Balzac's appearance, dress, and personality--His imaginary
world and schemes for making money--His family, childhood,
and school-days.
According to Theophile Gautier, herculean jollity was the most
striking characteristic of the great writer, whose genius excels in
sombre and often sordid tragedy. George Sand, too, speaks of Balzac's
"serene soul with a smile in it"; and this was the more remarkable,
because he lived at a time when discontent and despair were considered
the sign-manual of talent.
Physically Balzac was far from satisfying a romantic ideal of fragile
and enervated genius. Short and stout, square of shoulder, with an
abundant mane of thick black hair--a sign of bodily vigour--his whole
person breathed intense vitality. Deep red lips, thick, but finely
curved, and always ready to laugh, attested, like the ruddiness in his
full cheeks, to the purity and richness of his blood. His forehead,
high, broad, and unwrinkled, save for a line between the eyes, and his
neck, thick, round, and columnar, contrasted in their whiteness with
the colour in the rest of the face. His hands were large and dimpled
--"beautiful hands," his sister calls them. He was proud of them, and
had a slight prejudice against any one with ugly extremities. His
nose, about which he gave special directions to David when his bust
was taken, was well cut, rather long, and square at the end, with the
lobes of the open nostrils standing out prominently. As to his eyes,
according to Gautier, there were none like them.[*] They had
inconceivable life, light, and magnetism. They were eyes to make an
eagle lower his lids, to read through walls and hearts, to terrify a
wild beast--eyes of a sovereign, a seer, a conqueror. Lamartine likens
them to "darts dipped in kindliness." Balzac's sister speaks of them
as brown; but, according to other contemporaries, they were like
brilliant black diamonds, with rich reflections of gold, the white of
the eyeballs being tinged with blue. They seemed to be lit with the
fire of the genius within, to read souls, to answer questions before
they were asked, and at the same time to pour out warm rays of
kindliness from a joyous heart.
[*] "Portraits Contemporains--Honore de Balzac," by Theophile Gautier.
At all points Balzac's personality differed from that of his
contemporaries of the Romantic School--those transcendental geniuses
of despairing temper, who were utterly hopeless about the prosaic
world in which, by some strange mistake, they found themselves; and
from which they felt that no possible inspiration for their art could
be drawn. So little attuned were these unfortunates to their
commonplace surroundings that, after picturing in their writings
either fiendish horrors, or a beautiful, impossible atmosphere,
peopled by beings out of whom all likeness to humanity had been
eliminated, they not infrequently lost their mental balance
altogether, or hurried by their own act out of a dull world which
could never satisfy their lively imaginations. Balzac, on the other
hand, loved the world. How, with the acute powers of observation, and
the intuition, amounting almost to second sight, with which he was
gifted, could he help doing so? The man who could at will quit his own
personality, and invest himself with that of another; who would follow
a workman and his wife on their way home at night from a music-hall,
and listen to their discussions on domestic matters till he imbibed
their life, felt their ragged clothing on his back, and their desires
and wants in his soul,--how could he find life dull, or the most
commonplace individual uninteresting?
In dress Balzac was habitually careless. He would rush to the
printer's office, after twelve hours of hard work, with his hat drawn
over his eyes, his hands thrust into shabby gloves, and his feet in
shoes with high sides, worn over loose trousers, which were pleated at
the waist and held down with straps. Even in society he took no
trouble about his appearance, and Lamartine describes him as looking,
in the salon of Madame de Girardin, like a schoolboy who has outgrown
his clothes. Only for a short time, which he describes with glee in
his letters to Madame Hanska, did he pose as a man of fashion. Then he
wore a magnificent white waistcoat, and a blue coat with gold buttons;
carried the famous cane, with a knob studded with turquoises,
celebrated in Madame de Girardin's story, "La Canne de Monsieur de
Balzac"; and drove in a tilbury, behind a high-stepping horse, with a
tiny tiger, whom he christened Anchise, perched on the back seat. This
phase was quickly over, the horses were sold, and Balzac appeared no
more in the box reserved for dandies at the Opera. Of the fashionable
outfit, the only property left was the microscopic groom--an orphan,
of whom Balzac took the greatest care, and whom he visited daily
during the boy's last illness, a year or two after. Thenceforward he
reverted to his usual indifference about appearances, his only vanity
being the spotless cleanliness of his working costume--a loose
dressing-gown of white flannel or cashmere, made like the habit of a
Benedictine monk, which was kept in round the waist by a silk girdle,
and was always scrupulously guarded from ink-stains.
Naive as a child, anxious for sympathy, frankly delighted with his own
masterpieces, yet modest in a fashion peculiar to himself, Balzac gave
a dominant impression of kindliness and bonhomie, which overshadowed
even the idea of intellect. To his friends he is not in the first
place the author of the "Comedie Humaine," designed, as George Sand
rather grandiloquently puts it, to be "an almost universal examination
of the ideas, sentiments, customs, habits, legislation, arts, trades,
costumes, localities--in short, of all that constitutes the lives of
his contemporaries"[*]--that claim to notice recedes into the
background, and what is seen clearly is the _bon camarade_, with his
great hearty laugh, his jollity, his flow of language, and his jokes,
often Rabelaisian in flavour. Of course there was another side to the
picture, and there were times in his hardset and harassing life when
even _his_ vivacity failed him. These moods were, however, never
apparent in society; and even to his intimate men friends, such as
Theophile Gautier and Leon Gozlan, Balzac was always the delightful,
whimsical companion, to be thought of and written of afterwards with
an amused, though affectionate smile. Only to women, his principal
confidantes, who played as important a part in his life as they do in
his books, did he occasionally show the discouragement to which the
artistic nature is prone. Sometimes the state of the weather, which
always had a great effect on him, the difficulty of his work, the
fatigue of sitting up all night, and his monetary embarrassments,
brought him to an extreme state of depression, both physical and
mental. He would arrive at the house of Madame Surville, his sister,
who tells the story, hardly able to drag himself along, in a gloomy,
dejected state, with his skin sallow and jaundiced.
[*] "Autour de la Table," by George Sand.
"Don't console me," he would say in a faint voice, dropping into a
chair; "it is useless--I am a dead man."
The dead man would then begin, in a doleful voice, to tell of his new
troubles; but he soon revived, and the words came forth in the most
ringing tones of his voice. Then, opening his proofs, he would drop
back into his dismal accents and say, by way of conclusion:
"Yes, I am a wrecked man, sister!"
"Nonsense! No man is wrecked with such proofs as those to correct."
Then he would raise his head, his face would unpucker little by
little, the sallow tones of his skin would disappear.
"My God, you are right!" he would say. "Those books will make me live.
Besides, blind Fortune is here, isn't she? Why shouldn't she protect a
Balzac as well as a ninny? And there are always ways of wooing her.
Suppose one of my millionaire friends (and I have some), or a banker,
not knowing what to do with his money, should come to me and say, 'I
know your immense talents, and your anxieties: you want such-and-such
a sum to free yourself; accept it fearlessly: you will pay me; your
pen is worth millions!' That is _all I want_, my dear."[*]
[*] "Balzac, sa Vie et ses Oeuvres, d'apres la Correspondance," by
Mme. L. Surville (nee de Balzac).
Then the "child-man," as his sister calls him, would imagine himself a
member of the Institute; then in the Chamber of Peers, pointing out
and reforming abuses, and governing a highly prosperous country.
Finally, he would end the interview with, "Adieu! I am going home to
see if my banker is waiting for me"; and would depart, quite consoled,
with his usual hearty laugh.
He lived, his sister tells us, to a great extent in a world of his
own, peopled by the imaginary characters in his books, and he would
gravely discuss its news, as others do that of the real world.
Sometimes he was delighted at the grand match he had planned for his
hero; but often affairs did not go so well, and perhaps it would give
him much anxious thought to marry his heroine suitably, as it was
necessary to find her a husband in her own set, and this might be
difficult to arrange. When asked about the past of one of his
creations, he replied gravely that he "had not been acquainted with
Monsieur de Jordy before he came to Nemours," but added that, if his
questioner were anxious to know, he would try to find out. He had many
fancies about names, declaring that those which are invented do not
give life to imaginary beings, whereas those really borne by some one
endow them with vitality. Leon Gozlan says that he was dragged by
Balzac half over Paris in search of a suitable name for the hero of a
story to be published in the _Revue Parisienne_. After they had
trudged through scores of streets in vain, Balzac, to his intense joy,
discovered "Marcas" over a small tailor's shop, to which he added, as
"a flame, a plume, a star," the initial Z. Z. Marcas conveyed to him
the idea of a great, though unknown, philosopher, poet, or
silversmith, like Benvenuto Cellini; he went no farther, he was
satisfied--he had found "_the_ name of names."[*]
[*] "Balzac en Pantoufles," by Leon Gozlan.
Many are the amusing anecdotes told of Balzac's schemes for becoming
rich. Money he struggled for unceasingly, not from sordid motives, but
because it was necessary to his conception of a happy life. Without
its help he could never be freed from his burden of debt, and united
to the _grande dame_ of his fancy, who must of necessity be posed in
elegant toilette, on a suitable background of costly brocades and
objects of art. Nevertheless, in spite of all his efforts, and of a
capacity and passion for work which seemed almost superhuman, he never
obtained freedom from monetary anxiety. Viewed in this light, there is
pathos in his many impossible plans for making his fortune, and
freeing himself from the strain which was slowly killing him.
Some of his projected enterprises were wildly fantastic, and prove
that the great author was, like many a genius, a child at heart; and
that, in his eyes, the world was not the prosaic place it is to most
men and women, but an enchanted globe, like the world of "Treasure
Island," teeming with the possibility of strange adventure. At one
time he hoped to gain a substantial income by growing pineapples in
the little garden at Les Jardies, and later on he thought money might
be made by transporting oaks from Poland to France. For some months he
believed that, by means of magnetism exercised on somnambulists, he
had discovered the exact spot at Pointe a Pitre where
Toussaint-Louverture hid his treasure, and afterwards shot the negroes
he had employed to bury it, lest they should betray its hiding-place.
Jules Sandeau and Theophile Gautier were chosen to assist in the
enterprise of carrying off the hidden gold, and were each to receive a
quarter of the treasure, Balzac, as leader of the venture, taking the
other half. The three friends were to start secretly and separately
with spades and shovels, and, their work accomplished, were to put the
treasure on a brig which was to be in waiting, and were to return as
millionaires to France. This brilliant plan failed, because none of the
three adventurers had at the moment money to pay his passage out; and no
doubt, by the time that the necessary funds were forthcoming, Balzac's
fertile brain was engaged on other enterprises.[*]
[*] "Portraits Contemporains--Honore de Balzac," by Theophile Gautier.
The foundation of his pecuniary misfortunes was laid before his birth,
when his father, forty-five years old and unmarried, sank the bulk of
his fortune in life annuities, so that his son was in the unfortunate
position of starting life in very comfortable circumstances, and of
finding himself in want of money just when he most needed it.
Balzac's father was born in Languedoc in 1746, and we are told by his
son that he had been Secretary, and by Madame Surville, advocate, of
the Council under Louis XVI. Both these statements however appear to
be incorrect, and may be considered to have been harmless fictions on
the part of the old gentleman, as no record of his name can be found
in the Royal Calendar, which was very carefully kept. Almanacs are
awkward things, and his name _is_ mentioned in the National Calendar
of 1793 as a "lawyer" and "member of the general council for the
section of the rights of man in the Commune." But he evidently
preferred to draw a veil over his revolutionary experiences, and it
seems rather hard that, because he happened to possess a celebrated
son, his little secrets should be exposed to the light of day. Later
on he became an ardent Royalist, and in 1814 he joined with Bertrand
de Molleville to draw up a memoir against the Charter, which Balzac
says was dictated to him, then a boy of fifteen; and he also mentions
that he remembers hearing M. de Molleville cry out, "The Constitution
ruined Louis XVI., and the Charter will kill the Bourbons!" "No
compromise" formed an essential part of the creed of the Royalists at
the Restoration.
When M. de Balzac[*] married, in 1797, he was in charge of the
Commissariat of the Twenty-second Military Division; and in 1798 he
came to live in Tours, where he had bought a house and some land near
the town, and where he remained for nineteen years. Here, on May 16,
1799, St. Honore's day, his son, the celebrated novelist, was born,
and was christened Honore after the saint.
[*] The Balzac family will be accorded the "de" in this account of
them.
Old M. de Balzac was in his own way literary, and had written two or
three pamphlets, one on his favourite subject--that of health. He
seems to have been a man of much originality, many peculiarities, and
much kindness of heart. He was evidently impulsive, like his
celebrated son, and he certainly made a culpable mistake, and a cruel
one for his family, when he rashly concluded that he would always
remain a bachelor, and arranged that his income should die with him.
He afterwards hoped to repair the wrong he had thus done to his
children, by outliving the other shareholders and obtaining a part of
the immense capital of the Tontine. Fortunately for himself he
possessed extraordinary optimism, and power of excluding from his mind
the possibility of all unpleasant contingencies--qualities which he
handed on in full measure to Honore. He therefore kept himself happy
in the monetary disappointments of his later life, by thinking and
talking of the millions his children would inherit from their
centenarian father. For their sakes it was necessary that he should
take care of his health, and he considered that, by maintaining the
"equilibrium of the vital forces," there was absolutely no doubt that
he would live for a hundred years or more. Therefore he followed a
strict regimen, and gave himself an infinite amount of trouble, as
well as amusement, by his minute arrangements.
Unfortunately, however, the truth of his theories could never be
tested, as he died in 1829, at the age of eighty-three, from the
effects of an operation; and Madame de Balzac and her family were left
to face the stern facts of life, denuded of the rose-coloured haze in
which they had been clothed by the kindly old enthusiast. Balzac's
mother certainly had a hard life, and from what we hear of her
nervous, excitable nature--inherited apparently from her mother,
Madame Sallambier--we can hardly be astonished when Balzac writes to
Madame Hanska, in 1835, that if her misfortunes do not kill her, it is
feared they will destroy her reason. Nevertheless, she outlived her
celebrated son, and is mentioned by Victor Hugo, when he visited
Balzac's deathbed, as the only person in the room, except a nurse and
a servant.[*]
[*] "Choses Vues," by Victor Hugo.
She was many years younger than her husband--a beauty and an heiress;
and she evidently had her own way with the easy-going old M. de
Balzac, and was the moving spirit in the household: so that the ease
and absence of friction in her early life must have made her
subsequent troubles and humiliations especially galling. Besides
Honore, she had three children: Laure, afterwards Madame Surville;
Laurence, who died young; and Henry, the black sheep of the family,
who returned from the colonies, after having made an unsatisfactory
marriage, and who, during the last years of Honore de Balzac's life,
required constant monetary help from his relations.
Her two young children were Madame de Balzac's favourites, and they
and their affairs gave her constant trouble. In 1822 Laurence married
a M. Saint-Pierre de Montzaigle, apparently a good deal older than
herself; and Honore gives a very _couleur de rose_ account of his
future brother-in-law's family, in a letter written at the time of the
engagement to Laure, who was already married. He does not seem so
charmed with the bridegroom, _il troubadouro_, as with his
surroundings, and remarks that he has lost his top teeth, and is very
conceited, but will do well enough--as a husband. Every one is
delighted at the marriage; but Laure can imagine _maman's_ state of
nervous excitement from her recollection of the last few days before
her own wedding, and can fancy that he and Laurence are not enjoying
themselves. "Nature surrounds roses with thorns, and pleasures with a
crowd of troubles. Mamma follows the example of nature."[*]
[*] "H. de Balzac--Correspondence," vol. i. p. 41.
Laurence's death, in 1826, must have been a terrible grief to the poor
mother; but she may have realised later on that her daughter had
escaped much trouble, as in 1836 the Balzac family threatened M. de
Montzaigle with a lawsuit on the subject of his son, who was left to
wander about Paris without food, shoes, or clothes. We cannot suppose
that any one with such sketchy views of the duties of a father could
have been a particularly satisfactory husband; but perhaps Laurence
died before she had time to discover M. de Montzaigle's deficiencies.
Henry, the younger son, appears to have been brought up on a different
method from that pursued with Honore, as we hear in 1821 that Madame
de Balzac considered that the boy was unhappy and bored with school,
that he was with canting people who punished him for nothing, and must
be taken away. Evidently the younger son was the mother's darling; but
her mode of bringing him up was not happy in its effects, as he seems
to have given continual anxiety and trouble. He came back from the
colonies with his wife; and by threatening to blow out his brains, he
worked on his mother's feelings, and induced her to help him with
money, and nearly to ruin herself. In consequence she was obliged for
a time to take up her abode with Honore, an arrangement which did not
work well. Even when Henry was at last shipped off to the Indies, he
continued to agitate his family by sending them pathetic accounts of
his distress and necessities, and these letters from her much-loved
son must have been peculiarly painful to Madame de Balzac.
Honore and his mother seem never to have understood each other very
well; and she was stern with him and Laure in their youth, while she
lavished caresses on her younger children. Likeness to a father is not
always a passport to a mother's favour, and Madame de Balzac does not
appear to have realised her son's genius, and evidently feared that,
without due repression in youth, the paternal type of imaginative
optimist would be repeated.
She was not a tender mother in childhood, when indeed she saw little
of Honore, as she left him out at nurse till he was four years old,
and sent him to school when he was eight; but later on in all
practical matters she did her best for him, lending him money when he
was in difficulties, and looking after his business affairs when he
was away from Paris. She was evidently easily offended, and rather
absurdly tenacious of her maternal dignity; so that sometimes the
deference and submission of the great writer are surprising and rather
touching. On the other hand it must be remembered that Honore made
great demands on his friends, that they were expected to accord
continual sympathy and admiration, to be perfectly tactful in their
criticisms, and were only very occasionally allowed to give advice.
Therefore his opinion of his mother's coldness may have sprung from
her failure to answer to the requirements of his peculiar code of
affection, and not from any real want of love on her part.
Certainly her severity in his youth had the effect of concentrating
the whole devotion of Honore's childish heart on Laure, the _cara
sorella_ of his later years. She was a writer, the author of "Le
Compagnon du Foyer." To her we owe a charming sketch of her celebrated
brother, and she was the confidante of his hopes, ambitions, and
troubles, of his sentimental friendships, and of the faults and
embarrassments which he confided to no one else. Expressions of
affection for her occur constantly in his letters, and in 1837 he
writes to Madame Hanska that Laure is ill, and therefore the whole
universe seems out of gear, and that he passes whole nights in despair
because she is everything to him. The friendship between the brother
and sister was deep, devoted, and faithful, as Balzac's friendships
generally were--he did not care, as he said in one of his letters, for
_amities d'epiderme_--and the restriction put on his intercourse with
his sister by the jealousy of M. Surville was one of the many troubles
which darkened his later years.
Occasionally, indeed, there were disagreements between the brother and
sister, when Honore did not approve of Laure's aspirations for
authorship. The only subject which really caused coldness on both
sides, however--and this was temporary--was Laure's want of sympathy
for Balzac's attachment to Madame Hanska; because she, like many of
his friends, felt doubtful whether his passionate love was returned in
anything like equal measure. Perhaps, too, there may have lurked in
the sister's mind a slight jealousy of this alien _grande dame_, who
had stolen away her brother's heart from France, who moved in a sphere
quite unlike that of the Balzac family, and whose existence prevented
several advantageous and sensible marriages which she could have
arranged for Honore. Balzac, it must be allowed, was not always
tactful in his descriptions of the perfections of the Hanska family,
who were, of course, in his eyes, surrounded with aureoles borrowed
from the light of his "polar star." It must have been distinctly
annoying, when the virtues, talents, and charms of the young Countess
Anna were held up as an object lesson for Madame Surville's two
daughters, who were no doubt, from their mother's point of view, quite
as admirable as Madame Hanska's ewe lamb. Nevertheless, there was
never any real separation between the brother and sister; and it is to
Laure that--certain of her participation in his joy--poor Balzac
penned his delighted letter the day after his wedding, signed "Thy
brother Honore, at the summit of happiness."
Laure's own career was chequered. In 1820 she married an engineer, M.
Midy de la Greneraye Surville, and from the first the marriage was not
very happy, as Honore writes, a month after it took place, to blame
Laure for her melancholy at the separation from her family, and to
counsel philosophy and piano practice. Possibly Balzac's habits of
ascendency over those he loved, and his wonderful gift of fascination
--a gift which often provides its possessor with bitter enemies among
those outside its influence--made matters difficult for his
brother-in-law, and did not tend to promote harmony between Laure and
her husband. M. Surville probably became exasperated by useless attempts
to vie in his wife's eyes with her much-beloved brother--at any rate,
in later years he was tyrannical in preventing their intercourse, and
we hear of the unfortunate Laure coming in secret to see Balzac, on
her birthday in 1836, and holding a watch in her hand, because she did
not dare to stay away longer than twenty minutes. There were other
worries for Laure and her husband, for, like the rest of the Balzac
family, they were in continual difficulty about money matters. M.
Surville seems to have been a man of enterprise, and to have had many
schemes on hand--such as making a lateral canal on the Loire from
Nantes to Orleans, building a bridge in Paris, or constructing a
little railway. Speaking of the canal, Balzac cheerfully and airily
remarked in 1836 that only a capital of twenty-six millions of francs
required collecting, and then the Survilles would be on the high road
to prosperity. This trifling matter was not after all arranged, if we
may judge from the fact that in 1849 the Survilles moved to a cheap
lodging, and were advised by Balzac, in a letter from Russia, to
follow his habit of former days, and to cook only twice a week. In
fact, they were evidently passing through one of those monetary crises
to which we become used when reading the annals of the Balzacs, and
which irresistibly remind the reader of similar affairs in the
Micawber family.
In spite of the friction on the subject of Madame Surville, there was
never any actual breach between Honore and his brother-in-law; indeed,
he speaks several times of working amicably with M. Surville, in the
vain attempt to put in order the hopelessly involved web of family
affairs. He evidently had great faith in his brother-in-law's plans
for making his fortune, and took the keenest interest in them, even
offering to go over to London, to sell an invention for effecting
economy in the construction of inclined planes on railways. But M.
Surville changed his mind at the last, and Balzac never went to
England after all.
Honore and Laure were together during the time of their earliest
childhood, as they were left at the cottage of the same foster-mother,
and did not come home till Honore was four years old. His sister says,
"My recollections of his tenderness date far back. I have not
forgotten the headlong rapidity with which he ran to save me from
tumbling down the three high steps without a railing, which led from
our nurse's room to the garden. His loving protection continued after
we returned to our father's house, where, more than once, he allowed
himself to be punished for my faults, without betraying me. Once, when
I came upon the scene in time to accuse myself of the wrong, he said,
'Don't acknowledge next time--I like to be punished for you.'"[*]
[*] "Balzac, sa vie et ses oeuvres, d'apres sa correspondance," by
Madame L. Surville (nee de Balzac).
Both children were in great awe of their parents, and Honore's fear of
his mother was extreme. Years after, he told a friend that he was
never able to hear her voice without a trembling which deprived him of
his faculties. Their father treated them with uniform kindness, but
Honore's heart was filled with love for his kind grandparents, to whom
he paid a visit in Paris in 1804. He came back to Tours with wonderful
stories of the beauties of their house, their garden, and their big
dog Mouche, with whom he had made great friends. The news of his
grandfather's death a few months later was a great grief to him, and
made a deep impression on his childish mind. His sister tells us that
long afterwards, when the two were receiving a reprimand from their
mother, and he saw Laure unable to control a wild burst of laughter,
which he knew would lead to serious consequences, he tried to stop her
by whispering in tragic tones, "Think about your grandfather's death!"
He was a child of very deep affections and warmth of heart, but he did
not show any special intelligence. He was lively, merry, and extremely
talkative, but sometimes a silent mood would fall on him, and perhaps,
as his sister says, his imagination was then carrying him to distant
worlds, though the family only thought the chatterbox was tired. In
all ways, however, he was in these days a very ordinary child, devoted
to fairy stories, fond of the popular nursery amusement of making up
plays, and charmed with the excruciating noise he brought out of a
little red violin. This he would sometimes play on for hours, till
even the faithful Laure would remonstrate, and he would be astonished
that she did not realise the beauty of his music.
This happy childish life, chastened only by the tremors which both
children felt when taken by their governess in the morning and at
bedtime into the stern presence of their mother, did not last very
long for Honore. When he was eight years old (his sister says seven,
but this seems to be a mistake), there was a change in his life, as
the home authorities decided that it was time his education should
begin in good earnest. He was therefore taken from the day school at
Tours, and sent to the semi-military college founded by the Oratorians
in the sleepy little town of Vendome. On page 7 of the school record
there is the following notice: "No. 460. Honore Balzac, age de huit
ans un mois. A eu la petite verole, sans infirmites. Caractere
sanguin, s'echauffant facilement, et sujet a quelques fievres de
chaleur. Entre au pensionnat le 22 juin, 1807. Sorti, le 22 aout,
1813. S'adresser a M. Balzac, son pere, a Tours."[*] Thus is summed up
the character of the future writer of the "Comedie Humaine," and there
was apparently nothing remarkable or precocious about the boy, as his
quick temper is his most salient point in the eyes of his masters. It
will be noticed, too, that the "de," about which Balzac was very
particular, and which was the occasion of many scoffing remarks on the
part of his enemies, does not appear on this register.
[*] "Balzac au College," by Champfleury.
Honore was a small boy to have been completely separated from home,
and the whole scheme of education as devised by the Oratorian fathers
appears to have been a strange one. One of the rules forbade outside
holidays, and Honore never left the college once during the six years
he was at school; so that there was no supervision from his parents,
and no chance of complaint if he were unhappy or ill treated. His
family came to see him at Easter and also at the prize-givings; but on
these occasions, to which he looked forward, his sister tells us, with
eager delight, reproaches were generally his portion, on account of
his want of success in school work. In "Louis Lambert" he gives an
interesting account of the college, which was in the middle of the
town on the little river Loir, and contained a chapel, theatre,
infirmary, bakery, and gardens. There were two or three hundred
pupils, divided according to their ages or attainments into four
classes--_les grands_, _les moyens_, les petits_, and _les minimes_
--and each class had its own class-room and courtyard. Balzac was
considered the idlest and most pathetic boy in his division, and was
continually punished. Reproaches, the ferule, the dark cell, were his
portion, and with his quick and delicate senses he suffered intensely
from the want of air in the class-rooms. There, according to the
graphic picture in "Louis Lambert," everything was dirty, and eighty
boys inhabited a hall, in the centre of which were two buckets full of
water, where all washed their faces and hands every morning, the water
being only renewed once in the day. To add to the odours, the air was
vitiated by the smell of pigeons killed for fete days, and of dishes
stolen from the refectory, and kept by the pupils in their lockers.
The boy who, in the future, was to awaken actual physical disgust in
his readers by his description of the stuffy and dingy boarding-house
dining-room in "Le Pere Goriot," was crushed and stupefied by his
surroundings, and would sit for hours with his head on his hand, not
attempting to learn, but gazing dreamily at the clouds, or at the
foliage of the trees in the court below. No wonder that he was the
despair of his masters, and that his famous "Traite de la volonte,"
which he composed instead of preparing the ordinary school work, was
summarily confiscated and destroyed. So many were the punishment lines
given him to write, that his holidays were almost entirely taken up,
and he had not six days of liberty the whole time that he was at
college.
In addition to the troubles incident to Honore's peculiar temperament
and genius, he had in the winter, like the other pupils, to submit to
actual physical suffering. The price of education included also that
of clothing, the parents who sent their children to the Vendome
College paying a yearly sum, and therewith comfortably absolving
themselves from all trouble and responsibility. But the results were
not happy for the boys, who dragged themselves painfully along the icy
roads in miserable remnants of boots, their feet half dead, and
swollen with sores and chilblains. Out of sixty children, not ten
walked without torture, and many of them would cry with rage as they
limped along, each step being a painful effort; but with the
invincible physical pluck and moral cowardice of childhood, would hide
their tears, for fear of ridicule from their companions.
Nevertheless, even to Balzac, who was peculiarly unfitted for it, life
at the college had its pleasures. The food appears to have been good,
and the discipline at meals not very severe, as a regular system of
exchange of helpings to suit the particular tastes of each boy went on
all through dinner, and caused endless amusement. Some one who had
received peas as his portion would prefer dessert, and the proposition
"Un dessert pour des pois" would pass from mouth to mouth till the
bargain had been made. Other pleasures were the pet pigeons, the
gardens, the sweets bought secretly during the walks, the permission
to play cards and to have theatrical performances during the holidays,
the military music, the games, and the slides made in winter. Best of
all, however, was the shop which opened in the class-room every Sunday
during playtime for the sale of boxes, tools, pigeons of all sorts,
mass-books (for these there was not much demand), knives, balls,
pencils--everything a boy could wish for. The proud possessor of six
francs--meant to last for the term--felt that the contents of the
whole shop were at his disposal. Saturday night was passed in anxious
yet rapturous calculations, and the responses at Mass during that
happy Sunday morning mingled themselves with thoughts of the glorious
time coming in the afternoon. Next Sunday was not quite so delightful,
as probably there were only a few sous left, and possibly some of the
purchases were broken, or had not turned out quite satisfactorily.
Then, too, there was a long vista of Sundays in the future, without
any possibility of shopping; but after all a certain amount of
compounding is always necessary in life, and an intense short joy is
worth a grey time before and after.
When Balzac was fourteen years old, his life at the college came
suddenly to an end, as, to the alarm of his masters, he was attacked
by coma with feverish symptoms, and they begged his parents to take
him home at once. It is curious to notice that the Fathers make no
reference to this failure in their educational system in the school
record, where there is no reason given for Honore's departure from
school. Certainly his life at Vendome was not very healthy, as
sometimes for idleness, inattention, or impertinence he was for months
shut up every day in a niche six feet square, with a wooden door
pierced by holes to let in air. When Champfleury visited the college
years afterwards, the only person who remembered Balzac was the old
Father who had charge of these cells, and he spoke of the boy's "great
black eyes." Confinement in these _culottes de bois_, as they were
called, was much dreaded by the boys, and the punishment seems
barbarous and senseless, except from the point of view of getting rid
of troublesome pupils. Balzac, however, welcomed the relief from
ordinary school life, and indeed manoeuvred to be shut up. In the
cells he had leisure to dream as he pleased, he was free from the
drudgery of learning his lessons, and he managed to secrete books in
his cage, and thus to absorb the contents of most of the volumes in
the fine library collected by the learned Oratorian founders of the
college. The ideas in many of the learned tomes were far beyond his
age, but he understood them, remembered them afterwards, and could
recall in later years not only the thought in each book, but also the
disposition of his mind when he read them. Naturally this precocity of
intellect caused brain fatigue, though this would never have been
suspected by the Fathers of their idlest pupil.
Honore, his sister tells us, came home thin and puny, like a
somnambulist sleeping with open eyes, and his grandmother groaned over
the strain of modern education. At first he heard hardly any of the
questions that were put to him, and his mother was obliged to disturb
him in reveries, and to insist on his taking part in games with the
rest of the family; but with the fresh air and the home life he soon
recovered his health and spirits, and became again a lively, merry
boy. He attended lectures at a college near, and had tutors at home;
but great efforts were necessary in order to get into his head the
requisite amount of Greek and Latin. Nevertheless, at times, he was
astonishing, or might have been to any one with powers of observation.
On these occasions he made such extraordinary and sagacious remarks
that Madame de Balzac, in her character of represser, felt obliged to
remark sharply, "You cannot possibly understand what you are saying,
Honore!" When Honore, who dared not argue, looked at her with a smile,
she would, with the ease of absolute authority, escape from the
awkwardness of the situation by remarking that he was impertinent. He
was already ambitious, and would tell his sisters and brother about
his future fame, and accept with a laugh the teasing he received in
consequence.
It must have been during this time that he grew to love with an
enduring love the scenery of his native province of Touraine, with its
undulating stretches of emerald green, through which the Loire or the
Indre wound like a long ribbon of water, while lines of poplars decked
the banks with moving lace. It was a smiling country, dotted with
vineyards and oak woods, while here and there an old gnarled walnut
tree stood in rugged independence. The susceptible boy, lately escaped
from the abominations of the stuffy school-house, drank in with
rapture the warm scented air, and often describes in his novels the
landscape of the province where he was born, which he loves, in his
own words, "as an artist loves art." Another lasting memory[*] was
that of the poetry and splendour of the Cathedral of Saint-Gatien in
Tours, where he was taken every feast-day. There he watched with
delight the beautiful effects of light and shade, the play of colour
produced by the rays of sunlight shining through the old stained
glass, and the strange, fascinating effect of the clouds of incense,
which enveloped the officiating priests, and from which he possibly
derived the idea of the mists which he often introduces into his
descriptions.
[*] See "Balzac, sa Vie et ses Oeuvres, d'apres sa Correspondance" par
Madame L. Surville (nee de Balzac).