



Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers





                               BALZAC

                                 BY

                          FREDERICK LAWTON




     DEDICATED,

     In remembrance of many pleasant and instructive
     hours spent in his society, to the sculptor

                   AUGUSTE RODIN,

     whose statue of Balzac, with its fine, synthetic
     portraiture, first tempted the author to write
     this book.

     PASSY, PARIS, 1910.




                              PREFACE



Excusing himself for not undertaking to write a life of Balzac,
Monsieur Brunetiere, in his study of the novelist published
shortly before his death, refused somewhat disdainfully to admit
that acquaintance with a celebrated man's biography has
necessarily any value. "What do we know of the life of
Shakespeare?" he says, "and of the circumstances in which _Hamlet_
or _Othello_ was produced? If these circumstances were better
known to us, is it to be believed and will it be seriously
asserted that our admiration for one or the other play would be
augmented?" In penning this quirk, the eminent critic would seem
to have wilfully overlooked the fact that a writer's life may have
much or may have little to do with his works. In the case of
Shakespeare it was comparatively little--and yet we should be glad
to learn more of this little. In the case of Balzac it was much.
His novels are literally his life; and his life is quite as full
as his books of all that makes the good novel at once profitable
and agreeable to read. It is not too much to affirm that any one
who is acquainted with what is known to-day of the strangely
chequered career of the author of the _Comedie Humaine_ is in a
better position to understand and appreciate the different parts
which constitute it. Moreover, the steady rise of Balzac's
reputation, during the last fifty years, has been in some degree
owing to the various patient investigators who have gathered
information about him whom Taine pronounced to be, with
Shakespeare and Saint-Simon, the greatest storehouse of documents
we possess concerning human nature.

The following chapters are an attempt to put this information into
sequence and shape, and to insert such notice of the novels as
their relative importance requires. The author wishes here to
thank certain French publishers who have facilitated his task by
placing books for reference at his disposal, Messrs. Calmann-Levy,
Armand Colin, and Hetzel, in particular, and also the Curator of
the _Musee Balzac_, Monsieur de Royaumont who has rendered him
service on several occasions.




                               BALZAC



                             CHAPTER I

                            INTRODUCTION

The condition of French society in the early half of the nineteenth
century--the period covered by Balzac's novels--may be compared to
that of a people endeavouring to recover themselves after an
earthquake. Everything had been overthrown, or at least loosened from
its base--religion, laws, customs, traditions, castes. Nothing had
withstood the shock. When the upheaval finally ceased, there were
timid attempts to find out what had been spared and was susceptible of
being raised from the ruins. Gradually the process of selection went
on, portions of the ancient system of things being joined to the
larger modern creation. The two did not work in very well together,
however, and the edifice was far from stable.

During the Consulate and First Empire, the Emperor's will, so sternly
imposed, retarded any movement of natural reconstruction. Outside the
military organization, things were stiff and starched and solemn. High
and low were situated in circumstances that were different and
strange. The new soldier aristocracy reeked of the camp and
battle-field; the washer-woman, become a duchess, was ill at ease in
the Imperial drawing-room; while those who had thriven and amassed
wealth rapidly in trade were equally uncomfortable amidst the vulgar
luxury with which they surrounded themselves. Even the common people,
whether of capital or province, for whose benefit the Revolution had
been made, were silent and afraid. Of the ladies' _salons_--once
numerous and remarkable for their wit, good taste, and conversation--two
or three only subsisted, those of Mesdames de Beaumont, Recamier and de
Stael; and, since the last was regarded by Napoleon with an unfriendly
eye, its guests must have felt constrained.

At reunions, eating rather than talking was fashionable, and the
eating lacked its intimacy and privacy of the past. The lighter side
of life was seen more in restaurants, theatres, and fetes. It was
modish to dine at Frascati's, to drink ices at the Pavillon de
Hanovre, to go and admire the actors Talma, Picard, and Lemercier,
whose stage performance was better than many of the pieces they
interpreted. Fireworks could be enjoyed at the Tivoli Gardens; the
great concerts were the rage for a while, as also the practice for a
hostess to carry off her visitors after dinner for a promenade in the
Bois de Boulogne.

Literature was obstinately classical. After the daring flights of the
previous century, writers contented themselves with marking time.
Chenedolle, whose verse Madame de Stael said to be as lofty as
Lebanon, and whose fame is lilliputian to-day, was, with Ducis, the
representative of their advance-guard. In painting, with Fragonard,
Greuze and Gros, there was a greater stir of genius, yet without
anything corresponding in the sister art.

On the contrary, in the practical aspects of life there was large
activity, though Paris almost alone profited by it. Napoleon's
