Thus was the novelist doomed, early in his literary career, to meet with a disappointment which, as has been seen, was to be repeated some months later with more serious results, when his adoration for the Duchesse de Castries was suddenly turned into bitterness.
MADAME HANSKA. — LA COMTESSE MNISZECH. — MADEMOISELLE BOREL. — MESDEMOISELLES WYLEZYNSKA. — LA COMTESSE ROSALIE RZEWUSKA. — MADEMOISELLE CALISTE RZEWUSKA. — MADAME CHERKOWITSCH. — MADAME RIZNITSCH. — LA COMTESSE MARIE POTOCKA.
“And they talk of the first love! I know nothing as terrible as the
last, it is strangling.”
The longest and by far the most important of Balzac’s friendships began by correspondence was the one with Madame Eveline Hanska, whose first letter arrived February 28, 1832. The friendship soon developed into a more sentimental relationship culminating March 14, 1850, when Madame Hanska became Madame Honoré de Balzac. This “grand and beautiful soul-drama” is one of the noblest in the world, and in the history of literature the longest.
So long was Balzac in pursuit of this apparent chimera, and so ardent was his passion for his “polar star” that the above words of Quinola may well be applied to his experience. So fervent was his adoration, so pathetic his sufferings and so persistent his pursuit during the seventeen long years of waiting that Miss Betham-Edwards has appropriately said of his letters to Madame Hanska:
“Opening with a pianissimo, we soon reach a con molto expressione, a crescendo, a molto furore quickly following. Every musical term, adjectival, substantival, occurs to us as we read the thousand and odd pages of the two volumes. . . . Nothing in his fiction or any other, records a love greatening as the tedious years wore on, a love sovereignly overcoming doubt, despair and disillusion, such a love as the great Balzac’s for l’Etrangere.”
Their relationship from the beginning of their correspondence to the tragic end which came so soon after Balzac had arrived “at the summit of happiness,” has been shrouded in mystery. This mystery has been heightened by the vivid imagination of some of Balzac’s biographers, where fancy replace facts.
Miss Katherine P. Wormeley denies the authenticity of some of the letters published in the Lettres a l’Etrangere, saying:
“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 Levy, publisher). Madame Hanska, born Evelina (Eve) Rzewuska, who was then twenty-six or twenty-eight years old, resided at the chateau of Wierzchownia, in Volhynia. An enthusiastic reader of the Scenes de la Vie privee, uneasy at the different turns which the mind of the author was taking in La Peau de Chagrin, she addressed to Balzac — then thirty-three years old, in the care of the publisher Gosselin, a letter signed l’Etrangere, which was delivered to him February 18, 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’E — — H. de B.’ This acknowledgment of reception appeared in the Quotidienne of December 9. Thus was inaugurated the system of petite correspondence 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.”[*]
[*] 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 Honoré 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 Honoré 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 th
at 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.
“(3) My aunt Pauline was married to a Serbian banker settled in Odessa, a very rich man called Jean Riznitsch, but he was neither a General nor a Baron. Her second daughter, Alexandrine, married Mr. Ciechanowiecki who also never could boast of a title, and whose father had never been Minister de l’Interieur en Pologne.
“(4) My aunt Eve was neither married in 1818 nor in 1822 to Mr. Hanski, but in 1820. It was not because of revers de fortune that she was married to him, but it was the custom in Polish noble families to try to settle girls as richly as possible. Later on, my grandfather lost a great deal of money, but this circumstance, which occurred after my aunt’s marriage, had nothing to do with it. My grandfather, — this by the way, — was a very remarkable man, a personal friend of Voltaire. You will find interesting details about him in an amusing book published by Ernest Daudet, called La Correspondence du Comte Valentin Esterhazy, in the first volume, where among other things is described the birth of my aunt Helene, whose personality interests you so much, a birth which nearly killed her mother. Besides Helene, my grandparents had still another daughter who also died unmarried, at seventeen years of age, and who, judging by her picture, must have been a wonder of beauty; also a son Stanislas, who was killed accidentally by a fall from his horse in 1826.
“(5) My uncle Ernest was not the second son of his parents, but the youngest in the whole family.”
It is interesting to note that Balzac wished to have his works advertised in newspapers circulating in foreign countries and wrote his publisher to advertise in the Gazette and the Quotidienne, as they were the only papers admitted into Russia, Italy, etc. He repeated this request some months later, by which time he not only knew that l’Etrangere read the Quotidienne, but he had become interested in her.
As has been mentioned, it is a strange coincidence that this first letter from l’Etrangere arrived on the very day that the novelist wrote accepting the invitation of the Duchesse de Castries. Balzac doubtless little dreamed that this was the beginning of a correspondence which was destined to change the whole current of his life.
Many versions have been given as to what this letter contained, some saying that Madame Hanska had been reading the Peau de Chagrin, others, the Physiologie du Mariage, and others, the Maison du Chat-qui-pelote, but if the letter no longer exists how is one to prove what it contained? Yet it must have impressed Balzac, for he wanted to dedicate to her the fourth volume of the Scenes de la Vie privee in placing her seal and “Diis ignotis 28 fevrier 1832” at the head of l’Expiation, the last chapter of La Femme de trente Ans, which he was writing when her letter arrived, but Madame de Berny objected, so he saved the only copy of that dedication and wished Madame Hanska to keep it as a souvenir, and as an expression of his thanks.
According to Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Balzac showed one of Madame Hanska’s letters to Madame Carraud, and she answered it for him; but with his usual skill in answering severe cross-examinations, he replies:
“You have asked me with distrust to give an explanation of my two handwritings; but I have as many handwritings as there are days in the year, without being on that account the least in the world versatile. This mobility comes from an imagination which can conceive all and remain vague, like glass which is soiled by none of its reflections. The glass is in my brain.”
In this same letter, which is the second given, Balzac writes: “. . . I am galloping towards Poland, and rereading all your letters, — I have but three of them, . . .” If this last statement be true, the answer to Spoelberch de Lovenjoul’s question, “How many letters did Balzac receive thus?” is not difficult.
Miss Wormeley seems to be correct in saying that this second letter is inconsistent with the preceding one dated also in January, 1833, showing an arbitrary system of dating. There are others which are inconsistent, if not impossible, but if Spoelberch de Lovenjoul after the death of Madame Honoré de Balzac found these letters scattered about in various places, as he states, it is quite possible that contents as well as dates are confused.[*]
[*] One can see at once the injustice of the criticism of M. Henry
Bordeaux, la Grande Revue, November, 1899, in censuring Madame
Hanska for publishing her letters from Balzac.
The husband of Madame Hanska, M. Wenceslas de Hanski, who was never a count, but a very rich man, was many years her senior, and suffered from “blue devils” and paresis a long time before his death. Though he was very generous with his wife in allowing her to travel, she often suffered from ennui in her beautifully furnished chateau of Wierzchownia, which Balzac described as being “as large as the Louvre.” This was a great exaggeration, for it was comparatively small, having only about thirty rooms. With her husband, her little daughter Anna, her daughter’s governess, Mademoiselle Henriette Borel, and two Polish relatives, Mesdemoiselles Severine and Denise Wylezynska, she led a lonely life and spent much of her time in reading, or writing letters. The household comprised the only people of education for miles around.
Having lost six of her seven children, and being an intensely maternal woman, the deepest feelings of her heart were devoted to her daughter Anna, who also was destined to occupy much of the time and thought of the author of the Comedie humaine.
If the letters printed in Un Roman d’Amour are genuine, in the one dated January 8, 1833, she speaks of having received with delight the copy of the Quotidienne in which his notice is inserted. She tells him that M. de Hanski with his family are coming nearer France, and she wishes to arrange some way for him to answer her letters, but he must never try to ascertain who the person is who will transmit his letters to her, and the greatest secrecy must be preserved.
It is not known how she arranged to have him send his letters, but he wrote her about once a month from January to September, and after that more frequently, as he was arranging to visit her. M. de Hanski with his numerous family had come to Neufchatel in July, having stopped in Vienna on the way. Here Balzac was to meet l’Etrangere for the first time. He left Paris September 22, stopping to make a business visit to his friend, Charles Bernard, at Besancon, and arriving at Neufchatel September 25. (Although this letter to M. Bernard is dated August, 1833, Balzac evidently meant September, for there is no Sunday, August 22, in 1833. He did not leave Paris until Sunday, September 22, 1833.) On the morning after his arrival, he writes her:
“I shall go to the Promenade of the faubourg from one o’clock till four. I shall remain during that time looking at the lake, which I have never seen.”
Just what happened when they met, no one knows. The Princess Radziwill says that her aunt told her that Balzac called at her hotel to meet her and that there was nothing romantic in their introduction. Nevertheless, the most varied and amusing stories have been told of their first meeting.
Balzac remained in Neufchatel until October 1, having made a visit of five days. He took a secret box to Madame Hanska in which to keep his letters, having provided himself with a similar one in which to keep hers. If we are to credit the disputed letter of Saturday, October 12, we may learn something of what took place. Even before meeting Madame Hanska, he had inserted her name in one of his books, calling the young girl loved by M. Benassis “Evelina” (Le Medecin de Campagne).
Early in October M. de Hanski took his family to Geneva to spend the winter. After Balzac’s departure from Neufchatel the tone of his letters to Madame Hanska changed; he used the tutoiement, and his adoration increased. For a while he wrote her a daily account of his life and dispatched the journal to her weekly.
Madame Hanska came into Balzac’s life at a psychological moment. From his youth, his longing was “to be famous and to be loved.” Having found the emptiness of a life of fa
me alone, having apparently grown weary of the poor Duchesse d’Abrantes, about to cease his intimacy with Madame de Berny, having been rejected by Mademoiselle de Trumilly, and having suffered bitterly at the hands of the Duchesse de Castries, he embraced this friendship with a new hope, and became Madame Hanska’s slave.
If Balzac was charmed with the stories of the daughter of the femme de chambre of Marie Antoinette, was infatuated with a woman who had known Napoleon, and flattered by being invited to the home of one of the beautiful society ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, what must have been his joy in learning that his new Chatelaine belonged to one of the most aristocratic families of Poland, the grandniece of Queen Marie Leczinska, the daughter of the wise Comte de Rzewuska, and the wife of one of the richest men in Russia!
But Madame Hanska was a very different woman from the kind, self-sacrificing, romantic Madame de Berny; the witty, splendor-loving, indulgent, poverty-stricken Duchesse d’Abrantes; or the frail, dazzling, blond coquette, the Duchesse de Castries. With more strength physically and mentally than her rivals, she possessed a marked authoritativeness that was not found in Madame de Berny, a breadth of vision impossible to Madame Junot, and freedom from the frivolity and coquetry of Madame de Castries.
The Princess Radziwill feels that the Polish woman who has come down to posterity merely as the object of Balzac’s adoration, should be known as the being to whom he was indebted for the development of his marvelous genius, and as his collaborator in many of his works. According to the Princess, Modeste Mignon is almost entirely the work of Madame Hanska’s pen. She gives this description of her aunt, which corresponds to Balzac’s continual reference to her “analytical forehead”:
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 1544