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ÉMILE ZOLA
NOVELIST AND REFORMER
AN ACCOUNT OF HIS LIFE & WORK
BY ERNEST ALFRED VIZETELLY
ILLUSTRATED BY PORTRAITS, VIEWS,
& FAC-SIMILES
JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD
LONDON & NEW YORK MDCCCCIV
TO HIS MEMORY
_"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
PREFACE
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 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, 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 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
CONTENTS
I INTRODUCTORY--THE ZOLA FAMILY--BIRTH OF ÉMILE ZOLA
II EARLY YEARS: 1840-1860
III BOHEMIA--DRUDGERY--FIRST BOOKS: 1860-1866
IV IN THE FURNACE OF PARIS: 1866-1868
V THE FIRST "ROUGON-MACQUARTS": 1868-1872
VI THE PATH OF SUCCESS 1872-1877
VII THE ADVANCE OF NATURALISM: 1877-1881
VIII THE BATTLE CONTINUED: 1881-1887
IX THE BRITISH PHARISEES: 1884-1893
X THE LAST "ROUGON-MACQUARTS"--THE FRENCH ACADEMY--A VISIT TO LONDON:
1888-1893
XI A CRITICAL GLANCE: 1893
XII THE MAN--HIS LIFE DRAMA--A NEW DEPARTURE 1893-1897
XIII THE DREYFUS CASE: 1894-1900
XIV LAST YEARS--DEATH: 1901-1902
XV CONCLUSION--THE INFLUENCE AND SURVIVAL OF ZOLA'S WORKS
APPENDIX
A.--Declaration of Zola's birth
B.--Declaration of his death
C.--Note on some English translations of his novels
INDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS
I Émile Zola in his Last Days _Frontispiece_
II The Birthplace of Émile Zola _To face page_
III Dam and Reservoir of the Zola Canal
IV Zola's Home, Impasse Sylvacanne, Aix
V The Boulevard Zola and the Banks of the Arc, Aix
VI Émile Zola, 1876-1880
VII Zola's Home at Médan
VIII Zola in his Study
IX Émile Zola, 1888-1890
X Aix-in-Provence, the Plassans of his Books
XI Fac-simile Letter from Zola to E. A. Vizetelly
XII Denise and Jacques
XIII Maître Labori
XIV Zola writing "Fécondité" at Walton
XV Penn, and Summerfield, Surrey
XVI Penn from the Garden, and Fac-simile Card from Zola to Vizetelly
XVII Émile Zola, September, 1898
XVIII Zola's Dining-room
XIX Mme. Zola at the Queen's Hotel, Norwood
XX Zola's Bedroom
XXI M. Anatole France speaking at Zola's Funeral
ÉMILE ZOLA
NOVELIST AND REFORMER
I
INTRODUCTORY
THE ZOLA FAMILY--BIRTH OF ÉMILE ZOLA
The meaning of "Zola"--Localities of that name--The Zola family of
Brescia and Venice--Giovanni Battista Zola, saint and martyr--The
Abate Giuseppe Zola and his chequered career--The military Zolas of
Venice--Benedetta Kiariaki and her offspring--Francesco, father of
Émile Zola--His military training--He becomes an engineer and plans
one of the first "railways" in Europe--His service in the French
Foreign Legion and its strange ending--He plans new docks for the port
of Marseilles--His schemes for fortifying Paris and providing Aix in
Provence with water--He meets Françoise Émilie Aubert--His romantic
courtship and marriage--His home in the Rue St. Joseph, Paris--Birth
of Émile Zola--Literature in England, America, and France in 1840--The
birth of Émile Zola followed by that of Alphonse Daudet--Contrasting
characteristics of those writers.
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 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 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 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 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 (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]
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 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 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 (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 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.
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.
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 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
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] 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 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 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]
[Illustration: The Birthplace of Émile Zola 10, Rue St. Joseph, Paris]
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. 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.
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, 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 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 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.
NOTES
[1] Only one of Giuseppe Zola's works--"Lezioni di Storia delle Leggi
e di Costume de' popoli," etc., Milan, 1809--is in the British Museum
Library. Among the others, in addition to the volumes placed in the
"Index expurgatorius," were some elaborate commentaries on the history
of the Church (3 vols., 1780-1786), a dissertation on the theological
authority of St. Augustine, a treatise on Death, etc.
[2] "La Vérité en Marche," by Émile Zola, Paris, 1901, p. 259.
(Documents in the Dossier François Zola at the French War Office.)
[3] "Trattato di Livellazione topografica," by Francesco Zola, Dr. in
Math., Lieut., Padua, 1818. 8vo.
[4] Funeral oration on F. Zola, by Maître Labot, Advocate at the Bar of
the French Council of State.
[5] Documents printed by the "Neue Freie Presse" of Vienna (No. 12,028,
February 17, 1898) and quoted in "Le Père d'Émile Zola," by Jacques
Dhur, Paris, 1899.
[6] Baedecker's "Southern Germany and Austria," 1871.
[7] "La Vérité en Marche," pp. 259, 280-282.
[8] Probably in March, 1898. "La Vérité en Marche," pp. 251-253.
[9] _Ibid._, pp. 277-279.
[10] "La Vérité en Marche," pp. 264-266.
[11] This idea has suggested itself to many people, and, curiously
enough, is embodied in a five-act drama entitled "Fatalité," by M.
Eugène Quènemeur, produced at Nantes in March, 1903, with Parisian
artists in the chief parts. The play is a strange blending of François
Zola's adventure and the Dreyfus case.
[12] "Le Père d'Émile Zola," pp. 176, 177.
[13] The birthplace also of the famous La Bruyère of the "Caractères,"
and of Francisque Sarcey, the eminent French critic.
[14] At the time referred to, this house was No. 10 _bis_ (or as one
would put it in England, 10 _a_) in the street. But owing to various
changes it has become the only No. 10. M. Mongrédien's publishing
business, and the offices of a popular weekly, "La Semaine illustrée,"
are now (1903) installed in the house, the accompanying view of which
is from a photograph taken under exceptional difficulties (owing to the
extreme narrowness of the street) by the author's friend, M. Auguste
Waser, architect, of Paris.
[15] See _post_, Appendix A. Declaration of the birth of Émile Zola.
[16] Anatole France, October 5, 1902.
II
EARLY YEARS
1840-1860