Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1642 page)

Confident as ever, therefore, in his own resources, Balzac now took up the pen once more — this time in the character of a novelist. But another and a serious check awaited him at the outset. Fifteen months of solitude, privation, and reckless hard writing — months which are recorded in the pages of “La Peau de Chagrin” with a fearful and pathetic truth, drawn straight from the bitterest of all experiences, the experience of studious poverty — had reduced him to a condition of bodily weakness which made all present exertion of his mental powers simply hopeless, and which obliged him to take refuge — a worn-out, wasted man, in his twenty-fifth year, in his father’s quiet little country house. Here, under his mother’s care, his exhausted energies slowly revived; and here, in the first days of his convalescence, he returned, with the grim resolution of despair, to working out the old dream in the garret, to resuming the old hopeless business of making himself a great man.

It was under his father’s roof, during the time of his slow recovery, that the youthful fictions of Balzac were produced. The strength of his belief in his own resources and his own future gave him also the strength, in relation to these first efforts, to rise above his own vanity, and to see plainly that he had not yet learned to do himself full justice. His early novels bore on their title pages a variety of feigned names; for the starving, struggling author was too proud to acknowledge them, so long as they failed to satisfy his own conception of what his own powers could accomplish. These first efforts — now included in the Belgian editions of his collected works, and comprising among them two stories, “Jane la Pâle” and “Le Vicaire des Ardennes,” which show unquestionable dawnings of the genius of a great writer — were originally published by the lower and more rapacious order of booksellers, and did as little toward increasing his means as toward establishing his reputation. Still, he forced his way slowly and resolutely through poverty, obscurity, and disappointment, nearer and nearer to the promised land which no eye saw but his own — a greater man, by far, at this hard period of his adversity than at the more trying after-time of his prosperity and his fame. One by one the heavy years rolled on, till he was a man of thirty; and then the great prize which he had so long toiled for dropped within his reach at last. In the year eighteen hundred and twenty-nine, the famous “Physiologie du Mariage” was published; and the starveling of the Paris garret became a name and a power in French literature.

In England this book would have been universally condemned as an unpardonable exposure of the most sacred secrets of domestic life. It unveils the whole social side of Marriage in its innermost recesses, and exhibits it alternately in its bright and dark aspects with a marvelous minuteness of observation, a profound knowledge of human nature, and a daring eccentricity of style and arrangement which amply justify the extraordinary success of the book on its first appearance in France. It may be more than questionable, judging from the English point of view, whether such a subject should ever have been selected for any other than the most serious, reverent, and forbearing treatment. Setting this objection aside, however, in consideration of the French point of view, it cannot be denied that the merits of the “Physiology of Marriage,” as a piece of writing, were by no means overestimated by the public to which it was addressed. In a literary sense, the book would have done credit to a man in the maturity of his powers. As the work of a man whose intellectual life was only beginning, it was such an achievement as is not often recorded in the history of modern literature.

This first triumph of the future novelist — obtained, curiously enough, by a book which was not a novel — failed to smooth the way onward and upward for Balzac as speedily and pleasantly as might have been supposed. He had another stumble on that hard road of his before he fairly started on the career of success. Soon after the publication of “The Physiology of Marriage” an unlucky idea of strengthening his resources by trading in literature, as well as by writing books, seems to have occurred to him. He tried bookselling and printing; proved himself to be, in both cases, probably the very worst man of business who ever lived and breathed in this world; failed in the most hopeless way, with the most extraordinary rapidity; and so learned at last, by the cruel teaching of experience, that his one fair chance of getting money lay in sticking fast to his pen for the rest of his days. In the next ten years of his life that pen produced the noble series of fictions which influenced French literature far and wide, and which will last in public remembrance long after the miserable errors and inconsistencies of the writer’s personal character are forgotten. This was the period when Balzac was in the full enjoyment of his matured intellectual powers and his enviable public celebrity; and this was also the golden time when his publisher and biographer first became acquainted with him. Now, therefore, Monsieur Werdet may be encouraged to come forward and take the post of honour as narrator of the strange story that is still to be told; for now he is placed in the fit position to address himself intelligibly, as well as amusingly, to an English audience.

The story opens with the starting of Monsieur Werdet as a publisher in Paris on his own account. The modest capital at his command amounted to just one hundred and twenty pounds English; and his leading idea, on beginning business, was to become the publisher of Balzac.

He had already entered into transactions on a large scale with his favorite author, in the character of agent for a publishing house of high standing. He had been very well received, on that first occasion, as a man representing undeniable capital and a great commercial position. On the second occasion, however, of his representing nobody but himself, and nothing but the smallest of existing capitals, he very wisely secured the protection of an intimate friend of Balzac’s, to introduce him as favorably as might be for the second time. Accompanied by this gentleman, whose name was Monsieur Barbier, and carrying his capital in his pocketbook, the embryo publisher nervously presented himself in the sanctum sanctorum of the great man.

Monsieur Barbier having carefully explained the business on which they came, Balzac addressed himself, with an indescribable suavity and grandeur of manner, to anxious Monsieur Werdet.

“Just so,” said the eminent man. “You are doubtless possessed, sir, of considerable capital? You are probably aware that no man can hope to publish for ME who is not prepared to assert himself magnificently in the matter of cash? I sell high — high — very high. And, not to deceive you — for I am incapable of suppressing the truth — I am a man who requires to be dealt with on the principle of considerable advances. Proceed, sir — I am prepared to listen to you.”

But Monsieur Werdet was too cautious to proceed without strengthening his position before starting. He intrenched himself instantly behind his pocketbook.

One by one the notes of the Bank of France which formed the poor publisher’s small capital were drawn out of their snug hiding-place. Monsieur Werdet produced six of them, representing five hundred francs each (or, as before mentioned, a hundred and twenty pounds sterling), arranged them neatly and impressively in a circle on the table, and then cast himself on the author’s mercy in an agitated voice, and in these words:

“Sir, behold my capital. There lies my whole fortune. It is yours in exchange for any book you please to write for me — ”

At that point, to the horror and astonishment of Monsieur Werdet, his further progress was cut short by roars of laughter — formidable roars, as he himself expressly states — bursting from the lungs of the highly-diverted Balzac.

“What astonishing simplicity!” exclaimed the great man. “Do you actually believe, sir, that I — De Balzac — can so entirely forget what is due to myself as to sell you any conceivable species of fiction which is the product of MY PEN for the sum of three thousand francs? You have come here, Monsieur Werdet, to address an offer to me, without preparing yourself by previous reflection. If I felt so disposed, I should have every right to consider your conduct as unbecoming in the highest degree. But I don’t feel so disposed. On the contrary, I can even allow your honest ignorance, your innocent confidence, to excuse you in my estimation. Don’t be alarmed, sir. Consider yourself excused to a certain extent.”

Between disappointment, indignation, and astonishment, Monsieur Werdet was struck dumb. His friend, Monsieur Barbier, therefore spoke for him, urging every possible consideration; and finally proposing that Balzac, if he was determined not to write a new story for three thousand francs, should at least sell one edition of an old one for that sum. Monsieur Barbier’s arguments were admirably put; they lasted a long time; and when they had come to an end, they received this reply:

“Gentlemen!” cried Balzac, pushing back his long hair from his heated temples, and taking a fresh dip of ink, “you have wasted an hour of MY TIME in talking of trifles. I rate the pecuniary loss thus occasioned to me at two hundred francs. My time is my capital. I must work. Gentlemen! leave me.” Having expressed himself in these hospitable terms, the great man immediately resumed the process of composition.

Monsieur Werdet, naturally and properly indignant, immediately left the room. He was overtaken, after he had proceeded a little distance in the street, by his friend Barbier, who had remained behind to remonstrate.

“You have every reason to be offended,” said Barbier. “His conduct is inexcusable. But pray don’t suppose that your negotiation is broken off. I know him better than you do; and I tell you that you have nailed Balzac.

He wants money, and before three days are over your head he will return your visit.”

“If he does,” replied Werdet, “I’ll pitch him out window.”

“No, you won’t,” said Barbier. “In the first place, it is an extremely uncivil proceeding to pitch a man out of window; and, as a naturally polite gentleman, you are incapable of committing a breach of good manners. In the second place, rude as he has been to you, Balzac is not the less a man of genius; and as such, he is just the man of whom you, as a publisher, stand in need. Wait patiently; and in a day or two you will see him, or hear from him again.”

Barbier was right. Three days afterward, the following satisfactory communication was received by Monsieur Werdet:

“My brain, sir, was so prodigiously preoccupied by work uncongenial to my fancy, when you visited me the other day, that I was incapable of comprehending otherwise than imperfectly what it was that you wanted of me.

“To-day my brain is not preoccupied. Do me the favor to come and see me at four o’clock.

“A thousand civilities.

DE BALZAC. “

Monsieur Werdet viewed this singular note in the light of a fresh impertinence. On consideration, however, he acknowledged it, and curtly added that important business would prevent his accepting the appointment proposed to him.

In two days more friend Barbier came with a second invitation from the great man. But Monsieur Werdet steadily refused it. “Balzac has already been playing his game with me,” he said. “Now it is my turn to play my game with Balzac. I mean to keep him waiting four days longer.”

At the end of that time Monsieur Werdet once more entered the sanctum sanctorum. On this second occasion, Balzac’s graceful politeness was indescribable. He deplored the rarity of intelligent publishers. He declared his deep sense of the importance of an intelligent publisher’s appearance on the literary horizon. He expressed himself as quite enchanted to be now enabled to remark that appearance, to welcome it, and even to deal with it. Polite as he was by nature, Monsieur Werdet had no chance this time against Monsieur De Balzac. In the race of civility the publisher was now nowhere, and the author made all the running.

The interview, thus happily begun, terminated in a most agreeable transaction on both sides. Balzac cheerfully locked up the six bank-notes in his strong-box. Werdet as cheerfully retired, with a written agreement in his empty pocket-book, authorizing him to publish the second edition of “Le Medecin de Campagne” — hardly, it may be remarked in parenthesis, one of the best to select of the novels of Balzac.

II.

Once started in business as the happy proprietor and hopeful publisher of the second edition of “Le Medecin de Campagne,” Monsieur Werdet was too wise a man not to avail himself of the only certain means of success in modern times. He puffed magnificently. Every newspaper in Paris was inundated with a deluge of advertisements, announcing the forthcoming work in terms of eulogy such as the wonderstruck reader had never met with before. The result, aided by Balzac’s celebrity, was a phenomenon in the commercial history of French literature at that time. Every copy of the second edition of “Le Medecin de Campagne” was sold in eight days.

This success established Monsieur Werdet’s reputation. Young authors crowded to him with their manuscripts, all declaring piteously that they wrote in the style of Balzac. But Monsieur Werdet flew at higher game. He received the imitators politely, and even published for one or two of them; but the high business aspirations which now glowed within him were all concentrated on the great original. He had conceived the sublime idea of becoming Balzac’s sole publisher; of buying up all his copyrights held by other houses, and of issuing all his new works that were yet to be written. Balzac himself welcomed this proposal with superb indulgence. “Walter Scott,” he said in his grandest way, “had only one publisher — Archibald Constable. Work out your idea. I authorize it; I support it. I will be Scott, and you shall be Constable!”