THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN COMFORT

As well as that of our feelings, we would find in them the history of our morals. Who doesn't know, for example, that Balzac's work is a wonderful anecdotal treasure? MM. Henri Bachelin and Henri Dumesnil would demonstrate this, if necessary, by studying, in the Revue de Paris, how the "Human Comedy" makes it possible to date fairly precisely the origins of the foreign influences which, towards the middle of the last century, revolutionized French habits. We basically know that “modern comfort” came to us from England, when did the word and the thing become acclimatized in Paris? Balzac responds:

He carefully notes this progress. In La Peau de Chagrin, Raphaël de Valentin entering the home of the Countess of Fodora, in 1827, climbs a staircase where he notices “all the searches for English comfort. Each room has, as with the most opulent English, its particular character. »

This love of well-being is not only found in aristocratic hotels. As early as 1816, one could see in Paris in “some newly built houses, these apartments which seem made expressly for newlyweds to spend their honeymoon there”. There, everything is fresh and convenient. A simple and fresh antechamber, covered in stucco at sill height, gives entrance to a living room and a small dining room. The living room communicates with a pretty bedroom to which is adjoined a bathroom..." This apartment, rue Taitbout, is the one where the Count of Granville installed his mistress, Caroline Crochard. (A Double Family)...

Balzac, thus, is more than a novelist, more even than a historian: a historiographer. We find in him the origins of our tics and our manias.