Death by coffee?

Wednesday, January 10th., Cadogan Square, London

Balzac is one of the most romantic figures in the history of fiction. To me possibly the most romantic of all. I should say that no novelist was ever so dominated by the demon of creative work as Balzac. It is generally believed that he died, at age 50, of work. But I doubt if work ever killed anybody. Balzac's death was due rather to his insane methods of work, and to excessive coffee. When other people went to bed, Balzac went to work. He worked all night and drank coffee all night. Apparently he once wrote 80 pages of a novel in a night. If he had known how to organise his energies he might just have well have written those pages in the daylight. At another period, when ill, defying his doctor, he worked 18 hours at a stretch.

Balzac however was incapable of organising his energy. In practical matters he was a perfect fool. His absurd business schemes were deservedly disastrous. He made quite a lot of money but was usually hard up. Seemingly, his dentist sent him to prison for an unpaid bill! He was always talking about francs; and his novels are full of francs; so are his letters. He wasted half a fortune on proof corrections, simply because he was always in a hurry.

He must have been a very restless worker; probably an effect of the coffee. He once exclaimed: "This year I have killed two armchairs under me." Which means that he either couldn't sit still or the armchairs were acutely gimcrack. One thing is to Balzac's credit in the enterprise of daily existence - he never made his wife unhappy. Because he never lived with a wife. Had he done so he would undoubtedly have made her unhappy, but she would certainly have cured him of working excessively. This consequential result I can attest to from personal experience.

Balzac entirely changed the status of the novel. Nobody before him had ever written novels with the scope of his. And for 80 years afterwards nobody enlarged the scope further. And very few novelists have proved able to draw characters as completely, or as powerfully, as Balzac. Balzac created new characters as easily as Dickens, and far more completely. It appears that for him his characters achieved an independent existence - on his death bed he is alleged to have called out for the character Bianchon, a doctor, to be called to save him!

In recent years I have re-read much Balzac, and regret to say that some of it dates. But the best of his novels do not date. For instance "Cousin Bette", which I always held, and still hold, to be the finest of the lot. Never was achieved a better, more heroical, more ruthless, more touching portrait of a libertine than the portrait of Hulot in this masterpiece.