Balzac's love affairs and his epistolary romance with Evelina Hanska

The notion that Balzac remained a virgin until the age of forty, and that he is forever being dragged into all manner of lists of celibates, deserves to be treated with suspicion.

It is especially odd, of course, to imagine that he could have lost his virginity at forty: potbellied, bandy-legged, balding, toothless and puffy.

Besides, a good deal is known about his liaisons, peculiar as they were. At twenty, for instance, he was seeing a mature aristocrat who already had five children; he saw her for almost 15 years, and then she died. But what matters is that his chosen lady always gave Honoré material support.

He was also involved with a married Englishwoman, who likewise kept him afloat with a louis d'or (or, if you like, a napoleon d'or).

There was an episode with a marquise who left her husband for the son of an Austrian chancellor, bore him a child, and then broke her spine. The image of a lady in a corset can be found in "The Duchesse de Langeais".

And beyond the multitude of flings there is the well-known romantic story of Evelina Hańska, who wrote to him of her infatuation and began an epistolary romance. He married her after some ten years of correspondence, and soon afterwards died himself.