Chapter XVIII: Beyle

From the standpoint of our own day we see side by side with Balzac another French author whom it would never have occurred to any one in their day to couple with him, and whose literary existence was as quiet and unremarked as Balzac's was noisy and obtrusive. Curiously enough, Balzac was the only one of Henri Beyle's contemporaries who accorded him full, unqualified recognition. In the eyes of the younger generation of the France of to-day, Beyle and Balzac complement each other as unmistakably as do Lamartine and Victor Hugo. It may seem in so far inappropriate to couple the names of the two authors, that the one wrote close on a hundred novels, the other only two of any length; but the quality of Beyle's two is so remarkable that they entitle their author to rank with the father of the modern novel; and certain of his other works (he wrote, reckoning everything--novels, tales, critical and theoretical essays, biographies, and descriptions of travel--a score of volumes) have exercised as great a literary influence as have his novels.

Beyle's relation to Balzac is that of the reflective to the observant mind, of the thinker in art to the seer. We see into the hearts of Balzac's characters, into the "dark red mill of passion," which is the motive force of their actions; Beyle's characters receive their impulse from the head, "the open light-and-sound chamber";[1] the reason being that Beyle was a logician and Balzac a man of an effusively rich animal nature. Beyle stands to Victor Hugo in much the same position as Leonardo da Vinci to Michael Angelo. Hugo's plastic imagination creates a supernaturally colossal and muscular humanity, fixed in an eternal attitude of struggle and suffering; Beyle's mysterious, complicated, refined intellect produces a small series of male and female portraits which exercise an almost magic fascination on us with their far-away, enigmatic expressions and their sweet, seductive, wicked smiles. Of course, Michael Angelo towers as high above Victor Hugo as Leonardo does above Beyle; but just as there is a resemblance in Hugo's style to the style of Michael Angelo's Moses, so there is a kinship between Beyle's Duchess of Sanseverina and Leonardo's Mona Lisa; and, in spite of the immense superiority of the great Italians, the resemblance in the relative positions of the two artists and the two authors is striking. Beyle is the metaphysician among the French authors of his day, as Leonardo was the metaphysician among the great painters of the Renaissance.

We have already encountered Beyle as one of the leaders in the advanced-guard attacks upon the conventional French tragedy style and the patriotism of the Classicists, which ignored ail foreign literature simply as being foreign. In those engagements he was one of the first to break the enemy's ranks; no one dealt more crushing blows to the Imperialist men of letters than this writer, who in a manner was himself distinctly a Frenchman of the Empire. Indeed, the very circumstance that he was the only one of the great authors of 1830 who had really known the Empire, gives him a prominently peculiar position in the Romantic group. This man alone among them all had been present at the battle of Marengo and the entry into Milan, the battle of Jena and the entry into Berlin, had seen the burning of Moscow and shared in the horrors of the retreat through Russia. He alone among them all had spoken to Napoleon and had known Byron. He was only a year younger than Nodier; but Nodier as forerunner was not much more than a herald whose trumpet-blast announced and awakened, whereas Beyle as forerunner was a doughty trooper with lance and pennon, one of those Uhlans who capture a town single-handed. In Nodier's intellectual life the French Revolution was the great event which dominated everything--he never wearied of describing its heroes and its victims, its prison scenes, its conspiracies, secret societies, &c; in Beyle's, Napoleon's career and fall were the facts of vital importance.

Marie Henri Beyle was born at Grenoble on the 23rd of January 1783. His family belonged to the upper middle class, the aristocracy of the law. When only eight years old he lost his mother, a loss which he felt deeply and to which his thoughts perpetually recurred. His father was a reserved man, who took little notice of his children, and treated them with extreme severity. He entrusted the education of his son to needy abbés, whom the boy hated, regarding them as tyrants and hypocrites. Between him and his father there was early kindled a feeling of real animosity, which was never extinguished. Everything good that fell to Henri's lot in childhood came to him through his maternal grandfather, a clever and cultured doctor; but so strictly were his father's cruelly severe educational principles adhered to, that at the age of fourteen he was not acquainted with more than two or three children of his own age. This boy, in whose nature there lay germs of profound originality, in whose character determined independence was a main feature, whose energetic temperament begot a keen desire to do unusual deeds, and in whom the life of the senses stirred early and strongly, was subjected in the process of education to such severe, unrelieved, oppressive control, that passionate inward revolt was the inevitable consequence. Because the abbés, who lived in terror of the Revolution, educated him as a royalist and Catholic, he naturally developed into a revolutionist, a Bonapartist, and a freethinker in the extreme sense of the word. But the constant strife between his father's will and his own desires engendered, besides, a want of confidence, a distrust of humanity so deeply rooted that it was never eradicated. And ere long there was added to the fear of being deceived or exploited by others, the fear of deceiving himself, which bred in him the habit of being constantly on his guard, of constant self-examination and self-control.

A certain something in his character is traceable to the influence of the province in which he was born and in which his family had been settled for at least two centuries. The natives of Dauphiné are a keen, obstinate, argumentative race, as different from their neighbours of Provence as they are from the Parisians. The Provençal gives noisy or eloquent expression to his feelings; he rails and curses when he is angry or hurt; the Parisian is polite, witty, brilliantly superficial; the character of the native of Dauphiné is distinguished by a peculiar obstinacy; there is both depth and refinement in it; he remembers an insult and avenges it, but his anger never finds vent in abusive language. Beyle's mother, who read Dante and Ariosto in the original, a very uncommon accomplishment for a provincial lady in those days, was understood to be of Italian descent. This may in part explain Beyle's strong leaning to everything Italian; but it is also to be remembered that until 1349 Dauphiné did not form part of France, and was in its politics a semi-Italian state. It was one of Beyle's fancies that Louis XI, who, as Dauphin, governed the little country for several years, had imparted to its inhabitants something of his own distinguishing quality of prudence, of distrust of first inspirations. Improbable as this is, the surmise is in itself characteristic.

Circumstances early intensified the tendency to distrust with which Henri's home life had imbued him. When he at last attained to the liberty after which he had so long aspired, that is to say, when he was sent to school, a bitter disappointment awaited him. The little strong, thick-set, heavily built boy with the bright, speaking face (nicknamed "the walking tower" on account of his determined step, herculean limbs, and round Hercules head) was, in spite of the ironic expression of his mouth, an enthusiast. And in his schoolfellows he did not find the gay, amiable, noble-minded comrades he had pictured to himself, but a troop of selfish young whelps. When telling his friend Colomb this, he added: "It was a disappointment which has gone on repeating itself throughout my whole life." "Nor was I any luckier," he continued, "in the impression I made on my schoolfellows; I can see now that I displayed a ridiculous mixture of haughtiness and desire to amuse myself. To the other boys' coarse selfishness I responded with my Spanish hidalgo ideas of honour; and I was overwhelmed with despair when they went off to play together and simply ignored me." Compare this utterance with the bitter disappointment of young Fabrice (in _La Chartreuse de Parme_, published in 1839), when, during the battle of Waterloo, he begs some soldiers whom he meets for a piece of bread and is answered with a coarse jest: "These cruel words and the general laugh which followed were too much for Fabrice. War was not, then, it appeared, that noble, mutual impulse of souls who loved glory above everything, which Napoleon's proclamations had led him to understand it to be." We can easily imagine what memories of wild outbursts of animal selfishness Beyle brought back with him from his campaign; of these the tale of Fabrice's experiences is probably composed. He had formed too high an estimate of the comradeship existing among soldiers, just as he had over-estimated the comradeship of schoolboys.

About the year 1798 he began to devote himself with great ardour to the study of mathematics, for the characteristic reason, as he told his friends, that there was hypocrisy in every other science, but none, so far as he could discover, in the science of mathematics. But no doubt his ardour was stimulated by the growing fame of the young French general in Italy whom mathematics, practically applied in the science of artillery, had led from one great victory to another.

His studies at an end, Beyle arrived in Paris on the 10th of November 1799, the day following the 18th Brumaire. He had a letter of introduction to the Daru family, who were relatives, and when, after the _coup d'état_, Pierre Daru was made Secretary of War and Inspector of Reviews, he gave young Beyle a place in his office. I fancy I can trace reminiscences of this appointment in the episode of Julien's appointment as secretary to the Comte de la Mole in (_Rouge et Noir_). Colomb tells that on one of the first days after Beyle entered on his duties, when he was writing a letter to Daru's dictation, he absently spelled _cela_ with two l's, and thereby brought on himself a playful, but none the less humiliating, reproof. A precisely similar incident occurs in the novel. But Daru was evidently a very much kinder and more considerate patron than the Comte de la Mole; he proved himself Beyle's faithful friend and benefactor. Besides his talent for military organisation, Daru had undoubted literary talent; his translations of Horace and his historical prose are excellent examples of the literary style of the Empire, and all the authors of that period looked up to him. It was a strange freak of fortune which determined that throughout most of his campaigns he should have in immediate attendance on him one of the literary pioneers of the following period--not that he had any suspicion of his protege's gifts, gifts of which the young man himself was scarcely conscious as yet.

When Daru and his younger brother, acting under Carnot, then Minister of War, had organised the memorable Italian campaign of 1800, and had themselves been ordered to Italy, they sent for Beyle to come to them there, though they had for the moment no definite appointment to offer him. The youth of seventeen, who was by nature as energetic as he was imaginative, and whose dreams were all of daring deeds and the First Consul, did not wait to be called twice. He packed a dozen standard works in his knapsack and started for Geneva; there, though he had never learned to ride, he mounted a horse which Daru had left behind ill, but which had recovered, and, encountering many difficulties, rode over the Saint Bernard on the 22nd of May, two days after Napoleon. On the 1st or 2nd of June he reached Milan, the city where he was to have his first experience of the joy of life, and which was always to loom largely on his mental horizon. He witnessed the outburst of rapturous joy with which the abolition of the hated supremacy of Austria was hailed, and on the 4th of July was present at the battle of Marengo. After holding an appointment in the commissariat for some months, he entered the seventh regiment of dragoons as sergeant (as we are reminded in a curious note to the fifth chapter of _Rouge et Noir_) was promoted to a lieutenancy at Romanego, and was shortly afterwards made adjutant to General Michaud. He distinguished himself in all the subsequent engagements, and especially at Castel-Franco, not only by courage; but by the ardour, accuracy, and intelligence with which he executed all the tasks entrusted to him. We have, evidently, a very exact account of young Beyle's feelings as a spectator of the battle of Marengo, in the description of Fabrice del Dongo's youthfully enthusiastic and heroic emotions as spectator of the battle of Waterloo, a description which undoubtedly owes much of its masterliness to its being a faithful reproduction of personal experiences. The period which begins with the youth's ride across the Alps and ends with his farewell to the army after the Peace of Amiens, was the period of his life to which Beyle looked back as that of perfect happiness; it was rich in every variety of romantic experience; during it he did daring deeds, fought a comical duel, had various youthful love affairs, and enjoyed the poetry of a soldier's life in a beautiful country, where the foreign conquerors were greeted as saviours and heroes by a careless, naïvely passionate people, who were prevented by no scruples from indulging their thirst for pleasure.

When Henri returned to Grenoble from this his first flight into the wide world, he found everything as he had left it. His family still revered what he despised, and detested all that he enthusiastically admired. After some violent altercations, the young Hotspur obtained permission to take up his abode in Paris. There he studied Montaigne, Montesquieu, and the eighteenth-century philosophers, more particularly Cabanis and De Tracy, with the latter of whom he was at a subsequent period to become intimately acquainted. (For De Tracy's _Ideology_ Beyle had a profound admiration from his earliest youth.) He also took lessons in English.

In this quiet life of study, which lasted for a few years, there was an odd interlude. In 1805, during a visit to his native town, Henri fell in love with a beautiful young actress who was playing there. His love was returned, and, unable to endure the idea of separation from his beloved, he followed her to Marseilles, where she had obtained an engagement, and took a place as clerk in a large grocery business--the only possible means of earning a living which presented itself. He was quite happy on his office stool during the year his passion lasted; but, when the actress suddenly determined to marry a Russian, he returned to Paris and resumed his studies. Before long he received an invitation which he was incapable of refusing, to accompany Marshal Daru to the army. He fought in the battle of Jena, took part in Napoleon's triumphal entry into Berlin, and was appointed superintendent of the Imperial demesnes in Brunswick. This appointment he held for two years, during which he gained some knowledge of the German language and literature, and distinguished himself by his zeal in the Emperor's service. Receiving orders to levy a war tax of five millions, he levied seven. This was what they in those days called "being possessed of the sacred fire." When the Emperor was told, he said, "Well done!" and noted the assessor's name. But Beyle also won honour for himself in ways which appeal more to our sympathies. In 1809 he was left in a little German town, in charge of stores and of the wounded soldiers who were not fit to be removed. No sooner had the garrison departed than the citizens were summoned by the alarm-bell to attack the military hospital and seize the stores. The other officers lost their heads; but Beyle armed all the convalescents, every man who was able to be out of bed, posted the weakest at the windows (which he transformed into loopholes), and, placing himself at the head of the others, made a sortie and scattered the attacking mob.

He followed the army to Vienna, was employed in the negotiations which preceded Napoleon's marriage with Marie Louise, and afterwards received the appointment of inspector of the buildings and movable property belonging to the crown. In this capacity he appeared at court, and was introduced to the Empress.

After a stay in Milan he received permission, in 1812, to take part in the Russian campaign. His love of adventure had been more than satisfied by his previous campaigns; he had been sickened and pained by the sight of corpses, and whilst his carriage wheels passed over and mutilated them, he had tried to divert his mind by poetic fancies. But war always attracted him anew. We see the man whose books, written at a later period in his career, contain such store of delicate and profound insight into national psychology, studying, during the passage of the Niemen, the appearance and temperament of the soldiers of all lands who composed the Grand Army. But by the time Smolensk was reached he had had enough. From that town he writes:--

"How man changes! My old longing for novelty is quite gone. Since I have seen Milan and Italy, everything else repels me by its coarseness. Would you believe it? without any personal reason I am sometimes on the point of shedding tears. In this ocean of barbarism there is not a sound which finds its echo in my soul. Everything is coarse, foul, stinking, both literally and metaphorically. My one pleasure has been hearing a fellow, who is about as musical as I am pious, play a little on a piano which is terribly out of tune. Ambition has no longer any power over me; the most gorgeous order would be no compensation for what I am enduring. I represent to myself the summits on which my spirit dwells (planning books, listening to Cimarosa and loving Angela in a perfect climate) as beautiful heights; far below them on the plain lie the fetid marshes in which I am now sunk.... You will hardly believe it, but what really gives me pleasure is to attend to any Italian official business there is to transact. There has been some lately, and even though it is over, it continues to occupy my imagination like a romance."

In the diary he kept at Moscow we find traces of the same duality in his nature--the craving to occupy his imagination, and the desire to act and to be in the midst of action. During the great fire he writes: "The fire soon reached the house we had left. Our carriages stood for five or six hours on the boulevard. Tired of this inaction, I went to look at the fire, and spent an hour or two with Joinville ... we drank a bottle of wine, which restored us to life. I read a few lines of an English translation of _Paul et Virginie_ which restored me to a feeling of intellectual life in the midst of the universal barbarism."

During the terrible retreat through Russia, Beyle was superintendent of the depots at Minsk, Vitebsk, and Mohilof; he did good service by supplying the army as it passed Orcha with provisions for three days, the only provisions served out to it between Moscow and Beresina. The coolness and determination which had characterised him from his childhood did not desert him now. It has been often told how, on one of the most calamitous days of the campaign, he made his appearance in Daru's quarters cleanly shaved and carefully dressed, and was greeted by his chief with the words: "You are a brave man, Monsieur Beyle; you have shaved to-day."

During the retreat he lost everything--horses, carriages, clothes, and money--even the sum with which he was provided for emergencies. Before he left, his sister had replaced all the buttons on one of his overcoats with pieces of twenty and forty francs, carefully covered with cloth. On his return she asked him if they had been useful to him. After much reflection, he remembered that somewhere in the neighbourhood of Wilna he had presented his coat to a waiter, considering it worn out. The incident is a characteristic one; for Beyle, who was quite as eager to excel in diplomacy as in literature, was extremely prudent, but at the same time extremely forgetful.

He re-entered on his official duties in Paris; in 1813, he was, as a member of the Emperor's staff, at Mainz, Erfurt, Lützen, and Dresden; and for a time he held the appointment of Commissary-General in Silesia. His health giving way, he went to recruit it by the Lake of Como, in the region to which he always returned as to an earthly Paradise, and where, as usual, he passed in blissful idleness such leisure as the pursuit of a happy love affair left him. He was once more actively employed under Napoleon in 1814; but the Emperor's fall blasted all his hopes of a successful official career. He lost everything--his appointment, his income, his position in society; and he bore the loss not merely without complaint, but with cheerfulness, resigning himself with philosophic equanimity to being henceforward simply the cosmopolitan, dilettante, and author.

From 1814 till 1821, except for a short absence in 1817, Beyle was an inhabitant of his beloved Milan. He did not leave it even during the Hundred Days, being convinced that Napoleon's fortunes were irretrievable. A passionate lover of Italian music and singing, he spent happy evenings at the La Scala Theatre. He was received into the best society of the town; in Count Porro's house, or in Lodovico de Brême's box at the theatre, he made acquaintance with the Italian authors and patriots--Silvio Pellico, Manzoni, &c.; and also with such famous travellers as Byron, Madame de Staël, Wilhelm Schlegel, and a whole host of other English and German notabilities. An attachment which lasted for several years made him, what he was capable of being, perfectly happy; but this happiness was rudely disturbed in the summer of 1821 by his summary banishment from Milan. The Austrian police suspected him, quite groundlessly, of intrigues with the Carbonari.

He returned once more to Paris in a state of the deepest dejection; and it was during the height of his grief at being separated from the woman he loved, that he wrote his famous book, _De l'Amour_. Hitherto he had written, or at least published, nothing but biographies of Haydn and Mozart, which were only adaptations of Italian and German works, and the _Histoire de la Peinture en Italie_, with its proudly humble dedication to the captive of St. Helena. None of these books had made any sensation; but the last-mentioned had won him the goodwill and friendship of De Tracy, the philosopher. Beyle at first felt himself completely isolated in Paris. Many of his old associates under the Empire were banished; others had forfeited his regard by cringing to the new Government. At De Tracy's house, however, he met the best of the good society of the day--Lafayette, the Comte de Ségur, Benjamin Constant, &c, &c.; and at such houses as Giuditta Pasta, the famous opera-singer's, he met the young authors, men like Mérimée and Jaquemont. Beyle remained in Paris, except for short visits to England and Italy, until 1830. From 1830 until his death in 1842, he was again in government employment, holding posts which were practically sinecures. The first year he was Consul at Trieste, a place which he disliked, and the rest of the time at Civita Vecchia, which was almost equivalent to being in Rome. Here he lived under the sky he had always loved and among the people he preferred to all others, but his solitude and idleness were unutterably wearisome to him. To such of his countrymen as sought him out and suited him, he was an amiable and most efficient cicerone; but he longed to be back in Paris, although the old martial spirit of the Empire forbade him to acknowledge himself a Frenchman after Louis Philippe's Government yielded (in 1840) to the verdict of Europe on the Eastern question without striking a blow. During the last years of his life his health was bad. He died suddenly of apoplexy while on leave in Paris.[2]

[1] Expressions of Gottfried Keller's.

[2] The inscription on his tombstone in the cemetery of Montmartre, directions for which were contained in his will, shows what a hold Milan had on him to the last. It runs:

ARRIGO BEYLE
MILANESE
SCRISSE
AMO
VISSE
ANN. LIX M. II
MORI IL XXIII MARZO
M.D.CCC.XLII.