Encyclopaedia Britannica Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 Part 37

_History._--Of the early history of this portion of the Asiatic continent little or nothing is known. The poverty and natural strength of the country, combined with the ferocious habits of the natives, seem to have equally repelled the friendly visits of inquisitive strangers and the hostile incursions of invading armies. The first distinct account which we have is from Arrian, who, with his usual brevity and severe veracity, narrates the march of Alexander through this region, which he calls the country of the Oreitae and Gadrosii.[2] He gives a very accurate account of this forlorn tract, its general aridity and the necessity of obtaining water by digging in the beds of torrents; describes the food of the inhabitants as dates and fish; and adverts to the occasional occurrence of fertile spots, the abundance of aromatic and th.o.r.n.y shrubs and fragrant plants, and the violence of the monsoon in the western part of Makran. He notices also the impossibility of supporting a large army, and the consequent destruction of the greater part of the men and beasts which accompanied the expedition of Alexander. In the 8th century this country was traversed by an army of the Caliphate.

The precise period at which the Brahuis gained the mastery cannot be accurately ascertained; but it was probably about two and a half centuries ago. The last raja of the Hindu dynasty found himself compelled to call for the a.s.sistance of the mountain shepherds, with their leader, Kambar, in order to check the encroachments of a horde of depredators, headed by an Afghan chief, who infested the country and even threatened to attack the seat of government. Kambar successfully performed the service for which he had been engaged; but having in a few years quelled the robbers against whom he had been called in, and finding himself at the head of the only military tribe in the country, he formally deposed the raja and a.s.sumed the government.

The history of the country after the accession of Kambar is as obscure as during the Hindu dynasty. It would appear, however, that the sceptre was quietly transmitted to Abdulla Khan, the fourth in descent from Kambar, who, being an intrepid and ambitious soldier, turned his thoughts towards the conquest of Kach Gandava, then held by different petty chiefs under the authority of the nawabs of Sind.

After various success, the Kambaranis at length possessed themselves of the sovereignty of a considerable portion of that fruitful plain, including the chief town, Gandava. It was during this contest that the famous Nadir Shah advanced from Persia to the invasion of Hindustan; and while at Kandahar he despatched several detachments into Baluchistan and established his authority in that province. Abdulla Khan, however, was continued in the government of the country by Nadir's orders; but he was soon after killed in a battle with the forces of the nawabs of Sind. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Haji Mahommed Khan, who abandoned himself to the most tyrannical and licentious way of life and alienated his subjects by oppressive taxation. In these circ.u.mstances Nasir Khan, the second son of Abdulla Khan, who had accompanied the victorious Nadir to Delhi, and acquired the favour and confidence of that monarch, returned to Kalat and was hailed by the whole population as their deliverer. Finding that expostulation had no effect upon his brother, he one day entered his apartment and stabbed him to the heart. As soon as the tyrant was dead, Nasir Khan mounted the _musnud_ amidst the universal joy of his subjects; and immediately transmitted a report of the events which had taken place to Nadir Shah, who was then encamped near Kandahar. The shah received the intelligence with satisfaction, and despatched a firman, by return of the messenger, appointing Nasir Khan beglar begi (prince of princes) of all Baluchistan. This event took place in the year 1739.

Nasir Khan proved an active, politic and warlike prince. He took great pains to re-establish the internal government of all the provinces in his dominions, and improved and fortified the city of Kalat. On the death of Nadir Shah in 1747, he acknowledged the t.i.tle of the king of Kabul, Ahmad Shah (Durani). In 1758 he declared himself entirely independent; upon which Ahmad Shah despatched a force against him under one of his ministers. The khan, however, raised an army and totally routed the Afghan army. On receiving intelligence of this discomfiture, the king himself marched with strong reinforcements, and a pitched battle was fought in which Nasir Khan was worsted. He retired in good order to Kalat, whither he was followed by the victor, who invested the place with his whole army. The khan made a vigorous defence; and, after the royal troops had been foiled in their attempts to take the city by storm or surprise, a negotiation was proposed by the king which terminated in a treaty of peace. By this treaty it was stipulated that the king was to receive the cousin of Nasir Khan in marriage; and that the khan was to pay no tribute, but only, when called upon, to furnish troops to a.s.sist the armies, for which he was to receive an allowance in cash equal to half their pay. The khan frequently distinguished himself in the subsequent wars of Kabul; and, as a reward for his services, the king bestowed upon him several districts in perpetual and entire sovereignty. Having succeeded in quelling a dangerous rebellion headed by his cousin Behram Khan, this able prince at length died in extreme old age in the month of June 1795, leaving three sons and five daughters. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Mahmud Khan, then a boy of about fourteen years. During the reign of this prince, who has been described as a very humane and indolent man, the country was distracted by sanguinary broils; the governors of several provinces and districts withdrew their allegiance; and the dominions of the khans of Kalat gradually so diminished that they now comprehend only a small portion of the provinces formerly subject to Nasir Khan.

In 1839, when the British army advanced through the Bolan Pa.s.s towards Afghanistan, the conduct of Mehrab Khan, the ruler of Baluchistan, was considered so treacherous and dangerous as to require "the exaction of retribution from that chieftain," and "the execution of such arrangements as would establish future security in that quarter." General Wills.h.i.+re was accordingly detached from the army of the Indus with 1050 men to a.s.sault Kalat. A gate was knocked in by the field-pieces, and the town and citadel were stormed in a few minutes. Above 400 Baluches were slain, among them Mehrab Khan himself; and 2000 prisoners were taken. Subsequent inquiries have, however, proved that the treachery towards the British was not [v.03 p.0295] on the part of Mehrab Khan, but on that of his vizier, Mahommed Hussein, and certain chiefs with whom he was in league, and at whose instigation the British convoys were plundered in their pa.s.sage through Kach Gandava and in the Bolan Pa.s.s. The treacherous vizier, however, made our too credulous political officers believe that Mehrab Khan was to blame; his object being to bring his master to ruin and to obtain for himself all power in the state, knowing that Mehrab's successor was only a child. How far he succeeded in his object history has shown. In the following year Kalat changed hands, the governor established by the British, together with a feeble garrison, being overpowered. At the close of the same year it was reoccupied by the British under General Nott. In 1841 Nasir Khan II., the youthful son of the slain Mehrab Khan, was recognized by the British, who soon after evacuated the country.

From the conquest of Sind by the British troops under the command of General Sir Charles Napier in 1843 up to 1854 no diplomatic intercourse occurred worthy of note between the British and Baluch states. In the latter year, however, under the governor-generals.h.i.+p of the marquess of Dalhousie, General John Jacob, C.B., at the time political superintendent and commandant on the Sind frontier, was deputed to arrange and conclude a treaty between the Kalat state, then under the chieftains.h.i.+p of Nasir Khan and the British government. This treaty was executed on the 14th of May 1854 and was to the following effect:--

"That the former offensive and defensive treaty, concluded in 1841 by Major Outram between the British government and Nasir Khan II., chief of Kalat, was to be annulled.

"That Nasir Khan II., his heirs and successors, bound themselves to oppose to the utmost all the enemies of the British government, and in all cases to act in subordinate co-operation with that government, and to enter into no negotiations with other states without its consent.

"That should it be deemed necessary to station British troops in any part of the territory of Kalat, they shall occupy such positions as may be thought advisable by the British authorities.

"That the Baluch chief was to prevent all plundering on the part of his subjects within or in the neighbourhood of British territory.

"That he was further to protect all merchants pa.s.sing through his territory, and only to exact from them a transit duty, fixed by schedule attached to the treaty; and that, on condition of a faithful performance of these duties, he was to receive from the British government an annual subsidy of Rs.50,000 (5000)."

The provisions of the above treaty were most loyally performed by Nasir Khan up to the time of his death in 1856. He was succeeded by his brother, Mir Khodadud Khan, when a youth of twelve years of age, who, however, did not obtain his position before he had put down by force a rebellion on the part of his turbulent chiefs, who had first elected him, but, not receiving what they considered an adequate reward from his treasury, sought to depose him in favour of his cousin Sher dil Khan. In the latter part of 1857, the Indian rebellion being at its height and the city of Delhi still in the hands of the rebels, a British officer (Major Henry Green) was deputed, on the part of the British government, to reside as political agent with the Khan at Kalat and to a.s.sist him by his advice in maintaining control over his turbulent tribes. This duty was successfully performed until 1863, when, during the temporary absence of Major Malcolm Green, the then political agent, Khodadad Khan was, at the instigation of some of his princ.i.p.al chiefs, attacked while out riding by his cousin, Sher dil Khan, and severely wounded. Khodadad fled in safety to a residence close to the British border, and Sher dil Khan was elected and proclaimed Khan. His rule was, however, a short one, for early in 1864, when proceeding to Kalat, he was murdered in the Gandava Pa.s.s; and Khodadad was again elected chief by the very men who had only the previous year caused his overthrow, and who had lately been accomplices to the murder of his cousin. After the above events Khodadad maintained his precarious position with great difficulty; but owing to his inability to govern his unruly subjects without material a.s.sistance from the British government, which they were not disposed to give, his country gradually fell into the greatest anarchy; and, consequently, some of the provisions of the treaty of 1854 having been broken, diplomatic relations were discontinued with the Kalat state after the end of 1874.

After this the chiefs of Las and Wad, the Marris and Bugtis, Kej and Makran all threw off their allegiance, and anarchy became so widespread that the British government again interfered. The treaty of 1854 was renewed in 1876 by Lord Lytton (under Sandeman's advice), and the khan received substantial aid from the government in the form of an annual subsidy of a lakh of rupees, instead of the Rs.50,000 previously a.s.signed to him. The treaty of 1854 was a treaty of alliance offensive and defensive. The treaty of 1876 renewed these terms, but utterly changed the policy of non-intervention which was maintained by the former, by the recognition of the sirdars as well as the khan, and by the appointment of the British government as referee in cases of dispute between them. British troops were to be located in the khan's country; Quetta was founded; telegraphs and railways were projected; roads were made; and the reign of law and order established. The nebulous claims of Afghanistan to Sibi and Pis.h.i.+n were disposed of by the treaty of Gandamak in the spring of 1879, and the final consolidation of the existing form of Kalat administration was effected by Sandeman's expedition to Kharan in 1883, and the reconciliation of Azad Khan, the great Naus.h.i.+rwani chief, with the khan of Kalat. British Baluchistan was incorporated with British India by the resolution of 1st November 1887, and divided into two districts--Quetta-Pis.h.i.+n and Thai Chotiali--to be administered by a deputy-commissioner and a regular staff.

In 1890 and 1891 were carried out that series of politico-military expeditions which resulted in the occupation of the Zhob valley, the foundation of the central cantonment of Fort Sandeman, and the extension of a line of outposts which, commencing at Quetta, may be said to rest on Wana north of the Gomal. The effect of these expeditions, and of this extension of military occupation, has been to reduce the independent Pathan tribes of the Suliman mountains to effective order, and to put a stop to border raiding on the Indus plains south of the Gomal. In 1893 serious differences arose between the khan of Kalat and Sir James Browne, who succeeded Sir Robert Sandeman as agent to the governor-general in Baluchistan, arising out of Mir Khodadad Khan's outrageous conduct in the management of his own court, and the treatment of his officials. Finally, the khan was deposed, and his son Mir Mahmud Khan succeeded in November 1893. Since then the most important change in Baluch administration has been the perpetual lease and transfer of management to British agency of the Nushki district and Niabat, with all rights, jurisdiction and administrative power, in lieu of a perpetual rent of Rs.9000 per annum. This was effected in July 1899. This secures the direct control of the great highway to Seistan which has been opened to khafila and railway traffic.

The revenues of the khan of Kalat consist partly of subsidies and partly of agricultural revenue, the total value being about Rs.500,000 per annum.

Since 1882 he has received Rs.25,000 as government rent for the Quetta district, besides Rs.30,000 in lieu of transit duties in the Boian; this has been increased lately by Rs.9000 as already stated. In 1899 the total imports of Kalat were valued at Rs.700,000, and the exports at Rs.505,000.

AUTHORITIES.--The Seistan Boundary Report of 1873 by Sir F. Goldsmid; Floyer, _Unexplored Baluchistan_ (London, 1882); T. Thornton, _Life of Sandeman_ (London, 1896); G. P. Tate, _Kalat, a Memoir_ (Calcutta, 1896); Sir T. Holdich, "Ethnographic and Historical Notes on Makran," Calcutta, 1892 (_Survey Report_); "Antiquities, Ethnography, &c., of Las Bela and Makran," Calcutta, 1894 (_Survey Report_); "Ancient and Medieval Makran,"

vol. vii. _R.G.S. Journal_ (1896); "Perso-Baluch Boundary," vol. ix.

_R.G.S. Journal_ (1897); McMahon, "The Southern Borderland of Afghanistan,"

vol. x. _Journal R.G.S_. (1897). Notes on Sir R. Sandeman's tours in Baluchistan will be found in vols. v., xii., xiii. and xiv. of the _R.G.S.

Proceedings_; _Popular Poetry of the Baloches_, by M. Longworth-Dames (2 vols., _Roy. As. Soc._ 1907).

(T. H. H.*)

[1] See W. T. Blanford, "Geological Notes on the Hills in the neighbourhood of the Sind and Punjab Frontier between Quetta and Dera Ghazi Khan," _Mem.

Geol. Surv. India_, vol. xx. pt. 2 (1883); E. Vredenburg, "A Geological Sketch of the Baluchistan Desert, and part of Eastern Persia," _Mem. Geol.

Surv. India_, vol. x.x.xi. pt. 2 (1901); E. Vredenburg, "On the Occurrence of a Species of Halorites in the Trias of Baluchistan," _Rec. Geol. Surv.

India_, vol. x.x.xi. (1904), pp. 162-166, pls. 17, 18.

[2] See V. A. Smith, _Early Hist. of India_ (ed. 1908), p. 103 seq.

BALUCHISTAN, a province of Persia consisting of the western part of Baluchistan (_q.v._) in a wider sense. Persian Baluchistan has an area of about 60,000 sq. m., and lying along the northern sh.o.r.e of the Arabian Sea, is bounded E. by British and [v.03 p.0296] independent Baluchistan, N. by Seistan and the central Persian desert, and W. by Kerman. The country has little water and only a small part of it is under cultivation, the remainder being composed of arid, waterless plains, deserts--some stony, others with moving sands--barren hills and mountains. The princ.i.p.al rivers are the Mashkid and that of Bampur which flow away from the sea and are lost in depressions called _hamuns_. The rivers which flow into the sea are unimportant and dry during the greater part of the year. Persian Baluchistan forms an administrative division of the province of Kerman and is subdivided into the following twenty districts:--(1) Bampur; (2) Serhad; (3) Dizek; (4) Jalk; (5) Sib; (6) Irafshan; (7) Magas; (8) Serbaz; (9) Lashar; (10) Champ; (11) Fannuj; (12) Bazman; (13) Aptar; (14) Daman; (15) Aprandagan; (16) Asfehgeh; (17) Surmij; (18) Meskutan; (19) Pushteh; (20) Makran, the country of the Ichthyophagi, with the subdistricts Kasrkand, Geh, Bint, Dasht, Kucheh and Bahu. The total population of Baluchistan is under 200,000. The province was practically independent until the occupation of Bampur by Persian troops in 1849, and over some of the extreme eastern districts Persian supremacy was not recognized until 1872.

BALUE, JEAN (_c._ 1421-1491), French cardinal and minister of Louis XI., was born of very humble parentage at Angle in Poitou, and was first patronized by the bishop of Poitiers. In 1461 he became vicar-general of the bishop of Angers. His activity, cunning and mastery of intrigue gained him the appreciation of Louis XI., who made him his almoner. In a short time Balue became a considerable personage. In 1465 he received the bishopric of evreux; the king made him _le premier du grant conseil_, and, in spite of his dissolute life, obtained for him a cardinalate (1468). But in that year Balue was compromised in the king's humiliation by Charles the Bold at Peronne and excluded from the council. He then intrigued with Charles against his master: their secret correspondence was intercepted, and on the 23rd of April 1469 Balue was thrown into prison, where he remained eleven years, but not, as has been alleged, in an iron cage. In 1480, through the intervention of Pope Sixtus IV., he was set at liberty, and from that time lived in high favour at the court of Rome. He received the bishopric of Albano and afterwards that of Palestrina. In 1484 he was even sent to France as legate _a latere_. He died at Ancona in 1491.

See Henri Forgeot, "Jean Balue, cardinal d'Angers" (1895), in the _Bibliotheque de l'ecole des hautes etudes_.

BAl.u.s.tER (through the Fr. from the Ital. _balaustro_, so-called from a supposed likeness to the flower of the [Greek: balaustion], or wild pomegranate; the word has been corrupted in English into "banister"), a small moulded shaft, square or circular, in stone or wood and sometimes in metal, supporting the coping of a parapet or the rail of a staircase, an a.s.semblage of them being known as a bal.u.s.trade. The earliest examples are those shown in the bas-reliefs representing the a.s.syrian palaces, where they were employed as window bal.u.s.trades and apparently had Ionic capitals.

They do not seem to have been known to either the Greeks or the Romans, but early examples are found in the balconies in the palaces at Venice and Verona. In the hands of the Italian revivalists they became features of the greatest importance, and were largely employed for window balconies and roof parapets.

The term "bal.u.s.ter shaft" is given to the shaft dividing a window in Saxon architecture. In the south transept of the abbey at St Albans, England, are some of these shafts, supposed to have been taken from the old Saxon church. Norman bases and capitals have been added, together with plain cylindrical Norman shafts.

BAl.u.s.tRADE, a parapet or low screen consisting of a coping or rail supported on bal.u.s.ters (_q.v._). Sometimes it is employed purely as a decorative feature beneath the sill of a window which was not carried down to the ground. Sometimes flowing foliage takes the place of the parapet, and sometimes so-called bal.u.s.trades are formed of vertical slabs of stone, pierced as in the Ca' d'oro at Venice and the balconies of the minarets at Cairo.

BALUZE, eTIENNE (1630-1718), French scholar, was born at Tulle on the 24th of November 1630. He was educated at his native town and took minor orders.

As secretary to Pierre de Marca, archbishop of Toulouse, he won the appreciation of that learned prelate to such a degree that at his death Marca left him all his papers. Thus it came about that Baluze produced the first complete edition of Marca's treatise _De libertatibus Ecclesiae Gallicanae_ (1663), and brought out his _Marca hispanica_ (1688 f.). About 1667 Baluze entered Colbert's service, and until 1700 was in charge of the invaluable library belonging to that minister and to his son the marquis de Seignelai. He enriched it prodigiously (see the history of the Colbertine library in the _Cabinet des Ma.n.u.scrits_ by M. Leopold Delisle, vol. i.), and Colbert rewarded him by obtaining various benefices for him, and the post of king's almoner (1679). Subsequently Baluze was appointed professor of Canon law at the College de France on the 31st of December 1689, and directed that great inst.i.tution from 1707 to 1710.

The works which place him in the first rank of the scholars of his time are the _Capitularia Regum Francorum_ (1674; new edition enlarged and corrected in 1780); the _Nova Collectio Conciliorum_ (4 vols., 1677); the _Miscellanea_ (7 vols., 1678-1715; new edition revised by Mansi, 4 vols.

f., 1761-1764); the _Letters of Pope Innocent III._ (1682); and, finally, the _Vitae Paparum Avenionensium, 1305-1394_ (1693). But he was unfortunate enough to take up the history of Auvergne just at the time when the cardinal de Bouillon, inheritor of the rights, and above all of the ambitious pretensions of the La Tour family, was endeavouring to prove the descent of that house in the direct line from the ancient hereditary counts of Auvergne of the 9th century.

As authentic doc.u.ments in support of these pretensions could not be found, false ones were fabricated. The production of spurious genealogies had already been begun in the _Histoire de la maison d'Auvergne_ published by Christophe Justel in 1645; and Chorier, the historian of Dauphiny, had included in the second volume of his history (1672) a forged deed which connected the La Tours of Dauphiny with the La Tours of Auvergne. Next a regular manufactory of forged doc.u.ments was organized by a certain Jean de Bar, an intimate companion of the cardinal. These rogues were skilful enough, for they succeeded in duping the most ill.u.s.trious scholars; Dom Jean Mabillon, the founder of Diplomatics, Dom Thierry Ruinart and Baluze himself, called as experts, made a unanimously favourable report on the 23rd of July 1695. But cardinal de Bouillon had many enemies, and a war of pamphlets began. In March 1698 Baluze in reply wrote a _Letter_ which proved nothing. Two years later, in 1700, Jean de Bar and his accomplices were arrested, and after a long and searching inquiry were declared guilty in 1704. Baluze, nevertheless, was obstinate in his opinion. He was convinced that the incriminated doc.u.ments were genuine and proposed to do Justel's work anew. Encouraged and financially supported by the cardinal de Bouillon, he first produced a _Table genealogique_ in 1705, and then in 1709 a _Histoire genealogique de la maison d'Auvergne_, with "Proofs,"

among which, unfortunately, we find all the deeds which had been p.r.o.nounced spurious. In the following year he was suddenly engulfed in the disgrace which overtook his intriguing patron: deprived of his appointments, pensions and benefices, he was exiled far from Paris. None the less he continued to work, and in 1717 published a history of his native town, _Historiae Tutelensis libri tres_. Before his death he succeeded in returning to Paris, where he died unconvinced of his errors on the 28th of July 1718. Was he dupe or accomplice? The study of his correspondence with the cardinal gives the impression that he was the victim of clever cheats.

The history of the forgeries committed in the interests of the house of Bouillon forms a curious and instructive episode in the history of French scholars.h.i.+p in the time of Louis XIV. It is to be found in the _Manuel de diplomatique_ by A. Giry; and above all in a note to the _Oeuvres de Saint-Simon_ by M. de Boislisle (vol. xiv. pp. 533-558). The bibliography of Baluze's researches has been made by M. Rene f.a.ge (1882, 1884) and his _Life_ told by M. emile f.a.ge (1899). To these we must add an amusing book by G. Clement-Simon, _La Gaiete de Baluze; doc.u.ments biographiques et litteraires_ [v.03 p.0297] (1888). Baluze's will has been published by M.

Leopold Delisle (_Bibliotheque de l'ecole de Chartes_, 1872); his papers are now in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and in the Bibliotheque de l'a.r.s.enal (_Revue historique_, t. xcviii. p. 309). See also the article by Arthur de Boislisle in the _Revue des questions historiques_ for October 1908.

(C. B.*)

BALZAC, HONORe DE (1799-1850), French novelist, was born at Tours on the 20th of May 1799. His father, Bernard Francois, never called himself _de_ Balzac and Honore only a.s.sumed the particle after 1830. But the father had equally little right to the name of Balzac at all, for his birth-certificate has been recently discovered. The true name was "Balssa,"

and this in various forms ("Balsa," "Balsas") has been traced for more than a century before the novelist's birth as that of a family of day-labourers or very small peasant proprietors in the parish of Canezac, department of the Tarn. It is probable that the novelist himself was not aware of this, and his father appears to have practised some mystification as to his own professional career. In and after the Revolution, however, he actually attained positions of some importance in the commissariat and hospital departments of the army, and he married in 1797 Anne Charlotte Laure Sallambier, who was a beauty, an heiress, and a woman of considerable faculty. She survived her son; the father died in 1829. There were two sisters (the elder, Laure, afterwards Madame Surville, was her brother's favourite and later his biographer), and a younger brother, Henri, of whom we hear little and that little not very favourable.

Honore was put out to nurse till he was four years old, and in 1806, when he was seven, was sent to the _college_ (grammar school) of Vendome, where he remained till April 1813 as a strict boarder without any holidays. From this he pa.s.sed as a day-boy to the _college_ of Tours. His father's official work was transferred to Paris the year after, and Balzac came under the teaching of a royalist private schoolmaster, M. Lepitre, and others. He left school altogether in 1816, being then between seventeen and eighteen. His experiences at Vendome served as base for much of _Louis Lambert_, and he seems to have been frequently in disgrace. Later, his teachers appear to have found him remarkable neither for good nor for evil.

He was indeed never a scholar; but he must have read a good deal, and as he certainly had no time for it later, much of this reading must have been done early.

The profession which Balzac's father chose for him was the law; and he not only pa.s.sed through the schools thereof, and duly obtained his _licence_, but had three years' practical experience in the offices of a notary and a solicitor (_avoue_), for the latter of whom, M. Guillonnet-Merville, he seems to have had a sincere respect. But though no man of letters has ever had, in some ways, such a fancy for business, no man of business could ever come out of such a born man of letters. And when in 1820 (the _licence_ having been obtained and M. Balzac, senior, having had some losses) the father wished the son to become a practising lawyer in one or another branch, Honore revolted. His family had left Paris, and they tried to starve him into submission by establis.h.i.+ng him in a garret with a very small allowance. Here he began to write tragedies, corresponded (in letters which have fortunately been preserved) with his sister Laure, and, most important of all, attempted something in prose fiction. The tragedy _Cromwell_ was actually completed and read to friends if not to others; nay more, the ma.n.u.script exists in the hands of M. Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, the great authority on Balzac's life and bibliography; but it has never been published. The novels, _Cocqsigrue_ and _Stella_, proved abortions, but were only the first of many attempts at his true way until he found it.

Drama he never abandoned; but for him it was always an error.

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 t.i.tle 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 t.i.tle 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.n.a.lytic-satirical sketches which compose the _Physiologie du mariage_, and which ill.u.s.trate 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 acc.u.mulating, 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 friends.h.i.+ps 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,--antic.i.p.ations 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 friends.h.i.+ps with the other s.e.x 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 fas.h.i.+on; 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 const.i.tuted 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, friends.h.i.+p 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 t.i.tle 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 const.i.tuents, 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 const.i.tuents 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 Pa.s.sion dans le desert_ and _Un episode sous la Terreur_.