Women in the Life of Balzac

by Juanita Helm Floyd

[*] Miss M. F. Sandars states that a copy of the /Quotidienne/ containing this acknowledgment was in the possession of the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, and that she saw it. At the time of writing this preface, Miss Wormeley did not believe the correspondence began until February, 1833. In undertaking to prove this, she cited a letter from Balzac written to Madame Hanska, dated January 4, 1846, in which he says that the thirteen years will soon be completed since he received her first letter. She corrects this statement, however, in writing her /Memoir of Balzac/ three years later. The mistake in this letter here mentioned is only an example of the inaccuracy of Balzac, found not only in his letters, but throughout the /Comedie humaine/. But Miss Wormeley's argument might have been refuted by quoting another letter from Balzac to Madame Hanska dated February, 1840: "After eight years you do not know me!"

Regarding the two letters published in /Un Roman d'Amour/, pp. 33-49, dated November 7, 1832, and January 8, 1833, and signed /l'Etrangere/, Miss Wormeley says it is not necessary to notice them, since the author himself states that they are not in Madame Hanska's handwriting.

She is quite correct in this, for Spoelberch de Lovenjoul writes: "How many letters did Balzac receive thus? No one knows. But we possess two, neither of which is in Madame Hanska's handwriting." In speaking of the first letter that arrived, he says:

"This first record of interest which was soon to change its nature, has unfortunately not been found yet. Perhaps this page perished in the /autodafe/ which, as the result of a dramatic adventure, Balzac made of all the letters he had received from Madame Hanska; perhaps also, by dint of rereading it, he had worn it out and involuntarily destroyed it himself. We do not know. In any case, we have not found it in the part of his papers which have fallen into our hands. We regret it very much, for this letter must be remarkable to have produced so great an impression on the future author of the /Comedie humaine/."

The question arises: If Balzac burned in 1847 "all the letters he had received from Madame Hanska," how could de Lovenjoul publish in 1896 two letters that he alleged to be from her, dated in 1832 and 1833?

The Princess Radziwill who is the niece of Madame Honore de Balzac and was reared by her in the house of Balzac in the rue Fortunee, has been both gracious and generous to the present writer in giving her much valuable information that could not have been obtained elsewhere. In answer to the above question, she states:

"Balzac said that he burned my aunt's letters in order to reassure her one day when she had reasons to fear they would fall into other hands than those to whom they belonged. After his death, my aunt found them all, and I am sorry to say that /it was she who burned them/, and that I was present at this /autodafe/, and remember to this day my horror and indignation. But my aunt as well as my father had a horror of leaving letters after them, and strange to say, they were right in fearing to leave them because in both cases, papers had a fate they would not have liked them to have."

The sketch of the family of Madame Honore de Balzac as given in /Un Roman d'Amour/, is so inaccurate that the Princess Radziwill has very kindly made the following corrections of it for the present writer:

"(1) Madame Hanska was really born on December /24th, not 25th/, 1801. You will find the date on her grave which is under the same monument as that of Balzac, in Pere Lachaise in Paris. I am absolutely sure of the day, because my father was also born on Christmas Eve, and there were always great family rejoicings on that occasion. You know that the Roman Catholic church celebrates on the 24th of December the fete of Adam and Eve, and it is because they were born on that day that my father and his sister were called Adam and Eve. I am also quite sure that the year of my aunt's birth was 1801, and my father's 1803, and should be very much surprised if my memory served me false in that respect. But I repeat it, the exact dates are inscribed on my aunt's grave. . . . I looked up since I saw you a prayer book which I possess in which the dates of birth are consigned, and thus found 1801, and I think it is the correct one, but at all events I repeat it once more, the exact date is engraved on her monument.

"(2) Caroline Rzewuska, my aunt's eldest sister, and the eldest of the whole family, is the Madame Cherkowitsch of Balzac's letters, and not Shikoff, as the family sketch says. It is equally ridiculous to say that some people aver she was married four times, and had General Witte for a husband; but Witte was a great admirer of hers at the time she was Mme. Sobanska. There is also a detail connected with her which is very little known, and that is that she nearly married Sainte-Beauve, and that the marriage was broken off a few days before the one fixed for it to take place. That was before she married Jules Lacroix, and wicked people say that it was partly disappointment at having been unable to become the wife of the great critic, which made her accept the former.