admitted that while the authors of "Ohé! les petits Agneaux" scoffed at
Flaubert, they gave him a splendid advertisement.
[15] Zola to Valabrègue, February 6, 1865.
[16] "Les Romanciers Naturalistes," Paris, 1881, p. 238.
[17] The first performance took place on December 5, 1865.
[18] Though "1866" appears on the title-page, the above is the exact
date of publication and registration at the Ministry of the Interior.
Alexis is therefore in error when he says the book appeared in October.
The question of date has some importance in connection with Zola's
departure from Hachette's and the cause thereof.
[19] About _3d._; or six cents (American).
[20] Say $100.
[21] R. H. Sherard's "Émile Zola: A Biographical and Critical Study."
London, 1895, pp. 52, 53.
[22] Fernand Xau's "Émile Zola." 12mo, 68 pages, Paris, 1880.
IV
IN THE FURNACE OF PARIS
1866-1868
Henri de Villemessant, the Barnum of the Parisian press--His
papers, "L'Événement" and "Le Figaro"--The first interviews in
French journalism--Millaud and Timothée Trimm--Girardin's fresh
idea every day--Zola inaugurates "Literary Gossip"--A glance at
French literature in 1866--Zola, Littré, and Michelet--Zola's first
impression of Alphonse Daudet--The Librairie Nouvelle and the Librairie
Internationale--Zola and the Open-Air School of Art--Léopold Tabar and
"L'Œuvre"--Zola's articles on the Salon of 1866--The great sensation in
the art-world--A holiday at Bennecourt--"Le Vœu d'une Morte"--"Marbres
et Plâtres"--"La Madeleine"--A "definition of the novel"--Hard
times--Zola in love--More writings on art--"Les Mystères de
Marseille"--"Thérèse Raquin"--Arsène Houssaye and his moral tag--Ulbach
and "putrid literature"--Ste.-Beuve's criticism and Zola's reply--"Les
Mystères de Marseille" as a play--"La Honte," otherwise "Madeleine
Férat"--First idea of the Rougon Macquarts.
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, 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 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."
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 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_.
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 "Révue 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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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
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.