1799, the day following the 18th Brumaire. He had a letter of
introduction to the Daru family, who were relatives, and when, after
the _coup d'état_, Pierre Daru was made Secretary of War and Inspector
of Reviews, he gave young Beyle a place in his office. I fancy I can
trace reminiscences of this appointment in the episode of Julien's
appointment as secretary to the Comte de la Mole in (_Rouge et Noir_).
Colomb tells that on one of the first days after Beyle entered on his
duties, when he was writing a letter to Daru's dictation, he absently
spelled _cela_ with two l's, and thereby brought on himself a playful,
but none the less humiliating, reproof. A precisely similar incident
occurs in the novel. But Daru was evidently a very much kinder and
more considerate patron than the Comte de la Mole; he proved himself
Beyle's faithful friend and benefactor. Besides his talent for military
organisation, Daru had undoubted literary talent; his translations of
Horace and his historical prose are excellent examples of the literary
style of the Empire, and all the authors of that period looked up to
him. It was a strange freak of fortune which determined that throughout
most of his campaigns he should have in immediate attendance on him one
of the literary pioneers of the following period--not that he had any
suspicion of his protege's gifts, gifts of which the young man himself
was scarcely conscious as yet.
When Daru and his younger brother, acting under Carnot, then Minister
of War, had organised the memorable Italian campaign of 1800, and had
themselves been ordered to Italy, they sent for Beyle to come to them
there, though they had for the moment no definite appointment to offer
him. The youth of seventeen, who was by nature as energetic as he was
imaginative, and whose dreams were all of daring deeds and the First
Consul, did not wait to be called twice. He packed a dozen standard
works in his knapsack and started for Geneva; there, though he had
never learned to ride, he mounted a horse which Daru had left behind
ill, but which had recovered, and, encountering many difficulties, rode
over the Saint Bernard on the 22nd of May, two days after Napoleon. On
the 1st or 2nd of June he reached Milan, the city where he was to have
his first experience of the joy of life, and which was always to loom
largely on his mental horizon. He witnessed the outburst of rapturous
joy with which the abolition of the hated supremacy of Austria was
hailed, and on the 4th of July was present at the battle of Marengo.
After holding an appointment in the commissariat for some months,
he entered the seventh regiment of dragoons as sergeant (as we are
reminded in a curious note to the fifth chapter of _Rouge et Noir_)
was promoted to a lieutenancy at Romanego, and was shortly afterwards
made adjutant to General Michaud. He distinguished himself in all the
subsequent engagements, and especially at Castel-Franco, not only by
courage; but by the ardour, accuracy, and intelligence with which he
executed all the tasks entrusted to him. We have, evidently, a very
exact account of young Beyle's feelings as a spectator of the battle
of Marengo, in the description of Fabrice del Dongo's youthfully
enthusiastic and heroic emotions as spectator of the battle of
Waterloo, a description which undoubtedly owes much of its masterliness
to its being a faithful reproduction of personal experiences. The
period which begins with the youth's ride across the Alps and ends with
his farewell to the army after the Peace of Amiens, was the period of
his life to which Beyle looked back as that of perfect happiness; it
was rich in every variety of romantic experience; during it he did
daring deeds, fought a comical duel, had various youthful love affairs,
and enjoyed the poetry of a soldier's life in a beautiful country,
where the foreign conquerors were greeted as saviours and heroes by a
careless, naïvely passionate people, who were prevented by no scruples
from indulging their thirst for pleasure.
When Henri returned to Grenoble from this his first flight into the
wide world, he found everything as he had left it. His family still
revered what he despised, and detested all that he enthusiastically
admired. After some violent altercations, the young Hotspur obtained
permission to take up his abode in Paris. There he studied Montaigne,
Montesquieu, and the eighteenth-century philosophers, more particularly
Cabanis and De Tracy, with the latter of whom he was at a subsequent
period to become intimately acquainted. (For De Tracy's _Ideology_
Beyle had a profound admiration from his earliest youth.) He also took
lessons in English.
In this quiet life of study, which lasted for a few years, there was
an odd interlude. In 1805, during a visit to his native town, Henri
fell in love with a beautiful young actress who was playing there.
His love was returned, and, unable to endure the idea of separation
from his beloved, he followed her to Marseilles, where she had
obtained an engagement, and took a place as clerk in a large grocery
business--the only possible means of earning a living which presented
itself. He was quite happy on his office stool during the year his
passion lasted; but, when the actress suddenly determined to marry a
Russian, he returned to Paris and resumed his studies. Before long
he received an invitation which he was incapable of refusing, to
accompany Marshal Daru to the army. He fought in the battle of Jena,
took part in Napoleon's triumphal entry into Berlin, and was appointed
superintendent of the Imperial demesnes in Brunswick. This appointment
he held for two years, during which he gained some knowledge of the
German language and literature, and distinguished himself by his zeal
in the Emperor's service. Receiving orders to levy a war tax of five
millions, he levied seven. This was what they in those days called
"being possessed of the sacred fire." When the Emperor was told, he
said, "Well done!" and noted the assessor's name. But Beyle also won
honour for himself in ways which appeal more to our sympathies. In
1809 he was left in a little German town, in charge of stores and of
the wounded soldiers who were not fit to be removed. No sooner had the
garrison departed than the citizens were summoned by the alarm-bell to
attack the military hospital and seize the stores. The other officers
lost their heads; but Beyle armed all the convalescents, every man who
was able to be out of bed, posted the weakest at the windows (which he
transformed into loopholes), and, placing himself at the head of the
others, made a sortie and scattered the attacking mob.
He followed the army to Vienna, was employed in the negotiations which
preceded Napoleon's marriage with Marie Louise, and afterwards received
the appointment of inspector of the buildings and movable property
belonging to the crown. In this capacity he appeared at court, and was
introduced to the Empress.
After a stay in Milan he received permission, in 1812, to take part
in the Russian campaign. His love of adventure had been more than
satisfied by his previous campaigns; he had been sickened and pained by
the sight of corpses, and whilst his carriage wheels passed over and
mutilated them, he had tried to divert his mind by poetic fancies. But
war always attracted him anew. We see the man whose books, written at a
later period in his career, contain such store of delicate and profound
insight into national psychology, studying, during the passage of the
Niemen, the appearance and temperament of the soldiers of all lands who
composed the Grand Army. But by the time Smolensk was reached he had
had enough. From that town he writes:--
"How man changes! My old longing for novelty is quite gone. Since I
have seen Milan and Italy, everything else repels me by its coarseness.
Would you believe it? without any personal reason I am sometimes on
the point of shedding tears. In this ocean of barbarism there is not
a sound which finds its echo in my soul. Everything is coarse, foul,
stinking, both literally and metaphorically. My one pleasure has been
hearing a fellow, who is about as musical as I am pious, play a little
on a piano which is terribly out of tune. Ambition has no longer
any power over me; the most gorgeous order would be no compensation
for what I am enduring. I represent to myself the summits on which
my spirit dwells (planning books, listening to Cimarosa and loving
Angela in a perfect climate) as beautiful heights; far below them on
the plain lie the fetid marshes in which I am now sunk.... You will
hardly believe it, but what really gives me pleasure is to attend to
any Italian official business there is to transact. There has been
some lately, and even though it is over, it continues to occupy my
imagination like a romance."
In the diary he kept at Moscow we find traces of the same duality in
his nature--the craving to occupy his imagination, and the desire to
act and to be in the midst of action. During the great fire he writes:
"The fire soon reached the house we had left. Our carriages stood for
five or six hours on the boulevard. Tired of this inaction, I went to
look at the fire, and spent an hour or two with Joinville ... we drank
a bottle of wine, which restored us to life. I read a few lines of
an English translation of _Paul et Virginie_ which restored me to a
feeling of intellectual life in the midst of the universal barbarism."
During the terrible retreat through Russia, Beyle was superintendent
of the depots at Minsk, Vitebsk, and Mohilof; he did good service by
supplying the army as it passed Orcha with provisions for three days,
the only provisions served out to it between Moscow and Beresina.
The coolness and determination which had characterised him from his
childhood did not desert him now. It has been often told how, on one
of the most calamitous days of the campaign, he made his appearance in
Daru's quarters cleanly shaved and carefully dressed, and was greeted
by his chief with the words: "You are a brave man, Monsieur Beyle; you
have shaved to-day."
During the retreat he lost everything--horses, carriages, clothes,
and money--even the sum with which he was provided for emergencies.
Before he left, his sister had replaced all the buttons on one of
his overcoats with pieces of twenty and forty francs, carefully
covered with cloth. On his return she asked him if they had been
useful to him. After much reflection, he remembered that somewhere
in the neighbourhood of Wilna he had presented his coat to a waiter,
considering it worn out. The incident is a characteristic one; for
Beyle, who was quite as eager to excel in diplomacy as in literature,
was extremely prudent, but at the same time extremely forgetful.
He re-entered on his official duties in Paris; in 1813, he was, as a
member of the Emperor's staff, at Mainz, Erfurt, Lützen, and Dresden;
and for a time he held the appointment of Commissary-General in
Silesia. His health giving way, he went to recruit it by the Lake
of Como, in the region to which he always returned as to an earthly
Paradise, and where, as usual, he passed in blissful idleness such
leisure as the pursuit of a happy love affair left him. He was once
more actively employed under Napoleon in 1814; but the Emperor's
fall blasted all his hopes of a successful official career. He lost
everything--his appointment, his income, his position in society; and
he bore the loss not merely without complaint, but with cheerfulness,
resigning himself with philosophic equanimity to being henceforward
simply the cosmopolitan, dilettante, and author.
From 1814 till 1821, except for a short absence in 1817, Beyle was
an inhabitant of his beloved Milan. He did not leave it even during
the Hundred Days, being convinced that Napoleon's fortunes were
irretrievable. A passionate lover of Italian music and singing, he
spent happy evenings at the La Scala Theatre. He was received into
the best society of the town; in Count Porro's house, or in Lodovico
de Brême's box at the theatre, he made acquaintance with the Italian
authors and patriots--Silvio Pellico, Manzoni, &c.; and also with such
famous travellers as Byron, Madame de Staël, Wilhelm Schlegel, and a
whole host of other English and German notabilities. An attachment
which lasted for several years made him, what he was capable of being,
perfectly happy; but this happiness was rudely disturbed in the summer
of 1821 by his summary banishment from Milan. The Austrian police
suspected him, quite groundlessly, of intrigues with the Carbonari.
He returned once more to Paris in a state of the deepest dejection;
and it was during the height of his grief at being separated from the
woman he loved, that he wrote his famous book, _De l'Amour_. Hitherto
he had written, or at least published, nothing but biographies of Haydn
and Mozart, which were only adaptations of Italian and German works,
and the _Histoire de la Peinture en Italie_, with its proudly humble
dedication to the captive of St. Helena. None of these books had made
any sensation; but the last-mentioned had won him the goodwill and
friendship of De Tracy, the philosopher. Beyle at first felt himself
completely isolated in Paris. Many of his old associates under the
Empire were banished; others had forfeited his regard by cringing to
the new Government. At De Tracy's house, however, he met the best of
the good society of the day--Lafayette, the Comte de Ségur, Benjamin
Constant, &c, &c.; and at such houses as Giuditta Pasta, the famous
opera-singer's, he met the young authors, men like Mérimée and
Jaquemont. Beyle remained in Paris, except for short visits to England
and Italy, until 1830. From 1830 until his death in 1842, he was
again in government employment, holding posts which were practically
sinecures. The first year he was Consul at Trieste, a place which
he disliked, and the rest of the time at Civita Vecchia, which was
almost equivalent to being in Rome. Here he lived under the sky he had
always loved and among the people he preferred to all others, but his
solitude and idleness were unutterably wearisome to him. To such of
his countrymen as sought him out and suited him, he was an amiable and
most efficient cicerone; but he longed to be back in Paris, although
the old martial spirit of the Empire forbade him to acknowledge himself
a Frenchman after Louis Philippe's Government yielded (in 1840) to the
verdict of Europe on the Eastern question without striking a blow.
During the last years of his life his health was bad. He died suddenly
of apoplexy while on leave in Paris.[2]
[1] Expressions of Gottfried Keller's.
[2] The inscription on his tombstone in the cemetery of Montmartre,
directions for which were contained in his will, shows what a hold
Milan had on him to the last. It runs:
ARRIGO BEYLE
MILANESE
SCRISSE
AMO
VISSE
ANN. LIX M. II
MORI IL XXIII MARZO
M.D.CCC.XLII.
XIX
BEYLE
Henri Beyle's is, without doubt, one of the most complex minds of
the rich period to which he belongs. What chiefly distinguishes him
from his brethren of the Romantic School is his direct intellectual
descent from the severely rational sensationalistic philosophers of the
eighteenth century. Not even in any short youthful or transition period
is there a trace to be found in his soul of the Romantic reverence
for religious tradition so prevalent in his day. All his life long he
was the unfaltering philosophic antagonist of everything in the great
Romantic movement which was of the nature of a reaction against the
spirit of the eighteenth century. He was absolutely uninfluenced by
Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël--was neither a colourist like the
former nor eloquent like the latter; and absolutely uninfluenced by
André Chénier, Hugo, and Lamartine--for he was wanting in the sense of
metre, and was neither lyric nor pathetic. His models as a Romantic
writer were not French; and his allegiance to Condillac and Helvetius,
philosphers despised by the Romanticists of every country, never for a
moment wavered, even at the time when the prejudice against them was
universal.
He was a passionate atheist; that is to say, there was in his
conviction that the world is not governed by any God the Father, as it
were an element of enmity towards the being in whom he did not believe,
an indignation at the horrors of life, which found expression in the
sad and witty saying: "What excuses God is that he does not exist."
Beyle never let slip an opportunity of displaying his dislike of
so-called revealed religion. If he had occasion to write "the one true
religion," he did not forget to add in parenthesis "(the reader's);"
and when he touched on the subject of Christian morality, he was fond
of remarking that it might be reduced to the calculation: "It is
advisable not to eat truffles; they give you a stomach-ache."
As moral philosopher (and private individual) he was a pronounced
epicurean. He acknowledged no mainspring of action but self-interest,
that is to say, the desire of pleasure and the fear of pain; and, in
his opinion, no other was necessary to explain even so-called heroic
actions, since fear of self-contempt--_i.e._ fear of something that is
painful--is quite enough to make a man, let us say, jump into the water
to save another.[1] By virtuous actions, he understands actions which
are attended with inconvenience or suffering to the actor, but are
beneficial to others.
Psychological phenomena engrossed his attention to the exclusion
of everything else; as the observant traveller, as the student of
old chronicles, as the author of novels and stories, he was the
psychologist, and that alone. His one constant study was the human
soul, and he is one of the first modern thinkers who regard history as
being in its essence psychology. But to Beyle, with his utilitarian
philosophy, the science of the human soul and the science of happiness
are one and the same thing. All his thoughts turn on happiness. By
a man's character he understood the particular manner of seeking
happiness which had become habitual to him; and the reason of his
pronounced partiality to the Italians as a people was, that Italian men
and women seemed to him to have found the most certain and direct way
to happiness.
A man of an independent, original, ardent nature, he regarded it as the
first condition of happiness to be one's self. Everywhere throughout
his works we find, endlessly varied, the same warning: Be distrustful!
Believe only what you have seen; admire nothing that does not appeal
to you personally; always take it for granted that your neighbour
has been paid to lie! The charge which he never wearies of bringing
against the French is that they are too vain to know what happiness
is, or rather, that they are unsusceptible to any higher happiness
than that of gratified vanity, which he, personally, values very
cheaply. According to Beyle, the Frenchman is perpetually asking his
neighbour if he, the questioner, is feeling pleasure, is happy, &c.;
he dare not decide the question for himself. The fear of not being
like others, or of what others will say, is, in Beyle's opinion, the
Frenchman's dominant feeling. He himself, on the contrary, not content
with his natural originality, cherished a dislike of resembling others
which led him into oddity and affectation. The man who was constantly
ridiculing others for thinking of the opinion of their neighbours, who
loved and exalted frankness, self-forgetfulness, straightforwardness,
and simple-mindedness, was constantly keeping guard over himself,
observing himself, prescribing to himself such duties as defiance of
this neighbour, revenge upon that--and not neglecting to fulfil them.
The thought of what his neighbour might say or do plagued him quite as
much as it plagued the veriest philistine, merely with this difference,
that the philistine was haunted by the thought of his neighbour because
he desired to imitate him, Beyle because he wished to defy or avoid
him. This eternal antagonism to the philistine is a genuinely Romantic
trait. And it is also characteristically Romantic, that the man who
was perpetually preaching and lauding naturalness and unconstraint
should all his life have had a passion for concealment, disguise, and
mystification, for hiding his personal experiences and thoughts under
layer upon layer of wrappings and drapery.
Beyle's early years had been passed in profound spiritual solitude. An
overflowing fount of feeling had been turned inwards. The child who had
lost his mother, and who hated and was hated by his father, learned
early to look upon himself as different from others--no doubt also as
superior to others, though he defined his superiority as unlikeness.[2]
He was conscious that this unlikeness would exclude him from
any general sympathy and prevent his being generally understood.
Hence his desire that it were possible for him to write his books in
a language which should only be understood by a chosen few--a sacred
language. Hence also his wish to find "un lecteur unique, unique dans
tous les sens," and his dedication of _La Chartreuse de Parme_: "To the
happy few."
This, too, was the real source of the inclination to concealment. Not
only did Beyle publish all his books under a pseudonym (all, with one
exception, under the name of _De Stendhal_, presumably derived from
Stendal in Prussia, the birthplace of Winckelmann), but in many of
them, _De l'Amour_ among the rest, the pseudonymous author assumes any
number of second pseudonyms. Any sentiment which he does not care to
acknowledge as his own, any anecdote which might shed light upon his
private life, is laid to the account of an Albéric, or a Lisio, or the
amiable Colonel So and So. And he has given himself as many occupations
as names; now he is a cavalry officer, now an ironmonger, now a customs
officer, now a commercial traveller; here he figures as a man, there as
a woman; at one time he is of noble, at another of plebeian birth; at
one time English, at another Italian. He would have liked to write in a
cipher language for the initiated. This delight in leading his readers
on the wrong track is in part to be ascribed to the secretiveness of
the diplomatist; but in his private correspondence it was also due to
a suspicion of the police which almost amounted to a mania. In his
youth Beyle had made acquaintance with both Napoleon's and the Austrian
police, and he always retained a fear of his letters being seized and
opened. Therefore he hardly ever signed a private letter with his name.
I have counted in his correspondence more than seventy pseudonymous
signatures, varying from the strangest to the most ordinary
names--Conickphile, Arnolphe II, C. de Seyssel, Chopin d'Ornonville,
Toricelli, François Durand, &c, &c. He sometimes subscribes himself
captain, sometimes marquis, sometimes engineer; sometimes gives his
age, or the name of his street and number of his house. Grenoble he
calls Culars, Civita Vecchia, Abeille. It amuses him at times to append
a misleading indication of locality to his fictitious signature:
for example, Théodore Bernard (du Rhône); he actually signs such a
document as a public petition to Louis Philippe's Government for a new
coat-of-arms for France:
Olagnier,
De Voiron (Isère).
Such satisfaction did it give him to make himself unrecognisable and
hold himself aloof, that the words, _Odi profanum vulgus et arceo_,
may be employed to express what to him was certainly one condition of
happiness.
What did he himself regard as its conditions?--In his early days,
evidently daring action and passionate love. The thrill with which a
man, in his unbounded devotion to a cause or another man, risks his
life; and the tremor communicated to the soul by happy love--these to
him were the supreme moments of human existence. Writing of Milan in
the introduction to _La Chartreuse_, he observes characteristically:
"The departure of the last Austrian regiment marked the downfall of
the old ideas. It became the fashion for men to hazard their lives.
They saw that in order to be happy after centuries of hypocrisy and
vapidity, they must love something with real passion, and be capable,
on occasion, of risking their lives."