Chapter XXIV: Front Matter (24)

The garret-period from 1820 to 1822 was succeeded by another of equal length at home, but before it had finished (1821) he found his way into print with the first of the singular productions which (and that not entirely or finally) have taken a sort of outside place in his works under the title of _Oeuvres de jeunesse_. The _incunabula_ of Balzac were _Les Deux Hector, ou Les Deux Families bretonnes_, and _Charles Pointel, ou Mon Cousin de la main gauche_. They were followed next year by six others:--_L'Heritiere de Birague_; _Jean Louis, ou La Fille trouvee_; _Clotilde de Lusignan, ou Le Beau Juif_; _Le Centenaire, ou Les Deux Beringheld_; _Le Vicaire des Ardennes_; _Le Tartare, ou Le Retour de l'exile_. And these were again followed up in 1823 by three more: _La Derniere Fee, ou La Nouvelle Lampe merveilleuse_; _Michel et Christine et la suite_; _L'Anonyme, ou Ni pere ni mere_. In 1824 came _Annette et le criminel_, a continuation of the _Vicaire_; in 1825, _Wann-Chlore_, which afterwards took the less extravagant title of _Jane la pale_. These novels, which filled some two score volumes originally, were published under divers pseudonyms ("Lord R'hoone," an anagram of "Honore," "Horace de Saint Aubin," &c.), and in actual collaboration with two or three other writers. But though there is not yet in them anything more than the faintest dawn of the true Balzac, though no one of them is good as a whole, and very few parts deserve that word except with much qualification, they deserve far more study than they have usually received, and it is difficult to apprehend the true Balzac until they have been studied. They ceased for a time, not because of the author's conviction of their badness (though he entertained no serious delusions on this subject), nor because they failed of a certain success in actual money return, but because he had taken to the earliest, the most prolonged, and the most disastrous of his dabblings in business--this time as a publisher to some extent and still more as a printer and type-founder. Not very much was known about his experiences in this way (except their general failure, and the result in hampering him with a load of debt directly for some ten years and indirectly for the whole of his life) till in 1903 MM. Hanotaux and Vicaire published the results of their inquiries into the actual accounts of the concern. There seems to have been no reason why it should not have succeeded, and there has been claimed for it first, that it provided Balzac with a great amount of actual detail which he utilized directly in the novels, and secondly, that it gave him at whatever cost a still more valuable experience of practical life--the experience which has so often been wanting to men of letters. Anyhow, from 1825 to 1828, the future author of the _Comedie humaine_ was a publisher, printer and type-founder; and in the last year he had to abscond, or something like it, under pressure of debts which were never fully settled till 1838, and then by a further obligation of ninety thousand francs, chiefly furnished by his mother and never repaid to her.

It was Balzac's habit throughout his life to relieve the double pressure of debt and of work by frequent excursions into the country and abroad. On this occasion he fled to Brittany with an introduction to a M. and Mme. de Pommereul, who received him hospitably in their chateau near Fougeres. Here he obtained some of the direct material, and most of the scenery and atmosphere, for what he himself recognized as his first serious attempt in novel-writing, _Les Chouans_, or, as it was at first called, _Le Dernier Chouan_. This book (obviously written in direct following of Scott, of whom Balzac was a lifelong admirer) has been very variously judged--those who lay most stress on his realism thinking little of it, while those who maintain that he was always a romantic "with a difference" place it higher. It has at any rate brilliant colouring, some very vivid scenes, and almost more passion as well as "curtain" at its ending than any other of his books. Though not without a touch of melodrama it differs utterly from the confused and tedious imitations of Mrs Radcliffe, M. G. Lewis and C. R. Maturin which fill most of the _Oeuvres de jeunesse_. At the same time Balzac was engaged on a very different work, the analytic-satirical sketches which compose the _Physiologie du mariage_, and which illustrate his other and non-romantic side, again with some crudity, but again also with a vast advance on his earlier productions. Both were published in the year 1829, from which his real literary career unquestionably starts. It had exactly twenty-one years to run.

The history of these twenty-one years, though (in consequence mainly of the diligence and luck as a collector of the above-named M. de Lovenjoul) the materials for it are large and constantly accumulating, has never been arranged in a really standard biography, and there seems to be an increasing habit of concentrating the attention on parts of it. It divides itself under three heads mainly, the history of Balzac's business affairs, that [v.03 p.0298] of his loves and friendships and that of his actual work. The first has some small resemblance to Scott's similar experiences, though in Balzac's case there was no great crash but a lifelong pressure; on the other hand, his debts were brought upon him by a long course not so much of extravagance in actual expenditure (though there was something of this) as of financial irregularities of almost every description,--anticipations of earnings, costly methods of production (he practically wrote his novels on a succession of printed revises), speculations, travel, and lastly the collection of curiosities. As regards the second, although his fashion of life made him by turns a hermit and a vagrant, he was on good terms with most of the famous men of letters of his day from Hugo downwards, and seems never to have quarrelled with any man, except with some of his editors and publishers, by his own fault. Balzac was indeed, in no belittling sense of the word, one of the most good-natured of men of genius. But his friendships with the other sex are of much more importance, and not in the least matters of mere gossip. His sister Laure, as has been said, and a school-friend of hers, Mme Zulma Carraud, played important and not questionable parts as his correspondents. But at least three ladies, all of a rank higher than his own, figure as his "Egerias" to such an extent that it is hardly extravagant to say that Balzac would not have been Balzac without them. These are Madame de Berny, a lady connected with the court of the _ancien regime_, much older than himself and the mother of nine children, to whom he was introduced in 1821, who became to him _La dilecta_, who was the original of Mme de Mortsauf in _Le Lys dans la vallee_, and who seems to have exercised an excellent influence on him in matters of taste till her death in 1836; the marquise de Castries, who took him up for a time and dropped him, and who has been supposed to have been his model for his less impeccable ladies of fashion; and lastly, the Polish-Russian countess Evelina Hanska, who after addressing, as _l'Etrangere_, a letter to him as early as 1832, became his idol, rarely seen but constantly corresponded with, for the last eighteen years, and his wife for the last few months of his life. Some of his letters to her have long been known, but the bulk of them constituted the greatest recent addition to our knowledge of him as given in the two volumes of _Lettres a l'etrangere_. Of hers we have practically none and it is exceedingly hard to form any clear idea of her, but his devotion is absolutely beyond question.

Business, friendship and love, however, much more other things, were in Balzac's case always connected with and on the whole quite secondary to work. He would even sometimes resist the commands by which at long intervals Mme. Hanska would summon him to see her, and abstract the greater part of his actual visits to her in order to serve this still more absorbing mistress. He had, as we have seen, worked pretty hard, even before 1829, and his work had partly taken forms not yet mentioned--political pamphlets and miscellaneous articles which are now accessible in the _Edition definitive_ of his works, and hardly one of which is irrelevant to a just conception of him. Nor did he by any means abandon these by-works after 1829; indeed, he at one time started and almost entirely wrote, a periodical called the _Revue parisienne_. He wrote some dramas and planned many more, though the few which reached the stage left it again promptly. Balzac's dramas, as they appear in his works, consist of _Vautrin, Les Ressources de Quinola, Pamela Giraud_ (arranged for the stage by others), _La Maratre_ and _Mercadet le faiseur_, the last of which has, since his death, been not unsuccessful. But on the whole he did devote himself to his true vocation, with a furious energy beside which even Scott's, except in his sadder and later days, becomes leisurely. Balzac generally wrote (dining early and lightly, and sleeping for some hours immediately after dinner) from midnight till any hour in the following day--stretches of sixteen hours being not unknown, and the process being often continued for days and weeks. Besides his habit of correcting a small printed original into a long novel on the proofs, he was always altering and re-shaping his work, even before, in 1842, he carried out the idea of building it all into one huge structure--the _Comedie humaine_ with its subdivisions of _Scenes de la vie parisienne, Etudes philosophiques, &c._ Much pains have been spent upon this title and Balzac's intentions in selecting it. But the "Human Comedy," as a description for mere studies of life as his, will explain itself at once or else can never be explained.

Of its constituents, however, some account must be given, and this can be best done through an exact and complete list of the whole work by years, with such abbreviated notes on the chief constituents as may lead up to a general critical summary. Of the two capital works of 1829, we have spoken. 1830, the epoch year, saw part (it was not fully published till the next) of _La Peau de chagrin_, one of the crudest, but according to some estimates, one of the greatest of the works, full of romantic extravagance and surplusage, but with an engrossing central idea--the Nemesis of accomplished desire--powerfully worked out; _La Maison du chat qui pelote_, a triumph of observation and nature, together with a crowd of things less in bulk but sometimes of the first excellence--_El Verdugo_, _Etude de femme_, _La Paix du menage_, _Le Bal de sceaux_, _La Vendetta_, _Gobseck_, _Une Double Famille_, _Les Deux Reves_, _Adieu_, _L'Elixir de longue vie_, _Sarrazine_, _Une Passion dans le desert_ and _Un Episode sous la Terreur_. In 1831, _La Peau de chagrin_ appeared complete, accompanied by _Le Requisitionnaire_, _Les Proscrits_, _Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu_ (a masterpiece fortunately not unrecognized), _Jesus Christ en Flandre_ and _Maitre Cornelius_. 1832 gave _Madame Firmiani_, _Le Message_, _Le Colonel Chabert_ and _Le Cure de Tours_ (two stories of contrasted but extraordinary excellence), _La Bourse_, _La Femme abandonnee_, _Louis Lambert_ (autobiographical and philosophic), _La Grenadiere_ and _Les Marana_ (a great favourite with the author). In 1833 appeared _Ferragus, chef des devorants_, the first part of _L'Histoire des treize_ (a collection in the more extravagant romantic manner, very popular at the time, and since a favourite with some, but few, good judges), _Le Medecin de campagne_ (another pet of the author's, and a kind of intended document of his ability to support the cause of virtue, but, despite certain great things, especially a wonderful popular "legend of Napoleon," a little heavy as a whole), the universally admitted masterpiece of _Eugenie Grandet_, and _L'Illustre Gaudissart_ (very amusing). 1833 also saw the beginning of a remarkable and never finished work-out of his usual scope but exceedingly powerful in parts--the _Contes drolatiques_, a series of tales of Old France in Old (or at least Rabelaisian) French, which were to have been a hundred in number but never got beyond the third batch of ten. They often borrow the licence of their 15th and 16th century models; but in _La Succube_ and others there is undoubted genius and not a little art. 1834 continued the _Treize_ with _La Duchesse de Langeais_ and added _La Recherche de l'absolu_ (one of Balzac's great studies of monomania, and thought by some to be the greatest, though others prefer _Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu_), _La Femme de trente ans_ (the chief example of the author's caprice for re-handling, and very differently judged as a whole), with yet another of the acknowledged triumphs, _Le Pere Goriot_. On the whole, this year's work, though not the author's largest, is perhaps his most unique. Next year (1835) followed _Melmoth reconcilie_ (a tribute to the great influence which Maturin exercised, not over Balzac only, at this time in France), _Un Drame au bord de la mer_, the brilliant, if questionable, conclusion of _Les Treize_, _La Fille aux yeux d'or_, _Le Contrat de mariage_ and _Seraphita_. This last, a Swedenborgian rhapsody of great beauty in parts, has divided critics almost more than anything else of its writer's, some seeing in it (with excuse) nothing but the short description given above in three words, the others (with justice) reckoning it his greatest triumph of style and his nearest attempt to reach poetry through prose. 1836 furnished _La Messe de l'athee_, _Interdiction_, _Facino Cane_, _Le Lys dans la vallee_ (already referred to and of a somewhat sickly sweetness), _L'Enfant maudit_, _La Vieille Fille_ and _Le Secret des Ruggieri_ (connected with the earlier _Les deux Reves_ under the general title, _Sur Catherine de Medicis_, and said to have been turned out by Balzac in a single night, which is hardly possible). In 1837 were published _Les Deux Poetes_, destined to form part of _Illusions perdues_, _Les Employes_, _Gambara_ and another capital work, _Histoire de la grandeur et de la decadence [v.03 p.0299] de Cesar Birotteau_, where Balzac's own unlucky experiences in trade are made thoroughly matter of art. 1838 was less fruitful, contributing only _Le Cabinet des antiques_, which had made an earlier partial appearance, _La Maison Nucingen_ and _Une Fille d'Eve_. But 1839 made amends with the second part of _Illusions perdues_, _Un Grand Homme de province a Paris_ (one of Balzac's minor diploma-pieces), _Le Cure de village_ (a very considerable thing), and two smaller stories, _Les Secrets de la princesse de Cadignan_ and _Massimilla Doni_. _Pierrette_, _Z. Marcas_, _Un Prince de la Boheme_ and _Pierre Grassou_ followed in 1840, and in 1841 _Une Tenebreuse Affaire_ (one of his most remarkable workings-up of the minor facts of actual history), _Le Martyr Calviniste_ (the conclusion of _Sur Catherine de Medicis_), _Ursule Mirouet_ (an admirable story), _La Fausse Maitresse_ and _Memoires de deux jeunes mariees_, on which again there have been very different opinions. 1842 supplied _Albert Savarus_ (autobiographical largely), _Un Debut dans la vie_, the very variously named and often rehandled _Rabouilleuse_ (which, since Taine's exaltation of it, has often been taken as a Balzacian quintessence), and _Autre etude de femme_, yet another rehandling of earlier work. In 1843 came the introduction of the completed _Sur Catherine de Medicis_, _Honorine_ and _La Muse du departement_ (almost as often reconstructed as _La Femme de trente ans_), with _Comment aiment les jeunes filles_ (a similar rehandling intended to start the collected _Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes_), and a further instalment of _Illusions perdues_, _Les Souffrances d'un inventeur_. Three out of the next four years were astonishingly fruitful. 1844 gave _Modeste Mignon_ (a book with a place to itself, and said to be founded on a story actually written by Madame Hanska), _Gaudissart II._, _A combien l'amour revient aux vieillards_ (a second part of the _Splendeurs_), _Beatrix_ (one of the most powerful if not of the most agreeable), and the first and very promising part of _Les Paysans_. Only _Un Homme d'affaires_ came out in 1845, but this was made up in 1846 by _Les Comediens sans le savoir_ (sketched earlier), another part of the _Splendeurs_, _Ou menent les mauvais chemins_, the first part of _Les Parents pauvres_, _La Cousine Bette_ (sometimes considered the topmost achievement of Balzac's genius), and the final form of a work first issued fifteen years earlier and often retouched, _Petites miseres de la vie conjugale_. 1847 was even richer, with _Le Cousin Pons_ (the second part of _Les Parents pauvres_, and again a masterpiece), the conclusion of the _Splendeurs_, _La Derniere Incarnation de Vautrin_, _L'Envers de l'histoire contemporaine_ (which had been on and off the stocks for five years), and the unfinished _Depute d'Arcis_. This was the last scene of the comedy that appeared in the life of its author. The conclusion of the _Depute d'Arcis_, published in 1853, and those of _Les Paysans_ and _Les Petits Bourgeois_ which appeared, the first in this year, the second wholly in 1855, are believed or known to be by Balzac's friend, Charles Rabou (1803-1871).

This immense and varied total stands to its author in a somewhat different relation from that of any other work to any other writer. It has been well said that the whole of Balzac's production was always in his head together; and this is the main justification for his syllabus of it as the "Comedy." Some part never came out of his head into print; we have numerous titles of work (sometimes spoken of in his letters as more or less finished) of which no trace remains, or only fragmentary MS. sketches. One apparently considerable book, _La Bataille_, which was to be devoted to the battle of Essling, and for which he actually visited the ground, is frequently referred to as in progress from the time of his early letters to Madame Hanska onwards; but it has never been found. Another result of this relation was the constant altering, re-shaping, re-connecting of the different parts. That if Balzac had lived as long as Hugo, and had preserved his faculties as well, he could never have finished the _Comedie_, is of course obvious: the life of Methuselah, with the powers of Shakespeare, would not suffice for that. But that he never would--even if by some impossibility he could--is almost equally certain. Whether there is any mark of decline in his latest work has been disputed, but there could hardly have been farther advance, and the character of the whole, not easy to define, is much less hard to comprehend, if prejudice be kept out of the way. That character was put early, but finally, by Victor Hugo in his funeral discourse on Balzac, whose work he declared, with unusual terseness, among other phrases of more or less gorgeous rhetoric, to be "observation and imagination." It may be doubted whether all the volumes written on Balzac (a reasoned catalogue of the best of which will be found below) have ever said more than these three words, or have ever said it more truly if the due stress be laid upon the "and." On the other side, most of the mistakes about him have arisen from laying undue stress on one of the two qualities, or from considering them separately rather than as inextricably mixed and blended. It is this blending which gives him his unique position. He is an observer of the most exact, the most minute, the most elaborate; but he suffuses this observation with so strange and constant an imaginative quality that he is, to some careful and experienced critics, never quite "real"--or almost always something more than real. He seems accustomed to create in a fashion which is not so much of the actual world as of some other, possible but not actual--no matter whether he deals with money or with love, with Paris or with the provinces, with old times or with new. A further puzzle has arisen from the fact that though Balzac has virtuous characters, he sees humanity on the whole "in black": and that, whether he actually prefers the delineation of vice, misfortune, failure, or not, he produces as a rule in his readers the sensation familiarly described as "uncomfortable." His morality has been fiercely attacked and valiantly defended, but it is absolutely certain that he wrote with no immoral intention, and with no indifference to morality. In the same way there has been much discussion of his style, which seldom achieves beauty, and sometimes falls short of correctness, but which still more seldom lacks force and adequacy to his own purpose. On the whole, to write with the shorthand necessary here, it is idle to claim for Balzac an absolute supremacy in the novel, while it may be questioned whether any single book of his, or any scene of a book, or even any single character or situation, is among the very greatest books, scenes, characters, situations in literature. But no novelist has created on the same scale, with the same range; none has such a cosmos of his own, pervaded with such a sense of the originality and power of its creator.

Balzac's life during these twenty years of strenuous production has, as regards the production itself, been already outlined, but its outward events, its distractions or avocations--apart from that almost weekly process of "raising the wind," of settling old debts by contracting new ones, which seems to have taken up no small part of it--must now be shortly dealt with. Besides constant visits to the Margonne family at Sache in Touraine, and to the Carrauds at Frapesle in Berry, he travelled frequently in France. He went in 1833 to Neuchatel for his first meeting with Madame Hanska, to Geneva later for his second, and to Vienna in 1835 for his third. He took at least two flights to Italy, in more or less curious circumstances. In 1838, he went on a journey to Sardinia to make his fortune by melting the silver out of the slag-heaps of Roman mines--a project, it seems, actually feasible and actually accomplished, but in which he was anticipated. The year before, tired of Paris apartments, he had bought ground at Ville d'Avray, and there constructed, certainly at great, though perhaps exaggerated expense, his villa of Les Jardies, which figures largely in the Balzacian legend. His rash and complicated literary engagements, and (it must be added) his disregard of them when the whim took him, brought him into frequent legal difficulties, the most serious of which was a law-suit with the _Revue de Paris_ in 1836. In 1831, and again in 1834, he had thought of standing for election as Deputy, and in the latter year he actually did so both at Cambrai and Angouleme; but it is not certain that he received any votes. He also more than once took steps to become a candidate for the Academy, but retired on several occasions before the voting, and when at last, in 1849, he actually stood, he only obtained two votes.

As early as the Genevan meeting of 1833, Madame Hanska had formally promised to marry Balzac in the case of her husband's [v.03 p.0300] death, and this occurred at the end of 1841. She would not, however, allow him even to visit her till the next year had expired, and then, though he travelled to St Petersburg and the engagement was renewed after a fashion, its fulfilment was indefinitely postponed. For some years Balzac met his beloved at Baden, Wiesbaden, Brussels, Paris, Rome and elsewhere. Only in September 1847 was he invited on the definite footing of her future husband to her estate of Wierzschovnia in the Ukraine; and even then the visit, interrupted by one excursion to Paris and back, was prolonged for more than two years before (on the 14th of March 1850) the wedding actually took place. But Balzac's own _Peau de chagrin_ was now reduced to its last morsel. His health, weakened by his enormous labours, had been ruined by the Russian cold and his journeyings across Europe. The pair reached the house at Paris in the rue Fortunee, which Balzac had bought for his wife and filled with his collections, at the end of May. On Sunday, the 17th of August, Victor Hugo found Balzac dying, attended by his mother, but not by his wife. He actually died at half-past eleven that night and was buried on the 20th, the pall-bearers being Hugo himself, Dumas, Sainte-Beuve (an enemy, but in this case a generous one) and the statesman Baroche, in Pere La Chaise, where Hugo delivered the speech cited above.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The extraordinarily complicated bibliography of Balzac will be found all but complete in the _Histoire des oeuvres_ (1875 and later), attached by M. Spoelberch de Lovenjoul to the _Edition definitive_, and supplemented by him in numerous smaller works, _Autour de Balzac_, _Une Page perdue de Balzac_, &c. Summaries of it will be found appended to the introductory critical notices of each volume of the English translation edited by Saintsbury (London, 1895-1898), which also contains a short Memoir and general criticism. Before the _Edition definitive_ (1869 onwards), the works had been issued during the author's life in various forms and instalments, the earliest _Comedie humaine_ being of 1842 to 1846 in sixteen volumes. For many years, however, the edition best known was that referred to in Browning as "all Balzac's novels fifty volumes long," really fifty-five small and closely printed 24mos kept stereotyped with varying dates by Michel (Calmann) Levy, which did not contain the miscellaneous works and was not arranged according to the author's last disposition, but did include the _Oeuvres de jeunesse_. These were not reprinted in the _Edition definitive_, but this gives the miscellaneous works in four volumes, an invaluable volume of correspondence, and the _Histoire des oeuvres_ as cited. To this was added, in 1893, another volume, _Repertoire des oeuvres de Balzac_, in which the history of the various personages of the _Comedie_ is tracked throughout and ranged under separate articles by MM. Cerfbeer and Christophe with extraordinary pains, and with a result of usefulness which should have protected it from some critical sneers. In 1899 appeared, as the first volume of _Oeuvres posthumes_, an instalment of the _Lettres a l'etrangere_, and in 1906 a second (up to 1844) with a portrait of Madame Hanska, and other illustrations.

Works on Balzac are very numerous, and some of them are of much importance. Sainte-Beuve and Balzac fell out, and a furious diatribe by the novelist on the critic is preserved; but the latter's postmortem examination in _Causeries du lundi_, vol. ii., is not unfair, though it could hardly be cordial. Gautier, who was a very intimate and trusty friend of Balzac, has left an excellent study, mainly personal, reprinted in his _Portraits contemporains_. Lamartine produced a volume, not of much value, on Balzac in 1866; and minor contemporaries--Gozlan, Lemer, Champfleury--supplied something. But the series of important studies of Balzac, based on the whole of his work and not biased by friendship or enmity, begins with Taine's Essay of 1858, reprinted in volume form, 1865. Even then the _Oeuvres diverses_ were accessible only by immense labour in the scattered originals, and the invaluable _Correspondance_ not at all. It was not till the reunion of all in the _Edition definitive_ was completed, that full study of man and work was possible. To this edition itself was attached a sort of official critical introduction, _L'Oeuvre de Balzac_, by M. Marcel Barriere (1890). But this is largely occupied by elaborate analyses of the different books, and the purely critical part is small, and not of the first value. Better are M. Paul Flat's _Essais sur Balzac_ (2 vols., 1893-1894), which busy themselves especially with tracing types of character. Important and new biographical details (including the proper spelling of the name) were given in M. Edmond Bire's _Honore de Balzac_ (1897). The _Balzac ignore_ of A. Cabanes (1899) is chiefly remarkable for its investigations of Balzac's fancy for occult studies, and the first part (_Balzac imprimeur_) of MM. Hanotaux and Vicaire's _La Jeunesse de Balzac_ (1903) mentioned above, for its dealing with the printing business and the intimacy with Madame de Berny. Two most important studies of Balzac in French, are those of M. A. Le Breton, _Balzac, l'homme et l'oeuvre_ (1905), a somewhat severe, but critical and very well-informed examination, and M. Ferdinand Brunetiere's _Honore de Balzac_ (1906), a brilliant but rather one-sided panegyric on the subject as the evolver of the modern novel proper, and a realist and observer _par excellence_. In English, translations of separate books are innumerable; of the whole, besides that mentioned above, but containing a few things there omitted, an American version by Miss Wormeley and others may be mentioned. The most elaborate monograph in English, till recently, was F. Wedmore's _Balzac_ (1887), with a useful bibliography up to the time. The recent additions to our knowledge are utilized in Miss Mary F. Sandars' _Balzac_ (1904), a rather popular, but full and readable summary, chiefly of the life, from all but the latest documents, and W. H. Helm's _Aspects of Balzac_ (1905), which is critical as well as anecdotic. The present writer, besides the critical and biographical essays referred to above, prefixed a shorter one to a translation of _Les Chouans_ executed by himself in 1890.

(G. SA.)

BALZAC, JEAN LOUIS GUEZ DE (1594-1654), French author, was born at Angouleme in 1594. At the age of eighteen he travelled in Holland with Theophile de Viaud, with whom he later exchanged bitter recriminations. He was early befriended by the duc d'Epernon and his son Louis, Cardinal de la Valette, who took him to Rome. His letters written to his acquaintances and to many who held a high position at the French court gained for him a great reputation. Compliments were showered upon him, he became an habitue of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and his head appears to have been turned a little by his success. Richelieu was lavish of praise and promises, but never offered Balzac the preferment he expected. In 1624 a collection of his _Lettres_ was published, and was received with great favour. From the chateau of Balzac, whither he had retired, he continued to correspond with Jean Chapelain, Valentin Conrart and others. In 1634 he was elected to the Academy. He died at Angouleme on the 18th of February 1654. His fame rests chiefly upon the _Lettres_, a second collection of which appeared in 1636. _Recueil de nouvelles lettres_ was printed in the next year. His letters, though empty and affected in matter, show a real mastery of style, introducing a new clearness and precision into French prose and encouraging the development of the language on national lines by emphasizing its most idiomatic elements. Balzac has thus the credit of executing in French prose a reform parallel to Malherbe's in verse. In 1631 he published an eulogy of Louis XIII. entitled _Le Prince_; in 1652 the _Socrate chretien_, the best of his longer works; _Aristippe ou de la Cour_ in 1658; and several dissertations on style.

His _Oeuvres_ were collected (2 vols.) in 1665 by Valentine Conrart. There are numerous English translations from Balzac, dating from the 17th century.

BAM, a town of Persia in the province of Kerman, situated 115 m. S.E. of the city of Kerman at an elevation of 3600 ft. on both banks of the river Bam. Pop. about 13,000. It is the capital of the Bam-Narmashir district and has extensive groves of date-palms and gardens. Outside the town stands the famous citadel with walls 40 ft. in height. This citadel was, even as late as the beginning of the 19th century, the strongest fortified place in Persia, and owed its strength to the Afghans who took Bam in 1719 and were not finally expelled until 1801. Post and telegraph offices have been established there since 1903.

BAMBERG, a town and archiepiscopal see of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria. Pop. (1885) 31,521; (1905) 45,308. It lies on an open plain on the river Regnitz, 2 m. above its junction with the Main, and 39 m. north of Nuremberg by railway. The upper town is built on seven hills, each crowned by a church, while the lower, still partially surrounded by walls and ditches, is divided by the river and Ludwigskanal into three districts. The cathedral is a noble late Romanesque building with four imposing towers. It was founded in 1004 by the emperor Henry II., finished in 1012, afterwards partially burnt, and rebuilt in the 13th century. Of its many works of art may be mentioned the magnificent marble tomb of the founder and his wife, the empress Cunigunde, carved by Tilman Riemenschneider between 1499 and 1513, and an equestrian statue of the emperor Conrad III. Other noteworthy churches are the Jakobskirche, an 11th-century Romanesque basilica; the St Martinskirche; the Marienkirche or Obere Pfarrkirche (1320-1387), which has now been restored to its original pure Gothic style. The Michaelskirche, 12th-century Romanesque (restored), on the Michaelsberg, was formerly the church of a Benedictine monastery secularized in 1803, which now contains [v.03 p.0301] the Buergerspital, or alms-house, and the museum and municipal art collections. Of the bridges connecting the sections of the lower town the most interesting is the _Obere Bruecke_, completed in 1455. Halfway across this, on an artificial island, is the Rathaus (rebuilt 1744-1756). The royal lyceum, formerly a Jesuit college, contains notable collections and the royal library of over 300,000 volumes. The picturesque Old Palace (_Alte Residenz_) was built in 1591 on the site of an old residence of the counts of Babenberg. The New Palace (1698-1704) was formerly occupied by the prince-bishops, and from 1864 to 1867 by the deposed King Otto of Greece. Noteworthy among the monuments of the town is the Maximilian fountain (1880), with statues of Maximilian I. of Bavaria, the emperor Henry II. and his wife, Conrad III. and St Otto, bishop of Bamberg. At a short distance from the town is the Altenburg (1266 ft.), a castle occupied from 1251 onwards by the bishops of Bamberg. It was destroyed in 1553 by Albert, margrave of Brandenburg, but has been partly restored. The schools include the lyceum for philosophy and Catholic theology (a survival of the university suppressed in 1803), a seminary, two gymnasia, a Realschule, and several technical schools, including one for porcelain-painting. The industries of the town include cotton spinning and weaving, silk spinning, the manufacture of tobacco, ropes, metal-ware, furniture, &c. The market gardens of the neighbourhood are famous, and there is a considerable shipping trade by the river and the Ludwigskanal.

Bamberg, first mentioned in 902, grew up by the castle (Babenberch) which gave its name to the Babenberg family (_q.v._). On their extinction it passed to the Saxon house, and in 1007 the emperor Henry II. founded the see. From the middle of the 13th century onward the bishops were princes of the Empire. The see was secularized in 1802 and in 1803 assigned to Bavaria.

A brief history of the bishopric is given in the _Catholic Encyclopaedia_ (London and New York, 1909), with bibliography. For general and special works on the town see Ulysse Chevalier, _Topobibliographie_ (Montbeliard, 1894-1899), s.v.

BAMBERGER, LUDWIG (1823-1899), German economist and politician, was born of Jewish parents on the 22nd of July 1823 at Mainz. After studying at Giessen, Heidelberg and Goettingen, he entered on the practice of the law. When the revolution of 1848 broke out he took an active part as one of the leaders of the republican party in his native city, both as popular orator and as editor of one of the local papers. In 1849 he took part in the republican rising in the Palatinate and Baden; on the restoration of order he was condemned to death, but he had escaped to Switzerland. The next years he spent in exile, at first in London, then in Holland; in 1852 he went to Paris, where, by means of private connexions, he received an appointment in the bank of Bischoffheim & Goldschmidt, of which he became managing director, a post which he held till 1866. During these years he saved a competence and gained a thorough acquaintance with the theory and practice of finance. This he put to account when the amnesty of 1866 enabled him to return to Germany. He was elected a member of the Reichstag, where he joined the National Liberal party, for like many other exiles he was willing to accept the results of Bismarck's work. In 1868 he published a short life of Bismarck in French, with the object of producing a better understanding of German affairs, and in 1870, owing to his intimate acquaintance with France and with finance, he was summoned by Bismarck to Versailles to help in the discussion of terms of peace. In the German Reichstag he was the leading authority on matters of finance and economics, as well as a clear and persuasive speaker, and it was chiefly owing to him that a gold currency was adopted and that the German Imperial Bank took its present form; in his later years he wrote and spoke strongly against bimetallism. He was the leader of the free traders, and after 1878 refused to follow Bismarck in his new policy of protection, state socialism and colonial development; in a celebrated speech he declared that the day on which it was introduced was a _dies nefastus_ for Germany. True to his free trade principles he and a number of followers left the National Liberal party and formed the so-called "Secession" in 1880. He was one of the few prominent politicians who consistently maintained the struggle against state socialism on the one hand and democratic socialism on the other. In 1892 be retired from political life and died in 1899. Bamberger was a clear and attractive writer and was a frequent contributor on political and economic questions to the _Nation_ and other periodicals. His most important works are those on the currency, on the French war-indemnity, his criticism of socialism and his apology for the Secession.

An edition of his collected works (including the French life of Bismarck) was published in 1894 in five volumes. After his death in 1899 appeared a volume of reminiscences, which, though it does not extend beyond 1866, gives an interesting picture of his share in the revolution of 1848, and of his life in Paris.

(J. W. HE.)

BAMBINO, IL (Ital. for "the Babe"), the name given in art to the image of the infant Jesus in swaddling clothes common in Roman Catholic churches. The most famous is the miracle-working _Santissimo Bambino_ in the church of Ara Coeli at Rome, the festival of which is celebrated on the feast of the Epiphany (January 6).

BAMBOO, the popular name for a tribe of grasses, _Bambuseae_, which are large, often tree-like, with woody stems. The stems spring from an underground root-stock and are often crowded to form dense clumps; the largest species reach 120 ft. in height. The slender stem is hollow, and, as generally in grasses, has well-marked joints or nodes, at which the cavity is closed by a strong diaphragm. The branches are numerous and in some species spiny; the narrow, often short, leaf-blade is usually jointed at the base and has a short stalk, by which it is attached to the long sheath. The spikelets are usually many-flowered and variously arranged in racemes or panicles. The flower differs from that of the majority of grasses in having usually three lodicules and six stamens. Many species bloom annually, but others only at intervals sometimes of many years, when the individuals of one and the same species are found in bloom over large areas. Thus on the west coast of India the simultaneous blooming of _Bambusa arundinacea_ (fig. 1), one of the largest species, has been observed at intervals of thirty-two years. After ripening of the seed, the leafless flowering culms always die down.

The _Bambuseae_ contain twenty-three genera and occur throughout the tropical zone, but very unevenly distributed; they also extend into the sub-tropical and even into the temperate zone. Tropical Asia is richest in species; in Africa there are very few. In Asia they extend into Japan and to 10,000 ft. or more on the [v.03 p.0302] Himalayas; and in the Andes of South America they reach the snow-line.

The fruit in _Bambusa_, _Arundinaria_ and other genera resembles the grain generally characteristic of grasses, but in _Dendrocalamus_ and others it is a nut, while rarely, as in _Melocanna_, it is fleshy and suggests an apple in size and appearance. The uses to which all the parts and products of the bamboo are applied in Oriental countries are almost endless. The soft and succulent shoots, when just beginning to spring, are cut off and served up at table like asparagus. Like that vegetable, also, they are earthed over to keep them longer fit for consumption; and they afford a continuous supply during the whole year, though it is more abundant in autumn. They are also salted and eaten with rice, prepared in the form of pickles or candied and preserved in sugar. As the plant grows older, a species of fluid is secreted in the hollow joints, in which a concrete substance once highly valued in the East for its medicinal qualities, called _tabaxir_ or _tabascheer_, is gradually developed. This substance, which has been found to be a purely siliceous concretion, is possessed of peculiar optical properties. As a medicinal agent the bamboo is entirely inert, and it has never been received into the European materia medica.

The grains of the bamboo are available for food, and the Chinese have a proverb that it produces seed more abundantly in years when the rice crop fails, which means, probably, that in times of dearth the natives look more after such a source of food. The Hindus eat it mixed with honey as a delicacy, equal quantities being put into a hollow joint, coated externally with clay, and thus roasted over a fire. The fleshly fruit of _Melocanna_ is baked and eaten. The plant is a native of India, but is sometimes cultivated as in Mauritius. It is, however, the stem of the bamboo which is applied to the greatest variety of uses. Joints of sufficient size form water buckets; smaller ones are used as bottles, and among the Dyaks of Borneo they are employed as cooking vessels. Bamboo is extensively used as a timber wood, and houses are frequently made entirely out of the products of the plant; complete sections of the stem form posts or columns; split up, it serves for floors or rafters; and, interwoven in lattice-work, it is employed for the sides of rooms, admitting light and air. The roof is sometimes of bamboo solely, and when split, which is accomplished with the greatest ease, it can be formed into laths or planks. It is employed in shipping of all kinds; some of the strongest plants are selected for masts of boats of moderate size, and the masts of larger vessels are sometimes formed by the union of several bamboos built up and joined together.

The bamboo is employed in the construction of all kinds of agricultural and domestic implements and in the materials and implements required in fishery. Bows are made of it by the union of two pieces with many bands; and, the septa being bored out and the lengths joined together, it is employed, as we use leaden pipes, in transmitting water to reservoirs or gardens. From the light and slender stalks shafts for arrows are obtained; and in the south-west of Asia there is a certain species of equally slender growth, from which writing-pens or reeds are made. A joint forms a holder for papers or pens, and it was in a joint of bamboo that silk-worm eggs were carried from China to Constantinople during the reign of Justinian. The outer cuticle of Oriental species is so hard that it forms a sharp and durable cutting edge, and it is so siliceous that it can be used as a whetstone. This outer cuticle, cut into thin strips, is one of the most durable and beautiful materials for basket-making, and both in China and Japan it is largely so employed. Strips are also woven into cages, chairs, beds and other articles of furniture, Oriental wicker-work in bamboo being unequalled for beauty and neatness of workmanship. In China the interior portions of the stem are beaten into a pulp and used for the manufacture of the finer varieties of paper. Bamboos are imported to a considerable extent into Europe for the use of basket-makers, and for umbrella and walking-sticks. In short, the purposes to which the bamboo is applicable are almost endless, and well justify the opinion that "it is one of the most wonderful and most beautiful productions of the tropics, and one of Nature's most valuable gifts to uncivilized man" (A. R. Wallace, _The Malay Archipelago_).

A number of species of bamboo are hardy under cultivation in the British Isles. A useful and interesting account of these and their cultivation will be found in the _Bamboo Garden_, by A. B. Freeman-Mitford. They are mostly natives of China and Japan and belong to the genera _Arundinaria_, _Bambusa_ and _Phyllostachys_; but include a few Himalayan species of _Arundinaria_. They may be propagated by seed (though owing to the rare occurrence of fruit, this method is seldom applicable), by division and by cuttings. They are described as hungry plants which well repay generous treatment, and will flourish in a rich, not too stiff loam, and for the first year or two should be well mulched. They should be sheltered from winds and well watered during the growing period. When being transplanted the roots must be disturbed as little as possible. The following may be mentioned; _Arundinaria simoni_, a fine plant which in the bamboo garden at Kew has reached 18 ft. in height, and not infrequently flowers and fruits in Britain; _A. japonica_, a tall and handsome plant generally grown in gardens under the name _Bambusa metake_; _A. nitida_, "by far the daintiest and most attractive of all its genus, and remarkably hardy"; _Bambusa palmata_, with leaves a foot or more long and three inches broad; _B. tesselata_; _B. quadrangularis_, remarkable for its square stems; _Phyllostachys mitis_, growing to 60 ft. high in its native home, China and Japan; and _P. nigra_, so called from the black stem, a handsome species.

BAMBURGH, or BAMBOROUGH, a village in the Berwick-upon-Tweed parliamentary division of Northumberland, England, on the sea-coast, 2-1/2 m. E. of Belford station on the North Eastern railway, and 54 m. N. of Newcastle. It was a royal borough previous to the Norman Conquest and returned two members to parliament in the reign of Edward I. Its ancient castle occupies a magnificent position close to the sea on an almost perpendicular rock, 150 ft. in height, accessible only on the south-east side.

The first erection is ascribed by the Saxon chronicles to King Ida of Northumberland. The castle buildings are of various dates from the Norman period and are of great strength and dignity. They include a massive keep and the remains of an apsidal chapel dedicated to St Peter. In the village, the church is dedicated to St Aidan, who was bishop of Lindisfarne or Holy Island, which lies off the coast to the north, about 634. It is a fine cruciform building, mainly of Early English date, with a crypt beneath the chancel. In the churchyard is a monument to Grace Darling (1815-1842), the brave rescuer of some of the crew of the ship "Forfarshire" in 1838. The Longstone Lighthouse, where her father was keeper, stands on an outer rock of the Farne Islands, which stretch north-eastward for 6 m. from the coast at Bamburgh.

The town of Bamburgh (_Bebbanburgh_) sprang up round the ancient castle. During the struggle for the crown between William Rufus and Robert of Normandy, Bamburgh was besieged by William, who, finding the defence too strong, erected and garrisoned a new castle before Bamburgh called [v.03 p.0303] "Malveisin" or "Evil neighbour." Earl Robert of Northumberland, who was in command of Bamburgh, having been defeated in a sally, the castle surrendered to William in November 1095. The first mention of Bamburgh as a borough does not occur until 1169, when the men paid 2-1/2 marks to an aid. Henry III. by charter of 1254-1255 granted the burgesses their town at an annual fee farm rent of 26 marks, of which they were acquitted in 1318 and 1327 "on account of the robberies and fires inflicted on them by the Scots." Edward III. in 1332 confirmed the charter of Henry III., and granted further that the town should be a free borough governed by four bailiffs, that it should be enclosed by a wall and that the burgesses should have a gild merchant. He also altered the market-day from Sunday to Wednesday, and gave licence for the fairs, which had been held "from time immemorial" on the feasts of SS. Oswald and Aidan, to continue for three extra days. During the Scottish wars of the reign of Henry V., Bamburgh again suffered severely, so much so that in 1439 the burgesses had decreased in number from 120 to 13. These again petitioned for a remission of their farm, which in 1446 was reduced to L10 yearly. Bamburgh was twice taken by the Yorkists in the Wars of the Roses and twice recovered by Queen Margaret. In 1463, after it had been recovered a second time by the queen, Henry VI. stayed there for a year, but after the battle of Hexham it was again taken by the Yorkists, and the castle and town were then so much injured that from that time there is no mention of the burgesses or their privileges. Bamburgh returned two members to parliament in 1295 and again in Edward III.'s reign, but since then has never been represented. In 1384 Lord Neville received licence to dig for sea-coal in Bamburgh, and mines of coal and lead existed there as late as 1681.

BAMBUTE (sometimes incorrectly called BATWA), a race of pygmies of the Semliki Forest, on the western borders of the Uganda Protectorate between Albert Nyanza and Albert Edward Nyanza. They probably form merely a branch of the pygmy race of Equatorial Africa, represented farther west by H. von Wissmann's Batwa (_q.v._). Their complexion varies from reddish-yellow to brownish-black, with head-hair often of a russet-brown, and body-hair, black and bristly on upper lip, chin, chest, axillae and pubes, yellowish and fleecy on cheeks, back and limbs. Their average height is 4 ft. 9 in. Even when forced to keep clean, their skins give out a rancid odour, something (Sir H. H. Johnston says) between the smell of a monkey and a negro. Their faces are remarkable for the long upper lip, and the bridgeless nose with enormous alae (the cartilage of the nose above the nostrils). Like the Batwa they are nomad hunters, building only huts of sticks and leaves, and living in the forest, where they hunt the largest game with no weapon but a tiny bow from which they shoot poisoned arrows. Sir H. H. Johnston states that the Bambute have a good idea of drawing, and with a sharpened stick can sketch in sand or mud the beasts and birds known to them. The Bambute do not tattoo or scar, nor have they any love of ornament, wearing no ear-rings, necklets, anklets, &c. The upper incisors and canines are sharpened to a point. In the forests they go quite naked. They speak a corrupted form of the dialects of their negro neighbours. They have a peculiar way of singing their words. Their voices are low and musical and the pronunciation is singularly staccato, every syllable being separately uttered. They show no trace of spirit or ancestor worship, but have some idea that thunder, lightning and rain are manifestations of an Evil Power, and that the dead are reincarnated in the red bush-pig. They have no tribal government, accepting as temporary lawgiver some adept hunter. Marriage is by purchase; polygamy seems to exist, but the domestic affections are strong. The dead are buried in dug graves, and food, tobacco and weapons are often placed with the corpse. The Bambute are very musical, though they are uninventive as regards instruments. They have many songs which they sing well and they dance with spirit.

See A. de Quatrefages, _The Pygmies_ (Eng. edit. 1895); Sir H. H. Johnston, _Uganda Protectorate_ (1902).