previously both Gustave Flaubert and Alphonse Daudet, being well
acquainted with M. Agénor Bardoux, an Auvergnat poetaster and
politician appointed Minister of Public Instruction, had suggested to
him that Zola, who by "L'Assommoir" had now risen to a conspicuous
position, ought to be made a knight of the Legion of Honour.[8] Daudet,
in this matter, was actuated by friendship and admiration, and Flaubert
deemed himself to be under a great obligation to Zola. It seems that
while Flaubert was writing his "Bouvard et Pécuchet" (which did not
appear till after his death), he had often spoken of it to his friends
in a somewhat mysterious manner, never actually giving the names of
his characters, but referring to them merely by their initials, B.
and P. Zola was then working on "Son Excellence Eugène Rougon," and
one day, when he and Flaubert met at a lunch given by M. Charpentier,
he mentioned that a capital name had occurred to him for one of his
characters, this name being Bouvard, which, with its suggestion of
blotting-paper, was certainly a fit appellation for a civil service
scribe. It so happened--such is coincidence--that Zola and Flaubert
proposed to bestow it on much the same type of man; but the former, of
course, was quite ignorant of his friend's intentions, for Flaubert,
restricting himself to the initial B., had never allowed the word
Bouvard to escape his lips. When it fell from Zola's, the author of
"Madame Bovary" was greatly upset. "He became quite strange," wrote
Zola on subsequently relating the incident, "and after lunch he took
me to the bottom of Charpentier's garden, where, with a great show of
emotion, he implored me to surrender the name of Bouvard to him. I
assented, laughing; but he remained very grave, plainly touched, and
even declared that he would not have persevered with his book if I had
insisted on using the name. He looked upon his work as being entirely
in those two names Bouvard and Pécuchet, and could not picture it
without them."[9]
Now Flaubert was one of the best-hearted men in the world. He regarded
Zola's trifling concession as an act of great generosity, and it was
to mark his sense of it that he solicited for his friend the Cross of
the Legion of Honour. Pressed both by Daudet and Flaubert, M. Bardoux
showed himself very favourably disposed, and when, in accordance with
usage, he was visited by Zola, he told him straightly he would be
gazetted on the next National Fête-day July 14, 1878. That date came
and went, however, and Zola's name did not appear in the "Journal
Officiel"--the cross promised to him going, instead, to Ferdinand
Fabre. Other occasions presented themselves, Bardoux was often urged
to keep his promise, but as often evaded it, and of course when the
uproar provoked by Zola's paper on his fellow-novelists supervened, it
afforded a good excuse for shelving the matter altogether. Meantime
the affair had become common talk in certain literary circles, and
Zola, who felt that he was being made ridiculous, had more than once
threatened to fling the cross in Bardoux's face if he should eventually
tender it. Alexis, in recounting the affair, throws virtually all
the blame on the Minister; but the latter, after various paltry and
untruthful excuses, which certainly put him in a bad light, told Edmond
de Goncourt that if he had failed to keep his promise it was not his
fault, but really that of his colleagues in the Government.[10]
It really seems to be the case that the question whether Zola should
be decorated was made an affair of State, solemnly debated by the
Council of Ministers at the Élysée Palace, Marshal MacMahon being in
the chair, probably with his usual cigar between his lips, and his
usual bottle of green Chartreuse standing handy on a cheffonnier,
in order that he might help himself whenever "he felt so disposed,"
which, according to the scandal-mongers of the day, was pretty often.
And the brave, honest, and narrow-minded Marshal, who--perhaps at his
wife's instigation--absolutely refused to promote the impious Renan
from the rank of chevalier to that of officer of the Legion of Honour,
was in thorough agreement with all the Ministers who opposed the
unlucky Bardoux when he asked that the red ribbon might be conferred
on the obscene Zola. On his side, the latter, ignorant of the real
circumstances of the case, and more and more annoyed by the spiteful
allusions to the affair which appeared in some of the newspapers,
issued an open letter formally signifying his renunciation of the
red ribbon, with the result that for some years there was no further
question of "decorating" the foremost novelist of France.
On January 18, 1879, the Ambigu Theatre gave the first performance
of the dramatic version of "L'Assommoir" prepared by Messrs. Busnach
and Gastineau, who, in point of fact, had been largely assisted by
Zola, though his name did not appear on the bills, and he allowed all
the merit of the play's success to be attributed to his colleagues.
Goncourt tells us that during the rehearsals his melancholy mien
quite chilled the actors, who by no means anticipated a success.[11]
While the first performance was in progress Zola sat reading in the
manager's private room, and on the fall of the curtain his friends
repaired thither to inform him that, apart from a little hissing,
everything had gone off satisfactorily. Nevertheless, the critics
attacked the play, an English writer, George Augustus Sala, evincing
particular distress in a long article which recalled Sarcey's customary
brief verdict: "That man Zola makes me ill."[12]
But all Paris had read "L'Assommoir" as a novel, and wished to see it
on the stage;[13] and, besides, even the critics could not deny that
Madame Hélène Petit's impersonation of the unhappy Gervaise was a great
personal triumph. Thus crowds flocked to the Théâtre de l'Ambigu, whose
director, Henri Chabrillat, an ex-journalist and novelist, who had
commanded the Francs-tireurs de la Presse during the Franco-German War,
suddenly found himself making a fortune.
In honour of the staff and company of the Ambigu, the authors of the
play ended by giving a ball at the Élysée Montmartre, which, by the
way, figured in Zola's story, and Mr. George Moore, the well-known
author of "A Mummer's Wife" and "Esther Waters," has related that his
first meeting with Zola--of whom he became for several years the chief
English supporter--occurred at this particular entertainment.[14]
Mr. Moore--who had then only produced his "Flowers of Passion," and
was therefore known in Parisian literary and art circles as a young
poet--attended the ball dressed as a Parisian workman, and was engaged
to dance with Gervaise. He had no opportunity for conversation when
Manet introduced him to Zola, but he called at Médan a few weeks
afterwards, and a close friendship sprang up between him and the author
of "L'Assommoir." Each, however, was possessed of strong personal
convictions, and, as years went by, Zola's life and work gradually
took a course of which Mr. Moore did not approve, perhaps because--as
admitted by himself--he failed to understand it.
The law of the world is evolution. _L'homme absurde est celui qui ne
change jamais_; and Zola, amid the very triumph of "L'Assommoir," at
the very moment when he was expounding the principles of Naturalism
in the "Viestnik Yevropi" and "Le Voltaire" (which he joined when "Le
Bien Public" ceased publication), was already, and quite unconsciously,
perhaps, undergoing a change. He was in some degree carried away by
the sudden accession of ample means after years of poverty and years
of battle. In the long run he showed himself superior to fortune,
whether it were favourable or adverse, but he found its first smile
irresistible, as so often happens with those who have long toiled and
suffered and cursed their fate. Briefly, he proved no exception to the
general rule, and he was taunted with having failed to depart from it,
being candidly told in print that, like Herbert Spencer and Gustave
Flaubert, he ought to have been quite content with mere lodging-house
surroundings, and that he made a ridiculous use of his comparative
wealth.
Most of his money, it may be mentioned, was lavished on his property
at Médan, to which he made many additions, building, for instance, a
large square tower in which he fitted up a spacious workroom, whose
huge window suggested that of a studio. In that room in later years
most of his books were written. And as wealth accrued a second large
tower was added to the first, followed by some smaller ones flanking
the entrance of the property. All this was denounced as bad taste; and
unquestionably, from an architectural point of view, Médan, with one
bit of building added here and another there, became a strange-looking
place. At the same time it remains an interesting memorial of the rise
of Zola's fortunes. One knows, for instance, that the first tower
was built with money derived from "L'Assommoir," that the second
was erected with some of the proceeds of "Nana," that this and that
enlargement were paid for by "La Terre" or "La Débâcle." Certainly
no common _parvenu_ would have left such a tell-tale record. It is
doubtful whether he would have been content to dwell during the greater
part of the year in an out-of-the way village like Médan; and even had
he retained possession of the property he would surely have demolished
the original humble little house and have erected some grand Louis
Treize château on the site.
But another charge preferred against Zola was that he wasted time and
money in collecting works of art and curios--the latter more often than
the former. In his novel, "L'Œuvre," he gave an explanation of this
which is worth quoting:
"His [Sandoz's, otherwise Zola's] drawing-room was becoming
crowded with old furniture, old tapestry, nick-nacks of all
countries and all times--an overflowing torrent of things
which had begun at Batignolles with an old pot of Rouen
ware, which Henriette [Madame Zola] had given her husband on
one of his fête days. They ran about the curiosity shops
together; they felt a joyful passion for buying; and he now
satisfied the old longings of his youth, the romanticist
aspirations which the first books he had read had engendered.
Thus this writer, who was so fiercely modern, lived amid
the worm-eaten middle ages which he had dreamt of when he
was a lad of fifteen. As an excuse, he laughingly declared
that handsome modern furniture cost too much, whereas with
old things, even common ones, you immediately obtained some
effect and colour. _There was nothing of the collector about
him_, his one concern was decoration, broad effects; and to
tell the truth, the drawing-room, lighted by two lamps of old
Delft ware, derived quite a soft, warm tone from the dull
gold of the dalmaticas used for upholstering the seats, the
yellowish incrustations of the Italian cabinets and Dutch
show-cases, the faded hues of the Oriental door-hangings,
the hundred little notes of the ivory, the crockery and the
enamel work, pale with age, which showed against the dull red
hangings."[15]
No doubt, among the great quantity of tapestry, carved wood, old
furniture, pottery, church embroideries, and so forth, which Zola thus
gathered together, there were occasionally things which did not suggest
the best taste or the greatest accuracy of judgment. But the statement
quoted above shows that he disclaimed collecting in the ordinary sense,
and made purchases solely for decorative purposes. And, in any case,
even if he bought a few things whose only recommendation was their
quaintness, or accepted an object as genuine when an expert would have
known it to be spurious, his transgressions in those matters were of
no importance to the world at large, and one is surprised that some of
his "candid friends" should have thought it worth while to expatiate on
them.
It has been urged, however, that directly money came to Zola, instead
of yielding to a desire for comfort, he ought to have devoted himself
to travel and study, and particularly have restrained his literary
output. He would have derived benefit from foreign travel undoubtedly,
but his self-set task of the Rougon-Macquart series long riveted him
to France. As for study, he was always studying, books as well as men,
and Mr. George Moore's suggestion that he had little acquaintance with
the heart of French literature[16] was erroneous, for abundant proof of
the contrary will be found in the eight volumes of his collected essays
and articles. These also show that he kept abreast of the literature
of his time, and all his friends are aware that new books and literary
periodicals, to say nothing of a profusion of newspapers, encompassed
him during the last twenty years of his life. But, in a large degree,
he certainly set the literature of the past behind him, regarding it as
being chiefly of historical value. And whether he were right or wrong
in that matter, it must be obvious that his attitude was in keeping
with his character as an evolutionist. In a word, he was more concerned
respecting the future of literature than respecting its antecedents.
But it has been said that a change began to appear in Zola about
the time of "L'Assommoir," and the change we more particularly mean
is that by which the novelist expanded into a reformer. As scores
of his newspaper articles, collected and uncollected, testify, the
injustice of the social system had always been manifest to him. With
the degradation of many individual lives he was well acquainted. His
own rise to affluence made him yet more conscious of the difference
between the rich and the poor. His descent into the mire of life, to
seek there his Coupeau, his Lantier, and his Gervaise, left on his
mind some impress of the horror which he imparted to others. And thus,
with him, art no longer remained art for art's sake only,--a broad
humanitarianism gradually entered into his literary conceptions.
At the outset the novelist and the reformer were certainly more or less
at variance. The _cuisine_ of politics still remained distasteful to
Zola, and he is often found protesting that he is merely a literary
man and does not wish to intervene in passing events. But as the years
elapse the reforming instinct becomes more and more powerful, gathers
increased strength from such works as "Germinal" and "La Terre,"
till at last the humanitarian feeling, triumphing over everything
else, trampling unrestrained upon all literary canons, finds voice in
"Lourdes" and "Paris," "Fécondité" and "Travail," and at a supreme
moment impels Zola to champion the chosen victim of Roman Catholic
fanaticism and military infallibility.
At an early stage of his gradual transformation he is seen defining the
novelist as an exponent, an analyst, a dissector of human life. His
work is to be accomplished in strict accordance with science, and the
methods of the great scientist, Claude Bernard, are held up to him as
examples. This idea of "le Roman Expérimental," as Zola finally called
the scientific fiction he expounded, had long haunted him; but when
he wished to give it really adequate expression he was momentarily at
a loss as to where he might find the most forcible and most modern
exposition of scientific principles and methods. It was his friend M.
Yves Guyot, a many-sided man, then only a journalist, later a Minister
of State, and now eminent as a political economist, who recommended
him to study Claude Bernard.[17] On that study Zola based one of the
most famous of his essays. Science, which appeals so little to some
minds, particularly literary minds of the average calibre, is really
the greatest humanitarian agency we possess. The man who experiments,
the man who dissects, does not do so for mere pleasure; his aim is the
increase and diffusion of knowledge, the benefit of the world, the
advantage of his fellow-men. That which is learnt in the laboratory,
the workshop, the operating room is put to use in a thousand ways. In
physiological and medical science the work may often be very repulsive,
yet it reveals the causes of many flaws and ailments, and points to the
means of cure. A similar aim became Zola's as he proceeded with his
novels. He made it his purpose to inquire into all social sores, all
the imperfections and lapses of collective and individual life that
seemed to him to require remedying. That everything should be made
manifest in order that everything might be healed, such was the motto
he adopted.
Yet in the first instance he did not preach, he did not denounce,
he contented himself with stating the facts; he confined himself to
analysis, dissection, and demonstration, and he used the novel as his
vehicle, because the novel alone appealed to the great majority of
people to whom it was necessary that the facts should be made patent if
any remedy were to be applied.
[Illustration: Zola's Home at Médan, showing the "Assommoir" & "Nana"
Towers.]
But the prejudiced, the purblind, and the foolish, the hundreds of
so-called critics who had glanced at his novels but had never perused
a line of the essays in which he enunciated his principles, responded
by accusing him of a degraded partiality for filth, of wallowing in
mire, because such was his favourite element. The sensation created by
"L'Assommoir" had been great, that which attended the production of
"Nana" was perhaps greater.
Much of the year 1878 was spent by Zola in making preparations for that
book. Incredible as it may seem, his critics have actually reproached
him for his previous ignorance of the "successful" Parisian courtesan.
His knowledge of her had certainly been limited to her out-door life;
like others he had seen her, elbowed her at the theatres, in the Bois,
and at other places of public resort. That was all. He therefore
applied to friends and acquaintances for information. Edmond de
Goncourt, who had repeatedly dined at the table of La Païva[18] before
she became the wife of Henckel von Donnersmarck, gave him a variety of
information; Ludovic Halévy initiated him into the _demi-mondaine_
side of theatrical life, to which, given all his intercourse with
Hortense Schneider, Zulma Bouffar, and others, he was the most
competent of guides; men of fashion, who had wasted their best years
and much of their money among the harlots of the Second Empire, told
him tales of their experiences; he visited the house of one _belle
impure_ from basement to attic, and he supped at the house of another.
Of the lower-class unfortunate he had, perforce, seen a good deal
during his bohemian years in the Quartier Latin, and all observers of
women of that category are aware that in most cases, though they may
acquire some superficial polish on rising to wealth, their real natures
undergo little change.
Zola's enemies naturally imputed the writing of "Nana" to his
partiality for vice and scandal, but those who are acquainted
with "L'Assommoir" will recognise that, in such a series as "Les
Rougon-Macquart," a study of the courtesan was the necessary corollary
of the study on drink and the general degradation of the working
class. It is from such homes as those of Coupeau and Gervaise that
spring nine-tenths of the unhappy creatures so grimly denominated
_filles de joie_. Nana's childhood and youth had already been recounted
in "L'Assommoir," and it was certain that Zola would not leave her
there. How could he picture the degenerescence of a period if he
omitted the harlot, who had played--people hardly seem to recognise
it nowadays--such a prominent, such a commanding part, during the
years when Napoleon III.--dallying himself with La Castiglione, La
Bellanger, and a dozen others, while his cousin Prince Napoleon Jérôme
kept the notorious Cora Pearl--had transformed the proud city of Paris
into the brothel of Europe? Again, scores of Zola's contemporaries,
writers of various degrees, by trying to poetise the courtesan, had
increased her influence a hundred-fold, and the time had come to
check her encroachments by exhibiting her in her true colours, with
all her vulgarity, her greed, her degradation, her shamelessness and
heartlessness.
In September, 1879, when Zola had written about half of "Nana," he
arranged with M. Laffitte, editor of "Le Voltaire," which was then
publishing his articles on "scientific fiction," to produce the story
in that newspaper, and M. Laffitte at once advertised it in a fashion
worthy of Barnum himself. Huge posters appeared on all the walls of
Paris, "displayed" announcements invaded the newspapers, sandwich men
patrolled the streets, ticket-advertisements were even affixed to the
gutta-percha tubes of the pipe-lights in the tobacconists' shops; and,
indeed, upon every side one found the imperious injunction: _Read Nana!
Nana!! Nana!!_[19] All this greatly vexed Zola, who had shut himself
up at Médan to finish the book, and who did not at all desire to be
advertised in such an extravagant fashion. To make matters worse, the
serial issue had scarcely commenced (October 16, 1879) when several
newspapers began to discuss the story, all the quidnuncs demonstrating
by A _plus_ B that the opening chapter was not at all such as it ought
to be, and that the work was bound to prove a failure. Then, too,
letters full of suggestions or criticism or denunciation rained upon
Zola at Médan, putting his nerves to the severest test. Nevertheless,
he worked on steadily, taking the greatest care over even the most
trifling details, employing a friend to obtain precise information on
such matters as phaetons and tandems, the decorations of Mabille,
the aspect of the rooms on the top-floor of the Grand Hotel, the view
from them, and the facial mask of a woman dying (as Nana died) from
small-pox.[20]
As the publication proceeded in "Le Voltaire" the complaints became
more numerous. A good many people professed to be shocked, Gambetta
presently complained to the editor that the story was "too strong";
and the editor requested Zola's permission to curtail or omit certain
passages. This was accorded, the latter half of the work appearing in
"Le Voltaire" in a bowdlerized form. On January 2, 1880, Zola started
on the fourteenth and last chapter, and on January 7 he completed it.
"Let me tell you a great piece of news," he wrote to a friend that day,
"I finished 'Nana' this morning.... What relief! Never did any previous
work of mine upset me as this has done. At present let it be worth
what it may, it has ceased to exist for me. I write to you in the joy
of deliverance. My last chapter seems to me to be the most weird and
successful thing I have ever written."[21]
A few weeks later, that is on February 15, "Nana" appeared in book
form, the passages omitted from "Le Voltaire" being reinstated in
the text. Large orders having been received from various parts of
the world, M. Charpentier had ordered fifty-five thousand copies to
be printed, but on the very day of publication he found it necessary
to order ten thousand more.[22] In the case of "Nana," as in that of
"L'Assommoir," the public gave no heed to the critics, who, of course,
raised their customary protests. In certain matters of detail their
objections were well founded. Zola had made a few mistakes in dealing
with some of the _minutiæ_ of theatrical and turf life, and, as Madame
Edmond Adam remarked in the "Nouvelle Revue"--and as the author himself
subsequently admitted--Nana was shown accomplishing in few years what,
in actual life, would have taken a woman much longer to accomplish.
That, however, was forced upon Zola by the scheme of his series, the
incidents recorded in which had to occur between the years 1852 and
1870.[23] When all is said, taking "Nana" in its _ensemble_, it was
certainly the most truthful picture ever traced of the so-called
Parisian world of pleasure in Imperial times. Of course the book was
denounced as immoral. The Parisian smart set shrieked loudly, many
a Boulevardian journalist, whose looseness of life was notorious,
perorated in club and café respecting the amazing depravity of that man
Zola, and in addition to abusive newspaper articles, there again came
scurrilous pamphlets and parodies after the fashion of those which had
followed "L'Assommoir."
Zola did not reply immediately; but in 1881, when "Nana" had been
dramatised, he contributed a few articles to "Le Figaro" on the
subject, besides penning a longer paper on "Immorality in Literature,"
in which he contended that writers of the Idealist school made vice all
roses and rapture, whereas the Naturalists made it repulsive. And he
was absolutely convinced, he said, that far more heads had been turned,
more young men and girls and women led into dangerous courses, by the
works of George Sand, Octave Feuillet, Barbey d'Aurévilly, and even
Sir Walter Scott, than by the writings of Flaubert, Balzac, Goncourt,
and their followers. As for "Nana," said he, it had given offence
because it was a true picture, and therefore spoilt the pleasure of
the _viveurs_ of Paris, who wished to see everything _couleur de rose_
beneath a cloud of _poudre-de-riz_.[24]