Читать книгу Letters to Madame Hanska, born Countess Rzewuska, afterwards Madame Honoré de Balzac, 1833-1846 - Honoré de Balzac - Страница 3

In 1876 M. Calmann Lévy published Balzac's Correspondence in the twenty-fourth volume of the Édition Définitive of his works. These letters are prefaced by a short memoir written by his sister Laure, Madame Surville, which she had already published in 1856, six years after her brother's death, under the title of "Balzac, sa vie et ses écrits, d'après sa correspondance."

In this Correspondence given in the Édition Définitive, the first letter addressed by Balzac to Madame Hanska is dated August 11, 1835, and to it is appended the following footnote:—

"At this period Balzac was, and had been for some time, in correspondence with the distinguished woman to whom he was later to give his name; but, unfortunately, a part of this correspondence was burned in Moscow in a fire which occurred at Madame Hanska's residence. It must, therefore, be remarked that in the letters of this series two or three gaps occur, all the more regrettable because those which escaped the fire present a keen interest." (Éd. Déf., vol. xxiv., p. 217.)

The present publication of Letters (of which this volume is a translation) bears upon its title-page the words: "H. de Balzac. Œuvres Posthumes. Lettres à l'Étrangère. 1833–1842." No explanation is given of how these letters were obtained, and no proof or assurance is offered of their authenticity. A foot-note appended to the first letter merely states as follows:—

"M. le Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, in whose hands are the originals of these letters, has related the history of this correspondence in detail, under the title of 'Un Roman d'Amour' (Calmann Lévy, publisher). Madame Hanska, born Countess Evelina (Eve) Rzewuska, who was then twenty-six or twenty-eight years old, resided at the château of Wierzchownia, in Volhynia. An enthusiastic reader of the 'Scènes de la Vie privée,' uneasy at the different turn which the mind of the author was taking in 'La Peau de Chagrin,' she addressed to Balzac—then thirty-three years old, to the care of the publisher Gosselin, a letter signed, 'l'Étrangère,' which was delivered to him February 28, 1832. Other letters followed; that of November 7 ended thus: 'A word from you in the "Quotidienne" will give me the assurance that you have received my letter, and that I can write to you without fear. Sign it: "To l'É—h. de B."' This acknowledgment of reception appeared in the 'Quotidienne' of December 9. Thus was inaugurated the system of 'Petite correspondance' now practised in divers newspapers, and, at the same time, this correspondence with her who was, seventeen years later, in 1850, to become his wife."

Balzac himself gives the date of his reception of l'Étrangère's first letter in a way that puts it beyond all controversy. In a letter to Madame Hanska, written January 1, 1846 (Éd. Déf., p. 586), he says:—

"One year more, dear, and I take it with pleasure, for these years, these thirteen years which will be consummated in February on the happy day, a thousand times blessed, when I received that adorable letter, starred with happiness and hope, seem to me links indestructible, eternal. The fourteenth will begin in two months."

Thirteen years consummated in February, 1846, the fourteenth year beginning in February, 1846, make the date of the reception of that first letter February 28, 1833, not 1832. This fact not only puts an end to the tale about the advertisement in the "Quotidienne" [contained in the note to first page of present volume, quoted above, and in pages 31 to 39 of "Roman d'Amour"], but it falsifies the dates of the present volume. The first letter given, which is evidently not the first of Balzac's replies, is dated January, 1833, a month or more before the first letter of "l'Étrangère" was written. Throughout the volume other dates can be shown to be false, proving arbitrary arrangement of some kind, and casting justifiable doubt on the authenticity of a certain number of these letters.

"Un Roman d'Amour" is a book made up of conjectures, insinuations, hypotheses, and errors, in which one, and one only, fact is presented. That fact is a letter from Balzac to his sister, Madame Surville.

This letter Madame Surville first published in 1856 in her memoir of her brother (pp. 139, 140), introducing it in the following words: "Being absent from Paris in the month of October of the same year [1833], I received from my brother the following letter:"—

"Gone, without a word of warning [sans crier gare]. The poor toiler went to your house to make you share a little joy, and found no sister! I torment you so often with my troubles that the least I can do is to write you this joy. You will not laugh at me, you will believe me, you will!

"I went yesterday to Gérard's; he presented me to three German families. I thought I was dreaming; three families!—no less!—one from Vienna, another from Frankfort, the third Prussian, I don't know from where.

"They confided to me that they had come faithfully for a month to Gérard's, in the hope of seeing me; and they let me know that beyond the frontier of France (dear, ungrateful country!) my reputation has begun. 'Persevere in your labours,' they added, 'and you will soon be at the head of literary Europe.' Of Europe! they said it, sister! Flattering families!—How I could make certain friends roar with laughter if I told them that. Ma foi! these were kind Germans, and I let myself believe they thought what they said, and, to tell the truth, I could have listened to them all night. Praise is so good for us artists, and that of the good Germans restored my courage; I departed quite gaily [tout guilleret] from Gérard's, and I am going to fire three guns on the public and on envious folk, to wit: 'Eugénie Grandet,' 'Les Aventures d'une idée heureuse,' which you know about, and my 'Prêtre catholique,' one of my finest subjects.

"The affair of the 'Études de Mœurs' is well under way; thirty thousand francs of author's rights in the reprints will stop up large holes. That slice of my debts paid, I shall go and seek my reward at Geneva. The horizon seems really brightening.

"I have resumed my life of toil. I go to bed at six, directly after dinner. The animal digests and sleeps till midnight. Auguste makes me a cup of coffee, with which the mind goes at one flash [tout d'une traite] till midday. I rush to the printing-office to carry my copy and get my proofs, which gives exercise to the animal, who dreams as he goes.

"One can put a good deal of black on white in twelve hours, little sister, and after a month of such life there's no small work accomplished. Poor pen! it must be made of diamond not to be worn out by such toil! To lift its master to reputation, according to the prophecy of the Germans, to pay his debts to all, and then to give him, some day, rest upon a mountain—that is its task!

"What the devil are you doing so late at M. … ? Tell me about it, and say with me that the Germans are very worthy people. Fraternal handshake to Monsieur Canal. [Poignée de main fraternelle à M. Canal]; tell him that 'Les Aventures d'une idée heureuse' are on the ways.

"I send you my proofs of the 'Médecin de Campagne' to read."

When, twenty years later, Balzac's Correspondence appeared in the Édition Définitive (Calmann Lévy, 1876) Madame Surville's little memoir was made the Introduction to the volume. On page lv (Introduction) the above letter is given. On page 176 the letter is again given (in its place in the Correspondence), and it is there identically the same as the letter given above, down to the words: "What the devil are you doing so late at M. … ?" after which, the following additions are given:—

"However, you are free, and this is not a reproach, it is curiosity; between brother and sister that is pardonable.

"Well, adieu. If you have a heart you will reply to me. A fraternal handshake to M. Canal; tell him that the 'Aventures d'une idée' are on the ways, and that he can soon read them.

"Addio! Addio! Correct 'le Médecin' well; point out to me all the passages which may seem to you bad; and put the great pots into the little pots; that is to say, if a thing can be said in one line instead of two, try to make the sentence."

Three points are here to be observed and borne in mind, namely:—

1. These discrepancies are additions in one version, and omissions in the other; they are not changes in the phraseology.

2. Balzac's playful nickname for Madame Surville's husband, who was government engineer of bridges, canals, and highways, is given in both versions.

3. The first point shows conclusively that the letter given in the Correspondence is not a mere copy from that in Madame Surville's memoir, but is taken from the original letter, inasmuch as the version of 1876, though identical to a certain point with that of 1856, gives additions to it.

Twenty years later, in 1896, forty years after its first publication by the person who received it, the same letter appears in "Un Roman d'Amour," introduced by the following words (pp. 76, 77, 78):—

"Happily, a unique document, and exceptionally precious in relation to this first interview, that at Neufchâtel [with Madame Hanska], is in our hands. It is precise, and fixes, from Balzac's own pen, his immediate impressions of Madame Hanska and the five days he spent near her. This document consists of an autograph letter, almost entirely unpublished, addressed to his sister, Madame Surville; this letter is certainly the most important which, until now, has been brought to light on the opening of that celebrated passion. We shall quote it here. In it will be found many other unknown details of the most extreme interest, which confirm what we have already said as to the rôle which the feminine element always played in the life of the master. … Here is the complete text [texte complet] of this letter, certainly written very rapidly, for we find several words omitted, and more than one obscurity. To make the meaning clearer we have made, according to our custom in such cases, some additions [adjonctions], placed, as usual, between brackets."[1]

[1] One of these "adjonctions" is the signature!—0TR.

[Paris] Saturday, 12 [October, 1833].

My Dear Sister—You understand that I could not speak to you before Eugénie, but I had all my journey to relate to you.

I have found down there all that can flatter the thousand vanities of that animal called man, of whom the poet is certainly the vainest species. But what am I saying? vanity! No, there is nothing of all that. I am happy, very happy in thoughts, in all honor as yet. Alas! a damned husband never left us for one second during five days. He kept between the petticoat of his wife and my waistcoat. [Neufchâtel is] a little town where a woman, an illustrious foreigner, cannot take a step without being seen. I was, as it were, in an oven. Constraint does not suit me.

The essential thing is that we are twenty-seven years old, beautiful to admiration; that we possess the handsomest black hair in the world, the soft, deliciously delicate skin of brunettes, that we have a love of a little hand, a heart of twenty-seven, naïve; [in short, she is] a true Madame de Lignolles, imprudent to the point of flinging herself upon my neck before all the world.

I don't speak to you of colossal wealth. What is that before a masterpiece of beauty, whom I can only compare to the Princess Belle-Joyeuse, but infinitely better? [She possesses] a lingering eye [œil traînant] which, when it meets, becomes of voluptuous splendor. I was intoxicated with love.

I don't know whom to tell this to; certainly it is not [possible] either to her, the great lady, the terrible marquise, who, suspecting the journey, comes down from her pride, and intimates an order that I shall go to her at the Duc de F.'s [Fitz-James], [nor] is it [possible to tell it either] to her, poor, simple, delicious bourgeoise, who is like Blanche d'Azay. I am a father—that's another secret I had to tell you—and at the head of a pretty little person, the most naïve creature that ever was, fallen like a flower from heaven, who comes to me secretly, exacts no correspondence, and says: "Love me a year; I will love you all my life."

It is not [either] to her, the most treasured, who has more jealousy for me than a mother has for the milk she gives her child. She does not like L'Étrangère, precisely because L'Étrangère appears to be the very thing for me.

And, finally, it is not to her who wants her daily ration of love, and who, though voluptuous as a thousand cats, is neither graceful nor womanly. It is to you, my good sister, the former companion of my miseries and tears, that I wish to tell my joy, that it may die in the depths of your memory. Alas, I can't play the fop with any one, unless [apropos of] Madame de Castries, whom celebrity does not frighten. I do not wish to cause the slightest harm by my indiscretions. Therefore, burn my letter.

As it will be long before I see you—for I shall go, no doubt, to Normandy and Angoulême, and return to see her at Geneva—I had to write you this line to tell you I am happy at last. I am [joyous] as a child.

Mon Dieu! how beautiful the Val de Travers is, how ravishing the lake of Bienne! It was there, as you may imagine, that we sent the husband to attend to the breakfast; but we were in sight, and then, in the shadow of a tall oak, the first furtive kiss of love was given. Then, as our husband is approaching the sixties, I swore to wait, and she to keep her hand, her heart for me.

Isn't it a pretty thing to have torn a husband—who looks to me like a tower—from the Ukraine, to come eighteen hundred miles to meet a lover who has come only four hundred, the monster![1]

I'm joking; but knowing my affairs and my occupation here, my four hundred count as much as the eighteen hundred of my fiancée. She is really very well. She intends to be seriously ill at Geneva, which require [will require the care of] M. Dupuytren to soften the Russian ambassador and obtain a permit to come to Paris, for which she longs; where there is, for a woman, liberty on the mountain. However, I've enchanted the husband; and I shall try next year to get three months to myself. I shall go and see the Ukraine, and we have promised ourselves a magnificent and splendid journey in the Crimea; which is, you know, a land where tourists do not go, a thousand times more beautiful than Switzerland or Italy. It is the Italy of Asia.

But what labor between now and then! Pay our debts! Increase our reputation!

Yesterday I went to Gérard's. Three German families—one Prussian, one from Frankfort, one from Vienna—were officially presented to me. They came faithfully to Gérard's for a month past to see me and tell me that nothing was talked of but me in their country [chez eux]; that amazing fame began for me on the frontier of France, and that I had only to persevere for a year or two to be at the head of literary Europe, and replace Byron, Walter Scott, Goethe, Hoffmann!

Ma foi! as they were good Germans I let myself believe [all] that. It restored to me some courage, and I am going to fire a triple shot on the public and on the envious. During this fortnight, at one flash [I shall] finish "Eugénie Grandet," and write the "Aventures d'une idée [heureuse]" and "Le Prêtre catholique," one of my finest subjects. Then will come the fine third dizain, and after that I shall go and seek my reward at Geneva, after having paid a good slice of debts. There, sister. I have now resumed my winter life. I go to bed at six, with my dinner in my mouth, and I sleep till half-past twelve. At one o'clock Auguste brings me a cup of coffee, and I go at one flash, working from one in the morning till an hour after midday. At the end of twenty days, that makes a pretty amount of work!

Adieu, dearest sister. If your husband has arrived, tell him the "Aventures d'une idée [heureuse]" are on the ways, and he will perhaps read them at Montglat, for I will send you the paper in which they appear if you stay till the end of the month.

The affair of the "Études de Mœurs" is going on well. Thirty-three thousand francs of author's rights will just stop all the big holes. I shall [then] only have to undertake the repayment to my mother, and after that, faith! I shall be at my ease. I hope to repay you the remaining thousand francs at the end of the month; but if my mother wants all her interests [at once] I shall be obliged to put you off [till] the first fortnight in November.

Well, adieu, my dear sister. If you have any heart, you will answer me. What the devil are you doing at Montglat? However, you are free; this is not a reproach, it is curiosity. Between brother and sister it is pardonable. Much tenderness. You won't say again that I don't write to you.

Apropos, the pain in my side continues; but I have such fear of leeches, cataplasms, and to be tied down in a way that I can't finish what I have undertaken, that I put everything off. If it gets too bad we will see about it, I and the doctor, or magnetism.

Addio, addio. A thousand kind things. Correct carefully the "Médecin [de Campagne]," or rather tell me all the places that seem to you bad, and put the great pots into the little pots; that is to say, if a thing can be said in one line instead of two, try to make the sentence.

Adieu, sister. [Honoré.]

[1] Monsieur Hanski hired the house in Neufchâtel early in the spring of 1833 and took his family there in May. Balzac was not invited, or, at any rate, did not go there till September 25th.

Now there are three points here to be noticed and studied:—

1. The letters all state the purpose for which they were written. The versions of 1856 and 1876 give the same purpose. That given in "Roman d'Amour" is totally different.

2. The "Roman d'Amour" letter claims to be the complete text [texte complet]. How comes it, therefore, to have such variations from the original letter published by the sister who received it, and republished authoritatively in the Édition Définitive?

3. These variations are not merely omissions or additions of passages; they are the total reconstruction of many, and very characteristic, sentences.

Some one must have rewritten the letter. Some one has garbled it. There can be no question about this; the fact is there. It is not necessary for the vindication of Balzac's honour to inquire who did it; but it is plain that it was done.

It is therefore legitimate to suppose that the hand which garbled parts of the letter added the slanderous language of the first part.

Three years ago, in 1896, when "Roman d'Amour" first appeared, I added to the new edition of my "Memoir of Balzac" an appendix entitled "A Vindication of Balzac." It goes into more details connected with this slander than I can suitably put into this Preface, and I respectfully ask my readers to read it in the Memoir.

Now, to me who have lived in Balzac's mind for the last fifteen years as closely, perhaps, as any one now living, it is plain that the same hand that garbled the letter of October, 1833, has been at work on some of the letters in the present volume.

The simple story of these letters is as follows: In February, 1833, Balzac received a letter, posted in Russia, from a lady who signed herself "l'Étrangère" ["Foreigner"]. This letter is not known to exist; nor is there any authentic knowledge of its contents; but it began a correspondence between its writer and Balzac which ended in their marriage in 1850. It does not appear at what date Madame Hanska gave her name; it must have been quite early in the correspondence, although he never knew it exactly until the day he met her in September, 1833, at Neufchâtel.

The first reply from Balzac which is given is the first letter in the present volume, misdated January, 1833, a month before l'Étrangère's first letter was written; but it is plainly not the first reply he had made to her.

Eleven letters from Balzac follow the first, ending on the day (September 26, 1833) when he met Madame Hanska for the first time at Neufchâtel.

These twelve letters to an unknown woman are romantic; they are the letters of a poet, creating for himself an ideal love, and letting his imagination bear him along unchecked. From our colder point of view they seem, here and there, a little foolish, as addressed to a total stranger, but the impression conveyed of his own being, his nature, the troubles of his life and heart, is affecting and full of dignity. They are, moreover, the letters of a gentleman to a woman he respects. Owing to their false dates and to a forgery in the first letter (done undoubtedly to bring them into line with "Roman d'Amour"), they are open to suspicion; but Balzac's characteristics are in them, and I believe them to be, in spite of some interpolations, genuine.

But from the time that he meets Madame Hanska at Neufchâtel, a date which corresponds precisely with the garbled letter in "Roman d'Amour," the tone of the correspondence changes. For six months (from October to March) it becomes out of keeping with the respect which the foregoing letters, and the letters of all the rest of his life show that he felt for her. More especially is this true of the letters of January, February, and March. They are not in Balzac's style of writing; they present ideas that were not his, expressed in a manner that was not his; they contradict the impression given by all the other letters of his life; they contradict the letters of romantic ideal love that precede them; they contradict what every friend who knew Balzac closely has said of him; they contradict the known facts of the history of himself and Madame Hanska; they are, moreover, disloyal to friendship in a manner that Balzac's whole conduct in life, as evidenced in his correspondence, shows to have been impossible.

To bring the question home to ourselves—which of us, after reflection and comparison, can suppose that the paltry, immature, contemptibly vulgar stuff of the letters here designated as spurious ever came from the brain of the man who thought and wrote the "Comédie Humaine"?

There is such a thing as true literary judgment—as unerring as the science that sees a mammoth in a bone. To that judgment, if to no other, this question may be left. The letters are here in this volume, and the reader can judge them for himself. In my opinion they have been garbled in various places; expressions, passages, and many whole letters have been interpolated, with the vulgarity of the hand that garbled the letter in "Roman d'Amour," for the purpose of supporting the slander suggested in that book.

This is, necessarily, opinion and judgment only; but a very remarkable circumstance appears in this volume, which should be studied and judged by readers thoroughly informed about Balzac, his nature, his character, and his writings.

September 16, 1834, Balzac writes to Monsieur Hanski, asking him to explain to Madame Hanska how he came to write to her two love-letters; these letters are not given. He asks her pardon, he is grieved, he is mortified (and justly so); but the letter is characteristic of a man who was honest and brave; the defence rings true. Monsieur Hanski must have thought so, for he accepted the commission and so performed it that Balzac's next letter to Madame Hanska thanks her for her pardon, and is written in a tone of boyish glee which was eminently characteristic of him, and could not have been counterfeited.

From this time there is not a trace of embarrassment in his letters; he does not feel himself withheld from expressing his ardent but respectful feelings for Madame Hanska; he assures her, again and again, of her influence upon his life, and he sends friendly messages to Monsieur Hanski, which are returned in an evidently kind and cordial way.

To the translation of the "Lettres à l'Étrangère" I have added that of all the letters to Madame Hanska during the rest of Balzac's life which are contained in the volume of Correspondence in the Édition Définitive. The "Lettres à l'Étrangère"—those, I mean, that are genuine—ought, if published at all, to have been shortened. They were written to give vent to the emotions of a heart and soul under violent pressure; perhaps no letters exist that ever came so hot from the inner being; they lay bare a soul that little dreamed of this exposure, for the man who wrote them never read them over. For this reason, this lack of editing, the reader will surely find them too monotonous in their one long cry; and yet, without them, the world would not have known a tragedy too great for tears, nor the true history of a hero.

I should not have consented to translate these letters unless I had been allowed by my publishers to preface them with these remarks, and give my name and what weight my long, close intercourse with Balzac may possess in his just defence.

Katharine P. Wormeley.

The Säter,

Thorn Mountain.