Contemporary critics declined to acknowledge that, in these books and their congeners,6 there were some traces of a master-hand. To-day the traces are perceptible, because criticism has a better opportunity of discovering them. Here and there, and especially in Argow, the Pirate, is to be noticed a beginning of the realism that was afterwards the novelist’s excellence. The theme, that of a brigand purified by love, is, as Monsieur le Breton remarks in his study of Balzac, a romantic one in the manner of Byron, and has things in common with Walter Scott’s Heart of Midlothian, Victor Hugo’s Bug-Jargal, and Pixerecourt’s Belveder. There is an atmosphere of imagination in it, the action is quick, and the characters are strongly though distortedly drawn. Moreover, a breath of healthy sentiment runs through the story, which is not always the case in the later and more celebrated novels. Balzac must have learnt much and acquired much that was useful to him during this puddling of his ore in the furnace of his early efforts; and, if in his maturer age he retained certain defects of the Romantic school, it was because a lurking sympathy with them in his nature prevented his shaking himself free of them, when he reformed his manner.
6 Other youthful productions were The Centenarian, The Last Fairy, Don Gigadas, The Excommunicated Man, Wann-Chlore, or Jane the Pale, The Curate of the Ardennes, and Argow, the Pirate.
The style of his letters at this same period was admirable, sparkling with wit and with a humour that unfortunately grew rarer, bitterer, and even coarser often, in his later career. Some of his rapidly sketched pictures were incidents of home life. This one represents his mother’s fidgety disposition:—
“Louise, give me a glass of water.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Ah, my poor Louise, I’m in a bad way; I am indeed!”
“Nonsense, Ma’am!”
“It’s worse than other years.”
“Lud!... Ma’am!”
“My head is splitting..... Oh, Louise! The shutters are slamming; it’s enough to break all the panes in the drawing-room.”
Already, with the faculty of exaggeration which characterised him all his life, he anticipated gaining within the next twelvemonth no less than twenty thousand francs; forgetting the small result of his Cromwell, he spoke of having a lot of theatrical pieces in hand, plus an historical novel, Odette de Champdivers, and another dealing with the fortunes of the R’hoone family. R’hoone was an anagram of his own name Honore. Lord R’hoone was one of his pseudonyms. And “Lord R’hoone,” he told Laure, “will soon be the rage, the most amiable, fertile author; and ladies will regard him as the apple of their eye. Then the little Honore will arrive in a coach with head held up, proud look, and fob well garnished. At his approach, amidst flattering murmurs from the admiring crowd, people will say: ‘He is Madame Surville’s brother.’ Then men, women, and children, and unborn babes will leap as the hills.... And I shall be the ladies’ man, in view of which event I am saving up my money. Since yesterday I have given up dowagers, and intend to fall back on thirty-year-old widows. Send all you can find to Lord R’hoone, Paris. This address will suffice. He is known at the city gates. N.B. — Send them, carriage paid, free of cracks and soldering. Let them be rich and amiable; as for beauty, it is not a sine qua non. Varnish wears off, but the underneath earthenware remains.”
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