Recent researches have discovered several interesting facts about the origin of the woman to whom may be ascribed the merit of "creating" the writer who was destined to exercise so great an influence on his own and succeeding generations.[*] Curiously enough, Louise Antoinette Laure Hinner, destined at the age of fifteen years and ten months to become Madame de Berny, was, like Madame Hanska, a foreigner, being the daughter of Joseph Hinner, a German musician, who was brought by Turgot to France. Here he became harpist to Marie Antoinette, and married Madame Quelpee de Laborde, one of the Queen's ladies in waiting. Two years later, on May 23rd, 1777, the future Madame de Berny came into the world, and made her debut with a great flourish of trumpets, Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, represented by the Duc de Fronsac and Laure Auguste de Fitz-James, Princesse de Chimay, being her god-parents. When in 1784 her father died, her mother married the Chevalier de Jarjayes, one of Marie Antoinette's most loyal adherents during the Revolution. It was he who conceived the project of carrying off Louis XVII. from the Temple, and who was entrusted with the precious duty of carrying the seal, ring, and hair belonging to the Royal Family to the exiled Monsieur and Comte d'Artois.[*]
[*] See "Balzac, Imprimeur," in "La Jeunesse de Balzac," by MM.
Hanotaux et Vicaire.
We can easily see whence Balzac derived his strong Royalist principles —how from boyhood the lessons taught him by his masters, M. Lepitre and M. Guillonnet de Merville, would be insisted on, only with much greater effect and insistence, by this charming woman of the world. Her mother, still living, had passed her time in the disturbed and exciting atmosphere of plots and counterplots; and she herself could tell him story after story of heartrending tragedies and of hairbreadth escapes, which had happened to her own relations and friends. From her he acquired those aristocratic longings which always characterised him, and through her influence he made acquaintance with several people of high position and importance, and thus was enabled to make an occasional appearance in the beau-monde of Paris.
Her portrait gives the idea of an elegant rather than pretty woman, with a long neck, sloping shoulders, black curls on the temples, at each side of a high forehead, and large, languishing dark eyes, under pencilled eyebrows. The oval face has a character of gentle melancholy, and there is something subdued and suffering in the whole expression which invites our pity. She wears in the portrait an Empire dress, confined under the arms by a yellow ribbon.
"La dilecta," as Balzac calls her, cannot have been a very happy woman. Of her nine children, watched with the most tender solicitude, only four lived to grow up; and of these her favourite son, "beautiful as the day, like her tender and spiritual, like her full of noble sentiments," as Balzac says, died the year before her; and only an insane daughter and a wild, unsatisfactory son survived her. This terrible blow broke her heart, and she shut herself up and refused to see even Balzac during the last year of her life. The end must at any rate have been peaceful, as, in order to prolong her existence as much as possible, it had been found necessary to separate her from the irritable husband with whose vagaries she had borne patiently during thirty tedious years; but perhaps she was sorry in the end that this was necessary. Madame de Mortsauf, in the "Lys dans la Vallee," is intended to be a portrait of her, though Balzac says that he has only managed to give a faint reflection of her perfections. However this may be, Henriette de Mortsauf is a charming and ethereal creation, and from her we can understand the fascination Madame de Berny exerted over Balzac, and can realise that, as he says to Madame Hanska, her loss can never be made up to him. It is possible also to sympathise with the feeling, perhaps unacknowledged even to himself, which peeps out in a letter to Madame Hanska in 1840.[*] In this he reproaches his correspondent for her littleness in not writing to him because he cannot answer her letters quickly, and tells her that he has lately been in such straits that he has not been able to pay for franking his letters, and has several times eaten a roll on the Boulevards for his dinner. He goes on: "Ah! I implore you, do not make comparisons between yourself and Madame de Berny. She was of infinite goodness and of absolute devotion; she was what she was. You are complete on your side as she on hers. One never compares two great things. They are what they are." Certainly Balzac never found a second Madame de Berny.
[*] "Lettres a L'Etrangere."
From 1822 to 1824 we know little of Balzac's history, except that he passed the time at home, and was presumably working hard at his romantic novels; but in 1824 a change came, one no doubt hailed at the time with eager delight, though it proved unfortunately to be the foundation of all his subsequent misfortunes.
When he went up to Paris to make arrangements for publishing his novels, he stayed in the old lodgings of his family in the Rue du Roi Dore, and here he often met a friend, M. d'Assonvillez, to whom he confided his fear of being forced into an occupation distasteful to him. M. d'Assonvillez was sympathetic, advised him to seek for a business which would make him independent, and, carried away by Honore's powers of persuasion and eloquence, actually promised to proved the necessary funds. We can imagine Balzac's joy at this offer, and the enthusiasm with which he would take up his abode in Paris, and feel that he was about to earn his living, nay, more, that he would no doubt become enormously rich, and would then have leisure to give up his time to literature. What however decided him to become first publisher and then printer we do not know. He started his publishing campaign with the idea of bringing out compact editions of the complete works of different authors in one volume, and began with Moliere and La Fontaine, carrying on the two publications at the same time, for fear of competition if his secret should be discovered. The idea, which had already been thought of by Urbain Canel, was a good one; but unfortunately Balzac was not able to obtain support from the trade, and had not sufficient capital for advertising. Therefore by the end of the year not twenty copies were sold, and he lost 15,000 francs on this affair alone. Consequently, in order to save the rent of the warehouse in which the books were stored, he was obliged to part with all the precious compact editions for the price by the weight of the paper on which they were printed.
Matters now looked very black, as Balzac owed about 70,000 francs; but M. d'Assonvillez was evidently much impressed by his business capacity, and was naturally anxious to be repaid the money he had lent. He therefore introduced Honore to a relation who was making a large fortune by his printing-press; and Balzac, full of enthusiasm, dreamt of becoming a second Richardson, and of combining the occupations of author and printer. His father was persuaded to provide the necessary funds, and handed him over 30,000 francs—about 1,200 pounds—with which to start the enterprise. In August, 1826, Balzac began again joyously, first by himself and afterwards with a partner named Barbier, whom he had noticed as foreman in one of the printing-offices to which he had taken his novels. Unfortunately a printing-licence cost 15,000 francs in the time of Charles X.; and when this had been paid, Barbier had received a bonus of 12,000 francs, and 15,000 francs had been spent on the necessary materials, there remained very little capital with which to meet the current expenses of the undertaking. Nevertheless, the young partners started full of hope, having bought from Laurent for 30,000 francs the premises at No. 7, Rue des Marais Saint-Germain, now the Rue Visconti, a street so narrow that two vehicles cannot pass in it. A wooden staircase with an iron handrail led from a dark passage to the large barrack-like hall they occupied: an abode which Balzac tried to beautify, possibly for Madame de Berny's visits, by hangings of blue calico.
There Balzac developed quickly. He learnt the struggle of a business life, the duel between man and man, through which thousands pass without gaining anything except business acuteness, but which introduced the great psychologist to hundreds of new types, and showed to his keen, observant eyes man, not in society or domesticity, but in undress, fighting for life itself, or for all that makes life worth living. In the Rue de Lesdiguieres he had struggled with himself, striving in cold and hunger to gain the mastery of his art. Here he battled with others; and since, except on paper, he never possessed business capacity, he failed and went under; but by his defeat he paved the way to future triumph. He passed through an experience possibly unique in the career of a man of letters, one which imparts the peculiar flavour of business, money, and affairs to his books, and which fixed on him for all his days the impression of restless, passionate, thronging humanity which he pictures in his books. The abyss between his early romantic novels and such a book as the "Peau de Chagrin" is immeasurable, and cannot be altogether accounted for by any teaching, however valuable, or even by the strong influence which intercourse with Madame de Berny exercised. Something else definite must have happened to him—some great opening out and development, which caused a sudden appearance on the surface of hitherto latent, unworkable powers. This forcing-process took place at his first contact with the war of life; and though he bore the scars of the encounter as long as he lived, he grew by its clash, ferment, and disaster to his full stature. In "La Maison du Chat-qui-pelote," "Illusions Perdues," and "Cesar Birotteau" he gives different phases of this life, spent partly in the printer's office and partly in the streets, rushing anxiously from place to place and from person to person, trying vainly by interviews to avert the impending ruin.