Tuesday, 8th November, 2011
‘Money has never lost the least opportunity of showing how stupid it is,’ we are told in Chapter 29 of Balzac’s Cousin Bette. The following is by no means complete (or even certain) but it gives a fuller view of Monsieur Hulot’s finances in the novel c.1838, than that offered in David Bellos’s La Cousine Bette (London: Grant & Cutler, 1980).
I am fairly sure that it would be possible to chart all the transactions of the novel and in doing so demonstrate the flow of money (and power) from those made successful by the Empire before the novel begins, to the new bourgeoisie by the novel’s close. I suspect that such a tally would also, as this brief glimpse indicates, reveal that ‘the money plot’ simply does not hang together, that the figures liberally thrown about in the novel are intentionally ridiculous. Bette is an economist, Hulot has no grasp of money and as a result his figures do not add up.
Monsieur Hulot’s finances c.1838
| INCOME | OUTGOINGS | ||
| Ministry of War salary | 25,000 | Rent | 6,000 |
| Living expenses | 30,000 | ||
| Cost of four servants | ???? | ||
| Affair with Josépha | 50,000 | ||
| IOUs from Johann Fischer | 30,000 | ||
| Part payment on sculpture* | 1,000 | ||
| Setting up Valérie’s flat | 30,000 | ||
| Gifts for Valérie | 10,000 | ||
| Dowry for Victorin† | 200,000 | ||
| Hortense’s Dowry | 200,000 | ||
| Sale of Adeline’s diamonds ‡ | 6,000 | ||
| Loan from Nucigen ‡ | 70,000 | ||
| Sale of Johann’s business‡ | 40,000 | ||
| Investment in Govt. stock‡ | 60,000 | ||
| *The total cost of Wenceslas’s sculpture is 13,000 francs. Hortense covers the rest of the price with the entirety of her savings. | |||
| †Arranges for Victorin to raise this money himself. | |||
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‡ Monies raised to cover Hortense’s dowry and trousseau @ 200,000 francs. |
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JRWB 