A woman of thirty, The seamy side of history, and other stories

Preface

“La Femme de Trente Ans,” which opens the volume, is tainted with a kind of sentimentalism which, in Balzac’s hands and to English taste, very rarely escapes a smatch of the rancid. As M. de Lovenjoul’s patient investigations have shown, and as the curiously wide date 1828-1844 would itself indicate to any one who has carefully studied Balzac’s ways of proceeding, it is not really a single story at all, but consists of half a dozen chapters or episodes originally published at different times and in different places, and stuck together with so much less than even the author’s usual attention to strict construction, that the general title is totally inapplicable to the greater part of the book, and that the chronology of that part to which it does apply fits in very badly with the rest. This, however, is the least of the faults of the piece. It is more — though still not most — serious that Balzac never seems to have made up anything like a clear or consistent idea of Julie d’Aiglemont in his mind. First she is a selfish and thoughtless child ; then an angelic and persecuted but faithful wife ; then a somewhat facile victim to a very commonplace seducer, after resisting an exceptional one. So, again, she is first a devoted mother, then an almost unnatural parent, and then again devoted, being punished par ou elle a piche [however she may sin] once more. Even this, however, might have been atoned for by truth, or grace, or power of handling. I cannot find much of any of these things here. Not to mention the unsavoriness of part of Julie’s trials, they are not such as, in me at least, excite any sympathy ; and Balzac has drenched her with the sickly sentiment above noticed to an almost nauseous extent. Although he would have us take the Marquis as a brutal husband, he does not in effect represent

(ix)

X

PREFACE.

him as such, but merely as a not very refined and rather clumsy “ good fellow,” who for his sins is cursed with a viijauree [affected] of a wife. The Julie-Arthur love-passages are in the very worst style of “sensibility;” and though I fully acknowledge the heroism of my countryman Lord Arthur in allowing his fingers to be crushed and making no sign — although I question very much whether I could have done the same — I fear this romantic act does not suffice to give verisimilitude to a figure which is for the most part mere pasteboard, with sawdust inside and tinsel out. Many of the incidents, such as the pushing of the child into the water, and, still more, the scene on shipboard where the princely Corsair takes millions out of a piano and gives them away, have the crude and childish absurdity of the “ CEuvres de Jeunesse,” which they very much resemble, and with which, from the earliest date given, they may very probably have been contemporary. Those who are fortunate enough to find Julie, in her early afternoon of fei?ime incomprise [non-compromised woman], attractive, may put up with these defects. I own that I am not quite able to find the compensation sufficient. The worse side of the French “sensibility” school from Rousseau to Madame de Stael appears here ; and Balzac, genius as he was, had quite weak points enough of his own without borrowing other men’s and women’s.

It takes M. de Lovenjoul nearly three of his large pages of small type to give an exact bibliography of the extraordinary mosaic which bears the title of “ La Femme de Trente Ans.” It must be sufficient here to say that most of its parts appeared separately in different periodicals (notably the “ Revue de Paris”) during the very early thirties; that when in 1832 most of them appeared together in the “ Scenes de la Vie Privee ” they were independent stories ; and that when the author did put them together, he at first adopted the title “ M£me Histoire.”

The second story in the volume, a very slight touch of un-

PREFACE.

xi necessary cruelty excepted, is one of the truest and most amusing of all Balzac’s repertoire ; and it is conducted according to the orthodox methods of poetical justice. It is impossible not to recognize the justice of the portraiture of the luckless Oscar Husson, and the exact verisimilitude of the way in which he succumbs to the temptations and practical jokes (the first title of the story was “ Le Danger des Mystifications”) of his companions. I am not a good authority on matters dramatic ; but it seems to me that the story would lend itself to the stage in the right hands better than almost anything that Balzac has done. Half an enfant terrible and half a Sir Martin Marall, the luckless Oscar “ puts his foot into it,” and emerges in deplorable condition, with a sustained success which would do credit to all but the very best writers of farcical comedy, and would not disgrace the very best.

In such pieces the characters other than the hero have but to play contributory parts, and here they do not fail to do so. M. de Serizy, whom it pleased Balzac to keep in a dozen books as his stock example of the unfortunate husband, plays his part with at least as much dignity as is easily possible to such a personage. Madame Clapart is not too absurd as the fond mother of the cub; and Moreau, her ancient lover, is equally commendable in the not very easy part of a “ protector.” The easy-going ladies who figure in Oscar’s second collapse display well enough that rather facile generosity and jood-nature which Balzac is fond of attributing to them. Vs for the “ Mystificators,” Balzac, as usual, is decidedly nore lenient to the artist folk than he is elsewhere to men 3f letters. Mistigris, or Leon de Lora, is always a pleasant person, and Joseph Bridau always a respectable one. Georges Marest is no doubt a bad fellow, but he gets punished.

Nor ought we to omit notice of the careful study of the apprenticeship of a lawyer’s clerk, wherein, as elsewhere no doubt, Balzac profited by his own novitiate. Altogether the story is a pleasant one, and we acquiesce in the tempering xii

PREFACE.

of the wind to Oscar when that ordinary person is consoled for his sufferings with the paradise of the French bourgeois — a respectable place, a wife with no dangerous brilliancy, and a good dot.

G. S.

To Louis Boulanger , Painter .