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, 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 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, 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) 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 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 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 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":
"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!"
[Illustration: Émile Zola's Home, Impasse Sylvacanne, Aix-in-Provence
--Photo by C. Martinet]
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, 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 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 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 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]
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 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.
[1] £2 8s.; or about $12.
[2] Frédéric Lock's "Dictionnaire topographique et historique de
l'ancien Paris," Paris, n. d. but _cir._ 1856.
[3] Portions of the three poems are printed by Alexis, _l. c._
[4] "Le Paris Guide par les principaux Écrivains de la France," Vol.
II, Paris, 1867.
[5] "La Confession de Claude," Nouvelle Édition, 1903, p. 141.
[6] See E. A. Vizetelly's Introduction to "The Fat and the Thin" ("Le
Ventre de Paris") London, 1896. The original appeared in "Le Figaro,"
November 20, 1866; and Zola reprinted portions of it, altered out of
regard for his wife, in "Nouveaux Contes à Ninon," 1874.
[7] "Revue Bleue," March 10, 1883; and "Célébrités contemporaines,"
Vol. I, Paris, 1883.
[8] About sixty-four cents, American currency.
[9] Alexis, _l. c._, p. 56.
[10] See _ante_, p. 49.
[11] "La Grande Revue," Paris, 1893, Vol. XXVI, pp. 1-19, 241-262.
[12] These lectures were given first in the Rue de la Paix, later
in the Rue Cadet, and later still in the Rue Scribe. They were most
interesting and instructive. The present writer often attended them in
the last years of the Empire to hear Deschanel the elder, J. J. Weiss,
Eugène Pelletan, Laboulaye, Legouvé, St. Marc-Girardin, Henri Martin,
Sarcey, Wolowski, and others.
[13] No date appears on the title of the first edition (18mo,
3 francs), which bears the imprints of Hetzel and Lacroix, and
Poupart-Davyl & Co., Printers.