Part 14

What do these cryptic utterances mean? At first, both in his novel and in his letters, they are obscure; but before long, in each, they become very definite. In 1856, we find these sentences among his letters:

The old days--the old days! Shall I ever, I wonder, get the frame of mind back as it used to be then? Something of it, perhaps, but never quite as it used to be.

I find that the skeleton in my domestic closet is becoming a pretty big one.

His next letter draws the veil and shows plainly what he means:

Poor Catherine and I are not made for each other, and there is no help for it. It is not only that she makes me uneasy and unhappy, but that I make her so, too--and much more so. We are strangely ill-assorted for the bond that exists between us.

Then he goes on to say that she would have been a thousand times happier if she had been married to another man. He speaks of "incompatibility," and a "difference of temperaments." In fact, it is the same old story with which we have become so familiar, and which is both as old as the hills and as new as this morning's newspaper.

Naturally, also, things grow worse, rather than better. Dickens comes to speak half jocularly of "the plunge," and calculates as to what effect it will have on his public readings. He kept back the announcement of "the plunge" until after he had given several readings; then, on April 29, 1858, Mrs. Dickens left his home. His eldest son went to live with the mother, but the rest of the children remained with their father, while his daughter Mary nominally presided over the house. In the background, however, Georgina Hogarth, who seemed all through her life to have cared for Dickens more than for her sister, remained as a sort of guide and guardian for his children.

This arrangement was a private matter, and should not have been brought to public attention; but it was impossible to suppress all gossip about so prominent a man. Much of the gossip was exaggerated; and when it came to the notice of Dickens it stung him so severely as to lead him into issuing a public justification of his course. He published a statement in Household Words, which led to many other letters in other periodicals, and finally a long one from him, which was printed in the New York Tribune, addressed to his friend Mr. Arthur Smith.

Dickens afterward declared that he had written this letter as a strictly personal and private one, in order to correct false rumors and scandals. Mr. Smith naturally thought that the statement was intended for publication, but Dickens always spoke of it as "the violated letter."

By his allusions to a difference of temperament and to incompatibility, Dickens no doubt meant that his wife had ceased to be to him the same companion that she had been in days gone by. As in so many cases, she had not changed, while he had. He had grown out of the sphere in which he had been born, "associated with blacking-boys and quilt-printers," and had become one of the great men of his time, whose genius was universally admired.

Mr. Bigelow saw Mrs. Dickens as she really was--a commonplace woman endowed with the temper of a vixen, and disposed to outbursts of actual violence when her jealousy was roused.

It was impossible that the two could have remained together, when in intellect and sympathy they were so far apart. There is nothing strange about their separation, except the exceedingly bad taste with which Dickens made it a public affair. It is safe to assume that he felt the need of a different mate; and that he found one is evident enough from the hints and bits of innuendo that are found in the writings of his contemporaries.

He became a pleasure-lover; but more than that, he needed one who could understand his moods and match them, one who could please his tastes, and one who could give him that admiration which he felt to be his due; for he was always anxious to be praised, and his letters are full of anecdotes relating to his love of praise.

One does not wish to follow out these clues too closely. It is certain that neither Miss Beadnell as a girl nor Mrs. Winter as a matron made any serious appeal to him. The actresses who have been often mentioned in connection with his name were, for the most part, mere passing favorites. The woman who in life was Dora made him feel the same incompleteness that he has described in his best-known book. The companion to whom he clung in his later years was neither a light-minded creature like Miss Beadnell, nor an undeveloped, high-tempered woman like the one he married, nor a mere domestic, friendly creature like Georgina Hogarth.

Ought we to venture upon a quest which shall solve this mystery in the life of Charles Dickens! In his last will and testament, drawn up and signed by him about a year before his death, the first paragraph reads as follows:

I, Charles Dickens, of Gadshill Place, Higham, in the county of Kent, hereby revoke all my former wills and codicils and declare this to be my last will and testament. I give the sum of one thousand pounds, free of legacy duty, to Miss Ellen Lawless Ternan, late of Houghton Place, Ampthill Square, in the county of Middlesex.

In connection with this, read Mr. John Bigelow's careless jottings made some fifteen years before. Remember the Miss "Teman," about whose name he was not quite certain; the Hogarth sisters' dislike of her; and the mysterious figure in the background of the novelist's later life. Then consider the first bequest in his will, which leaves a substantial sum to one who was neither a relative nor a subordinate, but--may we assume--more than an ordinary friend?

HONORE DE BALZAC AND EVELINA HANSKA

I remember once, when editing an elaborate work on literature, that the publisher called me into his private office. After the door was closed, he spoke in tones of suppressed emotion.

"Why is it," said he, "that you have such a lack of proportion? In the selection you have made I find that only two pages are given to George P. Morris, while you haven't given E. P. Roe any space at all! Yet, look here--you've blocked out fifty pages for Balzac, who was nothing but an immoral Frenchman!"

I adjusted this difficulty, somehow or other--I do not just remember how--and began to think that, after all, this publisher's view of things was probably that of the English and American public. It is strange that so many biographies and so many appreciations of the greatest novelist who ever lived should still have left him, in the eyes of the reading public, little more than "an immoral Frenchman."

"In Balzac," said Taine, "there was a money-broker, an archeologist, an architect, an upholsterer, a tailor, an old-clothes dealer, a journeyman apprentice, a physician, and a notary." Balzac was also a mystic, a supernaturalist, and, above all, a consummate artist. No one who is all these things in high measure, and who has raised himself by his genius above his countrymen, deserves the censure of my former publisher.

Still less is Balzac to be dismissed as "immoral," for his life was one of singular self-sacrifice in spite of much temptation. His face was strongly sensual, his look and bearing denoted almost savage power; he led a free life in a country which allowed much freedom; and yet his story is almost mystic in its fineness of thought, and in its detachment, which was often that of another world.

Balzac was born in 1799, at Tours, with all the traits of the people of his native province--fond of eating and drinking, and with plenty of humor. His father was fairly well off. Of four children, our Balzac was the eldest. The third was his sister Laure, who throughout his life was the most intimate friend he had, and to whom we owe his rescue from much scandalous and untrue gossip. From her we learn that their father was a combination of Montaigne, Rabelais, and "Uncle Toby."

Young Balzac went to a clerical school at seven, and stayed there for seven years. Then he was brought home, apparently much prostrated, although the good fathers could find nothing physically amiss with him, and nothing in his studies to account for his agitation. No one ever did discover just what was the matter, for he seemed well enough in the next few years, basking on the riverside, watching the activities of his native town, and thoroughly studying the rustic types that he was afterward to make familiar to the world. In fact, in Louis Lambert he has set before us a picture of his own boyish life, very much as Dickens did of his in David Copperfield.

For some reason, when these years were over, the boy began to have what is so often known as "a call"--a sort of instinct that he was to attain renown. Unfortunately it happened that about this time (1814) he and his parents removed to Paris, which was his home by choice, until his death in 1850. He studied here under famous teachers, and gave three years to the pursuit of law, of which he was very fond as literary material, though he refused to practise.

This was the more grievous, since a great part of the family property had been lost. The Balzacs were afflicted by actual poverty, and Honore endeavored, with his pen, to beat the wolf back from the door. He earned a little money with pamphlets and occasional stories, but his thirst for fame was far from satisfied. He was sure that he was called to literature, and yet he was not sure that he had the power to succeed. In one of his letters to his sister, he wrote:

I am young and hungry, and there is nothing on my plate. Oh, Laure, Laure, my two boundless desires, my only ones--to be famous, and to be loved--they ever be satisfied?