Honore de Balzac [48]
obtaining exactly what he wished. He was impatient to take possession of his own home, but the completion of it was delayed from month to month; it was to have been ready for occupancy by November 30, 1837, yet on his return from Sardinia in June 1838, it was not yet finished. But he was so eager to move in that in defiance of his physician's orders he installed himself in August, in the midst of all the confusion and with the workmen still all around him. It was a dreadful condition of things, the upturned ground, the empty chambers, the chill of new plaster, and an irritating sense of things not finished and pushed along in haste; but he was exultant, and distracted his own attention by admiring the beauty of the surrounding landscape.
How delightful it was to live at Les Jardies! It required not more than ten minutes to reach the heart of Paris, the Madeleine, and it cost but ten sous. The Rue des Batailles and the Rue Cassini were at the other end of the world, and you must needs spend a couple of francs for the shortest drive which wasted an hour,--such was the fashion in which Balzac dreamed! And he would gaze at his acre of ground, bare, ploughed-up clay, without a tree or a blade of grass, and he found no trouble in transforming it mentally into an eden of "plants, fragrance and shrubbery." He planned to fill it with twenty-year magnolias, sixteen-year lindens, twelve-year poplars, birches and grape vines which would yield him fine white grapes the very next year. And then he would earn thirty thousand francs and buy two more acres of land, which he would turn into an orchard and kitchen-garden.
The house which was the object of so many witticisms was a small three-storied structure, containing on the ground floor a dining-room and parlour, on the next a bed-chamber and dressing-room, and on the upper floor Balzac's working room. A balcony supported by brick pillars completely surrounded the second story, and the staircase--the famous staircase--ascended on the outside of the house. The whole was painted brick colour, excepting the corners, which had stone trimmings.
Behind the house itself, at a distance of some sixty feet, were the outhouses, including, on the ground floor, the kitchen, pantry, bathroom, stables, carriage-house and harness-room; on the floor above an apartment to let, and on the top floor the servants' quarters and a guest chamber. Furthermore, Balzac had a spring of water on his own grounds!
For months all Paris talked of the staircase at Les Jardies which Balzac, great architect that he was, had forgotten to put into the plans for his house. Under the caption, "Literary Indiscretions," the following humorous note appeared in La Caricature Provisoire;
"M. de Balzac, after having successively inhabited the four corners of the globe and the twelve wards of Paris, seems to have definitely transferred his domicile to the midst of an isolated plain in the outskirts of Ville-d'Avray; he occupies a house which he has had built there for his own particular accommodation by a direct descendant of the marvellous architect to whom the world owes the cathedral of Cologne. This house, in which no doors or windows are to be found, and which is entered through a square hole cut in the roof, is furnished throughout with an oriental luxury of which even the pashas themselves would be incapable of forming an idea. The great novelist's private study has a floor inlaid with young girl's teeth and hung with superb cashmere rugs that have been sent him by all the crowned heads of the universe. As to the furniture, the chairs, sofas and divans, they are one and all stuffed with women's hair, both blonde and brunette, sent to the author of La Grenadiere by a number of women of thirty who did not hesitate a minute to despoil themselves of their most beautiful adornment,--a sacrifice all the more rare since they have passed the age at which the hair would grow again!"
Balzac removed to Les Jardies as soon as the walls of the dwelling had been raised and the floorings laid, and he lived there before there
How delightful it was to live at Les Jardies! It required not more than ten minutes to reach the heart of Paris, the Madeleine, and it cost but ten sous. The Rue des Batailles and the Rue Cassini were at the other end of the world, and you must needs spend a couple of francs for the shortest drive which wasted an hour,--such was the fashion in which Balzac dreamed! And he would gaze at his acre of ground, bare, ploughed-up clay, without a tree or a blade of grass, and he found no trouble in transforming it mentally into an eden of "plants, fragrance and shrubbery." He planned to fill it with twenty-year magnolias, sixteen-year lindens, twelve-year poplars, birches and grape vines which would yield him fine white grapes the very next year. And then he would earn thirty thousand francs and buy two more acres of land, which he would turn into an orchard and kitchen-garden.
The house which was the object of so many witticisms was a small three-storied structure, containing on the ground floor a dining-room and parlour, on the next a bed-chamber and dressing-room, and on the upper floor Balzac's working room. A balcony supported by brick pillars completely surrounded the second story, and the staircase--the famous staircase--ascended on the outside of the house. The whole was painted brick colour, excepting the corners, which had stone trimmings.
Behind the house itself, at a distance of some sixty feet, were the outhouses, including, on the ground floor, the kitchen, pantry, bathroom, stables, carriage-house and harness-room; on the floor above an apartment to let, and on the top floor the servants' quarters and a guest chamber. Furthermore, Balzac had a spring of water on his own grounds!
For months all Paris talked of the staircase at Les Jardies which Balzac, great architect that he was, had forgotten to put into the plans for his house. Under the caption, "Literary Indiscretions," the following humorous note appeared in La Caricature Provisoire;
"M. de Balzac, after having successively inhabited the four corners of the globe and the twelve wards of Paris, seems to have definitely transferred his domicile to the midst of an isolated plain in the outskirts of Ville-d'Avray; he occupies a house which he has had built there for his own particular accommodation by a direct descendant of the marvellous architect to whom the world owes the cathedral of Cologne. This house, in which no doors or windows are to be found, and which is entered through a square hole cut in the roof, is furnished throughout with an oriental luxury of which even the pashas themselves would be incapable of forming an idea. The great novelist's private study has a floor inlaid with young girl's teeth and hung with superb cashmere rugs that have been sent him by all the crowned heads of the universe. As to the furniture, the chairs, sofas and divans, they are one and all stuffed with women's hair, both blonde and brunette, sent to the author of La Grenadiere by a number of women of thirty who did not hesitate a minute to despoil themselves of their most beautiful adornment,--a sacrifice all the more rare since they have passed the age at which the hair would grow again!"
Balzac removed to Les Jardies as soon as the walls of the dwelling had been raised and the floorings laid, and he lived there before there