Part 4 (1/2)
In return for this devotion, he took her with him to Frankfort and to Bury to visit Madame de Bocarme. He celebrated the birthday of the _montagnarde_ in 1844, giving her some very attractive presents. Her economy and devotion seemed to increase with time, and enabled him to travel without any worry about his home. What must not have been the trial to him when this happy household came to be broken up later by her marriage!
Madame Delannoy was an old family friend of the Balzacs. She aided Balzac in his financial troubles as early in his career as 1826, and though he remained indebted to her for more than twenty years, he tried to repay her and was ever grateful to her, calling her his second mother. The following, written late in his career, reveals his general att.i.tude towards her:
”I have just written a long letter to Madame Delannoy, with whom I have settled my business; but this still leaves me with obligations of conscientiousness towards her, which my first book will acquit. No one could have behaved more like a mother, or been more adorable than she has been throughout all this business. She has been a mother, I will be a son.”
But if she remained one of his princ.i.p.al creditors, she received many literary proofs of his appreciation. As early as 1831 he dedicated to her a volume of his _Romans et Contes philosophiques_, but later changed the t.i.tle to _Etudes philosophiques_, and dedicated to her _La Recherche de L'Absolu_:
”To Madame Josephine Delannoy, nee Doumerg.
”Madame, may G.o.d grant that this book have a longer life than mine!
The grat.i.tude which I have vowed to you, and which I hope will equal your almost maternal affection for me, would last beyond the limits prescribed for human feeling. This sublime privilege of prolonging the life in our hearts by the life of our works would be, if there were ever a certainty in this respect, a recompense for all the labor it costs those whose ambition is such. Yet again I say: May G.o.d grant it!
”DE BALZAC.”
Balzac once thought of buying from Madame Delannoy a house that was left her by her friend, M. Ferraud, but which she could not keep. He felt that this would be advantageous to them both, but the plan was never carried out. Besides their financial and literary relations, their social relations were most cordial. He speaks of accompanying her and her daughter to the Italian opera twice during the absence of Madame Visconti.
In 1842, Balzac dedicated _La Maison-du-Chat-qui-pelote_ to Mademoiselle Marie de Montbeau, the daughter of Camille Delannoy, a friend of his sister, and the granddaughter of Madame Delannoy.
Another friend of Balzac's family was Madame de Pommereul. In the fall of 1828 after his serious financial loss, Balzac went to visit Baron and Madame de Pommereul in Brittany, where he obtained the material for _Les Chouans_, and became familiar with the chateau de Fougere. To please Madame de Pommereul, Balzac changed the name of his book from _Le Gars_ to _Les Chouans_, after temporarily calling it _Le Dernier Chouan_.
She has given a beautiful pen portrait of the youthful Balzac in which she describes minutely his appearance, noting his beautiful hands, his intelligent forehead and his expressive golden brown eyes. There was something in his manner of speaking, in his gestures, in his general appearance, so much goodness, confidence, naivete and frankness that it was impossible to know him without loving him, and his exuberant good nature was infectious. In spite of his misfortunes, he had not been in their company a quarter of an hour, and they had not even shown him to his room, before he had brought the general and herself to tears with laughter.
”On some evenings he remained in the drawing-room in company with his hosts, and entered into controversies with Madame de Pommereul, who, being very pious herself, tried to persuade him to make a practice of religion; while Balzac, in return, when the discussion was exhausted, endeavored to teach her the rules of backgammon. But the one remained unconverted and the other never mastered the course of the n.o.ble game. Occasionally he helped to pa.s.s the time by inventing stories, which he told with all the vividness of which he was master.”
A few months after this prolonged visit, Balzac wrote to General de Pommereul, expressing his deep appreciation of their hospitality, and in speaking of the book which he had just written, hoped that Madame de Pommereul would laugh at some details about the b.u.t.ter, the weddings, the stiles, and the difficulties of going to the ball, etc., which he had inserted in his work,--if she could read it without falling asleep.
Balzac made perhaps his most prolonged visits in the home of another old family friend, M. de Margonne, who was living with his wife at Sache. He describes his life there thus:
”Sache is the remains of a castle on the Indre, in one of the most delicious valleys of Touraine. The proprietor, a man of fifty-five, used to dandle me on his knee. He has a pious and intolerant wife, rather deformed and not clever. I go there for him; and besides, I am free there. They accept me throughout the region as a child; I have no value whatever, and I am happy to be there, like a monk in a monastery. I always go there to meditate serious works. The sky there is so blue, the oaks so beautiful, the calm so vast! . . . Sache is six leagues from Tours. But not a woman, not a conversation possible!”
Not only did Balzac visit them when he wished to compose a serious work, but he often went there to recuperate from overwork. He probably did not enjoy their company, as he spoke of ”having” to dine with them and he is perhaps even chargeable with ingrat.i.tude when he speaks of their parsimony.
Like his own family, these old people were interested in seeing him married to a rich lady, but to no avail. In spite of his unkind remarks about them, Balzac appreciated their hospitality, and expressed it by dedicating to M. de Margonne _Une Tenebreuse Affaire_.
MADAME CARRAUD--MADAME NIVET
”You are my public, you and a few other chosen souls, whom I wish to please; but yourself especially, whom I am proud to know, you whom I have never seen or listened to without gaining some benefit, you who have the courage to aid me in tearing up the evil weeds from my field, you who encourage me to perfect myself, you who resemble so much that angel to whom I owe everything; in short, you who are so good towards my ill-doings. I alone know how quickly I turn to you. I have recourse to your encouragements, when some arrow has wounded me; it is the wood-pigeon regaining its nest. I bear you an affection which resembles no other, and which can have no rival, because it is alone of its kind. It is so bright and pleasant near you! From afar, I can tell you, without fear of being put to silence, all I think about your mind, about your life. No one can wish more earnestly that the road be smooth for you. I should like to send you all the flowers you love, as I often send above your head the most ardent prayers for your happiness.”
Balzac's friends.h.i.+p with Madame Zulma Carraud was not only of the purest and most beautiful nature, but it lasted longer than his friends.h.i.+p with any other woman, terminating only with his death. It was even more constant than that with his sister Laure, which was broken at times. Though Madame Surville states that it began in 1826, the following pa.s.sage shows an earlier date: ”I embrace you, and press you to a heart devoted to you. A friends.h.i.+p as true and tender now in 1838 as in 1819. Nineteen years!” The first letter to her in either edition of his correspondence, however, is dated 1826.
Madame Carraud, as Zulma Tourangin, attended the same convent as Balzac's sister Laure. Her husband was a distinguished officer in the artillery and a man of learning, but absolutely lacking in ambition, preferring to direct the instruction of Saint-Cyr rather than to risk the chances of advancement presented in active service. He became inspector of the gunpowder manufactory at Angouleme, and later retired to his home at Frapesle, near Issoudun. Though an excellent husband, his inactivity was a great annoyance to his wife. According to several Balzacian writers, Madame Carraud became the type of the _femme incomprise_ for Balzac, but the present writer is inclined to agree with M. Serval when he calls this judgment astonis.h.i.+ng, since she was a woman who adored her husband and sons, was an author of some moral books for children, and nothing in her suggested either vagueness of soul or melancholy. Madame Carraud herself gives a glimpse of her married life in saying to Balzac that she and her husband are not sympathetic in everything, that being of different temperaments things appear differently to them, but that she knows happiness, and her life is not empty.
Often when sick, discouraged, overworked or pursued by his creditors, Balzac sought refuge in her home, and with a pure and disinterested maternal affection, she calmed him and inspired him with courage to continue the battle of life. It was indeed the maternal element that he needed and longed for, and Madame Carraud seems to have been a rare mother who really understood her child. He confided in her not only his financial worries, but also his love affairs, his aspirations in life, and his ideas of woman:
”I care more for the esteem of a few persons, amongst whom you are one of the first, both in friends.h.i.+p and in high intellect--one of the n.o.blest souls I have ever known,--than I care for the esteem of the ma.s.ses, for whom I have, in truth, a profound contempt.
There are some vocations that must be obeyed, and something drags me irresistibly towards glory and power. It is not a happy life.
There is in me a wors.h.i.+p of woman, and a need of loving, which has never been completely satisfied. Despairing of ever being loved and understood as I desire, by the woman I have dreamt of (never having met her, except under one form--that of the heart), I have thrown myself into the tempestuous region of political pa.s.sions and into the stormy and parching atmosphere of literary glory.
. . . If ever I should find a wife and a fortune, I could resign myself very easily to domestic happiness; but where are these things to be found? Where is the family which would have faith in a literary fortune? It would drive me mad to owe my fortune to a woman, unless I loved her, or to owe it to flatteries; I am obliged, therefore, to remain isolated. In the midst of this desert, be a.s.sured that friends.h.i.+ps such as yours, and the a.s.surance of finding a shelter in a loving heart, are the best consolations I can have. . . . To dedicate myself to the happiness of a woman is my constant dream, but I do not believe marriage and love can exist in poverty. . . . I work too hard and I am too much worried with other things to be able to pay attention to those sorrows which sleep and make their nest in the heart. It may be that I shall come to the end of my life, without having realized the hopes I entertained from them. . . . As regards my soul, I am profoundly sad. My work alone keeps me alive. Will there never be a woman for me in this world? My fits of despondency and bodily weariness come upon me more frequently, and weigh upon me more heavily; to sink under this crus.h.i.+ng load of fruitless labor, without having near me the gentle caressing presence of woman, for whom I have worked so much!”
Though Balzac and his mother were never congenial, he became very lonely after she left him in 1832. In the autumn of that year he had a break with the d.u.c.h.esse de Castries, so he began the new year by summing up his trials and pouring forth his longings to Madame Carraud as he could do to no other woman, not even to his _Dilecta_. In response to this despondent epistle, she showed her broad sympathetic friends.h.i.+p by writing him a beautiful and comforting letter, in which she regretted not being able to live in Paris with him, so as to see him daily and give him the desired affection.