Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings Part 18

Balzac died that night, Sunday, August 17th, 1850, at half-past eleven, at the age of fifty-one.

The dying man's almost complete isolation is strange, and the servant's news that M. Surville had not _yet_ gone to bed has a callous ring about it. Perhaps, however, the doctors had told Madame de Balzac and Madame Surville that Balzac was unconscious, and they had therefore withdrawn, utterly exhausted by the fatigues of the night before. In any case, it seems sad, though possibly of no moment to the dying man, that several of his nearest relations should have deserted him before the breath had left his body. Our respect for the elder Madame de Balzac is decidedly raised, because, though there had occasionally been disagreements between her and her son, the true mother feeling a.s.serted itself at the last, and she alone watched with the paid attendants till the end came.

However, some one was busy about the arrangements, as Balzac's portrait was taken by Giraud directly after his death, and a cast was made of his beautifully-shaped hand. His body was taken into the Beaujon Chapel before burial, so that he pa.s.sed for the last time, as Victor Hugo remarks, through that door, the key of which was more precious to him than all the beautiful gardens which had belonged to the old Farmer-General.

The funeral service was held on Wednesday, August 20th, at the Church of Sainte Philippe du Roule. The rain was descending in torrents, but the procession, followed by a large crowd, walked the whole way across Paris to the Cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise, where the interment took place. The pall-bearers were Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Monsieur Baroche, and Sainte-Beuve. At the grave Victor Hugo spoke, finishing with the words: "No, it is not the Unknown to him. I have said this before, and I shall never tire of repeating it: it is not darkness to him, it is Light! It is not the end, but the beginning; not nothingness, but eternity! Is not this the truth, I ask you who listen to me? Such coffins proclaim immortality. In the presence of certain ill.u.s.trious dead, we understand the divine destiny of that intellect which has traversed earth to suffer and to be purified. Do we not say to ourselves here, to-day, that it is impossible for a great genius in this life to be other than a great spirit after death?"[*]

[*] "Funerailles de Balzac," in "Actes et Paroles," by Victor Hugo.

The Cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise had been one of Balzac's favourite haunts in the old half-starved days of the Rue Lesdiguieres. "Here I am back from Pere-la-Chaise," he wrote to his sister in 1820,[*] "and I have brought with me some good big inspiring reflections. Decidedly, the only fine epitaphs are these: La Fontaine, Messena, Moliere, a single name, which tells all and makes one dream." Probably Madame Surville remembered these words and repeated them to Madame Honore de Balzac, for the monument erected to Balzac is a broken column with his name inscribed on it.

[*] "Correspondance," vol. i. p. 24.

The fortunes of the inhabitants of the Rue Fortunee were not happy after Balzac's death. Madame Honore de Balzac's contemporaries considered that she as not really as overwhelmed with sorrow at her husband's death as she appeared to be, and that when she wrote heartbroken letters, she slightly exaggerated the real state of her feelings; but she a.s.sumed gallantly the burdens laid upon her by the state of pecuniary embarra.s.sment in which her husband died. If Balzac had lived longer and had been able to work steadily, there is little doubt that he would in a few years have become a free man, as the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul tells us[*] that in the years between 1841 and 1847, after which date his productions became very rare, he had enormously diminished the sum he owed.

[*] "La Genese d'un Roman de Balzac," by the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul.

Under Balzac's will his widow might have refused to acknowledge any liability for his debts, but she set to work bravely, with the aid of MM. Dutacq and Fessart, to make as much money as she could out of Balzac's published works, and to bring before the public those that were still unpublished. In this way, "Mercadet le Faiseur" was acted a year after Balzac's death, and "Les Pet.i.ts Bourgeois" and "Le Depute d'Arcis" were published, the latter being finished, according to Balzac's wish, by Charles Rabou. "Les Paysans," which was to have filled eight volumes, and of which, as we have already seen, only a few chapters were written, presented great difficulty; but at last Madame de Balzac, aided by Champfleury and by Charles Rabou, managed to give some consistency to the fragment, and it appeared in the _Revue de Paris_ in April, May and June, 1855. Unfortunately, however, no information was given as to the unfinished state in which it had been left by Balzac, and therefore no explanation was offered of the insufficiency of the _denouement_, and the inadequacy of the last chapters. Madame de Balzac worked hard, and long before her death in April, 1882, the whole of Balzac's debts were paid off.

This was most creditable to her; but side by side with her admirable conduct in this respect, she seems to have either actively abetted, or at any rate acquiesced in mad extravagance on the part of Madame Georges Mniszech, who with her husband, had come to live in the Rue Fortunee after Balzac's death. Perhaps Madame de Balzac was too busy with her literary and business arrangements, to pay attention to what was happening, or possibly maternal devotion prevented her from denying her beloved daughter anything she craved for. At all events the results of her supineness were lamentable, especially as M.

Georges Mniszech was not capable of exercising any restraint on his wife; he being for some years before his death in 1881, in the most delicate state of health, both mental and physical.

Madame Georges Mniszech--after years of the wild Russian steppes, suddenly plunged into the fascinations of shopping in Paris, and left to her own devices--seems to have shown senseless folly in her expenditure. Additions were made to the house in the Rue Fortunee, though Balzac's rooms were left untouched; and the Chateau de Beauregard, at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, was bought as a country residence. Madame de Balzac and her daughter were, however, rich, and could quite afford to live comfortably, and even luxuriously. Their ruin seems to have been brought about by reckless expenditure on things which were of absolutely no use, and were only bought for the amus.e.m.e.nt of buying. Several sales of pictures took place, and on February 9th, 1882,[*] the Chateau de Beauregard and its contents were sold by order of the President of the Civil Tribunal of Corbeil.

[*] "Life of Balzac," by Frederick Wedmore.

Madame de Balzac died in April of the same year; and the very day of her funeral, Madame Georges Mniszech's creditors pushed her and her maid into the street, and rifled the house in the Rue Fortunee. The booty was transported to the auction-room known as l'Hotel Drouot, and there a sale was held by order of justice of Balzac's library, his Buhl cabinets, and some of his MSS., including that of "Eugenie Grandet," which had been given to Madame Hanska on December 24th, 1833. During the shameless pillage of the house, the vultures who ransacked it found evidence of the most reckless, the most imbecile extravagance, proof positive that the wisdom, prudence, even the principles of poor Balzac's paragon the Countess Anna, had been routed by the glitter and glamour of the holiday city. One room was filled with boxes containing hats, and in another, piles of costly silks were heaped, untouched since their arrival from the fashionable haberdasher or silk mercer.[*] Balzac's treasures, the curiosities he had ama.s.sed with so much trouble, the pictures of which he had been so proud, were ruthlessly seized; while precious ma.n.u.scripts and letters, which would perhaps have brought in a hundred thousand francs if they had been put up for sale, were thrown out of the window by the exasperated throng.

[*] "Journal des Goncourts," vol. viii. P. 48.

The Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul rescued a page of the first of Balzac's letters to Madame Hanska which has been found up to this time, from a cobbler whose stall was opposite the house. The cobbler, when once started on the quest by the Vicomte, discovered many other letters, sketches, and unfinished novels, which had been picked up by the neighbouring shopkeepers, and were only saved in the nick of time from being used to wrap up pounds of b.u.t.ter, or to make bags for other household commodities. It was an exciting chase, requiring patience and ingenuity; and Balzac's former cook held out for years, before she would consent to sell a packet of letters which the Vicomte coveted specially. Sometimes incidentally there were delightful surprises, and occasionally real joys; as on the occasion when the searcher found at a distant grocer's shop, the middle of the letter, of which the first page had been saved from destruction at the hands of the cobbler.

The bitter dislike Balzac had evoked in the literary world, and his occasional obscurity and clumsy style, have militated very strongly against his popularity in his native land, where perfection in the manipulation of words is of supreme importance in a writer. While in France, however, Balzac's undoubted faults have partially blinded his countrymen to his consummate merits as a writer, and they have been strangely slow in acknowledging the debt of grat.i.tude they owe to him, the rest or the world has already begun to realise his power of creating type, his wonderful imagination, his versatility, and his extraordinary impartiality; and to accord him his rightful place among the Immortals. Nevertheless we are still too near to him, to be able to focus him clearly, and to estimate aright his peculiar place in literature, or the full scope of his genius.

Some very great authorities claim him as a member of the Romantic School; while, on the other hand, he is often looked on--apparently with more reason--as the first of the Realists. His object in writing was, he tells us, to represent mankind as he saw it, to be the historian of the nineteenth century, and to cla.s.sify human beings as Buffon had cla.s.sified animals. No doubt this scheme was very imperfectly carried out: certainly the powerful mind of Balzac with its wealth of imagination, often projected itself into his puppets, so that many of his characters are not the ordinary men and women he wished to portray, but are inspired by the fire of genius. This fact does not, however, alter the aim of their creator. He intended to be merely a chronicler, a scientific observer of things around him; and though his works are tinged to a large extent with the Romanticism of the powerful school in vogue in his day, this object marks him plainly as the forerunner of the Realists, the founder of a totally new conception of the scope and range of the novel.

Theophile Gautier's words should prove to the modern reader, the debt of grat.i.tude he owes to the inaugurator of a completely original system of fiction. Speaking of Balzac's impecunious and ambitious heroes, Gautier cries:[*] "O Corinne, who on the Cape of Messina allowest thy snowy arm to hang over the ivory lyre, while the son of Albion, clothed in a superb new cloak, and with elegant boots perfectly polished, gazes at thee, and listens in an elegant pose: Corinne, what wouldst thou have said to such heroes? They have nevertheless one little quality which Oswald lacked--they live, and with so strong a life that we have met them a thousand times."

Balzac's own words, speaking of his play "La Maratre,"[+] might also serve for a motto for his novels: "I dream of a drawing-room comedy, where everything is calm, quiet, and amiable. The men play whist placidly by the light of candles with little green shades. The women talk and laugh while they work at their embroidery. They all take tea together. To sum up, everything announces good order and harmony.

Well, underneath are agitating pa.s.sions; the drama stirs, it prepares itself secretly, till it blazes forth like the flame of a conflagration."

[*] "Portraits Contemporains: Honore de Balzac," by Theophile Gautier.

[+] "Historiettes et Souvenirs d'un Homme de Theatre," by H. Hostein.

Balzac is essentially a Realist, in his use of the novel as a vehicle for the description of real struggling life; with money and position, the princ.i.p.al desiderata of modern civilisation, powerful as determining factors in the moulding of men's actions. Life, as portrayed in the old-fashioned novel, where the hero and heroine and their love affairs were the sole focus of attraction, and the other characters were grouped round in subordinate positions, while every one declined in interest as he advanced in years, was not life as Balzac saw it; and he pictures his hero's agony at not having a penny with which to pay his cab fare, with as much graphic intensity, as he tells of the same young gentleman's despair when his inamorata is indifferent to him.

Nevertheless, if we compare Balzac with the depressing writers of the so-called Realist School, we shall find that his conception of life differed greatly from theirs. In Flaubert's melancholy books, even perfection of style and painstaking truth of detail do not dissipate the deadly dulness of an unreal world, where no one rises above the low level of self-gratification; while Zola considers man so completely in his physical aspect, that he ends by degrading him below the animal world. Balzac, on the other hand, believed in purity, in devotion, and unselfishness; though he did not think that these qualities are triumphant on earth. In his pessimistic view of life, virtue generally suffered, and had no power against vice; but he knew that it existed, and he believed in a future where wrongs would be righted.

He is a poet and idealist, and thus akin to the Romanticists--though he lacks their perfection of diction--in his feeling for the beauty of atmospheric effects, and also in his enthusiasm for music, which he loved pa.s.sionately. The description of Montriveau's emotions when the cloistered d.u.c.h.esse de Langeais plays in the church of Spain--and Balzac tells us that the sound of the organ bears the mind through a thousand scenes of life to the infinite which parts earth from heaven, and that through its tones the luminous attributes of G.o.d Himself pierce and radiate--is totally unrealistic both in moral tone, and in its accentuation of the power of the higher emotions. His intense admiration for Sir Walter Scott--an admiration which he expresses time after time in his letters--is a further proof of his sympathy for the school of thought, which glorified the picturesque Middle Ages above every other period of history.

Whichever school, however, may claim Balzac, it is an undisputed fact that he possessed in a high degree that greatest of all attributes --the power of creation of type. Le Pere Goriot, Balthazar Claes, Old Grandet, La Cousine Bette, Le Cousin Pons, and many other people in Balzac's pages, are creations; they live and are immortal. He has endowed them with more splendid and superabundant vitality than is accorded to ordinary humanity.

To do this, something is required beyond keenness of vision. The gift of seeing vividly--as under a dazzling light--to the very kernel of the object stripped of supernumerary circ.u.mstance, is indeed necessary for the portrayal of character; but although d.i.c.kens, as well as Balzac, possessed this faculty to a high degree, his people are often qualities personified, or impossible monsters. For the successful creation of type, that power in which Balzac is akin to Shakespeare, it is necessary that a coherent whole shall be formed, and that the full scope of a character shall be realised, with its infinite possibilities on its own plane, and its impotence to move a hairsbreadth on to another. The mysterious law which governs the conduct of life must be fathomed; so that, though there may be unexpected and surprising developments, the artistic sense and intuition which we possess shall not be outraged, and we shall still recognise the abiding personality under everything. Balzac excels in this; and because of this power, and also because--at a time when Byronic literature was in the ascendant, and it was the fashion to think that the quintessence of beauty could be found by diving into the depths of one's own being--he came forward without pose or self-consciousness, as a simple observer of the human race, the world will never cease to owe him a debt of grat.i.tude, and to rank him among her greatest novelists.