The Human Comedy: Introductions and Appendix | Page 6

in detail, very little of him during the period. For the first
years, between 1819 and 1822, we have a good number of letters to
Laure; between 1822 and 1829, when he first made his mark, very few.
He began, of course, with verse, for which he never had the slightest
vocation, and, almost equally of course, with a tragedy. But by degrees
and apparently pretty soon, he slipped into what was his vocation, and
like some, though not very many, great writers, at first did little better
in it than if it had not been his vocation at all. The singular tentatives
which, after being allowed for a time a sort of outhouse in the structure
of the /Comedie Humaine/, were excluded from the octavo /Edition

Definitive/ five-and-twenty years ago, have never been the object of
that exhaustive bibliographical and critical attention which has been
bestowed on those which follow them. They were not absolutely
unproductive--we hear of sixty, eighty, a hundred pounds being paid
for them, though whether this was the amount of Balzac's always
sanguine expectations, or hard cash actually handed over, we cannot
say. They were very numerous, though the reprints spoken of above
never extended to more than ten. Even these have never been widely
read. The only person I ever knew till I began this present task who had
read them through was the friend whom all his friends are now
lamenting and are not likely soon to cease to lament, Mr. Louis
Stevenson; and when I once asked him whether, on his honor and
conscience, he could recommend me to brace myself to the same effort,
he said that on his honor and conscience he must most earnestly
dissuade me. I gather, though I am not sure, that Mr. Wedmore, the
latest writer in English on Balzac at any length, had not read them
through when he wrote.
Now I have, and a most curious study they are. Indeed I am not sorry,
as Mr. Wedmore thinks one would be. They are curiously, interestingly,
almost enthrallingly bad. Couched for the most part in a kind of
Radcliffian or Monk-Lewisian vein--perhaps studied more directly
from Maturin (of whom Balzac was a great admirer) than from
either--they often begin with and sometimes contain at intervals
passages not unlike the Balzac that we know. The attractive title of
/Jane la Pale/ (it was originally called, with a still more Early Romantic
avidity for /baroque/ titles, /Wann-Chlore/) has caused it, I believe, to
be more commonly read than any other. It deals with a disguised duke,
a villainous Italian, bigamy, a surprising offer of the angelic first wife
to submit to a sort of double arrangement, the death of the second wife
and first love, and a great many other things. /Argow le Pirate/ opens
quite decently and in order with that story of the /employe/ which
Balzac was to rehandle so often, but drops suddenly into brigands
stopping diligences, the marriage of the heroine Annette with a retired
pirate marquis of vast wealth, the trial of the latter for murdering
another marquis with a poisoned fish-bone scarf-pin, his execution, the
sanguinary reprisals by his redoubtable lieutenant, and a finale of

blunderbusses, fire, devoted peasant girl with /retrousse/ nose, and
almost every possible /tremblement/.
In strictness mention of this should have been preceded by mention of
/Le Vicaire des Ardennes/, which is a sort of first part of /Argow le
Pirate/, and not only gives an account of his crimes, early history, and
manners (which seem to have been a little robustious for such a
mild-mannered man as Annette's husband), but tells a thrilling tale of
the loves of the /vicaire/ himself and a young woman, which loves are
crossed, first by the belief that they are brother and sister, and secondly
by the /vicaire/ having taken orders under this delusion. /La Derniere
Fee/ is the queerest possible cross between an actual fairy story /a la/
Nordier and a history of the fantastic and inconstant loves of a great
English lady, the Duchess of "Sommerset" (a piece of actual
/scandalum magnatum/ nearly as bad as Balzac's cool use in his
acknowledged work of the title "Lord Dudley"). This book begins so
well that one expects it to go on better; but the inevitable defects in
craftsmanship show themselves before long. /Le Centenaire/ connects
itself with Balzac's almost lifelong hankering after the /recherche de
l'absolu/ in one form or another, for the hero is a wicked old person
who every now and then refreshes his hold on life by immolating a
virgin under a copper-bell. It is one of the most extravagant and
"Monk-Lewisy" of the whole. /L'Excommunie/, /L'Israelite/, and
/L'Heritiere de Birague/ are mediaeval or fifteenth century tales of the
most luxuriant kind, /L'Excommunie/ being the best, /L'Israelite/ the