The Dreyfus Case--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Opinion--Meeting
at the Egyptian-Hall--Interview with Zola--Maître Labori--M.
Henri Rochefort--Major Esterhazy.
One of my hobbies for the last forty years has been the study of
character in handwriting. It is pretty much with the various forms of
caligraphy as it is with the human face or with the human voice. The
vast majority of faces that one sees are essentially commonplace,
but each has somehow an individuality of its own. Handwriting has
its physiognomy, and everybody who has been accustomed to a large
correspondence knows how instinctively and unfailingly he recognises a
caligraphy which has been presented to him only twice or thrice. It was
as a result of my pursuit of this hobby that I first began to take
a real interest in the Dreyfus case. When the first rough and ready
facsimiles of the famous _Bordereau_ and of the authentic letters
of Captain Dreyfus were published side by side, it struck me with an
immediate amazement to conceive that any person who had given even the
most casual attention to this study of handwriting could possibly have
supposed that the various documents had emanated from the same hand. The
forgery of a signature is one of the simplest businesses in the world,
but the truly deceptive forgery of a document of any length is an
absolute impossibility--an impossibility as complete as would attend the
continued personification of a dual character by the most skilful mimic
under the observation of one who was able to maintain a sustained and
microscopic examination of the two.
It was an article in the _Strand Magazine_ communicated by that eminent
statistician, Mr Holt Schooling, which first enabled me to form a
judgment in this matter, and until it and its accompanying photographs
of original documents were brought to my notice, I had taken no more
than an ordinary passing interest in the case. But since it had
been decided, on the strength of an imagined resemblance between the
handwriting of the prisoner and that of the author of the _Bordereau_,
I had not a moment's hesitation in arriving at the conclusion that the
charge against him was unfounded and absurd, and it seemed to me to be
no less than a duty to bring other people to the conclusion which I so
strongly held. It was not easy. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote to me:--
“My dear Murray,--Its being a week-end will prevent my
coming up for I have always several visitors. I hope when
you can come down you will let me know. Very much interested
in your views upon the Dreyfus case. I fancy that the
Government may know upon evidence which they dare not
disclose (spy or traitor evidence) that he is guilty and
have convicted him on a bogus document,--Yours
very truly,
“(Sgd.) A. Conan Doyle.”
For nine long days I went over the photographs of the authentic letters
and the incriminating _Bordereau_ with a powerful magnifier, and in the
end I succeeded in establishing no fewer than twenty-two distinct and
characteristic differentiations between them. I had already entered
upon the preparation of an alphabetical synopsis when I learned of the
existence of that work of monumental patience and research which had
been prepared by Monsieur Bernard Lazare of Paris, and a consultation of
its pages showed me that part of the work I had undertaken had already
been performed by Monsieur Gustave Bridier, an acknowledged expert in
handwriting in Switzerland.
I caused all the documents at my disposal to be photographed on glass,
and thus prepared I betook myself from my home in North Wales to London,
where I found an immediate and enthusiastic helper in the person of Mr
J. N. Maskelyne of the Egyptian Hall. He lent me the use of the most
powerful oxyhydrogen magnifying lantern in London and prepared for me
a great screen on to which the photographs could be most delicately and
accurately thrown in an enormously magnified form. Until the fact of
my intended demonstration was announced by the Press, I had not the
remotest idea as to the intense interest with which the case was
regarded by the British public.
I had caused it to be announced that anybody desiring to be present
might secure a ticket of admission by forwarding to me a stamped
directed envelope. The Egyptian Hall seated about 360 people, and I
received applications which would certainly have enabled me to fill the
vast auditorium of the Albert Hall twice over. The result was that I was
enabled to make a choice, and when the night arrived the little hall was
packed with the pick of the brains of London, drawn from both Houses of
Parliament, from the Bench, the Bar, the diplomatic services of Europe,
the Royal Academy, the learned professions generally and the Press of
London. When a page of the _Bordereau_ was first thrown upon the screen
side by side with the authentic handwriting of the prisoner at Devil's
Island, I knew that I had my work cut out for me, for there were
murmurs everywhere of “Identical!” “Damnatory!” “That settles the whole
question,” and so on. The mood of the audience was not to be doubted for
an instant, but I knew my case and I was confident. Litde by little, as
demonstration succeeded demonstration, the temper changed, and at the
conclusion I achieved a triumph such as I have never before or since
enjoyed. I hope sincerely that I do not take more credit to myself for
that night's work than I deserve, but so far as I could judge there was
not one of my hearers who went away unconvinced. The Metropolitan Press
woke up and in its turn awakened the yet more influential journals of
the provinces, who exert an intenser as well as a narrower influence,
and in a very little time there came a reverberating boom in answer
from the other side of the Atlantic. Before the lecture was delivered I
received many threatening letters from truculent Frenchmen, who regarded
any foreign criticism of the evidence on which Dreyfus had been found
guilty as an insolent assault upon the honour of the French army. Two of
my correspondents threatened me with assassination if I should dare to
carry out my project, and scores of them expressed themselves in terms
of indignation and contempt. The most popular idea appeared to be that
I was a hireling in the employ of the Jews, and that I was being very
handsomely subsidized to take up the cudgels in a base and disgraceful
cause. I confess that I rather wished that this idea of a subsidy were
true, for in time and money I had spent considerably more than I could
legitimately afford, but the truth remains that Mr Maskelyne and I stood
the whole racket and that, so far as we were concerned, there might as
well have been no Israel in Great Britain or outside it.
It was this incident in my career which brought me acquainted with Emile
Zola, for whose work I had until that time felt a profound aversion. I
do not profess to be in sympathy with that work even now, but I got
to know the man and to recognise his purpose. When he published in the
pages of _L'Aurore_, his famous article entitled “J'accuse,” and was
brought to trial on account of it, I went over to Paris, eager to meet
him and to assure him that the intelligence of the world outside the
boundaries of France was entirely with him. I reached Paris a day before
the trial was appointed to begin, and I made my way at once to the
office of the _Steele_, where I applied to my old friend, Monsieur Yves
Guyot, for an introduction. He refused it flatly: “The man,” he said,
“is up to his eyes in responsibilities and labour. Every moment he can
spare is given to consultation with Maître Labori, who is engaged
to defend him, and I must refuse in his own interest to trouble him
further.” It was impossible not to recognise the justice of Monsieur
Guyot's plea, but when all was said and done I felt that I was there as
one of the rank and file in a losing cause, and that I had something of
a right to be near my leader. “I assure you,” said M. Guyot, in parting
from me, “that nothing will persuade Zola to receive a stranger at this
time. He is one of those publicists who hate publicity, and he knows you
already as one of the bitterest critics of his literary methods; it is
quite hopeless to dream of bringing you together now.” In my perplexity
I bethought me of Monsieur Bernard Lazare who, as Zola's acknowledged
champion in the Press, was in constant communication with him, and who
had sent to me an enthusiastic appreciation of the effect of my London
lecture. I went to see him and in one minute over the telephone an
interview was arranged for six o'clock that evening. I was there to the
minute, but at the entrance to the Rue de Bruxelles I was stopped by
a posse of _gendarmes_ and subjected to a vigorous examination. Zola's
house was like a castle in a state of siege. It became evident later on
that he was under police protection and that it was felt necessary to
guard him against the violence of the mob, but it appeared at first
sight as if he were a pre-judged criminal whose escape it was necessary
to make impossible. When the gates of the courtyard were at last opened
reluctantly to me, I was ushered into a chamber which might have been
one of the exhibition rooms of a dealer in _bric-à-brac_. There was a
sedan chair in one corner, and it was hardly possible to move without
disturbing some Japanese or Chinese grotesquerie in brass or porcelain.
I waited here alone for half an hour and then in came Zola with both
hands hospitably outstretched. “Vous parlez Français?” he began, “Bien!”
and with that he thrust me to a sofa and talked as I never heard man
talk before. “We know all,” he said, by way of exordium, “all, all, all!
and here is the history of this lamentable case.” That half-forgotten
American chronicler of English manners--Mr N. P. Willis--somewhere
described Disraeli as “talking as a racehorse runs.” That was Zola's way
that evening; he threw himself headlong into his narrative and he
talked with head and feet and arms and shoulders. His speech was almost
incredibly brilliant and painted, but I have very often thought since
then that in the constant preoccupation of his mind with this one theme
and the constant repetition of the strongest points he had to make,
he had acquired, as it were, the faculty of threading all his
conversational pearls upon a single string, and that he was, in fact,
presenting himself to his latest audience with a discourse which was
already finished and polished at Adunguen. He gave me a description of
the scene of Dreyfus's public degradation on the Champ de Mars which was
like a chapter of Carlyle's _French Revolution_ at first hand. It was
crammed with detail and so intensely dramatic that it made the scene
live over again. I asked him at last in surprise: “But surely you were
not there?” “No,” he explained eagerly, “I was not there, but you know
my method; I have had the scene described by a thousand eye-witnesses,
and at last I have reconstructed it for myself.” He told me of the
prospect for the defence and described the man upon whom the burden
would mainly rest--“un véritable géant,” he told me with a voice to
rally an army in retreat.
I met Maître Labori in Court next morning and admired the cool
intrepidity of his defence, though it was only when he came to address
the jury that he gave us a real touch of his quality. I know little of
the French method of judicial procedure, but anything more transparently
hollow than the pretence of justice which was offered to Emile Zola it
would not be easily possible to conceive. Whenever the defending counsel
put a question to any one of the witnesses for the prosecution which
bade fair to touch the marrow of the case, Monsieur Delegorgue consulted
with his colleagues and invariably closed the consultation by saying:
“La question ne sera pas passée.” In that case it was Labori's habit to
answer: “I shall have to enter an interpolation,” which he did, to
the effect that the progress of the case was arrested for a space of
anything from five minutes to a quarter of an hour, until he had drawn
up his formal protest. Meanwhile the courtyard of the Palais de Justice
was rigorously closed against all who could not establish a right to
entry, but outside the railings a great mob continually surged, and at
such times as they could escape from their scholastic labours an army of
students marched up and down singing: “Conspuez Zola!” to a tune roughly
based on the air of “La Donna é mobile.” Evening after evening Zola
and his defenders had to escape from the court under the shelter of
a cavalry escort, and on occasion the crowd made an ugly rush in its
effort to get at them.
I was standing near the locked gate in the great courtyard awaiting the
outcoming party, when I witnessed an episode which was very prettily
illustrative of one aspect of the popular mind. In the crowd outside,
close to the railings, stood a big man and a little one. I don't know
whether I was in at the beginning of the altercation, or if it had been
led up to in any way, but what I heard and saw was this. “Tu es juif,
n'est ce pas?” said the big man, with a sort of bullying jocundity.
“Mais oui, monsieur,” the little man assented. “Ah!” said the other,
“you wear your nose too long for your face.” With that simple but
sufficing explanation, the big man hit the little man on the obnoxious
feature and felled him to the pavement. There was a bit of a student
rush at that moment, and the crowd went over the prostrate figure, but
a detachment of the _gardes de ville_ which happened to be near at hand,
went in and rescued him, and he was borne away all muddy and tattered
and bleeding.
The sport of Jew-baiting went on quite merrily all over Paris at this
time, and on the Place Bouge, on the Sunday afternoon on which M. Henri
Rochefort elected to surrender himself to the prison authorities, there
was at least a score of merry little chases in which a hundred or so of
whooping and roaring citizens would pursue some member of the unpopular
race until he found refuge amongst the soldiery or the police, when he
was hustled on to take his chance amidst another portion of the crowd.
There was more horse-play than anger in all this, and cases in which
serious mischief was inflicted were rare. But the mob was in a highly
explosive state for all that, and any sturdy attempt at resistance or
self-defence might at any moment have led to bloodshed.
The surrender of M. Rochefort was really, when all things are
considered, one of the drollest spectacles I have ever seen. That
venerable political firebrand had been adjudged guilty of contempt
of court and had been sentenced to seven days' imprisonment as a
first-class misdemeanant. He was mulct in some inconsiderable fine as
well, and he was allowed to suit his own convenience and fancy as to the
time and manner of surrender. He chose to present himself to his gaolers
on a Sunday, and to arrive in an open carriage at the head of a small
procession. All Paris turned out to see him. There were fifteen thousand
troops along the line of route, and fifty thousand more of all arms
quartered near at hand. Why there should have been any necessity for the
collection of such a force, or for the provocation of a possible riot
under the conditions, it was difficult to see. The crowd groaned and
cheered with tremendous enthusiasm, and when at last somebody waved a
tri-colour flag from an upper window, it went roaring mad with cries of
_Vive Rochefort! Vive la France! Vive Fannie!_ In the end it dribbled
away quite peacefully, overflowing into all the neighbouring cabarets,
or trailing off homeward through the dusk and mud. Here and there a
street orator found his chance and gathered a crowd about him, but these
were quietly moved on by the police, and before seven o'clock, that part
of Paris had resumed its normal aspect. I tried hard to discover some
intelligible reason for this curious outburst of popular feeling, but I
could find none except that the condition of the popular mind was such
that almost any excuse for gathering in crowds, and indulging in noisy
cheers and groans, was welcome as a sort of safety valve.
Whilst that travesty of a trial was going on, and every suggestion
in favour of the accused was being trampled on, and every one of the
chartered liars who had sworn falsely for the honour of the army was
being bolstered by the authority of the court, I had many opportunities
for conversation with Zola, and in the course of one of them, he offered
me an almost passionate justification of his literary methods. He did
not complain, he said, that he had been misunderstood; he had been
charged with being a pornographist and with revelling in filth and
horror for their own sake. “It is not so,” he declared, “but look you! I
love and revere this beautiful and noble France, and I believe that she
has yet a splendid destiny before her. At this moment she seems to lie
dead and drowned beneath a river of lies, but she will yet revive and
justify herself. I picture her,” he went on, marching up and down the
room, “as a great suffering angel stricken down by a disease which only
a cruel cautery can cure. It has been the aim and effort of my life to
apply that cautery, and if I am fated to be remembered in the future,
the future will do me justice.” All this left me as far as ever from an
approval of the methods he defended, but it was absolutely impossible to
doubt his sincerity.
Two English journalists, who were at that time resident in Paris and who
felt strongly at the time that the notorious Major Esterhazy was a
much maligned and injured man, engineered an interview between him and
myself. The major, it appeared, was extremely anxious to be rightly
understood by the British public. He complained that on several
occasions he had consented to be interviewed by the London Press and
that in each case his statements had been maliciously distorted. He
asked me if I would represent him truly and would allow him to tell his
story without comment. I made the promise and, of course, I kept it, but
as a matter of fact he had no case to offer. He described the general
staff of the French army as _un tas de scélérats_, and he alleged that
he had been hounded down by his enemies and betrayed by those who had
pretended to be his friends. As he talked he leant forward in his chair,
tapping the parquet nervously with his walking-stick, and every now and
then sending a curiously furtive glance in my direction, for all the
world as if he were asking in his own mind: “Have you found me out yet?”
“I would ask nothing better,” he told me, “than to put myself at the
head of my regiment and to march my men through Paris, and to shoot down
every Jew who lives in it. I would shoot them down like rabbits, 'sans
rancune et sans remords.'” He flashed that strange furtive glance at me
and took his walking-stick in both hands: “I have a dream,” he went on,
“it comes to me often. I see myself in a room where the walls are white
and the ceiling is white and the floor is white, and all my enemies are
there before me. I rush amongst them with this stick only and I strike,
and I strike, and I strike until the walls are red and the ceiling is
red and the floor is red. Ah! I shall have my turn one day.” I wired all
this meaningless farrago to the _Daily News_ that night, but with much
more nonsense to the same effect, and on the following day it was all
duly printed. I mention this little fact for a reason. In M. Anatole
France's novel, _L'Anneau d'Améthyste_, which appeared much later than
the account of my interview with Esterhazy, a character is introduced
who talks precisely in that gentleman's manner and who, amongst other
things, relates that identical dream; from which one gathers that he
must have told it more than once. It was most probably a habit of his,
for all his phrases had a manufactured air, and he seemed much more like
an actor reciting a familiar part than as if he spoke on the spur of the
moment. Later on, as everybody knows, he sold a confession in which
he proclaimed himself the author of the _Bordereau_. Later still he
repudiated the confession, though by that time there was no doubt in any
sane man's mind that it was true. So long as the _affaire Dreyfus_ is
remembered, Esterhazy will in all likelihood be regarded as a villain
of the very deepest dye; but so far as I can make him out, he suffered
merely from a total absence of moral and mental responsibility. He seems
really to have persuaded himself that he was an ill-used man, and until
circumstances became too strong for him, to have acted in accordance
with his own queer code of honour.
I have listened to many 'great speakers in my time, but never to one who
displayed such fire and force and fluency and so wide an emotional range
as Maître Labori. When he arose to address the jury for the defence,
he seemed to hurl himself into his subject with every fibre of soul
and body. He gesticulated with all the vehemence of a man engaged in
a deadly bout with the rapier, and the impetuous torrent of his speech
dashed on as if nothing could arrest it. I remember thinking to myself
that twenty minutes of this would bring him to the limit of his forces,
but he went on for hours, as if he were incapable of fatigue. At one
point of his speech he used the words: “Un héros comme Zola.” There were
some two hundred privileged spectators of the scene, all squeezed into a
sort of pen at the extreme end of the court, and nearly everyone of them
held a latchkey in readiness, so that he might whistle down it if the
orator afforded any opportunity for derision. A shrill scream of sound
rose as Labori uttered the words. He paused and faced squarely round
upon his interrupters, turning his back on the tribunal. The
clamour lasted for a minute and then died away, and then with a cold
incisiveness, in strange contrast with his previous manner, he addressed
the crowd. “I repeat the phrase--a hero like Zola. I tell you that his
courage, his honesty and his devotion will be held in reverence by
his countrymen long after you have sunk into your unremembered and
unhonoured graves.” He towered there in silence for a full half minute
and there was not so much as a murmur of reply. “Eh bien!” he said, “je
résume,” and turning round to the tribunal he took up his speech at
the point at which it had been arrested. The rebuke was enough; he was
interrupted no more.
Zola read a statement in his own defence and was in a condition of
pitiable nervous agitation from the beginning of it to the end. The
foolscap pages he held in his hand quivered as if they were stirred
by the hot air rising from a stove, and in his anxiety to be heard
throughout the court he pitched his voice too high. In the middle of his
address it cracked harshly and the packed crowd at the end of the court
broke into derisive laughter. He too turned upon the scoffers, but not
as Labori had done before him. He was not on his own ground as the great
advocate had been, and he seemed to search for words that would not
come. The incident, however, seemed to brace him for a while and for a
minute or two he read in a firmer tone, though that pathetic tremor
of the papers he held still went on and sometimes seemed to make it
difficult for him to read.
When at last the tragic farce was over, the foregone conclusion arrived
at and the sentence of fine and imprisonment pronounced, I found Zola
alone at home in a state of profound dejection. “I don't pity myself,”
he said. “I am not to be pitied but this poor France, ce pauvre France.”
He returned to the words again and again. “I thought,” he said, “that
one had only to light the torch of Truth and to throw it into that pit
of darkness to make everything clear, but they have stifled the flame
with lies. It is finished, it is all finished.” I ventured to tell him
that I could not and would not believe it, that the verdict of the Court
of Cassation was the merest nothing in comparison with the verdict of
the world which he had beyond doubt secured. France would come to reason
yet. He refused to be cheered, and saying that he was in need of rest,
bade me goodnight dispiritedly and went to bed. Now that the trial was
over I had no further business to detain me in Paris, but I saw him by
appointment next day before I left for London. He was in full fighting
trim again. “We shall do something yet,” he said; “despair wins no
battles and there are still honest men in France.” I made a farewell
call on Maître Labori and found him so husky that he could barely
speak, but he poured scorn on the idea that he had worn his voice by the
prodigious effort of that sustained relation. He had been so imprudent
as to drive home in the humid air of a January evening and he had caught
a cold. For his own part he was quite sanguine of ultimate success--not
sanguine only, but assured. “We shall win yet,” he prophesied
confidently. “No cause ever failed in the long run which had such an
array of truth behind it.” He might well have added that no cause ever
succeeded which had behind it such a battalion of lies and liars as was
ranked upon the other side.