ÉMILE ZOLA

"If, upon your side, you have the testimony
of your conscience, and, against you, that
of the multitude, take comfort, rest assured
that time will do justice."— DIDEROT

[Pg vii]

This book is an attempt to chronicle the chief incidents in the life of the late Émile Zola, and to set out the various aims he had in view at different periods of a career which was one of the most strenuous the modern world has known. Virtually all his work is enumerated in the following pages, which, though some are given to argument and criticism, will be found crowded with facts. The result may not be very artistic, but it has been partially my object to show what a tremendous worker Zola was, how incessantly, how stubbornly, he practised the gospel which he preached. An attempt has been made also to show the growth of humanitarian and reforming passions in his heart and mind, passions which became so powerful at last that the "novelist" in Zola seemed as nothing. Yet I do not think I can be charged with having neglected the literary side of his career. It is that which bulks most largely in the present volume, and that I think is as it should be, for while Zola was certainly, and in some respects essentially, a Reformer, the pen was the weapon with which he strove to effect his purposes.

Designed more particularly for British and American readers, the book contains some passages which I should have abbreviated—omitted perhaps—if I had been addressing a French audience. And some subjects, which, in that case, I might have treated more fully, have here been dealt with briefly. For instance, though I have enumerated all the[Pg viii] plays that Zola wrote, and most of those founded by others on his works, I have not entered into any real discussion of his views respecting the stage, or of his indirect influence on it in France. I have thought it sufficient to indicate that such influence was exercised. A full examination of Zola's relations with the stage would have materially increased the length of a work which is long already, and which I have been anxious to keep within the scope of one volume—a desire which has made my task more difficult than it would have been had I used my materials in all their fulness. But I am distinctly of opinion that biographies in several volumes have nowadays little chance of surviving, even for a moderate number of years.

With respect to Zola's share in the Dreyfus case everybody will recognise, I think, how difficult it is to narrate the doings of any one individual in such an intricate mêlée without constant reference to the other combatants and explanation of the many points at issue. Nevertheless, though I fully recognise that the deliverance of Captain Dreyfus was not effected by Zola only, that many other able and whole-hearted men co-operated in that great achievement, I have endeavoured to disentangle Zola's share in the battle from that of the others, saying of them only what has seemed to me strictly necessary to explain his actions. I mention this in order that none may think me unjust towards Zola's fellow-fighters. And though in some introductory pages I have endeavoured to indicate the primary causes of the Affair, such as I think them to have been, in the hope that the reader may be better able to understand the fury of the fray, I have not plunged into a discussion of the Affair itself. Besides, M. Dreyfus's case is now once more before the Cour de Cassation, and reserve on a variety of matters has therefore become advisable. Further, for some years already, a far abler pen than mine, wielded by one of far greater authority, M. Joseph Reinach, has been retracing the many episodes of the Affair,[Pg ix] and one may take it, I think, that "L'Histoire de l'Affaire Dreyfus" will not end without casting light even on matters which may still seem obscure.

In one of my chapters I mention an episode in Zola's private life, which is already known to so many people that it would have been ridiculous on my part to have attempted to conceal it, even if it had been right to do so. I will not enlarge on the subject here, for it is discussed in its proper place, I will merely reiterate my conviction that if a biographer may well be kind to the virtues and a little blind to the errors of a man he has loved it is nevertheless his duty to his readers to omit nothing that may be essential for a right understanding of the man's life.

Further, in another section of the book, I have recounted the incidents of the prosecution instituted against my father with respect to certain translations of Zola's novels. And in this connection I have had occasion to say something about certain fanatics, and also about the attitude of the majority of the British newspaper press before it realised that Zola was not so black as it had painted him. Even after the lapse of long years, such matters and their consequences cannot be recalled by one who suffered by them without some feeling of resentment. It is true that in my preface to the English version of Zola's last book I expressed my acknowledgments to the press generally for the leniency, patience, and even favour that had been shown to me from the time I began to re-introduce Zola's works to the British public. Those acknowledgments I am quite ready to reiterate, in despite of the matters with which I deal in a chapter of the present book, for those matters belong to an earlier period. But a sense of duty and justice to my father, to my brothers and other relatives, to myself as well, has made it impossible for me to overlook the period in question, and what I regard largely as its aberrations. Besides, in a book intended for English readers, it is only fit that the[Pg x] attitude of the English public towards Zola should be dealt with.

Most of the illustrations accompanying my text are from photographs, several of them taken specially for this book; but I have to express my acknowledgments to the proprietors of the Illustrated London News for their kind permission to reproduce various views of the rooms in which much of Zola's life was spent.

E. A. V.

"MERTON, SURREY
March, 1904

[Pg xi]

APPENDIX

A.—Declaration of Zola's birth

B.—Declaration of his death

C.—Note on some English translations of his novels

INDEX

[Pg xii]
[Pg xiii]

[Pg xiv]
[Pg 1]

It has been contended, with some plausibility, that the Italian word zola is simply a variant of zolla, which means, in a restricted sense, a clod or lump of earth, and, in a broader one, the glebe or soil This circumstance has suggested to certain detractors of Émile Zola and his writings the scornful remark that he was at least well named, having been, indeed, of the earth earthy. Others have retorted, however, that he may well have taken pride in such association, for, far from disowning his Mother Earth, he acknowledged and proclaimed her beneficence, showed himself her worthy son, and a true and zealous brother to all compounded of her clay. In the course of the present memoir it will become necessary to examine the blame and praise so freely showered upon Zola[Pg 2] by his enemies and his admirers; but this can be done irrespective of any such fanciful consideration as the alleged meaning of his name. All discussion of that meaning may be left to philologists and those who are superstitiously inclined to detect predestination in nomenclature. At the same time, it may be as well to point out that the name of Zola is borne by several localities in Northern Italy. For instance, there are two villages so called in Lombardy,—one near Palestro in the province of Pavia, and another in the Valle di sotto, province of Sondrio. In the Emilia, moreover, towards Bologna, there is the small but ancient township of Zola-Predosa, which takes its name from two castellanies united early in the fourteenth century. And as far south as Tuscany, in the province of Florence, one finds a village called Zola incorporated in the Comune di Terra del Sole, and yet another which is named Zola di Modigliana. If, as is possible, the family to which Émile Zola belonged derived its patronymic from some specific locality, this may well have been one of the Lombardian Zolas; for though all the published accounts of the great novelist's progenitors associate them chiefly with Venice, it is certain that they were long connected with Brescia, Lombardy's fairest city, and one which passed for a time under Venetian rule.

The first notable Zola of whom some account has been preserved was a certain Giovanni Battista, born at Brescia between 1570 and 1580. Educated for the Church, he joined the Society of Jesus, and, in or about 1600, proceeded to Goa as a missionary. From India he made his way to Japan, whither St. Francis Xavier and others, following Mendez Pinto, had carried the cross half a century earlier. Remarkable success attended the first endeavours of the[Pg 3] Jesuit missionaries among the Japanese, but their principles were incompatible with tolerance. Throwing caution to the winds, they dictated when they should have been content to teach and persuade, destroyed native shrines, and plotted with disaffected nobles, in such wise that Christianity, after recruiting, it is said, some two hundred thousand adherents in the realm of the Rising Sun, was placed under interdict by the Emperor. Terrible slaughter ensued, and among those who perished at the hands of the Shintoists and Buddhists was the zealous Giovanni Battista Zola. In our own times, under the pontificate of Pius IX, he was placed, like the other holy martyrs of Japan, among the saints of the Roman Catholic Church.

At the confluence of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, another Zola, likewise a Churchman, rose to a position of some eminence. This was the Abate Giuseppe Zola, born in 1739 at Concesio, near Brescia, in which city he became successively librarian, professor of morals, and rector of the university. But he was a man of broad views, one whose dream was to reform and rejuvenate the Church—even like Abbé Pierre Froment in Émile Zola's "Lourdes" and "Rome." In 1771 the theological views professed by Giuseppe Zola brought him into conflict with his Bishop and the Jesuits. He was forced to quit the university; a three-volume work which he had written on the early Christians prior to Constantine and two volumes of his theological lectures were denounced to the Congregation of the "Index expurgatorius"; and—in this instance also like Abbé Pierre Froment—he journeyed to Rome in the hope of justifying himself. In the end—once more anticipating Abbé Pierre—he had to make his[Pg 4] submission. Then, for three years, he remained at Rome, teaching morals; but the influence of his enemies, the Jesuits, was waning, and not long after the promulgation of Ganganelli's historic brief suppressing Loyola's Order, Zola obtained an appointment as rector and professor of ecclesiastical history at a seminary for Hungarian students, established at Pavia by the Emperor Joseph II.

He proved a zealous partisan of that monarch's reforms; he imagined, too, that the suppression of the Jesuits meant the dawn of a new era for the Church. Thus he indulged fearlessly in advanced religious and political views, his persuasive eloquence carrying most of the professors of Pavia with him. The Church then again treated him as a rebel; he was accused of infecting his seminary with heresy; and not only was he deprived of his rectorship, but the institution itself was closed. At last came the French Revolution; and the victories of the Republican arms in Italy brought Zola the professorships of history, jurisprudence, and diplomacy at the Pavian University. During the brief revival of Austrian rule (1799-1800) he was once more cast out, to be reinstated, however, immediately after Marengo. The last important incident of his life was a journey to Lyons as one of the Lombardian deputies whom Napoleon summoned thither when he constituted his Kingdom of Italy. A year later, 1806, Giuseppe Zola passed away at his native place. He was a man of considerable erudition, broad sympathies, and untiring energy. Besides writing a dozen volumes on theological and historical subjects, he edited and annotated numerous books,[1] invariably turning to literature for consolation [Pg 5]amid the vicissitudes of his career, which has been recounted here at some little length because it is of a suggestive nature when one remembers that the Abate Giuseppe was a kinsman of the progenitors of Émile Zola.

Those progenitors belonged to a branch of the family which had established itself at Venice, and which became noted for its men of the sword, even as the Brescian branch was noted for its Churchmen. The Zolas of Venice held military rank under the last Doges, then under the Cisalpine Republic, and eventually under Napoleon as King of Italy. Two of them fell in the great conqueror's service, one then holding the rank of colonel, the other that of major. A third, who became a colonel of engineers and inspector of military buildings, married a young girl of the island of Corfu, which had been subject to Venice since the close of the fourteenth century. Her name was Benedetta Kiariaki, and she introduced a Greek element into the Zola blood. It seems probable that she had several children, among whom were certainly two sons. The elder, called Marco, became a civil engineer, and rose to the highest rank in the State roads-and-bridges service. He had three children, two daughters named respectively Benedetta and Catarina, and a son, Carlo. Benedetta died unmarried, while Catarina was wedded to Cavaliere Antonio Petrapoli of Venice; but their only offspring, a daughter, was snatched from them in her childhood.

Carlo Zola, meantime, followed the profession of the law, and, after the foundation of the present Kingdom of Italy[Pg 6] (1866), was appointed a judge of the Appeal Court of Brescia. He died comparatively few years ago. Contemporary with him there were other Venetian and Brescian Zolas, cousins, presumably, of various degrees. In family letters of the first half of the last century, one reads of a Lorenzo, a Giuseppa, a Marius, and a Dorina Zola, but all these have passed away, and at the present time (1903) the only representative of the family in Italy would seem to be the Signora Emma Fratta, née Zola, a widow lady with four children.

But, besides Marco Zola, Benedetta Kiariaki, the Corfiote, had a son called Francesco in his earlier years, and François after he took up his residence in France. As a matter of fact he bore four Christian names, Francesco Antonio Giuseppe Maria—which may be taken as some indication of the family's gentle status. In the present narrative, in which it is necessary to speak of him at some little length, for he became the father of Émile Zola, it may be best to call him François. He was born at Venice on August 8, 1795, and entered the Royal Military School of Pavia in October, 1810. A corporal-cadet in March, 1811, a serjeant two months later, he obtained his first commission, as a sub-lieutenant in the Fourth Light Infantry, in April, 1812. In July of the same year he was transferred to the Royal Italian Artillery, with the rank of lieutenant. He was then only seventeen. Until the collapse of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1814 he served under the viceroy Prince Eugène Beauharnais, and his regiment being afterwards incorporated in the Austro-Italian forces, he remained with it till 1820.[2]

[Pg 7]

But the exile of Napoleon to St. Helena had brought Europe a period of peace, and some leisure fell to the lot even of military men in active service. In all probability the "First Light Battery," to which François Zola belonged, was stationed at Padua; in any case, while still in the army, the young man perfected his studies at the Paduan University and secured the degree of doctor in mathematics. In 1818 he published a treatise on levelling ground,[3] which was adopted by the authorities at Milan (the capital of the Austrian dominions in Italy) as a text-book for the engineers of their roads-and-bridges service, and which procured for the young author, then three and twenty, the title of Associate of the Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts of Padua.[4]

If in 1820 he withdrew from military service, it was, as shown by a document in his own handwriting, preserved at the French War Office, because the Austrian Emperor "had been graciously pleased to order the introduction of the bastinado into his Italian regiments"; but although François Zola denounced this as a barbarous proceeding, he does not appear to have entertained any hatred of the Austrians generally. From a speech delivered at his funeral, one gathers that on quitting the army he worked under his brother Marco, then chief inspector of roads and bridges, became a properly qualified engineer, and was eventually sent to Upper Austria on some official surveying business. While there, he became acquainted with the Ritter von Gerstner and an engineer named Bergauer, in conjunction[Pg 8] with whom he constructed the first tramway line laid down on the continent of Europe.[5]

It has been called a railway, and such it undoubtedly was, though not in the sense usually given to the word "railway" nowadays; for relays of horses were employed for traction. The line extended from Linz on the Danube to Budweis in Bohemia, a distance of seventy-eight miles; and though it seems to have been largely devised for the transport of timber from the Bohemian forests to the great waterway, there was also a passenger service, which still existed in our time.[6]

While constructing this line, Zola, in June, 1823, obtained personally the imperial authorisation to make another one, connecting Linz with Gmunden and the Salzkammergut—the so-called "Austrian Switzerland," industrially important for its extensive salt-works. But he became disappointed with the financial results of the Budweis line, and, accordingly, in September, 1830, he sold the Gmunden concession. It seems likely that he had then already quitted Austria. There are indications that he may have visited England with Ritter von Gerstner, and have sojourned for a time in Holland; but before the end of 1830 he was certainly in France, writing to King Louis Philippe respecting a scheme he had devised for the fortification of Paris. In the spring of 1831 he was in communication with the French War Office on this same subject, whilst also soliciting an appointment in the Foreign Legion, in Algeria, with the rank of[Pg 9] captain.[7] The fortification scheme was shelved, but the appointment was granted, excepting in one respect: it was as a lieutenant, not as a captain, that François Zola entered the Foreign Legion in July, 1831.

His career in that corps proved very brief, and ended strangely. Many years afterwards an unprincipled journalist, anxious to discredit Émile Zola's championship of Captain Dreyfus, raked up the episode in order to denounce the novelist as the son of a thief. But it is certain that some documents cited at the time were entirely forged, that others were falsified in part, and that others, again, were suppressed. This can occasion no surprise when it is remembered that one of the dossiers concerning François Zola, preserved at the French War Office, passed for a time into the possession of the notorious forger, Colonel Henry;[8] and that an unscrupulous Minister, General Billot, by asserting authoritatively that certain papers did not exist,[9] contrived to delay their discovery. Those matters will require notice hereafter; at this stage one need only mention that the attack on François Zola's memory was answered first in a work called "Le Père d'Émile Zola" by a Socialist journalist, writing under the name of "Jacques Dhur," and secondly by Émile Zola himself in a series of newspaper articles, which he reprinted in a volume entitled "La Vérité en Marche."

After studying those books and the documents they quote, nobody of impartial mind can entertain the graver charges preferred against the novelist's father. In his time[Pg 10] (1831-1832) great confusion prevailed in the Algerian army of occupation. Commanders and officers were constantly being changed, and Zola himself, after serving at first as a company officer, was temporarily entrusted with wardrobe matters, in his management of which some irregularities appear to have arisen, in consequence, perhaps, of the aforesaid confusion, or of Zola's inexperience of such duties, or even neglect of them. In this connection, it is asserted that he became involved in an intrigue with a married woman, the wife of an ex-non-commissioned officer, of German origin, named Fischer. It is alleged that in May, 1832, when this woman and her husband were on the point of sailing for France, Zola disappeared from his quarters; and that, some garments belonging to him having been found on the seashore near Algiers, it was at first thought he had committed suicide, or had been drowned while bathing. Somebody suggested, however, that he might be with the Fischers, and accordingly the vessel on which they had taken passage was searched. Zola was not there, but the Fischers acknowledged that a sum of fifteen hundred francs, out of four thousand found in their possession, belonged to him. This seemed a matter for investigation, particularly as a deficit in the wardrobe accounts had now been discovered. The Fischers, therefore, were arrested and brought on shore.

But Zola, from some unknown retreat,—unknown, that is, at the present time,—wrote to the Commander-in-Chief, General the Duke of Rovigo, offering to come forward, make up his accounts, and pay whatever deficit might be found. According to the Duke of Rovigo, as Zola was only suspected of bad management, and no judicial complaint had been laid against him, this offer was accepted. No court-martial[Pg 11] was held, though the lieutenant, on presenting himself, was placed under arrest until his accounts had been adjusted. He then paid over what was due, and the conseil d'administration of the Foreign Legion having given him a discharge in full, the Duke of Rovigo ordered his release.

Meantime, Zola had tendered the resignation of his commission, and Marshal Soult, the Minister of War, who had been informed of the whole affair, objected that he ought not to have been set at liberty while this was still under consideration. Rovigo then wrote to the Minister justifying his own action;[10] and, in the result, after reference to the King in person, Zola's resignation was accepted.

Such are those facts of the case which seem to be well authenticated. It is known that several documents have disappeared from one of the Zola dossiers at the French Ministry of War, and that at least one letter attributed to Colonel Combe, who commanded the Foreign Legion in Zola's time, was forged; while another, couched in the strangest and wildest language, was doctored if not entirely invented. In such circumstances it is impossible to ascertain the whole truth concerning the affair, but the lenient view taken of it by the Duke of Rovigo, the life of high rectitude and able work which Zola led in after as in earlier years, the favour subsequently shown him by King Louis Philippe, to whom his case had been submitted, his later correspondence with Marshal Soult, to whom every particular was also known,—all tend to show that whatever may have been the exact nature of his delinquency, it was far less grave than his son's enemies wished one to imagine.

[Pg 12]

It is even possible that the documents which have disappeared from his dossier would have shown that he ended by completely justifying himself. Indeed, those documents may have been abstracted for the express purpose of leaving suspicion on his memory. On the other hand, there may have been some imprudence on his part, some neglect or infringement of the cast-iron military regulations; and, as Émile Zola himself has admitted, if it be true that his father became infatuated with Madame Fischer, he may for a moment have lost his head—particularly, one may add, at the thought of her approaching departure from Algiers. None can say how it really happened that the Fischers had some of Zola's money in their possession. Had it been coaxed, or extorted, or, indeed, perhaps stolen from him?[11] In such a case many suppositions are allowable. Even if Zola absconded from his regiment in a moment of madness, it does not necessarily follow that he intended to flee with the woman; in fact, his subsequent behaviour suggests other conclusions. Moreover, the assertions respecting the amount of the deficit in Zola's accounts are contradictory; and when it is observed that he can only have been charged temporarily with the wardrobe department of the Foreign Legion, in the place, it would seem, of a certain Lieutenant Ridoux,[12] the question even arises how far he himself was really responsible for the deficit. In any case, he speedily discharged his liability.

[Pg 13]

On quitting the service, if there had been anything particularly reprehensible in Zola's conduct, any reason why he should have shunned all who knew the particulars of his case, he would scarcely have established himself at Marseilles, the chief port by which France communicated with Algeria, one whose intercourse with the new colony was continuous. Yet that is what he did. He is found practising the profession of a civil engineer at Marseilles, residing in the Rue de l'Arbre till 1835, then on the Cannebière till 1838, and employing three draughtsmen and two pupils. He takes part in all sorts of enterprises, a scheme to improve the lighting of the city streets, another to increase its supply of fresh water, and a third to develop its port, in which last affair he proposed the construction of new maritime docks. He first turned his attention to that matter in 1834, and it gave him occupation for over four years, during which he busied himself with surveying and sounding work, drew up fourteen explanatory memoirs, prepared innumerable plans, journeyed four or five times to Paris, obtained private audiences of the King and the Prince de Joinville, held converse with statesmen and members of parliament, disbursed in expenses of divers kinds a hundred thousand francs—partly earned and partly inherited from his mother, who died in or about 1836—and carried on, meantime, an incessant newspaper campaign in support of his ideas.

But Marseilles preferred to construct the present Port de la Joliette, which has proved neither so safe nor so commodious an anchorage as was then anticipated, in such wise that more than once, of recent years, there has been talk of reverting to the skilful but contemned plans of François Zola. The latter was born before his time. In his various engineering[Pg 14] enterprises, he constantly showed himself to be in advance of his age,—such as it was in France,—full of faith in science, gifted with remarkable foresight as to possible developments, and possessed of an energy which no rebuff could overcome. In 1831 his schemes for the fortification of Paris had been shelved; but directly that question was publicly revived by the French government (1839-1840), François Zola, undismayed by the failure of his long efforts at Marseilles, again did battle for his ideas. It is a curious circumstance, established by his writings and supplying strong proof of his foresight, that he was opposed to the construction of a rampart round the city, and advocated a system of detached forts. Long years afterwards, the Franco-German War of 1870 demonstrated the general accuracy of his views; the rampart, raised contrary to his advice, then proved absolutely useless, and is now being removed, in part at all events; while the advanced forts of the time, though their system was imperfect, alone rendered efficient service against the besiegers. But it is remarkable to find that of recent years, in adding to the forts which did duty during the German investment, in erecting others in advance of them so as to enclose a larger stretch of country, whence the city might derive supplies of food in time of siege, the French military authorities have followed in all noteworthy respects the line traced by François Zola, first in 1831, and secondly in 1840!

Thus time brings round its revenges. François Zola was a gifted and able man, and well might a son be proud of having such a father. How proud Émile Zola was to have sprung from one who showed such practical and far-seeing genius, how he vindicated his memory, and smote his[Pg 15] traducers, all may read in the little volume entitled "Truth on the March."

But before François Zola made fresh efforts in the matter of fortifying Paris, he had quitted Marseilles for Aix, the old capital of Provence, having observed in the course of some visits how greatly that ancient city and some of the surrounding country suffered from a lack of water. The idea of damming certain gorges, forming huge reservoirs into which the mountain torrents might fall, and bringing the water to Aix by a canal, occurred to him, and he had already studied the matter for some months, when, in September, 1838, the chief local journal, "Le Mémorial d'Aix," gave publicity to his views. A preliminary agreement with the Municipal Council followed in December, and from that moment, what with this canal scheme, the Marseilles project, and the plans for fortifying Paris, Zola had his hands full. He was frequently compelled to visit the capital, and on one such occasion he fell in love and married.

This occurred early in 1839. François Zola, who is described as being a genuine Italian in appearance, dark, with a very expressive face, a delicately curved mouth, a well-shaped nose, and piercing eyes, was then three and forty, while his bride was in her twentieth year, simple, gentle, and very pretty. Their first meeting recalled that of Faust and Marguerite. He perceived her as she was leaving church, fell in love with her on the spot, sought her home and her parents in the Rue de Cléry, and wooed her with all the ardour of his Italian temperament. Her name was Françoise Émilie Aubert. Born in 1819, under the shadow of the tower of Philip Augustus, in the little town of Dourdan,[13][Pg 16] between the forest of that name and the great grain-producing plain of La Beauce—where Émile Zola laid the scene of his novel "La Terre"—she was of modest condition, her father having retired from business as a tradesman at Dourdan, and made his home in Paris, where he lived on a small income. But François Zola was no dowry hunter. He loved Émilie Aubert, and that sufficed. Her parents consenting to the match, everything was settled in a few weeks, the marriage taking place at the town hall of the First Arrondissement of Paris, on March 16, 1839.

Immediately afterwards the engineer carried his bride southward, and their honeymoon was spent amid the glowing scenery of Provence. For a twelvemonth they remained at Aix and Marseilles, Zola busying himself the while with his canal and dock plans; the first then beginning to take shape and the second approaching final rejection. At last, early in 1840, he repaired to Paris again, probably on account of the fortification scheme; and this time, accompanied as he was by his wife, who now expected to become a mother, and foreseeing that their sojourn in the capital might prove a long one, he did not, as previously, betake himself to any maison meublée, but rented and furnished the fourth floor of a house in the Rue St. Joseph, a narrow lane-like street, running from the Rue Montmartre to the Rue du Sentier, at two minutes' walk from the Boulevards and within a stone's throw of the Bourse.

Parisian historians tell us that in mediæval days this Rue St. Joseph was called the Rue du Temps Perdu, the Street of Lost Time, a name which none of them has been able to[Pg 17] explain. In 1640, at the end near the Rue Montmartre, a chapel dedicated to St. Joseph was erected in a graveyard apportioned to the parishioners of St. Eustache. And here were buried in succession two men of genius, whose names will endure with the French language. The first was the great Molière, the second the good La Fontaine. But the Revolution swept both chapel and graveyard away,—a market and houses arose in their place,—and the tombs of the illustrious dead were consigned to a museum, to be removed ultimately to Père-Lachaise.

The new home of François Zola stood, then, on an historic and once consecrated spot. It was a house erected in 1839, with five stories above its ground floor. The fifth and uppermost stood back a little, being faced by a terrace with iron railings. Beneath this terrace were the five front windows of Zola's flat, for which he paid an annual rental of twelve hundred francs; and the window nearest to the Rue du Sentier was that of the bedroom which he occupied with his wife, the dining-room being in the rear, where it overlooked the Rue du Croissant, famous in the history of French journalism. Nowadays the Rue St. Joseph itself—including the very house where François Zola resided[14]—harbours several publishing offices; in fact, newspapers, periodicals, and books pour forth from these streets incessantly. But such would not seem to have been the case in 1840, when[Pg 18] the newspaper trade of Paris was carried on chiefly in and about the Rue de la Victoire.

Directly the Zolas were installed in their new abode the young wife had to make preparations for her expected babe. In this matter she was assisted by her mother, Madame Aubert, a bright and sturdy woman, who had sprung from that peasantry which is the backbone of France. And soon afterwards, at eleven o'clock on the night of Wednesday, April 2, on a camp-bedstead, placed near the bedroom window already mentioned, there was born a child, who to the great delight of parents and grandparents was found to be a boy. Two days later the birth was registered at the Municipal Offices of the district, and the babe then received the names of Émile Édouard Charles Antoine.[15]

Born on the spot where Molière and La Fontaine had slumbered, that boy was destined like them to rise to literary celebrity. The laugh which Molière cast over human vileness, the light archness of La Fontaine, were never his. It was with deep earnestness that he stripped every Tartuffe of his last shred of clothing, that he bared every social sore to the gaze of a shrinking world. And the moral of his disclosures was not pointed in any vein of half-indulgent sarcasm, but writ large, in letters of fire, which burnt and branded. Moreover, a supreme destiny was reserved for him: his voice became at one moment that of the conscience of mankind.[16]

At the time of his birth the Victorian age was dawning in England. The Queen had lately married. Most of Tennyson's work was still undone, and so was Ruskin's.[Pg 19] Bailey had just leapt into renown with "Festus." Browning, in 1840, produced his "Sordello," and his wife her "Drama of Exile"; while Hood meandered "Up the Rhine," and Tupper basked in the continued popularity of his book of platitudes, already two years old. Meantime Faraday had published the first edition of his "Experimental Researches in Electricity"; Darwin, advancing slowly and methodically towards great pronouncements, was preparing the "Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle"; John Stuart Mill was meditating on his "System of Logic." And while Southey completed his naval History, while Agnes Strickland began to issue her "Lives of the Queens," and Harriet Martineau her History of thirty years, Macaulay wrote his Essays, and Carlyle discoursed on "Heroes and Hero-worship."

For the bon ton of London, the Countess of Blessington's now forgotten "Belle of the Season" was one of the novels of the day; but in that same year, 1840, Dickens published his "Old Curiosity Shop," Thackeray his "Catherine" and his "Paris Sketch Book," Ainsworth his "Tower," James his "Man at Arms," Marryat his "Poor Jack," Hook his "Cousin Geoffrey," and Frances Trollope her "Widow Married," with which she hoped to repeat the success of her clever "Widow Barnaby." Bulwer, for his part, was writing "Night and Morning," and Lever was recording the exploits of "Charles O'Malley," while Disraeli, who had produced his tragedy "Alarcos" the previous year, turned for a time from literature. The Brontës and Kingsley had given nothing as yet; the Rossettis were children, like George Meredith, then twelve years old; and among those who in 1840 first saw the light were John Addington Symonds and Thomas Hardy.

[Pg 20]

Meantime, across the Atlantic, Van Buren being President of the United States, Emerson was writing his "Method of Nature"; Longfellow his "Voices of the Night"; Lowell, "A Year's Life"; Irving on his side contributing "Wolfert's Roost" to the "Knickerbocker," Willis publishing his "Corsair," and Poe his "Tales of the Grotesque."

To English and American readers those imperfect summaries may give some idea of the "literary movement" in Great Britain and the United States at the time when Émile Zola was born. But what of his own country, France? During nearly ten years Louis Philippe had been reigning there; and a few months later the ashes of Napoleon were to be brought back from St. Helena; for the Orléans monarchy, which had now reached its zenith, imagined itself to be quite secure. Indeed, when in August, that same year, the great conqueror's nephew descended on Boulogne, with a tame eagle upon his arm and a proclamation in his pocket, he covered himself with ridicule instead of the glory he had anticipated. And, again, though it was in 1840 that Louis Blanc first issued his "Organisation du Travail," before beginning his "Histoire de Dix Ans," Republican and Socialist propaganda was not as yet sufficiently advanced to bear much fruit.

Literature flourished, and cast upon the reign the glory which it failed to glean on other fields, for little came from Algerian exploits, however dashing, and none at all was harvested by an adventurous diplomacy. But a generation of remarkable writers had arisen, some among them great, many of them eminent in their respective spheres. In 1840, no doubt, the shadows were gathering around Chateaubriand, Casimir Delavigne could see his transient popularity declining,[Pg 21] Alfred de Vigny's best work was already done; but Hugo, "Victor in drama, victor in romance," pursued with undimmed lustre his triumphal course. Moreover, Lamartine had just issued his "Recueillements poétiques," and Musset was publishing his tales in prose. Meantime, Michelet and the Thierrys gave life to History; while Ste. Beuve—when not wandering after petticoats, and meditating on that "Livre d'Amour" which he was to produce three years later, and afterwards to destroy, as far as possible, with his own hands—was penning those Monday criticisms which may still be read with so much profit as well as pleasure.

Gautier was in Spain, having left the critical arm-chair of "La Presse" to the gifted and ill-fated Gérard de Nerval; but Janin discoursed in the "Débats" with his usual flippancy, at one moment suggesting (in ignorance that any "Mrs. Grundy" would ever assert herself) that Paul de Kock and his indecorum were best suited to the English taste, whereas Monsieur de Balzac might well seek popularity in Russia. Thither, as it happened, the great delineator of "La Comédie Humaine" repaired for the first time towards the close of that year, which found him in a despondent mood. In March, "Vautrin" had been produced and promptly laid under interdict, because Frédérick Lemaître, who impersonated the great rascal, had "made himself a head" like the King's. And sixteen volumes and twenty acts, written in a twelvemonth, Balzac complained, had not brought him freedom from pecuniary worries, even though the proceeds amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand francs.

If Balzac took his pecuniary cares to heart, there was[Pg 22] little if any fretting on the part of that splendid prodigal the great Dumas, who now issued his "Chevalier d'Harmental," an inferior work, no doubt, yet one which showed traces of the lion's paw. Sue's contribution to the literature of 1840, "La Vigie de Koat-Ven," is now almost forgotten; so is Legouvé's "Edith de Falsen," though it ran through several editions. Doubtless one of the most popular novels of the day was still Charles de Bernard's best work, "Gerfaut," the fifth edition of which now came from the press. George Sand, for her part, was penning a minor work, "Pauline"; Soulié was building his "Château des Pyrénées"; and Mérimée, diffident and painstaking, was copying and modifying, sixteen times in succession, his still familiar tale of "Colomba." Stendhal had given his "Chartreuse de Parme" to the world in the previous year. Flaubert was but a young man of nineteen, travelling in southern France and plunging, at Marseilles, into a transient love affair, which was to suggest an episode of "Madame Bovary." Finally, in that same year, 1840,—within six weeks after the birth of Émile Zola,—Alphonse Daudet, who was destined to become his friend, and, in a sense, his rival for fame, came into the world at Nîmes in Provence.

In these two, Zola and Daudet, was repeated a phenomenon often observed in the history of French literature: the advent of a superior man of strong masculinity, attended or soon followed by that of another, distinguished by femininity of mind. Thus Corneille and Racine, Voltaire and Rousseau, Hugo and Lamartine. Very similar was the accouplement of Zola and Daudet, who, the one appealing to the reason, the other to the heart, stood in the domain of fiction, at least at one period of their careers, head and shoulders[Pg 23] above every contemporary. Daudet waged his battle with a quick and slender rapier, Zola brandished a heavy mace—akin to those redoubtable weapons with which the warriors of mediæval days beat down the helms of their antagonists. Some, too, have likened Daudet to an Arab horse, all eagerness and nerves, while Zola has been called a cactus of Provence that had sprouted between the paving-stones of Paris. The great city was his birthplace, and he was proud of it; yet Provence certainly had many claims on him, for there he was conceived, and there, as the following pages will show, he spent the greater part of his childhood under circumstances which exercised no little influence on his disposition, life, and work.

The infancy of Émile Zola was spent in Paris, his father's enterprises compelling the family to remain there till 1843. Throughout 1840 the engineer was preparing plans of his fortification scheme, issuing pamphlets, corresponding with Thiers, and interviewing General Despans-Cubières, Minister of War. He renewed his efforts when Thiers fell from power and was succeeded by Marshal Soult; but he was unable to overcome the stolid indifference of General Dode, the war-office director of fortifications, who, without even examining his plans, reported against them on the ground that the government and the defence committee had made up their minds four years previously with respect to what system should be adopted. As Soult accepted this view of the matter, Zola's efforts again came to nothing. His only consolation was that, early in 1841, when the Paris fortification[Pg 25] bill was finally discussed by the legislature, his ideas found supporters in General Schneider and M. Dufaure, a subsequent prime minister of France.[1] A better result attended Zola's invention of an appliance for removing the masses of earth, which, he foresaw, would be thrown up in digging the moat of the Paris rampart. He patented this invention in June, 1841, and after his appliance had been constructed at some works in the Rue de Miromesnil in 1842, it was employed successfully in the excavations at Clignancourt.[2]

A few months later the indomitable engineer again turned to his scheme for providing Aix with water. Removing thither with his wife and child, he signed, in April, 1843, a new agreement with the municipality, followed in June by another with the mayor of Le Tholonet, for a large dam was to be constructed near that village, at the entrance of the Infernet gorges. But although Zola's earlier suggestions had now prompted the neighbouring city of Marseilles to cut a canal from Pertuis on the Durance,—an enterprise carried out by a distinguished engineer named Montrichet between 1839 and 1849,—some of the good people of Aix and its vicinity remained uninfluenced by the example, and a long battle ensued.

The waters which Zola had finally decided to bring to Aix were those of the little rivers Causse and Bayou, and the interested villages were gradually won over, though, now and again, territorial magnates like the Marquis de Galliffet, Prince de Martigues,—father of the well-known general officer and owner of the château of Le Tholonet,—remained[Pg 26] hostile to the scheme. Fortunately Zola, besides having a good friend in M. Aude, the mayor of Aix, obtained support in Paris, notably from Thiers and Mignet, whose association with the old Provençal city is well known; and thus, in May, 1844, he obtained a royal declaration of the public utility of his project, with leave to expropriate landowners, purchase land, and capture water on terms which were to be arranged. The landowners, however, often set extravagant prices on their property, bitter disputes arose over valuations, and all sorts of authorities, with interests at stake, raised one and another claim and difficulty, the Council of State at last having to re-adjust Zola's agreements with municipalities and others, in such wise that a final covenant was only signed in June, 1845. Zola then returned to Paris with his wife and son, for, apart from all municipal help, a considerable amount of money had to be raised for the enterprise, and it was not until midsummer, 1846, that the Zola Canal Company was at last constituted.[3]

Then the engineer went southward once more. One reads in contemporary newspapers that the great struggle had affected his health, that he was no longer so strong as formerly, but it is certain that he felt full of confidence. His courageous efforts were about to yield fruit: the work was begun, the first sod was cut, the first blasting operations were carried out successfully. Zola stood, as it were, on the threshold of the promised land. And then, all at once, destiny struck him down. One morning, after three months' toil, while he was superintending his men, the "mistral" wind, that scourge of southern France, descended upon the valley where they were working. The icy blast laid its clutch[Pg 27] upon Zola, but, although he already felt its chill, he would not defer a business visit to Marseilles. He repaired thither, installing himself, as was his habit, at the Hôtel de la Méditerranée kept by one Moulet, in the Rue de l'Arbre. That same night he was attacked by pleurisy, and on the morrow it became necessary to summon his wife, who had remained at Aix. All remedies proved unavailing, and within a week he expired in her arms. Thirty years afterwards that sudden death, in a second-class hotel, amid unpacked trunks and the coming and going of heedless travellers, suggested to Zola's son the account of Charles Grandjean's death given in "Une Page d'Amour."[4]

It was on Saturday, March 27,1847, that François Zola thus passed away. His remains were embalmed, and the obsequies took place at Aix on the ensuing Tuesday, when the clergy went in procession to the Place de la Rotonde, beyond the walls, to receive the body on its arrival. The pall-bearers were the sub-prefect, the mayor, the government district engineer, and Maître Labot, an eminent advocate of the Council of State and the Court of Cassation, who had been one of Zola's leading supporters. The capitular clergy, headed by a Canon-bishop of St. Denis, officiated at the rites in the cathedral; and, as chief mourner, immediately behind the hearse, when escorted by the civil and military authorities it took the road to the cemetery, between crowds of spectators, there walked a pale-faced little boy, barely seven years of age, who moved as in a dream. In after years he retained little recollection of his father. He pictured him best, he was wont to say, by the aid of all that his mother[Pg 28] had related of his affectionate tenderness, his unflagging energy, his high and noble views. Thus how great was the son's amazement, indignation, and sorrow when, long years afterwards, unscrupulous enemies tried to make the world believe that his father had been a thief.

On that matter the reader will form his own opinion, and it is largely to enable him to do so that the chief facts of François Zola's career of honourable and untiring industry have been recapitulated in these pages. But another purpose also has been served. As the narrative of Émile Zola's life proceeds, it will be observed how truly he was his father's son, evincing in manhood the same energy, industry, and perseverance, the same passion to strive against obstacles, and, by striving, overcome them. In his case, the prompting of inherited nature is the more manifest as he was of such tender years when his father died, and thus escaped the influence of companionship and example, which so often increase the resemblance of father and son. Ah, that poor contemned doctrine of heredity, as old as the world itself, how could Émile Zola fail to believe in it when he himself was a striking illustration of its workings?

François Zola's widow placed a modest slab upon her husband's grave in the cemetery of Aix, in which she herself was to be laid three and thirty years later. A cedar shades the tomb from the flaring sky poised over that glowing field of death, whence the view spreads to many a hill and mountain, clad in blue and purple. And on the slab, which is protected by iron chains dangling from granite billets, one reads: "François Zola, 1795-1847. Françoise Émilie Zola, née Aubert, 1819-1880." Aix, however, does not need the presence of that tomb to remind it of one of its most[Pg 29] notable benefactors. Although François Zola died when his work was only in its first stage, although a little later his original scheme was foolishly cut down, in such wise as to necessitate other subsequent costly undertakings, and although thirty-one years elapsed before the water he had coveted at last entered Aix, the enterprise he planned has always been known popularly as the Zola Canal. Further, after its completion in 1868, the local municipality then in office, to efface in a measure the inconsiderate treatment of his widow and his son by previous municipalities, bestowed the name of Boulevard François Zola on a thoroughfare till then called the Boulevard du Chemin-neuf.[5]

The expression "inconsiderate treatment" is certainly not too severe a one to be applied to the action of some of the authorities of Aix in their dealings with Zola's widow, who, in her own name and her son's, inherited her husband's interest in the canal scheme. But she had to contend also with others associated with the work. It was virtually a repetition, or rather a variation, of the familiar story of the confiding inventor and the greedy capitalist. In this instance the inventor was dead, and only his heirs remained. He had fully disclosed his scheme, prepared his plans, and others were eager to profit by them. Thus his widow and his little boy were gradually regarded as incumbrances, nuisances. Why not set them aside? Why not rob them? Are not the widow and the orphan robbed every day? Besides, it is often easy to bamboozle a young and inexperienced woman in matters of law. Already at this time Madame Zola's parents had come to live with her at Aix; but her father was aged, and deficient, it would seem, in business capacity;[Pg 30] while her mother, however bright, active, and thrifty, was not the woman to give unimpeachable advice on intricate legal questions. As for little Émile, now seven years old, he did not even know his letters; he spent happy, careless days in the sunshine, blissfully ignorant that trouble was assailing the home, and would some day destroy it. Yet it was he who, long years afterwards, avenged his father and his mother, in the only manner possibly in which they could be avenged. Perhaps it did not affect the despoilers personally; many of them, indeed, must have been dead at the time, and those who survived may have only sneered, for the gold was theirs. None the less the pictures of Aix and its society, traced in four or five volumes of the Rougon-Macquart novels, were instinct with retribution. Aix still raises ineffectual protests whenever it hears that name of Plassans which the novelist gave it, and which, though its origin was simple enough,—for it was merely a modification of Plassans, the name of a village near Brignoles, southeast of Aix,—acquired under Zola's caustic pen an element of opprobrium.

The displeasure of Aix in this respect has been the more marked as the city's past is not destitute of grandeur. One of the earliest stations of the Romans in Gaul, it became the metropolis of the Second Narbonensis, but its walls, porticoes, thermæ, arena, and temples were largely destroyed when the Saracens sacked it in the eighth century, and few memorials of its classic era now exist. As the capital of Provence in the days of "good King René," whose court was described by Scott in "Anne of Geierstein," Aix regained some lustre, followed half a century later by a period of trouble, many of its mediæval monuments being wrecked[Pg 31] during the struggle between Francis I and Charles V, who was crowned King of Arles in the fane of St. Sauveur. Nevertheless, girdled by picturesque mountains, with its old town, new town, and faubourg, rich in stately edifices, pleasant promenades, and elegant fountains, Aix remains one of the notable cities of southern France. And if, administratively, as the French say, it is now only a sub-prefecture of the department of the Bouches-du-Rhône, it continues to be an archbishop's see, and retains its courts of justice and its faculties of theology, law, and letters. Its university is perhaps its greatest boast, though it is also proud of its museum and its splendid library, which is known to scholars all the world over. Thus Aix claims to be a city of enlightenment, not a town of Philistines, as it was largely pictured by Émile Zola; but one must remember that he described things as they were in his time, and that if a new and more active generation has arisen nowadays, it was preceded by others, somnolent and neglectful.

Aix has given several distinguished sons to France: the elder Vanloo; Vauvenargues, the moralist; Mignet, the historian; Brueys, the poet, and Brueys, the admiral who fell at the battle of the Nile; Michel Adanson and Piton de Tournefort, the eminent naturalists; François Granet, who translated Newton into French, and François Marius Granet, his nephew, who distinguished himself in art, and became one of the city's benefactors. Again, Portalis, the great jurisconsult, who prepared the Concordat which still binds France and the Papal See, was for a time one of the shining lights of the city, and Thiers, though born at Marseilles, completed his studies at Aix, took his degrees, and was called to the bar there. Curiously enough, the house[Pg 32] where Thiers had lived in his student days was the first home of the Zolas at Aix. It stood at the end of a strip of road, a "no thoroughfare," called picturesquely the Impasse Sylvacanne. There was a large garden to the house, and in that garden little Émile disported himself as he listed.

His mother and grandmother spoilt him, as the saying goes. His father's death filled them with indulgence for his childish faults. He was a boy to be petted and humoured, for the greatest of misfortunes had fallen on him. Spending so much of his time in the open air, he was becoming quite a sturdy little fellow, sun-tanned, with soft, thoughtful eyes and a perky nose, and his incessant questions seemed to indicate the possession of an intelligent and eager mind. But, as yet, no attempt was made to educate him. His mother was already busy with her lawyers, striving to enforce her claims, and endeavouring also to obtain influential support. When Thiers came to Aix some four months after François Zola's death, the widow presented her little son to the great man in the hope of thereby arousing his sympathy. And Thiers certainly responded with fair words, though whether he went further is doubtful. At all events, lawsuits were started, and to the worry they entailed one must ascribe the comparative neglect in which young Émile remained a little longer.

At last, in the autumn of 1847, it was decided to send him to school. Some doubt as to the result of the lawsuits was already arising in the minds of Madame Zola and her parents, and they felt that they must at least provide for the boy's future by giving him a sound education. It was suggested that he should be sent immediately to the College of Aix—now called the Lycée Mignet; but as he did not[Pg 33] even know his letters, Madame Aubert, his grandmother, sensibly decided to select a preparatory school. One was found near the Notre Dame gate, from which it derived its appellation of Pension Notre Dame. It was kept by a worthy and indulgent pedagogue, named Isoard, who after infinite trouble—for the boy was stubborn and bitterly regretted his careless life in the open air—contrived to teach him to read the Fables of La Fontaine. It was at this time that young Émile formed his earliest life-friendships; he became attached to two of his school-fellows, one of whom, Solari, a sculptor of distinguished talent, is still alive, while the other, Marius Roux, acquired a passing reputation as a "popular" novel writer.[6] These two were Zola's usual playmates at marbles, tops, and leap-frog, his first companions also in the rambles in which he began to indulge.

For some reason or other, Madame Zola and the Auberts moved from the Impasse Sylvacanne to the Pont-de-Beraud, in the open country, on the road to Toulon, and then young Émile had fields before him with a picturesque stream, the Torse, so called on account of its capricious windings—"a torrent in December, the most timid of rivulets in the fine weather," as he called it afterwards in his "Contes à Ninon." And the charms of the country, the inviting banks of the Torse, often made a truant of him,—a truant who remained unpunished, for as his grandparents generally said "It was not right to cross the poor fatherless boy."

The position of the family was now, however, becoming difficult. The widow's savings were dwindling away in[Pg 34] legal and living expenses; and some who had been willing to help her were at present unable to do so, having lost authority, influence, and, at times, even means. France had passed through a revolution, Louis Philippe had been overthrown; unrest was widespread throughout the period of the Second Republic; and when Louis Napoleon strangled that régime in the night, Provence became convulsed, there were risings, excesses, bloodshed, even as Émile Zola subsequently depicted in the pages of "La Fortune des Rougon." The new municipality of Aix, appointed after the Coup d'État, was not inclined to effect any reasonable compromise with those Orléanist protégés, the Zolas. One on whom they had largely relied, Thiers, was himself virtually a fugitive. Again, in those days of trouble the law's delays became greater than ever; apart from which it would seem that Madame Zola's actions were altogether ill-conducted. Nevertheless, in the summer of 1852, though her affairs were taking a very unfavourable course, and it was becoming necessary to trench upon the investments whence the Auberts derived their modest personal income, it was at last decided to send Émile to the College of Aix as a boarder, and the family, in order to be nearer to him, moved into the town, its new home being in the Rue Bellegarde.

The boy could now see that the family resources were diminishing. The last servant had been dismissed, and it was his grandmother, the still lively and sturdy Beauceronne, who attended to most of the housework. Moreover, she and her daughter had largely taken the lad into their confidence, and he, precociously realising that his future would most likely depend on his own exertions, resolved to turn over a new leaf. Though his love for the open air in no[Pg 35] wise diminished, he studied profitably from the time of entering the College of Aix in October, 1852. He was placed in the seventh class (the lowest but one), and at the expiration of the school year, in August, 1853, he was awarded first prizes for history and geography, recitation, and the translation of Latin into French, and second prizes for grammar, arithmetic, religious instruction, and the translation of French into Latin.[7] In the following year, in the sixth class, he was less successful, some antipathy, it is said, existing between him and one of the professors.[8] Nevertheless, his name was inscribed on the tableau d'honneur, and he obtained a first prize for history and geography, a first accessit[9] in religious instruction, and third accessits in excellence and recitation.

Next, 1854-1855, he passed into the fifth class, in which he gained two first prizes for Latin, translation and composition; a second prize for the translation of Greek into French, a first accessit in excellence, and third accessits in French, history, geography, and recitation. At the end of the ensuing school year, when he joined the fourth class, he secured four first prizes—excellence, Latin composition, Latin verse, translation from Latin into French; and three second prizes—history and geography, grammar, and Greek exercise. Finally, in 1856-1857 (his last completed year, spent in the third class) he was awarded: the tableau d'honneur prize, first prizes for excellence, French composition, arithmetic, geometry, physics, chemistry, natural history, and recitation; second prizes for religious instruction and translation from[Pg 36] the Latin; with a first accessit in history and geography. He was then in his eighteenth year, and if prize-winning might be taken as a criterion, there was every likelihood that he would achieve a distinguished career.

But one must now go back a little, for other matters marked those school days at Aix. At first the boy boarded at the college, then he became a half-boarder, and finally an externe, or day pupil, taking his meals at home; these changes being necessitated by the gradually declining position of his family. Already while he was a boarder, that is, barely in his teens, his literary bent began to assert itself, a perusal of Michaud's "Histoire des Croisades" inspiring him to write a romance of the middle ages, copiously provided with knights, Saracens, and fair damsels in distress. That boyish effort, though the almost illegible manuscript was preserved through life by its author, remained unprinted, and a like fate attended a three-act comedy in verse, entitled "Enfoncé le Pion," or "The Usher Outwitted." However, given these literary leanings, and a fervent admiration for some of the poets, as will presently be shown, it may at first seem strange that on entering the third class in 1856, and being called upon to choose between letters and sciences, Zola, then over seventeen, should have selected the latter. In this respect, as Paul Alexis says, he was influenced in part by the fact that, however proficient he might be in the dead languages, he had no real taste for them, whereas the natural sciences interested him; but his choice was also partially governed by the fact that he was the son of an engineer, and that a scientific career would be in accordance with his parentage. In his studies he was guided by one simple, self-imposed rule, a rule which he[Pg 37] carried into his after-life, and which largely proved the making of him. He did not eschew play and other recreation, he did not spend interminable hours in poring over books, there was nothing "goody-goody" about him; but he invariably learnt his lessons, prepared his exercises, before he went to play. And, all considered, no more golden rule can be offered to the schoolboy.

Zola and his disciple Paul Alexis, who also studied at the Aix College, have sketched it as it was at that time—a former convent, old and dank, with a somewhat forbidding frontage, a dark chapel, and grimly barred windows facing a quiet little square, on which still stands the rococo fountain of the Four Dolphins. Within the gate were two large yards, one planted with huge plane trees, and the other reserved chiefly for gymnastic exercises, while all around were the class-rooms, the lower ones dismal, damp, and stuffy, and the upper ones more cheerful of aspect, with windows overlooking the greenery of neighbouring gardens. The refectory again was quite a den, always redolent of dish-water; but comparative comfort might be found in the infirmary, managed by some "gentle sisters in black gowns and white coifs." The masters, if Zola's subsequent account of them in "L'Œuvre" may be trusted, were generally ridiculed by the boys, who gave them opprobrious nicknames. One, never known to smile, was called "Rhadamantus"; another, "who by the constant rubbing of his head had left his mark on the wall behind every seat he occupied, was named, plumply, 'Filth'"; and a third had his wife's repeated infidelity openly cast in his face.

Of course, the boys also had their nicknames, Zola, says Paul Alexis, acquiring that of "Franciot," or "Frenchy,"[Pg 38] which was given him because his pronunciation of various words differed from that of his Provençal school-fellows. This was not to be wondered at, the parent to whom he owed his mother tongue being a Beauceronne. Other anecdotes which picture him suffering from an impediment in his speech may be taken with a grain of salt, perhaps, as the official records show that he gained prizes and accessits for recitation. As had been the case at the Pension Notre Dame, he formed a close friendship with a few of his school-fellows. One of these was a lawyer's son, named Marguery, a bright, merry lad with musical tastes, who a few years later, to the general amazement, blew his brains out in a fit of insanity. Another was Antony Valabrègue, afterwards a tasteful poet, whose family, curiously enough, became connected with that of Captain Dreyfus. Valabrègue being some years younger than Zola, their companionship at school did not go very far, but they subsequently corresponded, and intimacy ensued between them. At the college Zola's more particular chums were Cézanne and Baille, the former afterwards well known as an impressionist painter, the second as a professor at the École Polytechnique. Baille, Cézanne, and Zola became inseparables, and though all three were fairly diligent pupils in class-time, they indulged in many a boyish prank together during the earlier years of their sojourn at the college.

One morning, in a spirit of mischievousness, they burnt the shoes of a school-fellow, a lank lad called Mimi-la-Mort, alias the Skeleton Day Boarder, who smuggled snuff into the school. Then one winter evening they purloined some matches in the chapel and smoked dry chestnut leaves in reed pipes there. Zola, who was the ringleader on that[Pg 39] occasion, afterwards frankly confessed his terror; owning that a cold perspiration had come upon him as he scrambled out of the dark choir. Again, another day, Cézanne hit upon the idea of roasting some cock-chafers in his desk to see whether they were good to eat, as people said they were. So terrible became the stench, so dense the smoke, that the usher rushed for some water, under the impression that the place was on fire. At another time they sawed off the wooden seats in one of the courtyards, and carried them like corpses round the basin of so-called ornamental water in the centre of the yard, other boys joining them, forming in procession, and singing funeral dirges. But in the midst of it all, Baille, who played the priest, tumbled into the basin while trying to scoop some water into his cap, which was to have served as a holy-water pot.[10]

The three inseparables engaged also in many a stone-throwing fight with the town lads, clambered over the old, crumbling, ivy-clad ramparts, and basked on "King René's chimney"[11] on occasions when the mistral thundered by,—"buffeting the houses, carrying away their roofs, dishevelling the trees, and raising great clouds of dust, while the sky became a livid blue, and the sun turned pale."[12] There were excursions also, sometimes by way of escorting regiments, which on changing garrison passed through the town, at other moments on the occasion of religious processions when[Pg 40] the clergy appeared in their finest vestments, their acolytes swinging censers and ringing hells, the military and municipal bands discoursing music, the white-gowned girls carrying banners, and the boys scattering roses and golden broom.

Although Émile Zola eventually lost all faith in the dogmas of the Roman Church, the pomp of its cult impressed him throughout his life, as is shown by many passages in his works. And in his boyhood the processions of Aix delighted him. He himself sometimes took part in them—acting on at least one occasion, in 1856, as a clarionet player of the college fanfare, for his friend Marguery had imparted to him some taste for music.

Then as now Aix had its theatre, which Zola and his young friends patronised whenever they could afford a franc for a pit seat, but they eschewed café life and the gambling which usually attends it in the provinces, for whenever they had time at their disposal they infinitely preferred to roam the country. The environs of Aix are strangely picturesque. There is the famous Mont Ste. Victoire, ascended through thickets of evergreen oaks and holly, pines, wild roses, and junipers, till at last only some box plants dot the precipitous slopes, veined like marble; while in a cavern near the summit is the weird bottomless pit of Le Garagay, whose demon-spirits Margaret of Anjou vainly interrogated in "Anne of Geierstein." Again, there is the historic castle of Vauvenargues, the ruined castle of Puyricard, the hermitage of St. Honorat, and there are other mountainous hills with goat paths, gorges, and ravines, and also stretches of plain, watered now by the Arc or the Torse, now by the canal which François Zola planned. In his son's youth that canal had not yet transformed the thirsty expanse;[Pg 41] when Émile roamed the region with his friends "the red and yellow ochreous fields, spreading under the oppressive sun, were for the most part planted merely with stunted almond and olive trees, with branches twisted in positions which seemed to suggest suffering and revolt. Afar off, like dots on the bare stripped hills, one saw only the white-walled bastides, each flanked by dark, bar-like cypresses. The vast expanse was devoid of greenery; but on the other hand, with the broad folds and sharply defined tints of its desolate fields, it possessed some fine outlines of a severe, classic grandeur."[13]

Apart from the plain, but very characteristic of the region, were the Infernet gorges, near which François Zola planned one of his huge reservoirs. There one found "a narrow defile between giant walls of rock which the blazing sun had baked and gilded. Pines had sprung up in the clefts. Plumes of trees, appearing from below no larger than tufts of herbage, fringed the crests and waved above the chasm. This was a perfect chaos. With its many sudden twists, its streams of blood-red soil, pouring from each gash in its sides, its desolation and its solitude, disturbed only by the eagles hovering on high, it looked like some spot riven by the bolts of heaven, some gallery of hell."[14]

There were also the villages, whose houses, at times, were mere hovels of rubble and boards, some squatting amid muck-heaps, and dingy with woeful want; others more roomy and cheerful, with roofs of pinkish tiles. Strips of garden, victoriously planted amid stony soil, displayed plots of vegetables enclosed by quickset hedges. Much of the aridity of the region had arisen from the ruthless deforesting[Pg 42] of the hills; formerly the falling leaves had spread rich vegetable soil over the mountain flanks, there had been good pasture for sheep where barren crags alone were left, and the climate, equalised by the moisture of the woods, had been less abrupt and violent in its changes.[15] Yet, in Zola's youth, as now, "wherever there was the smallest spring, the smallest brook, the glowing land still burst into powerful vegetation, and a dense shade prevailed, with paths lying deep and delightfully cool between plane trees, horse-chestnuts, and elms, all growing vigorously."[16]

Those various scenes were a delight to Zola and his friends. "They craved for the open air, the broad sunlight, the sequestered paths in the ravines. They roamed the hills, rested in green nooks, returned home at night through the thick dusk of the highways. In winter they relished the cold, the frosty, gaily echoing ground, the pure sky, and the sharp atmosphere. In summer they always assembled beside the river—the willow-fringed Arc—for the water then became their supreme passion, and they spent whole afternoons bathing, swimming, paddling, and stretching themselves to dry on the fine sun-warmed sand. In the autumn they became sportsmen—inoffensive ones, for there is virtually no game, scarcely even a rabbit, in the district, and at the most one might bring down an occasional petty-chap, fig-pecker, or some other small bird. But if, now and again, they fired a shot, it was chiefly for the pleasure of making a noise, and their expeditions always ended in the shade of a tree, where they lay on their backs, chatting freely of their preferences."[17]

[Pg 43]

A little later, when Zola's young muse essayed her flight, he recalled those days of Provence, singing:

"O Provence, des pleurs s'échappent de mes yeux
Quand vibre sur mon luth ton nom mélodieux....
O région d'amour, de parfum, de lumière,
Il me serait bien doux de t'appeler ma mère....
Autour d'Aix, la romaine, il n'est pas de ravines,
Pas de rochers perdus au penchant des collines,
Dans la vallée en fleur pas de lointains sentiers,
Où, l'on ne puisse voir l'empreinte de mes pieds....
Écolier échappé de la docte prison,
Et jetant aux échos son rire et sa chanson,
Adolescent rêveur poursuivant sous tes saules
La nymphe dont il croit voir blanchir les épaules,
Jusqu'aux derniers taillis j'ai couru tes forêts,
O Provence, et foulé tes lieux les plus secrets.
Mes lèvres nommeraient chacune de tes pierres,
Chacun de tes buissons perdus dans tes clairières.
J'ai joué si longtemps sur tes coteaux fleuris,
Que brins d'herbe et graviers me sont de vieux amis."[18]

Those rambles undoubtedly helped to rouse a sense of poetry in Zola and his companions. Besides providing themselves with provisions,—at times a small joint of raw mutton and some salad plants, which they cooked or dressed in the wilds,—they carried books, volumes of the poets, in their pockets or their bags. One year, 1856, Victor Hugo reigned over them like an absolute monarch. They were conquered by the majesty of his compositions, enraptured by his powerful rhetoric. His dramas haunted them like splendid visions. After being chilled by the classic monologues which they were compelled to learn by heart at the college, they felt warmed, transported into an orgy of quivering ecstacy, when they lodged passages of "Hernani" and "Ruy Blas" in their minds. Many a time, on the river-bank,[Pg 44] after bathing, they acted some scenes together.[19] Indeed, they knew entire plays, and on the way home, in the twilight, they would adapt their steps to the rhythm of those lines which were sonorous like trumpet-blasts. But a day came when one of them produced a volume of Alfred de Musset's poems, the perusal of which set their hearts quivering. From that hour their worship for Hugo received a great blow, his lines fled from their memories, and Musset alone reigned over them. He became their constant companion in the hollows, the grottoes, the little village inns where they rested; and, again and again, they read "Rolla" or the "Nights," aloud.[20]

Thus their young natures awoke to love. Cézanne and Baille were then about eighteen years of age, Zola was seventeen. But their aspirations remained full of ideality. There were a few brief, uncertain attempts at love-making, nipped in the bud by circumstances. Already, before the time we have now reached, Zola, or his musically minded friend Marguery, or perhaps both, had nursed a boyish flame for the fair-haired daughter of a local haberdasher, and had serenaded her in company, the former with his clarionet, the latter with a cornet-à-piston, until one evening the indignant parents emptied their water-jugs over them. Later Zola dreamt of encountering "fair beings in his rambles, beautiful maidens, who would suddenly spring up in some strange wood, charm him for a whole day, and melt into air at dusk."[21] And at last a young girl, Gratienne, flits by in the moonlight near the Clos des Chartreux, with her heavy[Pg 45] tresses of raven hair resting on her young white neck;[22] but even she remains little more than a vision, and as yet, neither into Zola's life nor his friends' does woman, the real creature of flesh and blood, really enter, to achieve that work of disillusion by which she almost invariably destroys the youthful ecstacy which she, or her semblance, has inspired. Ninon, the Ninon of the "Contes"[23], comes later. As yet she is only dreamt of, though the name by which she is to be known to the world is already suggested by an old gravestone in the cemetery, with only the word "Nina" remaining of its time-worn inscription:

"Ami, te souviens-tu de la tombe noircie,
Tout au bord d'une allée, à demi sous les fleurs,
Qui nous retint longtemps, et nous laissa rêveurs?
Le marbre en est rongé par les vents et la pluie.
Elle songe dans l'herbe et, discrête, se tait,
Souriante et sereine au blond soleil de mai.

"Elle songe dans l'herbe, et, de sa rêverie,
La tombe, chastement, à ceux qui passent là,
Ne livre que le nom effacé de NINA.
.    .    .    .
Ami, te souviens-tu, nous la rêvâmes belle,
Et depuis, bien souvent, sans jamais parler d'elle,
Nos regards se sont dit, dans un dernier regret:
'Si je l'avais connue, oh! Ninette vivrait!'"[24]

But serious trouble was now impending in Zola's home. While he studied at the college, while his heart opened and[Pg 46] his mind expanded, the position of his mother and grandparents gradually became desperate. All the savings, even the Auberts' funds, were exhausted; the lawsuits still dragged on, entailing heavy costs, which drained the home of all resources. Already in 1855, the rent in the Rue Bellegarde proving too heavy, it became necessary to take a cheaper lodging on the Cours des Minimes. Then, early in 1857, that also was found too dear, and two little rooms were rented at the corner of the Rue Mazarine. They overlooked the Barri[25], a lane-like chemin-de-ronde encompassing the old town, with small and sordid houses on one hand, and the crumbling ramparts on the other.

Here black ruin fell upon the Zolas and the Auberts. The aged but active grandmother toiled to the very last, managing the household, raising money on goods and chattels, resisting the wolf at the door with all the energy of despair. Bit by bit, every superfluous article of furniture was sold; remnants of former finery were carried to the wardrobe dealers, to obtain the means of purchasing daily bread and paying Émile's college fees. As for the lawsuits, they remained in abeyance from lack of funds. And blow following blow, poor Madame Aubert could at last resist no longer, but sickened and died. That happened in November, 1857. During the previous month Émile Zola had returned to the college, entering the second class. Towards Christmas his despairing mother started, alone, for Paris, to implore the help of some of the personages who had formerly favoured her husband. The old and almost helpless Monsieur Aubert remained at Aix with his young grandson, who, after an anxious period of suspense, received[Pg 47] in February a letter from his mother, running much as follows:

Young Émile acted in accordance with those instructions, but he could not tear himself away from Aix and his friends without making with the latter a farewell excursion to Le Tholonet and the barrage of the canal reservoir planned by his father. When he at last took the train with old M. Aubert, his heart was heavy at the thought that he might never see Provence again. But in that respect his fears were not realised.

On reaching Paris, he found his mother residing at No. 63 Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, near the Luxembourg palace. She had obtained some assistance from friends, one of whom, Maître Labot[26], recommended Émile to Désiré Nisard, the critic and historian, famous for having tried to demonstrate that there were two moralities, and Nisard speedily procured him a free scholarship at the Lycée or college of St. Louis. This was by Madame Zola's express wish, for, however great might be her misfortunes, she desired that her son might continue his studies.

But Paris now seemed a horrible place to the youthful Émile. All was gloom there. Orsini, Pieri, and Rudio had attempted the life of Napoleon III outside the opera-house a few weeks previously, and a kind of terror prevailed under the iron rule of General Espinasse and the new Law of[Pg 48] Public Safety. Zola regretted the hills and the sun of Provence, the companionship of Baille and Cézanne; he felt lost among his new school-fellows, four hundred in number, and his poverty and shabbiness increased his bitterness of spirit, for the lads attending St. Louis were all more fortunately circumstanced than himself. That Lycée, which then faced the Rue de la Harpe—the transformation of the old Quartier Latin by the tracing of the Boulevard St. Michel being as yet uneffected—ranked third among the great colleges of Paris; and among those who had sat on its benches were the second Dr. Baron Corvisart, Gounod the composer, Egger the Hellenist and poet, Havet the Latinist and historian of early Christianity, and Nettement, whose account of French literature under the Restoration is still worthy of perusal. Other pupils, before Zola's time, were Henri Rochefort the erratic journalist and politician, Charles Floquet the advocate, who became prime minister of France; Dr. Tripier, one of the pioneers in the application of electricity to medicine, and the well-known General de Galliffet. Many of the professors also were able men who rose to eminence, and in such a college one might have thought that Zola would have made decisive progress.

As it happened, he not only got on badly with his school-fellows,—who on account of the southern accent he had acquired in Provence nicknamed him the "Marseillese,"—but, yielding to a brooding spirit, he neglected his lessons. It was only in French composition that he occasionally distinguished himself. One day, it appears, when the allotted subject was "Milton dictating 'Paradise Lost' to his daughter," he treated it so ably that the professor, M. Levasseur,—the eminent historian of the French working[Pg 49] classes,—publicly complimented him. Truth to tell, he now read a great deal, even in class time, still devouring the poets, but finding a delight also in Rabelais, Montaigne, and other prose authors. And he carried on an interminable correspondence with his friends in Provence, at times addressing them in verse, at others launching into discussions on philosophy, morals, and æsthetics. It was now, too, that he wrote his tale, "La Fée Amoureuse," which was therefore the earliest of his "Contes à Ninon," in which volume it afterwards appeared. Thus, in spite of his declared preference for a scientific career, his literary bent was steadily asserting itself.

At the end of his school year his only award was a second prize for French composition. Nevertheless, his mother, having scraped a little money together, allowed him to go to Provence for the vacation, which he spent with Baille and Cézanne. But on coming back to Paris in October he fell ill with a mucous fever of such severity that more than once a fatal issue was feared. When, after a period of convalescence, he returned to St. Louis, there entering the rhetoric class, two months had been lost and he still felt weak. Thus, though his new master, M. Lalanne, commended some of his work, notably his compositions, his progress was not great, particularly as his mind turned so frequently to Provence and his friends there, and hesitated between the scientific avocations of his choice and an increasing ambition to become a poet. When, however, the school year ended in August, 1859, his mother's position being as precarious as ever, he resolved to make an effort. He would skip the philosophy class and at once offer himself as a candidate for the degree of bachelor in sciences—that, or a corresponding[Pg 50] degree in letters, being a necessary passport for eventual admission into the recognised professions or the government service.

The result of Zola's attempt was singular. In his written examination he proved very successful, his name appearing second on the list, but in the ensuing vivâ-voce examination, after securing good marks in physics, chemistry, and natural history, fair ones in pure mathematics, algebra, and trigonometry, he collapsed in literature and modern languages. He post-dated Charlemagne's death by five hundred years, scandalised the examiner by a romantic interpretation of one of La Fontaine's fables, and virtually confessed his utter ignorance of German. Thus his mark was zero; and though, it would seem, the examiners in sciences interceded in his favour with the examiner in belles lettres, the latter remained obdurate and would not modify the mark. Zola was therefore "sent back," for it was not allowable that a bachelor in sciences should be absolutely nul en littérature.[27]

Several years previously Alexandre Dumas fils had been "ploughed" for the very same reason. Two distinguished men of Zola's own generation, Alphonse Daudet and François Coppée, also failed to secure bachelors' degrees; yet, like Zola himself, they became eminent writers. Of course it is impossible to found any valid argument for or against degrees on a few isolated instances. It may be doubted, perhaps, whether they are any great recommendation to the literary man who is a dramatist or a novelist or a poet. But Zola's literary aspirations did not enter into his scheme when he offered himself for examination; he merely wished[Pg 51] to secure a certificate, as it were, qualifying him for employment in one of the semi-scientific branches of the government service. In that respect his failure was a severe disappointment, particularly to his mother, who had set all her hopes upon him, and was distressed to find that the promise of his college days at Aix remained unfulfilled. At the same time, mother-like, she blamed the examiners more than she blamed him, and once more she provided him with enough money to spend the summer vacation in Provence.[28] A week after he had been "ploughed" at the Sorbonne, Zola was again roaming the hills, in a blouse and hob-nailed boots, accompanied by his usual intimates.

There was also no little writing of poetry on Zola's part during those holidays, the influence of Musset still being in the ascendant, as is shown by a piece entitled "Rodolpho," in which one can further detect the change which Parisian life, particularly that of the Quartier Latin, where he had his home, was now effecting in the youth who had awoke, in Provence, to little more than ideal love. Musset likewise inspires some verses entitled "Vision," also dating from this time; but a perusal of the "Contes de La Fontaine," a book which no discipline seems able to keep out of French colleges, plainly suggested "Le Diable ermite," in which the good Abbé's erotic style was imitated only too successfully. Another piece, entitled "Religion," shows that the young versifier, the former winner of prizes for "religious instruction," was already losing his faith under the influence, no doubt, of Parisian surroundings. In this effort he is found[Pg 52] calling on the Deity to manifest himself in order that he may believe in him, asking the why and the wherefore of things, and displaying a grim consciousness of the wretchedness of mankind. There are lines in this poem of his twentieth year which suggest the Zola of the last stage:

"Hélas! que tout est noir dans la vallée humaine!
Les hommes en troupeaux se parquent dans la plaine,
Vivant sur des égouts, qu'entoure un mur croulant."

As his vacation drew to a close, Zola once more bestirred himself, and, after consultation with his friends, decided to make another attempt to secure the diploma which would prove an "open sesame" to regular employment. But he did not care to face the Paris examiners again, he preferred to try those of Marseilles, thinking, perhaps, that they might prove more indulgent. So, taking up his books to refresh his memory, he lingered in Provence till November. At Marseilles, however, even his comparative success in Paris was denied him. He failed with his preliminary papers and was not even summoned for the vivâ-voce examination. That defeat was decisive. When he returned to Paris he found his mother cast down by it; the friends who helped her had lost all faith in his ability. It was useless for him to return to the Lycée. In another four months he would be twenty years of age, he must no longer remain a burden on others, it was time for him to earn his own living. But how was he to do so? The outlook was gloomy indeed.

After choosing a scientific career, and then aspiring to poetic fame as great as that of Hugo or Musset, to sink even momentarily to a junior clerkship, worth sixty francs a month,[1] at the "Docks" in the Rue de la Douane, was hard indeed. Yet such became Zola's fate. Some who have written of the episode have fallen into various errors. An American account says that the young man became a dock labourer; an English biographer has referred to his place of employment as a business house. But on consulting any plan of Paris as it was in 1860 or thereabouts, it will be seen that a great entrepôt, with offices for the collection of the state customs and the municipal dues, then adjoined the[Pg 54] "Docks Napoléon," where goods, coming into Paris by the St. Martin Canal, were landed. The establishment of this entrepôt and its adjuncts was carried out between 1833 and 1840;[2] the adjoining Rue de la Douane took its name from the enterprise, and it was there, then, that Zola, after failing at his examinations, secured employment as a clerk, the situation being found for him by his father's friend, Maître Labot, the advocate.

But the salary was the barest pittance. How could a young man of twenty live, in Paris, on two francs a day? Moreover, there was no prospect whatever of any "rise." At the expiration, therefore, of two months,—after trudging a couple of miles twice a day between the "Docks" and the Quartier Latin, passing on the road the great Central Markets, whose wondrous life he now began to observe,—Zola threw up this employment; and from the beginning of March, 1860, till the end of that year, then all through 1861, and the first three months of 1862, he led a life of dire Bohemian poverty. On arriving in Paris in February, 1858, he had lived with his mother at 63, Rue Monsieur-le-Prince. Thence, in January, 1859, they had moved to 241, Rue St. Jacques, a narrow and ancient thoroughfare, long one of the main arteries of Paris, intimately associated, too, with the student history of the original Quartier Latin. But in April, 1860, at the time when Zola quitted the "Docks," he and his mother found a cheaper lodging at 35, Rue St. Victor, another old street, on the slope of the "Montagne Ste. Geneviève," towards the Halle aux Vins and the Jardin des Plantes.

[Pg 55]

Here Zola's room was one of a few lightly built garrets, raised over the house-roof proper, and constituting a seventh "floor"; the leads in front forming a terrace whence the view embraced nearly all Paris. While Zola was lodging here, living very precariously and trying by fits and starts to secure some remunerative work, his friend Paul Cézanne arrived from Aix with the hope of making his way in the art world of the capital. Cézanne was more fortunately circumstanced than Zola, having a small monthly allowance to depend upon; and it was perhaps by way of helping his friend that he at first took up his residence with him in that seventh-floor garret. Zola was wonderfully cheered by the companionship; before long he again became as enthusiastic as Cézanne, and the two friends dreamt of conquering Paris, one as a poet, the other as a painter.

When the summer arrived they often laid a paillasse on the terrace outside their attic, and spent the mild and starry night in discussing art and literature. Moreover, while Cézanne began to paint, Zola wrote another poem à la Musset, which he entitled "Paolo"; as well as a tale, "Le Carnet de Danse," which was subsequently included in "Les Contes à Ninon." But there was no improvement in his position. Indeed, things went from bad to worse; and in the autumn of the year, as he had too much delicacy to sponge on Cézanne, whose allowance, moreover, was only just sufficient for himself, they ceased to live together, though they remained close friends.

About the same time Zola and his mother separated. She, over a term of years, had now and again secured some trifling sum of money by compromising one or another law-suit—sacrificing a considerable claim for little more than a[Pg 56] morsel of bread. For the rest, she was helped by a few relatives of her own and by some friends of her deceased husband. In October, 1860, as her son could not as yet provide for her, she went to live at a pension in the Quartier Latin, assisted there, perhaps, by some friends, or else obtaining some employment in the house, for she was skilful with her needle. At all events, her son found himself for a time quite alone.

He now went to reside in the Rue Neuve St. Étienne du Mont, near the ancient church of that name, and his lodging, as usual, was at the very top of the house. This time it was a kind of belvedere or glass cage in which Bernardin de St. Pierre, the author of "Paul and Virginia," was said to have sought a refuge from the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. It was there, then, amid all the breezes of heaven, and inspired perhaps by the position of his retreat, that Zola wrote another poem, called "L'Aérienne," which he added to the pieces entitled "Rodolpho" and "Paolo," the first written at Aix, the second in the Rue St. Victor. These three compositions formed, as it were, a trilogy which he named "L'Amoureuse Comédie,"—"Rodolpho" representing the hell, "L'Aérienne" the purgatory, and "Paolo" the paradise of love.[3] This done, he sought a publisher, or, as Paul Alexis puts it, he imagined he sought one.

As a matter of fact, this slim, pale-faced poet, in his twenty-first year, with an incipient beard and long hair falling over his neck, had become extremely timid in everything that pertained to ordinary life. He was not deficient in will power, but misfortune—repeated rebuffs of all sorts—had[Pg 57] deprived him of the ordinary confidence of youth in his intercourse with others. His circumstances were desperate enough. Alexis, when telling us that he composed his poem "L'Aérienne" in his glass cage near the sky, during the terribly severe winter of 1860-1861, shows him tireless, shivering in bed, with every garment he possesses piled over his legs, and his fingers red with the cold while he writes his verses with the stump of a pencil.

How does he live? it may be asked. He himself hardly knows. Everything of the slightest value that he possesses goes to the Mont-de-Piété; he timidly borrows trifling sums of a few friends and acquaintances, he dines off a penn'orth of bread and a penn'orth of cheese, or a penn'orth of bread and a penn'orth of apples, at times he has to content himself with the bread alone. His one beverage is Adam's ale; it is only at intervals that he can afford a pipeful of tobacco; his great desire when he awakes of a morning is to procure that day, by hook or crook, the princely sum of three sous in order that he may buy a candle for his next evening's work. At times he is in despair: he is forced to commit his lines to memory during the long winter night, for lack of the candle which would have enabled him to confide them to paper.

Yet he is not discouraged. When "L'Aérienne" is finished, he plans another poetic trilogy, which he intends to call "Genesis." He is still at a loss for bread, but his chief concern is to beg, borrow, or, if possible, buy the books which he desires to study before beginning his new poems. At last he plunges into the perusal of scientific works, consults Flourens on such subjects as longevity, instinct and intelligence, genius and madness, dips into Zimmermann's account[Pg 58] of the origin of mankind and the marvels of human nature, reads Lucretius and Montaigne again, and prepares a plan of his intended composition. The first poem is to narrate "The Birth of the World" according to the views of modern science; the second—to be called "Mankind"—is to form a synthesis of universal history, while the third, the logical outcome of the previous ones, is to be written in a prophetic strain showing "The Man of the Future" rising ever higher and higher, mastering every force of nature, and at last becoming godlike.

But though that stupendous composition is long meditated, only eight lines of it are actually written. The long winter ends, the spring comes, and Zola turns to enjoy the sun-rays—at times in the Jardin des Plantes, which is near his lodging, at others along the quays of the Seine, where he spends hours among the thousands of second-hand books displayed for sale on the parapets. And all the life of the river, the whole picturesque panorama of the quays as they were then, becomes fixed in his mind, to supply, many years afterwards, the admirable descriptive passages given in the fourth chapter of his novel "L'Œuvre." There it is Claude Lantier who is shown walking the quays with his sweetheart Christine. And Zola was certainly not alone every time that he himself paced them. We know to what a young man's fancy turns in springtime, and he was as human as others. He lived, moreover, in the Quartier Latin, which still retained some of its old freedom of life, in spite of the many changes it was undergoing.

Baron Haussmann had set pick and spade to work there, and many an ancient tenement and court had been swept away in piercing the Rue des Écoles and the Boulevard St.[Pg 59] Michel, then called "Boulevard Sebastopol, Rive Gauche." At that time the Chaumière was dead, the Prado also had disappeared, and the Closerie des Lilas—afterwards known as the Bal Bullier—had lately been renovated, in fact transformed, as Privat d'Anglemont recorded in one of the last sketches he wrote prior to his death in 1859. And with the disappearance or alteration of the old dancing places and tabagies, with the demolition of many an ancient den and haunt, the inhabitants of the Quartier and their manners and customs were likewise altering. In fact, there was a great crisis in la vie de Bohême. But though it was no longer such as it had been pictured by Murger, such as it had appeared to Théodore de Banville, who, recalling his youth, described it briefly yet forcibly a few years later,[4] it would be a mistake to imagine that it was altogether dead. Alphonse Daudet, who arrived in Paris from Nîmes a few months before Zola entered the Lycée St. Louis, has shown that many of the old habits and customs remained. Again, the writer of these pages, who knew the Quartier Latin well in the last years of the Second Empire, can recall that vestiges of its former life clung to it even till the war of 1870. There were still a few tenth-year students, still a few rapins, still a few grisettes, of a kind, lingering within its precincts. But the war proved the final coup de grâce; and the Quartier of the Third Republic with its chic students, its gambling hells, its demi-monde, its filles de brasserie, its garish vulgarity, its mock propriety, has resembled the old one in little save its studiousness, for, however much, for centuries past, its young men may have amused themselves, whatever[Pg 60] their eccentricities, whatever their excesses, they have also studied, accumulated in that same Quartier a rich store of scholarship and science, which has enabled many of them to confer benefits on mankind.

Zola, then, knew the former Quartier in its last lingering hours, when there were no longer any taverners who sold books for hard cash and bought them back for a snack or a drink, but when old clo'men still perambulated the streets, when La Californie and other bibines still existed on the confines, and when L'Académie, the grimy absinthe den, still flourished in the Rue St. Jacques under the patronage of littérateurs who never wrote, painters who never painted, and spurious students in law and medicine and what not besides. Those were the men of whom one said: "When they are not talking they drink, when they are not drinking they talk." How they lived nobody knew, but one of them, a notorious character, who after a few glasses of absinthe would improvise the most extraordinary comic songs with rattling tunes, slept for some years in a stable. He was turned out of it one winter, and a few days later was found frozen to death in the moat of the fortifications near Montrouge.

Zola, for his part, indulged in no such bibulous dissipation, but he elbowed it often enough. And in his distressful poverty, without guide or support, it was fatal that he should turn to such consolation as might be offered him. Thus he went the way of many another young man dwelling in the Quartier, finding at last a companion for his penury, not the ideal Ninon of whom he had dreamt in Provence, not the Musette nor the Mimi whom Murger portrayed with the help rather of his imagination than of[Pg 61] his memory, but such a one as the Bohemia of the time still had to offer.

A glimpse of his life at that moment is given in a few early newspaper articles, and particularly in one of his first books, "La Confession de Claude," which pictured the shameless immorality prevailing in certain sets of the Quartier Latin, and the weakness that came upon even a well-meaning young man when cast into such a sphere. At the same time romance is blended with fact in the "Confession"; and it would be quite a mistake to regard Claude's mistress, Laurence, as a portrait of the young woman to whom Zola became attached. At the same time, the aspirations of his nature are well revealed in that book, which beneath some literary exaggeration remains instinct with the genuine disappointment of one who has found the reality of love very different from his dream of it.

Some passages are certainly autobiographical. The scene is a maison meublée, which stood near the Pantheon, in the Rue Soufflot before that street was widened and rebuilt. Zola betook himself thither on being expelled from his glass cage near St. Étienne du Mont for non-payment of rent. The house was tenanted by students, their mistresses and other women, and the life led there was so riotous and disorderly that more than once the police came down on the place and removed some of the female tenants to the prison of St. Lazare. Here, then, Zola gathered materials for "La Confession de Claude"; here he elbowed his characters Jacques, Paquerette, Laurence, and Marie, while sharing a life of the greatest privation with the companion who had come to him. "Provence, the broad, sunlit country-side, the tears, the laughter, the hopes, the dreams, the innocence[Pg 62] and pride of the past had all departed, only Paris with its mire, a garret and its misery, remained."[5]

Again, real episodes find a place in the "Confession,"—memories of early days, rambles in the valley of the Bièvre, amid the foetid stench of that sewer-like stream and the acreous odour of its tanneries; the first visit to the Closerie des Lilas, the disgust inspired there by the sight of all the harlots with their paint, their cracked voices, and their impudent gestures, and then the excursion through the waste lands of Montrouge, the paths and fields of Arcueil and Bourg-la-Reine, to Fontenay-aux-Roses, Sceaux, and the Bois de Verrières. But one need not imagine that this trip was made with such a creature as the callous, shameless, helpless Laurence, for, in recounting the episode elsewhere, Zola expressed himself as follows:

"I thought of my last excursion to Fontenay-aux-Roses with the loved one, the good fairy of my twentieth year. Springtime was budding into birth, the path was bordered by large fields of violets.... She leant on my arm, languishing with love from the sweet odour of the flowers.... Deep silence fell from the heavens, and so faint was the sound of our kisses that not a bird in all the hedges showed sign of fear.... We ascended to the woods of Verrières, and there, in the grass under the soft, fresh foliage, we discovered some tiny violets.... Directly I found a fresh one I carried it to her. She bought it of me, and the price I exacted was a kiss.... And now amid the hubbub of the Paris markets I thought of all those things, of all that happiness.... I remembered my good fairy, now dead and gone, and the little bouquet of dry violets which I still[Pg 63] preserve in a drawer. When I returned home I counted their withered stems there were twenty, and over my lips there passed the gentle warmth of my loved one's twenty kisses."[6]

The man who has lived with a Laurence—the creature who robs youth of all its flame and degrades it to the mire—does not afterwards call her his good fairy. But whatever the liaison, whatever its origin and its ending, it was certainly marked by most distressful circumstances. As the winter of 1861 approached, Zola's poverty became terrible. It was then, as he afterwards told Guy de Maupassant,[7] that he lived for days together on a little bread, which, in Provençal fashion, he dipped in oil, that he set himself to catch sparrows from his window, roasting them on a curtain rod; and that he "played the Arab," remaining indoors for a week at a time, draped in a coverlet, because he had no garments to wear. Not only did he himself starve, but the girl who shared his poverty starved with him; and Paul Alexis and Maupassant and "Claude's Confession" relate how, at one moment of desperation, on a bitter winter evening, after an unbroken fast of thirty-six hours, he took off his coat on the Place du Panthéon and bade his tearful companion carry it to the pawnshop.

"It was freezing. I went home at the run, perspiring the while with fear and anguish. Two days later my trousers[Pg 64] followed my coat, and I was bare. I wrapped myself in a blanket, covered myself as well as possible, and took such exercise as I could in my room, to prevent my limbs from stiffening. "When anybody came to see me I jumped into bed, pretending that I was indisposed."

Very little money can have been lent him on his few garments. He often used to say in after-life that the only coat he possessed in that year of misery ended by fading from black to a rusty green. Thus, when he went hither and thither soliciting employment, he was very badly received. "I gathered that people thought me too shabby. I was told, too, that my handwriting was very bad; briefly, I was good for nothing.... Good for nothing—that was the answer to my endeavours; good for nothing—unless it were to suffer, to sob, to weep over my youth and my heart. I had grown up dreaming of glory and fortune, I awoke to find myself stranded in the mire."

But it is a long lane that has no turning. At the close of 1861, an eminent medical man, Dr. Boudet of the Academy of Medicine, who had either been connected with the Lycée St. Louis or had acted as one of the examiners when Zola had attempted to secure a bachelor's degree, gave the young man a letter of recommendation to M. Louis Hachette, the founder of the well-known publishing business. Zola called at the firm's offices, but, for the time, he could only obtain a promise of the first suitable vacancy. Meantime, Dr. Boudet, moved by the sight of his pitiable poverty, came to his help in an ingenious manner. On the occasion of a new year the Parisians of the more prosperous classes invariably exchange visiting cards, and the doctor asked Zola to distribute those which he intended for his[Pg 65] friends. At the same time the worthy scientist slipped a twenty-franc piece into the young man's hand as remuneration for his trouble. This discreetly veiled charity at least saved Zola from actual starvation during the festive season; but his heart remained heavy, and his feelings were not devoid of envy when he found that several of the doctor's cards were addressed to the prosperous parents of his former school-fellows at St. Louis.

However, a month later, February, 1862, he entered the "Bureau du Matériel" at Hachette's establishment, his salary being fixed at a hundred francs a month, an average of 2s. 8d. per diem;[8] and his duties, during the first few weeks, being confined to packing books for delivery. A little later he was promoted to the advertising department, with a slightly increased salary. He was now at least "assured of daily bread. Naturally painstaking and conscientious, he had done with Bohemia for ever; he had begun life, he was saved."[9]

Yet it was only by force of will that he accustomed himself to a round of comparative drudgery. If Bohemianism implied poverty, it meant liberty also; and, like many of us, Zola found it hard to have to work regularly, at set tasks and set hours. Again, it worried him that he had no opportunity to read all the books that passed through his hands. But necessity compelled obedience to discipline, and he ended by discharging his clerkly duties fairly well, while allowing full rein to his literary bent every evening and every Sunday. He turned, however, from poetry to prose, not, it would seem, because he doubted his poetical faculty,[Pg 66] but because after all his sufferings he was impatient for success. Until that success should arrive he felt, rightly enough, that for ten publishers who might be willing to buy a volume of his prose he would not find one inclined to risk money on a volume of his verse. Everything tends to show, indeed, that the dreamer of the belvedere in the Rue St. Étienne du Mont was awaking to full consciousness of the stern and often unjust laws of the modern world, that, enlightened, instructed by his sojourn in Bohemia, he was ripening into a practical man.

In the advertising department of Messrs. Hachette's business the young clerk became acquainted with some of the authors whose works were published by the firm. He only occasionally caught sight of such celebrities as Guizot, Lamartine, Michelet, Littré, and Duruy, the Minister of Public Instruction; but other writers dropped in to inquire what arrangements were being made for launching some forthcoming work, or how the sales of a recent book were progressing, for that also was a matter with which Zola had to deal. Among the men with whom he thus had some intercourse were miscellaneous writers like Francis Wey, travellers like Ferdinand de Lanoye, popular novelists like Amédée Achard, a dozen of whose fifty romances—largely of Dumas' semi-historical pattern—were published by Hachette. Then there was the scholarly Prévost-Paradol, to whom Zola was attracted, for he had been professor of French literature at the faculty of Aix before embracing journalism and becoming a leading exponent of Orleanist doctrines,—liberal, though scarcely democratic, views. His chief work, "La France Nouvelle," a classic for all who would study the condition of French society in the middle period of the nineteenth[Pg 67] century, was not yet written; but Hachette already issued his "Études sur les Moralistes Français" and his "Essai sur l'Histoire Universelle."

Another visitor, one who called as a reviewer of the provincial press, not as an author, for he published his books elsewhere, was Duranty, a young novelist with an original, strongly marked personal talent, whose first book, "Le Malheur d'Henriette Gérard," had proved fairly successful, but who, in the end, failed to secure public recognition, though Zola became quite an admirer of his work—in a measure, perhaps, because it departed from most of the recognised canons and showed Duranty to be a man who, appreciated or not, followed his own bent and disdained to copy others.

But one of Hachette's leading authors at that time was Edmond About, the "nephew of Voltaire," who a few months before Zola was engaged by the firm had given it his vivid "Lettres d'un bon jeune homme," written au pas de charge, to the music, as it were, of a flourish of trumpets. Then, in 1862, in Zola's time, Hachette published About's fanciful "Cas de M. Guérin," and in the following year his novel "Madelon," which would be perhaps his best book had he not insisted unduly on its setting, with the result that it now seems somewhat old-fashioned. "Madelon," however, is to About what "La Dame aux Camélias" is to Dumas fils, "La Fille Élisa" to the Goncourts, "Sapho" to Daudet, and "Nana" to Zola. The young clerk read this book with keen and appreciative interest.

But of all the authors calling at his office, the one who most frequently lingered there to chat for a few minutes was the great critic Taine. He was then writing his "Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise" (1863-1864), and, on account,[Pg 68] perhaps, of his contributions to the French reviews or of his "Philosophes classiques du XIXe Siècle" he occasionally found letters awaiting him at Hachette's. These were handed him by Zola, in whose presence he opened them. At times they were simply abusive, at others they warned him to be careful of his soul, and in either case they were anonymous. But Taine on receiving any such missive merely laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "It is of no account," he would say, "it only comes from some poor benighted country priest. I am anathema to the village curés."

Zola received no help or encouragement from the authors he met at Hachette's, but this is not surprising; in the first years, at all events, they knew nothing of his literary proclivities, and he was too timid to reveal them. He had now moved from the den in the Rue Soufflot to an old house, a former convent, in the Impasse St. Dominique, near the Rue Royer Collard, where he occupied a monastic room, overlooking a large garden. Thence he betook himself to the Rue Neuve de la Pépinière, between the fortifications and the Montparnasse cemetery, over which the view from his window extended. But his peregrinations were incessant, and at the beginning of the winter of 1863 he moved again, this time to 7, Rue des Feuillantines, a turning out of the Rue St. Jacques. Nearly all his spare time was given to writing. Thinking of the Bohemianism from which he had lately emerged, he began his novel "La Confession de Claude"; then put it by for a time, and devoted himself to short stories. His "Fée Amoureuse"[10] had been printed in an Aix newspaper, "La Provence"; and he now (1863)[Pg 69] secured the insertion of a story called "Simplice," and another, "Le Sang," in the "Revue du Mois," issued at Lille. Others followed: "Les Voleurs et l'Ane," reminiscent of Bohemia; "Sœur des Pauvres," written in full view of the Montparnasse cemetery; and "Celle qui m'aime," in which, after féerie, parable, and pure romance, a touch of realism first appeared in Zola's work. He sent this last tale to Henri de Villemessant for the latter's then weekly journal, "Le Figaro," but the manuscript came back "declined with thanks."

Another attempt to secure the honours of print, this time with his poetic trilogy, "L'Amoureuse Comédie," proved equally unsuccessful. One Saturday evening, says Alexis, he timidly deposited the manuscript on M. Hachette's table, and on the Monday morning his employer sent for him. He had glanced at the poems, and though he was not disposed to publish them, he spoke to the young author in a kindly and encouraging manner, raised his salary to two hundred francs a month, and even offered him some supplementary work. For instance, he commissioned him to write a tale for one of his periodicals, one intended for children, and it was then that Zola penned his touching "Sœur des Pauvres"; but M. Hachette deemed it too revolutionary in spirit, and did not use it.

Zola's circumstances having now improved, he again sought a new home, and finding commodious quarters at 278, Rue St. Jacques, near the military hospital of the Val de Grâce, he took his mother to live with him. Her father, the aged M. Aubert, who, it seems probable, had retained or recovered some slender means in the course of the canal lawsuits, had died in 1862; but around the mother and[Pg 70] her son were now gathered the latter's early friends, who, like him, had come from Aix to Paris. Paul Cézanne, Jean-Baptiste Baille, Marius Roux, and Solari, with Zola himself, formed a small, enthusiastic, ambitious band, such as was afterwards described so faithfully in "L'Œuvre." From time to time also, Antony Valabrègue, the future poet and critic, visited the capital, and on returning to Aix corresponded with Zola, whose letters[11] were very interesting.

One gleans from them that in 1864 Zola submitted some of his poetical pieces to L'Académie des Jeux Floraux of Toulouse, which "crowned" none of them; that he attended the evening literary lectures at the Salle des Conférences in the Rue de la Paix, and "reported," for some paper which is not specified, the accounts given of Chopin, "Gil Blas," Shakespeare, Aristophanes, La Bruyère's "Caractères," Michelet's "L'Amour" and the philosophy of Molière.[12] In April that year he had as yet done nothing with the various short stories to which reference has been made; and he thought of leaving them in abeyance while he completed the novel, "La Confession de Claude," which he had begun in 1862. Three months later, however, the stories were sold, and Zola wrote to Valabrègue: "The battle has been short, and I am astonished that I have not suffered more. I am now on the threshold: the plain is vast and I may yet break[Pg 71] my neck in crossing it; but no matter, as it only remains for me to march onward I will march."

Besides the tales already enumerated, Zola's first volume, which opened with a glowing dedication to Ninon, the ideal love of his youth,—some passages being inspired, however, by the riper knowledge that had come to him from the more material love of Bohemian days,—included "Les Aventures du Grand Sidoine et du Petit Médéric," an entertaining fable of a giant and his tiny brother. Zola had sent his manuscript to M. Hetzel, then associated in business with M. Albert Lacroix, a scholarly man of letters who, a little later, founded the well-known Librairie Internationale and published several of the works of Victor Hugo: in return for which the great poet, whose own books were profitable, virtually compelled M. Lacroix to issue the works of his sons and his hangers-on, with the result that heavy losses frequently occurred.

Hetzel and Lacroix agreed to publish Zola's tales (under the collective title of "Contes à Ninon") without exacting anything for the cost of production, but the author was to receive no immediate payment. He, all eagerness to see his work in book-form, subscribed to every condition that was enunciated, and then ran home to tell his mother the good news. The volume was issued on October 24, 1864,[13] which became a red letter day in Zola's life. Writing to Valabrègue in the following January, he told him that more than half of the first edition (probably one of fifteen hundred copies) was then sold; and as the book at least made him known, procured him journalistic and literary[Pg 72] work, he felt greatly inspirited, though he still remained at Hachette's, intending, he said, to keep his post for several years if possible, in order to increase "the circle of his relations." Meantime, as it was necessary he should "make haste, and rhyming might delay him," he left the Muse for ulterior wooing,—that is, if she should not then have grown angry, or have eloped with some more naïf and tender lover than himself. Briefly, as he was writing prose to his personal advantage, he intended to persevere with it.

It may be said of Zola's first volume that it was gracefully, prettily written; that more than one of the tales contained in it was a poem in prose. Brimful of the author's early life in Provence, his youthful fancies and aspirations, those "Contes à Ninon" gave no warning of what was to follow from his pen. And yet at the very time of writing most of them he was being weaned from romance and fable and idyl. Not only had he taken considerable interest in About's "Madelon," but he had been studying Balzac, and particularly Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," the perusal of which had quite stirred him. A man had come, axe in hand, into the huge and often tangled forest which Balzac had left behind him; and the formula of the modern novel now appeared in a blaze of light. When "Madame Bovary" was issued in 1860, the average Parisian, the average literary man even, regarded it merely as a succès de scandale. Many of those who praised the book failed to understand its real import; and when Flaubert was satirised in the popular theatrical révue, "Ohé! les petits Agneaux," half Paris, by way of deriding him, hummed the trivial lines sung by the actress who impersonated "Madame Bovary":

[Pg 73]

Qu'importe! c'est officiel,
Ou vit quatre éditeurs me suivre:
Oui, Paul, Mathieu, Pierre, et Michel
Voulurent imprimer mon livre!...
Craignant mes excentricités
Mathieu ne vit pas mon mérite;
Paul ne vit pas mes qualités,
Pierre ne vit pas mes beautés,
Mais Michel les vit
Mais Michel les vit[14]
Tout de suite!"

Zola, however, did not laugh or jeer at "Madame Bovary"; he felt that a literary evolution might be at hand, as is shown by his subsequent correspondence with Valabrègue. The struggle which was to last all his life, one between his reason and his imagination, was beginning, if indeed it had not begun previously; for the oscillation which one observes in his writings between romanticism and realism—or naturalism as the latter became in its advanced stage—would indeed seem to be only a continuation of what had happened in his school days, when, in spite of proficiency in literary subjects, he had elected to follow a scientific course of study, in the midst of which, however, his literary bent had still and ever asserted itself. Novalis has said: "Every person who consists of more than one person is a person of the second power—or a genius." If that be true, then Zola was certainly a genius; for there were always two men in him. And, in any case, those who desire to understand him aright should never lose sight of the duality of his nature.

But at the stage of his career which one has now reached,[Pg 74] the realist, the naturalist, had not fully arisen. We find him appearing in Zola's next book, "La Confession de Claude," and in sundry newspaper articles, which, like the "Confession," were issued in 1865. After working ten hours a day at Hachette's, the young man, on returning to his home—which in the year mentioned was first at 142, Boulevard Montparnasse, near a shooting gallery which prevented him from working, and a little later at 10, Rue de Vaugirard, where he had a balcony overlooking the Luxembourg gardens—at once turned to the "Confession," or else to the press-work he had secured. Every week he wrote an article of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty lines for the "Petit Journal," and often another, running from five to six hundred lines for the "Salut Public," then the chief organ of the Lyons press. The former newspaper paid him twenty francs for each article, the latter, from fifty to sixty francs. Thus he now made an average of two hundred francs a month by his pen.[15] It was also at this period that he contributed a few short tales, notably "La Vierge au Cirage," to that somewhat demi-mondain periodical "La Vie Parisienne," and that he wrote a one-act comedy, "La Laide," which he sent to the Odéon Theatre, whose manager declined to stage it.

But the articles in the "Salut Public" attracted attention, and Zola afterwards reprinted some of them in a volume called "Mes Haines." The germ of the Zola of later times will be found in several of those early papers. The one on Taine is perhaps the best; and, when one remembers that it was written by a young man in his twenty-fifth year, the real understanding and critical insight which it discloses[Pg 75] appear all the more creditable. Another notable article was a bold, disdainful review of Napoleon III's "Histoire de Jules César," containing, in the usual veiled language of the times, the first indication that Zola held Republican opinions. Again, two articles on "Le Supplice d'une Femme" and the Dumas-Girardin scandal connected with that tragedy are in their way interesting, while another on the "Germinie Lacerteux" of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt is particularly noteworthy as showing the progress of Zola's evolution towards naturalism in literature.

This article was favourable to the book, whose authors it pleased, and some communications having been exchanged, the young journalist secured a seat for that famous first performance of "Henriette Maréchal," which ranks as one of the most uproarious nights in the history of the Comédie Française. The audience, Zola tells us,[16] began to hiss before the curtain rose; the storm burst forth at the first words spoken by the actors. The opening scene, laid at the opera-house on the night of a masked ball, scandalised the old habitués of the Comédie. Modern masqueraders and slang in the home of Racine and Corneille! What sacrilege! But the greatest opposition to the piece came from the young Republicans of the time, who were not influenced by the merits or faults of the play, but simply by the fact that its performance at the Comédie was due to the influence of the Emperor's cousin, the Princess Mathilde.

Yet whatever might be the public dislike of that member of the reigning house, to whom a horrid nickname was currently given, whatever the notoriety of her liaison with the Count de Nieuwerkerke, the "Superintendent of[Pg 76] Fine Arts," it was somewhat hard for the Goncourts that their play should be rendered responsible for her lapses. But good came out of evil, as the saying goes; if "Henriette Maréchal" was hissed off the stage, the fracas made the Goncourts famous. Two nights of uproar contributed more to popularise their name and to win readers for their works than years of zealous toil. They had long been esteemed in literary circles, but hitherto they had remained unknown to the great public. Their novels, like their historical works, had secured no large sales, whereas now all was altered, and the change, and the circumstances which wrought it, produced a deep impression on Émile Zola, confirmed him in the view which he had already begun to entertain, that fame in the modern literary world depended largely on a resounding coup-de-pistolet.

He was fairly well pleased with the result of his volume of "Contes," but prior to the "Henriette Maréchal" scandal[17] he had already declared that he would greatly have preferred a severe "slating" to some of the milk-and-water praise of his reviewers. As he wrote to Valabrègue, however, he lived in the hope that his next book, "La Confession de Claude," would almost "decide his reputation." It was published by Lacroix, on November 25, 1865,[18] at the Librairie Internationale, which he had now established in conjunction with a Flemish confrère, Verboeckhoven; and this time the arrangement with Zola was that the latter should receive a[Pg 77] royalty of ten per cent, or thirty centimes,[19] for every copy sold. As, however, only fifteen hundred copies were printed, the sale of the entire edition represented less than twenty pounds[20] for the author, and it so happened that the book was not reissued till 1880.

From this it might be inferred that it proved an absolute failure, but such was hardly the case. Certainly it was not a perfect book. Zola himself afterwards wrote that the observer occasionally vanished from its pages, allowing the poet to appear, a poet who had drunk too much milk and eaten too much sugar. "It was not," said he, "a virile work; it was the cry of a weeping, rebellious child." But with all its faults it bore the impress of sincerity; Daudet's "Sapho," though far superior as literature, leaves one cold when one turns to it after perusing Zola's feverish pages. If the public did not rush to buy the "Confession," the critics, at all events, paid it considerable attention, and several assailed it unmercifully. For instance, Barbey d'Aurévilly, writing in the "Nain Jaune," declared that its "hero" was a toad, and that the author had simply spun out, over three hundred and twenty pages, what Cambronne, who commanded the Old Guard at Waterloo, had expressed in a single word. But what particularly roused Zola's ire was that "le Catholique hystérique," as he subsequently nicknamed Barbey d'Aurévilly, maliciously referred to the "Confession" as "Hachette's little book," whereas that firm had nothing to do with it. Zola therefore addressed a letter of protest to the "Nain Jaune."[21]

[Pg 78]

But he had already decided to sever his connection with his employers. Since the death of M. Louis Hachette in the summer of 1864, the young man's position in the firm had been growing difficult. His superiors looked askance at his literary efforts, as if they thought that he wrote stories and articles in the time for which they paid him. Moreover, as they themselves did not deal in revolutionary literature, they did not care to have one of their clerks associated with such work. "La Confession de Claude" seemed to them too outspoken; and a few days after its publication, that is, at the end of November, 1865, one of the partners said to Zola: "You earn two hundred francs a month here. It is ridiculous! You have plenty of talent, and would do better to take up literature altogether. You would find glory and profit in it."[22]

Zola took the hint (conveyed pleasantly enough) and gave notice to leave at the end of the following January. And he was the better pleased at having adopted that course, and having averted, perhaps, a direct dismissal, as a few weeks after the appearance of "La Confession de Claude" the Procureur Impérial, otherwise the public prosecutor, influenced by certain reviews of the book, caused some inquiries to be made at Hachette's with respect to its author. No prosecution ensued, and "Madame Bovary" having escaped scot free, it is extremely doubtful if one would have succeeded even in those days of judicial subserviency to the behests of the authorities, particularly as, whatever might be the subject-matter of the "Confession," it was instinct throughout with loathing and censure of the incidents it narrated. In any case, Zola, on writing to Valabrègue early[Pg 79] in January, 1866, with thoughts, perhaps, of "Henriette Maréchal" and the Goncourts in his mind, was by no means alarmed or cast down. If, said he, the "Confession" had damaged him in the opinion of respectable folk, it had also made him known; he was feared and insulted, classed among the writers whose works were read with horror. For his part, he did not mean to pander to the likes or the dislikes of the crowd; he intended to force the public to caress or insult him. Doubtless, indifference would be loftier, more dignified; but he belonged to an impatient age, and if he and his fellows did not trample the others under foot, the others would certainly pass over them, and, personally, he did not desire to be crushed by fools.

And now, then, having published two volumes, the first fairly well received, the second virulently attacked, he quitted Hachette's, to give himself up entirely to journalism and literature.

One of the best-known Parisians of those days was Henri de Villemessant, a man typical of the period, with something of Barnum and Balzac's "Mercadet" in his composition. He was the son of one of the first Napoleon's dashing plebeian colonels by a young woman of noble birth, whose name he had to take and retain, after engaging in an unsuccessful law-suit to prove the legitimacy of his birth and thereby secure a right to the name of his father. Coming to Paris as a young man, in the early days of Louis Philippe's reign, Villemessant conceived the idea that a fortune might be made by running a fashions journal on new lines; and, under the patronage of La Taglioni, the famous ballet dancer,[Pg 81] he founded one called "La Sylphide," in which dressmakers and their creations, hairdressers and their restorers, corsets and cosmetics, in fact "beautifiers" of every description, were puffed in a skilful and amusing manner. "La Sylphide" did not make Villemessant a millionaire, but the money and the experience he acquired in conducting it launched him into a very successful career. In the days of Charles X. there had been a newspaper called "Le Figaro," which had died as many newspapers die. The title having lapsed, anybody could appropriate it, and Villemessant, finding it to his liking, did so. He started, then, a weekly journal called "Le Figaro," which at first was devoted largely to things theatrical, and in particular to the charms, the wit, and the merits of actresses, not forgetting those of the demi-monde.

The contents of "Le Figaro," in its early period, were often scurrilous; unpleasant stories were current respecting the means by which paragraphs of green-room gossip were inserted or suppressed, but Villemessant, paying no heed, went his way, prosperous and rejoicing. In course of time, like many another adventurer, he assumed some semblance of respectability, and imparted a literary touch to his journal. But, as its questionable days were still too recent for many folk to take to it, he decided to start, or rather revive for a time, another derelict newspaper, "L'Événement," which he made a non-political morning daily.

Villemessant had a remarkable scent for actualité and talent. Almost every French writer popular from 1864 onward, contributed for a time to "L'Événement" or to "Le Figaro," which eventually took the other journal's place. Villemessant liked to capture his contributors young, when[Pg 82] they were beginning to show their mettle, run them for a year or two, then toss them aside in order to make room for other promising débutants. From special circumstances a few men remained with him till the last, but the number of those whose connection with Villemessant's journals proved as brief as brilliant, was extraordinary. It may be said of him that if he did not originate he at least accentuated the personal note in French newspaper writing; and, in conjunction with his collaborateur, Adrien Marx, he was certainly the very first to introduce the "interview" into European journalism.[1] Later he became the sponsor of Henri Rochefort, who did so much to demolish the Second Empire.

It was into the hands of Villemessant that Zola fell on quitting Hachette's. He, Zola, had already had some dealings with another singular and prominent newspaper promoter, Millaud, the first to produce a popular halfpenny daily in Paris, "Le Petit Journal," in whose columns Léo Lespès, a Parisian hairdresser, achieved journalistic celebrity as "Timothée Trimm." There was as much of a Barnum in Millaud as there was in Villemessant, but while the former was a thorough Hebrew Jew, the latter was a Christian one, who, whenever it suited his purpose, could be a liberal pay-master. And, besides, his manners were pleasant, even jovial; his greatest vice being an extreme partiality for the pleasures of the table, in which respect his contemporaries contrasted him with Dr. Véron, another famous newspaper man of those times, saying, "Véron is a gourmet, and Villemessant a glutton."

[Pg 83]

Émile de Girardin, the father of the modern French press, who at the period one has now reached, 1866, was conducting a paper called "La Liberté," which had little influence in Paris, had made himself responsible, in Louis Philippe's time, for a fresh idea every day—not, it must be said, altogether successfully, for many of the ideas which he enunciated were mere paradoxes. Villemessant, who owed much to Girardin, was an equally great believer in novelty; but being less versatile, and suffering, moreover, from a laborious digestion, which consumed much of his time, he did not often have ideas of his own. So he purchased those of others. He had taken a wife while he was yet in his teens, and had two daughters, one married to his musical critic, Jouvin, the other to a M. Bourdin, who attended to some of his business matters, such as advertising and puffery. Bourdin called upon the Paris publishers, and at Hachette's offices he met Zola. The latter, having decided to quit the firm, told Bourdin of an idea he had formed; it was communicated to Villemessant, who at once offered to give Zola a trial.

The matter was very simple, and will even appear trivial to present-day English and American journalists. Under the title of "Books of To-day and To-morrow," Zola proposed to contribute a variety of literary gossip to "L'Événement," after the style of the theatrical gossip, already printed by that and other newspapers. Though publishers' puffs appeared here and there, nobody had previously thought of doing for books and writers what many were already doing for plays, operas, actors, and especially actresses. The innovation took Villemessant's fancy; and Zola, quitting Hachette's on January 31, 1866, published his[Pg 84] first gossip in "L'Événement" two days later. In one important respect his articles differed from the theatrical gossip of the time. Much of the latter was paid for by managers or performers; whereas Zola neither sought nor accepted bribes from authors or publishers, but looked to "L'Événement" for his entire remuneration. As mentioned previously, he had been engaged on trial, and thus no actual scale of payment had been arranged. When at the end of a month he called upon the cashier at "L'Événement" office he was both amazed and delighted to receive five hundred francs.[2]

Villemessant, for his part, was well pleased with the contributions. Though the time was not one of exceptional literary brilliancy, it had its interesting features, and the activity in the book-world was the greater as the first period of the Second Empire, that of personal rule, had not yet quite ended, the second period, that of the so-called "Empire libéral," dating only from the ensuing year, 1867. The French still possessed few liberties, the Government kept a strong curb on the political newspapers that were tolerated, and thus literature at least had a chance of attracting that wide attention of which politics so often despoil it. But it was also a degenerate time, the time of Clodoche at the opera-balls, of Offenbach's "Orphée" and "La Belle Hélène." Only a few months previously (November, 1865), Victorien Sardou had produced his "Famille Benoîton," one of the very best of his many theatrical efforts, a stinging but truthful satire of some of the manners of the day, such as they had become in the atmosphere of the imperial régime.

[Pg 85]

To the conditions of the time may be largely attributed certain features of its journalism, and of at least one branch of its literature, fiction. Again and again the most prominent articles in the majority of the Paris newspapers (only five or six of which were serious political organs) dealt with such women as Cora Pearl, Giulia Barucci, Anna Deslions, and Esther Guimond; such men as Worth, the dressmaker, Markowski, the dancing master, Gramont-Caderousse, the spendthrift, and Mangin, the charlatan. The average boulevardian novel beautified vice, set it amid all the glamour of romance. The adulterous woman was an angel, the courtesan quite a delightful creature, her trade a mere péché mignon. The lovers, the seducers, were always handsome, high-minded, exceptionally virile, irresistible; while the deceived husbands were of every kind,—odious, tragic, pathetic, débonnair, or simply ridiculous. And every "intrigue" was steeped in an odour of musk and suffused with a cloud of poudre-de-riz.

At the same time some of the great writers of the July Monarchy were still living. But if Hugo, the Olympian veteran, showed little sign of decay, either with his "Chansons des Rues et des Bois," or his "Travailleurs de la Mer," Dumas the elder was now at his last stage, and George Sand, bound by an agreement to the "Revue des Deux Mondes," was deluging its readers with the mere milk and water of "Laura" and similar productions, though she treated others—as a result, perhaps, of the vitiated taste of the hour—to such strong and unsavoury meat as "Elle et Lui," to which Paul de Musset retorted with his pungent relevé, "Lui et Elle." The recluse of Nohant was to produce good work yet, but that she herself should publicly flaunt[Pg 86] the least excusable of her many amours was sad and repulsive.

Meantime other great workers, as diligent as she, were steadily pursuing their life work. Littré, whom Zola knew slightly, for Hachettes were his publishers, and on whom he called in his modest second-floor rooms in the Rue d'Assas, was continuing his great dictionary of the French language,[3] and making his first attempt to enter the Academy, to be foiled, however, by the frantic bigotry of Bishop Dupanloup, whereas those minor lights, Camille Doucet and Prévost-Paradol, secured without difficulty the honours of election. Then Littré's neighbour, Michelet,—another of Hachette's authors—whose quiet soireés Zola, like other young literary men, occasionally attended, was completing his History of France. And there was much activity among historical writers generally, and, in particular, a large output of books throwing light on phases and personages of the great Revolution.

At that period also a little band of so-called Parnassian poets, inspired, some by Leconte de Lisle, and others by Baudelaire, but, for the most part, gifted with little breadth of thought, was imparting to French verse an extreme literary polish, at times attaining real beauty of expression, and at others lapsing into a préciosité, which neither sonority of sound nor wealth of imagery could save from being ridiculous. Meanwhile, in dramatic literature, Ponsard was producing his version of "Le Lion Amoureux," and Augier his "Contagion," the latter's success being due, however, more to political reasons than to any intrinsic merit.[4] Then, in[Pg 87] fiction, if Edmond About seemed to have run to seed prematurely with his interminable novel, "La Vieille Roche," Octave Feuillet was writing his best book, "Monsieur de Camors." And if the historical novel, as Dumas had conceived it, had declined to mere trash, those well-known literary partners, Erckmann-Chatrian, by transforming it and dealing exclusively with the period of the Revolution and the First Empire, were achieving repeated successes, their popularity being the greater among the Parisians on account of the Republican spirit of their writings. Then the foibles of the time were vividly illustrated by Taine's amusing "Graindorge," and Droz's "Monsieur, Madame, et Bébé," the last as strange a medley of immorality, wit, and true and honest feeling as ever issued from the press. But there was no redeeming feature in the nonsensical stories of semi-courtesans to which the brilliant Arsène Houssaye had declined; no shade of literary merit in the wild, unending romances with which Ponson du Terrail harrowed the feelings of every Parisian doorkeeper and apprentice. Perhaps the best serial writer of the time was Émile Gaboriau, for though his style was devoid of any literary quality, he was ingenious and plausible, and by the exercise of these gifts raised the detective novel of commerce from the depths in which he found it.

But a delightful story-teller was coming to the front in the person of young Alphonse Daudet, who, since his arrival in Paris some nine years previously, had made his way sufficiently well to secure the performance of a one-act[Pg 88] comedy, "L'Œillet blanc," at the Comédie Française, and of another, "La Dernière Idole," at the Odéon. He had also contributed to "Le Petit Moniteur,"—a one-sou adjunct of the official journal—in whose columns he signed either "Baptiste" or "Jehan de l'Isle." Further, he had begun his familiar "Tartarin" under the title of "Le Don Quichotte provençal"; and he gave his charming "Lettres de mon Moulin" to "L'Événement," at the very time when Zola was providing that journal with literary gossip. The young men met occasionally at the offices as well as at Villemessant's country house at Seine-Port, and Zola was greatly struck by Daudet's handsomeness,—"his abundant mane of hair, his silky, pointed beard, his large eyes, slender nose, and amorous mouth, the whole illumined by a ray of light, instinct with a soft voluptuousness, in such wise that his face beamed with a smile at once witty and sensual. Something of the French gamin and something of the woman of the East, were blended in him."[5]

But Daudet and Zola, afterwards such good friends, did not become intimate at this time. They merely elbowed one another on a few chance occasions, then followed the different roads they had chosen, roads which seemed likely to part them for ever, but which ended by bringing them as near one to the other as their natures allowed.

In those days one of the institutions of literary and boulevardian Paris was the Librairie Nouvelle, which had been founded in 1853 or 1854, at the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue de Grammont, by a M. Bourdilliat, who subsequently sold the enterprise to Michel Lévy, the well-known publisher. This Librairie Nouvelle[Pg 89] was both a publishing and a book-selling centre, and was much patronised by literary men, who made it a kind of lounge, meeting there of an afternoon, towards the absinthe hour, and again at night when the theatres closed. You might meet there such men as the two Dumas, the Goncourts, Paul de Musset, Nestor Roqueplan, Gautier, About, Lambert-Thiboust, Jules Noriac, a brilliant chroniqueur, who never went to bed till sunrise, Xavier Aubryet, who combined literature with business, penning prose as full of sparkle as the champagne he sold, and Dr. Cerise, a fashionable and eccentric medical man, who shrewdly "physicked" his lady patients with amusing books. Chatrian also came to the Librairie Nouvelle, with Offenbach, Clésinger, Auber, Halévy, and Meilhac; and among all these one might occasionally espy amiable diplomatists like the Chevalier Nigra and the Prince de Metternich, the husband of "the wittiest woman of the age."

Now, when M. Albert Lacroix, the publisher of Zola's "Contes à Ninon" and "Confession de Claude," established the Librairie Internationale, in a very similar position, that is at the corner of the Boulevard Montmartre and the Rue Vivienne, he wished to make it a literary centre of the same description as the Librairie Nouvelle. And he largely succeeded in his endeavour, attracting many patrons of the older establishment, and drawing numerous others around him. Indeed, the Librairie Internationale became almost a revolutionary centre; for besides issuing many translations of foreign works, such as those of Grote, Buckle, Dean Merivale, Bancroft, Motley, Prescott, Gervinus, Duncker, and Herder, it published many of the writings of Hugo and Michelet, Eugène Pelletan and Edgar Quinet, Lamartine[Pg 90] and Laveleye, Jules Simon, Ernest Hamel, and Proudhon,—briefly of men whose principles were opposed to those of the Second Empire.[6] Occasionally M. Lacroix was led into hot water by his democratic tendencies, as, for instance, when he incurred fine and imprisonment for issuing Proudhon's annotated edition of the Gospels, whereupon he became so alarmed that for some time he would not continue the publication of Hamel's whitewashing of Robespierre, of which he had already issued the first volume. In fiction he was often venturesome; for he not only produced "Manette Salomon" and "Madame Gervaisais" for the Goncourts, but he issued "Le Maudit" and other notorious volumes by the Abbé ***,—really the Abbé Michon,—an author whom Zola did not hesitate to "slate" in a provincial newspaper, though Lacroix was his own publisher. "Disgust," he wrote, "rises to the lips when one reads these novels[7] floundering through filth, as vulgar in form as they are in thought, and pandering to the gross appetites of the multitude. One must assume that all this vileness and vulgarity is intentional on the author's part: he has written for a certain public and has served it the spicy and evil-smelling ragoûts which he knows will please it."

On the other hand, calling now and again at the Librairie[Pg 91] Internationale, Zola there acquired no little information which became useful for his contributions to "L'Événement," besides making the acquaintance of various literary men. But his old friends remained his favourite ones, and Cézanne, the painter, ranked foremost among them. He, Cézanne, had become a fervent partisan of the new school of art, the school which Zola called that of the Open Air, and which led to Impressionism. Zola himself had strong artistic leanings and sympathies; he spent hours in the studio of his friend, who introduced him to several other young painters, first Guillemet, then Édouard Béliard, Pissarro, Claude Monet, Degas, Renoir, Fantin-Latour,—as well as Théodore Duret, art critic and subsequently historian—with all whom he often discussed art at the famous Café Guerbois at Batignolles. A little later, Guillemet and Duranty the novelist,[8] with whom Zola had kept up an intercourse since leaving Hachette's, introduced him to Édouard Manet, the recognised leader of the new school; and in all likelihood Zola, about the same time, came across the unlucky Léopold Tabar, a born colourist, whom Delacroix had favoured and helped.

Tabar produced one striking and almost perfect painting, a "Saint Sebastian," but the rest of his life was consumed in ineffectual efforts. His sketches were admirable, but he could never finish a picture, and his failures were accentuated by his constant ambition to produce something huge, something colossal. Yet for years he was regarded as a coming great man. He had failed with his last picture, no doubt, but his next would be a masterpiece. He died at last in misery. And so much of his story corresponds with[Pg 92] that of Zola's novel, "L'Œuvre," that it seems certain the author must have met the unfortunate painter, and have blended his life with that of Cézanne and others when preparing his study on the art-world of Paris.[9]

It was undoubtedly because Zola found himself thrown so much among the young painters of the new school that he asked Villemessant to let him write some critical articles on the Salon of 1866, a request which the editor of "L'Événement" seems to have granted readily enough. It is a curious circumstance that scores of prominent French authors, including famous poets, historians, novelists, and playwrights, have written on one or another Salon at some period of their careers. It used to be said in Paris, half in jest, half in earnest, that nobody could aspire to literary fame of any kind without having criticised at least one of the annual fine-art shows in the Champs Élysées. In any case the admission of "non-professionals," so to say, among the critics, has been beneficial with respect both to the quality of art and the diffusion of artistic perception in France. It has more than once led painting out of the beaten track, checked the pontiffs of narrow formulas, encouraged the young, helped on the new schools. At times the professional art critic has found his harsh dogmas and slavish traditions shattered by the common sense of his non-professional rival. In England it happens far too often that the same men write on art in the same jargon and in the same newspapers and periodicals for years and years. In the long run, they fail to interest their readers: they[Pg 93] are for ever repeating the same things. They cannot appreciate any novelty: their vision has become too prejudiced. And they exercise no healthy, educating, vivifying influence. It is no wonder, then, that the diffusion of artistic culture in England should proceed very slowly.

Of course, even in France, the partisans of old and recognised schools do not immediately welcome a new one. For the most part they defend their acquired position with all the vigour they possess. And the battle may go on for some years before a new formula triumphs, soon to find, perhaps, yet another one preparing to challenge its hard-earned victory. When Zola, whose eyes treasured memories of the bright sunlight of Provence, who could recall the limpid atmosphere of the hillsides that girdled Aix, entered the lists to do battle for the new realists of that time he encountered a terrific opposition. It had been arranged with Villemessant that he should write from sixteen to eighteen articles, passing the entire Salon in review; but he penned and published seven only—the first two, which dealt with the exhibition jury and its system of admitting and excluding pictures, being written prior to May 1, the opening day. These articles, which accused the jury of manifest injustice in excluding Édouard Manet, and almost every artist who shared his tendencies, created quite an uproar in the Parisian art-world, which increased when a third article denounced the absolute mediocrity of some eighteen hundred and ninety of the two thousand pictures which had been "hung." A fourth article, in vindication of Manet and his methods, and a fifth praising Claude Monet's "Camille," and attacking Vollon, Ribot, Bonvin, and Roybet as spurious realists, brought matters to a climax. Villemessant and Zola himself[Pg 94] were assailed with letters of complaint, some hundreds of readers (inspired for the most part by the artistic enemies of the "Open-Air" school) demanding the critic's immediate dismissal or withdrawal. Zola's articles, it may be said, were signed with the nom de plume of "Claude,"—in memory, no doubt, of "Claude's Confession," and in anticipation of the "Claude Lantier" of "L'Œuvre,"—nevertheless, his identity having been divulged, he was freely abused by the critics of rival newspapers, and was even threatened with a duel.

At that time, it should be mentioned, Édouard Manet, whose high talent needs no praise nowadays, was generally regarded as a mystifier, an impudent scamp who delighted to play jokes with the public, and it followed that this man Zola, who defended him, must be either another mystifier or else a mere ignorant jackass. Villemessant, however, less alarmed than amused by the storm which had been raised, was unwilling to dismiss him. In lieu thereof he decided to run a second series of articles on the Salon, one of the orthodox type, by Théodore Pelloquet, which it was thought would counterbalance the revolutionary utterances emanating from Zola. But this decision, although almost worthy of Solomon, did not satisfy the readers of "L'Événement." They would not have Zola as art critic at any price, and so he brought his campaign to an end after two more strongly written articles. In the first, truthfully enough, and in a regretful spirit, he pointed out the decline of Courbet, Millet, and particularly Théodore Rousseau, whose pictures that year were of an inferior quality, while, in the second, after attacking Fromentin for painting Oriental scenes with plenty of colour, but with an absolute lack of[Pg 95] light, he turned the now-forgotten Nazon's sunsets into ridicule, and dismissed Gérome and Dubuffe with a few stinging words. On the other hand, he praised Daubigny, Pissarro (then a newcomer among the realists), and Corot, observing of the last, however, that he would like his work far better if he would only slaughter the nymphs with which he peopled his woods, and set real peasants in their places. And he wound up as follows, in words which, applied to much of his after-life, were almost prophetic:——

Such writing as this was bound to ruffle many dovecotes. There had previously been various efforts on behalf of the new school of painting, the complaints of injustice having led one year to the granting of a Salon des Réfusés, but never had any writer hit out so vigorously, with such disregard for the pretentious vanity of the artistic demigods of the hour. If, however, Zola was banished from "L'Événement" as an art critic, he was not silenced, for he republished his articles in pamphlet form,[10] with a dedicatory preface addressed to Paul Cézanne, in which he said: "I have faith in the views I profess; I know that in a few years everybody will hold me to be right. So I have no fear that they may be cast in my face hereafter." In this again he was fairly accurate: at least several of the views then held to be not merely revolutionary but ridiculous have become commonplaces of criticism.

Though this campaign did not improve Zola's material position, it brought him into notoriety among the public, and gave him quite a position among the young men of the French art-world. At this time he still had his home in the Rue de Vaugirard, overlooking the Luxembourg gardens, but in the summer of 1866 he was able to spend several weeks at Bennecourt, a little village on the right[Pg 97] bank of the Seine, near Bonnières, and—as the crow flies—about half-way between Paris and Rouen. Here he was joined at intervals by some of his Provençal friends, Baille, Cézanne, Marius Roux, and Numa Coste;[11] and they roamed and boated, rested on the pleasant river islets and formed the grandest plans for the future, while Paris became all excitement about the war which had broken out between Prussia and Austria. The crash of Kœnigsgratz echoed but faintly in that pleasant valley of the Seine, among those young men whose minds were intent on art and literature. But politically the year was an important one for France, for, from that time, the Franco-German War became inevitable. The Napoleonic prestige was departing. The recall of the expeditionary force from Mexico had become imperative. In vain did the unhappy Empress Charlotte hasten to Paris and beg and pray and weep; Napoleon III, who had placed her husband Maximilian in his dangerous position, would give him no further help, and she, poor woman, was soon to lose her reason and sink into living death.

The year which had opened so brightly for Zola was to end badly for him also. After shocking the readers of "L'Événement" as an art critic, he imagined he might be more successful with them as a story writer. So he proposed a serial to Villemessant, who after examining a synopsis of the suggested narrative, accepted the offer. The story which Zola then wrote was called "Le Vœu d'une Morte," but it met with no more success than the art criticisms, and after issuing the first part, Villemessant[Pg 98] stopped the publication. The second part was never written; yet the abortion—for it was nothing else—was issued in volume form,[12] and of recent years has even been translated into English,[13] and reviewed approvingly by English critics! Zola himself always regarded it as the very worst of his productions. "What a wretched thing, my friend!" he remarked in a letter to M. George Charpentier twenty years after this story's first appearance. "Nowadays young men of eighteen turn out work ten times superior in craftsmanship to what we produced when we were five and twenty."

This second failure to catch the public fancy injured Zola considerably in the opinion of Villemessant, but the latter continued to take various articles from him, such as a series of literary character-sketches, entitled "Marbres et Plâtres," in which figured such men as Flaubert, Janin, Taine, Paradol, and About. These articles were merely signed "Simplice,"—Zola's name having become odious to the readers of "L'Événement,"—and portions were worked by the author into later studies on French literary men.

About this time Villemessant found himself in serious difficulties with the authorities, through having sailed too near to politics in a journal only authorised for literature and news. "L'Événement" was suppressed, but its editor turned "Le Figaro" into a daily organ, and Zola's services were transferred to the latter journal. He contributed to it a number of Parisian and other sketches, portions of[Pg 99] which will be found under the title "Souvenirs," in a second volume of "Contes à Ninon," published in 1874.

In the latter part of 1866 his pecuniary position was a declining one. As he wrote to his friend, Antony Valabrègue, he found himself in a period of transition. He had penned a pretty and pathetic nouvelle, "Les Quatre Journées de Jean Gourdon," for "L'Illustration,"[14] but he was chiefly turning his thoughts to dramatic art, going, he said, as often as possible to the theatre—with the idea, undoubtedly, that, as he had failed to conquer Paris as an art critic and a novelist, he might yet do so as a playwright. The young man was certainly indomitable; after each repulse he came up, smiling, to try the effect of another attack. Already in 1865, although his comedy, "La Laide," had been declined by the Odéon Theatre, he had started on a three-act drama, called "La Madeleine," and this now being finished he sent it to Montigny, the director of the Gymnase Theatre, who replied, however, that the play was "impossible, mad, and would bring down the very chandeliers if an attempt were made to perform it." Harmant of the Vaudeville also declined "La Madeleine," but on the ground that the piece was "too colourless," from which, as Alexis points out, one may surmise that he had not troubled to read it.

After this experience Zola slipped his manuscript into a drawer and turned to other matters. In December, 1866, he is found informing Valabrègue that he has received a very flattering invitation to the Scientific Congress of France,[15] and asking him, as he cannot attend personally,[Pg 100] to read on his behalf a paper he has written for it. This was a "definition of the novel," prepared, said Zola, according to the methods of Taine,[16] and it embodied at least the germs of the theories which he afterwards applied to his own work. When writing to Valabrègue on the subject he was in a somewhat despondent mood, for his position on "Le Figaro" had now become very precarious. He wished to undertake some serious work, he said, but it was imperative that he should raise money, and he was "very unskilful in such matters." Indeed, in spite of every effort, he did not earn more than an average of three hundred francs a month. Nevertheless, he still received his friends every Thursday, when Pissarro, Baille, Solari, and others went "to complain with him about the hardness of the times."[17] And he at least had a ray of comfort amid his difficulties, for he was now in love, was loved in return, and hoped to marry at the first favourable opportunity. The young person was tall, dark haired, very charming, very intelligent, with a gift, too, of that prudent thrift which makes so many Frenchwomen the most desirable of companions for the men who have to fight for position and fame. Her name was Alexandrine Gabrielle Mesley; before very long she became Madame Zola.

In 1867 Zola put forth a large quantity of work. Early in the year he quitted "Le Figaro," and bade good-bye to the Quartier Latin, removing to Batignolles, quite at the other end of Paris; his new address being 1, Rue Moncey, at the corner of the Avenue de Clichy. He was[Pg 101] now near his artistic friends of Montmartre, and complained to Valabrègue of having only painters around him, without a single literary chum to join him in his battle. His association with artists led, however, to the production of a fresh study on Manet,[18] and to another abortive effort to write a "Salon," this time in a newspaper called "La Situation," which the blind, despoiled King of Hanover had started in Paris for the purpose of inciting the French against the Prussians. This journal was edited by Édouard Grénier, a publiciste and minor poet of the time, who was well disposed towards Zola, but the latter's articles again called forth so many protests, that Grénier, fearing the newspaper would be wrecked when it was barely launched, cast his contributor overboard.

Zola fortunately had other work in hand, having arranged with the director of a Marseillese newspaper, "Le Messager de Provence," to supply him with a serial story, based (so Zola wrote to Valabrègue), on certain criminal trials, respecting which he had received such an infinity of documents that he hardly knew how to reduce so much chaos to order and invest it with life. He hoped, however, that the story, which he called "Les Mystères de Marseille," might give him a reputation in the south of France, even if from a pecuniary standpoint it provided little beyond bread and cheese, the remuneration being fixed at no more than two sous a line. That, perhaps, was full value for such matter, at all events the London Sunday papers and halfpenny evening journals often pay no more,[Pg 102] if indeed as much, for the serials they issue nowadays, the majority of which are no whit better than was Zola's tale. It was not literature certainly, but it was clearly and concisely written, and generally good as narrative, in spite of some sentimental mawkishness and sensational absurdity. As often happens with hack work of this description the tale opens better than it ends. Long, indeed, before it was finished, the writer had grown heartily tired of it, as many of its readers must have perceived. At the same time it was not a work to be ashamed of, particularly in the case of an author fighting for his daily bread, and Zola, when at the height of his reputation, showed that he was not ashamed of it, for on his adversaries casting this forgotten "pot boiler" in his face, he caused it to be reprinted, with a vigorous preface, in which he recounted under what circumstances the story had been written.[19]

The money paid for it had been very acceptable to him, for it had meant an income of two hundred francs a month for nine months in succession; and it had enabled him to give time to some real literary work, the writing of his first notable novel, "Thérèse Raquin." This he had begun in 1866; the idea of it then being suggested to him by Adolphe Belot and Ernest Daudet's "Vénus de Gordes," in which a husband is killed by the wife's lover, who, with[Pg 103] his mistress, is sent to the Assizes. Zola, for his part, pictured a similar crime in which the paramours escaped detection, but suffered all the torment of remorse, and ended by punishing each other. An article, a kind of nouvelle which he contributed to "Le Figaro" on the subject, led him to develop this theme in the form of a novel. In parts, "Thérèse Raquin," as the author afterwards remarked, was neither more nor less than a study of the animality existing in human nature. It was, therefore, bound to be repulsive to many folk. But if one accept the subject, the book will be found to possess considerable literary merit, a quality which cannot be claimed for Émile Gaboriau's "Crime d'Orcival," with which it has been compared by Mr. Andrew Lang. Gaboriau was a clever man in his way, but he wrote in commonplace language for the folk of little education who patronised the feuilletons of "Le Petit Journal." No French critic, except, perhaps, the ineffable M. de Brunetière, who has declared the illiterate Ponson du Terrail to be infinitely superior to the Goncourts, would think of associating Gaboriau's name with that of Émile Zola.

Under the title of "Un Mariage d'Amour," "Thérèse Raquin" was published during the summer and autumn of 1867, in Arsène Houssaye's review, "L'Artiste," which paid Zola the sum of six hundred francs[20] for the serial rights. There was some delay and difficulty in the matter. Houssaye, who was bien en cour, as the French say, and desirous of doing nothing that might interfere with his admission to[Pg 104] the Tuileries, informed Zola that the Empress Eugénie read the review, and on that ground obtained his assent to the omission of certain strongly worded passages from the serial issue. But the author rebelled indignantly when he found that Houssaye, not content with this expurgation, had written a fine moral tag at the end of the last sheet of proofs. Zola would have none of it, and he was right; yet for years the great quarrel between him and his critics arose less from the outspokenness with which he treated certain subjects than from his refusal to interlard his references to evil with pious ejaculations and moral precepts. But for all intelligent folk the statement of fact should carry its own moral, and books are usually written for intelligent folk, not for idiots. In the case in point the spectacle of Arsène Houssaye, a curled, dyed, perfumed ex-lady killer, tendering moral reflections to the author of "Thérèse Raquin," was extremely amusing. Here was a man who for years had pandered to vice, adorned, beautified, and worshipped it, not only in a score of novels, but also in numerous semi-historical sketches. For him it was all "roses and rapture," whereas under Zola's pen it appeared absolutely vile. In the end Houssaye had to give way, and the moral tag was deleted.

Zola took his story to M. Albert Lacroix, who in the autumn of 1867 published it as a volume. Naturally it was attacked; and notably by Louis Ulbach, a writer with whom Zola frequently came in contact, for Ulbach did a large amount of work for Lacroix, and was often to be met at the afternoon gatherings at the Librairie Internationale. It was he who had initiated the most popular book of that year: Lacroix's famous "Paris Guide by the principal[Pg 105] authors and artists of France"; but at the same time he did not neglect journalism, and just then he was one of the principal contributors to "Le Figaro," for which he wrote under the pseudonym of "Ferragus." In an article printed by that journal he frankly denounced "Thérèse Raquin" as "putrid literature," and Zola, with Villemessant's sanction, issued a slashing reply. This certainly attracted attention to the book, with the result that a second edition was called for at the end of the year, which had not been a remunerative one for the book-selling world, for it was that of the great Exhibition when Paris, receiving visits from almost every ruler and prince of Europe, gave nearly all its attention to sight-seeing and festivity.[21]

Zola had sent a copy of his book to Ste.-Beuve, for whom, as for Taine, he always professed considerable deference, though he reproached him somewhat sharply for having failed to understand Balzac, Flaubert, and others. Ste.-Beuve, having read "Thérèse Raquin," pronounced it to be a "remarkable and conscientious" work, but objected to certain of its features. Some years afterwards Zola had occasion to refer to this subject, and the remarks he then penned[22] may be quoted with the more advantage as they embody his own criticism of his book:——

About the time of the publication of "Thérèse Raquin" Zola at last obtained the coveted honours of the footlights. In conjunction with his friend Marius Roux he wrote a drama based on his "Mystères de Marseille," and the director of the Marseillese Gymnase consented to stage it. It is possible that this arrangement was effected during a visit which the director made to Paris, for, according to some accounts, a trial performance of the play took place[Pg 107] in the capital.[23] Zola and Roux, being anxious to witness its production at Marseilles, afterwards repaired thither, and superintended the last rehearsals; but their hopes were scarcely fulfilled, for although, as Alexis points out rather naïvely, the first performance[24] "proceeded fairly well, enlivened by only a little hissing," no more than two others were ever given. And while it is true that a "run" could hardly be expected in a provincial city, particularly in those days, three solitary performances, followed by no revival, could not be interpreted as signifying success.

Perhaps it was the failure of this effort that caused Zola to abandon for some years all hope of making his way as a dramatic author. Judging by the comparative success of "Thérèse Raquin," novel writing seemed the safer course for him. Accordingly, he transformed his rejected play, "La Madeleine," into a novel, which he entitled "La Honte," and offered as a serial to a certain M. Bauer, who had established a new "Evénement." Bauer accepted it, but its minute descriptions of the working of sensual passion in a woman shocked his readers, and the publication ceased abruptly. On the whole, this story, written in a large degree on the same lines as "Thérèse Raquin," was not a good piece of work. When Lacroix published it, however, in volume form, under the title of "Madeleine Férat," it soon went into a second edition.[25]

This was the chief literary work accomplished by Zola[Pg 108] in 1868, when he also published a variety of articles in different Paris newspapers. And as his books were now selling fairly well, he began to think of giving some fulfilment to an old and once vague project, to which the example of Balzac's works had at last imparted shape. Writing in May, 1867, to his friend Valabrègue, he had then said: "By the way, have you read all Balzac? What a man he was! I am reperusing him at this moment. To my mind, Victor Hugo and the others dwindle away beside him, I am thinking of a book on Balzac, a great study, a kind of real romance."

That book was never written, but the perusal of "La Comédie Humaine" and its haunting influence at least largely inspired "Les Rougon-Macquart."

It has been mentioned already that when the Goncourts' novel, "Germinie Lacerteux," was published in 1865, some little correspondence took place between Zola and the authors, they being really grateful to him for the favourable review of their work which he had contributed to "Le Salut Public," of Lyons. They told him that he alone had understood the book, that his frankness consoled them for much of the literary hypocrisy of the times, and that they admired his courage in daring to confess his likings.[1] Subsequently, wishing to become personally acquainted with[Pg 110] Zola, they called on him, but found him absent. In February, 1868, however, still remembering his article on their book, they wrote to him in praise of "Thérèse Raquin," in which they detected the hand of an artist, one who had probed human truth and crime to the core.[2]

From Alexis's account it has been inferred by several writers that Zola and the Goncourts became intimate in 1865; but the latter's "Journal" shows, peremptorily, that they did not actually meet till December 14, 1868,[3] when Zola lunched with the brothers at their house on the Boulevard Montmorency, at Auteuil. This time the approaches probably came from Zola.[4] The Goncourts were preparing their novel "Madame Gervaisais," and he, with the idea of writing an anticipatory article on it, seems to have applied for information, whereupon he was invited to the Goncourts' house. They had pictured him as somewhat of a Normalien, a pedagogue, and they found him sickly, nervous, anxious, deep, intricate, in fact almost a riddle! He told them of the difficulties of his position, admitted that his novel, "Madeleine Férat," ran off the rails and ought to have been limited to three characters; complained of having to conform to idiotic editorial opinions in some articles he was then contributing to "La Tribune," a weekly opposition journal, and expressed a keen desire to find a publisher who, over a term of six years, would pay him a sum of thirty thousand francs for eight novels, in which the history of a family would be recounted.[5] This history, of course, was[Pg 111] that of the Rougon-Macquarts, which finally expanded into a series of twenty volumes.

At a later date, on August 27, 1870, while lunching with Edmond de Goncourt,[6]—Jules had died in the previous June—Zola reverted to this subject and expressed his conviction that, after all which had been accomplished by others, such as by Flaubert in "Madame Bovary," after all the analysis of petty shades of feeling, all the minute jewelry work, so to say, which had been done in literature, there was no longer any call for the younger men to imagine and build up any one or two characters, they could only appeal to the public by the power and the breadth of their creations,—briefly, they must work on a large scale. And Zola allowed it to be inferred that it was this view which had prompted his scheme of a family history

But he had not been influenced solely by that consideration. The original germ of his idea lay far back, in that projected poetic trilogy, "Genèse," which was to have recounted the advent, development, and destiny of mankind. That vague scheme, suggested by the pages of Lucretius, had been resuscitated, transformed, modernised, so to say, by the repeated perusal of Balzac's "Comédie Humaine"; and there is little doubt that, from the practical standpoint of personal advantage, Zola was also influenced by the success of many connected series of books. It is a question whether Balzac's novels were widely read at that moment. Cheap, badly printed on the vilest paper, they were to be seen in almost every bookseller's shop, but their covers, soiled and fading, often spoke of long continuance in the dealers' custody, whereas there could be no doubt of the ready sale, the immense[Pg 112] vogue, of Erckmann-Chatrian's numerous productions. Those so-called "Romans Nationaux" hung well together, thanks to a variety of connecting links, and in their prodigious circulation Zola constantly had before his eyes an example of the great success which might attend a series of novels leading skilfully one from the other.

But he did not propose to write about the past, even the near past, such as the First Republic and the First Empire, which had supplied Erckmann-Chatrian with their themes; his aim was to describe contemporary manners, those of the then-existing Second Empire. That régime had begun in blood, and had passed through some remarkable phases, which would provide him with suitable backgrounds for several stories. And it followed—purely and simply as a matter of course—that the series he contemplated must be largely a record of social and natural degeneration. The degeneracy of the times was a stock subject, a commonplace of contemporary literature. The playwrights—Ponsard, Augier, Feuillet, Barrière, Sardou, Dumas fils, and others, had harped upon it for years. It had figured in numerous novels; it had formed the subject of many volumes of so-called "serious" literature; it had appeared in the pages of Tocqueville, it had found an echo amid even the hopefulness of Prévost-Paradol's "France Nouvelle"; it was a theme repeatedly selected by those newspapers which did not pander to the supporters of the demi-monde. No doubt, there has never been a time, since men began to write, when some of them have not pictured the world and the human species as degenerate. The cry, O! tempora, O! mores, has re-echoed through all the centuries indiscriminately. But under a régime so base and corrupt as the Second French[Pg 113] Empire it was justifiable. There could then be no doubt that degeneracy was indeed attacking the nation.

What Zola himself thought on the subject was indicated by him with vigorous indignation in a newspaper article apropos of the licentious operettas of the time. Protesting against all the clappers who went into ecstasies when a so-called actress emphasised "some obscene expression by her contortions," he exclaimed: "Ah, misère! on the day when the sublime idea occurs to some woman to play the part of a——, au naturel, on the stage, Paris will fall ill with enthusiasm. But what else can you expect? We have grown up amid shame, we are the bastard progeny of an accursed age. As yet we have only reached jerking of the hips, exhibition of the bosom; but the slope is fatal, and we shall roll down it to the very gutter unless we promptly draw ourselves erect and become free men."[7]

But another point has to be considered. At the very outset of Zola's scheme the predisposition towards certain branches of science which he had shown in his youth revived. The question of hereditary influence had already attracted his attention while he was writing "Madeleine Férat," and it assumed larger proportions and greater complexity when he began to think of his projected family history. The members of the family in question (like all others) would be affected not merely by their actual environment but also by psychological conditions coming from their progenitors. Zola felt that he must study the question carefully, and for some months his spare time was spent at the Bibliothèque Impériale (now Nationale) where he read every book he could discover treating of hereditary influence.[Pg 114] As he himself subsequently stated, among the works which most impressed him, there was particularly one by a now almost forgotten scientist, Dr. Prosper Lucas,[8] the brother of Charles Lucas, the eminent pioneer in criminology.

At the end of 1868 Zola drew up a scheme of his proposed "family history," even then preparing the original genealogical tree of the Rougon-Macquarts such as he conceived it.[9] He set down also the terms on which he would write the series, which at this date he proposed to limit to twelve volumes. And he carried everything to his publisher, M. Lacroix, who, while regarding the offer favourably, would not bind himself at the outset for more than the first four volumes. An agreement in that sense was signed in the spring of 1869; it being stipulated that Zola was to write two volumes each year and to receive five hundred francs a month from Lacroix, not in actual payment for his work but as an advance. The stories were to be sold in the first instance to newspapers for serial issue, and with the proceeds of those sales the publisher was to be refunded his advances, wholly or in part. On the subsequent publication in book form (each volume being priced at three francs[10]) the author was to receive a royalty of forty centimes (or about thirteen per cent) on every copy sold. But if the publisher's advances had not been fully repaid with the newspaper money[Pg 115] he was to reimburse himself out of the book royalties as they accrued.

So far, the arrangement, though somewhat unusual, would not seem to have been unduly intricate, but it was rendered so by the further stipulation that every month, on receiving his advance of five hundred francs, Zola should hand Lacroix a promissory note for that amount, at three months' date, those notes being renewable until each volume was issued, when a proper account was to be drawn up. But with this system confusion set in, particularly as after a long delay in the serial issue of the first volume the War of 1870 supervened, in consequence of which M. Lacroix found himself in serious financial difficulties.

To Zola, at the outset, everything seemed clear sailing. He had ensured himself an annual income of six thousand francs[11] for at least two years, and he had only to set to work. Thus, in May, 1869, he started on his first volume, "La Fortune des Rougon," in which he pictured the origin of the family whose history he proposed to recount, and its first ignoble rise to position with the help of Louis Napoleon's coup d'état. The scene of the narrative was laid at Aix, which had so long been Zola's home and which, for his literary purposes, he now called Plassans.[12]

His book was written in a Republican spirit with considerable boldness for those Imperial times. And in this connection, by way both of refuting a suggestion made by Edmond de Goncourt, that Zola, in his penury, would willingly have sold himself to the Empire, had it chosen to buy him, and of showing the young author's participation in the[Pg 116] journalism of the period, it is as well that one should momentarily retrace one's steps.

Already in 1867, through M. Albert Lacroix, his publisher, Zola had become acquainted with M. Paul Meurice, an able novelist and playwright, best known, however, by his connection with Victor Hugo. The great man had a horror of proof-correcting, and even in his lifetime much of his writing was passed for the press and, one may add, revised by M. Meurice, to whom, since then, has fallen the task of editing both the poet's correspondence and the éditions définitives of his books. In the last years of the third Napoleon's reign Hugo lived at Brussels, M. Meurice acting in many matters as his Parisian representative.[13] Madame Meurice's drawing-room was thrown open to all the Hugolâtres of the time; and Zola often attended her receptions, accompanied on some occasions by Duranty, on others by Manet. He then met several of the so-called Parnassian poets,[14] who, though their methods were often very different from those of the master, professed great admiration for him. Such were Sully Prudhomme and François Coppée, both of whom Zola first met in Madame Meurice's drawing-room. With M. Coppée, his relations became and remained intimate until the great Dreyfus case, when the so-called "poet of the humble," suffering from a serious chronic disorder, and fearful of losing the services of an expert medical attendant devoted to the priestly cause, resolved to save both soul and body by joining the great crusade against the Jews.

[Pg 117]

Towards the close of 1868 politics passed before literature in Madame Meurice's salon, for the tide of opposition to the Empire was then rising rapidly. In May, that year, Henri Rochefort, thanks to a new press law and the help of Villemessant, had started his famous periodical, "La Lanterne"; and in all directions the liberal newspapers had become more and more outspoken, in spite of the many sentences to fine and imprisonment which were heaped on their managers, writers, and printers. The grant of the right of public meeting added to the general unrest, and when 1869 arrived the excitement of the Parisians became the greater as general elections were appointed to take place in May. "La Lanterne" having been crushed—Rochefort seeking an asylum in Belgium where Hugo gave him hospitality—many suggestions of starting another opposition journal were made in Madame Meurice's salon. A certain Barbieux, a victim of the Coup d'État, carried the idea to Hugo at Brussels, and no satisfactory title having been as yet suggested, the poet undertook to provide one. The next morning, says Rochefort in his autobiography,[15] he proposed "Le Rappel"—a speaking title for those times, signifying a call to arms, the mustering of all who wished to shake off the rule of Napoleon III.

From the first gossip at Madame Meurice's it had been arranged that Zola should belong to the staff of the proposed journal, the principal contributors to which were Charles and François Hugo, the great man's sons; Louis Blanc the historian; Auguste Vacquerie, perhaps the ablest[Pg 118] and most fervent of all the Hugolâtres;[16] Paul Meurice, of whom one has already spoken; Rochefort, who reprinted portions of his "Lanternes" in "Le Rappel"; Édouard Lockroy, who subsequently married Charles Hugo's widow, and since those days has been a member of more than one Republican Chamber and Ministry; Laferrière, who under the Republic became President of the Council of State, and later Governor-general of Algeria; and finally Zola.

It has already been shown that the latter was by no means a frantic partisan of Victor Hugo, but he was drawn towards the great man's band by circumstances, by an admiration for the poet, which if tempered by his critical sense was within its limits perfectly sincere, and also by a genuine sympathy with the object which the projected newspaper was to further. In one of his earliest contributions to the press, one dealing with Napoleon III's "Life of Cæsar," he had shown that he in no wise admired the Man of Destiny. Other early writings, even passages of "Les Contes à Ninon," breathed a spirit incompatible with Bonapartist imperialism. Further, life in the Quartier Latin had helped to republicanise Zola, and when he took to journalism for a livelihood, it was to the popular opposition press that he naturally turned. Even if "L'Événement" and "Le Figaro" were originally non-political, their tendencies at any rate were against the Empire. Again, "Le Salut Public," of Lyons, was not a government journal, nor was "Le Gaulois," to which Zola contributed several articles on social subjects, literature, and literary men soon[Pg 119] after its establishment by Edmond Tarbé. Then, too, "La Tribune," a weekly journal for which he wrote regularly, was certainly most democratic, if rather eccentric in some of its views.[17]

Nevertheless, a few years after the invasion and revolution, Edmond de Goncourt, lunching one day with Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, did not hesitate to declare that the Empire might have secured Zola's services had it chosen. "He was penniless, he had a mother and a wife to keep. At the outset he had no public opinions. You could have had him on your side like many others, had you chosen. He could only find democratic newspapers to take his copy. Living among all those folk, he became a democrat. It was quite natural." And Goncourt added that the Princess Mathilde had disarmed many hatreds and angers by her friendship, graciousness, and attentions, winning over such men as himself, his brother, and Flaubert to the Empire which, otherwise, they also would have attacked.[18]

Those allegations, so far as they concern Zola, cannot be left unanswered. The Goncourts' "Journal" shows that the brothers, with all their gifts, were not men of the highest principles; and it is evident that they often judged others by their own standard. As a matter of fact there is no shred of evidence that Zola would ever have sold himself to the Empire. At the time of that régime, as subsequently,[Pg 120] his chief interest lay in literature and art, politics came afterwards; but so far as he concerned himself in them his opinions were essentially democratic. In all respects Edmond de Goncourt's assertions were erroneous. If Zola had cared to sell his pen for political purposes he might have done so with the greatest ease. In 1868-1869, when he first began to give real attention to politics, the authorities were only too anxious to secure clever men who might reply to Rochefort and all the other opposition writers. Large sums were spent in bribing journalists. Villemessant was paid ten thousand pounds to shake off Rochefort and support the authorities; Émile de Girardin was bought with the promise of a senatorship; Clément Duvernois was secured by being placed at the head of a new journal, "Le Peuple Français," on which the Privy-purse, in little more than one year, expended over fifty-six thousand pounds.[19] More money was spent on other journals, new ones like "L'Étendard," for which Auguste Vitu (one of the original characters of Murger's "Vie de Bohème") was engaged; "Le Public," whose editor, Ernest Dréolle, was financed; and "L'Époque," whose nominal proprietor was Dusautoy, the Emperor's tailor. For these and other newspapers contributors were required, and a good many clever but needy men of lax principles presented themselves. The less brazen among them found their excuse in the pretended transformation of the régime; they would never have served the "personal Empire"—of course not!—but the "liberal Empire" commanded their sympathies.

[Pg 121]

It follows that Edmond de Goncourt's estimate of Zola's democratic tendencies was arrant nonsense. Paris had been the young writer's home for several years now; he knew what to think of the Empire, and was against, not with, it. However, he placed literature before politics, particularly as all he saw of the political cuisine of the times inclined him to regard many professional politicians with contempt. And his Republicanism was not so intense as to restrict him exclusively to Republican society. He admired the Goncourts and Flaubert—to whom the former introduced him in 1869—as literary masters, and associated with them freely. Again, he saw no reason why he should not contribute stories to "L'Artiste" and "L'Illustration," even if their editors did not think politically as he did. With respect to "Le Rappel," though his contributions were at times political they more frequently dealt with literary subjects; and the independence of his character was illustrated by the boldness with which he praised Balzac in a journal patronised and in some degree financed by Victor Hugo, who held that Balzac was fated to early and absolute oblivion, because he could not even write French. The result of Zola's championship of Balzac in "Le Rappel" was the severance of his connection with that journal. This, however, did not take place till the last months of the Empire, when much of the paper's purpose was already accomplished.

In the summer of 1869, after signing his contract with Lacroix for the first Rougon-Macquart volumes, Zola felt that he might at last venture to marry, and in July Mademoiselle Mesley, to whom reference has been made already,[20][Pg 122] became his wife. As he afterwards explained, apart from the question of love, he held "the married state to be an indispensable condition for the accomplishment of all good and substantial work. The theory which pictured woman as a destructive creature, one who killed an artist, pounded his heart, and fed upon his brain—was a romantic idea which facts controverted. For his own part, he needed an affection that would guarantee him tranquillity, a loving home, where he might shut himself up, so as to devote his life to the great series of books which he dreamt of. Everything, said he, depended upon a man's choice, and he believed he had found what he needed,—an orphan, the daughter of tradespeople, without a penny, but handsome and intelligent."[21]

At this time, after removing from the corner of the Avenue de Clichy and the Rue Moncey to 23, Rue Truffaut, Zola had secured a little house or "pavilion" in the Rue de La Condamine,—likewise at Batignolles,—a house reached by crossing the courtyards of a larger building divided into flats and facing the street. By opening an iron gate one gained admittance to a small garden with a tiny lawn, over which a large plum-tree cast its shade, while directly in front of the pavilion was an arbour of Virginia creeper. Three rooms on the ground floor, and three on the first, "all like little drawers with partitions as flimsy as paper," such was the accommodation which the house offered, and the dining-room was so small that when a little later Zola purchased a piano, the necessary space for it could only be obtained by transforming a kind of china cupboard into an alcove.[22] The inmates of this band-box were four in number:[Pg 123] Zola, his young wife, his aged mother, now in very indifferent health, and his dog, a cross between a sheep-dog and a Newfoundland,—in a word the faithful Mathieu, of whose last years and death the novelist afterwards wrote so pathetically in "La Joie de Vivre." A servant-woman, who slept out, attended to the harder and dirtier housework; Madame Zola the younger took charge of most of the cooking, and it was amid these conditions, in this little pavilion behind No. 14, Rue de La Condamine, that the young author, who had but lately completed his twenty-ninth year, resolutely set to work upon one of the greatest literary efforts ever made, one which not only embraced a most painstaking study of a period and its people, but imported into fiction, for the first time in its history, virtually every application of the scientific theory of atavism.

Thus Zola gave effect to his old desire to try to reconcile science and poetry—which he had only recently enunciated once more in an article in "La Tribune." And in the prosecution of this self-chosen task over a long term of years, amid many difficulties, the greatest ridicule, the most impudent misrepresentation, the most savage abuse that every white-livered critic could think of, he did not once swerve from the view he expressed in "Le Gaulois" about the time when he was signing his contract with Lacroix: "If I kept a school of morals I would hasten to place 'Madame Bovary' or 'Germinie Lacerteux' in my pupils' hands, convinced as I am that only truth can instruct and fortify generous souls."[23]

That view remained Zola's till his last hour.

Early in the summer of 1869 he handed the opening[Pg 124] chapters of his first volume, "La Fortune des Rougon," to the acting-editor of "Le Siècle," with which journal he had negotiated its serial issue. "Le Siècle" then held in Paris a position similar to that of "The Morning Advertiser" in London. That is to say, it was largely the organ of the licensed victuallers, without, however, belonging to them. Even as in England, there is sometimes said to be a Beer and Bible alliance between the brewers and the clergy, so "Le Siècle" represented a kind of Wine and Democracy compact. It was found in every Parisian wine shop, and during the earlier years of the Empire it had been the only journal of democratic tendencies which the authorities tolerated. Léonor Havin, who became an Opposition deputy in the Corps Législatif, conducted the paper with great ability for several years, but he was dead when Zola negotiated the publication of his novel, and "Le Siècle" had fallen into the hands of that journalistic abomination, an "editorial board." Zola had a friend at court in the person of M. Castagnary, who many years previously had done for Courbet what Zola, comparatively recently, had done for Manet. But Castagnary, while exercising considerable influence, helping to impart a more resolute Republican tone to the paper, was not all powerful in the board room; and not only had Zola already made a good many enemies in his own profession, but a recollection of the opposition which his earlier novels had encountered from the readers of other newspapers, so influenced "Le Siècle's" editorial committee that it again and again postponed the publication of "La Fortune des Rougon."

Thus Zola found himself in an unpleasant position at the very moment when he hoped to live in a little quietude and[Pg 125] comfort. M. Lacroix, for some months, made the stipulated advances without raising any difficulty, but when 1870 arrived the position became more and more uncertain. Zola was reduced to such a state of anxiety that for weeks at a time he could hardly write, and it was only the encouragement he received from his brave young wife that gave him enough energy to persevere.

Thanks to newspaper work, he earned just sufficient money to live on meagrely from day to day and keep the home together, and at last, the publication of "La Fortune des Rougon" being still deferred, he turned from that work, which he had not quite completed, in order to begin another. This was "La Curée," into which some of his critics have read a great many things which he never put in it. Politically and financially, it was simply the story of the Haussmanisation of Paris, while morally its central intrigue was neither more nor less than an adaptation of the ancient legend of Phædra to the corrupt times of the Empire. Of this second book Zola had just written the first chapter, at the end of May, 1870, when "Le Siècle" suddenly decided to publish his earlier work. So once again the young author reverted to "La Fortune des Rougon," correcting the proofs of the commencement and penning the conclusion.

Things looked brighter now, but after that year of keen anxiety Madame Zola was in a very ailing state and needed change and rest. Zola himself felt a longing to get away from Paris for a time, and so, after making various pecuniary arrangements with M. Lacroix and "Le Siècle," he started with his wife and mother for Provence. Then, all at once, came the thunderclap: Napoleon III declared war against Prussia, France was invaded; her armies were surprised[Pg 126] at Wissemburg, overthrown at Woerth, thrust back from Borny and Gravelotte under Metz, routed at Beaumont, surrounded and captured at Sedan. The Empire fell, and a fortnight later the Germans invested Paris. Zola, now in his thirty-first year, was not called upon to undertake any military duties like others of that age, for, being the only son of a widow, the law exempted him from service. It is true, no doubt, that other widows' sons at that time occasionally joined the colours as volunteers, in spite of the legal exemption. And on that account, at a subsequent period, directly after the publication of "La Débâcle," Zola's enemies made much of the fact that he had not done likewise.

But proper allowance should be made for his circumstances at the time. The investment of Paris had cut him off from his usual sources of income, he found himself virtually adrift, at Marseilles, with his sick wife and his old mother, who had become more or less infirm. They had little or no money, there was no relative with whom they might seek a refuge, and if Zola, in a fine spirit of patriotism, had gone to join the army, the two women would have become dependent on the charity of the public. At first Zola was at a loss what to do. But meeting M. Arnaud, who had published his "Mystères de Marseilles" in the "Messager de Provence," he prevailed on him to run a popular halfpenny war journal, which was called "La Marseillaise." Zola's friend, Marius Roux, who was then also in the city, joined him in the venture, and between them they wrote the whole paper, which at the outset seemed likely to prove successful, its sales amounting to ten and fifteen thousand copies; but typographical and other difficulties[Pg 127] arose, and at last, instead of money being earned, it was lost.

In December (1870) Zola's position at Marseilles being once more little short of desperate, he went to Bordeaux to seek some work there, that city having lately become the capital of France by the removal of the National Defence Delegation from Tours. At Bordeaux he found Glais-Bizoin, under whom he had formerly contributed to "La Tribune," and Glais-Bizoin, who was now a member of the Government, a colleague of Gambetta, Crémieux, and Fourichon, made him his secretary. Short, lean, a septuagenarian, with a glistening cranium and a nose like a hawk's beak, this Breton proconsul was one of the amusing personalities of the time. An ardent democrat, he had sat in the legislative chambers of the July Monarchy, the Second Republic, and the Second Empire, making himself quite a parliamentary reputation, not by his own speeches, but by the caustic, galling, and irrelevant manner in which he interrupted the speeches of others. Under his ægis Zola became acquainted with the whole entourage of the National Defence Delegation, from the astute and prim Clément Laurier, who had negotiated the notorious Morgan Loan, to the dishevelled, bohemian, and nicotian Georges Cavalié, otherwise Pipe-en-Bois, who, tapping the British ambassador, Lord Lyons, on the shoulder one morning, while his excellency was somewhat impatiently waiting for Gambetta, had suggested familiarly: "I say, old man, don't bother about the governor, let's go and have a good glass of beer!"[24]

[Pg 128]

In these circumstances Zola summoned his wife and mother to Bordeaux, and set himself to write letters and prepare reports for Glais-Bizoin, pending another appointment; for the old democrat, on introducing him to Clément Laurier, who disposed of most of the civil patronage, had said: "I want a prefecture for this young man,—the first one that may fall vacant." In Glais-Bizoin's estimation, Zola's claim to such a post was self-evident; for he had belonged to the staff of "La Tribune," and since the Revolution of September 4 all the writers on that journal had become members of the Government, ambassadors, or prefects. In Zola's case the first vacancies which occurred were the prefectures of Bayonne and Auch, but both were secured by more eager and active candidates, and all that Laurier could ultimately offer was a sub-prefecture, that of Castel-Sarrasin, a pleasant little town of seven thousand inhabitants, on the Garonne, not far from Montauban.

This incident in Zola's career has been turned by some of his detractors into an exciting romance which it is unnecessary to recapitulate. The main facts have been given by Alexis, to whose account a few particulars may be added. The war at that time was drawing to an end. Gambetta was anxious to prevent any partisans of the fallen Empire from being returned at the elections for an Assembly, which were becoming more and more inevitable and imminent. There was a sub-prefect at Castel-Sarrasin named Camille Delthil.[Pg 129] He was a young poet, the author of a volume of "Poëmes Parisiens," to which he afterwards added "Les Rustiques" and "Les Lambrusques." He discharged his duties with the literary grace of a true Parnassian, and a mildness which arose from the circumstance that he was himself a native of Castel-Sarrasin. Gambetta deemed him altogether too mild. According to the Dictator, to ensure the return of a Republican in that constituency a strong-fisted sub-prefect was needed, a man, too, who could pen vigorous and stirring proclamations. Now it occurred to Clément Laurier that Zola had a vigorous style and a stern mien, so why should not the novelist be set in the place of the poet, the latter being gently transferred to some other office? But Delthil would not consent to this arrangement. Having been born at Castel-Sarrasin, he gloried in ruling it.

According to the legend, he now threw off all his mildness, barricaded himself in his sub-prefecture, and defied both the Government and Zola, in such wise that the latter, although duly "gazetted," was unable to take possession of his post when he repaired to Castel-Sarrasin. But he never went there. The truth is that he had barely accepted the appointment when Paris capitulated, and Jules Simon arrived at Bordeaux to put an end to some of Gambetta's high-handed proceedings. Forthwith, in presence of the general "muddle" which arose, and with the thought, also, that now communications with Paris were restored, he might revert to journalism, and ultimately to literature, Zola called on Laurier and withdrew his acceptance of the appointment.

It may be idle and unprofitable to speculate concerning "the might-have-been," yet a few remarks may well be[Pg 130] offered respecting this curious episode in Zola's career. His original acceptance of Laurier's offer was explained by him to Alexis. Those were wild times, and every mind was more or less unhinged. "For my part," said Zola, "I imagined that it was the end of the world, and that there would be no more literature. I had brought the manuscript of the first chapter of 'La Curée' with me from Paris, and I occasionally looked at it as I might have looked at some very old papers which had become mere souvenirs. Paris seemed to me very far away, lost in the clouds, and, as I had my wife and mother with me and no certain prospect of money, I ended by thinking it quite natural and advisable that I should plunge into politics, for which I had felt so much contempt previously,—a contempt which speedily returned."[25]

There was some little exaggeration in those last words as the sequel will show, though as Zola was a man of absolute convictions, one who detested compromises, it was only natural that he should look unfavourably on many politicians and their methods. But, whatever his views, it happened that politics repeatedly played an important part in his life, even at the time when he appeared most devoted to purely literary pursuits. It does not seem very difficult to divine how his career would have shaped itself had he become a functionary. As he had too independent a character to execute any orders unless he regarded them as right, he would soon have found himself at loggerheads with his superiors, dismissed or compelled to resign; and unlike the majority of the discarded functionaries of the period he could hardly have sought compensation in a[Pg 131] parliamentary seat, for he was no orator. Thus, like some others, he might have become a mere hanger-on of the Republican party, one of those who only secured a real livelihood subsequent to Thiers and MacMahon, when Gambetta's influence again became paramount in France.

His refusal, at the first opportunity, of the sub-prefectoral appointment which he had only accepted as a pis-aller, was therefore wise. He could not get rid of politics, whatever may have been his desires, but he at least confined himself to the duties of a political journalist. He became a correspondent of "Le Sémaphore," the chief daily paper of Marseilles, his connection with which lasted seven years. Further he placed himself in communication with "La Cloche" of Paris, for which he had written a few articles previous to the Siege, and which, curiously enough, was directed by Louis Ulbach,—the novelist and critic who had denounced "Thérèse Raquin" as "putrid literature." That quarrel, apparently, had been patched up, and Zola and Ulbach, while remaining of antagonistic literary schools, had found some basis of agreement in politics. At all events the former now became the descriptive parliamentary correspondent of "La Cloche," recording the doings of the National Assembly, first at Bordeaux, later at Versailles, his connection with this journal lasting till the summer of 1872, when he carried his pen to "Le Corsaire," for which he wrote several fiery political articles, one of which, called "The Morrow of the Crisis"[26] almost led to the paper's suppression.

[Pg 132]

Leaving Bordeaux for Paris about the time when the Assembly removed to Versailles, Zola who had seen nothing of the German siege, at least witnessed various incidents of the Commune.[27] The little house in the Rue de La Condamine was now again his home, and at times he went about the city, and at others betook himself to Versailles, zealously attending to his duties for "La Cloche." At that moment there could be no thought of book-writing; but after the fall of the Commune at the end of May, 1871, he again turned to "La Curée," and prevailed upon Ulbach to print that story as a serial. Considerable confusion still prevailed in Paris, and he was put to many shifts for information which he needed—shifts which some of his critics afterwards imputed to him as crimes, though the wonder is that he should have been able to write such a book at all, in the hurly-burly through which France was passing.

"La Curée" began to appear in "La Cloche" towards the end of September (1871), and about the same time Lacroix at last published the initial volume of the series, "La Fortune des Rougon," the final chapter of which had remained lying in the offices of "Le Siècle" throughout the war, much to the alarm of Zola, who had regarded it as lost. The book met with little sale, little recognition, but this is not surprising. France had not yet recovered from the great convulsions of the war and the Commune, and small was the attention vouchsafed to literature. Moreover, as Paris slowly settled down to a degree of quietude, it desired amusement more than anything else—the sprightliest music, the gayest songs, the very lightest literature obtainable. It was the usual reaction, the same which[Pg 133] had come with all the frivolity of the Directory after the Terror's bath of blood. Produced, then, under the most unfavourable conditions, "La Fortune des Rougon" did not even secure the honour of a real second edition, for the copies which may be found bearing the mention "second edition" on their covers and title-pages, were merely a residue of the first one, only a portion of which was bound when the book originally appeared.[28]

This was bad, and it seemed really as if Zola would never reach the end of his troubles, for the Public Prosecution service took note of "La Curée" as it appeared in "La Cloche," and adjudged a certain account of a supper at the Café Riche to be immoral. It was early in November when Zola received an intimation from the Public Prosecutor requesting him to call at his office. He did so and was received by an official who "advised" him to cease publishing his story in a newspaper. Zola protested the purity of his intentions, explained that his one desire was to show the corruption of society under the fallen Empire, but he finally accepted the official "advice." On November 8, then, he wrote to Ulbach, asking him to suspend publication, his letter being printed in "La Cloche" with the following editorial comment: "We desire that the public should fully know that whatever may be our personal opinion of Zola's analytical method, and whatever danger he may incur from the audacity of his studies, his imprudence is that of a most upright character, sincerely attached to truth in art."

[Pg 134]

As it happened, the serial issue, if suspended in "La Cloche," was completed in a periodical called "La République des Lettres" which Catulle Mendès, the poet and son-in-law of Théophile Gautier, was then editing. Mendès placed himself at Zola's disposal directly he heard of the affair, and curiously enough he rendered him a similar service some years later with respect to "L'Assommoir." The first edition of "La Curée" was produced by Lacroix early in 1872,[29] and soon afterwards the publisher, whose interests had been greatly affected by the war, was forced to suspend business. Thus once more the demon of ill-luck fell upon Zola's home. The "Lettres parisiennes" which he was then writing for "La Cloche," his correspondence for "Le Sémaphore," did not supply all his needs; terrible times came back, numerous bills given to Lacroix were protested, executions followed, and on one desperate occasion, there being nothing pawnable, for everything had been seized except the bedding, which according to the law could not be attached, the very wool of the mattresses on which Zola and his wife slept was sold by the latter to a dealer in order to procure the necessary money for bread.

In these distressful circumstances a great service was rendered to Zola by a man for whose literary style he had no great admiration, though curiously enough it was in more than one respect akin to his own. This was Théophile Gautier to whose connection with Catulle Mendès reference has just been made. Gautier had a fair knowledge of the young man's literary work, and he heard, probably[Pg 135] from Mendès, of his terrible position. Now Gautier's publisher was M. Georges Charpentier, who had lately taken over his father's business, and one evening when they and Francisque Sarcey were together at the Comédie Française, their conversation, during one of the entr'actes, fell on the young writers of the time. "There is one among them," said Gautier,[30] "who is very unlucky, and who is different from most of the others. You should admit him among your authors, my dear Charpentier. If I am not vastly mistaken he possesses a touch of genius. His name is Émile Zola. Have you ever heard of him?"

Yes, both Charpentier and Sarcey had often heard of Zola, and had remarked his repeated efforts to get to the front. Nevertheless they were somewhat surprised by the praise which had fallen from Gautier's lips. He, subsequent to this conversation, caused Zola to be informed of the recommendation he had given him, and the young novelist soon called on M. Charpentier, whose establishment was then on the Quai du Louvre. For just one moment there had been a little hesitation on Zola's part. His only suit of clothes was quite disreputable, and both he and his devoted young wife felt that he ought, at least, to appear decently clad before this publisher on whom his fate depended. There was very little money in the house, but Madame Zola took it and hurried to the "slop" market of the Temple, where she purchased a second-hand suit of black, the nearest approach to a fit that she could find. In those slop garments—which remind one of Daudet's black trousers, similarly acquired, which suddenly became a military red, having been very imperfectly dyed—Zola presented himself[Pg 136] before Charpentier, and was pleased to find that he had to deal, not with the stern founder of the business, whom some authors regarded as a kind of terror, but with the son, a pleasant, cordial man of about his own age.

The position was explained: Lacroix was ruined, and Zola wished to transfer his contract with certain modifications. M. Charpentier asked for twenty-four hours to consider the matter, and on the morrow an agreement was arrived at. During a period of five years Zola was to supply two novels every twelvemonth, and Charpentier was to hand him five hundred francs every month; that is to say, in addition to the two volumes published by Lacroix there would be ten others, representing in the aggregate a sum of thirty thousand francs. Whereas, however, in the contract with Lacroix, the money received by Zola was regarded as an advance, in that with M. Charpentier it was to be actual payment, in return for which the full copyright in each of the ten novels which Zola engaged to write would belong to M. Charpentier for ten years. During that period he would be at liberty to produce them in whatever manner he pleased, both serially and in book form, as well as to sell the rights of translation to foreign publishers, without paying Zola a single franc beyond the stipulated monthly allowance.[31] As Zola desired that the entire series should be in the hands of one publisher, a desire which Charpentier shared, there was also an understanding respecting "La Fortune des Rougon" and "La Curée," the right to republish which was secured from Lacroix by a payment of eight hundred francs.

The agreement with Charpentier certainly extricated Zola[Pg 137] from an extremely difficult position, and it is unlikely that he would have secured better terms, or even as good, elsewhere. But what did they amount to? To the prospect of an income of two hundred and forty pounds[32] a year for five years, in exchange for ten novels. As the sequel showed, such an income would hardly have sufficed for Zola's wants, particularly as there were many claims on him with respect to the bills he had given Lacroix. No less than thirty thousand francs' worth of paper bearing his signature or endorsement was in circulation about this time, says Alexis, and Zola had the greatest difficulty to prove that he had not been the ruined publisher's "man of straw." The nominal amount of his indebtedness was swollen, and the intricacy of the position increased, by the circumstance that many a time when a bill had been renewed it had not been returned to him, though the new bill was placed in circulation. It was only in 1875 that Zola was able to recover his notes and acceptances, and generally liquidate his position, by the payment of various amounts in accordance with an arrangement entered into with M. Lacroix. The latter, be it said, was an honourable but unlucky man, a victim both of circumstances and of misplaced confidence in others.

But, to return to Zola. His contract with M. Charpentier did not free him from the necessity of doing his utmost to increase his income by journalism, to which he devoted no little time. This threw him back with his novels, which, as will be shown, often necessitated considerable preliminary study, and which he refused to "scamp." The publishing arrangement he had made partook undoubtedly of a[Pg 138] "pot-boiling" character; but he was resolved that there should be nothing of the nature of pot-boiling about his literary work. He found at last that he could not write more than one novel a year, and thus, though he drew his money regularly enough, the time came—in or about 1875—when he owed M. Charpentier two or three volumes. Mustering his courage, he called on his publisher to explain his position. But at the first words he spoke with respect to his overdraughts, M. Charpentier interrupted him.

"My dear friend," said he, "I do not wish to rob you. I do not want to derive more than my usual profits from your work. I have lately had an account of your sales drawn up on the basis of an author's royalty of forty centimes per volume,[33] and according to this account, it is not you who owe me money, it is I who owe you some ten thousand francs. Here is our agreement, I tear it up, and all you have to do is to see my cashier."

As Alexis remarks, after telling this story, what other publisher would have done such a thing? In Zola's case it raised him from modest circumstances to affluence. Had the original contract remained in force he would have earned, inclusive of the earlier payments from Lacroix, no more than forty thousand francs by the first twelve volumes of his "Rougon-Macquart" series. At least he would have earned no more during the first ten years of their circulation. But thanks to M. Charpentier's generous honesty,—the successive increase, too, of Zola's royalty from forty to fifty and sixty centimes per volume, the various sums accruing from special issues, illustrated editions, popular[Pg 139] editions, éditions de luxe, serial rights and translation rights—all of which, under the agreement, would have belonged to the publisher—he earned by those twelve books fully twenty times the amount of money he had covenanted to take for them.

That said, it is as well to return to the year 1872, and show how, his long spell of absolute ill-luck ceasing, Zola, while still encountering much hostility, which presently was to grow into a furious storm, gradually advanced along the path of success, assisted by literature's handmaiden, journalism, and cheered by the friendship of some of the foremost men of letters of his time.

After the Franco-German War, Gustave Flaubert, who during fifteen years of the imperial régime had resided, when in Paris, on the Boulevard du Temple, found a pied-à-terre in the Rue Murillo, near the Parc Monceau, thereby becoming one of Zola's neighbours, for the Rue Murillo is only a few minutes' walk from the Rue de La Condamine. Zola frequently called on Flaubert, whom he at first found very downcast, for the fall of the Empire seemed to him the end of the world, and besides, he had not yet recovered from the failure of his book, "L'Education sentimentale," published in 1869. It was at Flaubert's that Zola again met Edmond[Pg 141] de Goncourt, who was still mourning his brother, and feeling so discouraged that he hardly dared to take pen in hand. With Zola and Goncourt came Flaubert's young disciple, Guy de Maupassant, at that moment little more than one-and-twenty, then Ivan Tourgeneff and Alphonse Daudet, whom Zola had already met in the days of "L'Événement," these five being for a time the only intimates of the author of "Madame Bovary." They were not a very gay party, it would seem. One Shrove Sunday, says Zola, while the carnival horns were resounding in the streets, he sat till nightfall listening to Goncourt and Flaubert, who for hours did not cease recalling the past and lamenting its disappearance.[1] Goncourt, on his side, receiving Zola about this time (June, 1872), once more found him sickly and neurotic, complaining confusedly of rheumatism, heart and bladder trouble, and mastered by such acute nervous trembling that he had to employ both hands to carry his glass to his lips.[2]

At that date Zola was planning a novel on the Paris markets—"Le Ventre de Paris"—and dramatising his earlier book, "Thérèse Raquin," working, so he told Goncourt, some nine hours and a half every day. When his play was finished he offered it to M. Hostein, the director of a new Parisian theatre, La Renaissance, and after numerous alterations had been effected, its five acts being reduced to four, it was staged and produced on July 11, 1873, when it met with a curious reception. The more frivolous, the "society" section of the audience, could not endure such tragic sombreness, and Francisque Sarcey, who held that the stage only existed for the amusement of the public, declared[Pg 142] that "this man Zola" made him feel "quite ill." If, however, there was some hissing at the first performance of "Thérèse Raquin," there was also some applause, and when the curtain fell the question of success or failure seemed still to be hanging in the balance. But the professional critics agreed to slate the play, and moreover the "dog-days" were just beginning, the heat emptying even those theatres which had hitherto drawn large audiences, in such wise that after nine performances La Renaissance closed its doors for the summer vacation, and "Thérèse Raquin," as a play, was heard of no more.

Zola consoled himself with the comparative success of his novel, "Le Ventre de Paris,"[3] which reached a second edition deservedly, for its kaleidoscopic pictures of the Paris markets were the best descriptive work that the author had as yet penned. Nevertheless, the book encountered some severe criticism at the hands of the few reviewers who condescended to notice it. Writers devoid of any Rabelaisian sense denounced it as the apotheosis of gluttony; the transference of a pork-butcher's shop to literature was regarded as outrageous; and a certain "symphony of cheeses" gave one critic such a fit of nausea, that an unsuspecting foreigner reading his remarks might have imagined cheese to be an abomination to the delicately constituted Parisians, whereas, in fact, they then consumed—and still consume to-day—a greater amount and a greater variety of cheese, often with[Pg 143] the strangest flavours and odours, than any other community in the world.

But, apropos of this same "symphony," a Parnassian poet,—one who was then regarded as a neo-Grecian, neither more nor less,—M. Anatole France, pointed out rightly enough that the imagery in which Zola indulged was inconsistent with his claim already put forward, though not definitely enunciated, to be a realistic writer. "Such vain, empty, and detestable virtuosité" had no place, said M. France, in the realist system, and indeed, taking that system as it was defined by Zola under the name of naturalism a little later, M. France was assuredly correct. As a matter of fact the duality of Zola's nature was always appearing. He was for ever straying beyond the limits of the doctrines he propounded, having quaffed too deeply of Hugo's rhetoric in his youth to be able to restrain himself. And it was as well, perhaps, to show that even at this early stage of his great series, his vagaries, his deviations from his self-chosen principles, already attracted attention.

It was also apropos of this same "Ventre de Paris," that the first of many charges of plagiarism was preferred against Zola. In this instance it was M. Nadar, photographer, aeronaut, caricaturist, and author, who declared that "the colour scale" of the sea of vegetables which Zola showed spreading around the Paris markets had been borrowed from something which he, Nadar, had written. But Zola had merely expanded a passage of one of his own early articles; and the suggestion of plagiarism was the more ridiculous as the first thing which strikes anybody, even with only a little artistic perception, when witnessing daybreak at the Paris markets, is the diversity of the picture's[Pg 144] hues, the great medley of colour gradually accentuated by the light of the rising sun. M. Nadar probably realised that his contention could not be regarded seriously. At all events the matter dropped, and Zola turned to his next volume, "La Conquête de Plassans," as well as to a new play, a three-act comedy, which he entitled "Les Héritiers Rabourdin."

Meantime, it had occurred to Flaubert to unite his intimates in a monthly dinner, which, said he, might be called "the Dinner of the Hissed Authors." He himself had been hissed for his play, "Le Candidat," Zola had encountered a similar experience with "Thérèse Raquin," Alphonse Daudet with "L'Arlésienne," and Edmond de Goncourt with "Henriette Maréchal." Tourgeneff, also, was admitted to the company on the strength of his assertion that he had been hissed in Russia; but, according to Daudet, when Émile de Girardin, hearing of the project, wished to join the others—pleading, no doubt, the reception given to the notorious "Supplice d'une Femme"—they promptly blackballed him on the ground that he was not a littérateur.[4]

Thanks to the wine provided at those monthly dinners, they were livelier, though perhaps not more interesting, than the Sunday meetings in Flaubert's rooms. They took place at various restaurants, the first at the Café Riche, on April 14, 1874.[5] Then, as Flaubert was starting for Le Croisset, near Rouen, the next was adjourned till the winter[Pg 145] months. As Zola tells us, during the years over which these dinners were spread, the choice of a restaurant for the next repast invariably led to great discussion among the five convives. Anxious apparently to sample every kind of cuisine, they went from the Café Riche to Voisin's in the Rue St. Honoré; from Voisin's to Adolphe and Pelé's near the Grand Opera House, and thence to the Byron on the Place de l'Opéra Comique. They feasted now on bouillabaisse, now on poulet au kari. Tourgeneff naturally required caviar to whet his appetite; Flaubert always insisted on having Normandy butter, and revelled in Rouen ducklings à l'étouffade; while Goncourt evinced a depraved taste for preserved ginger. As for Zola, he, according to Alphonse Daudet, was addicted to shellfish and sea-urchins! His friends occasionally twitted him respecting the partiality he began to evince for good fare,—which cast, they said, a lurid light on his novel, "Le Ventre de Paris"—and he frankly acknowledged his gourmandise, pleading, however, that it was his only vice, and that he had gone hungry so many years!

Of course there was no ceremony at those monthly dinners. Flaubert and Zola often took off their coats and sat down at table "in their shirt-sleeves," as the phrase goes, while between the courses Tourgeneff would sprawl on a sofa. And directly the coffee was served the waiters were turned out of the room, and a long discussion on literary subjects began, that is when it had not been started already at the outset of the repast. "I remember," wrote Zola, in his recollections of Flaubert,[6] "a terrible discussion on Chateaubriand, which lasted from seven in the evening till one[Pg 146] o'clock in the morning. Flaubert and Daudet defended him, Tourgeneff and I attacked him, while Goncourt remained neutral. At other times we took up the subject of the passions, talked of women and love, and on those occasions the waiters looked at us aghast. Then, as Flaubert detested having to walk home alone, I accompanied him through the dark streets, and did not get to bed till three o'clock in the morning, for we halted at the corner of every open space to philosophise."

Meantime the Sunday gatherings at Flaubert's had become far less gloomy. The author of "Madame Bovary" had gradually accustomed himself to the new order of things, and when he removed from the Rue Murillo to the Faubourg St. Honoré, a number of admirers surrounded him, as well as his half-dozen chosen intimates.[7] On some occasions as many as twenty visitors assembled in his half-furnished white and gold drawing-room, which from three till six o'clock became full of tobacco-smoke, everybody except Zola freely indulging in pipe, cigar, or cigarette. He had ceased smoking under compulsion, in his days of dire necessity, and though no such compulsion existed now, even Flaubert seldom succeeded in forcing a pipe upon him.

In his account of those Sunday gatherings, he allows us to understand that the speech often suggested the style of Rabelais, perhaps even of Villon, that spades were called plumply spades, which will not surprise those who know the Cambronnesque epithet that Flaubert—the stylist—applied[Pg 147] to his own work, "Madame Bovary," in his anger and weariness at being incessantly complimented on it. For the rest, Zola tells us that the company "rattled through every subject, always reverting to literature, to the book or the play of the hour, or to some general question or venturesome theory; but, at the same time, excursions were made into every field, and neither men nor things were spared. Flaubert thundered, Tourgeneff told stories of exquisite originality and savour, Goncourt pronounced judgment on one matter and another with all his shrewdness and personal style of phraseology. Then Daudet acted his anecdotes in that charming manner of his, which made him the best of companions; while as for myself I did not shine at all, for I am a very poor conversationalist, and only worth anything when I feel a deep conviction on some subject, and fly into a passion."

To some of the aforementioned gatherings and dinners it will be necessary to refer again in the course of this narrative. What has been set down here will, however, indicate the nature of the companionship which came to Zola as he toiled along the path leading to success. He had not shaken off his old friends, he still gave his weekly dinners which one or another—Alexis, Marius Roux, Coste, Duranty, and Béliard, the painter,—attended, though some began to fall out of the ranks, carried hither and thither by their private interests. Meantime, he worked very zealously. In 1874, he completed his story, "La Conquête de Plassans,"—the fourth volume of the Rougon-Macquart series—and ran it through "Le Siècle" as a serial. When it was published, soon afterwards, in volume form by Charpentier, there was a sufficient demand to justify the[Pg 148] printing of a second edition of this tale of priestly intrigue in public and private life.[8]

But Zola's eyes were still turned towards the stage, partly because he desired to apply certain theories to play-writing, and partly because he knew that the successful dramatist advanced far more rapidly than the successful novelist along the path to fortune. Thus, having finished his three-act comedy, "Les Héritiers Rabourdin,"[9] in which the gruesome was mingled with the farcical, he offered it to the Palais Royal Theatre. But the manager of that house only cared for amusing plays free from all lugubrious taint, his chief author being Labiche, whose name was synonymous with unadulterated merriment; so Zola soon carried his manuscript to M. Montigny of the Gymnase. Writing on July 23, 1874, to his friend and publisher, M. Charpentier, he gave the following account of the issue of his endeavours:——

The Théâtre de Cluny was then a third or fourth rate little house in the Quartier Latin, and Zola's fears respecting its company were fully justified. To give an idea of the fate which befell his play it will be enough to mention that one of the "parts," that of Chapuzot, an octogenarian, was confided to a young fellow named Olona, who in his efforts to imitate an old man's voice ended by speaking like a "Punch." Nevertheless, there was no hissing at the first performance which was delayed until the 3d of November (1874); the demeanour of the audience being rather one of bewilderment, particularly when in the third act illness and death suddenly intruded into the midst of farce. But the critics did not hesitate. They damned the play even as they had damned "Thérèse Raquin," "Le Figaro" curtly declaring that it was repulsive, tiresome, and immoral; and after seventeen performances, given to well-nigh empty houses, except on Sundays when the shopkeepers and working-people of the district attended and laughed good-naturedly,[11] "Les Héritiers Rabourdin" disappeared from the stage without hope of revival.

But this was not Zola's only work during the year 1874. He had now moved from the Rue de La Condamine to 21, Rue St. Georges (now Rue des Apennins) at Batignolles.[Pg 150] Here again, unlike most Parisians, who live in flats, he had a house to himself, with a garden, both considerably larger than the previous ones. In the Rue de La Condamine he himself had attended to his garden, made a kennel for his dog, erected his own fowl and rabbit houses—for he was skilful with his hands—just like any other modestly circumstanced dweller in Suburbia. But in the Rue St. Georges his prosperity increased, and instead of employing a mere femme-de-ménage to help his wife in the housework, he was soon able to engage two servants, man and wife.

His increased prosperity was due to the good offices of his friend, Ivan Tourgeneff, who took no little interest in him. At this time Zola no longer wrote political articles for the Paris press, for editors deemed his pen too violent; and as he also carried revolutionary methods into literary discussion, he was unable to find in France any satisfactory outlet either for certain critical studies on eminent writers which he had often thought of undertaking, or for any adequate expression of his theories respecting fiction. In these circumstances Tourgeneff recommended him to a St. Petersburg review, the "Viestnik Yevropi," otherwise "The European Messenger." To this periodical Zola became a regular and well-paid contributor for several years. The essays and short stories which he wrote for it were naturally translated into Russian, in which language they became known long before the French text was printed.

It was also this Russian review that first issued "La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret," the fifth instalment of the "Rougon-Macquarts" and one of the most romantic of all Zola's novels. He wrote it in the Rue St. Georges in the summer of 1874, after arranging for the publication in[Pg 151] book form of ten short stories which he had contributed during recent years to newspapers, almanacs, and other periodicals. The little volume was called "Nouveaux Contes à Ninon," and the reception given to it by both the critics and the public was distinctly encouraging.[12] The former, however, cold-shouldered "La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret," which was published by Charpentier in 1875, though this was the first of Zola's novels that reached, not a great sale certainly, but one which may fairly be called considerable for that period. In 1876 a sixth edition of it was reached, followed by another in the ensuing year.[13]

When "Abbé Mouret" was placed on the market, Zola, who seldom if ever rested, was already working on his next book, "Son Excellence Eugène Rougon," in which he dealt with the political side of the Second Empire and sketched the life of the Imperial Court at Compiègne. Some years previously, in 1865, when he was writing for "L'Événement," that journal had published a series of articles signed "D," chronicling the imperial sojourn at Compiègne; and these had been collected in a volume to which the fanciful subtitle of "Confidences d'un Valet de Chambre"[14] was given, though, in point of fact, the author was[Pg 152] simply a journalist, recommended by Théophile Gautier for the express purpose of reporting the doings of the court during its villegiatura, and in that way refuting the thousand rumours of indescribable orgies at Compiègne, which circulated among the more credulous Parisians. From the record in question, a very accurate one, Zola, who, of course had never been a guest at Compiègne, derived considerable information, but sundry critics, unacquainted with the truth, twitted him for having placed reliance on back-stairs gossip, when in reality he had taken as his guide statements issued with the Emperor's express approval.

But further information was given him by Flaubert, who had visited Compiègne more than once as a court guest. And Goncourt tells us that Flaubert, when questioned by Zola, proceeded to mimic the late sovereign in characteristic fashion, walking up and down with his figure bent, resting one hand on his back, and twirling his moustache with the other, while mumbling idiotic remarks. "Napoleon III," added Flaubert, by way of comment, "was unadulterated stupidity"; to which proposition Goncourt retorted, wittily and with great truth, that stupidity was usually loquacious, whereas the Emperor's had been silent stupidity. "It was that which made his strength, it allowed one to suppose everything."[15] No better judgment than this was ever passed on Napoleon III. For twenty years the world regarded him as "deep," though, in reality, he was in many respects a fool, one who would never even have[Pg 153] reigned over France had it not been for the energy and acumen of his bastard half-brother, the Duke de Morny.

Apropos of the latter, Goncourt mentions that one day when Alphonse Daudet, who had been in the Duke's employment, was giving various particulars about him, Zola expressed a keen regret that he had not possessed this information in time to use it in "Son Excellence," which contains but a very imperfect sketch of Morny under the name of Marsy. In a discussion which ensued, Zola evinced great eagerness to put everything into his books—that is everything he learnt which might be germane to his subjects and likely to cast light upon them. On the whole, however, he was far less "personal" than Daudet. Both in "Son Excellence Eugène Rougon" and in his later novel, "Paris," although many of the characters suggested well-known people, almost every one of them was a blend, so to say, of three or four originals, whereas Daudet, sketching his characters from the life, often modified them so little that those who knew their Paris could not regard some of his books otherwise than as pillories.

The writing of "Son Excellence Eugène Rougon" proved a somewhat laborious task for Zola, the period selected for the story being largely antecedent to his participation in newspaper life, from which he had learnt so much both politically and socially. And his desire to be scrupulously accurate in all essential particulars led him to undertake a variety of fatiguing researches. Hard work, indeed excessive work, for he wrote regularly for the Russian review, and penned some Parisian correspondence every day for "Le Sémaphore" of Marseilles, besides proceeding with his novel, again reduced him to a nervous condition, and one day, when he[Pg 154] was with Goncourt and others, he complained that while he wrote he often fancied he could see mice scampering about him, or birds flying away on one hand or the other. That spring (1875) others also felt "run down," as the saying goes. Tourgeneff, for instance, complained of his nerves, and Flaubert was haunted by the idea that there was always somebody behind him while he worked.[16]

At last, when the summer came and his book was finished, Zola resolved to seek a change, though not absolute rest, for idleness was repugnant to him. His circumstances had now greatly improved; M. Charpentier had torn up the original agreement for the Rougon-Macquart series, and opened his cash-box, and Zola had at last liquidated the liabilities which he had incurred by the failure of Lacroix. So, with his wife and mother, he betook himself to a little Norman watering-place, St. Aubin-sur-Mer, lying between the mouth of the Orne and the Calvados rocks, and reached, in those days, by coach from Caen.

It was there, as Alexis relates, that he planned his next book, "L'Assommoir," the idea of which had occurred to him before his departure from Paris. In his previous volumes he had dealt with the Imperial Court, the Parisian society, the political world, the provincial life, the clerical intrigues of the Second Empire, and it was only in "Le Ventre de Paris" that he had cast some side-lights upon the working class of the capital. They, however, deserved an entire volume to themselves, and Zola felt that he could write one, based largely on his own personal knowledge of their habits and customs, for in his days of poverty he had dwelt among them at Montrouge, and in the Rue St. Jacques, and again[Pg 155] on the Boulevard Montparnasse. Besides what he had written about them in a few newspaper articles or short stories, such as "Le Chomage," "Mon voisin Jacques" and "Le Forgeron,"[17] which will be found in the "Nouveaux Contes à Ninon," he remembered a great many things, funerals, festivities, and junketings. He had discovered, too, a suitable title—"L'Assommoir"—in Alfred Delvau's slang dictionary, and it was this circumstance which, when he had written two chapters of the book in his usual style, suddenly inspired him with the idea of penning it in the real vernacular of the Parisian masses, not the special slang of thieves and prostitutes, such as Eugène Sue had employed, and, in part, invented, in "Les Mystères de Paris," but in the current langage populaire, understood by everybody.[18]

It was during Zola's stay at St. Aubin, face to face with the sea,—whose influence was not lost upon him for, as will be shown, it suggested in part a later work, "La Joie de Vivre,"—that he mapped out this book on the Parisian prolétaire, which was to raise him to fame, and Alexis tells us that though he already had the chief scenes of the story in his mind he was for a time at a loss for a suitable intrigue which would weld them well together. The idea of taking a girl of the people, who stumbles and has two children by her seducer, then marries another man, establishes herself in business by dint of hard work, but is borne down by the conduct of her husband, who becomes a drunkard, had previously occurred to him, figuring, indeed, in the original genealogical tree which he had drawn up for his series, but[Pg 156] he felt that the husband's drunkenness might not fully account for the wife's downfall, and he remained at a loss how to proceed until, all at once, he was inspired to bring the woman's seducer back into her home. That would make everything possible, and he decided to model his story accordingly.

He busied himself with "L'Assommoir" on his return to Paris in the autumn, and arranged for the "serialisation" of his completed novel, "Son Excellence Eugène Rougon," in "Le Siècle" early in the following year, 1876.[19] He was then in high spirits. "Fortune," he said to Edmond de Goncourt, "was at last finding its way to his home." Indeed, a stroke of luck had befallen him. A daily evening paper, "Le Bien Public," had appointed him its dramatic critic at a salary of six thousand francs a year. This journal had been started with the support of Thiers, since whose resignation of the presidency of the Republic in 1873 France had been governed in a reactionary spirit by MacMahon's ministers. During that troublous period "Le Bien Public," whose connection with Thiers was well known, rendered good service to the Republican cause, first rallying many hesitating people, then becoming more and more democratic, and helping on that alliance of the middle class and the proletariat which saved France from monarchical intrigues and resulted in MacMahon's downfall. Zola was delighted to join the paper, particularly as it allowed him all freedom in his dramatic criticisms, which were written in his usual trenchant style. Of course he had to give to[Pg 157] them some of the time he had hitherto allotted to his books, but he was not afraid of additional work, particularly when it was of a nature to bring him nearer to the Parisian stage, on which, in spite of every rebuff, he still dreamt of triumphing. Moreover, the increase in his income was very welcome; with the salaries he deceived from "Le Bien Public" and "Le Sémaphore"—for which he still wrote—the proceeds of his contributions to the Russian review, which some months amounted to eight hundred francs, and the money accruing from his books, his income, in the early part of 1876, before the serial publication of "L'Assommoir," represented quite twenty-five thousand francs, and perhaps thirty thousand francs a year.[20] But he decided to offer his new story to "Le Bien Public"; and that he could now command good terms is shown by the fact that the paper agreed to pay him ten thousand francs for the serial rights without even seeing his manuscript, which, by the way, was not ready, though he had given information respecting the subject he meant to treat.

The serial issue began in June (1876) and there was an immediate outcry. Whatever might be thought of Zola's novels in book form, they were not liked by the newspaper readers of those days; and, in the case of "L'Assommoir," there were not only complaints of immorality, but the author was accused, ludicrously enough, of slandering the masses, insulting the working classes. The latter charge alarmed the director of "Le Bien Public" far more than the first did. Important political issues were then at stake, and it was essential that the working-man should not be offended! Of course people judged the story merely by[Pg 158] the instalments as they appeared, and these as yet gave little indication of what it would be when completed. Thus a very narrow view was taken by some readers, while others were more particularly horrified by the slang in which the work abounded, complaining notably of its appearance, not only in the dialogue but in the descriptive and narrative passages, into which Zola had introduced it with the express object of suggesting that this was a story of the masses told by one of themselves. Briefly, in all respects, the outcry became so great that in July the director of "Le Bien Public" decided to cease publication. Nevertheless, the paper honestly paid Zola the full amount specified in the agreement

At this moment M. Catulle Mendès again came to the rescue, and, for a nominal sum, a thousand francs or so, Zola handed him the remainder of his manuscript for publication in "La République des Lettres"; then, leaving his literary bombshell to complete its work, betook himself to Piriac, on the Breton coast, between Vannes and St. Nazaire, for a holiday. In Paris the periodical edited by M. Mendès suddenly leaped into notoriety. It supplied the latter part of "L'Assommoir" gratuitously to those subscribers of "Le Bien Public" who desired to read it, but at the same time its sales increased largely, for so much was said about this extraordinary story, so violent were the attacks upon it, that many, who as yet had seen nothing of it, wished to ascertain its character and form their own opinions.

Amid all the hubbub, a well-known Parisian journalist of that period, Tony Révillon, who had catered for the working classes since the latter years of the Empire, meeting Paul Alexis one day in the autumn, said to him: "Tell Zola to[Pg 159] make his mind easy. His book will sell like hot cakes.... 'L'Assommoir' will be a wonderful success."

In a pecuniary sense, such was indeed the case directly M. Charpentier published the book in 1877.[21] Of the ordinary edition fifty thousand copies—a very large figure for those days—were soon sold, and at the end of 1879, eighty thousand had been disposed of; these being independent of a "popular" illustrated edition, issued in fifty-nine "parts" at ten centimes apiece, forty thousand copies of which were disseminated chiefly among the Parisian working classes (whom the story was said to libel) in the course of 1878 alone. From 1877 onward an unexampled controversy raged round the book as well as round Zola's principles and methods generally—a controversy to which additional zest was imparted both by a dramatic adaptation of the story, which drew all Paris to the Théâtre de l'Ambigu, and by the publication in French of some of the articles on French literature and literary men which Zola had written for the Russian review. More fuel was added to the fire by a pamphlet he penned and called "La République française et la Littérature," and by a series of papers he contributed to "Le Voltaire" and collected a little later under the title of "Le Roman Expérimental." Wherever one went in Paris one heard allusion to or discussion of Zola, "L'Assommoir," and "naturalism." The newspapers were full of articles: the author was attacked by such men as Henri[Pg 160] Fouquier in "Le XIXe Siècle," Francisque Sarcey in "Le Temps," Jules Claretie in "La Presse," Gaucher in "La Revue Bleue." "La Revue de France" joined in the hostile chorus and so, too, did the Olympian "Revue des Deux Mondes"; while "La Vie littéraire" and "La Jeune France" joined "La République des Lettres" in defending the much-abused author.

But pamphlets also rained upon Paris, there was "Zola, Pape et César," by Madame Arnault; "Monsieur Zola," by "Papa Cadet"; a "Petit Traité de Littérature Naturaliste," by "Camille B." and Albert Vanier; "Naturalisme ou Réalisme," by F. de Bus; "M. Zola et son Assommoir," by Frédéric Erbs; "Apropos de l'Assommoir," by Édouard Rod, and several others. But mere pamphlets did not suffice, there came "poems" like "En r'venant d' l'Assommoir," by Galipaux; parodies like "L'Assommoir du Cirque Franconi" and "L'Assommoir pour rire," by Blondelet and Beaumaine; and finally there were lectures both against Zola and in defence of him, the most notable of the latter, one which particularly angered both the conservative critics and the sensitive Parnassians, being delivered by M. Léon Hennique in the Salle des Conférences on the Boulevard des Capucines.

To a few of the matters enumerated above, the production of "L'Assommoir" as a play, and the publication in volume form of some of Zola's literary papers, it will be necessary to refer again in following the thread of this narrative; but they have been mentioned here in order that the reader may at once form some idea of the sensation which the appearance of "L'Assommoir" caused, first in the literary world of Paris, whence it spread throughout the reading public.[Pg 161] In the literary annals of France, 1876, 1877, and 1878 must always rank as the years of "L'Assommoir." Yet they were by no means barren in other respects. They cover the period when Victor Hugo published, not only a new series of "La Légende des Siècles," but also "L'Art d'être Grandpère" and "L'Histoire d'un Crime." And other poets were raising their voices: Leconte de Lisle was issuing his translation of Sophocles, Mallarmé his "Après-midi d'un Faune," Dierx his "Amants," Anatole France his "Noces Corinthiennes," Richepin his "Chanson des Gueux." And fiction, as usual, poured from the printing presses of France. Flaubert's "Trois Contes"; Daudet's "Jack" and "Le Nabab"; Goncourt's "La Fille Élisa"; Octave Feuillet's "Amours de Philippe"; George Sand's last stories, "La Tour de Percemont" and "Marianne"; Ferdinand Fabre's best book, "L'Abbé Tigrane," were then first offered to the reading public. And going further afield one finds "Le Train 17" and "La Maison Vide," by Jules Claretie; "Les Batailles du Mariage" and "Sans Famille," by Hector Malot; "Samuel Brohl," by Cherbuliez; "Raymonde," by André Theuriet; "Michel Strogoff," by Jules Verne; "L'Homme de la Croix-aux-Bœufs," by Léon Cladel, also appearing at this time. But none of these, and indeed, briefly, no novel, or play, or poem, or historical or philosophical work of the time stands forth conspicuously, preëminently, as "L'Assommoir" does, to give its name to the date, to mark the period, to indicate a climax or an evolution in French literature.

Before "L'Assommoir," the critics had often treated Zola's books and theories with silent contempt, but they could do so no longer. They were at last compelled to recognise that a new force had arisen, and that they must[Pg 162] be up and doing if they wished to prevent it from gaining the mastery. As happens at every literary evolution, as was the case when the Romantic supplanted the Classic school, all the older men, and, indeed, nearly all of any age who had acquired a recognised position, were against Zola, his adherents being mostly young writers whose positions were not yet made. It has been mentioned that some of the friends of his youth and early manhood had dropped away from him, in a measure by the force of circumstances. But "Le Ventre de Paris" and "L'Assommoir" brought him others, and in particular there were five young men of great promise who, for a time, became known as his "band." Taking them by order of seniority, one may place first the ever-faithful Paul Alexis, a Provençal, in 1877 thirty years of age. Second came Joris Karl Huysmans, a Parisian of Dutch origin, nine and twenty years old, and already the author of a volume of prose poems suggestive of Baudelaire, and a novel, "Marthe." Next there was Guy de Maupassant, a Norman, seven and twenty, introduced to Zola by their mutual friend and master, Flaubert; then Henri Céard, a thoroughbred Parisian, six and twenty, who without introduction had called upon Zola one Sunday to tell him that he had read his books and admired them; and, finally, Léon Hennique, a native of Guadeloupe, who numbered but five and twenty years against the seven and thirty which Zola completed at the time when his first great book was published.[22]

[Pg 163]

Every Thursday, for some years, those five young men, two of whom, Maupassant and Huysmans, afterwards rose to eminence, visited Zola and talked "literature" with him, even as on Sundays he and they visited Gustave Flaubert. The latter, amid all the hubbub and controversy provoked by "L'Assommoir," felt that Zola was going too far, at least farther than he, Flaubert, would have gone. He always underrated his own realism—or naturalism, if one prefer that term—as displayed in "Madame Bovary," as well as his own philosophy, outlined in "L'Education sentimentale" and "La Tentation de St. Antoine"; and if Zola's account of him be accurate, his one ambition was to be known and remembered as a stylist, a master of impeccable French. He even denied that "Madame Bovary" marked any evolution in fiction, he shut his eyes to the deductions which others drew from it, and thus, when he found himself confronted by Zola's venturesome theories, he was at first at a loss to account for them. In one sense his astonishment was amusing: it suggested the surprise of the cause at the sight of so remarkable an effect. But if he twitted Zola about his naturalist professions of faith he did so, as Goncourt observes, "avec de très grands coups de chapeau" for he fully recognised the ability of the man who claimed to be his disciple. One thing which he did not like was the eagerness with which Zola accepted controversy and proclaimed his doctrines on all possible occasions, for this seemed to be too suggestive of self-advertisement.

[Pg 164]

Zola, however, replied very naturally, frankly, and boldly, that he, Flaubert, possessed a small fortune and was therefore able to disregard all sorts of considerations, whereas he, Zola, had been obliged to earn his living by his pen and undertake at times all kinds of writing, even contemptible work. "What I write," he added, "may be divided into two parts. There are my books by which I am judged, and by which I desire to be judged, and there are my critical notices in 'Le Bien Public,' my Russian articles, and my correspondence for Marseilles which I regard as of no account, which I reject, and which I only undertake in order to help on my books. I first placed a nail in position and with the stroke of a hammer I drove it half an inch into the brain of the public, then with a second blow I drove it in an inch. Well, my hammer is the newspaper work which I myself do round my own books."[23]

Nothing could have been more frank than this, not even his remark on the same occasion—in reply evidently to some criticism of Flaubert's, which Goncourt does not exactly specify,—that he cared not a rap for the word "naturalism," and yet intended to repeat it, because things required christening in order that the public might regard them as new.[24] In all this one traces the determination to succeed at any cost, the fighting spirit which had prompted Zola to write to Antony Valabrègue, more than ten years previously, that he belonged to an impatient age, that if he did not trample others under foot they would pass over him, and that he did not desire to be crushed by fools. Thus, whatever might be his contempt for the weapons of his time—advertisement[Pg 165] and pushfulness—he readily made use of them, feeling that if he neglected to do so, amid all the stress, all the fierce competition around him, he might well go under and fail to reach the goal, in spite of the talent of which he was conscious. The battle of the age was the keenest there had ever been, a man could only triumph by incessantly thrusting himself forward, and Zola, for his part, did so without hesitation.

At an early period of the controversies provoked by "L'Assommoir," that is when its publication had been transferred to "Le Bien Public," Zola quitted Paris for L'Estaque, a tiny village nestling below precipitous mountains on the shore of the Golfe des Crottes, beyond which spreads the Mediterranean, with the various islands, including the Château d'If of "Monte Cristo," which mark the approach to the port of Marseilles. In this quiet retreat, where life among the tunny-fishers was rather primitive, the novelist[Pg 167] began to write "Une Page d'Amour," which he had planned before leaving Paris. Edmond de Goncourt mentions an amusing discussion started by Zola, apropos of this book, at a dinner given to Tourgeneff, who was leaving for Russia. Love, in Zola's opinion, did not master one so absolutely as some pretended; and, said he, phenomena similar to those which might be observed in love were also to be found in friendship and patriotism. For his part, he had never been madly in love, and therefore found it difficult to depict such a state of things in others. Flaubert and Goncourt admitted a similar incapacity, arising from the same cause, and it was agreed that the only one of the party whom experience might have qualified to portray the great passion adequately, was Tourgeneff, who, however, was unfortunately deficient in the necessary critical sense.

The question whether Zola's portrayal of love in "Une Page d'Amour" was adequate is certainly open to doubt, and whatever the power and beauty of the book's pictures of Paris, as viewed from the Trocadéro, at sunrise, at sundown, at night, in a storm, and under the snow, one may demur to the often expressed opinion that they were the best he ever limned. They doubtless cost him an effort, but after the great labour which the writing of "L'Assommoir" had involved, "Une Page d'Amour," with its few characters and its narrow scope of action, was almost a restful book. It should be observed, indeed, that Zola seldom penned two great panoramic works in succession. His own explanation of the course he took in writing such comparatively quiet books as "Une Page d'Amour," "La Joie de Vivre" and "Le Rêve" between works of crowded incident like "L'Assommoir," "Nana," "Germinal," "La Terre," and "La[Pg 168] Bête Humaine," was that he wished to diversify his series as much as possible; but it is also certain that he often found it necessary to husband his energies, to allow himself breathing time, as it were, between two great efforts.

He spent some months at L'Estaque writing "Une Page d'Amour," and on returning to Paris late in the autumn of 1877, enriched as he was by the sales of "L'Assommoir," he removed his home to a handsome third-floor flat, 23, Rue de Boulogne. Then, while searching the environs of Paris for a country pied-à-terre, a convenient retreat for the following summer—when the first great Exhibition since the Franco-German War was to be held in Paris—he came upon a little house which took his fancy. It stood on the verge of the village of Médan, which overlooks the Seine, beyond Poissy. Zola merely wished to rent it, but the owner desired a purchaser, not a tenant, and in the end the novelist bought the little place for nine thousand francs.[1] A few weeks later, says Alexis, builders, painters, and upholsterers were turned into the house to repair and fit it for occupation, and for several years they remained busy there on the various enlargements which followed and the other work which became necessary.

Already in 1876, having acquired by his contributions to "Le Bien Public" what may be at least called a conspicuous position as a dramatic critic of very absolute views, Zola, still hankering for theatrical success, had written a farce called "Le Bouton de Rose" intended for the Palais Royal Theatre. At the beginning of 1877 the parts were distributed, and some rehearsals even took place; then, however, the success of the work seeming doubtful, it was postponed;[Pg 169] and Zola himself, somewhat diffident as to its merit, at last decided to withdraw it altogether. But early in 1878 the great uproar occasioned by "L'Assommoir" inspired the directors of the Palais Royal Theatre with a fresh desire to stage this play by a man whose name was now on everybody's lips. They urged him to consent, and he ultimately did so, making various alterations which the directors deemed to be advisable. The play was then rehearsed again, and both the managers and the actors, now as sanguine as they had previously been doubtful, imagined that it would prove a triumph. But at the first performance (May 6, 1878) the audience, after receiving the first act with favour, became angry during the second, and hissed the third freely. In vain did Geoffroy, the leading comedian, endeavour to announce the author's name according to usage; such a tremendous din arose when he appeared before the footlights, that he was unable to make himself heard. Meantime Zola, in the slips, was saying to the crestfallen directors: "You see I was right. You insisted on staging the piece in spite of me. Your earlier decision to drop it was the better one."

In accordance with custom, he had arranged to celebrate the first performance by a supper at Véfour's. In a sense the repast was a funereal one, though it proved by no means doleful, for Zola took the failure of his play right cheerfully, merely regretting that he would now have to modify the order of the work which he had proposed to undertake that year. Had "Le Bouton de Rose" been successful, he had intended to begin another play, based on his novel "La Curée," but that would now have to wait while he started on the next novel of his series. Some days later, when dining at M. Charpentier's, he told Goncourt that the failure of[Pg 170] "Le Bouton de Rose" made him feel quite young again. The success of "L'Assommoir" had unnerved him, whereas he now seemed to have got back to his twentieth year. He needed to be imbued with an angry fighting spirit, said he, in order to write the many volumes which were required to complete his Rougon-Macquart series.

"Une Page d'Amour" was about this time issued serially by "Le Bien Public," whose readers took it more quietly than they had taken "L'Assommoir"; but when it appeared as a volume[2] Zola was accused of having stolen his plot from a novel called "Les Amours d'un Homme Laid," by a Madame Berton, née Samson. It may be said at once that there are several points of resemblance between the plots of these stories. A young widow, a doctor, and a sickly child are prominent characters in both. At the same time there is great difference of treatment, and Zola, on hearing of the accusation, which first emanated from a journal called "La Paix Sociale," at once wrote to it: "I have never read Madame Berton-Samson's story, and until to-day I was ignorant of the existence both of the author and of the work."

To an unprejudiced person it may well seem that the similarity existing between his story and Madame Berton's was due solely to the long arm of coincidence. But of course his enemies asserted that he lied. According to them[Pg 171] he was always lying: and indeed everything he wrote, from the time of attaining any prominence, was denounced as being wholly or in part plagiarism. Even "L'Assommoir" was alleged to be merely a crib from Denis Poulot's "Le Sublime";[3] and, briefly, his adversaries would not allow that he was possessed of a single spark of originality.

At this time (1878) he had so many irons in the fire, as the saying goes, that it is difficult to follow his work in strict chronological order. We find him preparing his novel "Nana," collecting materials for it, devising its plot; penning theatrical criticisms for "Le Bien Public," contributing to "Le Voltaire"; planning with Messrs. Busnach and Gastineau a dramatic version of "L'Assommoir"; and writing a series of papers, chiefly on "Les Romanciers Naturalistes," for the "Viestnik Yevropi" of St. Petersburg. One of those papers, a general critique of contemporary French novelists, their methods and their abilities, was a slashing and in some respects unjust onslaught on all who did not conform to the tenets of the Naturalist school. It was published by the Russian review in September (1878), and a month later was denounced by a Swiss periodical, "La Bibliothèque Universelle," which gave a résumé of its contents. Such, however, was then the "insularity" of France with respect to literary happenings abroad, that December arrived before a Parisian journal, "Le Figaro," discovered the obnoxious paper and proceeded to rate its author. This it did in its most virulent style, borrowing for the occasion a variety of slang epithets from the pages of "L'Assommoir." And as a crowning stroke Zola was[Pg 172] accused of arrant cowardice. He did not dare to attack his contemporaries in the French language and in a French journal, it was said; he sought a foreign country and a foreign tongue for his venomous outpourings.

His reply to this accusation was characteristic. He offered "Le Figaro" the original French manuscript of his article—which differed in many respects from the résumé issued by the Swiss review—and "Le Figaro," which had denounced some of his remarks as unprintable, speedily inserted the entire paper in its literary supplement.[4] The uproar in literary circles then became terrific. Among those whom Zola assailed were Hector Malot, Ferdinand Fabre, Octave Feuillet, Victor Cherbuliez, Edmond About, Louis Ulbach, Erckmann-Chatrian, Paul Féval, Jules Claretie, and Léon Cladel; and it was pointed out that the only writers whom he praised or spared were those whose works were issued by his own publisher, M. Charpentier! Of course, said the quidnuncs, he must have been paid for this service; M. Charpentier could not have given him less than ten thousand francs for his article, though if M. Calmann-Lévy, for instance, had offered him twenty thousand, he would doubtless have written up that publisher's writers instead of abusing them.

As already mentioned, the article in question was in some measure unjust, for it assumed a priori that only the Naturalist school of fiction was entitled to live; but at the same time it contained some sound criticism. Nobody nowadays would deny the proposition that Hector Malot, in whom at one time many hopes had centred, never produced a really great book; that Jules Claretie also, in[Pg 173] spite of his many undoubted gifts, never rose above the second rank as a novelist, that Cladel rendered himself ridiculous by the affectation of his style, and that men like About and Feuillet had greatly declined at the period when Zola wrote. But, naturally enough, these, and all the others whom he named, disliked to be told to their faces that they had always been or had become inferior men; and thus no little wrath was kindled in many directions. There was, however, one man who not only showed no resentment but unhesitatingly acknowledged his own great admiration for Zola's work. And this, strange as it may seem, was Octave Feuillet, who freely expressed himself in that sense both to his friend, Adrien Marx, and to the present writer. The latter had occasion to call upon him with respect to one of his last books, and, some general conversation on literary matters supervening, Feuillet mentioned Zola, saying that he had at first found it almost impossible to read the writings of the Naturalist master, but having forced himself to do so, his feeling of repulsion had departed, leaving sympathy and admiration in its place. Another famous writer whom Zola attacked even more bitterly than he attacked Feuillet, one with whom he had many a literary duel—Alexandre Dumas fils—also ended by expressing very kindly sentiments. "My literary standpoint," he said to the present writer, "is not the same as Zola's. On some matters no agreement between us is possible. But he is a strong man; and," added Dumas bluffly, with a momentary flash of the paternal manner, "what I particularly like about him is his damned frankness."[5][Pg 174] Later, when Zola became a candidate for the French Academy, Dumas fils was one of his most consistent supporters.[6] Jules Claretie also evinced an equally forgiving disposition.

As for Zola, his literary views certainly became more liberal as he grew older; but at the period one has now reached he was in his most arbitrary and dogmatic mood, going so far as to suggest in a pamphlet that each régime must have its appropriate literature, that Naturalist literature alone was suited to the Republic, and that the Republic itself must prove Naturalist, or otherwise would assuredly collapse. "By Naturalism," said he, "I mean analytical and experimental methods based on facts and human documents. There must be agreement between the social movement, which is the cause, and literature, which is the effect. If the Republic, blind as to itself, and failing to understand that it exists by the force of a scientific formula, should begin to persecute that formula in literature, this would be a sign that the Republic is not ripe for facts, and that it must once again give place to one, that is dictatorship."[7]

The pamphlet we have quoted was issued early in 1879. Some months previously both Gustave Flaubert and Alphonse Daudet, being well acquainted with M. Agénor Bardoux, an Auvergnat poetaster and politician appointed Minister of Public Instruction, had suggested to him that Zola, who by "L'Assommoir" had now risen to a conspicuous[Pg 175] position, ought to be made a knight of the Legion of Honour.[8] Daudet, in this matter, was actuated by friendship and admiration, and Flaubert deemed himself to be under a great obligation to Zola. It seems that while Flaubert was writing his "Bouvard et Pécuchet" (which did not appear till after his death), he had often spoken of it to his friends in a somewhat mysterious manner, never actually giving the names of his characters, but referring to them merely by their initials, B. and P. Zola was then working on "Son Excellence Eugène Rougon," and one day, when he and Flaubert met at a lunch given by M. Charpentier, he mentioned that a capital name had occurred to him for one of his characters, this name being Bouvard, which, with its suggestion of blotting-paper, was certainly a fit appellation for a civil service scribe. It so happened—such is coincidence—that Zola and Flaubert proposed to bestow it on much the same type of man; but the former, of course, was quite ignorant of his friend's intentions, for Flaubert, restricting himself to the initial B., had never allowed the word Bouvard to escape his lips. When it fell from Zola's, the author of "Madame Bovary" was greatly upset. "He became quite strange," wrote Zola on subsequently relating the incident, "and after lunch he took me to the bottom of Charpentier's garden, where, with a great show of emotion, he implored me to surrender the name of Bouvard to him. I assented, laughing; but he remained very grave, plainly touched, and even declared that he would not have persevered with his book if I had insisted on using the name. He looked upon his work as[Pg 176] being entirely in those two names Bouvard and Pécuchet, and could not picture it without them."[9]

Now Flaubert was one of the best-hearted men in the world. He regarded Zola's trifling concession as an act of great generosity, and it was to mark his sense of it that he solicited for his friend the Cross of the Legion of Honour. Pressed both by Daudet and Flaubert, M. Bardoux showed himself very favourably disposed, and when, in accordance with usage, he was visited by Zola, he told him straightly he would be gazetted on the next National Fête-day July 14, 1878. That date came and went, however, and Zola's name did not appear in the "Journal Officiel"—the cross promised to him going, instead, to Ferdinand Fabre. Other occasions presented themselves, Bardoux was often urged to keep his promise, but as often evaded it, and of course when the uproar provoked by Zola's paper on his fellow-novelists supervened, it afforded a good excuse for shelving the matter altogether. Meantime the affair had become common talk in certain literary circles, and Zola, who felt that he was being made ridiculous, had more than once threatened to fling the cross in Bardoux's face if he should eventually tender it. Alexis, in recounting the affair, throws virtually all the blame on the Minister; but the latter, after various paltry and untruthful excuses, which certainly put him in a bad light, told Edmond de Goncourt that if he had failed to keep his promise it was not his fault, but really that of his colleagues in the Government.[10]

It really seems to be the case that the question whether[Pg 177] Zola should be decorated was made an affair of State, solemnly debated by the Council of Ministers at the Élysée Palace, Marshal MacMahon being in the chair, probably with his usual cigar between his lips, and his usual bottle of green Chartreuse standing handy on a cheffonnier, in order that he might help himself whenever "he felt so disposed," which, according to the scandal-mongers of the day, was pretty often. And the brave, honest, and narrow-minded Marshal, who—perhaps at his wife's instigation—absolutely refused to promote the impious Renan from the rank of chevalier to that of officer of the Legion of Honour, was in thorough agreement with all the Ministers who opposed the unlucky Bardoux when he asked that the red ribbon might be conferred on the obscene Zola. On his side, the latter, ignorant of the real circumstances of the case, and more and more annoyed by the spiteful allusions to the affair which appeared in some of the newspapers, issued an open letter formally signifying his renunciation of the red ribbon, with the result that for some years there was no further question of "decorating" the foremost novelist of France.

On January 18, 1879, the Ambigu Theatre gave the first performance of the dramatic version of "L'Assommoir" prepared by Messrs. Busnach and Gastineau, who, in point of fact, had been largely assisted by Zola, though his name did not appear on the bills, and he allowed all the merit of the play's success to be attributed to his colleagues. Goncourt tells us that during the rehearsals his melancholy mien quite chilled the actors, who by no means anticipated a success.[11] While the first performance was in progress[Pg 178] Zola sat reading in the manager's private room, and on the fall of the curtain his friends repaired thither to inform him that, apart from a little hissing, everything had gone off satisfactorily. Nevertheless, the critics attacked the play, an English writer, George Augustus Sala, evincing particular distress in a long article which recalled Sarcey's customary brief verdict: "That man Zola makes me ill."[12]

But all Paris had read "L'Assommoir" as a novel, and wished to see it on the stage;[13] and, besides, even the critics could not deny that Madame Hélène Petit's impersonation of the unhappy Gervaise was a great personal triumph. Thus crowds flocked to the Théâtre de l'Ambigu, whose director, Henri Chabrillat, an ex-journalist and novelist, who had commanded the Francs-tireurs de la Presse during the Franco-German War, suddenly found himself making a fortune.

In honour of the staff and company of the Ambigu, the authors of the play ended by giving a ball at the Élysée Montmartre, which, by the way, figured in Zola's story, and Mr. George Moore, the well-known author of "A Mummer's Wife" and "Esther Waters," has related that his first meeting with Zola—of whom he became for several years the chief English supporter—occurred at this particular entertainment.[14] Mr. Moore—who had then only produced his "Flowers of Passion," and was therefore known in Parisian literary and art circles as a young poet—attended the ball dressed as a Parisian[Pg 179] workman, and was engaged to dance with Gervaise. He had no opportunity for conversation when Manet introduced him to Zola, but he called at Médan a few weeks afterwards, and a close friendship sprang up between him and the author of "L'Assommoir." Each, however, was possessed of strong personal convictions, and, as years went by, Zola's life and work gradually took a course of which Mr. Moore did not approve, perhaps because—as admitted by himself—he failed to understand it.

The law of the world is evolution. L'homme absurde est celui qui ne change jamais; and Zola, amid the very triumph of "L'Assommoir," at the very moment when he was expounding the principles of Naturalism in the "Viestnik Yevropi" and "Le Voltaire" (which he joined when "Le Bien Public" ceased publication), was already, and quite unconsciously, perhaps, undergoing a change. He was in some degree carried away by the sudden accession of ample means after years of poverty and years of battle. In the long run he showed himself superior to fortune, whether it were favourable or adverse, but he found its first smile irresistible, as so often happens with those who have long toiled and suffered and cursed their fate. Briefly, he proved no exception to the general rule, and he was taunted with having failed to depart from it, being candidly told in print that, like Herbert Spencer and Gustave Flaubert, he ought to have been quite content with mere lodging-house surroundings, and that he made a ridiculous use of his comparative wealth.

Most of his money, it may be mentioned, was lavished on his property at Médan, to which he made many additions, building, for instance, a large square tower in which[Pg 180] he fitted up a spacious workroom, whose huge window suggested that of a studio. In that room in later years most of his books were written. And as wealth accrued a second large tower was added to the first, followed by some smaller ones flanking the entrance of the property. All this was denounced as bad taste; and unquestionably, from an architectural point of view, Médan, with one bit of building added here and another there, became a strange-looking place. At the same time it remains an interesting memorial of the rise of Zola's fortunes. One knows, for instance, that the first tower was built with money derived from "L'Assommoir," that the second was erected with some of the proceeds of "Nana," that this and that enlargement were paid for by "La Terre" or "La Débâcle." Certainly no common parvenu would have left such a tell-tale record. It is doubtful whether he would have been content to dwell during the greater part of the year in an out-of-the way village like Médan; and even had he retained possession of the property he would surely have demolished the original humble little house and have erected some grand Louis Treize château on the site.

But another charge preferred against Zola was that he wasted time and money in collecting works of art and curios—the latter more often than the former. In his novel, "L'Œuvre," he gave an explanation of this which is worth quoting:

No doubt, among the great quantity of tapestry, carved wood, old furniture, pottery, church embroideries, and so forth, which Zola thus gathered together, there were occasionally things which did not suggest the best taste or the greatest accuracy of judgment. But the statement quoted above shows that he disclaimed collecting in the ordinary sense, and made purchases solely for decorative purposes. And, in any case, even if he bought a few things whose only recommendation was their quaintness, or accepted an object as genuine when an expert would have known it to be spurious, his transgressions in those matters were of no importance to the world at large, and one is surprised that some of his "candid friends" should have thought it worth while to expatiate on them.

[Pg 182]

It has been urged, however, that directly money came to Zola, instead of yielding to a desire for comfort, he ought to have devoted himself to travel and study, and particularly have restrained his literary output. He would have derived benefit from foreign travel undoubtedly, but his self-set task of the Rougon-Macquart series long riveted him to France. As for study, he was always studying, books as well as men, and Mr. George Moore's suggestion that he had little acquaintance with the heart of French literature[16] was erroneous, for abundant proof of the contrary will be found in the eight volumes of his collected essays and articles. These also show that he kept abreast of the literature of his time, and all his friends are aware that new books and literary periodicals, to say nothing of a profusion of newspapers, encompassed him during the last twenty years of his life. But, in a large degree, he certainly set the literature of the past behind him, regarding it as being chiefly of historical value. And whether he were right or wrong in that matter, it must be obvious that his attitude was in keeping with his character as an evolutionist. In a word, he was more concerned respecting the future of literature than respecting its antecedents.

But it has been said that a change began to appear in Zola about the time of "L'Assommoir," and the change we more particularly mean is that by which the novelist expanded into a reformer. As scores of his newspaper articles, collected and uncollected, testify, the injustice of the social system had always been manifest to him. With the degradation of many individual lives he was well acquainted. His own rise to affluence made him yet more[Pg 183] conscious of the difference between the rich and the poor. His descent into the mire of life, to seek there his Coupeau, his Lantier, and his Gervaise, left on his mind some impress of the horror which he imparted to others. And thus, with him, art no longer remained art for art's sake only,—a broad humanitarianism gradually entered into his literary conceptions.

At the outset the novelist and the reformer were certainly more or less at variance. The cuisine of politics still remained distasteful to Zola, and he is often found protesting that he is merely a literary man and does not wish to intervene in passing events. But as the years elapse the reforming instinct becomes more and more powerful, gathers increased strength from such works as "Germinal" and "La Terre," till at last the humanitarian feeling, triumphing over everything else, trampling unrestrained upon all literary canons, finds voice in "Lourdes" and "Paris," "Fécondité" and "Travail," and at a supreme moment impels Zola to champion the chosen victim of Roman Catholic fanaticism and military infallibility.

At an early stage of his gradual transformation he is seen defining the novelist as an exponent, an analyst, a dissector of human life. His work is to be accomplished in strict accordance with science, and the methods of the great scientist, Claude Bernard, are held up to him as examples. This idea of "le Roman Expérimental," as Zola finally called the scientific fiction he expounded, had long haunted him; but when he wished to give it really adequate expression he was momentarily at a loss as to where he might find the most forcible and most modern exposition of scientific principles and methods. It was his friend M. Yves[Pg 184] Guyot, a many-sided man, then only a journalist, later a Minister of State, and now eminent as a political economist, who recommended him to study Claude Bernard.[17] On that study Zola based one of the most famous of his essays. Science, which appeals so little to some minds, particularly literary minds of the average calibre, is really the greatest humanitarian agency we possess. The man who experiments, the man who dissects, does not do so for mere pleasure; his aim is the increase and diffusion of knowledge, the benefit of the world, the advantage of his fellow-men. That which is learnt in the laboratory, the workshop, the operating room is put to use in a thousand ways. In physiological and medical science the work may often be very repulsive, yet it reveals the causes of many flaws and ailments, and points to the means of cure. A similar aim became Zola's as he proceeded with his novels. He made it his purpose to inquire into all social sores, all the imperfections and lapses of collective and individual life that seemed to him to require remedying. That everything should be made manifest in order that everything might be healed, such was the motto he adopted.

Yet in the first instance he did not preach, he did not denounce, he contented himself with stating the facts; he confined himself to analysis, dissection, and demonstration, and he used the novel as his vehicle, because the novel alone appealed to the great majority of people to whom it was necessary that the facts should be made patent if any remedy were to be applied.

[Pg 185]

But the prejudiced, the purblind, and the foolish, the hundreds of so-called critics who had glanced at his novels but had never perused a line of the essays in which he enunciated his principles, responded by accusing him of a degraded partiality for filth, of wallowing in mire, because such was his favourite element. The sensation created by "L'Assommoir" had been great, that which attended the production of "Nana" was perhaps greater.

Much of the year 1878 was spent by Zola in making preparations for that book. Incredible as it may seem, his critics have actually reproached him for his previous ignorance of the "successful" Parisian courtesan. His knowledge of her had certainly been limited to her out-door life; like others he had seen her, elbowed her at the theatres, in the Bois, and at other places of public resort. That was all. He therefore applied to friends and acquaintances for information. Edmond de Goncourt, who had repeatedly dined at the table of La Païva[18] before she became the wife of Henckel von Donnersmarck, gave him a variety of information; Ludovic Halévy initiated him into the demi-mondaine[Pg 186] side of theatrical life, to which, given all his intercourse with Hortense Schneider, Zulma Bouffar, and others, he was the most competent of guides; men of fashion, who had wasted their best years and much of their money among the harlots of the Second Empire, told him tales of their experiences; he visited the house of one belle impure from basement to attic, and he supped at the house of another. Of the lower-class unfortunate he had, perforce, seen a good deal during his bohemian years in the Quartier Latin, and all observers of women of that category are aware that in most cases, though they may acquire some superficial polish on rising to wealth, their real natures undergo little change.

Zola's enemies naturally imputed the writing of "Nana" to his partiality for vice and scandal, but those who are acquainted with "L'Assommoir" will recognise that, in such a series as "Les Rougon-Macquart," a study of the courtesan was the necessary corollary of the study on drink and the general degradation of the working class. It is from such homes as those of Coupeau and Gervaise that spring nine-tenths of the unhappy creatures so grimly denominated filles de joie. Nana's childhood and youth had already been recounted in "L'Assommoir," and it was certain that Zola would not leave her there. How could he picture the degenerescence of a period if he omitted the harlot, who had played—people hardly seem to recognise it nowadays—such a prominent, such a commanding part, during the years when Napoleon III.—dallying himself with La Castiglione, La Bellanger, and a dozen others, while his cousin Prince Napoleon Jérôme kept the notorious Cora Pearl—had transformed the proud city of Paris into the[Pg 187] brothel of Europe? Again, scores of Zola's contemporaries, writers of various degrees, by trying to poetise the courtesan, had increased her influence a hundred-fold, and the time had come to check her encroachments by exhibiting her in her true colours, with all her vulgarity, her greed, her degradation, her shamelessness and heartlessness.

In September, 1879, when Zola had written about half of "Nana," he arranged with M. Laffitte, editor of "Le Voltaire," which was then publishing his articles on "scientific fiction," to produce the story in that newspaper, and M. Laffitte at once advertised it in a fashion worthy of Barnum himself. Huge posters appeared on all the walls of Paris, "displayed" announcements invaded the newspapers, sandwich men patrolled the streets, ticket-advertisements were even affixed to the gutta-percha tubes of the pipe-lights in the tobacconists' shops; and, indeed, upon every side one found the imperious injunction: Read Nana! Nana!! Nana!![19] All this greatly vexed Zola, who had shut himself up at Médan to finish the book, and who did not at all desire to be advertised in such an extravagant fashion. To make matters worse, the serial issue had scarcely commenced (October 16, 1879) when several newspapers began to discuss the story, all the quidnuncs demonstrating by A plus B that the opening chapter was not at all such as it ought to be, and that the work was bound to prove a failure. Then, too, letters full of suggestions or criticism or denunciation rained upon Zola at Médan, putting his nerves to the severest test. Nevertheless, he worked on steadily, taking the greatest care over even the most trifling details, employing a friend to obtain precise information on such[Pg 188] matters as phaetons and tandems, the decorations of Mabille, the aspect of the rooms on the top-floor of the Grand Hotel, the view from them, and the facial mask of a woman dying (as Nana died) from small-pox.[20]

As the publication proceeded in "Le Voltaire" the complaints became more numerous. A good many people professed to be shocked, Gambetta presently complained to the editor that the story was "too strong"; and the editor requested Zola's permission to curtail or omit certain passages. This was accorded, the latter half of the work appearing in "Le Voltaire" in a bowdlerized form. On January 2, 1880, Zola started on the fourteenth and last chapter, and on January 7 he completed it. "Let me tell you a great piece of news," he wrote to a friend that day, "I finished 'Nana' this morning.... What relief! Never did any previous work of mine upset me as this has done. At present let it be worth what it may, it has ceased to exist for me. I write to you in the joy of deliverance. My last chapter seems to me to be the most weird and successful thing I have ever written."[21]

[Pg 189]

A few weeks later, that is on February 15, "Nana" appeared in book form, the passages omitted from "Le Voltaire" being reinstated in the text. Large orders having been received from various parts of the world, M. Charpentier had ordered fifty-five thousand copies to be printed, but on the very day of publication he found it necessary to order ten thousand more.[22] In the case of "Nana," as in that of "L'Assommoir," the public gave no heed to the critics, who, of course, raised their customary protests. In certain matters of detail their objections were well founded. Zola had made a few mistakes in dealing with some of the minutiæœ of theatrical and turf life, and, as Madame Edmond Adam remarked in the "Nouvelle Revue"—and as the author himself subsequently admitted—Nana was shown accomplishing in few years what, in actual life, would have taken a woman much longer to accomplish. That, however, was forced upon Zola by the scheme of his series, the incidents recorded in which had to occur between the years 1852 and 1870.[23] When all is said, taking "Nana" in its ensemble, it was certainly the most truthful picture ever traced of the[Pg 190] so-called Parisian world of pleasure in Imperial times. Of course the book was denounced as immoral. The Parisian smart set shrieked loudly, many a Boulevardian journalist, whose looseness of life was notorious, perorated in club and café respecting the amazing depravity of that man Zola, and in addition to abusive newspaper articles, there again came scurrilous pamphlets and parodies after the fashion of those which had followed "L'Assommoir."

Zola did not reply immediately; but in 1881, when "Nana" had been dramatised, he contributed a few articles to "Le Figaro" on the subject, besides penning a longer paper on "Immorality in Literature," in which he contended that writers of the Idealist school made vice all roses and rapture, whereas the Naturalists made it repulsive. And he was absolutely convinced, he said, that far more heads had been turned, more young men and girls and women led into dangerous courses, by the works of George Sand, Octave Feuillet, Barbey d'Aurévilly, and even Sir Walter Scott, than by the writings of Flaubert, Balzac, Goncourt, and their followers. As for "Nana," said he, it had given offence because it was a true picture, and therefore spoilt the pleasure of the viveurs of Paris, who wished to see everything couleur de rose beneath a cloud of poudre-de-riz.[24]

In 1880, after the publication of "Nana," Zola wrote several short stories. He had published one, "Naïs Micoulin," in a paper called "La Réforme," towards the close of the previous year; and he now gave "La Fête à Coqueville," "L'Inondation," and "Nantas," to "Le Voltaire," to which journal he also contributed some papers on Théophile Gautier, Ste.-Beuve, and others. But a better known publication[Pg 191] in which he was interested appeared during the spring. This was the collection of stories called "Les Soirées de Médan,"[25] to which Zola contributed his well-known tale, "L'Attaque du Moulin," which he had previously published in Russia, and which subsequently provided his friend M. Alfred Bruneau with the subject for an opera. Nowadays in its form as a story "L'Attaque du Moulin" has become a reading book in many French and English schools.

As mentioned in a previous chapter, five younger writers, Alexis, Huysmans, Maupassant, Céard, and Hennique, had gathered round Zola, whose literary views they largely shared.[26] Each of them contributed to the so-called "Soirées de Médan," the preface of which stated: "The following stories have been published previously, some in France, others abroad. It has seemed to us that they have sprung from one and the same idea, that their philosophy is identical. We therefore unite them. We are prepared for all the attacks, the bad faith, and the ignorance of which current criticism has already given us so many examples. Our only concern has been to affirm publicly what are really our friendships and our literary tendencies."

At that time, of the six writers responsible for that preface, only Zola had acquired a position; and such a solemn manifesto seemed therefore somewhat presumptuous, the more particularly as, apart from Zola's tale, the only other[Pg 192] of real merit in the book was Guy de Maupassant's. For him, so far as the book-reading public was concerned, "Les Soirées de Médan" proved virtually a début, whose promise his subsequent writings confirmed. "Boule de Suif," as he called his contribution to the volume, was the tale of a woman, who is shown sacrificing herself, during the Franco-German War, for the convenience and safety of others. They entreat her in that sense, and yet as soon as they are free they spurn her and abandon her to her shame. This woman, like the other people figuring in the story, actually lived,[27] and indeed it would be difficult to find half a dozen really imaginary characters in all Guy de Maupassant's tales. He carried the passion for personalities even farther than Alphonse Daudet did, and there exists, it is said, a set of his writings, on the margins of which he himself wrote the real names of almost every person and locality he ever described. One may conclude that he was perhaps a more genuine Naturalist than Zola, his work being invariably based on "human documents," the fruit of personal observation and experience. This occasionally tended to make his art unduly photographic; but, at the same time, as is well known, his literary style was excellent,[Pg 193] and from that standpoint some of his tales are undoubtedly masterpieces of their kind.

Unfortunately there was insanity in Guy de Maupassant's family, which was old, of good nobility, but limited means. His father, who had been a painter and had played a prominent part in founding a famous Paris art club, had died in a lunatic asylum. The same fate befell his brother; and, according to some accounts, there was insanity on his mother's side also. In any case, from birth onward a dreadful threat hung over Guy de Maupassant, and the life he led from the time he became his own master was not calculated to ward off the danger. He was a man of the strongest passions, a beau male, as the French say; and women began the work which absinthe, opium, and morphia completed. At last, still young in years, at the height of his celebrity, he attempted his life, and was only saved from immediate death to languish awhile in an asylum. One cannot think of him, as of some others, without feeling the force of the contention that very little may at times separate genius from insanity.

Immediately "Les Soirées de Médan" appeared, its contributors were chaffed by the newspapers for attributing undue importance to themselves; and Zola was said to be bringing up these young men in leading-strings for the express advancement of his literary theories. A rather acrimonious controversy ensued, Zola repeatedly declaring that he was not, and did not wish to be, a chef d'école, and that those with whom he was associated were his friends and not his disciples. But the discussion suddenly ceased, for the literary world of Paris was startled by the unexpected news of Gustave Flaubert's death at Croisset, near Rouen.

[Pg 194]

During the previous Easter (March, 1880) the veteran author had received Daudet, Zola, Charpentier, Maupassant, and Goncourt at his country place, and Goncourt has related in his "Journal" how thoroughly they enjoyed Flaubert's paternal hospitality, and how on Easter Monday they lingered in Rouen, ferreting among old curiosity shops, playing billiards, and planning a diner fin at the principal hotel. When, however, they wished to give their order, consternation fell on them: it was a holiday, all the provision shops were closed, the hotel larder was virtually empty, and the diner fin resolved itself into veal cutlets and cheese. That amusing experience was still in Zola's mind when, on May 8, he received at Médan this laconic telegram from Maupassant: "Flaubert dead." Dead—and they had left him so gay and so full of life and health! Zola was profoundly attached to Flaubert, and the tidings quite unmanned him. On May 11 he started for Le Croisset and attended the funeral, of which he has left a deeply interesting account, instinct with all the grief of one who has lost a near and dear friend. In these later years various English versions of some of Flaubert's books have been published, but, so far as the present writer is aware, no editor or publisher has thought of utilising Zola's account of Flaubert as an introduction to a translation. Yet that account is perhaps Zola's best work as an essayist,—full of interest, and much of it admirable in tone and style. One may say, too, that anybody wishing to form an accurate opinion of Gustave Flaubert, both as a writer and as a man, cannot do better than read the hundred pages which Zola devoted to him in his "Romanciers Naturalistes."

But another blow fell on Zola in 1880. In October his[Pg 195] mother, long ailing and crippled, passed away at Médan. Various painful circumstances attended the death and the funeral; and Goncourt, writing at the end of the year, pictures Zola as having become a perfect hypochondriac in consequence of this loss. He complained of all sorts of ailments, kidney disease and palpitations of the heart, talked of his own death as being near at hand, and feared that he would not have time to finish anything. Briefly, "he was filling the world with his name, his books were selling by the hundred thousand, no other author, perhaps, had ever created such a stir, and yet he felt profoundly miserable."[28]

About the time when his mother died his articles on "scientific fiction," previously issued, some in "Le Voltaire" and others in the "Viestnik Yevropi," were republished in a volume.[29] One of them had greatly offended Laffitte, the editor of "Le Voltaire," who being mixed up in sundry transactions with some of Gambetta's satellites, resented Zola's caustic allusions to them. Nor was an article on some scandal occasioned by the erotic publications of the "Gil Blas" to his liking. He ended by accusing his contributor of defending obscenity and of treating public men with disrespect. A rupture followed. Zola castigated Laffitte in a foot-note to one of the incriminated articles when he reissued them in a book, and turned to "Le Figaro," which gave him all liberty to defend his ideas. He then began a series of articles, republished in a volume the following year under the title of "Une Campagne."[30][Pg 196] They dealt with a great variety of subjects, political, literary, and social, and show how wide was the interest which Zola took in the affairs of his time. One of them on Victor Hugo and his poem "L'Ane" caused a sensation, for most people deemed it positive sacrilege to attack the greatest literary glory of the age. The uproar was even heard across the channel, and Mr. Swinburne, who admired "L'Ane," and held Zola to be mere "stench," manifested particular indignation. But a quarter of a century has elapsed since then, and it is a question whether many people would be inclined nowadays to regard "L'Ane" as a great poem. In a sense, Zola's attack was unkind, but it was essentially one on fetish worship, on the habit of lavishing indiscriminate praise on everything, good, bad, or indifferent, that might come from the pen of a writer of eminence. Let us remember that there has never yet been a poet of whom one might say his every line is a masterpiece. Homer nodded, so did Hugo, and so has even Mr. Swinburne himself.

Some of Zola's articles in "Le Figaro" dealt with his own work; others with that of his friends Goncourt, Huysmans, Maupassant, and Daudet; but several were political—attacks on Gambetta and so forth, written in the same spirit which had prompted the article on Hugo. Gambetta, as will be remembered, had now (1880-1881) reached the crisis of his life. The Tunisian debt scandal, the frauds of the Union Générale,—a Catholic bank established with the papal blessing for the purpose of wresting financial power from the Jews,—were associated by some folk with his "great ministry." Besides, his proposals for changing the electoral system, his patronage of reactionary generals,[Pg 197] able men, it must be admitted, divided the Republican party. He was accused, too, of acting as a drag, of checking the progress of the democracy, of sacrificing principles to personal interest. He had certainly become somewhat sluggish so far as measures were concerned, and, as Zola put it, he seemingly imagined that orations sufficed for everything. "It was not his actions which gave him his position, but his phrases," Zola wrote. "He has always defeated his adversaries by phrases. He has acquired authority by phrases. If there be any question of taking a forward step he makes a speech. If there be a question of warding off a danger he makes a speech. If there be a question of making his authority felt he again makes a speech. He speechifies without a break, and all over the country."[31]

Later, after Gambetta had come into conflict with his constituents, and the elections of 1881 had shown that the so-called Opportunist cause was seriously compromised, Zola returned to the attack, and one may the more appropriately quote a passage from his article called "Drunken Slaves," as it shows how deftly he profited by an opportunity to defend his literary cause while dealing with a political subject. Before giving that passage, however, it is as well to explain that Gambetta, having encountered a hostile reception at an electoral meeting at Charonne, had completely lost his head. Threatening his adversaries (all working-men) with his walking stick he shouted to them furiously: "Silence, you squallers! silence, you brawlers!... You pack of drunken slaves, I will track you to your lairs!" And as if this were not sufficient, his[Pg 198] newspaper, "La République Française," added in its next issue such choice epithets as: "Cowards, incapables, prostitutes' bullies, jail-birds, and pot-house loafers." All who might not vote for the great man having been thus stigmatised in advance, it might be assumed when Gambetta, in lieu of his usual great majority, polled only 9,404 votes against 8,799, that about half the electorate was given over to drink, crime, and depravity. Taking this as his text Zola wrote as follows:

The foregoing extracts will give some idea of the passionate vigour which Zola occasionally displayed in controversy. To some readers it may seem beside the mark to dwell at length upon a series of newspaper articles like "Une Campagne," but it is in such writings, more than in the majority of his novels, that one finds the real Zola with his superb confidence in himself, his disregard for conventionalities, and his glowing passion for truth and rectitude. His pen was certainly not always so virulent as in the passages one has quoted, but it was almost invariably incisive, and when treating sociological subjects it showed that, however impersonal his novels might be, his heart really bled at the thought of the degradation he described in them. Looking back, it seems extraordinary that for so many years his critics, and particularly foreign ones, and among them notably those of England and America, should have persisted in the ridiculous assertion that if he pictured filth, it was solely in order to pander to readers of gross instincts. His articles, his declarations, his explanations, were all before the world, and easily accessible; but through carelessness, or laziness, or ignorance, the great majority of English and American critics never turned to them, and the legend of the filthy Zola, whose favourite habitat was the muck heap or the cess-pool, spread upon all sides.

The humanitarian purpose, the reforming instinct that is to be found in Zola, appears clearly in some of the[Pg 201] articles contained in "Une Campagne." The meaning of "L'Assommoir" is indicated in the passages that have been quoted here, and light is thrown on some of his subsequent works, such as "Nana" and "Pot-Bouille," by the papers entitled: "The Harlot on the Stage," "How the Girls grow up," "Adultery in the Middle Classes," "Virtuous Women," and "Divorce and Literature." Some of those articles were written apropos of the performance of "Nana," which was dramatised by M. Busnach in conjunction with Zola (whose name, however, did not appear on the bills) and produced at the Ambigu on January 29, 1881. Zola tells us there had been no little trouble with the theatrical censors, who, when the play was submitted to them in manuscript, deleted the word "night" wherever it appeared, and wished to strike out in its entirety the chief scene between Nana and Count Muffat—a scene of temptation such as had been given in a score of earlier plays. What particularly alarmed the censors, according to Zola, was Nana's consent, the "yes" with which the scene ended; they wished to substitute some such answer as, "Well, we will see," which would have been ridiculous.

Edmond de Goncourt says that the audience at the first performance was on the whole favourably inclined; but Zola points out that it was composed of two distinct elements, on one hand the literary men, friendly or inimical, who came to judge the play, and on the other the faded harlots of Paris, the white-gloved bullies, the men of pleasure and finance who had sunk to the streets, in fact all the characters that figured in the play itself, multiplied fifty times over. And these looked and listened with pale faces, sneering at the representation of their own[Pg 202] depravity. However, there was considerable applause when the play ended; and Zola and Busnach received the congratulations of their friends in the manager's private room, where Madame Zola, suddenly turning towards her husband, scolded him for having failed to order any supper to celebrate the happy event. "My dear," Zola answered, remembering, no doubt, the supper intended to celebrate the success of "Le Bouton de Rose," which had become a fiasco, "I'm superstitious, you know, and I'm convinced that if I had ordered a supper the piece would have failed."[33]

It was attacked by the critics on the morrow, some complaining that they had been imposed upon, that they had been led to expect a masterpiece of revolutionary audacity, and that only a repugnant play, base and crapulous in its fidelity to life, had been offered them. Others, of course, protested against the exhibition of the harlot on the stage; and to them Zola responded that he was by no means the first to set her there. He recalled Victor Hugo, with "Marion Delorme" and "La Esmeralda"; Dumas fils, with "La Dame aux Camélias"; Barrière and Thiboust with "Les Filles de Marbre," and Émile Augier with "Le Mariage d'Olympe." They and their imitators had lied, however; they had pictured harlots such as had never existed since the world was world, and his sin was that he had done his best to portray such a creature as she really was. "Besides," he added, "it seems to me cowardice to shun certain problems under the pretext that they disturb one. That is turning egotism and hypocrisy into a system. Let be, people say, let us cover up vice and celebrate virtue[Pg 203] even when it is not to be found.... I have a different idea of morality. It is not served by rhetorical declamation but by an accurate knowledge of facts. And therein lies that Naturalism which provokes so much laughter, and at which so much mud is foolishly thrown."

The actress who played the rôle of Nana was Léontine Massin. Fair, with a coaxing glance, a sensual mouth and nose, and a superb figure, she quite looked the part, in spite of her forty years; and, truth to tell, she had in some measure lived it. She had also long been known to the stage in minor rôles; and now, yielding to her natural instincts, she sprang to the front, impersonating Nana with a power and a truth which stirred one deeply. All Paris flocked to see her. But she was not content with acting. She became Nana in reality, and her chosen victim was the manager of the Ambigu, Henri Chabrillat, a bright, talented, gallant man, who had shown his bravery in the Franco-German War, and his literary skill in half a dozen novels. Unhappily he was carried away by a mad infatuation for the temptress; as fast as money poured into his coffers he squandered it upon her; embarrassment followed, and when the end came he put a pistol to his head. Never, perhaps, has the truth of a play, and the disregard of the passions for the most obvious lessons, been exemplified more terribly. Amid the uproar which ensued La Massin vanished, Paris for a week remained lost in amazement, and then, as always happens, the tragedy was forgotten.

In that same year, 1881, Zola republished in book form most of the biographical and literary papers which he had written of recent years. "Le Roman Expérimental" had led the way in 1880, and now there came four more[Pg 204] volumes: first "Les Romanciers Naturalistes,"[34] a series of papers on Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Daudet, and the Goncourts, to which was added the much discussed review of contemporary novelists; secondly, "Documents Littéraires: Études et Portraits,"[35] in which will be found papers on Chateaubriand, Hugo, Musset, Gautier, George Sand, Dumas fils, Ste.-Beuve, contemporary poets such as Leconte de Lisle, Baudelaire, Banville, Catulle Mendès, Dierx, Anatole France, Mallarmé, Hérédia, Coppée, Bouchor, Richepin, and Sully-Prudhomme; and critics such as Taine, Pontmartin, Levallois, Babou, Barbey d'Aurévilly, and Sarcey, with some curious notes on Buloz, the founder of the famous "Revue des Deux-Mondes." Next there came "Le Naturalisme au Théâtre," divided into two sections, theory and example; the former including papers on the special gift alleged to be necessary in all writers for the stage, on acting, costumes, scenery, government subventions, etc.; and the latter running through the whole scale of the playwright's art, tragedy, drama, comedy, vaudeville and pantomime, with selections from the many articles which Zola had written as a dramatic critic between 1876 and 1880. Finally there was a fourth volume entitled, "Nos Auteurs Dramatiques," in which plays by Hugo, Augier, Dumas fils, Sardou, Labiche, Halévy, Gondinet, Pailleron, D'Ennery, Barrière, Feuillet, and others, were analysed and discussed.[36]

[Pg 205]

To some of the theories set forth in those four volumes it may be necessary to refer when we survey Zola's work generally. The books have been mentioned here because they were issued at the period we have now reached, and because it is advisable that the reader should realise how energetic, how zealous Zola always was, how great was his versatility, and how strenuous his life. This man who subsequently preached the gospel of work had practised it unremittingly since the day he emerged from Bohemia. Fortune might frown or success might come, he did not alter in his industrious habits. In spite of every rebuff, every attack, he continued striving undauntedly, even as his father had striven before him. He was a living example of the axiom that life is a battle. He fought for his ideas, his principles, without a pause, until his last hour.

In the year 1881, besides launching the critical volumes enumerated in the last chapter, Zola carried his Rougon-Macquart series a step further. Early in the spring he planned "La Joie de Vivre," a tale of pain and suffering, containing numerous autobiographical passages, descriptive of some of his feelings and peculiarities. But while he was preparing his notes the recollection of his mother's recent death constantly pursued him, and he felt it would be impossible for him at that time to write such a book as he wished. So, after a few attempts, he decided to postpone[Pg 207] this particular work. It will be remembered that he had first intended to make the Rougon-Macquart series one of eight volumes only. Next, he had decided on twelve, to which figure he had adhered until the time of "L'Assommoir." But plenty of characters for additional volumes figured on the leaves of the genealogical tree which he had long since prepared,[37] and now that success had come he felt that he might extend his series. "Nana" was its ninth volume, and he resolved to add eleven more. "La Joie de Vivre" having been put aside, he was thinking of what subject he might take in hand when, in the course of his "Figaro" campaign, he had occasion to write an article on "Adultery in the Middle Class." The idea that this was the great evil preying on the bourgeoisie seized hold of him, and he began to prepare the book which he called "Pot-Bouille," a title which might be Englished, perhaps, as "The Stockpot," and which signifies every-day cuisine and by extension every-day life. Some of the incidents that he wove into this work had come under his personal observation, others were suggested by friends, some of whom also collected special information which he needed, Huysmans, for instance, supplying notes about the church of St. Roch, and Céard inquiring into diocesan architects, government clerks, judges, and others, their earnings, their duties, their pensions, and so forth.[38]

Begun at Médan, continued at Grandcamp on the Norman coast, whither Zola betook himself during the[Pg 208] summer, and eventually finished at Médan in the autumn, "Pot-Bouille" first appeared, somewhat bowdlerised, in "Le Gaulois," which paid the author thirty thousand francs[39] for the serial rights. But even Zola's best friends did not receive the work very favourably. In writing it he had made a trial of his own scientific formula, keeping his descriptions as short as possible, dividing the narrative into acts, as it were, like a play, curbing his fancy throughout, allowing no exuberance of style; and he was afterwards amazed to find so many cavillers. "It is the clearest and most condensed of my novels," he wrote to a friend early in 1882.[40] Nevertheless, this time the public seemed to share the opinion of the critics. The sale of "Pot-Bouille" in volume form[41] was much smaller than that of "L'Assommoir" and "Nana," a circumstance which is worthy of note, for Zola's adversaries had argued that if "Nana" had sold so largely it was solely on account of all the depravity depicted in its pages. But here was a book which, in that respect, actually surpassed "Nana," and yet it had nothing like the same sale. It has been suggested by way of explanation that middle-class people were the chief purchasers of Zola's works, and that while they appreciated his delineation of depravity among others, they were offended by his description of it among themselves. In that respect "Pot-Bouille" certainly brought Zola some worry; for as a gentleman of[Pg 209] the law declared he recognised himself in a certain character, legal proceedings supervened, and Zola had to make certain alterations in his work.

Shortly before the publication of "Pot-Bouille," Edmond de Goncourt had suggested to Zola that their monthly dinners, abandoned since the death of Flaubert, might be resumed, and Zola, like Tourgeneff and Alphonse Daudet, immediately assented. Goncourt, by the way, would seem to have then seen little of Zola for some time past. He mentions that he read the first chapters of his novel, "La Faustin," to the Zolas, the Daudets, Hérédia, Charpentier, and the "young men of Médan," on which occasion he was amazed to find that the passages based on study and research produced no effect on his little audience, whereas the chapters in which he had relied on his imagination carried them away. And he was particularly amused when Zola declared that a certain imaginary Greek, called Athaasiadas, must really have been drawn from the life.[42] A little later, when Goncourt, the Daudets, and Charpentier visited Zola at Médan, they found that he had already spent two hundred thousand francs on his house there, besides buying one of the islands on the Seine near the property and building a chalet on it. In talking of those matters, Zola evinced a superb contempt for money. It was impossible for him to hoard, he said; he remembered the first franc-piece given him when he was a very little boy. He had immediately gone to buy a purse, which had cost him nineteen sous, in such wise that he had only one sou left to put in it.[43]

[Pg 210]

When the monthly "Diner des Auteurs Sifflés" was resumed in March, 1882, the two stock subjects of conversation, says Goncourt, were death and love. And the hypochondriasis from which Zola was suffering, which had declared itself at the time of his mother's death and had recently compelled him to put "La Joie de Vivre" aside, now became painfully manifest. An unreasoning fear of death, and, it would seem, even of suffering pursued him. Somewhat later (in 1885) and apropos of the terrible, lingering death of Jules Vallès, who in the midst of a friendly conversation would suddenly blanch with dread as if he could see death approaching him, Zola said to Goncourt: "Ah! to be struck down suddenly, as Flaubert was, that is the death one should desire."[44] This wish, we know, was ultimately granted. But in 1882, according to Goncourt, Zola, who believed that he had a complaint of the heart, was tortured by the idea of "a sudden and violent death which would fall upon him before he had finished his work." Again, we know that such a fate did ultimately befall him; but Goncourt tells us that, at the period we have now reached, the thought of it haunted him to such a degree that "since the death of his mother, whose coffin it had been necessary to bring down by way of the window (there being only a narrow, winding staircase at Médan, in spite of all its embellishments), he had never since been able to set eyes on that window without wondering who would soon be lowered from it, himself or his wife. 'Yes,' he said, 'since that day the thought of death is always lurking in our minds. We now invariably keep a light burning in our bedroom, and very often, when I look at my wife before she[Pg 211] falls asleep, I feel that she is thinking of it even as I am. And we remain like that, a certain feeling of delicacy preventing us from making any allusion to what we are both thinking of. Oh! the thought is terrible! There are nights when I suddenly spring out of bed on both feet, and remain for a moment in a state of indescribable fright.'"[45]

And this, it will be observed, was the leading French novelist of the time, a man in the prime of life, whose name was already known all over the world, who had risen from poverty to affluence, and who, if attacked by some, was also envied by thousands!

A few days after telling his friends how he suffered at the thought of death, Zola gave a diner fin at his Paris residence. There was great display, and Goncourt tells us that the menu included potage au blé vert, reindeers' tongues, mullet à la Provençale, and truffled guineafowl.[46] But Zola was still out of sorts. Success had no charms for him, he said, and, in his estimation, literature was a mere dog's trade. Less than a month afterwards, on April 6, the day when "Pot-Bouille" was published, and when the first orders seemed to indicate a large demand for the book, Goncourt met Zola again and found him as morose as ever. The truth would appear to be that he resented some of the criticisms already levelled at his work. He kept on growling, and finally exclaimed that it was not so necessary to have had actual experience of things as some folk imagined; and as for incessant reading, well, he had not the time for it. "Society?" he added, "why, what does a drawing-room reveal of life? It shows one nothing at all! I have five and twenty men[Pg 212] now working at Médan who teach me a hundred times more than any drawing-room would teach me."

Again on April 18, when lunching with Madame Zola at Goncourt's, he was full of spleen, complaining of a score of worries, and notably of some plot, engineered by sundry members of the French Academy, to stop the circulation of "Pot-Bouille." He had now already begun to write the next instalment of the Rougon-Macquarts, that is, "Au Bonheur des Dames," but according to his statements to Goncourt, this story really had no great attraction for him. He dreamt of undertaking some work which he would never be able to finish, he said, something which would give him occupation, and at the same time enable him to retire from the every-day battle without saying so—for instance, some colossal and endless history of French literature. In July that same year—1882—when Goncourt, Daudet, and Charpentier were at Médan, Zola reiterated his dissatisfaction with "Au Bonheur des Dames." His previous success had spoilt his life, he declared; he would never again be able to write a book which would make as much stir as "L'Assommoir" or command such a multitude of readers as "Nana."[47]

Writing to a friend a fortnight previously, he had evinced less pessimism. Indeed, though he referred to "Au Bonheur des Dames" as a tour de force which would end by disgusting people "with the complicated state of French literature," he had expressed himself as being generally satisfied, and as enjoying the solitude in which he found himself at Médan, for it lent him great lucidity of mind. But it is certain that his nerves were overstrained, and that[Pg 213] Goncourt's opinion of his condition was accurate; for a little later, in August, he collapsed and had to cease work entirely. His friends were very much alarmed, for his weakness became extreme and a fatal issue seemed possible. But his constitution slowly triumphed over that nervous prostration, and at the end of October, one finds him writing to a friend: "I am a little better. I have been able to get back to work. Nevertheless I am not at all strong. I fancy that something very grave brushed past me but spared me.... How heavy is the pen! For the next two or three years I ought to lead the life of an idiot [i. e. a purely animal life without mental exertion] in order to recover my strength. I have become such a coward that the prospect of having to finish my book terrifies me."[48]

But he compelled himself to resume it, for as is well known he regarded work as the panacea for all evils, physical as well as mental. Thus, by the middle of November, he was able to announce that he had taken up his task again with a sufficiency of courage and intellectual health. It was about this time that M. Charpentier published a volume of his short stories, previously contributed to various periodicals.[49] Moreover "Au Bonheur des Dames" was now appearing serially in the "Gil Blas," which paid twenty[Pg 214] thousand francs for the right of publication, or two-thirds of the amount which it had given for "Pot-Bouille." "Au Bonheur des Dames" had naturally necessitated considerable preliminary study and investigation in order that a truthful picture might be presented of the trade of a great city, as exemplified by one of those huge drapery establishments,—the Louvre, the Bon Marché, and the Printemps. Some such leviathan, devouring all the small fry around it and teeming with restless life, was depicted in Zola's pages, which introduced the reader to a world of counter-jumpers beneath whose superficial gloss lay much rank brutishness. And the subject also embraced the hard, the often cruel lot of the girls employed in such places, the ambition and commercial daring of the master, and the ways of all the customers, not forgetting the kleptomaniacs. But though the book was full of interest of a particular kind and deserved the attention of all thinking people, it was perhaps scarcely one to fascinate the great majority of readers. Zola finished it at the end of January, 1883, and in March it was published by M. Charpentier.[50] Most of the newspapers dealt with it sharply; and Schérer, the Protestant critic of "Le Temps," still smarting from the attacks which Zola had made upon the French Protestants, their alleged self-righteousness and narrow bigotry,[Pg 215] during his "Figaro" campaign, revengefully described the book as "the attempt of an illiterate individual to lower literature to his own level."[51] The general public did not take very kindly to the work. With "Pot-Bouille" there had at least been a moment when a very large sale had seemed probable, but the demand for "Au Bonheur des Dames" was distinctly moderate, and the wiseacres of the bookselling world opined that Zola, after going up like a rocket, might presently come down like a stick. It is true that the sudden and melodramatic death of Gambetta a short time previously (December 31, 1882) had left the French political world in some confusion; and it is known that the bookselling trade invariably suffers when there is any political unrest. Yet the conditions of the time did not sufficiently explain the drop in the demand for Zola's writings.

Goncourt, who met him a short time after the publication of "Au Bonheur des Dames," found him lugubrious. "The big sales are all over," said he, in much the same tone as a Trappist might have ejaculated the customary greeting, "Brother, one must die." Nevertheless, though he had several excellent subjects in his mind,—books which under favourable circumstances might well have compelled a renewal of public attention,—he deliberately postponed them, and turned to a work which he must have known would appeal to only a small audience, that study of suffering, egotism, and sacrifice which he called satirically "La Joie de Vivre," and which he had put aside in 1881.

After all, in his estimation apparently, it mattered little what book he took in hand, for as he remarked to Goncourt at the Comédie Française on the night of the revival of[Pg 216] Victor Hugo's "Le Roi s'amuse" (November 23, 1882), novels were always the same thing over and over again; and it would only be possible to take an interest in the writing of them if one could invent a new form. Personally his great desire was an opportunity to produce a play, one really all his own. In a word he was as stage-struck as ever, and it seemed unlikely that he would feel content until he had given the world an acknowledged dramatic masterpiece. That comparative disregard for the work for which one is best fitted, that craving to excel in something else, and to be praised for it, has appeared in many men, in various degrees and ways. There was Thackeray, who always longed to see his drawings commended; there was Ingres, who courted more applause for his proficiency as a violinist than for his gifts as a painter.

At the opening of the Salon of 1883, Zola lunched with Daudet and Goncourt, and Daudet unbosoming himself, as was often his wont, solicited the advice of his friends as to whether he should offer himself as a candidate for the French Academy. Both Zola and Goncourt urged him to do so, and there was no reason why they should have acted otherwise, for he had many chances in his favour. He occupied a high position as a novelist, and though nowadays no thinking critic can place him in the same rank as Zola, he was at that time far more popular, for if, here and there, he had lampooned one or another individual in his books, he had never given anything like the offence which Zola had given in many directions.

It may be said, perhaps, that in 1883 Alphonse Daudet had reached the height of his reputation. In any case his best work was already done. His novel, "Le Nabab," published[Pg 217] in 1878, had been followed the next year by "Les Rois en Exil," and in 1880 by "Numa Roumestan," which would seem to mark the apogee of his career, for a decline was already observable in "L'Évangéliste," published in 1882, and although "Sapho," issued two years later, sold prodigiously, it was not really a great book in the opinion of the present writer, who, cast young into the vortex of Paris, knows something of the existence depicted in Daudet's pages, and has always held that picture to be artificial, untrue to nature in many essential respects, and absolutely deficient in depth. Indeed "Sapho" is a mere skimming of the surface; it never probes. But when all is said, Daudet could be an admirable story-teller when he chose, and the very gifts, which on one hand led to some adverse criticism,—his veneer of poetry, his sentimentality, his inclination to moralise,—won him favour far and wide among people of average intellects.

As was suggested earlier in these pages, Daudet brought a feminine talent into competition with the masculine talent of Zola. Each had his champions in the Parisian world of those days, and nothing would have given some folk greater pleasure than a fierce battle for supremacy between the two men who had become the most widely read novelists of their time. But as a matter of fact they were the best of friends. One has only to glance at Zola's collected essays to see how he praised some of Daudet's writings; while on consulting the pages of Goncourt's "Journal" one will find the two rivals constantly together, dining and lunching and making excursions. Daudet frequently went to Médan, where he boated on the Seine, singing gaily while he rowed, for his health was still good, his spirits were still those of the[Pg 218] joyous South, all brightness and geniality, which often helped to dispel his friend's hypochondria. That he was worthy of a place in the French Academy goes without saying, and it was only natural that he should have thought of offering himself as a candidate and have solicited his friends' advice. But, as will be remembered, his views on the subject changed entirely; he allowed it to be known that he regarded the Academy as beneath his notice, and then, in a contradictory spirit, went out of his way to lampoon it in a third-rate book, "L'Immortel." As for Zola, in 1883 there could be no question of an Academical seat for him. He was still in the midst of his battle, with his work only half done.

His novel "La Joie de Vivre," begun at Médan, was written chiefly amid the wild, primitive surroundings of the Anse de Benodet, a creek on the rocky coast of Finistère; but the scene of the book was laid on the Norman shore, between St. Aubin and Grandcamp, where Zola had stayed in previous years. In Lazare Chanteau, the "hero" of his story, he depicted much of his own hypochondria, at which he had already glanced in a tale called "La Mort d'Olivier Bécaille." Lazare's fear of death, his petty superstitions, his irresolution, were all based on Zola's personal experience. So gray a work, which only the devotion and self-sacrifice of Pauline, the heroine, occasionally brightens, could not attract the mass of the reading public. It was published first by the "Gil Blas," which again paid twenty thousand francs for the serial rights; but when it appeared as a volume its sales were small.[52] In fact, from the standpoint of circulation,[Pg 219] Zola now relapsed into the position he had occupied before "L'Assommoir."

But he had made a fresh effort as a playwright, having prepared a dramatic version of "Pot-Bouille," in conjunction with M. Busnach. This, which was produced at the Ambigu Theatre on December 13, 1883, proved less successful than its forerunners, "L'Assommoir" and "Nana," and Zola, in a grumpish mood, decided to remain at "the mill," that is, write another novel. This time, however, he hesitated awhile as to his subject. Among those he had selected for consideration was the railway world, but he was still at a loss how he might work it into a novel. It would be better to turn to the peasantry, to whom he must certainly devote a book; and so, after telling Goncourt that his next novel would be called "La Terre," and that in order to obtain the requisite local colour he would have to spend at least a month on a farm in La Beauce, he asked his friend if it would be possible to procure him a letter of recommendation from some large landowner to one of his farmers, who might be willing to give a lodging to a lady in poor health and in need of country air. The lady in question—Madame Zola—would naturally be accompanied by her husband, and, added Zola, a double-bedded room with whitewashed walls would be ample accommodation, though it must be arranged that he and his wife should take their meals with the farmer and his family, for otherwise he would learn virtually nothing.[53] He realised, apparently, that folks unbutton themselves[Pg 220] (in the figurative sense) more readily at meal-time than at any other.

Goncourt was unable to help his friend in this matter, at all events immediately; so Zola turned to another subject which he mentioned on the same occasion, that of a strike in a mining district, such as was in progress among the pitmen of northern France at that very moment. Forthwith he started for the scene of the trouble. "At Valenciennes since Saturday, among the strikers, who are remarkably calm," he wrote in February, 1884. "A splendid country as a scene for my book." This time his subject fairly carried him away. "He spent," says Mr. Sherard, "the best part of six months in travelling about, note-book in hand, through the various mining districts of the north of France and of Belgium, interviewing miners, exploring mines from pit-mouth to lowest depths, attending political meetings among the miners, studying various types of Socialist lecturers, drinking horrible beer and still more horrible brandy in the forlorn cabarets of the corons[miners' villages], interrogating miners' wives, and wandering about the fields in the neighbourhood of these corons to watch the lads and lassies taking their poor pastimes when the day's drudgery was over."[54]

Some eight or nine years subsequently, Mr. Sherard, on visiting the Borinage, as the coal district round Mons is called, fell in with an old porion or "viewer" who had acted as one of Zola's guides, and who pronounced him to have been the most inquisitive gentleman he had ever met. Never had he known anybody who asked more questions, said he, unless, indeed, it were an investigating[Pg 221] magistrate. Mr. Sherard mentions also that "Germinal"—for that was the book which proceeded from Zola's sojourn among the pitmen—was known in every mining village which he visited. There was not a coron where at least one well-thumbed copy of the work could not be found: a proof of the appreciation in which it was held by the toilers on whose behalf it had been written.

The preliminary study which "Germinal" necessitated, the long sojourn among new and strange scenes, the strong interest, the compassion roused by all Zola saw and heard, most certainly proved very beneficial to him, reinvigorating him, checking his hypochondriacal tendency, diverting his mind from self, renewing and enlarging his ideas. Thus he was again in possession of physical and mental strength when he began the actual writing of the book. Like his more recent novels it was published en feuilleton by the "Gil Blas";[55] and an English version, prepared by Mr. Albert Vandam, appeared in a London weekly newspaper, "The People."[56]

While the serial issue was in progress Zola was once again accused of plagiarism. This time he was said to have borrowed the idea of "Germinal" from a story called "Le[Pg 222] Grisou" ("Firedamp"), by M. Maurice Talmeyre—a story which likewise dealt with the coal-pits of northern France, and which when published a few years previously had attracted some attention, being full of interest and written with literary ability. But the idea that Zola had stolen his idea of "Germinal" from it was ridiculous. It had been pointed out long since by Alexis that he proposed to add a second volume on the masses to the study he had made of them in "L'Assommoir," intending on the second occasion to deal more particularly with their social and political aspirations. That intention was partially carried into effect in "Germinal," and the idea of laying the scene of his story in the "black country" of northern France was a sudden inspiration which came to Zola when he found it difficult to proceed immediately with his proposed work on some of the French peasantry—an inspiration which was not derived from M. Talmeyre's book at all, but from the circumstance that some thousands of pitmen were on strike at that very time.

Surely no author can claim a monopoly of any subject or any locality. One writer, for instance, may lay a scene in Regent Street; another is equally entitled to do so; and in the result there may well be some resemblance between their descriptions of the thoroughfare. Moreover, in giving an account of any form of life, all writers are confronted by the same essential facts. They may regard them, interpret them, differently, but each must take them into account. Thus if somewhat similar scenes and corresponding facts figure occasionally in "Le Grisou" and "Germinal" it does not follow that the second is stolen from the first. But Zola, unfortunately, was a much-hated[Pg 223] man, and the flimsiest peg was good enough for his enemies. As a matter of fact, with respect to "Germinal," he gave nearly six months to personal study of his subject on the spot, and though he derived a few incidents, as he was well entitled to do, from officially recorded instances of the horrors and dangers of the pitman's life,[57] his work well deserved to be regarded not only as an original one but even as a livre vécu. When "Germinal" appeared as a volume there was a large demand for it, though its circulation did not approach that of "L'Assommoir" or "Nana." This has surprised several writers on Zola, who hold "Germinal" to be his masterpiece, but it has already been pointed out in these pages that his sales had been declining for some time past, books like "Pot-Bouille" having angered many of his readers. It was hardly to be expected that he would regain all his lost ground at one leap, and under the circumstances the reception given to "Germinal" was distinctly cheering. Moreover, whereas there had been no popular illustrated edition of "Au Bonheur des Dames" or "La Joie de Vivre," one of "Germinal" in parts soon made its appearance, and sold very widely, in such wise that the full extent of the book's circulation cannot be gauged by M. Charpentier's printings.[58]

[Pg 224]

The next work which Zola took in hand was "L'Œuvre," the most autobiographical of all his novels, and one for which he had no need to collect documents, for his materials were stored away in his memory. A little of his hypochondria had now returned to him, and the writing of "Germinal" having compelled him to give some attention to politics, he did not cease to rail at politicians. At the "Henriette Maréchal" anniversary dinner (May 6, 1885) he made quite a sortie against them, declaring that they were the sworn foes of literary men, in which opinion Edmond de Goncourt cordially agreed. About that time "L'Assommoir" was revived as a play, and at a dinner given at the Maison Dorée to celebrate the event, Zola turned from the politicians to rate some of the young authors of the time, their alacrity of speech, and on the other hand their unwillingness to take the trouble of writing, unless they were positively assured of publication. One of these young men, said Zola, would expound an idea that had come to him, depict in glowing terms all the interest which such or such a book would have, and then conclude coldly: "Ah! if a publisher would only order it of me!" For young men of that stamp there was no question of striving. They would work to order or not at all. Thus literature was becoming a mere commercial pursuit.

On May 22, 1885, France lost her great poet, Victor Hugo. He had been sinking for some time; nevertheless the news that he was really dead quite startled Paris. During his last illness he had declined the ministrations of "any priest of any religion," and the announcement that he would be buried without rites or prayers angered the Church party exceedingly, and led to unseemly scenes in the Chamber of[Pg 225] Deputies when it was proposed that the Pantheon should be restored to its former destination as the resting-place of the great men of France, and that Hugo's remains should be laid in it. This proposal having been shelved by the Chamber, the popular indignation became so great that President Grévy virtually took the law into his own hands, and issued a decree in accordance with public opinion. The obsequies became a great anticlerical demonstration. Of course, for years past, many free-thinkers had been buried without the celebration of religious rites, but there had been only a few great secular public funerals, such as that of Félicien David, the composer, in 1876, later that of M. Hérold, Prefect of the Seine, and, later still, that of Gambetta. The enterrement civil of Victor Hugo marked another step in the same direction and it impressed thousands. More, even, than any of its forerunners, it set an example largely followed in later years.

When Zola heard of the death of Hugo he felt deeply stirred. He remembered the days of long ago, the happy days of Provence when he had learnt by heart page after page of the poet's writings. He had then drunk deeply of Hugo's sonorous rhetoric, and he had not ceased to admire his genius. The virtual failure of "Le Roi s'amuse" when it was revived in 1882 had pleased him from the Naturalist standpoint; yet he had not concealed his opinion that many passages of the play deserved applause, and in fact he had applauded them. "Why not, indeed?" he had ejaculated, turning to Edmond de Goncourt who had accompanied him to the Théâtre Français. And whatever criticism Zola had levelled at the productions of Hugo's declining years, whatever reservations he might make respecting[Pg 226] even some of the poet's prime, he knew that this man had been a Master, the most powerful that his age had produced in France. So Zola immediately despatched the following telegram to M. George Hugo, the poet's young grandson:

Besides writing his novel "L'Œuvre" that year, Zola helped M. Busnach to adapt "Germinal" for the stage; but when the play was ready in the autumn, the censorship forbade its performance on the ground that it would excite revolutionary passions. Zola's indignation boiled over at this rebuff, and with the approval of Alphonse Daudet and Edmond de Goncourt, whom he consulted, he issued a protest in "Le Figaro," trouncing M. René Goblet, the responsible Minister, a fussy little advocate who played the part of a Radical when it suited his purposes, but who was really a Philistine dans l'âme. However, the protest had no effect, nor had an offer to allow all reasonable alterations in the play for the sake of M. Busnach, whose interests were chiefly at stake; and it was only in the spring of 1888,[Pg 227] when other ministers were in office, that "Germinal" was at last produced at the Théâtre du Châtelet. It may be convenient to mention here that for some years subsequent to the publication of "Germinal" as a novel there was never a strike in France without some foolish and prejudiced journalists casting the blame on Zola and his book. When in 1887 Décazeville became the scene of some terrible disturbances, Zola was charged in many directions—even in the Chamber of Deputies by some of its reactionary members—with the responsibility of those misfortunes. He disdained to reply to such ridiculous accusations; but it so happened that a few months previously (December 27, 1886) when authorising "Le Petit Rouennais" to publish "Germinal" serially, he had written the following prefatory note, in which he explained the book's real purport, which of course had never been doubtful for sensible minds:

Thus, in "Germinal," Zola gave rein to his humanitarian feelings, and in recognition thereof prudes shrieked indignantly: "That man is at it again! What a beast he must be!" And on their side capitalists, battening on the labour of the poor and alarmed for the safety of their pelf, howled in chorus: "This book ought to be suppressed, it certainly must not be allowed as a play. It means revolution, robbery, rascality of every kind."

But Zola, though he suffered secretly,—all unjust attacks brought him the keenest suffering,—hid it, and passed on.

There was a touch of humanitarianism even in his next book, "L'Œuvre," for it set forth many of the evils of bohemian life, and embraced an appeal for woman in the person of the unhappy Christine, its heroine. Critics may shake their heads, indeed some have done so, and say sapiently: "All this was not art." They may laugh, too, at the idea of reforming the world by novels. But even if, judging Zola by some of his books, one may occasionally feel inclined to set no very lofty estimate on his artistry, surely the trend of his works, the knowledge of their aim, the circumstances under which they were written, must increase one's respect for their author as a man. And, after all, what is the mere artist? As often as not he is penned within a fanatical creed, bound to narrow formulas, blind to everything beyond[Pg 229] them, full of prejudice, and even more ridiculous at times than the Philistines at whom he rails.

As "L'Œuvre" dealt chiefly with the art-world of Paris at a certain period of the Second Empire, it revived some of the passions which Zola had kindled by his championship of Manet. By certain painters the book was roundly abused when M. Charpentier published it early in 1886,[60] on the completion of the issue in the "Gil Blas." This time the demand was not great, for by its nature "L'Œuvre" appealed more particularly to a limited class of readers. Perhaps its sales would have been even smaller had not Zola woven into his narrative so much interesting information concerning himself in his earlier years.

No sooner was he delivered of this book than he turned to the novel on the French peasantry which had been in his mind at the beginning of 1884. Already at that time he had given it considerable thought, made notes, studied his subject in books and periodicals; and he now took up the work of preparation in real earnest. At the very outset he had decided to lay the scene in or near the great grain-producing region of La Beauce, in some degree because this would enable him to deal, en passant, with certain economic questions, such as the importation of American wheat, but more particularly because both his mother and his grandmother, Madame Aubert, had been Beauceronnes, and in his younger days he had often heard them talk of that part of the country, which presents various features of interest.[Pg 230] La Beauce proper is certainly flat and monotonous, but its confines are picturesque, and Dourdan, Auneau, Orgères, and other localities are associated historically with the horrible crimes of the desperadoes known as chauffeurs, who roamed the region early in the nineteenth century. A strain of brutishness was long to be observed among some of the inhabitants. Withal, they are essentially French, that is of the borders of the Ile de France, for there is no fixed type of French peasant. Those of Provence, Languedoc, Burgundy, Normandy, Brittany, and other parts, all differ from one another in important characteristics. Thus generalisations on the subject of the French peasantry may occasionally become ridiculous.

Nevertheless, at the period selected for Zola's work, that of the Second Empire, a general resemblance was to be found among them in two respects. In the first place their ignorance was very great. The Imperial Government which did a good deal to ameliorate their lot materially, did as little as possible to enlighten and elevate their minds. They were, so to say, the backbone of the régime, and their ignorance was its safeguard. At the elections they were led like sheep to the polling places to vote for the official candidates. All that, however, belongs to the past. Many changes have occurred during the last thirty years, and without entering here into the question of the religious and secular schools, it may be said that under the Third Republic more has been done than at any previous time for the education of the peasantry. Some brutishness persists in various regions, but all who remember how widespread was illiteracy before the War of 1870 know that great improvement has been effected.

[Pg 231]

To-day, however, even as was formerly the case, there is still one trait common to the French peasantry generally. As in other countries there has been, and is still, a great exodus from the rural districts to the towns; but those who remain at home are distinguished by their earth-hunger, their all-consuming passion for the soil. The historical explanation of this is perhaps as follows: For centuries the peasantry possessed little or nothing, and when the Revolution at last placed the land in their hands absolutely, a craving which had descended from generation to generation was satisfied. They seized the land eagerly, they clung to it fiercely, fearful lest it should be taken from them, as, for instance, when the Bourbons returned, and many of the old noblesse sought the resumption of their estates. And old-time feelings, the covetous cravings of ancestors, the desperate tenacity of the generation of 1815, have descended to the peasants of to-day, and were perhaps even stronger among those of the Second Empire, with whom Zola proposed to deal in his novel "La Terre."

It was in part on the peasant's brutish ignorance, and more particularly on his earth-hunger, that he resolved to base his book. The following extract from one of his letters[61] will show his intentions:

In the spring of 1886 Zola started on a tour of investigation. He already had some personal knowledge of the region where he proposed to lay the scene of his story, having gone there in his mother's time, but that was long before he thought of writing "La Terre." Among the places he now visited was Châteaudun, where one finds him early in May, whence he writes a friend an interesting letter which Mr. Sherard prints, and a portion of which one may venture to quote here:

[Pg 233]

In June Zola returned to Médan, and throughout that year and indeed until August, 1887, one finds him busy with this book from which he turned only for a short time in February and April to attend to the production, first of a dramatic version of "Le Ventre de Paris,"[63] which had at least a succès de curiosité, and secondly of a play called "Renée"—based on "La Curée"—which proved a resounding failure and was attended by an acrimonious controversy in the press. In the opinion of the critics, apparently, Racine's "Phædra" sufficed for all time, and the idea of a modern one in the person of "Renée" was monstrous: thus Zola sinned both against the great classic writer and against modern society.[64]

While he was dividing his attention between those plays and his novel "La Terre," France was becoming more and more absorbed in political questions. General Boulanger, who had been Minister of War in the Freycinet administration of 1886 had lost that position, but his popularity remained extreme, fanned as it was by a large party of malcontents of various political schools. Many were actuated solely by patriotic considerations, for there had been trouble with Germany over an Alsatian frontier incident known historically as the Schnæbelé Affair. Some people who[Pg 234] believed the general to be sincerely Republican only wished him to relieve them of certain men of the hour, such as President Grévy, for rumours were already abroad respecting the nefarious practices of the latter's son-in-law, M. Wilson. But others were intent on purposes of their own, the overthrow of the Republic and the establishment of a monarchy or a dictatorship, into which enterprise they hoped to inveigle the popular ex-Minister of War. Briefly, at this time a great crisis was gradually approaching.

Nevertheless, though the unrest penetrated to the literary world, the latter did not neglect the subjects which more particularly concerned it, and there was some commotion among men of letters when on August 18 that year (1887) "Le Figaro" published a manifesto directed against Zola's new work, which had been appearing in the "Gil Blas" since May, and the concluding pages of which were at that very moment being written at Médan. This manifesto (which, when one recalls the presumptuous preface to "Les Soirées de Médan," may be regarded as a Roland for an Oliver) was signed by five young writers, Paul Bonnetain, J. H. Rosny, Lucien Descaves, Paul Margueritte, and Gustave Guiches, who, "in the name of their supreme respect for art, protested against a literature devoid of all nobility." The factum was of some length, diffuse, bristling with scientific jargon, and disfigured by a ridiculous attack on the personal appearance of Zola, whose leadership these young men solemnly renounced.

At that time the best known of the five was Paul Bonnetain, a Provençal of Nîmes, and a friend of Alphonse Daudet, who came from the same city. Bonnetain had then published four or five books, the first of which, "Chariot[Pg 235] s'amuse," had so out-Zola'd anything written by Zola himself that its author had been prosecuted for it. M. Rosny on his side had at that date written two books, "Nell Horn," a ridiculous story of "English manners," and "Le Bilatéral," a study of Anarchism and Collectivism which showed marked improvement. M. Gustave Guiches was the author of three volumes, none of which had attracted attention, while Lucien Descaves had published four novels, and was gradually emerging from obscurity, though another two years were to elapse before his venturesome book, "Sous-Off,"—for which he was tried and acquitted—made his name at all widely known. Finally, M. Paul Margueritte—destined like M. Rosny to acquire a high position in literature, in conjunction, be it said, with his younger brother, Victor—was as yet only known by an estimable book on his father, the gallant general killed at Sedan, and a couple of works of fiction, "Tous Quatre" and "Une Confession posthume." The eldest of the band, Bonnetain, was in his thirtieth year, the others were six or seven and twenty.

A comical feature of the affair was that of these five indignant writers, who so solemnly disowned "the Master of Médan," only one, Bonnetain, was personally known to him. They had met just twice. With the others Zola had no acquaintance at all. This appears clearly from the statements he made to M. Fernand Xau of the "Gil Blas," who, directly the manifesto appeared and Zola's enemies raised a cry of jubilation at the so-called "great Naturalist schism," hurried to Médan to interview the author of "La Terre." A portion of Zola's declarations to M. Xau may well be given here:

[Pg 236]

While conversing with M. Xau, Zola mentioned that some of his friends believed the manifesto to be an echo of the opinions of certain persons whom he held in high esteem, both personally and from a literary standpoint; but he had reason to know that the persons in question were really grieved by the factum to which they had given neither inspiration nor assent. The allusion was in part to Alphonse Daudet, by reason of his friendship with Bonnetain, but more particularly to Edmond de Goncourt, as the latter's "Journal" explains. Goncourt's house, his grenier, as one said in those days, had become the meeting-place of a number of young authors, who looked up to him much as others had looked up to Flaubert. And Goncourt, on reading the manifesto in "Le Figaro," had immediately exclaimed, "Diable, why four of them belong to my grenier!"[66] It naturally occurred to him that Zola might think the plot had been hatched there, under his auspices, and he felt extremely annoyed. A journalist who called on him suggested an article showing that he had no responsibility in the matter, but Goncourt declined to hide behind others. If anything had to be said he would say it himself. However, he went to dine at Champrosay with Daudet, and after they had decided that the manifesto was very badly written and outrageously insulting, they communicated privately with Zola, who was thus able to tell M. Xau that whatever[Pg 238] might be said elsewhere, he knew that "the certain persons whom he held in high esteem" had nothing to do with the affair.

On the other hand, some minor literary men adhered to the protest, and the incident was so sedulously exaggerated by Zola's enemies that one might have imagined the manifesto had come from novelists of high reputation instead of from beginners, who, with the exception of Bonnetain, had not yet half-won their spurs. The affair has been related in some detail here, first because a kind of legend has gathered round it, a legend repeated in many of the memoirs issued after Zola's death, and secondly because it ultimately had a notable result: the nomination of Zola as a knight of the Legion of Honour.

Before recounting how that occurred it must be mentioned that "La Terre" was published in volume form late in 1887.[67] The attacks made upon it ever since the so-called "Manifesto of the Five" then acquired yet greater intensity, which a little later was checked somewhat by the uproar attending the decorations scandal in which President Grévy's son-in-law was implicated, followed by the President's resignation, the election of Carnot, and the increase of the Boulangist propaganda. However, at every pause in that turmoil the denunciation of Zola began afresh.

It was still going on when M. Edmond Lockroy, who had known the novelist in the old days of "Le Rappel," became[Pg 239] Minister of Public Instruction. Married to Charles Hugo's widow, guardian of the great poet's grandchildren, artist, author, Garibaldian volunteer, politician, deputy, and minister, M. Lockroy was—and is still—a man of very broad views. He had formed a poor opinion of the "Manifesto of the Five" at the time of its appearance, and he was disgusted by the ensuing attacks, which emanated for the most part from the reactionary press. In these circumstances he resolved on a somewhat bold course, that of offering the red ribbon to the much-abused author, as an official recognition of his literary attainments, and as a kind of solatium for the insults heaped upon him.

At the same time M. Lockroy realised that as Zola, angered by the behaviour of Bardoux in 1878, had then declared he would not accept a decoration, it would be advisable to sound him unofficially in the first instance. The minister ended by selecting as his intermediary a lady who knew the novelist well, and she at once repaired to Médan to ascertain his views.[68] At her first words Zola began to protest, reminding her of the public declaration he had formerly made, and adding that if he now accepted the red ribbon he would surely cover himself with ridicule. But the minister's messenger insisted, pointing out, notably, that prejudiced and ignorant people were on all sides accusing him of deliberate immorality, even obscenity, and that his official nomination to the Legion of Honour might act[Pg 240] as a check on his insulters and rehabilitate him in the eyes of the vulgar. At last Zola began to waver, and after consulting his wife, who favoured the proposal, he gave his assent to it. At the same time, mindful of M. Bardoux' shilly-shallying, he insisted that he should have a formal promise from the minister immediately. It was given him, and very soon afterwards, the time having come to draw up the list of those who should be decorated on the occasion of the National Fête that year, 1888, M. Lockroy brought Zola's name before the Council of Ministers. Later, the decree having been signed and gazetted, he personally fixed the red ribbon to Zola's buttonhole in the drawing-room of the lady who had acted as intermediary.

She, it would appear, was not a little astonished some time afterwards when on receiving a visit from the novelist he told her that he had decided to offer himself as a candidate for the French Academy. And he explained the position thus: "I had the choice of two paths, one leading to the recognition of my readers only, the other leading to official recognition also. I never troubled about the latter, but you turned me into that path, and I am not the man to halt half way on any road. As there is an Academy I shall offer myself as a candidate directly a suitable opportunity occurs. And," he added jocularly, "as there is a Senate also I may even offer myself as a candidate for that as well. Why not? Ste.-Beuve was a senator, and perhaps I myself shall be one."

Neither of those aspirations was realised; and, in later years, even, Zola's decoration of the Legion of Honour was almost taken from him. It had come to him, not as some have said as the result of "Le Rêve," which was not published [Pg 241]till some months afterwards, but as the result of "La Terre." Elsewhere, however, that same book had very different consequences for another man, for it led to proceedings at law which ruined him, cast him into prison, and hastened his death. How that happened the following chapter will tell.

The earliest versions of Zola's novels in our language offered for sale in Great Britain were of American origin. Some American translations are ably done—that is well known—but the particular ones here referred to were for[Pg 243] the most part ridiculous, full of errors, and so defaced by excisions and alterations as to give no idea of what the books might be like in French. There were translations of much greater merit in Germany, Italy, and Russia, but until a Mr. Turner produced in London a version of "Au Bonheur des Dames,"[1] the English reader, ignorant of French, really had no opportunity of forming any personal opinion of Zola's writings. He had to rest content with the views expressed in various newspapers and periodicals by men who had read Zola in the original. Among those who wrote on him in the English reviews were Mr. Andrew Lang and Mr. Henry James, but most of the articles that appeared were conveniently anonymous, and therefore, perhaps, essentially abusive, as, for instance, an unsigned paper in "Blackwood's Magazine," the writer of which, not content with attacking Zola's books, thought it as well to libel him as a man. At long intervals there appeared some article in his defence, some statement of his principles and his aims, the best of these being another anonymous paper called "The Literary Creed of Émile Zola,"[2] though even this had a foolishly worded "note" attached to it, showing how little Zola was understood by the average English editor. Such, then, was the position: a dozen or more worthless American versions on the market, and frequent attacks in reviews, magazines, and newspapers, when, in 1884, the first English series of Zola translations was begun by a London publisher, Henry Vizetelly, who, assisted by two of his sons, traded as "Vizetelly & Co."

[Pg 244]

Before proceeding further the writer desires to enter a plea pro domo sua. He, like others, has his weak spot, and the present may be the only opportunity he will ever have of setting forth certain facts concerning his family, which, in spite of considerable association with English journalism and literature, has frequently been described—chiefly in connection with Zola and his writings—as Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Italian, or Jewish. That the Vizetellys are of Italian origin is indisputable, but one may well inquire how long it takes to make a family English? Some are accepted as such after a few years. Surely, then, four centuries ought to suffice.

The forerunners of Henry Vizetelly came from Venice[3] to England in the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth; and until the end of the seventeenth century were concerned in the manufacture of glass. One of them became connected with some works established at Lambeth in or about 1673 by George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham. The first sheets of blown glass for mirrors and coach-windows made in Great Britain came from those works, which Evelyn visited, as mentioned in his "Diary" But in the early part of the eighteenth century the Vizetellys became printers, and the family papers describe them as of "the parish of St. Bride's in the city of London." The Vizetelly, or Vizzetelli, of Elizabethan days having been called James (Jacopo), it became until recent years the family rule that the eldest son of the eldest son should bear that Christian name.

[Pg 245]

Another name, given to daughters, was the Biblical one of Mehetabel, a survival, perhaps, of some family Puritanism in Commonwealth days. But if there were a Puritan, there was certainly no Jewish strain in the family, the men of which in the eighteenth century married girls with good old English names, some of them London born and others coming from counties as far away as Cheshire. Thus, although the Vizetellys seem to have never forgotten their origin and to have cultivated friendship with sundry notable Italians who settled in England, it is certain that, as generation followed generation, English blood predominated in their veins.

The status of the eighteenth-century Vizetellys as printers is difficult to determine. They were apparently in fair circumstances, but the writer knows of no eighteenth-century book bearing their imprint. He believes they were associated in business with others whose names alone appeared. The first found actually trading in his own name was James Henry Vizetelly,[4] born in 1790, and son of James Vizetelly, "printer, of St. Bride's parish and of[Pg 246] Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields." James Henry's eldest son, James Thomas George, was apprenticed to him as a printer; and his second son, Henry Richard, after acquiring a knowledge of the same trade, was placed first with Bonner and afterwards with Orrin Smith, two noted wood-engravers. He proved one of the latter's best pupils, and ultimately joined his brother James in the printing and engraving firm known as Vizetelly Brothers.

While thus engaged, Henry Vizetelly[5] was approached by Mr. Herbert Ingram, a former news-agent of Nottingham, on the subject of founding an illustrated newspaper. The outcome (1842) was "The Illustrated London News," the first journal of its kind in any country. Vizetelly afterwards quarrelled with Ingram, and, in 1843, in conjunction with Mr. Andrew Spottiswoode, started an opposition paper, "The Pictorial Times," to which some notable men, including Douglas Jerrold and Thackeray, contributed. As, however, the printing and engraving business which he carried on with his brother was becoming a large one, Vizetelly eventually severed his connection with journalism for some years, and either with his brother, or later on his own account, produced a large number of illustrated books, which from typographical and other technical standpoints were often among the best of their time. He was also (this may interest American readers) the first to introduce Poe's "Tales" and—through C. H. Clarke—Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," to the English public, and, having[Pg 247] virtually discovered Birket Foster, he also did much to popularise Longfellow in England. Perhaps his best work as a wood-engraver was that done for the edition of "Evangeline," illustrated with Foster's designs.

Vizetelly also took a prominent part in the agitation for the repeal of the taxes on knowledge, such as the newspaper stamp and the paper duty, being honorary secretary to the society for the removal of the latter impost; and in 1855, conjointly with David Bogue, the publisher of most of the books he printed, he started "The Illustrated Times," on the staff of which, as had been the case with "The Pictorial Times," there were again many notable writers and artists.[6] This newspaper ran a very successful course for some years, but about 1860 Vizetelly—after losing a large sum over another venture, "The Welcome Guest"—sold his share in the proprietorship to Ingram of "The Illustrated London News." Ultimately, in 1865, he entered into an agreement to represent the last-named journal on the continent of Europe, with headquarters in Paris, to which city he removed with his family. He saw virtually all there was to be seen there during the last years of the Empire, the subsequent siege by the Germans, and, later, the Commune. He afterwards acted for "The Illustrated London News" as a "special" in different parts of Europe, and became British wine juror at various international exhibitions, for he had made a particular study of wines in the regions where they were produced,[Pg 248] and wrote on them at length both in "The Pall Mall Gazette" and in a series of popular volumes. Other subjects also attracted his pen; the best of his numerous literary efforts being probably a work on the famous Diamond Necklace scandal, and another on Berlin as it was when Bismarck had constituted the new German Empire.

Such, then, was the man who in 1880 joined the ranks of the London publishers. He was at that time sixty years old but still full of energy, and he gave great personal attention to his business, though, as already mentioned, he had the assistance of two sons. He had been twice married, and of a numerous family four sons and a daughter were then living. The sons whom he had with him were the younger ones, Arthur and Frank Vizetelly;[7] their elder brothers, then abroad, being Edward[8] and Ernest, the present writer, who for convenience proposes to refer to himself by his Christian name throughout this particular narrative.

[Pg 249]

One of the first ventures of the new business, a series of sketches of English society, entitled "The Social Zoo," and published in parts, was badly launched and dropped before completion, but some sections of it, by E. C. Grenville-Murray, attracted great attention and sold widely on being reissued in volume form. Sala's "Paris Herself Again" and other books were also very successful, but when Vizetelly—who by reason of his long residence in Paris took great interest in French literature—produced a series of cheap translations of works of high repute in France—novels and tales by Daudet, Theuriet, About, Malot, Cherbuliez, George Sand, Mérimée, and others—there was little or no demand for them, though a large amount of money was spent in advertisements. Indeed it soon appeared that if French fiction was to be offered to English readers at all it must at least be sensational; and Vizetelly therefore started a cheap series of Gaboriau's detective stories, which found a large and immediate market. The business gradually expanded, and before long, in addition to miscellaneous works by Sala, Grenville-Murray, and others, the firm took up English fiction in a new form.

Mr. George Moore, the novelist, having found the circulating libraries opposed to some of his books, protested vigorously against the three-volume system which placed English fiction at the libraries' mercy. He held that all novels ought to be sold direct to the public, and many other writers agreed with him. Mr. Moore became one of Vizetelly & Co.'s authors, and the firm thereupon put the theory of direct sale to the public into practice. They abandoned the three-volume system altogether, issuing their new novels in one volume only, and it was Henry Vizetelly[Pg 250] who fixed the price at six shillings, to be lowered, after the earlier editions, to three shillings and sixpence—those being the figures which still prevail to-day. When therefore in later years the three-volume novel was finally slain it was somewhat impudent on the part of certain publishers to issue advertisements claiming all the merit of the change; for long before they or others joined the movement, Vizetelly & Co., as their catalogues show, were issuing a whole series of novels at the popular price, and quoting, in cordial approval of their initiative, an extract from an article in "The Saturday Review." Doubtless the one-volume system has not done all that was predicted for it, but it has certainly been an improvement on the old one, and it may be fairly claimed that Mr. George Moore and Henry Vizetelly were its pioneers.

After the establishment of his publishing business, Vizetelly had communicated with his son Ernest,[9] who was then living in Paris and had friends and acquaintances among writers, publishers, and booksellers there. Several suggestions which he made in the course of the next few years were adopted by the firm. However the idea of publishing English translations of Zola's works did not originate with him. As a journalist he had to keep himself informed respecting everything that occurred in Paris;[Pg 251] and he was fairly familiar with what had been done, written, and said there over a long term of years, particularly as even in his school-days he had begun to assist his father as a newspaper correspondent. Thus he was already acquainted with the salient features of Zola's career, the novelist's long and arduous battle for mastery. He had not read all the Rougon-Macquart volumes then published, but he had followed the exponent of Naturalism in his various newspaper campaigns, and he had seen most of the plays based on his books. Again, he was the only member of his family who, at that time, had ever met the novelist. Not long after the Franco-German War Zola had been pointed out to him by an artist as "the man who had championed Manet"; and since then Vizetelly had seen and elbowed him on various occasions in places of public resort. But only once had there been any real conversation between them, in the presence of others, at the Théâtre des Folies-Bergère, with which Vizetelly had been for a time connected.[10]

It may be added that Vizetelly's life in France had inclined him to the outspokenness of the French, and that experience had shown him there was much rottenness in Parisian society. Thus he had no personal prejudice against Zola's writings, which contained, he knew, a vast amount of truth. But he also knew, likewise by experience, that whenever any horrible scandal arose in Paris, the English newspapers would only print a small portion of the truth,[Pg 252] and he, as a correspondent, was thus often debarred from making a plain statement of facts of general interest, such as sometimes affected the moral status of men of very high position. Moreover, although Vizetelly had left England in his boyhood, and in subsequent years had only now and again spent a few days or weeks there (apart from one sojourn of about twelve months' duration), his own work, and the frequent perusal of English books and publications had kept him to a certain point in touch with his kinsfolk. And, so far as he could judge, English literature, like English journalism, was under the thumb of Mrs. Grundy. He had seen no sign indicating that Naturalism would even secure a hearing in England. When, therefore, in 1884, he suddenly heard that Vizetelly & Co. were about to produce "L'Assommoir" and "Nana" in an English dress, it seemed to him that the firm was taking an audacious course, and he did not hesitate to write and say so. He was answered, that, being resident abroad, he did not fully understand the position, and, as some difficulty had arisen with the translation of "L'Assommoir," he was asked to translate a small portion of it, some chapter towards the end of the book, which he did. That, for the time, was the extent of his share in the Zola translations.

The idea of publishing those translations originated, then, with Henry Vizetelly, unless, indeed, it was suggested to him by somebody else. In 1885 his son Ernest, on going to London, found the firm doing a large and increasing business. In addition to French and English writers, several Russian authors, Tolstoï, Dostoieffsky, and Lermontoff,—who were followed a little later by Gogol,—had been added to the firm's catalogue. A series of reprints of the old[Pg 253] dramatists, the well-known "Mermaid Series," was being projected;[11] and the Zola translations, so far as they then went, were in wide demand. This surprised Ernest Vizetelly, whose anticipations had been so different. But he yielded to evidence, and even began to think that there was at last some prospect of English people dropping the hypocrisy which had clung to them so long and looking unpleasant facts in the face.

He returned to Paris, where he remained till 1887, when various reasons induced him to take up his residence in London. He had married some years previously, and though his wife was French he particularly desired that his children should retain his nationality. Moreover, he now had the offer of a great deal of work from his father, who was projecting various reprints of French eighteenth-century books, as well as expensive and sumptuous editions of "The Heptameron," "The Decameron," and the works of Rabelais. Some thousands of pounds were spent on those undertakings, but only the first-named eventually saw the light.[12] Arriving in London, Ernest Vizetelly became one of the readers and editors of his father's firm, but for one reason or another he still had little to do with the Zola translations. His father contemplating a new edition of the Gramont Memoirs, he revised the translation alleged to have been edited by Sir Walter Scott, and corrected some scores of[Pg 254] errors which he found in it. For the rest, his time was largely spent in researches respecting the proposed version of "The Heptameron," of which he was editor.

Meanwhile Vizetelly & Co. were still issuing translations of modern French fiction, and Mr. George Moore, having occasion to go to Paris, spoke on the firm's behalf to Zola respecting "La Terre," which book the novelist was then preparing. An arrangement was made for the sale of the British rights to Vizetelly & Co., who then knew virtually nothing of the work, apart from the fact that it would deal with the French peasantry. Some time afterwards, however, Zola supplied a brief outline of his book in a letter which has been already quoted.[13] Then various delays ensued, several months elapsing before proofs of the earlier chapters were forwarded to Vizetelly & Co. Those proofs were handed to a translator with whom some difficulty arose, in such wise that they were transferred to another, and Ernest Vizetelly was requested to read and check the English proofs, a task which he occasionally undertook in connection with various translations. He was immediately struck by the boldness of Zola's story, which seemed to surpass in outspokenness any of the novelist's previous works. And at the very outset he deemed certain excisions and alterations advisable.

For instance, he found one of the characters, Hyacinthe Fouan, called by the nickname of "Jesus Christ," and afflicted with a nasty infirmity. The nickname did not particularly surprise him, for during the many years he had spent in Paris, he had known more than one young artist cultivating, notably as regards hair and beard, a resemblance[Pg 255] to the traditional portraits of the Christ, and going by that nickname both in the studios and the cafés frequented by artists. It seemed to him quite possible that Zola had found it among the peasantry whom he described. But, however that might be, Vizetelly felt that the nickname would give offence to English readers, and so he did not hesitate to expunge it from the proofs submitted to him. He felt also, that although Hyacinthe's infirmity might be true to life, it would also give offence to people who no longer read Sterne, and who knew little or nothing of Rabelais. Accordingly expurgation again ensued.

But as successive instalments of the proofs reached Ernest Vizetelly, he found in them a good deal of matter, which in his opinion needed "toning" for the English reader. And he was confronted by a difficulty which pursued him subsequently when he himself translated some of Zola's works; that is to say, the French proofs arrived in sections, the translation was supplied in the same manner, and it was therefore difficult to determine what incidents and facts might be really essential, and how far expurgation might be carried without rendering the book unintelligible. Vizetelly spoke on the matter to one of his brothers, and ultimately he put the work on one side, deciding to wait for its completion. Considerable delay ensued in the publication of the translation. Meantime, towards the close of 1887, the original work appeared in Paris, and was virulently attacked by Zola's enemies; while a rumour, subsequently contradicted, spread to the effect that translations had been stopped in various countries. It therefore seemed advisable to proceed cautiously. Finally the matter was laid before Henry Vizetelly, the proofs of the English version were[Pg 256] examined from beginning to end, and in conjunction with his son Ernest, he struck out or modified a very large number of passages, with the result that much of the work had to be reimposed. It may be said, then, that the translation as published was undoubtedly an expurgated one.

About this time, that is in March, 1888, Mr. W T. Stead, then editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette," who had made himself notorious some time previously by a series of articles on "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon," applied to Vizetelly & Co. for some information respecting the sales of the various translations from the French, which the firm was publishing, and which certainly circulated widely and attracted great attention. When the matter was laid before Henry Vizetelly, his son Arthur, who took a large part in the management of the business, suggested that the request should not be entertained, for, said he, it was a very unusual one, and publishers were not in the habit of supplying the public with all sorts of particulars about their affairs. That, at the time in question, was quite true, but Henry Vizetelly, who saw no objection to the request, supplied Mr. Stead with an article in which he gave numerous particulars concerning the sales of his publications. The article, as the sequel showed, was somewhat injudiciously worded in various respects. For instance, it conveyed an impression that—unlike the crude and mangled American versions of Zola which were then in the market—the Vizetelly translations of that author were absolutely unmutilated. As a matter of fact, none of them was an exact replica of the original, all had been expurgated more or less, though care had invariably been taken to preserve the continuity of the[Pg 257] narrative. Further, though Vizetelly had very good grounds for asserting that he reckoned it a bad week when the sale of the Zola translations fell below a thousand volumes, this statement, which seemed at first sight to indicate a very large circulation,[14] was again indiscreet, and was eagerly seized hold of and magnified by those who were already lying in wait to destroy him.

Of the inner workings of that conspiracy the writer might perhaps say a good deal, but for the purposes of this narrative, the facts which appeared on the surface are sufficient. A campaign was started, chiefly against Vizetelly & Co., and ostensibly for the purpose of protecting boys and girls, against what was called "pernicious literature." A society styling itself the "National Vigilance Association" eventually took the matter in hand. Its secretary, the person usually representing it in public, was a man named Coote; the agent for its publications was a Protestant fanatic named Kensit;[15] among those who gave it their countenance was W. T. Stead, then, as already mentioned, editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette." The publications of Kensit on "The High Church Confessional," and those of Stead on "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon," would have seemed to indicate that both Kensit and Stead favoured the doctrine of outspokenness or publicity to which Zola gave effect in his novels, the doctrine which he summed up in the[Pg 258] words, "Let all be set forth so that all may be healed." But although in the estimation of Kensit and Stead it was quite right that they should speak out, the idea of allowing Zola the same privilege was nonsense. He was Belial, whereas of them it might be said: "Mark the perfect men, and behold the upright." Thus they might circulate descriptions of vice,—even allow them, as in the case of "The Maiden Tribute," to be hawked about the streets in penny numbers[16]; but Zola must not picture vice in his books.

Among the members of the so-called "National Vigilance Association" were various parsons and priests who naturally abominated such an infidel as Zola, and some of whom subsequently traduced him freely. These might accept the outspokenness of a Stead, but, generally speaking, they represented the doctrine of reticence and secrecy as opposed to that of publicity. Theirs was the policy, pursued through the ages, of wrapping everything up, cloaking everything over, and they were lost in anger, horror, and amazement when they found a different course being pursued. They ignored Zola's position altogether, though for years he had been calling to them and those who resembled them: "You claim to reform the world, you preach and you prate; but although your endeavours may be honest you do little or no good. Evil exists on all sides, society is rotten at the core; but you merely cover up abominations, you even feign at times to ignore their existence, though they lie little below[Pg 259] the surface and poison all around them. The system of reticence and concealment which you pursue is a profound mistake. It is one of the many consequences of that system that thousands of girls are cast every year into the arms of seducers, that thousands of young men kneel at the feet of harlots. Abortion is practised among the married as among the unmarried. Drunkenness is in your midst. Your prisons are full. Your gibbets and guillotines are always in use. Cheating and swindling are commonplaces of your every-day life. Well, I am resolved to tear the veil asunder, to set forth everything, to conceal nothing. I shall shock the world undoubtedly, but it is only by bringing things to light, by disgusting people with themselves and their surroundings, that there will be a possibility of remedying the many evils which prey on the community at large. Eighteen hundred years have elapsed since the carpenter of Nazareth walked the earth. You and your forerunners have had those eighteen hundred years at your disposal. What have you done in them? How much, or rather how little real good have you effected with all your organisations, your great authority, your exceeding wealth, your devotion, your piety, your talent, which at times has blossomed into genius? You have extirpated nothing whatever; your system has tended chiefly to the dissemination of hypocrisy and cant; you have failed egregiously; and to explain your failure you preach the ridiculous doctrine of the Fall, invented expressly to account for the impotency of priestcraft. I have nothing to say—as yet—on the subject of your belief in a future state, of your system of rewards or penalties after life, for good or evil conduct in the world, though it is one, half threat and half[Pg 260] bribe, for which there should be no occasion. But I take human society as it is, and by exposing the errors of its ways I hope to set afoot, to encourage among practical reformers, a movement of social regeneration, which will perhaps achieve, in a few centuries, a happier result than you, even though appealing to the supernatural, have achieved in so many. And in any case I intend to try, whatever abuse you may shower on me, whatever mud you may fling at me, mud which will some day, perhaps, recoil upon yourselves."

But how could men, trained to teach one and another superstition, wrapt in all the prejudices of their heredity and their caste, accept such arguments as those even if they had heard of them? The mere idea that man might regenerate himself without the aid of the supernatural was impious to their minds; the idea of stating the truth plainly, of rousing people by shocking them, was horrible to their delicacy of feeling, for they belonged to a white-livered generation, whence all robustness had departed. Perhaps if this Zola had been one of themselves they might have tolerated him, but he did not bow to the supernatural, his creed was different, and he was therefore a rival, an enemy, particularly as he contemplated a world whence they would be banished, as it would need none of their ministrations.

Thus the campaign began and soon found an echo in the newspapers. At that time probably there were not twenty journalists in all England who had read Zola's essays and critical papers in which he defined his position and the purport of his novels. In the latter, as is well known, he abstained from preaching. There is nothing of the nature of a sermon in the whole series of "Les Rougon-Macquart"[Pg 261] until one reaches "Le Docteur Pascal"; and one must admit that, although Zola had freely expounded his views elsewhere, the omission of those views from his novels was detrimental to him and them among those people who could not rightly understand any exposure of vice unless it were accompanied by preaching. Had he preached, the clergy, so many of whom believe preaching to be the chief function of their ministry, might well have been on his side, and even "Blackwood's Magazine" might then have hesitated to describe him as a man without a conscience. But he contented himself with picturing vice as vile, and the viler he made it appear, the more was he abused, the more was he accused of wallowing in it, of giving full rein to filthy libidinous propensities for the express purpose of corrupting all who read him! That charge was repeated widely by the English press, as is shown by the hundreds of cuttings from London and provincial newspapers in the writer's possession. And Vizetelly & Co. were accused of having deliberately chosen "the very worst" of Zola's books for translation.

As a matter of fact, in 1888 they were selling all the novels that Zola had then written, with the exception of "Les Mystères de Marseille," "La Confession de Claude," and "Le Rêve," which last only appeared in Paris in the latter part of that year. The publication of those books had been going on for four years, unchallenged. Each new volume as it appeared was priced at six shillings, and subsequently lowered to three shillings and sixpence. A few volumes, in picture boards, were sold at two shillings and sixpence. But the critics rushed upon "The Soil," the English version of "La Terre," and one man, who[Pg 262] can never have compared it with the original, had the impudence to assert that it was "an almost word for word translation of Zola's bestial book." Readers who had never seen Vizetelly & Co.'s catalogue were also allowed to infer that the firm traded exclusively in "pornographic literature." Now, in that catalogue, two hundred and forty works were enumerated, and the Zola volumes were eighteen in number. But it may be said that other books were denounced also, the translations of Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" and "Salammbo"; Goncourt's "Germinie Lacerteux" and "Renée Mauperin"; Gautier's "Mlle. de Maupin"; Murger's "Vie de Bohême"; Maupassant's "Bel-Ami" and "Une Vie"; Daudet's "Sapho"; Paul Bourget's "Crime d'Amour" and his "Cruelle Énigme," which last the firm had issued in consequence of a laudatory notice in the staid old "Athenæum," surely the last journal in the world to recommend anything suggestive of pornography. But counting even all the works belonging more or less to the French realistic schools which Vizetelly & Co. issued, one reached only a total of about thirty, leaving some two hundred and ten books of other classes. Thirteen of those were certainly volumes of "The Mermaid Series of the old Dramatists" which some anonymous scribes likewise regarded as "pornographic" in that hour when cant and hypocrisy poured venom on virtually every form of literature that had not received the imprimatur of Pecksniff & Company

The public having been prepared for developments, the question of "pernicious literature" was brought before the House of Commons by one of its members, Mr. Samuel Smith, who sat for Flintshire. He had married the daughter of a clergyman, and had a reputation for extreme piety. He[Pg 263] was described at the time as "an enthusiast without enthusiasm, with a tall, expansive frame, a huge beard, a placid-life-like expression, and a mild feminine voice,"[17] which, said another journal, was "peculiarly suited to the expression of lamentation."[18] There was some fear, it seems, that there might be a poor attendance at the debate on the motion he meant to submit, indeed a "count out" was feared, but arrangements were made to keep a house for the occasion, when the aspect of the benches was apparently such as the following diagram indicates:

Thus, of an assembly numbering between six and seven hundred members, just forty were found sufficiently interested [Pg 264]in the morals of their constituents to discuss the motion submitted by Mr. Smith, which was: "That this House deplores the rapid spread of demoralising literature in this country, and is of opinion that the law against obscene publications and indecent pictures and prints should be vigorously enforced and, if necessary, strengthened." In the speech with which the member for Flintshire opened the debate he did not hesitate to describe Henry Vizetelly as "the chief culprit in the spread of pernicious literature"; and, according to a "Pall Mall Gazette" report, which he never contradicted, he said of the works of Zola that "nothing more diabolical had ever been written by the pen of man; they were only fit for swine, and those who read them must turn their minds into cesspools."[19] In this fashion does the Puritan prate when he goes on the warpath. For the rest, Mr. Smith talked de omni re scibili, "flinging his accusations broadcast. All kinds of literature, including daily newspapers, came under his ban. He wanted everything—books, magazines, and newspapers,—to be subject to some sort of restraint." He spoke in the "spirit which assumes that what is evilly suggestive to itself must be evilly suggestive to others." But as was added by the journal from which these remarks are quoted:[20] "What sort of literature should we have if it were all brought down to such a level as would satisfy the ascetic tastes of the Smiths? Where would the Bible be? What would become of Shakespeare?"

[Pg 265]After Mr. Smith's motion had been seconded by Mr. T. W. Russell, and endorsed by Sir Robert Fowler and Mr. De Lisle, another member, Mr. (afterwards Sir F. S.) Powell, leaving French novels on one side, called attention to certain circulars "headed with Scriptural texts and looking like religious tracts" which were circulated in English homes, apropos of the spread of contagious disease in India, and which, in his opinion, were calculated to do much harm.

Then came the Government spokesman, Mr. Henry Matthews, one of the most unpopular Home Secretaries that Great Britain has known since the time of the Walpole under whose effete administration the public tore down the railings of Hyde Park. Mr. Matthews, a lawyer and a Roman Catholic, was subsequently given a peerage; but in 1888 he sat in the House of Commons for the city of Birmingham. He agreed very largely with what Mr. Smith had said, and he asserted that "in comparing French modern literature with classical literature it had to be borne in mind that, while the latter was written with no evil purpose(!), the former was written with the object of directing attention to the foulest passions of which human nature was capable, and to depict them in the most attractive forms"—an allegation which, applied to Zola's works, can only be described as astounding. But the Home Secretary also denounced the "penny dreadfuls," the quack advertisements, and the full reports of divorce cases which appeared in the daily press. And on the question of instituting prosecutions he said:

The debate was continued by three or four members, one of whom, Mr. H. J Wilson (Holmfirth) apologetically and naïvely declared with respect to the pious circulars on the working of the Contagious Diseases Act, of which Mr. Powell had complained, that their distribution was the only method of making the truth known, and that the only way to stop them would be to put an end to the horrible system that rendered their dissemination necessary. To this Zola, if he had been present, might have retorted that the circulation of the plain statements of fact contained in his books was likewise, in his estimation, the only way to make known the degradation of society at large, in order that remedies might be applied.

Mr. Smith's motion was carried unanimously, however,[Pg 267] by the forty gentlemen present, matters being left in this position: The Government hesitated to institute prosecutions, and thought that private individuals should do so.

Meanwhile the campaign went on. Mr. Smith wrote a letter to the newspapers; another came from Lord Mount-Temple; and the press, with few exceptions, endorsed everything that was said by the commoner and the nobleman. The vigilant "Guardian" of the Church of England availed itself of the occasion to thunder against Sir Richard Burton and his "Arabian Nights"; "The Tablet" of the Roman Catholics jesuitically signified its approval of the agitation, because Zola's whole tendency was "suspected"(!) to be immoral; the conscientious Nonconformist journals, as was to be expected, said ditto to everything that Smith said. Some righteous contributor to "The Globe" wrote of Zola's books that they were characterised by "dangerous lubricity," that they "sapped the foundations of manhood and womanhood, not only destroyed innocence, but corroded the moral nature." "The Birmingham Daily Mail" declared that "Zola simply wallowed in immorality." "The Whitehall Review" openly clamoured for the prosecution of his publisher. "The Weekly Dispatch" impudently inquired, "If Mr. Vizetelly gives us Zola, why does he pick 'La Terre'? And if Daudet, why pick 'Sapho'?"—thus ignoring the fact that the firm published virtually all of the former's stories, and several of the latter's, and conveying, for its own purposes, a false impression to its readers. Indeed, misrepresentation of the facts was to be found in many directions. A few newspapers wrapped themselves in their dignity and said nothing, and a few remained fairly cool and sensible:[Pg 268] "The Standard," "The Scottish Leader," "The Scotsman," "The Radical Leader," "The Bradford Observer," "The Country Gentleman," "Piccadilly," "The Newcastle Chronicle," and "The Western Daily Press." There may have been a few others, for the writer does not claim that his collection of press cuttings is absolutely complete; but after examining some hundreds of extracts he finds little that is not mendacious or steeped in religious bigotry, puritanical prudery, or gross ignorance. And at all events it is certain that an overwhelming majority of British editors and "leader-writers" endorsed the views of the Pharisees.

The campaign was then carried to a decisive stage. A firm of solicitors, Collette & Collette, applied at Bow Street police-court for a summons against Henry Vizetelly for having published three obscene books, to wit, "Nana," "The Soil" ("La Terre"), and "Piping-Hot" ("Pot-Bouille"), by Émile Zola. The summons was granted, and on August 10, 1888, Vizetelly appeared to answer it. The prosecution had been entrusted to Mr. Asquith,—now best known as a politician,—and he, in opening his case, was about to deal with "Nana," when the magistrate, Mr. (afterwards Sir) John Bridge, who evidently had already made up his mind respecting the case, suggested that he should take the worst of the three books, namely "The Soil,"—for which, by the way, Zola had received the decoration of the Legion of Honour three weeks previously! Counsel assented, referred the magistrate to various pages, and then solemnly declared that this book and the two others were "the three most immoral books ever published!" But having thus revealed how very limited was his knowledge of literature, he added, fairly enough, that it was claimed for "The Soil" that it[Pg 269] had been published with a high moral object—namely, to show the degradation of the French peasant and the necessity of alteration in the laws by which he was governed.

Vizetelly's solicitor, Mr. Lickfold (of Messrs. Lewis & Lewis), argued on his client's behalf that he had a perfect right to publish these translations, the French originals of which were circulated in Great Britain without let or hindrance; and he contrasted them with English works which were sold widely and freely, such as Byron's "Don Juan," and Shakespeare's "Merry Wives of Windsor." Far from the incriminated books being the three most immoral ever written, said Mr. Lickfold, there were many within the cognisance of all men of any education which were very much worse. But the magistrate curtly intimated that it was a case for a jury to decide, and he forthwith committed the defendant for trial at the Central Criminal Court, admitting him, meanwhile, to bail in his own recognisances.

Vizetelly's committal led to great rejoicing among the Pharisees; and to improve the occasion the "National Vigilants" summoned a bookseller named Thomson at Guildhall (September 7) for selling an English version of Boccaccio's "Decameron." Mr. Forrest Fulton—subsequently knighted and appointed Common Sergeant of the City of London—prosecuted and asked for a committal, but Mr. Horace Avory, defendant's counsel, replied that the "Decameron" had been in circulation for over four hundred years, that there were three copies of the work in the English language in the Guildhall Library and some two hundred in the British Museum; and he contended that this classical work was not indecent in the eyes of the law. Mr. Alderman Phillips, who heard the case, quietly remarked[Pg 270] that he himself had read the book both in Italian and in English, and he refused to send the defendant for trial, as he did not believe that any jury would return a conviction.

This was a rebuff for the fanatics, who now concentrated their energy on the prosecution of Vizetelly. The latter had taken his committal in a defiant spirit, promptly issuing the following notice to his customers: "The trade is informed that there are no legal restrictions on the sale of 'Nana,' 'Piping Hot,' and 'The Soil,' and that none can be imposed until a jury has pronounced adversely against these books which the publishers still continue to supply." This announcement, which was perhaps ill advised—though in counsel's opinion well within one's legal rights—momentarily enraged the "Vigilants," but they were about to receive important help. The Government, encouraged by the press, took up the prosecution, thus relieving the agitators of the cost of their suit.

Affairs now began to assume a more serious aspect, the question was no longer one of fighting a band of fanatics, but of contending against the law-officers of the Crown who would bring all the weight of their authority to bear upon the jury. In these circumstances Vizetelly decided to print a series of extracts from the works of English classic authors,[21] by way of showing that if Zola's novels were suppressed one ought also to suppress some of the greatest works in English literature. These extracts, which were preceded by quotations from Macaulay on the suggested suppression of the works of Congreve, Wycherley,[Pg 271] etc., and by Zola's own explanation of the scope and purpose of his Rougon-Macquart series, covered a very wide field. Among the many authors laid under contribution were Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, John Ford, Thomas Carew, Sir George Etherege, Dryden, Congreve, Otway, Prior, Defoe, Swift, Sterne, Fielding, Smollett, Byron, etc., the series running from the time of Elizabeth to the early part of the nineteenth century. At the same time Vizetelly drafted an open letter to Sir A. K. Stephenson, the Solicitor to the Treasury, who now conducted the prosecution, and copies of the letter and of the extracts were forwarded to all the members of the Government and the leading London newspapers. The letter ran as follows:——

[Pg 274]

The letter was dated September 18, 1888, on which very day the sessions of the Central Criminal Court began, but the Crown applied for a postponement of the trial, and as Vizetelly's counsel, who had been instructed to oppose any postponement, failed to attend, and Vizetelly himself was refused admittance by an officious policeman, the case was at once put off until October. This was very prejudicial to Vizetelly's business, particularly as the attacks of certain prints did not cease. Looking back, it greatly astonishes the writer that no application was ever made to commit the publishers of several London and provincial newspapers for circulating comments on a case which was sub judice, comments well calculated to prevent the defendant from obtaining a fair trial. But that idea does not seem to have occurred either to Vizetelly or to anybody about him. He at first had felt fairly confident respecting the issue of the case, and, as an old journalist, had entertained nothing but contempt for the terriers of the profession who barked at his heels. But his confidence had been shaken by the intervention of the Government and was finally undermined by well-meaning friends who, owing to the postponement of the proceedings, had many an opportunity to tender counsel. Their motives were most honourable and praiseworthy, no doubt. But the effects of their solicitude were disastrous. "In the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom," it has been said, but in Vizetelly's case there came chaos. While some urged him to fight, others begged that he would do no such thing. There was an incessant chassê-croisê of advice; and Vizetelly, now resolving on one course, and now on another, was at last at a loss what to do. Had he been a younger man the case would have been very different, for[Pg 275] in his prime he had evinced much energy of disposition, and in difficult moments had relied on his own sound common-sense. But he was now sixty-eight years old, and though he was still of most industrious habits, the strenuous life he had led had left its mark upon him. Moreover, a complaint from which he suffered had taken a very serious turn, and frequent physical suffering was not conducive to perspicuity and energy of mind. Again, there was the position of his business to be considered. In consequence of the prosecution and the misrepresentations of the newspapers, the trade became afraid to handle any books he published, and thus his sales rapidly decreased. Besides, he found it difficult to obtain efficient counsel for his trial. The Parnell Commission was then sitting, and most of the great men of the bar were retained in it. Mr. (now Sir Robert) Finlay, Q. C., who was applied to, could not take the brief, having in hand already a large number, which the barristers engaged before the commission had been obliged to decline. Other men were similarly circumstanced, and there was one who honestly admitted that he did not like the case, and would therefore prove a very poor advocate. Eventually Mr. Francis B. Williams, Q. C., Recorder of Cardiff, was retained, with Mr. A. R. Cluer, now a London police magistrate, as his junior.

Beset as he was by various friends, who held that in the state of public opinion he was not likely to secure an acquittal, Vizetelly at last allowed some inquiries to be made as to what would happen if he pleaded guilty and withdrew the three incriminated Zola translations, such as they were then, from circulation. A letter bearing on this question, says: "If the rest of Zola's works that are open[Pg 276] to objection are withdrawn, the Solicitor-general will be content that the defendant be not sentenced to imprisonment. He thinks that the taxed costs of the prosecution should be paid, and will leave the amount of fine (if any) to the judge, not pressing for a heavy one if the defendant is a man of small means." This communication gave a new aspect to the case. The question was no longer one of three of Zola's works, all of them might have to be withdrawn. Private testimony respecting the narrow puritanism animating the authorities at that moment indicated that they would show no fairness in considering the matter of other books by Zola, at least in the form of translations; for it is a fact that while Vizetelly's expurgated English versions were being prosecuted, the French volumes still entered the country and were freely sold there and circulated by libraries! Thus all who knew French were privileged to read Zola verbatim, whereas those who did not know that language were not allowed to peruse expurgated renderings of his books. Under the circumstances set forth above, Vizetelly finally resolved to contest the case; but, unfortunately, the inquiries instituted on his behalf had made his hesitation known to the prosecution and inclined it therefore to vigorous courses.

The trial took place on October 31, 1888, at the Old Bailey, before the Recorder, Sir Thomas Chambers, whose literary bent may be indicated in a few words: his favourite poet was Hannah More. The jury appeared to be of the usual petty-trading class. The prosecution was conducted by the Solicitor-general, then Sir Edward Clarke, who had already made a considerable reputation by certain cross-examinations, and who at a subsequent period defended the unhappy[Pg 277] Oscar Wilde, when the latter was convicted of unnatural offences. Sir Edward opened the proceedings at no great length. He first pointed out that, in the case of "The Queen v. Hicklin," Lord Chief Justice Cockburn had ruled that the object for which a publication might be issued had nothing to do with the question of its obscenity, the test of which was whether the matter so published had a tendency to deprave and corrupt those into whose hands the publication might fall. He also mentioned that it had been ruled in the Hicklin case that no excuse was supplied by the circumstance that other literature—especially that of two or three centuries previously—might contain passages conflicting with one's judgment as to what was fit for circulation. Then he passed to "The Soil," asserting that it was full of bestial obscenity, without a spark of literary genius or the expression of an elevated thought. That, of course, was his opinion of the book; and several years later he amused a great many people by giving his opinions on literature at large, thereby arousing the ire of a distinguished writer, Mr. Edmund Gosse, who unfortunately made the mistake of telling Sir Edward Clarke that he was a lawyer and not a littérateur—even as Mr. Chamberlain in his fiscal campaign subsequently reproached Mr. Asquith for discussing business when he was not a business man. But whatever might be Sir Edward Clarke's calling, he had a right to hold opinions on literature and to express them. Even a tinker may have literary views and may make them known, though it does not follow that they will be adopted by the community generally.

Having concluded his address, the Solicitor-general proceeded to read some passages from "The Soil," and he had[Pg 278] scarcely begun when a faint stir among the public brought a loud cry of "Silence!" from the ushers. Ernest Vizetelly, who was seated at the solicitors' table, then turned and perceived several French newspaper correspondents and others striving to preserve their gravity, which had been disturbed by the curious manner in which Sir Edward Clarke pronounced the French names confronting him in the pages of "The Soil." For a time one might have imagined he was reading a novel of the kail-yard, for he persistently pronounced "Jean" as if it were a Scottish name. For instance:

"There was a lass, and she was fair,
At kirk and market to be seen;
When a' the fairest maids were met,
The fairest maid was bonnie Jean."[22]

The effect was the more curious as in Zola's book Jean, of course, is a man, whereas from Sir Edward Clarke's pronunciation it might have been inferred that he was a woman! However, the slaughter of French names did not continue long. The jurymen expressed their views clearly enough by interrupting a passage describing how the girl Françoise Mouche brings the cow, La Coliche, to the bull at the farm of La Borderie. The mere idea that such a thing could happen evidently amazed and disgusted them; but their surprise would probably have been less great if, instead of being Londoners, they had been yokels from the country, for, as various correspondents informed the writer subsequent to the trial, instances of the same kind could have been easily adduced from different parts of the United Kingdom, notably Wales.

[Pg 279]

One of the Pecksniffian arguments at that time was that Zola wrote for his own countrymen, and that even if he were justified in addressing them as he did, there was no excuse for placing translations of his works in the hands of English people, to whom those works did not apply. This was ridiculous, English society being quite as deeply, though by reason of the national hypocrisy, not so openly corrupt as French society. As for the case of Françoise Mouche and the cow, La Coliche, one might have found, as already stated, numerous instances of young girls being similarly employed in Great Britain. But of course such matters were not to be spoken of or written about! They must be cloaked over, covered up, so that they might continue unhindered! Besides, it was abominable to assert such things. The rural districts of England were moral paradises, safe in the guardianship of parson and squire! Only London was immoral, poor, wicked London, which bears the weight of many a sin which is not its own. It would be interesting, indeed, to know how far those moral paradises, the rural districts, contribute to the illegitimate births with which London is at times reproached. Is there even a single day in the year when London does not witness the arrival in its midst of some unfortunate country girls who have left their homes to hide their shame among the multitude of its inhabitants?

But one must return to the trial. When Sir Edward Clarke had read a few of his extracts the demeanour of the jury and their repeated interruptions plainly indicated what their verdict would be. Even then, no doubt, the better course would have been to let the trial proceed, in order that counsel might have his opportunity of presenting the defence, if not for the enlightenment of the jury, at least[Pg 280] for that of the public at large. Mere passages,—there were twenty-five, some, no doubt, rather long ones, incriminated in a volume of hundreds of pages—proved nothing. One might find scores and scores of passages in the Bible which if taken without the context and the general knowledge one has of the book might make it appear undesirable. In the case of "The Soil," the facts should have been expounded, whether they influenced the jury or not. But Vizetelly's counsel, Mr. Williams, was evidently quite disheartened; he deemed it useless to prolong the case; and so after the briefest of consultations the plea of "not guilty" was withdrawn for one of "guilty." It was a complete collapse.

Mr. Williams, however, began to address the Recorder in mitigation of punishment, and in doing so referred to Zola as "a great French writer." "Oh, no, a voluminous French writer, if you like," said Sir Edward Clarke. "A popular French writer," the Recorder suggested. "A writer who certainly stands high among the literary men of France," Mr. Williams retorted; whereupon Sir Edward Clarke exclaimed in a pompous way, "Do not malign the literature of France!" Whether the Solicitor-general was qualified to express any opinion of weight on the literature of France might well have been doubted by all who had heard him pronounce the name "Jean." But Mr. Williams got in a last word. Confirming his description of Zola, he said: "It is apparent to all who have studied the literature of France at the present day."[23] And he might have added that Zola had but lately been made a knight[Pg 281] of the Legion of Honour for the very book, for having issued an expurgated edition of which Vizetelly was about to be punished. On that subject Sir Edward Clarke stated that he did not ask for imprisonment, and however much one may differ from him, particularly in literary matters, it is essential one should recognise that, having won the day, he showed some forbearance. Vizetelly had naturally pleaded guilty, not only to the indictment respecting "The Soil," but to those respecting "Nana" and "Piping Hot," which were not gone into. The Recorder admonished him and then sentenced him to pay a fine of a hundred pounds and to enter into his recognisances in two hundred pounds to be of good behaviour for twelve months.[24]

But a very important matter has still to be mentioned. A certain undertaking was given in court respecting the Zola translations published by Vizetelly. The present writer, his brothers, and many friends who were present, as well as the defendant himself, distinctly understood that undertaking to be that the three incriminated volumes and all other works by Zola which were as objectionable as those three should be withdrawn from circulation; but it was not said that none of Zola's books should ever be sold. On that point it is advisable to quote the shorthand writers' transcript, which shows how the Solicitor-general interpreted the undertaking: "Sir Edward Clarke: Of course I am very glad that a course has been taken which will not only stop from circulation the three books contained in these indictments, but which carries with[Pg 282] it an undertaking by Mr. Vizetelly that he will be no party to the circulation of any other of the works which M. Zola has produced, any others—I should like to say—which are at least as objectionable as those which are indicted before your Lordship to-day."

According to the writer's recollection, and that of his relatives and friends, Mr. Williams in giving the undertaking applied to the incriminated books the expression, "in their present form"; but these words do not appear in the shorthand notes which the writer holds. Nevertheless the language of Sir Edward Clarke suggests that some similar words had been used. It followed that Vizetelly, in all good faith, believed that he was entitled to sell Zola's books if he rendered them unobjectionable by further expurgation. But when other proceedings ensued it was even suggested that he was not entitled to sell them under any circumstances; and he was actually admonished for having inserted in his catalogue the words "Undergoing revision" after the titles of "La Terre" and "Nana." This plainly showed that the real secret desire of the authorities and the "Vigilants" was to suppress translations of Zola altogether. They cared not a jot what Vizetelly might attempt in order to satisfy their narrow puritanism, they were determined to regard all expurgation as inadequate, to pursue and persecute Vizetelly till he abandoned that author altogether. And to effect this they were ready to strain the law as it had never, perhaps, been strained before.

Meantime Zola, who naturally heard of Vizetelly's trial, attached, personally, little importance to it. He held that the English were making themselves ridiculous by setting[Pg 283] up a puritanical standard of morality when their own literature contained many examples of outspokenness going far beyond anything that he had ventured upon. Apart from the writers of the past, he had some acquaintance with modern English novels such as had been translated into French, there being various series of that kind;[25] and he took the view that many of them, with the glamour they cast over vice and even their artful reticence, were certainly calculated to demoralise people, whereas his own rough frankness could only give the reader a shock, as indeed it was intended to do. At the same time he was not surprised at the outcry, for there had been one in France, where the ground was far better prepared for outspokenness than in England, where the cant of the Victorian era had ever striven to set restrictions on the novelist's art. Thackeray, we know, had chafed under them, and had written on his preface to "Pendennis": "Even the gentlemen of our age... we cannot show as they are, with the notorious foibles and selfishness of their lives and their education. Since the author of 'Tom Jones' was buried no writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost power a MAN. We must drape him, and give him a certain conventional simper, Society will not tolerate the Natural[26] in our Art."

[Pg 284]

As for the issue of the affair for the Vizetellys, of whom Zola then knew little, having only had a few business transactions with them, he did not feel deeply affected, for the matter seemed to him to resolve itself into a moderate pecuniary loss which, he imagined, the defendant would be well able to incur, having made considerable profits on the incriminated books.[27] For the rest, when in later years Ernest Vizetelly showed him various newspaper cuttings imputing to him a variety of statements, Zola remarked that some he had never made, while as for others his words had evidently been misconstrued.

As it happened, the affair proved far more serious for Vizetelly & Co. than Zola had thought possible. The firm then had several thousand pounds locked up in illustrated books which were not nearly ready for publication. The sales of its existing books had been declining for several months, so that its receipts had become small, though its expenses remained heavy and it had liabilities such as are always incurred in trade. Under these circumstances it was felt that the Zola translations, being a valuable property, could not be entirely sacrificed. The undertaking given in court was interpreted in the sense previously indicated, and, though the books were absolutely[Pg 285] withdrawn for a time, it was decided to put them on the market again after they had been adequately expurgated.

A good deal of this work was entrusted to Ernest Vizetelly, but he was hampered by important restrictions. He learnt that the books were stereotyped and that his alterations must be such as might be effected in the plates, for it would be too expensive to reset the books in their entirety, though a few pages might be reset here and there. Under these conditions, as sentences and paragraphs often had to be struck out or considerably abbreviated, it became very difficult to fill the gaps which occurred. Ernest Vizetelly at least did the best he could. He spent two months on the work and deleted or modified three hundred and twenty-five pages of the fifteen volumes handed to him. Henry Vizetelly was in poor health at the time; but he himself attended to a few volumes, and his son's work was sent to him for inspection before it was forwarded to the printers. Whether he himself went through it in its entirety or not cannot be stated positively; but at all events the work was passed, and some of the Zola volumes were reissued.

Soon afterwards the "National Vigilants," elated by their previous easy victory, returned to the warpath. Henry Vizetelly was again summoned, this time for selling the following books: "The Assommoir," "Germinal," "Fat and Thin" ("Le Ventre de Paris"), "The Rush for the Spoil" ("La Curée"), "Abbé Mouret's Transgression," "How Jolly Life is" ("La Joie de Vivre"), "The Fortune of the Rougons," and "His Excellency E. Rougon," by Zola; "Madame Bovary," by Gustave Flaubert; "A Love Crime," by Paul Bourget; "A Woman's Life" and "A Ladies' Man"[Pg 286] ("Bel Ami"), by Guy de Maupassant. At the same time W. M. Thomson, discharged when summoned for "The Decameron," was prosecuted for selling a translation of "The Heptameron," as well as other works, and other booksellers were likewise proceeded against in connection with some of the American versions of Zola's novels. The cases were heard by Mr. Vaughan, a testy old magistrate who long presided at Bow Street, and who committed Vizetelly for trial with respect to the following works: Zola's "Abbé Mouret's Transgression," "The Rush for the Spoil," "Fat and Thin," "His Excellency E. Rougon," "How Jolly Life is"; Bourget's "Love Crime" and Maupassant's "Ladies' Man." A few objections had been raised in the press apropos of the prosecution of "Madame Bovary," and with the gracious approval of the great Stead of the "Maiden Tribute," the summons respecting that work was eventually adjourned sine die.[28]

When Vizetelly returned to his office from Bow Street on the day of his committal, he took the only course consistent with integrity. He assigned everything he possessed for the benefit of his creditors, in order that his business might be liquidated. It was impossible to carry it on any longer. The wreckers had resolved to ruin him, and had succeeded to their hearts' desire. Friends came and expressed their sympathy—among others, Sir Henry Irving, the late Sir John Gilbert, and Mr. Birket Foster—but there was virtually no opportunity for any public protest. Not a newspaper[Pg 287] now dared to print a word on behalf of this old servant of the press whom the "Vigilants" had chosen for their victim. On the morrow of the first trial the "leader" writers had hastened to avail themselves of his plea of guilty to pass unanimous condemnation on him. The delighted "Vigilants" had promptly printed and circulated extracts from the "Times," "St. James's Gazette," "Whitehall Review," "Star," "Globe," "Morning Advertiser," "Saturday Review," "Methodist Times," "Liverpool Mercury," and "Western Morning News"; and those samples of English press opinion might have been multiplied indefinitely. They showed all parties in agreement: the Tories and the Radicals, the Puritans and the Publicans. Coote, the secretary to the "Vigilants," had become censor morum, and all bowed to his authority. Yet some members of this so-called "National Vigilance Association" had been mixed up in various nefarious matters. There had been, as Mr. George Moore subsequently wrote, "the case of an unfortunate foreign prince, who was dragged into court on a charge of abduction or seduction, or both; when the matter came to be sifted it was found that he was absolutely and wholly innocent. So conclusive and so unimpeachable was the evidence, that Mr. Besley, who prosecuted for the Association, had to admit that he had nothing to say, and the judge replied, 'I should think not, indeed.'"[29]