



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
reconstruction in the provinces was administrative chiefly. A complete
programme was first started on in the capital, which the Emperor
wished to exalt into the premier city of Europe. Gas-lighting,
sewerage, paving and road improvements, quays, and bridges were his
gifts to the city, whose general appearance, however, remained much
the same. The Palais-Royal served still as a principal rendezvous. The
busy streets were the Rues Saint-Denis and Saint-Honore on the right
bank, the Rue Saint-Jacques on the left; and the most important shops
were to be found in the Rue de la Loi, at present the Rue de
Richelieu.

The fall of the Empire was less a restoration of the Monarchy than the
definite disaggregation of the ancient aristocracy, which had been
centralized round the court since the days of Richelieu. The Court of
Louis XVIII. was no more like that of Louis XVI. than it was like the
noisy one of Napoleon. Receiving only a few personal friends, the King
allowed his drawing-rooms to remain deserted by the nobles that had
returned from exile; and the two or three who were regular visitors
were compelled to rub elbows with certain parvenus, magistrates,
financiers, generals of the Empire whom it would not have been prudent
to eliminate.

In this initial stage of society-decentralization, the diminished band
of the Boulevard Saint-Germain--descendants of the eighteenth-century
dukes and marquises--tried to close up their ranks and to
differentiate themselves from the plutocracy of the Chaussee d'Antin,
who copied their manners, with an added magnificence of display which
those they imitated could not afford. In the one camp the antique
bronzes, gildings, and carvings of a bygone art were retained with
pious veneration; in the other, pictures, carpets, Jacob chairs and
sofas, mirrors, and time-pieces, and the gold and silver plate were
all in lavish style, indicative of their owner's ampler means. One
feature of the pre-Revolution era was revived in the feminine
_salons_, which regained most, if not the whole, of their pristine
renown. The Hotel de la Rochefoucauld of Madame Ancelot became a
second Hotel de Rambouillet, where the classical Parseval-Grandmaison,
who spent twenty years over his poem _Philippe-Auguste_, held
armistice with the young champion of the Romantic school, Victor Hugo.
The Princess de Vaudemont received her guests in Paris during the
winter, and at Suresnes during the summer; and her friend the Duchess
de Duras' _causeries_ were frequented by such men as Cuvier, Humboldt,
Talleyrand, Mole, de Villele, Chateaubriand, and Villemain. Other
circles existed in the houses of the Dukes Pasquier and de Broglie,
the countess Merlin, and Madame de Mirbel.

With the re-establishment of peace, literary and toilet pre-occupations
began to assert their claims. The _Ourika_ of the Duchess de Duras took
Paris by storm. Her heroine, the young Senegal negress, gave her name to
dresses, hats, and bonnets. Everything was _Ourika_. The prettiest
Parisian woman yearned to be black, and regretted not having been born
in darkest Africa. Anglomania in men's clothes prevailed throughout the
reign of Louis XVIII., yet mixed with other modes. "Behold an up-to-date
dandy," says a writer of the epoch; "all extremes meet in him. You shall
see him Prussian by the stomach, Russian by his waist, English in his
coat-tails and collar, Cossack by the sack that serves him as trousers,
and by his fur. Add to these things Bolivar hats and spurs, and the
moustaches of a counter-skipper, and you have the most singular
harlequin to be met with on the face of the globe."

Among the masses there were changes just as striking. For the moment
militarism had disappeared, to the people's unfeigned content, and the
Garde Nationale, composed of pot-bellied tradesmen, alone recalled the
bright uniforms of the Empire. To make up for the soldier excitements
of the _Petit Caporal_, attractions of all kinds tempted the citizen
to enjoy himself after his day's toil was finished--menagerie,
mountebanks, Franconi circus, Robertson the conjurer in the Jardin des
Capucines. At the other end of the city, in the Boulevard du Temple,
were Belle Madeleine, the seller of Nanterre cakes, famous throughout
Europe, the face contortionist Valsuani, Miette in his egg-dance,
Curtius' waxworks. By each street corner were charlatans of one or
another sort exchanging jests with the passers-by. It was the period
when the Prudhomme type was created, so common in all the skits and
caricatures of the day. One of the greatest pleasures of the citizen
under the Restoration was to mock at the English. Revenge for Waterloo
was found in written and spoken satires. Huge was the success of
Sewrin's and Dumersan's _Anglaises pour rire_, with Brunet and Potier
travestied as _grandes dames_, dancing a jig so vigorously that they
lost their skirts. The same species of _revanche_ was indulged in when
Lady Morgan, the novelist, came to France, seeking material for a
popular book describing French customs. Henri Beyle (Stendhal) hoaxed
her by acting as her cicerone and filling her note-books with absurd
information, which she accepted in good faith and carried off as fact.
On Sundays the most respectable families used to resort to the
_guinguettes_, or _bastringues_, of the suburbs. Belleville had its
celebrated Desnoyers establishment. At the Maine gate Mother Sagnet's
was the meeting-place of budding artists and grisettes. At La
Villette, Mother Radig, a former canteen woman, long enjoyed
popularity among her patrons of both sexes. All these scenes are
depicted in certain of Victor Ducange's novels, written between 1815
and 1830, as also in the pencil sketches of the two artists Pigal and
Marlet.

The political society of the Restoration was characterized by a good
deal of cynicism. Those who were affected by the change of _regime_,
partisans and functionaries of the Empire, hastened in many cases to
trim their sails to the turn of the tide. However, there was a
relative liberty of the press which permitted the honest expression of
party opinion, and polemics were keen. At the Sorbonne, Guizot,
Cousin, and Villemain were the orators of the day. Frayssinous
lectured at Saint-Sulpice, and de Lamennais, attacking young
Liberalism, denounced its tenets in an essay which de Maistre called a
heaving of the earth under a leaden sky.

The country's material prosperity at the time was considerable, and
reacted upon literature of every kind by furnishing a more leisured
public. In 1816 Emile Deschamps preluded to the after-triumphs of the
Romantic School with his play the _Tour de faveur_, the latter being
followed in 1820 by Lebrun's _Marie Stuart_. Alfred de Vigny was
preparing his _Eloa_; Nodier was delighting everybody by his talents
as a philologian, novelist, poet, and chemist. Beranger was continuing
his songs, and paying for his boldness with imprisonment. The King
himself was a protector of letters, arts, and sciences. One of his
first tasks was to reorganize the "Institut Royal," making it into
four Academies. He founded the Geographical and Asiatic Societies,
encouraged the introduction of steam navigation and traction into
France, and patronized men of genius wherever he met with them.

Yet the nation's fidelity to the White Flag was not very deep-rooted.
Grateful though the population had been for the return of peace and
prosperity, a lurking reminiscence of Napoleonic splendours combined
with the bourgeois' Voltairian scepticism to rouse a widespread
hostility to Government and Church, as soon as the spirit of the
latter ventured to manifest again its inveterate intolerance.
Beranger's songs, Paul-Louis Courier's pamphlets, and the articles of
the _Constitutionnel_ fanned the re-awakened sentiments of revolt; and
Charles the Tenth's ministers, less wisely restrained than those of
Louis XVIII., and blind to the significance of the first barricades of
1827, provoked the catastrophe of 1830. This second revolution
inaugurated the reign of a bourgeois king. Louis-Philippe was hardly
more than a delegate of the bourgeois class, who now reaped the full
benefits of the great Revolution and entered into possession of its
spoils. During Jacobin dictature and Napoleonic sway, the bourgeoisie
had played a waiting role. At present they came to the front, proudly
conscious of their merits; and an entire literature was destined to be
devoted to them, an entire art to depict or satirize their manners.
Scribe, Stendhal, Merimee, Henry Monnier, Daumier, and Gavarni were
some of the men whose work illustrated the bourgeois _regime_, either
prior to or contemporaneous with the work of Balzac.

The eighteen years of the July Monarchy, which were those of Balzac's
mature activity, contrasted sharply with those that immediately
preceded. In spite of perceptible social progress, the constant war of
political parties, in which the throne itself was attacked, alarmed
lovers of order, and engendered feelings of pessimism. The power of
journalism waxed great. Fighting with the pen was carried to a point
of skill previously unattained. Grouped round the _Debats_--the
ministerial organ--were Silvestre de Sacy, Saint-Marc Girardin, and
Jules Janin as leaders, and John Lemoinne, Philarete Chasles, Barbey
d'Aurevilly in the rank and file. Elsewhere Emile de Girardin's
_Presse_ strove to oust the _Constitutionnel_ and _Siecle_, opposition
papers, from public favour, and to establish a Conservative Liberalism
that should receive the support of moderate minds. Doctrines many,
political and social, were propounded in these eighteen years of
compromise. Legitimists, Bonapartists, and Republicans were all three
in opposition to the Government, each with a programme to tempt the
petty burgess. Saint-Simonism too was abroad with its utopian ideals,
attracting some of the loftier minds, but less appreciated by the
masses than the teachings of other semi-secret societies having aims
more material.

Corresponding to the character of the _regime_ was the practical
nature of the public works executed--the railway system with its
transformation of trade, the fortification of the capital, the
commencement of popular education, and the renovation of decayed or
incompleted edifices.