breaking off the connexion between his publisher and
himself, now that he found there was no more money to be had; Monsieur
Werdet being, on his side, perfectly ready to "sign, seal, and
deliver" as soon as his claims were properly satisfied in due form of
law.
Balzac had now but one means of meeting his liabilities. His personal
reputation was gone; but his literary reputation remained as high as
ever, and he soon found a publisher, with large capital at command,
who was ready to treat for his copyrights. Monsieur Werdet had no
resource but to sell, or be bankrupt. He parted with all the valuable
copyrights for a sum of sixty thousand and odd francs, which sufficed
to meet his most pressing engagements. Some of the less popular and
less valuable books he kept, to help him, if possible, through his
daily and personal liabilities. As for gaining any absolute profit, or
even holding his position as a publisher, the bare idea of securing
either advantage was dismissed as an idle dream. The purpose for
which he had toiled so hard and suffered so patiently was sacrificed
for ever, and he was reduced to beginning life again as a country
traveller for a prosperous publishing house. So far as his main object
in existence was concerned, Balzac had plainly and literally ruined
him. It is impossible to part with Monsieur Werdet, imprudent and
credulous as he appears to have been, without a strong feeling of
sympathy, which becomes strengthened to something like positive
admiration when we discover that he cherished, in after life, no
unfriendly sentiments towards the man who had treated him so
shamefully; and when we find him, in the Memoir now under notice,
still trying hard to make the best of Balzac's conduct, and still
writing of him in terms of affection and esteem to the very end of the
book.
The remainder of Balzac's life was, in substance, merely the
lamentable repetition of the personal faults and follies, and the
literary merits and triumphs, which have already found their record in
these pages. The extremes of idle vanity and unprincipled extravagance
still alternated, to the last, with the extremes of hard mental labour
and amazing mental productiveness. Though he found new victims among
new men, he never again met with so generous and forbearing a friend
as the poor publisher whose fortunes he had destroyed. The women,
whose impulses in his favour were kept alive by their admiration of
his books, clung to their spoilt darling to the last--one of their
number even stepping forward to save him from a debtors' prison, at
the heavy sacrifice of paying the whole demand against him out of her
own purse. In all cases of this sort, even where men were concerned as
well as women, his personal means of attraction, when he chose to
exert them, strengthened immensely his literary claims on the sympathy
and good-will of others. He appears to have possessed in the highest
degree those powers of fascination which are quite independent of mere
beauty of face and form, and which are perversely and inexplicably
bestowed in the most lavish abundance on the most unprincipled of
mankind. Poor Monsieur Werdet can only account for half his own acts
of indiscretion, by declaring that his eminent friend wheedled him
into committing them. Other and wiser men kept out of Balzac's way,
through sheer distrust of themselves. Virtuous friends who tried hard
to reform him, retreated from his presence, declaring that the
reprobate whom they had gone to convert had all but upset their moral
balance in a morning's conversation. An eminent literary gentleman,
who went to spend the day with him to talk over a proposed work,
rushed out of the house after a two hours' interview, exclaiming
piteously, "The man's imagination is in a state of delirium--his talk
has set my brain in a whirl--he would have driven me mad if I had
spent the day with him!" If men were influenced in this way, it is not
wonderful that women (whose self-esteem was delicately flattered by
the prominent and fascinating position which they hold in all his
books) should have worshipped a man who publicly and privately
worshipped them.
His personal appearance would have recalled to English minds the
popular idea of Friar Tuck--he was the very model of the conventional
fat, sturdy, red-faced, jolly monk. But he had the eye of a man of
genius, and the tongue of a certain infernal personage, who may be
broadly hinted at, but who must on no account be plainly named. The
Balzac candlestick might be clumsy enough; but when once the Balzac
candle was lit, the moths flew into it, only too readily, from all
points of the compass.
The last important act of his life was, in a worldly point of view,
one of the wisest things he ever did. The lady who had invited him to
Vienna, and whom he called Carissima, was the wife of a wealthy
Russian nobleman. On the death of her husband, she practically
asserted her admiration of her favourite author by offering him her
hand and fortune. Balzac accepted both; and returned to Paris (from
which respect for his creditors had latterly kept him absent) a
married man, and an enviable member of the wealthy class of society. A
splendid future now opened before him--but it opened too late. Arrived
at the end of his old course, he just saw the new career beyond him,
and dropped on the threshold of it. The strong constitution which he
had remorselessly wasted for more than twenty years past, gave way at
length, at the very time when his social chances looked most brightly.
Three months after his marriage, Honoré de Balzac died, after
unspeakable suffering, of disease of the heart. He was then but fifty
years of age. His fond, proud, heart-broken old mother held him in her
arms. On that loving bosom he had drawn his first breath. On that
loving bosom the weary head sank to rest again, when the wild,
wayward, miserable, glorious life was over.
* * * * *
The sensation produced in Paris by his death was something akin to the
sensation produced in London by the death of Byron. Mr. Carlyle has
admirably said that there is something touching in the loyalty of men
to their Sovereign Man. That loyalty most tenderly declared itself
when Balzac was no more. Men of all ranks and parties, who had been
shocked by his want of principle and disgusted by his inordinate
vanity while he was alive, now accepted universally the atonement of
his untimely death, and remembered nothing but the loss that had
happened to the literature of France. A great writer was no more; and
a great people rose with one accord to take him reverently and
gloriously to his grave. The French Institute, the University, the
scientific societies, the Association of Dramatic Authors, the Schools
of Law and Medicine, sent their representatives to walk in the funeral
procession. English readers, American readers, German readers, and
Russian readers, swelled the immense assembly of Frenchmen that
followed the coffin. Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas were among the
mourners who supported the pall. The first of these two celebrated men
pronounced the funeral oration over Balzac's grave, and eloquently
characterised the whole series of the dead writer's works as forming,
in truth, but one grand book, the text-book of contemporary
civilisation. With that just and generous tribute to the genius of
Balzac, offered by the most illustrious of his literary rivals, these
few pages may fitly and gracefully come to an end. Of the miserable
frailties of the man, enough has been recorded to serve the first of
all interests, the interest of truth. The better and nobler part of
him calls for no further comment at any writer's hands. It remains to
us in his works, and it speaks with deathless eloquence for itself.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] This sentence has unfortunately proved prophetic. Cheap
translations of Le Père Goriot and La Recherche de l'Absolu were
published soon after the present article appeared in print, with
extracts from the opinions here expressed on Balzac's writings
appended by way of advertisement. Critical remonstrance in relation to
such productions as these would be remonstrance thrown away. It will
be enough to say here, by way of warning to the reader, that the
experiment of rendering the French of Balzac into its fair English
equivalent still remains to be tried.
FRAGMENTS OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.--II.
MY BLACK MIRROR.
Has everybody heard of Doctor Dee, the magician, and of the black
speculum or mirror of cannel coal, in which he could see at will
everything in the wide world, and many things beyond it? If so, I may
introduce myself to my readers in the easiest manner possible.
Although I cannot claim to be a descendant of Doctor Dee, I profess
the occult art to the extent of keeping a black mirror, made exactly
after the model of that possessed by the old astrologer. My speculum,
like his, is constructed of an oval piece of cannel coal, highly
polished, and set on a wooden back with a handle to hold it by.
Nothing can be simpler than its appearance; nothing more marvellous
than its capacities--provided always that the person using it be a
true adept. Any man who disbelieves nothing is a true adept. Let him
get a piece of cannel coal, polish it highly, clean it before use
with a white cambric handkerchief, retire to a private sitting-room,
invoke the name of Doctor Dee, shut both eyes for a moment, and open
them again suddenly on the black mirror. If he does not see anything
he likes, after that--past, present, or future--then let him depend on
it there is some speck or flaw of incredulity in his nature; and the
sad termination of his career may be considered certain. Sooner or
later, he will end in being nothing but a rational man.
I, who have not one morsel of rationality about me; I, who am as true
an adept as if I had lived in the good old times ("the Ages of Faith,"
as another adept has very properly called them) find unceasing
interest and occupation in my black mirror. For everything I want to
know, and for everything I want to do, I consult it. This very day,
for instance (being in the position of most of the other inhabitants
of London, at the present season), I am thinking of soon going out of
town. My time for being away is so limited, and my wanderings have
extended, at home and abroad, in so many directions, that I can hardly
hope to visit any really beautiful scenes, or gather any really
interesting experiences that are absolutely new to me. I must go to
some place that I have visited before; and I must, in common regard to
my own holiday interests, take care that it is a place where I have
already thoroughly enjoyed myself, without a single drawback to my
pleasure that is worth mentioning.
Under these circumstances, if I were a mere rational man, what should
I do? Weary my memory to help me to decide on a destination, by giving
me my past travelling recollections in one long panorama--although I
can tell by experience that of all my faculties memory is the least
serviceable at the very time when I most want to employ it. As a true
adept, I know better than to give myself any useless trouble of this
sort. I retire to my private sitting-room, take up my black mirror,
mention what I want--and, behold! on the surface of the cannel coal
the image of my former travels passes before me, in a succession of
dream-scenes. I revive my past experiences, and I make my present
choice out of them, by the evidence of my own eyes; and I may add, by
that of my own ears also--for the figures in my magic landscapes move
and speak!
Shall I go on the continent again? Yes. To what part of it? Suppose I
revisit Austrian Italy, for the sake of renewing my familiarity with
certain views, buildings, and pictures which once delighted me? But
let me first ascertain whether I had any serious drawbacks to complain
of on making acquaintance with that part of the world. Black mirror!
show me my first evening in Austrian Italy.
A cloud rises on the magic surface--rests on it a little
while--slowly disappears. My eyes are fixed on the cannel coal. I see
nothing, hear nothing of the world about me. The first of the magic
scenes grows visible. I behold it, as in a dream. Away with the
ignorant Present. I am in Italy again.
The darkness is just coming on. I see myself looking out of the side
window of a carriage. The hollow roll of the wheels has changed to a
sharp rattle, and we have entered a town. We cross a vast square,
illuminated by two lamps and a glimmer of reflected light from a
coffee-shop window. We get on into a long street, with heavy stone
arcades for foot-passengers to walk under. Everything looks dark and
confused; grim visions of cloaked men flit by, all smoking; shrill
female voices rise above the clatter of our wheels, then subside again
in a moment. We stop. The bells on the horses' necks ring their last
tiny peal for the night. A greasy hand opens the carriage-door, and
helps me down the steps. I am under an archway, with blank darkness
before me, with a smiling man holding a flaming tallow candle by my
side, with street spectators silently looking on behind me. They wear
high-crowned hats and brown cloaks, mysteriously muffling them up to
the chin. Brigands, evidently. Pass, Scene! I am a peaceable man, and
I don't like the suspicion of a stiletto, even in a dream.
Show me my sitting-room. Where did I dine, and how, on my first
evening in Austrian Italy?