1828 - 1829
Life in the Rue de Tournon--Privations and despair--Friendships
--Auguste Borget--Madame Carraud--The Duchesse d'Abrantes--George
Sand, etc.--Balzac writes "La Peau de Chagrin" and the
"Physiologie du Marriage"--His right to be entitled "De Balzac."
In September, 1828, before the final winding up of affairs, Balzac had
fled from Paris, and had gone to spend three weeks with his friends
the Pommereuls in Brittany. There he began to write "Les Chouans," the
first novel to which he signed his name. With his usual hopefulness,
dreams of future fame filled his brain; and in spite of his
misfortunes, his relief at having obtained temporary escape from his
difficulties and freedom to pursue his literary career was so great,
that his jolly laugh often resounded in the old chateau of Fougeres.
It was certainly a remarkable case of buoyancy of temperament, as the
circumstances in which he found himself were distinctly discouraging.
He was now twenty-nine years old; he owed about 100,000 francs, and
was utterly penniless; while his reputation for commercial capacity
had been completely destroyed. His most pressing liabilities had been
paid by his mother, who was all his life one of his principal
creditors; and he was now firmly under the yoke of that heavy burden
of debt which was destined never again to be lifted from his
shoulders. Once again, as they had done nine years before, his parents
cast off all responsibility for their unsatisfactory son. They had
saved the family honour, which would have been compromised by his
bankruptcy; but they felt that whether he lived or starved was his own
affair. His position was infinitely worse than it had been in those
early days in the Rue Lesdiguieres, when submission would have led to
reinstatement in favour. He was now, as he graphically expressed it,
"thrown into" the Rue de Tournon,[*] and apparently no provision was
made for his wants. His parents, who had moved from Villeparisis to
Versailles the year before, in order to be near Madame Surville,
limited their interference in his affairs to severe criticism on his
want of respect in not coming to see his family, and righteous wrath
at his extravagance in hanging his room with blue calico. These
reproaches he parried with the defence that he had no money to pay
omnibus fares, and could not even write often because of the expense
of postage; while anent the muslin, he stated that he possessed it
before his failure, as La Touche and he had nailed it up to hide the
frightful paper on the walls of the printing-office. Uncrushed by the
scathing comments on his attempts at decoration, curious though
characteristic efforts on the part of a starving man, he writes to his
sister a few days later: "Ah, Laure, if you did but know how
passionately I desire (but, hush! keep the secret) two blue screens
embroidered in black (silence ever!)."[+] He reopens his letter about
the screens to answer one from Madame Surville, written evidently at
the instigation of M. and Mme. de Balzac, to blame his supposed
idleness; and the poor fellow, to whom _this_ fault at least could at
no time be justly imputed, asks her if he is not already unhappy
enough, and tells her pathetically how he suffers from these unjust
suspicions, and that he can never be happy till he is dead. In the
end, however, he returns with childlike persistence to the screens as
a panacea for all his ills, and finishes with: "But my screens--I want
them more than ever, for a little joy in the midst of torment!"
[*] He says himself "Rue Cassini," but this is a mistake.
[+] "Correspondance," vol. i. p. 82.
He had now apparently completely gone under, like many another
promising young man of whom great things are expected; and he had in
his pride and misery hidden himself from every one, except a few
intimate friends. With the death on June 19, 1829, of his father,
whose last days were saddened by the knowledge of his son's disaster,
the world was poorer by one castle in the air the less; for besides
his natural sorrow at the death of the kind old man, who was so much
softer than his wife, the dream of becoming a millionaire by means of
the Tontine capital faded way, like all poor Honore's other visions.
Even Balzac's buoyancy was not always proof against the depressing
influence of two or three days of starvation, and he sometimes
descended to the lowest depths, and groped in those dark places from
which death seems the only escape. When he tells us in "La Peau de
Chagrin" that Raphael walked with an uncertain step in the Tuileries
Gardens, "as if he were in some desert, elbowed by men whom he did not
see, hearing, through all the voices of the crowd, one voice alone,
the voice of Death," it is Balzac himself, who, after glorious
aspirations, after being in imagination raised to heights to which
only a great nature can aspire, now lay bruised and worsted, a
complete failure, and thought that by suicide he would at least obtain
peace and oblivion. He knew to the full the truth of his words:
"Between a self-sought death and the abundant hopes whose voices call
a young man to Paris, God only knows what may intervene, what
contending ideas have striven within the soul, what poems have been
set aside, what moans and what despair have been repressed, what
abortive masterpieces and vain endeavours."[*]
[*] Honore de Balzac, "La Peau de Chagrin."
Looking back years afterwards at this terrible time, he can find only
one reason why he did not put an end to himself, and that was the
existence of Madame de Berny: "She was a mother, a woman friend, a
family, a man friend, an adviser," he cries enthusiastically; "she
made the writer, she consoled the young man, she formed his taste, she
cried like a sister, she laughed, she came every day, like a merciful
slumber, to send sorrow to sleep."[*] Certainly there was no woman on
earth to whom Balzac owed so deep a debt of gratitude, and certainly
also he joyfully acknowledged his obligations. "Every day with her was
a fete," he said to Madame Hanska long afterwards.
[*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."
About this time another friendship was beginning, which, though slower
in growth and not so passionate in character, was as faithful, and was
only terminated by Balzac's death. When Madame Surville went to live
at Versailles, she was delighted to find that an old schoolfellow,
Madame Carraud, was settled there, her husband holding the post of
director of the military school at Saint-Cyr. Honore had known Madame
Carraud since 1819; but he first became intimate with her and her
husband in 1826, and later he was their constant guest at Angouleme,
where Commandant Carraud was in charge of the Government powder-works,
or at Frapesle in Berry, where Madame Carraud had a country house. She
was a woman of much intelligence and ambition, high-principled and
possessing much common sense. Balzac occasionally complained that she
was a little wanting in softness; but, nevertheless, he invariably
turned to her for comfort in the vicissitudes of his more passionate
attachments. He was also much attached to M. Carraud, a man of great
scientific attainments and a good husband, but, to his wife's despair,
utterly lacking in energy and ambition; so that instead of taking the
position to which by his abilities he was entitled, he soon retired
altogether from public life, and Madame Carraud, who should, according
to Balzac, have found scope for her talents in Paris, was buried in
the country. Nevertheless, the Carrauds were a happy couple, genuinely
devoted to each other; and Madame Carraud cited the instance of their
affection, in spite of the difference of their point of view on many
subjects, when in 1833 she wrote to Honore urging him to marry.[*]
"There is no need to tell you that my husband and I are not
sympathetic in everything. We are so unlike each other that the same
objects appear quite differently to us. Yet I know the happiness about
which I speak. We both feel it in the same degree, though in a
different way. I would not give it up for the fullest existence,
according to generally received ideas. I have not an empty moment."
[*] Letter from Madame Carraud in the Vicomte de Spoelberch de
Lovenjoul's collection, published in _La Revue Bleue_, November
21st, 1903.
She was an ardent politician, and we gain much of our knowledge of
Balzac's political views from his letters to her when he wished to
become a deputy; while she also possessed the faculty which he valued
most in his women friends, that of intelligent literary criticism. She
could be critical on other points as well; and, like Madame Hanska,
blamed Balzac for mobility of ideas and inconstancy of resolution,
which she said wasted his intellect. She complained that, in the time
that he might have used to bring one plan successfully to completion,
he generally started ten or twelve new ones, all of which vanished
into smoke, and brought him no advantage.[*]
[*] "L'Ecole des Menages" in "Autour de Honore de Balzac," by the
Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul.
Hardly a year passed without Balzac spending some time at the
hospitable house at Frapesle, the doors of which were always open to
him; and there, away from creditors, publishers, journalists, and all
his other enemies, he was able to write in peace and quietness. There,
too, he made many pleasant acquaintances, among them M. Armand Pereme,
the distinguished antiquary, and M. Periollas, who was at one time
under M. Carraud at Saint-Cyr, and afterwards became chief of a
squadron of artillery. To Madame Carraud he also owed an introduction
to his most intimate male friend, Auguste Borget, a genre painter who
travelled in China, and drew many pictures of the scenery there.
Borget lodged in the same house with Balzac in the Rue Cassini, and is
mentioned by him in a letter to Madame Hanska, in 1833, as one of his
three real friends beside her and his sister, Madame de Berny and
Madame Carraud being the other two. It was a very real grief to Balzac
when Borget was away; and he says that even when the painter is
travelling, sketching, and never writes to him, he is constantly in
his remembrance; while in another letter he speaks of his friend's
nobility of soul and beauty of sentiment. To Borget was dedicated the
touching story of "La Messe de l'Athee"; and in case of Balzac's
sudden death it was to this "good, old, and true friend" that the duty
of burning Madame Hanska's letters were entrusted, though eventually
their recipient performed this painful task himself in 1847.
A still older friend was M. Dablin, a rich, retired ironmonger with
artistic tastes, who left his valuable collection of artistic objects
to the Louvre. He was known to Balzac before 1817; and in 1830 the
successful writer remembers with gratitude that M. Dablin used to be
his only visitor during his martyrdom in the Rue Lesdiguieres in 1819.
At that time and later he was most generous in lending Honore money;
and the only cloud that came between them for a long time was his
indignation when Balzac wished to find him further security than his
own life for a loan he had promised. Later on, in 1845, when M.
Dablin, rather hurt by some heedless words from Balzac, and evidently
jealous of his former protege's grand acquaintances, complained that
honours and fortune changed people's hearts--the great novelist found
time, after his daily sixteen hours of work, to write a long letter to
his old benefactor.[*] In this he tells him that nothing will alter
his affection for him, that all his real friends are equal in his
sight; and he makes the true boast that, though he may have the
egotism of the hard worker, he has never yet forsaken any one for whom
he feels affection, and is the same now in heart as when he was a boy.
[*] "Correspondance," vol. ii. p. 115.
Other early and lifelong friendships were with Madame Delannoy, who
lent him money, and was in all ways kind to him, and with M. de
Margonne, who lived at Sache, a chateau on the Indre, in the beautiful
Touraine valley described in "Le Lys dans la Vallee," and who had held
Balzac on his knees when a child. Balzac often paid him visits,
especially when he wanted to meditate over some serious work, as he
found the solitude and pure air, and the fact that he was treated in
the neighbourhood simply as a native of the country and not as a
celebrity, peculiarly stimulating to his imagination and powers of
creation. He wrote "Louis Lambert," among other novels at the house of
this hospitable friend. Madame de Margonne he did not care for: she
was, according to his unflattering portrait of her, intolerant and
devout, deformed, and not at all _spirituelle_. But she did not count
for much; Balzac went to the house for the sake of her husband.
An intimacy was formed about this time between Balzac and La Touche,
the editor of the _Figaro_, who, as has been already mentioned, helped
him in the prosaic task of nailing up draperies. This intimacy must
have been of great value to Balzac's education in the art of
literature, and is remarkable for that reason in the history of a man
in whose writings small trace of outside influence can be descried,
and who, except in the case of Theophile Gautier, seemed little
affected by the thought of his contemporaries. Therefore, though a
long way behind Madame de Berny--without whom Balzac, as we know him,
would hardly have existed--La Touche deserves recognition for his
work, however small, in moulding the literary ideals and forming the
taste of the great writer. Besides this, his friendship with Balzac is
almost unique in the history of the latter, in the fact that, for some
reason we do not know, it was suddenly broken off; and that almost the
only occasion when Balzac showed personal dislike almost amounting to
hatred, in criticism, was when, in 1840, in the _Revue Parisienne_, he
published an article on "Leo," a novel by La Touche. He became, George
Sand says, completely indifferent to his old master, while the latter
--a pathetic, yet thorny and uncomfortable figure, as portrayed by his
contemporaries--continued to belittle and revile his former pupil,
while all the time he loved him, and longed for a reconciliation which
never took place. La Touche had a quick instinct for discovering
genius: he introduced Andre Chenier's posthumous poems to the public,
and launched Jules Sandeau and George Sand. But he was soured by
seeing his pupils enter the promised land only open to genius, while
he was left outside himself. Sooner or later, the eager, affected
little hypochondriacal man with the bright eyes quarrelled with all
his friends, and a rupture would naturally soon take place between the
ultra-sensitive teacher, ready to take offence on the smallest
pretext, and the hearty, robust Tourainean, who, whatever his troubles
might be, faced the world with a laugh, who insisted on his genius
with cheery egotism, and who, in spite of real goodheartedness and
depth of affection, was too full of himself to be always careful about
the feelings of others. How much Balzac owed to La Touche we do not
know; but though, as we have already seen, there were other reasons
for his sudden stride in literature between 1825 and 1828, it is
significant that "Les Chouans," the first book to which he affixed his
name, and in which his genius really shows itself, was written
directly after his intercourse with this literary teacher. No doubt La
Touche, who was cursed with the miserable fate of possessing the
temperament of genius without the electric spark itself, magnified the
help he had given, and felt extreme bitterness at the shortness of
memory shown by the great writer, whom he vainly strove to sting into
feeling by the acerbity of his attacks.
Never at any time did Balzac go out much into society, but his
anonymous novels, though they did not bring him fame, had opened to
him the doors of several literary and artistic salons, and he was a
frequenter of that of Madame Sophie Gay, the author of several novels,
one of which, "Anatole," is said to have been read by Napoleon during
the last night spent at Fontainebleau in 1814. Hers was essentially an
Empire salon, antagonistic to the government of the Bourbons, and
Balzac's feelings were perhaps occasionally ruffled by the talk that
went on around him, though more probably the interest he found in the
study of different phases of opinion outweighed his party
prepossessions. Those evenings must have been an anxious pleasure;
for, with no money to pay a cab fare, there was always the agonising
question as to whether on arrival his boots would be of spotless
cleanliness, while the extravagance of a pair of white gloves meant a
diminution in food which it was not pleasant to contemplate. Then,
too, he felt savage disgust at the elegant costumes and smart
cabriolets owned by empty-headed fops with insufferable airs of
conquest, who looked at him askance, and to whom he could not prove
the genius that was in him, or give voice to his belief that some day
he would dominate them all. The restlessness and discomfort, and at
the same time the sense of unknown and fascinating possibilities which
are the birthright of talented youth, and in the portrayal of which
Balzac is supreme, must have been well known to him by experience; and
his almost Oriental love of beauty and luxury made his life of
grinding poverty peculiarly galling.
Conspicuous in her mother's salon, queen of conversationalists,
reciting verses in honour of the independence of Greece, exciting
peals of laughter by her wit and her power to draw out that of others,
was a brilliant figure--that of the beautiful Delphine Gay, who was,
in 1831, to become Madame de Girardin. She is a charming figure, a
woman with unfailing tact and a singular lack of literary jealousy, so
that all her contemporaries speak of her with affection. She made
strenuous efforts to keep the peace between Balzac and her husband,
the autocratic editor of _La Presse_; and till 1847, when the final
rupture took place, Balzac's real liking for her conquered his
resentment at what he considered unjustifiable proceedings on the part
of her husband. Once indeed there was a complete cessation of friendly
relations, and even dark hints about a duel; but usually Madame de
Girardin prevailed; and though there were many recriminations on both
sides, and several times nearly an explosion, Balzac wrote for _La
Presse_, visited her salon, and was generally on terms of politeness
with her husband. She was proud of her beautiful complexion, and had a
drawing-room hung with pale green satin to show it to the best
advantage; while, like her mother, she wrote novels, one of which she
called "La Canne de M. de Balzac," after the novelist's famous cane
adorned with turquoises.
One of the habituees of Madame Gay's salon was the Duchesse
d'Abrantes; and between her and Balzac there existed a literary
comradeship, possibly cemented by the impecunious condition which was
common to both. In 1827 she lived at Versailles; and whenever Balzac
went to see his parents, he also paid her a visit; when long talks
took place about their mutual struggles, misfortunes and hopes of
gaining money by writing. The poor woman was always in monetary
difficulties. After the fall of the Empire and the death of her
husband, whom she courageously followed throughout his campaign in
Spain, she continued to live in the same luxury that had surrounded
her during her days of splendour; and as the Bourbon Government
refused to help her, she was soon reduced to a state of destitution,
and turned to her pen to pay off her creditors. She wrote several
novels, which at this time are completely forgotten; but in 1831 she
began to bring out her Memoirs, and these give a graphic account of
the social life under the Empire, and have become a classic. These
Memoirs were first published in sixteen volumes, and it must have been
a relief to the public when a second edition, consisting of only
twelve volumes, was brought out three years later.
In 1829, the time of which we are now writing, Balzac could only
sympathise when the poor Duchess, formerly raised to great heights and
now fallen very low, felt depressed at her reverses, and took a gloomy
view of life. He would assure her that happiness could not possibly be
over for ever, and would predict a bright dawn some future day; while
as soon as he began to prosper himself, he did his best to lend her a
helping hand. He effected an introduction to Charles Rabou, so that
her articles were received by the _Revue de Paris_, and he assisted as
intermediary between her and the publishers, taking infinite trouble
on her behalf, and in the end gaining most advantageous terms for her.
No assistance, however, was of permanent use. She, who knew so much,
had never learnt to manage money, and, helped by her eldest son,
Napoleon d'Abrantes, she spent every penny she earned. On July 7th,
1838, she died in the utmost poverty in a miserable room in the Rue
des Batailles, having been turned out of the hospital, where she had
hoped to end her days in peace, because she could not pay her expenses
in advance. Balzac writes to Madame Hanska: "The papers will have told
you about the Duchesse d'Abrantes' deplorable death. She ended as the
Empire ended. Some day I will explain this woman to you; it will be a
nice evening's occupation at Wierzchownia."[*]
[*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."
Another of Balzac's friendships, rather different in character from
those already mentioned, was that with George Sand, "his brother
George" he used to call her. He first made her acquaintance in 1831,
and would often go puffing up the stairs of the five-storied house on
the Quai Saint-Michel, at the top of which she lived. His ostensible
object was to give advice about her writing, but in reality he would
leave this comparatively uninteresting subject very quickly, and pour
out floods of talk about his own novels. "Ah, I have found something
else! You will see! You will see! A splendid idea! A situation! A
dialogue! No one has ever seen anything like it!" "It was joy,
laughter, and a superabundance of enthusiasm, of which one cannot give
any idea. And this after nights without slumber and days without
repose,"[*] remarks George Sand.
[*] "Autour de la Table," by George Sand.
There were limitations in his view of her, as he never fully realised
the scope of her genius, and looked on her as half a man, so that he
would sometimes shock her by the breadth of his conversation. After
her rupture with Jules Sandeau, whose side in the affair he espoused
vehemently, he disapproved of her for some time, and contrasted rather
contemptuously the versatility of her affairs of the heart with the
ideal of passionate, enduring love portrayed in her novels. However,
later on, when he himself had been disappointed in Sandeau, and when
the latter had further roused his indignation by writing a novel
called "Marianna," which was intended to drag George Sand's name
through the mud, Balzac defended her energetically. About the same
time (1839) he brought out his novel "Beatrix," in which she is
portrayed as Mlle. de Touches, with "the beauty of Isis, more serious
than gracious, and as if struck with the sadness of constant
meditation." Her eyes, according to Balzac, were her great beauty, and
all her expression was in them, otherwise her face was stupid; but
with her splendid black hair and her complexion--olive by day and
white in artificial light--she must have been a striking and
picturesque figure. Later on Balzac appears to have partly reconciled
himself to her moral irregularities, on the convenient ground that
she, like himself, was an exceptional being; and we hear of several
visits he paid to Nohant, where he delighted in long hours of talk on
social questions with a comrade to whom he need not show the
_galanteries d'epiderme_ necessary in intercourse with ordinary women.
He says of her: "She had no littleness of soul, and none of those low
jealousies which obscure so much contemporary talent. Dumas is like
her on this point. George Sand is a very noble friend."[*]
[*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."
This is all anticipation; we must now go back to 1828 and 1829, and
picture Balzac's existence first in the Rue de Tournon and then in one
room at the Rue Cassini. Insufficiently clad and wretchedly fed, he
occasionally went to evening parties to collect material for his
writing; at other times he visited some sympathising friend, and
poured out his troubles to her; but he had only one real support--the
sympathy and affection of Madame de Berny. It was a frightfully hard
life. He took coffee to keep himself awake, and he wrote and wrote
till he was exhausted; all the time being in the condition of a
"tracked hare," harassed and pursued by his creditors, and knowing
that all his gains must go to them.
His only relaxations were little visits. He went to Tours, where he
danced at a ball with a girl with red hair, and with another so little
"that a man would only marry her that she might act as a pin for his
shirt."[*] He travelled to Sache, to see M. de Margonne; to
Champrosay, where he met his sister; and to Fougeres in Brittany, at
the invitation of the Baron de Pommereul. During the last-named visit,
as we have already seen, he not only collected the material, but also
wrote the greater part of his novel "Les Chouans," which proved the
turning-point of his career.
[*] "Correspondance," vol. i. p. 82.
This novel, the first signed with his name, Honore Balzac, was
published by Canel and Levavasseur in March, 1829, and in December of
the same year the "Physiologie du Mariage by a Celibataire," appeared,
and excited general attention; though many people, Madame Carraud
among the number, were much shocked by it. Each of these books brought
in about fifty pounds--not a large sum, especially when we think that
Balzac must at this time have owed about two thousand pounds; but he
had now his foot upon the first rung of the ladder of fame, and
editors and publishers began to apply to him for novels and articles.
It is a curious fact that Balzac, who answered a question put to him
during his lawsuit against the _Revue de Paris_ on the subject of his
right to the prefix "de," with the rather grandiloquent words, "My
name is on my certificate of birth, as that of the Duke of Fitz-James
is on his,"[*] should on the title-page of "Les Chouans" have called
himself simply M. H. Balzac, and on that of the "Scenes de la Vie
Privee," which appeared in April, 1830, M. Balzac, still without the
"de." In 1826 he gives his designation and title as "H. Balzac,
imprimeur, Rue des Marais, St.-Germain, 31," and we have already seen
that he was entered on the school register as Honore Balzac, and that
his parents at that time called themselves M. and Mme. Balzac.
Occasionally, however, as early as 1822, in letters to his sister
Honore insists on the particle "de," and all his life he claimed to be
a member of a very old Gaulish family--a pretension which gave his
enemies a famous opportunity for deriding him.
[*] First Preface to the "Lys dans la Vallee," p 482, vol. xxii. of
"Oeuvres Completes de H. de Balzac," Edition definitive.
In 1836, during his lawsuit with the _Revue de Paris_, he certainly
spoke on the subject with no doubtful voice:
"Even if my name sounds too well in certain ears, even if it is envied
by those who are not pleased with their own, I cannot give it up. My
father was quite within his rights on this subject, having consulted
the records in the Archive Office. He was proud of being one of the
conquered race, of a family which in Auvergne had resisted the
invasion, and from which the D'Entragues took their origin. He
discovered in the Archive Office the notice of a grant of land made by
the Balzacs to establish a monastery in the environs of the little
town of Balzac, and a copy of this was, he told me, registered by his
care at the Parliament of Paris."[*]
[*] See First Preface to the "Lys dans la Vallee."
Balzac continues for some time in this strain, giving his enemies a
fresh handle for ridicule. After the loss of the lawsuit, the _Revue
de Paris_, raging with indignation, answered him with "Un dernier mot
a M. de Balzac," an article which the writer, after a reflection full
of venom, must have dashed off with set teeth and a sardonic smile,
and in which there is a most scathing paragraph on the vexed question
of the "de":
"He [Balzac] tells us that he _is of an old Gaulish family_ (You
understand, 'Gaulish'--one of Charlemagne's peers! A French family,
what is that? Gaulish!) It is not his own fault, poor man! Further, M.
de Balzac will prove to you that the Bourbons and the Montmorencies
and other French gentlemen must lower their armorial bearings before
him, who is a Gaul, and more--a Gaul of an old family! In fact, this
name 'De Balzac' is a patronymic name (patronymically ridiculous and
Gaulish). He has always been De Balzac, only that! while the
Montmorencies--those unfortunate Montmorencies--were formerly called
Bouchard; and the Bourbons--a secondary family who are neither
patronymic nor Gaulish (of old Gaulish family is of course understood)
were called Capet. M. de Balzac is therefore more noble than the
King!"
Towards the end, rage renders the talented writer slightly incoherent,
and we can imagine a blotted and illegible manuscript; but the
question raised is an interesting one, and Balzac attached great
importance to it. A favourite form of spite with his enemies was to
adopt the same measures as did this writer, who, except in the title,
calls him throughout "M. Balzac," a form of insult which possessed the
double advantage of imposing no strain on the mind of the attacking
party, and yet of hitting the victim on a peculiarly tender spot.
Balzac's statement that he was entered "De Balzac" on the register of
his birth is on the face of it untrue, as he was born on the 2nd
Prairial of the year VII., a time when all titles were proscribed; so
that the omission of the "de" means nothing, while his contention that
he dropped the "de" in 1826, because he would not soil his noble name
by associating it with trade, might very easily be correct.
Unfortunately, however, for Balzac's argument, when old M. Balzac
died, on June 19th, 1829, he was described in the register as Bernard
Francois Balzac, without the "de." He does not even seem to have stood
on his rights during his lifetime, as in 1826, after the death of
Laurence, who had become Madame de Montzaigle--it must have been a
satisfaction to the Balzac family to have one indisputable "de" among
them--cards were sent out in the names of M. and Madame Balzac, M. and
Madame Surville, and MM. Honore and Henri Balzac.
Still, it might be possible for us to maintain, if it so pleased us,
that, in spite of certain evidence to the contrary, the Balzacs were
simple, unpretentious people, who, having dropped the "de" at the time
of the Revolution, did not care to resume it; but here M. Edmond Bire,
who furnishes us with the information already given, completely cuts
the ground away from under our feet. It appears that M. Charles
Portal, the well-known antiquary, has in his researches discovered the
birth register of old M. Balzac. He was born on July 22nd, 1746, at La
Nougarie, in the parish of Saint-Martin de Canezac, and is described
in this document, not as Balzac at all, but as Bernard Francois
Balssa, the son of a labourer! At what date he took the name of
Balzac, and whether his celebrated son knew of the harmless deception,
we do not know; but possibly his change of name was another of the
little reserves which the clever old gentleman thought it necessary to
maintain about his past life, and Honore really considered himself a
member of an old family.
At any rate, as M. Bire says, he certainly earned by his pen the right
to nobility, and in this account of him he will be known by his usual
appellation of "De Balzac."