LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1835, 1836
The Rue des Batailles, whither Balzac removed his household goods in
1834, was one of those old landmarks of Paris which have disappeared
in the opening up and beautifying of the city. Commencing at the
fortifications, it penetrated inwards along the waste ground of the
Trocadero, and crossed the Rue Chaillot at a point which has since
become the Place d'Iena. Its direction from there was very nearly the
same as that of the present Avenue d'Iena. No. 12, where Balzac had
his flat, probably occupied the site whereon now stands the mansion of
Prince Roland Bonaparte. From its windows a good view was obtained of
the Seine, the Champ de Mars, the Ecole Militaire, and the Dome of the
Invalides.
As a matter of fact, the house of the Rue des Batailles was for a time
a supplementary dwelling rented by the novelist, so Werdet says, as a
hiding-place from the myrmidons of the law. The flat in the Rue
Cassini was retained, and its furniture also; and an arrangement was
made with the landlord by which a notice-board hung continually on the
door, with the words: "This apartment to let." In reality the tenant
often sojourned there still, and his cook stayed on the premises to
look after them, and serve her master with meals, whenever he wished
to work in his old study without being disturbed. At the Rue des
Batailles he lived under the pseudonym of Widow Brunet, so that
temporarily the sergeant-major of the National Guard was outwitted.
The second flat, when he took it, was composed of five small rooms;
but an army of workmen was summoned; and what with the pulling down of
partitions and their reconstruction on a more commodious plan, the
place was metamorphosed into four luxuriously furnished chambers, the
study being fitted up as a sort of boudoir. One of its walls was a
graceful curve against which rested a large, real Turkish divan in
white cashmere, its drapery being caught and held with lozenge-shaped
bows of black and flame-coloured silk. The opposite wall formed a
straight line broken only by a white marble chimney-piece pinked out
in gold. The entire room was hung in red stuff as a background, and
this was covered with fluted Indian muslin, having a top and bottom
beading of flame-coloured stuff ornamented with elegant black
arabesques. Under the muslin the red assumed a rose tint, which later
was repeated in the window curtains of muslin lined with taffety, and
fringed in black and red. Six silver sconces, each supporting two
candles, projected from the wall above the divan, to light those
sitting or lying there. From the dazzlingly white ceiling was
suspended an unpolished silver-gilt lustre; and the cornice round it
was in gold. The carpets of curious designs were like Eastern shawls;
the furniture was lavishly upholstered. The time-piece and candelabra
were of white marble incrusted with gold; and cashmere covered the
single table, while several flower-stands filled up the corners, with
their roses and other blooms. This study, which Balzac himself has
left us a description of in his novel _The Girl with the Golden Eyes_,
was soon abandoned as a workroom for another more simple and austere,
up under the roof. The latter, however, he likewise began, being
tormented by the desire of change, to adorn almost as fantastically.
Throughout the time that Werdet continued to be Balzac's publisher,
and up to the end of 1836, when their active business relations
ceased, it is difficult to be quite accurate in speaking of their
relations and the things spoken of by both in which they were mutually
concerned. There is frequent discordance in their narration of the
same event, and one is often embarrassed in trying to reconcile them.
On the one hand, it is certain that Balzac was not always exact in his
statements; on the other, Werdet's memory, in the seventies, when he
wrote his _Portrait Intime_ of the novelist, was as certainly now and
again treacherous. An example of such discrepancy is furnished by the
information given concerning _Seraphita_, which Werdet says he bought
from Buloz at the end of 1834, and for which he had to wait till
December 1835. He even makes it a reproach that the novelist, after
being extracted from a dilemma, should have dealt with him so
cavalierly. Now, from documents published by the Viscount de
Lovenjoul, there must be a mistake in Werdet's dates. During the year
of 1835, the _Revue de Paris_ published, after long delay, some
further chapters of _Seraphita_; and not until the end of November in
this same twelvemonth was the treaty signed which rendered Werdet
possessor of the book.
_Seraphita_, or _Seraphitus_--the name is designedly spelt both ways
in different parts of the book--is an attempt on the novelist's part
to represent in fiction the dual sex of the soul. The scene is laid in
the fiords of Norway. There, in a village, we meet with a person of
mysterious nature who is loved simultaneously by a man and a woman,
and who is regarded by each as being of the opposite sex. By whiles
this hermaphrodite seems to respond to the affection of each admirer,
and by whiles to withdraw on to a higher plane of existence whither
their mortality hinders them from following. To the old pastor of the
village, _Seraphita-Seraphitus_ talks with assurance of the essence of
phenomena and the invisible world, but, forsooth, only to initiate the
shades that visit spiritualistic _seances_, and to say what is either
obscure verbiage, or a hash-up of philosophies often digested without
much sustenance derived from them. In the end, this dual personage
vanishes from our mundane atmosphere, translated bodily to heaven; and
leaves his or her lovers to repair their loss--just like a forlorn
widow or widower--by making a match based on rules of conduct laid
down by the departed one.
_Seraphita_ was Balzac's pocket Catholicism. He had another
Catholicism, entirely orthodox, for the use of the public at large.
Esoterically understood, his novel teaches a doctrine of mysticism,
intuitionalism, and materialism combined. Plotinus, the Manicheans,
and Swendenborg are borrowed from without reserve. Ordinary reason is
despised. He believes himself for the nonce inspired, like the Pope
when launching bulls. "The pleasure," he writes, "of swimming in a
lake of pure water, amidst rocks, woods, and flowers, alone and fanned
by the warm zephyr, would give the ignorant but a weak image of the
happiness I felt when my soul was flooded with the rays of I know not
what light, when I listened to the terrible and confused voices of
inspiration, when from a secret source the images streamed into my
palpitating brain." On the contrary, he holds--and this does not
square well with the preceding--that the soul is an ethereal fluid
similar to electricity; that the brain is the matrass or bottle into
which the animal transports, according to the strength of the
apparatus, as much as the various organisms can absorb of this fluid,
which issues thence transformed into will; that our sentiments are
movements of the fluid, which proceeds from us by jerks when we are
angry, and which weighs on our nerves when we are in expectation; that
the current of this king of liquids, according to the pressure of
thought and feeling, spreads in waves or diminishes and thins, then
collects again, to gush forth in flashes. He believes also that our
ideas are complete, organized beings (the theosophic notion) which
live in the invisible world and influence our destinies; that,
concentrated in a powerful brain, they can master the brains of other
people, and traverse immense distances in the twinkling of an eye. In
short, he anticipates not a little of the science of the present day,
yet mixing up the true and false in his guesses by the very exuberance
of his fancy. At the close, he gives us his vision of the universe:
"They heard the divers parts of the Infinite forming a living melody;
and, at each pause, when the accord made itself felt like a huge
respiration, the worlds, drawn by this unanimous movement, inclined
themselves towards the immense being who, from his impenetrable
centre, sent everything forth and brought it back to himself. The
light engendered melody, the melody engendered light; the colours were
light and melody, the movement was number endowed with speech; in
fine, all was at once sonorous, diaphanous, mobile; so that, all
things interpenetrating each other, distance was without obstacles,
and might be traversed by the angels throughout the depths of the
infinite. There was the fete. Myriads of angels all hastened in like
flight, without confusion, all similar, yet all dissimilar, simple as
the field-rose, vast as worlds. They were neither seen to come nor go.
On a sudden, they studded the infinite with their presence, just as
the stars shine in the indiscernible ether."
The fundamental error of _Seraphita_ is its hybridity, not to speak of
its pretentious psychology. It is neither flesh nor fowl; and,
exception made for some fine passages, more at the beginning than in
the rest of the book, it jars and irks, and amazes, but does not
captivate or persuade.
It had a great success when it came out in book form. People were
inquisitive to know the end of the story, which the _Revue de Paris_
had not given; and their eagerness had been further whetted by a
cleverly graduated series of puffs put into the newspapers. In the
first day of sale, the whole edition was cleared out of Werdet's
warehouse, a thing that had never happened before with any of the same
author's works. Balzac, who had been duly informed of the good news,
hastened to the office, and led the publisher off proudly to dine with
him at Very's, and to finish up the evening at the Porte-Saint-Martin
Theatre, with ices afterwards at Tortoni's. The whole affair was
carried out in grand style. The novelist had on his war-paint, and was
accompanied by a lady, young, pretty, whose name is not revealed to
us. Werdet's _vis-a-vis_ was Madame Louise Lemercier, a benevolent
blue-stocking of that day, who was a Providence to needy men of
letters. When dinner was over, Balzac's elegant equipage, with its
mighty coachman and its diminutive groom, yclept Millet-seed, who
unfortunately died soon after in the hospital, conveyed them to the
play, in which Frederick Lemaitre and Serres held chief roles. Balzac
was the hero of the evening. His jewelled stick, and his pretty
companion monopolized the attention of the spectators, who somewhat
neglected the amusement offered by the _Auberge des Adrets_ on the
stage. At the conclusion of the piece, the four passed out of the
theatre through a double line of people eager to pay the homage that
notoriety can always command.
In the year 1835 the novelist's restlessness and inability to remain
long in one spot were evinced in a very marked manner. Only by
repeated changes of scene was he able to carry on his work at all.
After wearing himself out in a fruitless attempt to complete
_Seraphita_ in April, he fled to Madame Carraud's at Frapesle. In
October he was at La Boulonniere, where he put the last touches to
_Pea-Blossom_, better known as the _Marriage Contract_, which came out
before the end of December. His fits of depression alternated with
spurts of cheerfulness nearly every week, according as he had some
loss or gain to register; here, a fire at the printer's, where some of
his _Contes Drolatiques_ were burned; there, the sale of an article to
the _Conservateur_ for three thousand francs. In September the
barometer rose, and he exclaimed joyfully in a letter to Laure:
"The Reviews are at my feet and pay me more for my sheets. He! He!
"The reading public have changed their opinion about the _Country
Doctor_, so that Werdet is certain of selling his editions directly.
Ha! Ha!
"In short, I can meet my liabilities in November and December. Ho!
Ho!"
This tone changed in October. To his sister now he lamented:
"I am drinking the cup to the dregs. In vain I work fourteen hours a
day. I cannot suffice."
He had held practically the same language to Werdet in May,[*] when he
announced to him his intention of starting for Austria, where Madame
Hanska was staying. His brain, he said, was empty; his imagination
dried up; cup after cup of coffee produced no effect, nor yet baths
--these last being the supreme remedy.
[*] In Werdet's account this journey is placed between September and
November; but the _Letters to the Stranger_ prove that the date
he gives is incorrect.
Werdet did his best to thwart the trip; but Balzac would not be
gainsaid. He affirmed he should return with rejuvenated faculties,
after seeing his _carissima_; and ultimately he persuaded his
publisher to advance him two thousand francs for his travelling
expenses. Profuse in his gratitude, he wrote from his hotel in Vienna
--the Hotel de la Poire, situated in the Langstrasse--that, in the
society of the cherished one, he had regained his imagination and
verve. Werdet, he continued, was his Archibald Constable (_vide_
Walter Scott); their fortunes were thenceforward indissoluble; and the
day was approaching when they would meet in their carriages in the
Bois de Boulogne and turn their detractors green with envy. This
flattery was the jam enveloping the information that he had drawn on
his publisher for another fifteen hundred francs; there was also a
promise made that he would come back with his pockets full of
manuscripts. Instead of the manuscripts, he brought back some Viennese
curiosities. He had done no work while with Madame Hanska, but he had
seen Munich, and had enjoyed himself immensely, being idolized by the
aristocracy of the Austrian capital. "And what an aristocracy!" he
remarked to Werdet; "quite different from ours, my dear fellow; quite
another world. There the nobility are a real nobility. They are all
old families, not an adulterated nobility like in France."
The Vienna visit, which cost him, in total, some five thousand francs
--a foolish expense in his involved circumstances--was the cause of
his silver plate having to be pawned while he was away, in order that
certain payments of interest that he owed might be made at the end of
the month. Since he was always plunging into fresh extravagance of one
kind or another, his liabilities had a fatal tendency to grow; and at
present even more than before, since he was puffed up by the lionizing
he had enjoyed abroad. It was hardly to be expected that a man should
study economy who saw himself already appointed to the Secretaryship
for Foreign Affairs. "This is the only department which would suit
me," he said to Werdet. "I have now my free entry to the house of the
Count d'Appony, Ambassador of Austria, and to that of Rothschild,
Consul of the same Power. What glory for you, Master Werdet, to have
been my publisher. I will make your fortune then."
His display and luxury manifested themselves in greater sumptuousness
of furniture, more servants in livery, a box at the Opera for himself,
and another at the _Italiens_. And the two secretaries must not be
forgotten--one was not sufficient--the Count de Belloy and the Count
de Grammont. Sandeau was not grand enough for the post. The reason
given by Balzac to Madame Hanska was Jules' idleness, nonchalance, and
sentimentality. As a matter of fact, Sandeau did not care to play
always second fiddle, and to write tragedies or comedies for which
Balzac wished to get all the credit. Moreover, he was not a
Legitimist. The novelist had tried to convert him to his own doctrine
of autocratic government and had signally failed. These sprigs of
nobility he felt himself more in sympathy with.
About this time his epistles to "The Stranger" were full of himself
and his Herculean labours, and Madame Hanska hinted pretty plainly
that the quantity of the latter did not necessarily imply their
quality. Such expression of opinion notwithstanding, he boasted of
conceiving, composing, and printing the _Atheist's Mass_, a short
novel, it is true, in one night only. His portrait by Louis Boulanger,
which was painted during the year of 1835, had been ordered rather
with a view to advertizing him at the ensuing Salon, although he
asserted it was because he wanted to correct a false impression given
of him by Danton's caricature in the earlier months of the year. The
likeness produced by Boulanger he esteemed a good one, rendering his
Coligny, Peter the Great persistence, which, together with an intrepid
faith in the future, he said was the basis of his character. The
future hovered as a perpetual mirage in all his introspections,
sometimes with tints of dawn, at other times half-threatening. "I am
the Wandering Jew of thought," was his cry to Eve from the Hotel des
Haricots, "always up and walking without repose, without the joys of
the heart, without anything besides what is yielded me by a
remembrance at once rich and poor, without anything that I can snatch
from the future. I hold out my hand to it. It casts me not a mite, but
a smile which means to say: to-morrow."
When he embarked on the hazardous venture of starting a newspaper of
his own, the motive was chiefly a desire to exercise a larger
political influence. Yet he had additional incentives. The Reviews to
which he had contributed in the past had yielded him almost as much
annoyance as profit; and, since the two most important ones, the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_ and the _Revue de Paris_, both under the same
editorship, were closed against him, he believed he needed an organ in
which to defend himself from the rising virulence of hostile
criticism. A press campaign in his favour could be better and more
cheaply waged in a paper under his entire control. His plan was not to
create a journal, but to revive one. In 1835 the _Chronique de Paris_,
formerly called the _Globe_, was on its last legs, albeit it had been
ably edited by William Duckett; and the proprietor, Bethune the
publisher, was only too glad to listen to Balzac's overtures. By dint
of puffing the new enterprise, a company was formed with a nominal
capital of a hundred thousand francs; Duckett was paid out in bills
drawn on the receipts to accrue, since the novelist had no ready money
of his own; and a start was made under the new management. The staff
was a strong one. Jules Sandeau was dramatic critic; Emile Regnault
supplied the light literature; Gustave Planche was art critic;
Alphonse Karr wrote satirical articles; Theophile Gautier, Charles de
Bernard, and Raymond Brucker contributed fiction; and Balzac, together
with his functions of chief editor, gave the leading article.
In its reorganized form, the Review came out Sundays and Thursdays and
once a week Saturdays. The collaborators met at Werdet's house to
discuss and compare notes. Generally, they brought with them more
conversation than copy, and Balzac would begin to scold.
"How can I make up to-morrow's issue," he asked, "if each of you
arrives empty-handed?"
"Oh! being a great man and a genius," was the reply, "you have merely
to say: 'Let there be a Chronicle,' and there will be a Chronicle."
"But you know that I reserve to myself nothing except the article on
foreign policy."
"Yes, we all know," answered Karr, punning on the French word
_etrangere_, "that your policy is strange."
(Not finishing the word _etrangere_, he said only _etrange_.)
"_Ere_," shouted Balzac, adding the termination.
"_Ere_," Alphonse yelled back. "You reserve to yourself a policy which
is foreign to all governments present and past and future. And, as you
scold me, Mr. Editor, is your own article ready?"
"No, but it is here"--tapping his forehead--"I have only to write it.
In an hour it will be done."
"With the corrections?" queried Karr slily.
"Yes, with the corrections."
"Ah! well, prove that to us; and we'll all go on dry bread and water
until a statue is raised to you. I am hungry."
Although Balzac's colleagues had a real respect and admiration for his
talent, they chaffed him unmercifully for his vanity. One Saturday,
Alphonse Karr, as a joke, crowned him with flowers; and Balzac, in all
good faith, complacently accepted the honour. Around him, the laughter
broke out fast and furious; and, at length, he joined in with volleys
that shook the room, while his face waxed purple beneath his
explosions. In his _Guepes_, Alphonse Karr subsequently recalled this
improvized coronation of the novelist.
Edited and composed in such desultory fashion, the _Chronicle's_
prosperity was short-lived, in spite of the lustre it temporarily
acquired from Balzac's name, and the publication in it of some of his
fiction. Before long its financial position was so bad that the chief
editor, as a forlorn hope, tried to induce a young Russian nobleman,
who was an eager reader of his books, to enter the concern with a
large amount of fresh capital. To bait him, a magnificent dinner was
given in the Rue Cassini flat, amidst a display of all its tenant's
gold and silver plate, liberated from the pawnbroker's for the
occasion by a timely advance of two thousand francs from Werdet. The
feast was an entire success, and an appointment was fixed for the next
day at the Russian's hotel. Alas! when the envoy went, he received,
sandwiched in the guest's thanks for the royal entertainment of the
preceding evening, an announcement of the said guest's immediate
departure for Russia and the intimation that, as the nobleman was not
returning to Paris for some time, it would be impossible for him to
accept the offer of a sleeping-partnership in the Review. Three months
later the _Chronicle_ was resold to Bethune for a small sum; and the
publisher disposed of it to a third person, who, however, did not
succeed in keeping it alive. Balzac's loss by his experiment was about
twenty thousand francs.
And this loss was not the only disagreeable part of the business.
There were the bills signed to Duckett. They being protested in 1837,
Duckett sued the novelist and obtained judgment against him. At this
moment, Balzac, tracked by his creditors, had taken temporary refuge
with some friends, the Count Visconti and his English wife, who lived
in the Champs Elysees. Here he remained incognito. One day a man,
wearing the uniform of a transport company, called at the mansion and
informed the servant that he had brought six thousand francs for
Monsieur de Balzac. Suiting the action to his words, he dumped down on
to the floor a heavy bag that chinked as it struck the hall tiles.
"Monsieur de Balzac does not live here," was the servant's reply.
"Then is the master of the house in?" asked the man. "No, but the
mistress is." "Then tell her I have six thousand francs for Monsieur
de Balzac." The servant vanished and soon the lady of the mansion
appeared and offered to sign the receipt herself. To this the man
demurred. He must either see Monsieur de Balzac or must take the money
away again. There was a hurried confabulation between hostess and
guest, the upshot of which was that Balzac, falling into the snare,
came to the man, thinking that some generous friend had sent him the
money; and he was immediately served with an arrest-warrant for debt.
"I am caught," he cried; "but I will pillory Duckett for this. He
shall go down to posterity with infamy attached to his name." To get
the novelist out of the mess, Madame Visconti paid the debt for which
the warrant had been made out; and thus spared him, for the nonce, a
sojourn in the debtors' prison at Clichy.
Balzac's lawsuit with the _Revue de Paris_, the details of which are
given in the Viscount de Lovenjoul's _Last Chapter of the History of
Balzac's Works_, was brought about by the novelist's quarrel, in 1835,
with Buloz, the editor, because the latter, while the _Lily in the
Valley_ was being printed, communicated proofs of it to the _Revue
Francaise_ of Saint Petersburg. Balzac at once severed his connection
with the _Revue de Paris_, and took away his novel, on the ground that
the editor was not justified in selling it abroad without his--the
author's--permission, and especially was not justified in
communicating premature proofs, which, owing to his practice of
modifying the text while correcting it, could in no way represent his
finished work. After an attempt made by mutual friends to settle the
matter amicably, Buloz entered an action against Balzac to compel him
to continue the publication of the _Lily in the Valley_ in the _Revue
de Paris_. Three parts had been given. It was the end which the Review
demanded, and ten thousand francs damages for the delay. The case was
heard in May 1836, after months of bitter controversy, in which both
sides had their ardent supporters. The most was made by the
plaintiff's barrister of Balzac's previous disputes with other
editors, who had had to complain of his tardiness in completing
articles or stories. A letter was also put in, signed by Alexandre
Dumas, Eugene Sue, Frederic Soulie, and others, stating that it was
usual for authors to allow the communication of their productions to
the _Revue Francaise_ of Saint Petersburg, with a view to combating
Belgian and German piracies. And Jules Janin, who during the Thirties
was a zealous opponent of Balzac, cast his weight of evidence in
favour of the Review. The _Seraphita_ episode was dragged in, too,
with testimony to show that, even after Werdet had bought the right to
publish the novel in book form, Balzac again negotiated for its
continuation as a serial in the Review, and had, moreover, supplied
some other chapters, yet without coming to the end. In fact, the suit
was a complicated one to decide. Ultimately, the Court gave its
verdict against Balzac on the chief point at issue. He lost the
conclusion of the _Lily in the Valley_, and recovered only a small sum
of money that had been advanced to the novelist for copy not supplied,
and besides had to pay all the expenses of his action.
What galled Balzac particularly during the speeches of the plaintiff's
barrister, was to hear the style of his novel pulled to pieces in
language of mingled sarcasm and clever criticism that delighted the
audience and the papers. After the termination of the affair, he
thoroughly overhauled the parts of the book which had been so severely
handled, made large alterations, and, since fun had also been poked at
his pretensions to noble ancestry, he prefixed a curious introduction
to the edition that Werdet was about to publish. In the course of it
he declared: "If some persons, deceived by caricatures, false
portraits, penny-a-liners, and lies, credit me with a colossal
fortune, palaces, and above all, with frequent favours from women
. . . I here declare to them that I am a poor artist, absorbed in art,
working at a long history of society, which will be either good or
bad, but at which I work by necessity, without shame, just as Rossini
has made operas or Du Ryer translations and volumes; that I live very
much alone, that I have a few firm friends; that my name is on my
birth-certificate, etc., just as that of Monsieur de Fitz-James is on
his; that, if it is of old Gaulish stock, this is not my fault; but
that de Balzac is my patronymic, an advantage which many aristocratic
families have not who called themselves Odet before they were called
Chatillon, Duplessis, and who are, none the less, great families."
To the foregoing he joined a long account of his birth and his
presumed title to ancient lineage, and inserted into the bargain a
panegyric of Werdet as a man of activity, intelligence, and probity,
with whom his relations would be unbroken, since by this same
declaration he constituted him henceforward his sole publisher. That
was in July 1836. Scarcely six months after, when Werdet was
threatened with a bankruptcy which was likely to involve him--a
repetition in minor degree of Scott's entanglement with Constable--he
veered completely round, called Werdet a rotten plank, an empty head,
an obstinate mule, and other names more expressive than polite,
affirmed that he had always considered him a bit of a fool, and
dropped all further connection with him. Werdet, it is true, was no
business genius, but he was really attached to Balzac, and had yielded
to the great man's importunities as long as his purse would support
the strain.
The _Lily in the Valley_ was published by Werdet in the week after the
lawsuit was finished, and was well received by the public. Its
success, however, was more considerable abroad than in France. The
author complained of the smallness of the numbers sold in France
compared with those of foreign editions; but Werdet's figures indicate
a very fair sale, and are larger than those given by Balzac, who in
this instance at least was not so accurate as his publisher.
The novel deals with the struggle in the heart of a Madame de
Mortsauf, torn between her affection for Felix de Vandenesse and her
determination to remain outwardly faithful in conduct towards her
husband. With his invariable enthusiasm for subjects that pleased him
in his own work, Balzac believed and affirmed that this secret combat
waged in a valley of the Indre was as important as the most famous
military battle ever fought. Possibly the amount of early personal
biography in the book--yet a good deal romanced--led him to this
conviction. Possibly, too, the richness with which he adorned its
style helped to foster the opinion he held, which critics have not
ratified. Not even Lamartine, his eulogist, found much to say in
favour of the story. To the first part alone he gave his approval,
likening it to the Song of Solomon. The rest he thought vulgar, and
hinted that the heroine degenerates into a sort of hermaphrodite
character. Brunetiere's estimate, given in a parenthesis, is not much
more favourable. And Taine, when dipping into the book for examples of
Balzac's style, neutralizes his praise of one portion by his
depreciation of another.
Apart from the question of the novel's style, which is turgid because
the lyric note intrudes, the most legitimate objection to the book is
the sentimentalism which pervades it throughout, and palls on the
reader before he reaches the conclusion. Like Richardson in his
_Pamela_, but far to a greater extent than Richardson, Balzac has
placed the struggle on the physical plane. Madame de Mortsauf permits
de Vandenesse to make love to her, to caress her, and she accords him
everything with the single exception of that which would confer on her
husband the right to divorce her. The interest of the book therefore
is largely a material one. The moral issue is thrown into the
background. And de Vandenesse, moreover, is not a person that inspires
us with respect or even pity. He consoles himself with Lady Dudley,
while swearing high allegiance to his Henriette.
In sooth, the swain's position resembled the novelist's own. Honore
was also inditing oaths of fidelity to his "dear star," his
"earth-angel" in far-away Russia, while worshipping at shrines more
accessible. Lady Dudley may well have been, for all his denial, the
Countess Visconti, of whom Madame Hanska was jealous and on good
grounds, or else the Duchess de Castries, to whom he said that, in
writing the book, he had caught himself shedding tears. His
reminiscences of Madame de Berny aided him in composing the figure of
the heroine, whose death-bed scene was soon to become sober reality.
Madame de Berny died in July, having had a last pleasure in perusing
the story that immortalized her affection for the novelist. Balzac had
been intending to pay her a farewell visit; but he was then in the
midst of embarrassments of all kinds, and the journey was postponed
until it was too late.
At this moment, the affair of the _Chronique_ was being liquidated;
and then Madame Bechet, his late publisher, was dunning him for some
arrears of copy that he owed her. His brother Henry, too, going from
bad to worse, was in a position that necessitated Madame de Balzac's
giving up the remnants of her capital; and, to crown all, a son of
Laurence, the dead sister, quitting an unhappy home, was living as a
vagabond on the streets of Paris, whence he had to be rescued. Since,
to these worries and griefs, there was added certain disquieting news
from Eve, whose aunt, from reading some of his books, supposed him to
be a gambler and debauchee and was trying to turn her niece against
him, it was not astonishing that he should have been completely
unnerved. While at Sache, where he had come to stay with some friends,
the de Margonnes, in order to terminate the work he was obliged to do
for Madame Bechet, he had an attack of apoplexy; and, on recovering
from it, was glad to seize an opportunity offered him of a journey to
Italy to escape for a while from the scene of his toiling and moiling
and to have a radical change. His good genius on this occasion was the
Count Visconti, who, having some legal business of a litigious nature
to settle at Turin and not being able to attend to it personally,
asked him to go instead. On this trip he was accompanied by Madame
Marbouty, a woman of letters, better known under her pseudonym, Claire
Brunne, whose acquaintance he had made some years back at Angouleme.
Madame Marbouty's exterior had much in common with that of George
Sand, and the resemblance between the two women gave rise to the
report that it was the authoress of _Indiana_ who accompanied Balzac
to Italy at this date.
The journey back to Paris was effected through Switzerland, which
enabled him to see Geneva again, though under less agreeable auspices
than those of 1833. His prospects on returning to France were no
better than when he left. Indeed, they were worse, for Werdet's bad
circumstances forced him to pledge himself in several quarters in
order to raise some ready money for his immediate wants; and, being
pledged, he was bound to produce at high pressure. His _Old Maid_,
which he sold to the _Presse_ for eight thousand francs, was written
in three nights, _Facino Cane_, in one night, and the _Secret of the
Ruggieri_, in one night also. Rossini, happening to meet him during
this spell of drudgery, condoled with him and remarked that he himself
had gone through the mill.
"But when I did it," he added, "I was dead after a fortnight, and it
took me another fifteen days to revive."
"Well!" replied Balzac, "I have only the coffin in view as a rest; yet
work is a fine shroud."
Casting round for a means to free himself from a position that had
grown intolerable, he was induced to lend himself to a scheme
suggested by Chateaubriand's example. Chateaubriand, having fallen
into financial straits, sold his pen to a syndicate, in return for an
annual stipend. Balzac did something of the same kind. Victor Bohain,
who played an intermediary role in the affair, discovered
Chateaubriand's capitalist; and a company was formed which paid the
novelist fifty thousand francs down to relieve his most pressing
needs; and further engaged to allow him fifteen hundred francs a month
for the first year, three thousand francs a month for the second year,
and, afterwards, four thousand francs a month up to the fifteenth
year, when the agreement was to come to an end. In return for these
sums, Balzac promised to furnish a fixed number of volumes per year,
half profits in which were to be his, after all publishing expenses
were paid. The arrangement was signed on the 19th of November 1836;
and this date, in so far as the general quality of his writing is
concerned, marks a beginning of decadence. Thenceforward his fiction,
published mostly in political dailies first of all--the _Presse_, the
_Constitutionnel_, the _Siecle_, the _Debats_, the _Messager_--had to
be composed hurriedly and without the corrections which were the _sine
qua non_ of Balzac's excellence; and consequently it contained many
imperfections inherent in such kinds of literary work. There was irony
in the situation. Hitherto, he had despised the daily press and the
journalists that supplied it with matter, chiefly, it must be
confessed, because of the slatings he had received through these
organs of information; and he had revenged himself for the attacks by
pillorying the journalistic profession in his novels. Lousteau, Finot,
Blondet, and other members of the press appear in his pages as
unprincipled men, only too willing to sell themselves to the highest
bidder. Of course, such retaliation carried with it injustice; and men
of high principle, like Jules Janin, resented this prejudiced
condemnation of a class for no better reason than its having black
sheep, which existed in every circle, trade and profession. Now, Janin
had an easy task in convicting of inconsistency an accuser who, since
it suited his purpose, was fain to belong to the press brotherhood.
The real derogation, however, was not in Balzac's turning
_feuilletoniste_, but in his slipping into the manner and his adopting
the artifices that he blamed so unsparingly in Eugene Sue and
Alexandre Dumas. Not to speak of his falling off in accurate
observation, he inserted more and more padding in his fiction; the
aridly didactic encroached upon the artist's creation; and, to make
the arid portions go down with his readers, he spiced them with
exciting episodes and all the stage tricks common in the serial story.
To tell the truth, he had never quite shaken off his juvenile manner
of the _Heiress of Birague_, which reasserted itself so much the more
easily as his essentially vulgar temperament was ready to crop out on
the slightest encouragement afforded to it. During his best period he
had a mentor at his elbow in Charles Lemesle, who always read what he
wrote before it went to the printer; and Balzac, though vain, was too
intelligent not to avail himself of this friend's pruning. Under the
new _regime_ the revising was impossible, and, as a result, that
difficult perfection which he had so perseveringly sought was destined
to be attained but rarely in the rest of his achievement.