The First Success.
Misfortune, far from discouraging Balzac, strengthened all his powers
of resistance and exalted his will and his energy. He had a healthy and
strongly optimistic nature, upon which chagrins, reverses and sorrows
acted like so many stimulants; he was never so resolute as after a
defeat. M. Sedillot had barely begun the liquidation of his business
affairs, the printing house and foundry, when he gave himself up
passionately and exclusively to his literary work, apparently having
forgotten all his troubles, save the necessity of paying his debts. He
had a habit of prompt decisions and quick action. Eager to break at
once all the remaining fetters that bound him to his assignee, he wrote
to the General Baron de Pommereul, at Fougeres:
"For the past month I have been busy over some historical researches of
great interest, and I hope that in the absence of talent, which in my
case is altogether problematic, our national manners and customs may
perhaps bring me good luck. I have realised that, no matter how
industrious I am, my efforts will not bring me in anything like a
living wage before the first of next January; and meanwhile the purest
chance has brought to my attention a historic incident of 1798 relating
to the war of the Chouans and the Vendeans, which gives me a subject
that is very easy to handle. It requires no research, except in regard
to the localities.
"My first thought was of you, and I decided to ask you to grant me an
asylum for a matter of twenty days. My muse, her trumpet, a quire of
paper and myself will surely not be greatly in your way." (Balzac in
Brittany, published letter by R. du Pontavice de Heussy.)
The general's father had been a friend of Francois Balzac, who had
rendered him some financial service; accordingly the son hastened to
reply to Honore that his house was open to him. No sooner was the
letter received than the latter set forth, such was his haste to leave
Paris, collect the material for his story, and find the necessary
tranquillity for writing it. He left Paris without change of linen and
with his toilet all in disorder, intoxicated with his sense of liberty,
"to such an extent," writes M. de Pontavice, "that he presented himself
to his provincial friends wearing such a piteous hat that they found it
necessary to conduct him forthwith to the only hatter in Fougeres. That
honourable tradesman went to infinite pains before he succeeded in
discovering any headwear large enough to shelter the bony casket which
contained the Human Comedy."
Honore de Balzac was exuberant with joy. He took his hosts by storm
through his wit and good humour. He questioned M. de Pommereul as to
the main facts about the Chouans; he jotted down in his notebook, which
he afterwards came to call his larder, a host of original anecdotes
preserved by oral tradition; and he roamed the whole countryside,
fixing in his mind the landscapes and the gestures, attitudes and
physiognomies of the peasants, and saturating himself with the
atmosphere of the region in which he was to place the chief scenes of
his drama.
Those were happy hours during which Honore de Balzac withdrew to his
first-floor room, seated himself before a little table placed close to
the window, and wrote with feverish elation of the heroic acts of the
Blues and the Chouans, of Commander Hulot, Marche-a-Terre and the Abbe
Gudin, and wove tangled threads of the adventures of Fouche's spy Mlle.
de Verneuil, who set forth to save the young stripling and allowed
herself to be caught in the divine snare of love.
On some evenings he remained in the drawing-room in company with his
hosts, and entered into controversies with Mme. de Pommereul, who,
being very pious herself, tried to persuade him to make a practice of
religion; while Balzac, in return, when the discussion was exhausted,
endeavoured to teach her the rules of backgammon. But the one remained
unconverted and the other never mastered the course of the noble game.
Occasionally he helped to pass the time by inventing stories, which he
told with all the vividness of which he was master.
The days slipped away, as fruitful as they were happy; but Balzac's
family became troubled over his prolonged absence. They feared that he
was wasting his time amid the pleasures of the country, after all the
sacrifices they had made for him, and when he ought to be hard at work,
clearing off his debts. They summoned him home, and he left Fougeres at
the end of October, regretting the interruption to his task. But he had
no sooner arrived in Paris than he set to work again, and he did not
fail to keep his provincial friends informed of the progress of his
novel. The first thing he did was to change its title from The
Stripling, to which Mme. de Pommereul had objected, to The Chouans or
Brittany Thirty Years Ago, and finally settled definitely on The Last
Chouan or Brittany in 1800. This work, the first that he signed with
his own name, was finished in the beginning of 1829, and was published
by Urbain Canel. On the eleventh of March he announced to the Baron de
Pommereul that he was sending him a set.
"Between four and six days from now," he wrote, "you will receive the
four 12mo volumes of The Last Chouan or Brittany in 1800.
"Did I call it my work? . . . It is partly yours also, for as a matter
of fact it is built up from the precious anecdotes which you so ably
and so generously related to me between glasses of that pleasant and
mild vin de Grave and those crisp buttered biscuits."
The Last Chouan proved a success. It was criticised and its merit was
admitted. L'Universel shows the tone of most of the articles devoted to
it: "After all, the work is not without interest; if reduced to half
its length, it would be amusing from one end to the other. In general,
the style is pretentious in almost all of the descriptive parts, but
the dialogue is not lacking in naturalness and frankness."
In 1829, after the publication of The Last Chouan, Honore de Balzac
plunged boldly, under his own name, into the turmoil of literature. He
pushed ahead audaciously, elbowing his way, and he made himself
enemies. He went his own road, indifferent to sarcasms, mockeries, and
spiteful comments called forth by his tranquil assurance and certainty
of his own strength, which he did not try to hide. At a period when it
was the fashion to sigh and be pale and melancholy, in a stage-setting
of lakes, clouds and cathedrals, and when one was expected to be
abnormal and mediaeval, Balzac displayed a robust joviality, he was
proud of his stalwart build and ruddy complexion, and, far from looking
to the past for literary material, his observing and clairvoyant eyes
eagerly seized the men of his own time and transformed them into heroes.
All day long he went the rounds of publishers and editors, of papers
and reviews, and sought connections with other writers of repute.
Returning in the evening to his study, he would write throughout the
entire night, until long after the dawn had come, with feverish
regularity and energy and without fatigue, ready to begin again the
next day. When he gave up his printing house he went to live at No. 1,
Rue Cassini, in a quarter which at that time was almost deserted,
between the Observatory and the Maternity Hospital. He brought his
furniture with him and fitted up his rooms in accordance with his own
tastes and resources. This had called forth some bitter comments from
his parents: What right had he to comfort and to something approaching
luxury before he had cleared off his debts? "I am reproached for the
furnishings of my rooms," he wrote to his sister Laure, "but all the
furniture belonged to me before the catastrophe came! I have not bought
a single new piece! The wall covering of blue percale which has caused
such an outcry was in my chamber at the printing house. Letouche and I
tacked it with our own hands over a frightful wall-paper, which would
otherwise have had to be changed. My books are my tools and I cannot
sell them. My sense of good taste, which enables me to make all my
surroundings harmonious, is something which cannot be bought
(unfortunately for the rich); yet, after all, I care so little for any
of these things that, if one of my creditors wants to have me secretly
imprisoned at Sainte-Pelagie, I shall be far happier there; for my
living will cost me nothing and I shall be no closer prisoner than my
work now keeps me in my own home."
In spite of this apparent and wholly circumstantial disinterestedness,
Balzac loved artistic surroundings, rugs, tapestries and silver ware.
He detested mediocrity, and could enjoy nothing short either of
glorious poverty, nobly endured in a garret, or wealth and the
splendour of a palace. Balzac shared his apartment with Auguste Borget,
a painter and traveller, who was one of his most faithful friends. From
a window in their parlour they could look across some gardens and see
the dome of the Invalides. Ever since his childhood Balzac had made a
sort of worship of Napoleon. He was his model and his great ambition
was to equal Napoleon's exploits in the realm of the intellect. Mme.
Ancelot relates in the Salons of Paris that Balzac had erected a sort
of altar, surmounted by Napoleon's bust, on which he had inscribed:
"What he began with the sword I shall achieve with the pen." This
anecdote is confirmed by Philarete Chasle, who saw the statue in the
Rue Cassini apartment, a plaster statue representing the emperor clad
in his redingote and holding his celebrated lorgnette in his hand.
Napoleon's influence upon Balzac was profound, or rather there was a
sort of parallelism between their two ambitions, each of a different
order, but equally formidable. Balzac was essentially a conqueror and
legislator. But he wished to establish his empire in the intellectual
domain, for he believed that the time for territorial conquest was
past; yet he wished to prescribe laws for the people and govern them
himself. He was a born ruler, whether he turned to literature or
politics, and he appointed himself "Marshal of Letters," just as he
might have aspired to be prime minister to the king.
After the publication of The Last Chouan, Balzac's literary activity
became prodigious. Shutting himself into his workroom and seated before
a little table covered with green cloth, under the light of a
four-branched candlestick, dressed in his monkish frock, a white robe
in which he felt at ease, with the cord tied slackly around his waist
and his shirt unbuttoned at the collar, he turned out, in a dizzy orgy
of production, The Physiology of Marriage, the short stories
constituting the Scenes of Private Life, At the Sign of the
Cat-and-Racket, The Ball at Sceaux, The Vendetta, A Double Family,
Peace in the Household, Gobseck and Sarrasine, besides studies,
criticisms and essays for newspapers and magazines.
The Physiology of Marriage appeared at the end of December, 1829, and
caused quite a little scandal. The public did not understand Balzac's
ideas, they recoiled from the boldness of his themes, which sounded
like sheer cynicism, and remembered only the crudity of certain
anecdotes, without trying to penetrate their philosophy. He was
attacked in the public press, and even his friends did not spare him
their reproaches. Balzac defended himself against the criticisms of
Mme. Zulma Carraud, whom he had met at Versailles at the home of his
sister Laure, and whose esteem and affection he was anxious to keep.
Mme. Carraud was a broad-minded and discerning woman, of delicate
sensibility and an upright nature. Her husband was Commander Carraud,
director of studies at the Military School of Saint-Cyr, and later
inspector of the powder works at Angouleme. Balzac loved her as a
confidential friend,--who, at the same time, did not spare him the
truth,--and he made frequent visits to the towns where she lived,
especially to Issoudun, at her chateau of Frapesle, after the Commander
had gone into retirement.
The Physiology might seem to have been an abnormal work for a man of
Balzac's years if it was not known that he had two collaborators, Mme.
de Berny, who brought him her experience as a woman of the world, and
his father, who gave him the greater part of his maxims.
Francois de Balzac believed that he was ordained to live for more than
a hundred years, and perhaps he would have attained that age if he had
not succumbed to the after-effects of an operation on the liver, June
19, 1829. Honore felt this loss keenly, for, although his father often
showed himself sceptical as to the value of his son's literary efforts,
too little attention has been paid to the share that he had in the
origin of that son's ideas.
The Physiology had only just appeared when Balzac published the Scenes
of Private Life, on March 10, 1836; and without slackening speed, he
contributed to a number of different journals. Emile de Girardin had
welcomed him to the columns of La Mode, which he had founded in 1829,
under the patronage of the Duchesse de Berry, and he contributed
sketches to it regularly: El Verdugo, The Usurer, a Study of a Woman
(signed "By the author of the Physiology of Marriage"), Farewell, The
Latest Fashion in Words, A New Theory of Breakfasting, The Crossing of
the Beresina, and Chateau Life, an essay against the publication of
which Balzac protested because his sensitive literary conscience was
unwilling that it should be printed until developed into something more
than a crude sketch,--and lastly came the Treatise on Fashionable Life,
a manual which, under the form of pleasantry, was saturated with
philosophy and lofty social doctrines.
At the same period, from 1829 to 1830, he collaborated with Victor
Ratier on the Silhouette, under his own name and various pseudonyms.
For this periodical he wrote phantasies of a festive tone and somewhat
broad humour: Some Artists (signed, "An Old Artist"), The Studio, The
Grocer, The Charlatan, Aquatic Customs, Physiology of the Toilet, the
Cravat considered by itself and in its relations to Society and the
Individual, Physiology of the Toilet and Padded Coats, Gastronomic
Physiology, etc. In Le Voleur, edited by Maurice Alhoy, he published La
Grisette Parvenue, A Working Girl's Sunday, and Letters on Paris, a
series of articles, incisive and farsighted, dealing with French
politics. Finally, still in 1830, he was almost one of the accredited
editors of La Caricature, for which he wrote fantasies against the
government, sketches of Parisian manners, and pictures of the life of
the capital, some of which were destined later to find their way into
The Magic Skin; namely, Le Cornac de Carlsuhe, Concerning Indifference
in Politics, A Minister's Council, The Veneerer, A Passion in College,
Physiology of the Passions, etc.
But, not satisfied with this fecundity,--which would have exhausted many
another man of letters,--Honore de Balzac, in 1830, founded a critical
organ, in company with Emile de Girardin, H. Auger, and Victor
Varaigne, under the title of Feuilleton des Journaux Politiques.
And there were thousands of pages which Balzac carelessly let fall from
his fertile pen, and which he valued so slightly that he never
afterwards gathered them together for his collected works. On the other
hand, they did not seem to interfere with the composition of his more
important writings, and at the very time that he seemed to be
scattering his efforts in twenty different papers he was writing The
Woman of Thirty, under the guidance of Mme. de Berny, and working on
his extraordinary Magic Skin, a dramatic study with a colouring of
social philosophy, which he was greatly distressed to hear defined as a
novel. He was possessed with a sort of fever of creation, he had
already visualised nearly all the characters in his Human Comedy, and,
in spite of his driving labours and his marvellous facility at writing,
he could not keep pace with his own imagination. Meanwhile, in order to
keep himself awake and excite his productive forces, he indulged, at
this period, in a veritable orgy of coffee, cup after cup, an orgy
which was destined, after twenty years' continuance to have a
disastrous effect upon his health.
Balzac took the most minute precautions in making this coffee; he not
only selected several kinds from different localities, in order to
obtain a special aroma, but he had his own special method of brewing
it, which developed all the virtues of the blend. In his Treatise on
Modern Stimulants he has told us how he prepared the coffee and what
its effects were upon his temperament. "At last I have discovered a
horrible and cruel method," he writes, "which I recommend only to men
of excessive vigour, with coarse black hair, a skin of mingled ochre
and vermilion, squarish hands and legs like the balustrades in the
Palace Louis XV. It consists in the employment of a decoction of ground
coffee taken cold and anhydride (a chemical term which signifies
'little or no water') and on an empty stomach. This coffee falls into
your stomach, which, as you have learned from Brillat-Savarin, is a
sack with a velvety interior, lined with little pores and papillae; it
finds nothing else, so it attacks this delicate and voluptuous lining;
it becomes a sort of food which demands its digestive juices; so it
wrings them forth, it demands them as a pythoness calls upon her god,
it maltreats those delicate walls as a truckman maltreats a pair of
young horses; the plexus nerves inflame, they burn and send their
flashes to the brain. Thereupon everything leaps into action; thoughts
and ideas rush pell-mell over one another, like battalions of the grand
army on the field of battle, and the battle takes place. Recollections
arrive in a headlong charge, with banners flying; the light cavalry of
comparisons advances in a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic
hurries up with its gun-carriages and ammunition; flashes of wit arrive
like so many sharp-shooters; the action develops; the paper slowly
covers over with ink, for the night's work has begun, and it will end
in torrents of black water, like the battle in torrents of black
powder."
In spite of the alarming benefits which Balzac attributes to this
regime, one is amazed at the abundance of his productions, for, even
though he sacrificed a large part of his days and nights, he none the
less frequented certain famous salons, was often absent on vacations at
M. de Margonne's home at Sache; at La Grenadiere, where he rented a
house; and at Nemours. Besides, he had to spare some time to his
friends, his publishers, and to the adjustment of his already
complicated finances.
With his remarkably keen sense of realities, he knew that it did not
suffice merely to produce a work in order to have it become known and
sell; and, while it was repugnant to him to solicit an article from a
fellow craftsman, he excelled in the art of exciting curiosity, and
acquiring partisans and women admirers who, upon the publication of
each new volume, would loudly proclaim it as a masterpiece. He was on
intimate terms with the Duchesse d'Abrantes and Mme. Sophie Gay; he was
received by the Baron Gerard and by Mme. Ancelot; he announced to his
publisher, Charles Gosselin, that Mme. Recamier had asked him to give a
reading from his Magic Skin, "so that we are going to have a whole lot
of people to boom us in the Faubourg Saint-Germain." And he did not
content himself with all these benevolent "boomers," for, according to
Philibert Audebrand, he himself wrote a very flattering article on his
own work in La Caricature, over one of his three pseudonyms.
The book-collector Jacob sketched a verbal portrait of Balzac in 1831,
a little heavy and over-emphasised, yet fairly like him: "He was about
thirty-two years old, and seemed younger than his age. He had not yet
taken on too much flesh, yet he was far from being slender, as he still
was five or six years earlier. He did not yet wear his hair long, nor
had he a moustache. His open countenance revealed a character
ordinarily kindly and jovial; his high colour, red lips and brilliant
eyes were often likely to give the impression that he had just come
from the dinner table, where he had not wasted his time." In order to
give a greater degree of truth and life to this sketch, it should be
added that Balzac had extremely mobile features, that he was very
sensitive, and that, if anything was said that gave him offence, his
expression became indifferent, non-committal or haughty. He suffered
when he was congratulated on his short stories and tales, for with
justifiable pride he wished to be appreciated as a poet, a philosopher
and a thinker. It has not been sufficiently recognised how well he
understood the essence of his own genius; for, aside from the short
recitals in the Scenes of Private Life, his early works are philosophic
works, The Magic Skin, Louis Lambert, and The Country Doctor, ranging
all the way from the most lofty speculations regarding human
intelligence to the details of the social, material and moral
organisation of a village.
But, on the other hand, although Balzac had already acquired a massive
aspect, he did not have that vulgar outline which Jacob, the
book-fancier, suggests. And when he was speaking enthusiastically in a
drawing-room his face irradiated, one might almost say, a sort of
spirituality, his eyes glowed with a splendid fire, and his lips parted
in a laugh of such potent joyousness that he communicated the contagion
of it to his hearers. He spoke in a pleasant, well-modulated voice,
with fluctuations in tone that accorded nicely with the circumstances
of the recital; and his gestures and power of mimicry seemed to conjure
up the characters whose adventures he narrated. He was so successful
that he gave up telling stories in public, for fear of acquiring the
reputation of an entertainer, which might have robbed him of the high
consideration which he exacted both for himself and for his writings.
In the full heat of his literary work Balzac did not forget his
political ambitions; and, since the Revolution of July, 1830, had made
him eligible, he was anxious to present himself in 1832 at one of the
electoral colleges, as a candidate for the supplementary elections. In
April he wrote a pamphlet, Inquest into the politics of two Ministries,
which he signed "M. de Balzac, eligible elector," and in which he set
forth his criticisms of the government and his own principles. As soon
as it was printed he sent off forty copies to General de Pommereul, for
the purpose of distribution among his friends in Fougeres; and he wrote
him:
"I shall write successively four or five more, in order to prove to the
electors who nominate me that I can do them honour, and that I shall
try to be useful to the country.
"As for parliamentary incorruptibility, my ambition is to see my
principles triumphantly carried out by an administration, and great
ambitions are never for sale." Whether Baron de Pommereul forewarned
him of failure at the hands of his fellow citizens, or whether Balzac
wished to have two strings to his bow instead of one, no one knows, but
at all events in June he asked Henry Berthoud, director of the Gazette
de Cambrai, to back him as candidate in his district. In return, Balzac
promised to try to get some articles by Berthoud accepted by Rabon for
the Revue de Paris. "The coming Assembly," he prophesied, "is likely to
be a stormy one; it is ripe for revolution. It is possible that the
people of your district would prefer to see a Parisian representing
their interests rather than any of their own men; a town always loves
to see itself represented by an orator; and, if I seek election to the
Assembly, it is with the idea of playing a leading part in politics and
of giving the benefit to the community which supported me and from
which I have received the political baptism of election. All my friends
in Paris, either rightly or wrongly, base some hope upon me. I shall
have as my credentials: Yourself, if that is agreeable to you; the
Revue de Paris, the Temps, the Debats, the Voleur, one other minor
journal, and my own actions from now on."
But, in spite of all his projects, Balzac was destined never to be a
candidate from any district,--and so much the better for the advancement
of French thought.