1. The letters all state the purpose for which they were written. The
versions of 1856 and 1876 give the same purpose. That given in "Roman
d'Amour" is totally different.
2. The "Roman d'Amour" letter claims to be the complete text [_texte
complet_]. How comes it, therefore, to have such variations from
the original letter published by the sister who received it, and
republished authoritatively in the Édition Définitive?
3. These variations are not merely omissions or additions of passages;
they are the total reconstruction of many, and very characteristic,
sentences.
Some one _must_ have rewritten the letter. Some one has garbled it.
There can be no question about this; the fact is there. It is not
necessary for the vindication of Balzac's honour to inquire who did it;
but it is plain that it was done.
It is therefore legitimate to suppose that the hand which garbled parts
of the letter added the slanderous language of the first part.
Three years ago, in 1896, when "Roman d'Amour" first appeared, I added
to the new edition of my "Memoir of Balzac" an appendix entitled "A
Vindication of Balzac." It goes into more details connected with this
slander than I can suitably put into this Preface, and I respectfully
ask my readers to read it in the Memoir.
Now, to me who have lived in Balzac's mind for the last fifteen years
as closely, perhaps, as any one now living, it is plain that the same
hand that garbled the letter of October, 1833, has been at work on some
of the letters in the present volume.
The simple story of these letters is as follows: In February, 1833,
Balzac received a letter, posted in Russia, from a lady who signed
herself "l'Étrangère" ["Foreigner"]. This letter is not known to exist;
nor is there any authentic knowledge of its contents; but it began
a correspondence between its writer and Balzac which ended in their
marriage in 1850. It does not appear at what date Madame Hanska gave
her name; it must have been quite early in the correspondence, although
he never knew it exactly until the day he met her in September, 1833,
at Neufchâtel.
The first reply from Balzac which is given is the first letter in the
present volume, misdated January, 1833, a month _before_ l'Étrangère's
first letter was written; but it is plainly not the first reply he had
made to her.
Eleven letters from Balzac follow the first, ending on the day
(September 26, 1833) when he met Madame Hanska for the first time at
Neufchâtel.
These twelve letters to an unknown woman are romantic; they are the
letters of a poet, creating for himself an ideal love, and letting his
imagination bear him along unchecked. From our colder point of view
they seem, here and there, a little foolish, as addressed to a total
stranger, but the impression conveyed of his own being, his nature,
the troubles of his life and heart, is affecting and full of dignity.
They are, moreover, the letters of a gentleman to a woman he respects.
Owing to their false dates and to a forgery in the first letter (done
undoubtedly to bring them into line with "Roman d'Amour"), they are
open to suspicion; but Balzac's characteristics are in them, and I
believe them to be, in spite of some interpolations, genuine.
But from the time that he meets Madame Hanska at Neufchâtel, a date
which corresponds precisely with the garbled letter in "Roman d'Amour,"
the tone of the correspondence changes. For six months (from October to
March) it becomes out of keeping with the respect which the foregoing
letters, and the letters of all the rest of his life show that he
felt for her. More especially is this true of the letters of January,
February, and March. They are not in Balzac's style of writing; they
present ideas that were not his, expressed in a manner that was not
his; they contradict the impression given by all the other letters
of his life; they contradict the letters of romantic ideal love that
precede them; they contradict what every friend who knew Balzac closely
has said of him; they contradict the known facts of the history of
himself and Madame Hanska; they are, moreover, disloyal to friendship
in a manner that Balzac's whole conduct in life, as evidenced in his
correspondence, shows to have been impossible.
To bring the question home to ourselves--which of us, after reflection
and comparison, can suppose that the paltry, immature, contemptibly
vulgar stuff of the letters here designated as spurious ever came from
the brain of the man who thought and wrote the "Comédie Humaine"?
There is such a thing as _true literary judgment_,--as unerring as
the science that sees a mammoth in a bone. To that judgment, if to no
other, this question may be left. The letters are here in this volume,
and the reader can judge them for himself. In my opinion they have
been garbled in various places; expressions, passages, and many whole
letters have been interpolated, with the vulgarity of the hand that
garbled the letter in "Roman d'Amour," for the purpose of supporting
the slander suggested in that book.
This is, necessarily, opinion and judgment only; but a very remarkable
circumstance appears in this volume, which should be studied and judged
by readers thoroughly informed about Balzac, his nature, his character,
and his writings.
September 16, 1834, Balzac writes to Monsieur Hanski, asking him to
explain to Madame Hanska how he came to write to her two love-letters;
these letters are not given. He asks her pardon, he is grieved, he
is mortified (and justly so); but the letter is characteristic of a
man who was honest and brave; the defence rings true. Monsieur Hanski
must have thought so, for he accepted the commission and so performed
it that Balzac's next letter to Madame Hanska thanks her for her
pardon, and is written in a tone of boyish glee which was eminently
characteristic of him, and could not have been counterfeited.
From this time there is not a trace of embarrassment in his letters;
he does not feel himself withheld from expressing his ardent but
respectful feelings for Madame Hanska; he assures her, again and again,
of her influence upon his life, and he sends friendly messages to
Monsieur Hanski, which are returned in an evidently kind and cordial
way.
To the translation of the "Lettres à l'Étrangère" I have added that
of all the letters to Madame Hanska during the rest of Balzac's life
which are contained in the volume of Correspondence in the Édition
Définitive. The "Lettres à l'Étrangère"--those, I mean, that are
genuine--ought, if published at all, to have been shortened. They were
written to give vent to the emotions of a heart and soul under violent
pressure; perhaps no letters exist that ever came so hot from the inner
being; they lay bare a soul that little dreamed of this exposure, for
the man who wrote them never read them over. For this reason, this lack
of editing, the reader will surely find them too monotonous in their
one long cry; and yet, without them, the world would not have known a
tragedy too great for tears, nor the true history of a hero.
I should not have consented to translate these letters unless I had
been allowed by my publishers to preface them with these remarks, and
give my name and what weight my long, close intercourse with Balzac may
possess in his just defence.