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,look here--you've blocked out fifty pages for Balzac, who was nothingbut an immoral Frenchman!"
I adjusted this difficulty, somehow or other--I do not just rememberhow--and began to think that, after all, this publisher's view ofthings was probably that of the English and American public. It isstrange that so many biographies and so many appreciations of thegreatest novelist who ever lived should still have left him, in theeyes of the reading public, 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, ajourneyman apprentice, a physician, and a notary." Balzac was also amystic, a supernaturalist, and, above all, a consummate artist. No onewho is all these things in high measure, and who has raised himself byhis genius above his countrymen, deserves the censure of my formerpublisher.
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 yet hisstory 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 people ofhis 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 frommuch scandalous and untrue gossip. From her we learn that their fatherwas a combination 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 everdid discover 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 asDickens did 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 andhis parents removed to Paris, which was his home by choice, until hisdeath in 1850. He studied here under famous teachers, and gave threeyears to the pursuit of law, of which he was very fond as literarymaterial, 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. Heearned a little money with pamphlets and occasional stories, but histhirst for fame was far from satisfied. He was sure that he was calledto literature, and yet he was not sure that he had the power tosucceed. In one 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 give atrue and panoramic picture of the whole of human life. This was thefirst intimation of his "Human Comedy," which was so daringlyundertaken and so nearly completed in his after years. In his earlydays of obscurity, he said to his readers:
Note well the characters that I introduce, since you will have tofollow their 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 evilfortune. Meantime, writing almost savagely, and with a feeling combinedof ambition 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 deeperinto debt.
In 1827 he was toiling on his first successful novel, and indeed one ofthe best historic novels in French literature--The Chouans. He speaksof his labor as "done with a tired brain and an anxious mind," and ofthe eight or ten business letters that he had to write each day beforehe could 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 wasin debt to the amount of a hundred and twenty-four thousand francs. Hewas saved from bankruptcy only by the aid of Mme. de Berny, a woman ofhigh character, and one whose moral influence was very strong withBalzac until 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 givenit to a son, and thereby she saved a great soul for literature. Butthere was no sickly sentiment between them, and Balzac regarded herwith a noble 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, containing adeathbed 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, andyou have a cluster of masterpieces not to be surpassed.
In the year 1829, when he was just beginning to attain a slightsuccess, Balzac received a long letter written in a woman's hand. As heread it, there came to him something very like an inspiration, so fullof understanding were the written words, so full of appreciation and ofsympathy with the best that he had done. This anonymous note pointedout here 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 youngPolish lady, Mme. Evelina Hanska, the wife of a Polish count, whosehealth was feeble, and who spent much time in Switzerland because theclimate there agreed 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 him fullyin the eyes, than she fell fainting to the floor, overcome b
y heremotion. 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 innerstrain which purified the grosser elements of his nature. He who wrotethe roaring 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 painsfrom many sources, and then weighed them anxiously in the balance. Awriter on the subject of names and their significance has given thefollowing account 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, everyaffiche upon the walls, was scrutinized. Thousands of names wereconsidered and rejected, and it was only after his companion, utterlyworn out by fatigue, had flatly refused to drag his weary limbs throughmore than one additional street, that Balzac suddenly saw upon a signthe name "Marcas," and gave a shout of joy at having finally securedwhat he was seeking.
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. Forthe present, the novelist plunged into a whirl of literary labor,toiling as few ever toiled--constructing several novels at the sametime, visiting all the haunts of the French capital, so that he mightobserve and understand every type of human being, and then hurlinghimself like a giant 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 forhis corrections. An immense table stood in the midst of his study, andupon the 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 the proof-sheets, with a gigantic pencil, such as Bismarcksubsequently used to 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 inthe margins, until perhaps he had practically made a new book. Thisprocess was repeated several times; and how expensive it was may bejudged from the fact that his bill for "author's proof corrections" wassometimes more than the publishers had agreed to pay him for thecompleted 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 drewhim to 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 astrong belief that everything which concerned him must concern her; andhe begged 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 shemade ardent love to him; but he laughed her off very much as the elderDumas did.
Then there was the pretty, dainty Mme. Carraud, who read and revisedhis manuscripts, and who perhaps took a more intimate interest in himthan did the other ladies whom he came to know so well. Besides Mme.Hanska, he had another correspondent who signed herself "Louise," butwho never let 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 keptpressing on him, loading him down, and almost quenching hope. He actedtoward his creditors like a man of honor, and his physical strength wasstill that of a giant. To Mme. Carraud he once wrote the half pathetic,half humorous plaint:
Poor pen! It must be diamond, not because one would wish to wear it,but because 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 thepoignant cry:
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 ofa man.
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 herattitude with 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 madehim, for weeks and even months beforehand, restless, uneasy, andagitated, 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 endured byhim for years without exhausting his fecundity or blighting hiscreativeness.
With Balzac, however, it was the period of his most brilliant work; andthis 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 certainsense of strain underlying what he wrote, a certain lack of elasticityand facility, if of nothing more; yet on the whole it is likely thatwithout this friendship Balzac would have been less great than heactually became, as it is certain that had it been broken off he
wouldhave ceased 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 hishappiness, his creative genius blazed up into a most wonderful flame;but he soon discovered that the promise was not to be at oncefulfilled. The shock impaired that marvelous vitality which had carriedhim through debt, and want, and endless labor.
It was at this moment, by the irony of fate, that his country hailedhim as one of the greatest of its men of genius. A golden stream pouredinto his lap. His debts were not all extinguished, but his income wasso large that they burdened him no longer.
But his one long dream was the only thing for which he cared; andthough in an exoteric sense this dream came true, its truth was but amockery. Evelina Hanska summoned him to Poland, and Balzac went to herat once. There was another long delay, and for more than a year helived as a guest in the countess's mansion at Wierzchownia; butfinally, in March, 1850, the two were married. A few weeks later theycame back to France together, and occupied the little country house,Les Jardies, in which, some decades later, occurred Gambetta'smysterious 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 ventureupon one, 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, thesource 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 doesnot enter in its completeness. If there is any element lacking ineither of those who think that they can mate, their mating will be asad and pitiful failure.
It is evident enough that Mme. Hanska was almost wholly spiritual, andher long years of waiting had made her understand the differencebetween Balzac and herself. Therefore, she shrank from his proximity,and from his physical contact, and it was perhaps better for them boththat their union was so quickly broken off by death; for the greatnovelist died of heart 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.