HONORE DE BALZAC AND EVELINA HANSKA
I remember once, when editing an elaborate work on literature, that thepublisher called me into his private office. After the door was closed,he spoke in tones of suppressed emotion.
"Why is it," said he, "that you have such a lack of proportion? In theselection you have made I find that only two pages are given to GeorgeP. Morris, while you haven't given E. P. Roe any space at all! Yet, lookhere--you've blocked out fifty pages for Balzac, who was nothing but animmoral Frenchman!"
I adjusted this difficulty, somehow or other--I do not just rememberhow--and began to think that, after all, this publisher's view of thingswas probably that of the English and American public. It is strange thatso many biographies and so many appreciations of the greatest novelistwho ever lived should still have left him, in the eyes of the readingpublic, little more than "an immoral Frenchman."
"In Balzac," said Taine, "there was a money-broker, an archeologist, anarchitect, an upholsterer, a tailor, an old-clothes dealer, a journeymanapprentice, a physician, and a notary." Balzac was also a mystic, asupernaturalist, and, above all, a consummate artist. No one who is allthese things in high measure, and who has raised himself by his geniusabove his countrymen, deserves the censure of my former publisher.
Still less is Balzac to be dismissed as "immoral," for his life was oneof singular self-sacrifice in spite of much temptation. His face wasstrongly sensual, his look and bearing denoted almost savage power; heled a free life in a country which allowed much freedom; and yethis story is almost mystic in its fineness of thought, and in itsdetachment, which was often that of another world.
Balzac was born in 1799, at Tours, with all the traits of the peopleof his native province--fond of eating and drinking, and with plenty ofhumor. His father was fairly well off. Of four children, our Balzac wasthe eldest. The third was his sister Laure, who throughout his life wasthe most intimate friend he had, and to whom we owe his rescue from muchscandalous and untrue gossip. From her we learn that their father was acombination of Montaigne, Rabelais, and "Uncle Toby."
Young Balzac went to a clerical school at seven, and stayed there forseven years. Then he was brought home, apparently much prostrated,although the good fathers could find nothing physically amiss with him,and nothing in his studies to account for his agitation. No one ever diddiscover just what was the matter, for he seemed well enough in thenext few years, basking on the riverside, watching the activities ofhis native town, and thoroughly studying the rustic types that he wasafterward to make familiar to the world. In fact, in Louis Lambert hehas set before us a picture of his own boyish life, very much as Dickensdid of his in David Copperfield.
For some reason, when these years were over, the boy began to have whatis so often known as "a call"--a sort of instinct that he was to attainrenown. Unfortunately it happened that about this time (1814) he and hisparents removed to Paris, which was his home by choice, until his deathin 1850. He studied here under famous teachers, and gave three yearsto the pursuit of law, of which he was very fond as literary material,though he refused to practise.
This was the more grievous, since a great part of the family propertyhad been lost. The Balzacs were afflicted by actual poverty, and Honoreendeavored, with his pen, to beat the wolf back from the door. He earneda little money with pamphlets and occasional stories, but his thirstfor fame was far from satisfied. He was sure that he was called toliterature, and yet he was not sure that he had the power to succeed. Inone of his letters to his sister, he wrote:
I am young and hungry, and there is nothing on my plate. Oh, Laure,Laure, my two boundless desires, my only ones--to be famous, and to beloved--they ever be satisfied?
For the next ten years he was learning his trade, and the artistic useof the fiction writer's tools. What is more to the point, is the factthat he began to dream of a series of great novels, which should givea true and panoramic picture of the whole of human life. This was thefirst intimation of his "Human Comedy," which was so daringly undertakenand so nearly completed in his after years. In his early days ofobscurity, he said to his readers:
Note well the characters that I introduce, since you will have to followtheir fortunes through thirty novels that are to come.
Here we see how little he had been daunted by ill success, and how hisprodigious imagination had not been overcome by sorrow and evil fortune.Meantime, writing almost savagely, and with a feeling combined ofambition and despair, he had begun, very slowly indeed, to create apublic. These ten years, however, had loaded him with debts; and hisstruggle to keep himself afloat only plunged him deeper in the mire.His thirty unsigned novels began to pay him a few hundred francs, notin cash, but in promissory notes; so that he had to go still deeper intodebt.
In 1827 he was toiling on his first successful novel, and indeed one ofthe best historic novels in French literature--The Chouans. He speaks ofhis labor as "done with a tired brain and an anxious mind," and of theeight or ten business letters that he had to write each day before hecould begin his literary work.
"Postage and an omnibus are extravagances that I cannot allow myself,"he writes. "I stay at home so as not to wear out my clothes. Is thatclear to you?"
At the end of the next year, though he was already popular as anovelist, and much sought out by people of distinction, he was at thevery climax of his poverty. He had written thirty-five books, and was indebt to the amount of a hundred and twenty-four thousand francs. He wassaved from bankruptcy only by the aid of Mme. de Berny, a woman of highcharacter, and one whose moral influence was very strong with Balzacuntil her early death.
The relation between these two has a sweetness and a purity which areseldom found. Mme. de Berny gave Balzac money as she would have given itto a son, and thereby she saved a great soul for literature. But therewas no sickly sentiment between them, and Balzac regarded her with anoble love which he has expressed in the character of Mme. Firmiani.
It was immediately after she had lightened his burdens that the realBalzac comes before us in certain stories which have no equal, andwhich are among the most famous that he ever wrote. What could be morewonderful than his El Verdugo, which gives us a brief horror whilecompelling our admiration? What, outside of Balzac himself, could bemore terrible than Gobseck, a frightful study of avarice, containinga deathbed scene which surpasses in dreadfulness almost anything inliterature? Add to these A Passion in the Desert, The Girl with theGolden Eyes, The Droll Stories, The Red Inn, and The Magic Skin, and youhave a cluster of masterpieces not to be surpassed.
In the year 1829, when he was just beginning to attain a slight success,Balzac received a long letter written in a woman's hand. As he readit, there came to him something very like an inspiration, so full ofunderstanding were the written words, so full of appreciation and ofsympathy with the best that he had done. This anonymous note pointed outhere and there such defects as are apt to become chronic with ayoung author. Balzac was greatly stirred by its keen and sympatheticcriticism. No one before had read his soul so clearly. No one--not evenhis devoted sister, Laure de Surville--had judged his work so wisely,had come so closely to his deepest feeling.
He read the letter over and over, and presently another came, full ofcritical appreciation, and of wholesome, tonic, frank, friendly wordsof cheer. It was very largely the effect of these letters that rousedBalzac's full powers and made him sure of winning the two great objectsof his first ambition--love and fame--the ideals of the chivalrous,romantic Frenchman from Caesar's time down to the present day.
Other letters followed, and after a while their authorship was madeknown to Balzac. He learned that they had been written by a young Polishlady, Mme. Evelina Hanska, the wife of a Polish count, whose health wasfeeble, and who spent much time in Switzerland because the climate thereagreed with him.
He met her first at Neuchatel, and found her all that he had imagined.It is said that she had no sooner raised her face, and looked himfully in the eyes, than she fell fainting to the floor, overcome
byher emotion. Balzac himself was deeply moved. From that day until theirfinal meeting he wrote to her daily.
The woman who had become his second soul was not beautiful.Nevertheless, her face was intensely spiritual, and there was a mysticquality about it which made a strong appeal to Balzac's innermostnature. Those who saw him in Paris knocking about the streets at nightwith his boon companions, hobnobbing with the elder Dumas, or rejectingthe frank advances of George Sand, would never have dreamed of thismysticism.
Balzac was heavy and broad of figure. His face was suggestive only ofwhat was sensuous and sensual. At the same time, those few who lookedinto his heart and mind found there many a sign of the fine inner strainwhich purified the grosser elements of his nature. He who wrote theroaring Rabelaisian Contes Drolatiques was likewise the author ofSeraphita.
This mysticism showed itself in many things that Balzac did. One littleincident will perhaps be sufficiently characteristic of many others. Hehad a belief that names had a sort of esoteric appropriateness. So, inselecting them for his novels, he gathered them with infinite pains frommany sources, and then weighed them anxiously in the balance. A writeron the subject of names and their significance has given the followingaccount of this trait:
The great novelist once spent an entire day tramping about in theremotest quarters of Paris in search of a fitting name for a characterjust conceived by him. Every sign-board, every door-plate, every afficheupon the walls, was scrutinized. Thousands of names were consideredand rejected, and it was only after his companion, utterly worn out byfatigue, had flatly refused to drag his weary limbs through more thanone additional street, that Balzac suddenly saw upon a sign the name"Marcas," and gave a shout of joy at having finally secured what he wasseeking.
Marcas it was, from that moment; and Balzac gradually evolved aChristian name for him. First he considered what initial was mostappropriate; and then, having decided upon Z, he went on to expand thisinto Zepherin, explaining minutely just why the whole name ZepherinMarcas, was the only possible one for the character in the novel.
In many ways Balzac and Evelina Hanska were mated by nature. Whetherthey were fully mated the facts of their lives must demonstrate. For thepresent, the novelist plunged into a whirl of literary labor, toiling asfew ever toiled--constructing several novels at the same time, visitingall the haunts of the French capital, so that he might observe andunderstand every type of human being, and then hurling himself like agiant at his work.
He had a curious practise of reading proofs. These would come to him inenormous sheets, printed on special paper, and with wide margins for hiscorrections. An immense table stood in the midst of his study, and uponthe top he would spread out the proofs as if they were vast maps. Then,removing most of his outer garments, he would lie, face down, upon theproof-sheets, with a gigantic pencil, such as Bismarck subsequently usedto wield. Thus disposed, he would go over the proofs.
Hardly anything that he had written seemed to suit him when he saw itin print. He changed and kept changing, obliterating what he disliked,writing in new sentences, revising others, and adding whole pages in themargins, until perhaps he had practically made a new book. This processwas repeated several times; and how expensive it was may be judged fromthe fact that his bill for "author's proof corrections" was sometimesmore than the publishers had agreed to pay him for the completed volume.
Sometimes, again, he would begin writing in the afternoon, and continueuntil dawn. Then, weary, aching in every bone, and with throbbing head,he would rise and turn to fall upon his couch after his eighteen hoursof steady toil. But the memory of Evelina Hanska always came to him;and with half-numbed fingers he would seize his pen, and forget hisweariness in the pleasure of writing to the dark-eyed woman who drew himto her like a magnet.
These are very curious letters that Balzac wrote to Mme. Hanska. Heliterally told her everything about himself. Not only were there longpassages instinct with tenderness, and with his love for her; but healso gave her the most minute account of everything that occurred, andthat might interest her. Thus he detailed at length his mode of living,the clothes he wore, the people whom he met, his trouble with hiscreditors, the accounts of his income and outgo. One might think thatthis was egotism on his part; but it was more than that. It was a strongbelief that everything which concerned him must concern her; and hebegged her in turn to write as freely and as fully.
Mme. Hanska was not the only woman who became his friend and comrade,and to whom he often wrote. He made many acquaintances in thefashionable world through the good offices of the Duchesse de Castries.By her favor, he studied with his microscopic gaze the beau monde ofLouis Philippe's rather unimpressive court.
In a dozen books he scourged the court of the citizen king--itspretensions, its commonness, and its assemblage of nouveaux riches. Yetin it he found many friends--Victor Hugo, the Girardins--and among themwomen who were of the world. George Sand he knew very well, and she madeardent love to him; but he laughed her off very much as the elder Dumasdid.
Then there was the pretty, dainty Mme. Carraud, who read and revised hismanuscripts, and who perhaps took a more intimate interest in him thandid the other ladies whom he came to know so well. Besides Mme. Hanska,he had another correspondent who signed herself "Louise," but who neverlet him know her name, though she wrote him many piquant, sunny letters,which he so sadly needed.
For though Honore de Balzac was now one of the most famous writers ofhis time, his home was still a den of suffering. His debts kept pressingon him, loading him down, and almost quenching hope. He acted toward hiscreditors like a man of honor, and his physical strength was stillthat of a giant. To Mme. Carraud he once wrote the half pathetic, halfhumorous plaint:
Poor pen! It must be diamond, not because one would wish to wear it, butbecause it has had so much use!
And again:
Here I am, owing a hundred thousand francs. And I am forty!
Balzac and Mme. Hanska met many times after that first eventful episodeat Neuchatel. It was at this time that he gave utterance to the poignantcry:
Love for me is life, and to-day I feel it more than ever!
In like manner he wrote, on leaving her, that famous epigram:
It is only the last love of a woman that can satisfy the first love of aman.
In 1842 Mme. Hanska's husband died. Balzac naturally expected that animmediate marriage with the countess would take place; but the womanwho had loved him mystically for twelve years, and with a touch of thephysical for nine, suddenly draws back. She will not promise anything.She talks of delays, owing to the legal arrangements for her children.She seems almost a prude. An American critic has contrasted her attitudewith his:
Every one knows how utterly and absolutely Balzac devoted to this onewoman all his genius, his aspiration, the thought of his every moment;how every day, after he had labored like a slave for eighteen hours, hewould take his pen and pour out to her the most intimate details of hisdaily life; how at her call he would leave everything and rush acrossthe continent to Poland or to Italy, being radiantly happy if he couldbut see her face and be for a few days by her side. The very thought ofmeeting her thrilled him to the very depths of his nature, and made him,for weeks and even months beforehand, restless, uneasy, and agitated,with an almost painful happiness.
It is the most startling proof of his immense vitality, both physicaland mental, that so tremendous an emotional strain could be enduredby him for years without exhausting his fecundity or blighting hiscreativeness.
With Balzac, however, it was the period of his most brilliant work;and this was true in spite of the anguish of long separations, and thecomplaints excited by what appears to be caprice or boldness or a faintindifference. Even in Balzac one notices toward the last a certain senseof strain underlying what he wrote, a certain lack of elasticity andfacility, if of nothing more; yet on the whole it is likely that withoutthis friendship Balzac would have been less great than he actuallybecame, as it is certain that had it been broken off
he would haveceased to write or to care for anything whatever in the world.
And yet, when they were free to marry, Mme. Hanska shrank away. Notuntil 1846, four years after her husband's death, did she finally giveher promise to the eager Balzac. Then, in the overflow of his happiness,his creative genius blazed up into a most wonderful flame; but he soondiscovered that the promise was not to be at once fulfilled. The shockimpaired that marvelous vitality which had carried him through debt, andwant, and endless labor.
It was at this moment, by the irony of fate, that his country hailed himas one of the greatest of its men of genius. A golden stream pouredinto his lap. His debts were not all extinguished, but his income was solarge that they burdened him no longer.
But his one long dream was the only thing for which he cared; and thoughin an exoteric sense this dream came true, its truth was but a mockery.Evelina Hanska summoned him to Poland, and Balzac went to her at once.There was another long delay, and for more than a year he lived as aguest in the countess's mansion at Wierzchownia; but finally, in March,1850, the two were married. A few weeks later they came back to Francetogether, and occupied the little country house, Les Jardies, in which,some decades later, occurred Gambetta's mysterious death.
What is the secret of this strange love, which in the woman seems to benot precisely love, but something else? Balzac was always eager for herpresence. She, on the other hand, seems to have been mentally more atease when he was absent. Perhaps the explanation, if we may venture uponone, is based upon a well-known physiological fact.
Love in its completeness is made up of two great elements--first, theelement that is wholly spiritual, that is capable of sympathy, andtenderness, and deep emotion. The other element is the physical,the source of passion, of creative energy, and of the truly virilequalities, whether it be in man or woman. Now, let either of theseelements be lacking, and love itself cannot fully and utterly exist.The spiritual nature in one may find its mate in the spiritual natureof another; and the physical nature of one may find its mate in thephysical nature of another. But into unions such as these, love does notenter in its completeness. If there is any element lacking in eitherof those who think that they can mate, their mating will be a sad andpitiful failure.
It is evident enough that Mme. Hanska was almost wholly spiritual, andher long years of waiting had made her understand the difference betweenBalzac and herself. Therefore, she shrank from his proximity, and fromhis physical contact, and it was perhaps better for them both that theirunion was so quickly broken off by death; for the great novelist died ofheart disease only five months after the marriage.
If we wish to understand the mystery of Balzac's life--or, more truly,the mystery of the life of the woman whom he married--take up and readonce more the pages of Seraphita, one of his poorest novels and yet asingularly illuminating story, shedding light upon a secret of the soul.