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Page 1
I have often felt disposed to ask those who would assert Balzac's
absolute infallibility as a gynaecologist to give me a reasoned
criticism of the heroine of this novel. I do not entirely "figure to
myself" Dinah de la Baudraye. It is perfectly possible that she should
have loved a "sweep" like Lousteau, there is certainly nothing
extremely unusual in a woman loving worse sweeps even than he. But
would she have done it, and having done it, have also done what she
did afterwards? These questions may be answered differently; I do not
answer them in the negative myself, but I cannot give them an
affirmative answer with the conviction which I should like to show.
Among the minor characters, the _substitut_ de Clagny has a touch of
nobility which contrasts happily enough with Lousteau's unworthiness.
Bianchon is as good as usual; Balzac always gives Bianchon a favorable
part. Madame Piedefer is one of the numerous instances in which the
unfortunate class of mothers-in-law atones for what are supposed to be
its crimes against the human race; and old La Baudraye, not so
hopelessly repulsive in a French as he would be in an English novel,
is a shrewd old rascal enough.
But I cannot think the scene of the Parisians _blaguing_ the
Sancerrois is a very happy one. That it is in exceedingly bad taste
might not matter so very much; Balzac would reply, and justly, that he
had not intended to represent it as anything else. That the fun is not
very funny may be a matter of definition and appreciation. But what
scarcely admits of denial or discussion is that it is tyrannously too
long. The citations of _Olympia_ are pushed beyond measure, beyond
what is comic, almost beyond the license of farce; and the comments,
which remind one rather of the heavy jesting on critics in _Un Prince
de la Boheme_ and the short-lived _Revue Parisienne_, are labored to
the last degree. The part of Nathan, too, is difficult to appreciate
exactly, and altogether the book does not seem to me a _reussite_.
The history of _L'Illustre Gaudissart_ is, for a story of Balzac's,
almost null. It was inserted without any previous newspaper appearance
in the first edition of _Scenes de la Vie de Province_ in 1833, and
entered with the rest of them into the first edition also of the
_Comedie_, when the joint title, which it has kept since and shared
with _La Muse du Departement_, of _Les Parisiens en Province_ was
given to it.
_La Muse du Departement_ has a rather more complicated record than its
companion piece in _Les Parisiens en Province_, L'Illustre
Gaudissart_. It appeared at first, not quite complete and under the
title of _Dinah Piedefer_, in _Le Messager_ during March and April
1843, and was almost immediately published as a book, with works of
other writers, under the general title of _Les Mysteres de Province_,
and accompanied by some other work of its own author's. It had four
parts and fifty-two chapters in _Le Messager_, an arrangement which
was but slightly altered in the volume form. M. de Lovenjoul gives
some curious indications of mosaic work in it, and some fragments
which do not now appear in the text.
George Saintsbury
THE ILLUSTRIOUS GAUDISSART
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By
Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
To Madame la Duchesse de Castries.
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