Women in the Life of Balzac

by Juanita Helm Floyd

I will not extend myself here on the help my aunt was to Balzac all through the years which preceded their marriage, when there seemed no possibility of the marriage ever taking place. She encouraged him in his work, interested herself in all his actions, praised him for all his efforts, tried to be for him the guide and the star to which he could look in his moments of dark discouragement, as well as in his hours of triumph. Without her affection to console him, he would most probably have broken down under the load of immense difficulties which constantly burdened him, and he never would have been able to leave behind him as a legacy to a world that had never property appreciated or understood him, those volumes of the /Comedie humaine/ which have made his name immortal. Madame Hanska was his good genius all through those long and dreadful years during which he struggled with such indomitable courage against an adverse fate, and her devotion to him certainly deserved the words which he wrote to her one day, "I love you as I love God, as I love happiness!"

All this has taken me very far from Miss Floyd's book, though what I have just written about my uncle and aunt completes in a certain sense the details she has given us concerning the wonderful romance which after seventeen years of arduous waiting, made Madame Hanska the wife of one of the greatest literary glories of France. Her work is magnificent and she has handled it superbly, and reconstituted two remarkable figures who were beginning to be, not forgotten, which is impossible, but not so much talked about by the general public, who a few years ago, had shown itself so interested in their life history as it was first disclosed to us in the famous /Lettres a l'Etrangere/, published by the Vicomte Spoelberch de Lovenjoul. She has also cleared some of the clouds which had been darkening the horizon in regard to both Balzac and his wife, and restored to these two their proper places in the history of French literature in the nineteenth century. She has moreover shown us a hitherto unknown Balzac, and a still more unknown /Etrangere/, and this labor of love, because it was that all through, can only be viewed with feelings of the deepest gratitude by the few members still left alive of Madame de Balzac's family, my three brothers and myself. I feel very happy to be given this opportunity of thanking Miss Floyd, in my brothers' name as well as in my own, for the splendid work which she has done, and which I am quite certain will ensure for her a foremost place among the historians of Balzac.

CATHERINE, PRINCESS RADZIWILL.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The steady rise of Balzac's reputation during the last few decades has been such that almost each year new studies have appeared about him. While the women portrayed in the /Comedie humaine/ are often commented upon, no recent work dealing in detail with the novelist's intimate association with women and which might lead to identifying the possible sources of his feminine characters in real life has been published.

The present study does not undertake to establish the origin of all the characters found in the /Comedie humaine/, but is an attempt to trace the life of the novelist on the side of his relations with various women,—a story which is even more thrilling than those presented in many of his novels,—in the hope that it will help explain some of the interesting enigmas presented by his work. So far as the writer could find the necessary evidence, many of the women in Balzac's novels have been here identified with women he knew in the course of his life; and while giving due weight to the suggestions of various writers, and indicating some of the most striking resemblances, she has tried to avoid a mere promiscuous identification of characters.

In the case of many novelists such an investigation would not be worth while, but Balzac's place in literature is so transcendent and his life and writings are so closely and fascinatingly interblended, that it is hoped that the following study, in which the writer has striven to maintain correctness of detail, may not be unwelcome, and that it will throw light on Balzac's complex character, and help his readers better to understand and appreciate some of his most noted women characters. It is believed that this study will show that the influence of women on Balzac was much wider and his acquaintance with them much broader than has previously been supposed.

Apropos of remarks made by Sainte-Beuve and Brunetiere regarding Balzac's admission to the higher circles of society, Emile Faguet has this to say:

"I would point out that the duchesses and viscountesses at the end of the Restoration were known neither to Sainte-Beuve nor to Balzac, the former only having begun to frequent aristocratic drawing-rooms in 1840, and Balzac, in spite of his very short /liaison/ with Madame de Castries, having become a regular attendant only a few months before that date. Sainte-Beuve himself has told us that the Faubourg Saint-Germain /was closed to men of letters before 1830/, and since it had to spend a few years becoming accustomed to their admittance, Sainte-Beuve's testimony is not at all valid as regards the great ladies of the Restoration, even at the end."

Perhaps it is due partly to the above statement and partly to the fact that Balzac tried to give the impression that he led a sort of monastic life, that it is generally believed the novelist never had access to the aristocratic society of his time, and never had an opportunity of observing the great ladies or of frequenting the marvelous balls and receptions that fill so large a place in his writings. Whether he made a success of such descriptions is not the question here, but the following pages will at least furnish proof that he not only had many social opportunities, but that his presence was sought by many women belonging to high life and the nobility.