not the pantheons of the nations be well-nigh empty? If it were
to reject the works of every writer whose life was not absolutely
immaculate, what literature would be left? Masterpieces of the human
mind, writings that have wrought an infinity of good, would be cast
aside. One may remind the reader that a good many English authors even
of that age of specious respectability, the Victorian era, were by no
means perfect in their private lives. In France, no doubt, more laxity
has prevailed. Take that champion of Christianity, Chateaubriand,
and remember the many _liaisons_ of his married life; take that great
deist, Victor Hugo, also a married man, and with no such excuse as
Chateaubriand and Zola may have had, and remember his long connection
with Madame Juliette Drouet. And as examples of moral laxity among men
outside the matrimonial pale, take Alfred de Musset and both the Dumas,
particularly the elder. Old Parisians, like the writer, will remember
the day in or about 1869 when even the boulevards were scandalised by
the sight which confronted one and all in the windows of every shop
where photographs were sold. There was the portrait of the prince of
romancers with Adah Isaacs Menken, the circus-rider, seated, in her
fleshings, on his knees, her arms cast lovingly about his neck. Happily
in the afternoon the son appeared upon the scene and carried off all
such photographs that he could find, and thereupon Paris, which had
been laughing a pornographic laugh, applauded him, recalling the story
of Japhet and his father Noah.
But it is not only men who have thrust the moral law aside. The lives
of George Eliot and others are known to us. They were as nothing beside
that of George Sand, who in the matter of her private life was perhaps
the nearest approach to Byron to be found among female writers. She
passed from Baron Dudevant, her husband, to Jules Sandeau, then to
Mérimée, then to Musset, then to Pagello, then to Michel de Bourges,
then to Pierre Leroux, then to Chopin, and at last to Manceau, the
engraver, those passions being interspersed with platonic interludes
with Lamennais and Liszt. Yet Emerson, "one of the purest of men, dwelt
on the rare and beautiful sentiment that runs through George Sand's
'Consuelo.' And who can deny the evidence of keen political insight,
lofty ideas, and pure morality in the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Frances Wright, and George Eliot?"[7] People still read "Consuelo,"
even as they read "Les Trois Mousquetaires." They also read "Les
Contemplations" and even dip into "Le Génie du Christianisme." They
ostracise none of the great writers because there was error in their
lives. Besides, it must be acknowledged as true that a counsel of
perfection, or what we regard as perfection from our social standpoint,
may well come from the imperfect. In fact it could not be otherwise,
since we are all imperfect in one or another way.
Thus to reject Zola's books and his teaching on the ground that there
came a lapse in his life after fifty years of strenuous endeavour
would be ridiculous, for it would entail the rejection of hundreds of
others. The subject may be dismissed, then, without further comment
from the moral point of view. Undoubtedly it will always be a source of
regret to Zola's friends that this happened, even though it satisfied
the great craving of his life. In spite of all our knowledge of human
imperfection we always try to picture an ideal being, and we sorrow
when the flaw in our ideal is discovered, even though reason tells us
that we ought to have been prepared for it.
That the occurrences referred to caused great perturbation in Zola's
life goes without saying; and as, about this time or soon afterwards,
some change appeared in his writings, a certain co-relation between
that change and his domestic troubles might be suspected. But beyond
what is apparent in parts of "Le Docteur Pascal," and much later in
"Fécondité" and "Travail," Zola's writings show no trace of the
passing storm. It was assumed by some critics, after the completion
of the Rougon-Macquart novels, that "a new Zola" had arisen, the man
who wrote "Lourdes," "Rome," and "Paris" being, said they, evidently
very different from the one who had penned "Nana," "Pot-Bouille," and
"La Terre." It was even asserted that this novelist who had been so
obscene was becoming quite moral, at least for a man with such shocking
antecedents. But the inanity of that contention is demonstrated by the
facts of the case. The so-called obscene books were written by one who
led a life of the most rigid personal rectitude, whereas the later
volumes, which were received far more favourably, were the work of one
whom passion had conquered. That should suffice to show how worthless
is a certain kind of criticism. Moreover, any change that was noticed
in Zola's writings was in one respect more apparent than real. In some
of his books he had set down horrible and loathsome things because he
had found them involved in his subject. Subsequently, being confronted
by less mire, he naturally gave it less prominence. At the same time
"Le Docteur Pascal" certainly marked a new departure in his manner.
In his previous works, as we have remarked before, he had sunk his
personality and had never preached. In "Le Docteur Pascal" he began to
do so, and this gradually became a habit with him. The reason is not
far to seek. For more than twenty years the critics had constantly said
to him: "If you must show the vileness of life, you should at least
point the moral. You should deplore such terrible things, denounce
them, thunder at them in your pages." Remarks of that kind having been
repeated hundreds of times, it is not surprising that Zola, who had
long felt annoyed at seeing his books misinterpreted, should have ended
by complying with the clamour. Curiously enough, however, the very
critics who had called on him for moral ejaculations, who had begged
for sermons, then became mightily indignant. "This man," they said,
"has no imagination left, he does nothing but preach, his books are
as dull as ditch water. After all, we liked 'Nana' better." Such was
the result of Zola's change of manner, a result which might have been
foreseen.
After his departure from England in 1893, the present writer remained
without news of him for some weeks; but in November he wrote that he
had been ill and unable to attend to anything: the fact being that
this was a critical time in connection with his domestic affairs.
Nevertheless he gave some attention to an opera which his friend M.
Alfred Bruneau based on "L'Attaque du Moulin," the libretto being
partly the work of M. Louis Gallet and partly that of Zola himself.
The first performance took place at the Opéra Comique, then under M.
Carvalho's management, on November 23, with a result gratifying to all
concerned; and Zola afterwards turned to the writing of his novel,
"Lourdes," which he intended to make the first of three volumes to be
called "Les Trois Villes," that is, Lourdes, Rome, and Paris.
The writing of those works was inspired by the trend of French
literature and also of opinion in France at that time. A few years
previously, on being interviewed on the question whether Naturalism
were an expiring school or not, Zola had laughingly answered in the
negative.[8] Nevertheless he had observed the rise of the Symbolist,
Occultist, and Décadent schools,--a wave of returning mysticism, as it
were, which, as he had remarked in an address to the Paris students,
was invading art as well as literature. No little balderdash was being
written about the alleged bankruptcy of science, Rome was coquetting
with the Republic, there was much talk of a new Catholicism adapted
to the modern world, the clergy were showing extreme activity, and a
good many _universitaires_ and _normaliens_, among whom the Voltairean
spirit had formerly predominated, seemed won over to the Church's side
and anxious to co-operate with it in securing the return of France
to the fold, as if, indeed, agnosticism had been carried too far and
must now be checked. The Lourdes and similar pilgrimages represented
a notable phase of the agitation, and Zola, who had attended them
two years running as a spectator, found in them some illustration of
the first of the Christian virtues, Faith. It thereupon occurred to
him that Rome would illustrate Hope, for it was in her and in her
pontiff, Leo XIII, that all who desired to see the world reconquered
by a rejuvenated Catholicism set their hopes. Finally Paris would
afford abundant illustration of Charity in its various senses. Now the
question whether religion might flourish anew in France depended, at
least largely, on the practice of the aforesaid virtues and the light
in which they were regarded by the community at large. Was the faith
of Lourdes justified, was any real hope to be found in Rome, was the
charity of Paris adequate or not? Zola returned a negative answer to
all those questions; and at an early stage of the writing of "Les Trois
Villes" he resolved to supplement this series by a further one which
would enunciate the principles in which he himself believed, that
is, Fruitfulness, Work, Truth, and Justice, all springing from the
fundamental basis of Love.
"Lourdes" gave him occupation throughout the winter of 1893-1894.
It appeared first in the "Gil-Blas," which paid fifty thousand
francs for the serial rights, and early in the autumn of 1894 it was
issued as a volume,[9] whereupon a prelate of the papal household,
a certain Monseigneur Ricard, vicar-general of the diocese of Aix,
in Provence, arose to answer Zola, which he did in a very blundering
way.[10] The fathers of the Lourdes grotto also attempted some direct
denials of Zola's accusations of greed and imposture, and being all
powerful in the town prevented the sale of the book there, while as a
crowning stroke of condemnation it was deferred to Rome and promptly
placed, like some of Zola's previous works, in the famous "Index
Librorum Prohibitorum." Once again, also, abusive letters rained upon
the author, some emanating from deluded believers in the Lourdes
miracles, and others from angry priests and monks. Several of those
correspondents interlarded their effusions with the language of the
gutter, while others contented themselves with briefly cursing the man
who presumed to doubt the sanctity of the unfortunate Bernadette, and
the virtues of the spring which the Assumptionist Fathers had turned
into a river of gold. That money was used in part for the purpose of
subsidising Leo XIII, but the bulk was employed in fighting the French
Republic with the object of restoring a monarchy under which the
Church, and particularly its monks, would have been all powerful.
Soon after "Lourdes" was finished Zola turned to "Rome," which
necessitated a great deal of study. He was immersed in it when there
came an incident fraught with grave future consequences for France. An
artillery captain named Alfred Dreyfus, attached to the General Staff
of the army, was arrested on a charge of communicating military secrets
to the German embassy. The arrest took place on October 15, 1894, but
did not become known until the end of the month, when it was divulged
by two newspapers, "La Libre Parole" and "L'Éclair." Zola gave little
or no heed to it, for quitting his books and papers he was at that very
moment preparing for a visit to Rome, which he had projected for some
time past.
About the middle of October he had told Vizetelly, who was then with
him at Médan, that he had some hope the Pope would receive him, and
that he certainly intended to apply for an audience. Vizetelly gave
publicity to this statement, which was quoted on all sides. But
almost immediately afterwards, Vizetelly having returned to England,
Zola on talking the matter over with some friends found that no
audience with the Pope was possible. The reason was simple enough.
"Lourdes," "La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret," and several other volumes of
his writings--just like the novels of Dumas _père_, that "accursed
Garibaldian"--were in the "Index," and accordingly, before even
applying for an audience, he would have to withdraw and annihilate
those books so far as lay in his power, and make a full submission to
Holy Church.
Such were the facts. A little investigation of the subject showed
peremptorily that the popes made it an inflexible rule to receive no
authors whose writings figured among the prohibited books unless and
until those authors had withdrawn their writings and submitted. Abbé
Alfred Loisy, the author of "La Question Biblique" and "L'Évangile et
l'Église," has of more recent times discovered the _procédure_ to be
such as is here stated. He, like Zola's Abbé Pierre Froment, repaired
to Rome to plead his cause, but though cardinals may have received him,
he was not allowed to approach the Pope. Zola, in his "Rome," used a
novelist's license when he brought Abbé Pierre face to face with Leo
XIII; and all readers of the book are aware that the interview is
pictured as a secret one, obtained by surreptitious means, such as Zola
could never have employed. Had he asked for an audience he must have
done so through the usual channel, that of the French embassy to the
Vatican; and we have before us that embassy's express statement that no
such application was ever made. Thus, contrary to the assertions which
went the round of the world's press, Zola did not ask to see the Pope,
and the Pope did not have occasion to refuse him.
Leaving Paris at the end of October, he remained in Rome till December
15. He applied for an audience at the Quirinal, and was received with
a gracious cordiality by King Umberto. Both the French ambassador to
the Italian court and the ambassador to the Vatican placed themselves
at his disposal, and furnished him either personally or through
their _attachés_ with a quantity of information. Some of the Italian
ministers took a similar course. He was welcomed, too, in several
drawing-rooms. M. Hébert, the great French painter, accompanied him
on his visits to the Palatine, the Sistine Chapel, the _stanze_ of
Raffaelle, and the Vatican Museum. Signor Bernabei, director-general
of the excavations, accompanied him on other occasions, and supplied
him with a quantity of notes. As for the foolish tale that he bribed
Vatican servants for information, a tale which went the round of the
press, it was purely imaginative. With two ambassadors, half a dozen
_attachés_, and a score of prominent Italian officials at his disposal,
Zola had no need to apply to any servants whatever.
On quitting Rome he betook himself to Venice and Brescia with the
object of visiting the Italian members of his family, the Venetian
Petrapolis and Frattas, and particularly his cousin, Carlo Zola, then a
judge of the Brescian Appeal Court. Venice gave him a public reception,
and at Brescia his cousin greeted him with open arms. Unfortunately,
though the novelist, assisted by his knowledge of Latin and Provençal,
was able to read Italian fairly accurately, he could not speak it; and
as on the other hand the judge knew no French, an interpreter had to be
provided. In spite of this drawback the intercourse was very pleasant,
and when after a sojourn of some days at Brescia Zola set out on his
journey to Paris, he repeatedly promised to return. He was never able
to do so, but his wife, who revisited Italy on more than one occasion
subsequently, took care to keep up the family intercourse which had
been renewed after the lapse of so many years.
While Zola was visiting Rome the French military authorities had been
busy with the case of Captain Dreyfus, but the latter's court-martial
did not begin till December 19, that is, about the time of the
novelist's return to Paris; the degradation of the unfortunate officer
following on January 5, 1895. Zola, however, was now busy classifying
all the materials he had brought from Rome and revolving in his
mind the tremendous task which lay before him. Thus, once again,
he gave comparatively little attention to the proceedings against
Dreyfus. Moreover there was nothing in the newspapers to indicate any
probability of a miscarriage of justice. Like everybody else,--except
the members of the Dreyfus family, whom he did not know,--Zola assumed
that the convicted officer was guilty, and thereupon dismissed the
matter from his mind.
Writing to Vizetelly on January 11, he said that he hoped to make
"Rome" a work of European interest, and if possible he should include
in it some account of the wonderful progress which the Catholic Church
claimed to be effecting in Great Britain and the United States of
America. He hoped the book would be shorter than "Lourdes," and he
intended to keep it "absolutely chaste, though very _passionné_, for
while Abbé Froment would be the central figure, a very tragic _drame
passionnel_ would be unfolded beside him." However, the historic,
descriptive, and controversial parts of the work expanded in Zola's
hands, and far from "Rome" proving shorter than "Lourdes," it
exceeded that book in length by a hundred and fifty pages. The _drame
passionnel_ which was to have been so prominent a feature, became
nearly lost among the surrounding matter, so that by the time the work
was finished little suggested that it was intended to be a novel. At
the same time it was certainly one of the books on which Zola expended
most time and study He had begun to examine his subject in the summer
of 1894, and his proofs were not finally passed for press till the
end of February, 1896. It may be said that he gave the whole of 1895
to the writing of "Rome." As he had not been able to remain very long
in the Eternal City, Madame Zola returned thither to collect further
information on various points, and a perfect mountain of documents at
last encompassed the struggling novelist, who had no little difficulty
in shaping his course. In December, 1895, the work began to appear as
a _feuilleton_ in "Le Journal," the organ of Zola's friend, M. Fernand
Xau, and about the same time an English translation was issued by
various provincial and colonial journals, Vizetelly having to perform
a _tour de force_ in order to ensure this early publication. In the
case of "Lourdes" he had been assisted by his personal knowledge of
the spot, and a similar knowledge helped him with "Rome," the actual
translation of which had to be made in about nine weeks in order to
meet commercial requirements. That little fact will serve to illustrate
the remarks made in a previous chapter concerning the imperfection of
the translations issued under the conditions which nowadays prevail in
the publishing world.
When "Rome" appeared as a volume early in the spring of 1896,[11]
M. Gaston Deschamps, writing in "Le Temps," roundly accused Zola of
plagiarism, and it is certain that here and there "Rome" contained
sentences taken from Firmin Didot's publication, "Le Vatican," and
Gaston Boissier's "Promenades archéologiques." Zola, on being accused,
replied in "Le Figaro" to the effect that when he was writing a book
he invariably consulted every available work bearing on his subject.
He passed several of his former novels in review, mentioning the
books by others which had been useful to him, and also naming the
politicians, merchants, scientists, lawyers, architects, and others
who had provided him with detailed memoranda on various points.
For instance Jules Ferry had given him some information about the
Haussmannization of Paris for "La Curée," M. Chauchard, the director
of the "Grands Magasins du Louvre," had largely assisted him with "Au
Bonheur des Dames," M. Edmond Perrier, the scientist, had helped him
with the passages about seaweed and bromide of potassium in "La Joie
de Vivre," M. Frantz-Jourdain, the eminent architect, had constantly
befriended him in architectural matters, M. Henri Céard had supplied
him with notes on music, and M. Thyébaut with consultations on points
of law, while the theory of an "elixir of life," embodied in "Le
Docteur Pascal," had been built for him by his friend Dr. Maurice de
Fleury. Indeed Zola claimed that he had never discussed a scientific
question or written about an illness in his books without first taking
the opinion of scientists and medical men. But he claimed that he had
assimilated, adapted, and in a sense transmuted all the information
he had derived from persons and books. As for "Rome" he was charged
with having borrowed some sentences from two or three well-known
works, but, in fact, he had consulted some scores of volumes, the
titles of many of which he gave. Briefly, he pictured himself as an
architect or a sculptor, and his materials as building stones or
modelling clay; suggesting also the example of those masters of the
Renaissance who employed a swarm of workers to prepare their paints,
their "grounds," and so forth. And he contended that what he had done
was perfectly legitimate, the only question being whether he had so
used his materials as to produce a substantial, harmonious result, and
had infused into it the spirit of life. "If it were usual," he added,
"to indicate one's authorities in a novel, I would willingly stud the
bottom of my pages with foot-notes. And if a line from a fellow-writer
remains intact in one of my pages, this simply proves that I am not
hypocrite enough to hide my borrowing, which it would be so easy to
conceal."
In spite of that last remark there is reason to believe that, in the
case of "Rome," Zola had a difficulty in wrestling with his mountain of
"notes," and that when confronted by some memorandum made many months
previously, he sometimes imagined its phraseology to be his own and not
the actual language of one of his authorities. It seems quite likely
that if the latter had been patent to him he would have paraphrased the
memorandum. With respect to the actual principle for which he contended
it is obvious that the novelist possessed of any conscientiousness
ought often to read up certain subjects and consult a variety of
authorities. It is indeed a pity that the practice is not followed
more generally, for one would then be spared the thousands of blunders
in elementary questions of law, science, history, precedence, titles,
etc., which appear in so much contemporary fiction.
[Illustration: Émile Zola writing "Fécondité" at Walton-on-Thames, 1898
--Photo by V. R. Vizetelly]
Zola's defence with respect to "Rome" will be found in a volume called
"Nouvelle Campagne,"[12] which contains a number of articles he
contributed to "Le Figaro" in 1896. They are of all sorts. The first,
on the opportunism of Leo XIII, foreshadows the denunciation of the
Roman Catholic Church which eventually appeared in "Vérité"; while
another, called "Dépopulation," contains the germ of "Fécondité."
There are various papers on the professional interests of literary
men; a couple on Zola's love of animals, which was very marked
throughout his life, and an incisive one, called "The Toad," in which
he railed at the people who sent him abusive letters and the newspaper
men who pursued him with pinpricks. Then, in a paper on a Parisian
_clairvoyante_, a certain Mademoiselle Couesdon, who pretended to be
in direct communication with the archangel Gabriel, he commented on
the childishness of the imposture and deplored the senseless eagerness
with which people imagined they would discover the secrets of the
invisible by consulting a semi-hysterical girl. At the same time he
admitted that such was the trend of the modern mind; and, after all,
as people could only satisfy their yearnings in this way, one must
let them do so, said he, pending the time when science would nourish
the world with the bread of truth. However, the most notable article
in the volume was certainly the one entitled "For the Jews," in which
for the first time Zola gave expression to his surprise and disgust
at the progress of anti-Semitism in France. In that campaign, the
Dreyfus case, which at first had been merely an incident, was soon to
become everything, for Colonel Picquart was now (July, 1896) making
important discoveries which convinced him of the innocence of Dreyfus
and the guilt of Esterhazy. That was as yet unknown to Zola, who did
not begin to intervene until late in the autumn of the following year.
Thus, in protesting against the anti-Jewish agitation which had been
growing and spreading for some years past, he treated the question
from a general point of view without mentioning the unhappy prisoner
of Devil's Island. And here one may well call a halt to consider the
state of affairs which had prompted Zola to raise his voice on behalf
of a community with which he had no connection whatever, either racial
or religious, but which he defended by virtue entirely of the guiding
principles of his life,--the principles of truth and justice.
[1] "Enquête Médico-Psychologique sur les Rapports de la Supériorité
Intellectuelle avec la Névropathie. Introduction générale. Émile Zola,"
by Dr. É. Toulouse, Paris, 1896.
[2] "Journal des Goncourt," Vol. VI, p. 254.
[3] According to Dr. Toulouse, Zola was less keen than most people
in detecting odours, but he had a "smell memory" and could remember
objects by their scent.
[4] Published in 1893.