Honore de Balzac [27]
he would have attained that age if he had not succumbed to the after-effects of an operation on the liver, June 19, 1829. Honore felt this loss keenly, for, although his father often showed himself sceptical as to the value of his son's literary efforts, too little attention has been paid to the share that he had in the origin of that son's ideas.
The Physiology had only just appeared when Balzac published the Scenes of Private Life, on March 10, 1836; and without slackening speed, he contributed to a number of different journals. Emile de Girardin had welcomed him to the columns of La Mode, which he had founded in 1829, under the patronage of the Duchesse de Berry, and he contributed sketches to it regularly: El Verdugo, The Usurer, a Study of a Woman (signed "By the author of the Physiology of Marriage"), Farewell, The Latest Fashion in Words, A New Theory of Breakfasting, The Crossing of the Beresina, and Chateau Life, an essay against the publication of which Balzac protested because his sensitive literary conscience was unwilling that it should be printed until developed into something more than a crude sketch,--and lastly came the Treatise on Fashionable Life, a manual which, under the form of pleasantry, was saturated with philosophy and lofty social doctrines.
At the same period, from 1829 to 1830, he collaborated with Victor Ratier on the Silhouette, under his own name and various pseudonyms. For this periodical he wrote phantasies of a festive tone and somewhat broad humour: Some Artists (signed, "An Old Artist"), The Studio, The Grocer, The Charlatan, Aquatic Customs, Physiology of the Toilet, the Cravat considered by itself and in its relations to Society and the Individual, Physiology of the Toilet and Padded Coats, Gastronomic Physiology, etc. In Le Voleur, edited by Maurice Alhoy, he published La Grisette Parvenue, A Working Girl's Sunday, and Letters on Paris, a series of articles, incisive and farsighted, dealing with French politics. Finally, still in 1830, he was almost one of the accredited editors of La Caricature, for which he wrote fantasies against the government, sketches of Parisian manners, and pictures of the life of the capital, some of which were destined later to find their way into The Magic Skin; namely, Le Cornac de Carlsuhe, Concerning Indifference in Politics, A Minister's Council, The Veneerer, A Passion in College, Physiology of the Passions, etc.
But, not satisfied with this fecundity,--which would have exhausted many another man of letters,--Honore de Balzac, in 1830, founded a critical organ, in company with Emile de Girardin, H. Auger, and Victor Varaigne, under the title of Feuilleton des Journaux Politiques.
And there were thousands of pages which Balzac carelessly let fall from his fertile pen, and which he valued so slightly that he never afterwards gathered them together for his collected works. On the other hand, they did not seem to interfere with the composition of his more important writings, and at the very time that he seemed to be scattering his efforts in twenty different papers he was writing The Woman of Thirty, under the guidance of Mme. de Berny, and working on his extraordinary Magic Skin, a dramatic study with a colouring of social philosophy, which he was greatly distressed to hear defined as a novel. He was possessed with a sort of fever of creation, he had already visualised nearly all the characters in his Human Comedy, and, in spite of his driving labours and his marvellous facility at writing, he could not keep pace with his own imagination. Meanwhile, in order to keep himself awake and excite his productive forces, he indulged, at this period, in a veritable orgy of coffee, cup after cup, an orgy which was destined, after twenty years' continuance to have a disastrous effect upon his health.
Balzac took the most minute precautions in making this coffee; he not only selected several kinds from different localities, in order to obtain a special aroma, but he had his own special method of brewing it, which developed all the virtues of the blend.
The Physiology had only just appeared when Balzac published the Scenes of Private Life, on March 10, 1836; and without slackening speed, he contributed to a number of different journals. Emile de Girardin had welcomed him to the columns of La Mode, which he had founded in 1829, under the patronage of the Duchesse de Berry, and he contributed sketches to it regularly: El Verdugo, The Usurer, a Study of a Woman (signed "By the author of the Physiology of Marriage"), Farewell, The Latest Fashion in Words, A New Theory of Breakfasting, The Crossing of the Beresina, and Chateau Life, an essay against the publication of which Balzac protested because his sensitive literary conscience was unwilling that it should be printed until developed into something more than a crude sketch,--and lastly came the Treatise on Fashionable Life, a manual which, under the form of pleasantry, was saturated with philosophy and lofty social doctrines.
At the same period, from 1829 to 1830, he collaborated with Victor Ratier on the Silhouette, under his own name and various pseudonyms. For this periodical he wrote phantasies of a festive tone and somewhat broad humour: Some Artists (signed, "An Old Artist"), The Studio, The Grocer, The Charlatan, Aquatic Customs, Physiology of the Toilet, the Cravat considered by itself and in its relations to Society and the Individual, Physiology of the Toilet and Padded Coats, Gastronomic Physiology, etc. In Le Voleur, edited by Maurice Alhoy, he published La Grisette Parvenue, A Working Girl's Sunday, and Letters on Paris, a series of articles, incisive and farsighted, dealing with French politics. Finally, still in 1830, he was almost one of the accredited editors of La Caricature, for which he wrote fantasies against the government, sketches of Parisian manners, and pictures of the life of the capital, some of which were destined later to find their way into The Magic Skin; namely, Le Cornac de Carlsuhe, Concerning Indifference in Politics, A Minister's Council, The Veneerer, A Passion in College, Physiology of the Passions, etc.
But, not satisfied with this fecundity,--which would have exhausted many another man of letters,--Honore de Balzac, in 1830, founded a critical organ, in company with Emile de Girardin, H. Auger, and Victor Varaigne, under the title of Feuilleton des Journaux Politiques.
And there were thousands of pages which Balzac carelessly let fall from his fertile pen, and which he valued so slightly that he never afterwards gathered them together for his collected works. On the other hand, they did not seem to interfere with the composition of his more important writings, and at the very time that he seemed to be scattering his efforts in twenty different papers he was writing The Woman of Thirty, under the guidance of Mme. de Berny, and working on his extraordinary Magic Skin, a dramatic study with a colouring of social philosophy, which he was greatly distressed to hear defined as a novel. He was possessed with a sort of fever of creation, he had already visualised nearly all the characters in his Human Comedy, and, in spite of his driving labours and his marvellous facility at writing, he could not keep pace with his own imagination. Meanwhile, in order to keep himself awake and excite his productive forces, he indulged, at this period, in a veritable orgy of coffee, cup after cup, an orgy which was destined, after twenty years' continuance to have a disastrous effect upon his health.
Balzac took the most minute precautions in making this coffee; he not only selected several kinds from different localities, in order to obtain a special aroma, but he had his own special method of brewing it, which developed all the virtues of the blend.