kept more or less imprisoned on his recently-acquired property, though
they were charming girls well worthy of being sought in marriage; and the
story I heard was that three officers sojourning in the district had one
day espied the three forlorn damsels over the garden hedge, and had
forthwith begun to court them, much to the ire of the misanthropic,
retired pawnbroker. That stern old gentleman ordered his daughters into
the house, and then kept them in stricter confinement than ever.
But love laughs at locksmiths, and the amorous officers eventually
carried the place by storm, and beat down all parental resistance. Three
weddings followed on the same day, and all ended for a time as in a fairy
tale. But the old pawnbroker subsequently married again to relieve his
solitude, and after his death his will was attacked, and an interminable
lawsuit ensued, with the result that the property was left unoccupied.
Now, it appeared, it was for sale, and before long would probably be cut
up into building plots.
Whatever romantic element there might be in the story of the pawnbroker
and his daughters, M. Zola much preferred the popular and gruesome legend
of the little girl murdered in the scullery; and, some time later, when
he consented to write a short story for 'The Star,' it was this legend
which he took as his basis, building thereon the pathetic sketch of
'Angeline,' the scene of which he transferred to France.
He has stated in his article 'Justice,' published in Paris on his return
from exile, that during most of the time he spent in England he was
virtually in a desert. There were people about him of course; but he
retired into himself as it were, communing with his own thoughts, and
seeking no intercourse with strangers. This is true of the period to
which I am now referring. Still he did not complain of solitude. In fact
he knew that quiet was essential for his work. Only once or twice did
anything happen of a nature to cause any anxiety. Neither Wareham nor
myself was much troubled at this period; there was a lull even in the
periodical visits which gentlemen of the Press kindly favoured me.
Still we had taken our precautions by admitting a mutual friend, Mr. A.
W. Pamplin, into our confidence. If M. Zola's communications with Paris,
through Wareham and myself, should be threatened, Mr. Pamplin was to take
upon himself the duty of re-establishing them.
At M. Zola's house there was, so far as I am aware, but one brief
_alerte_. This occurred one afternoon, when a servant came to my daughter
with the tidings that there was a French hunchback at the door. Violette
impulsively rushed off to tell M. Zola of it; but when in her turn she
went to the door to see who the person might be, she found that he was an
Englishman, a traveller for some county directory, who had merely
performed his legitimate work in requesting to know the name of the
occupier of the house. Of course the only name given was that of the
owner, then absent at the seaside.
Thus the hot days sped by peacefully enough. M. Zola had at least found
occupation and quietude, though it was naturally impossible that he
should feel content with his lot. Each day brought more and more home to
him the consciousness that he was in exile, and that contumely had been
his reward for seeking to save France from the shame of a great crime.
I have previously mentioned that during the first week or so of his
sojourn in England he had refused to look at newspapers and--at least so
it seemed to me--had sought to banish the Dreyfus affair and his own
troubles from his mind, much as one might seek to drive away a hateful
nightmare. But before long he again fell under the spell and followed the
course of events with the keenest interest. And again and again, reading
of the great battle being waged in France, he longed to return home, and
grew restless and impatient.
Moreover a complaint from which he has suffered on and off for some years
troubled him on more than one occasion. He always rallied, however, and
returned to his work with renewed energy. 'Fecondite' was already taking
shape in the leafy solitude in which he dwelt. And undoubtedly the steady
task of creation, resumed morning by morning, greatly helped him to quiet
the anguish of heart which the course of events in France would otherwise
have rendered intolerable.
NOTE.--While this work was appearing serially in the 'Evening
News' I received numerous letters from readers interested in
various matters mentioned by me. With respect to the foregoing
chapter, a lady living at Staines wrote saying that she was
looking out for 'a cheap haunted house,' and asking for the
address of the one I had mentioned. I was unable to comply with
her request, as personally I do not believe the house was haunted
at all. Moreover, to prevent the sale or letting of any particular
house by asserting it to be haunted would be an offence under the
libel laws. As I could not tell what course my lady-correspondent
might take in the matter, I preferred not to answer her. May she
forgive me my impoliteness!
X
'LE REVE': THE DREAM
When the owner of the house which M. Zola had rented desired to resume
possession, it became necessary to find new quarters of a similar
character for the master. And so he was transferred to another Surrey
country house where the arrangements remained much the same as
previously: work every morning, resting or bicycling in the afternoon,
followed by newspaper reading and letter-writing in the evening.
The grounds of M. Zola's new retreat were very extensive, and in part
very shady, which last circumstance proved extremely welcome to the
novelist, who on coming to 'cold, damp, foggy England,' as the French put
it, had never imagined that he would have to endure a temperature
approaching that of the tropics.
The heat deprived him of appetite, and, moreover, he did not particularly
relish some of the dishes provided for him by a new cook who had lately
been engaged. We all know how great is the servant difficulty even under
the best of circumstances; and when cooks and maids have to be secured in
hot haste an entirely satisfactory result is hardly to be expected.
Moreover, many servants refuse to live in country retirement, far away
from their 'followers,' and thus one has at times to take such as one can
find.
As for the cookery to which M. Zola was at certain periods treated, he
beheld it with wonder and repulsion. His tastes are simple, but to him
the plain, boiled, watery potato and the equally watery greens were
abominations. Plum tart, though served hot (why not cold, like the French
_tarte_?) might be more or less eatable; but, surely, apple pudding--the
inveterate breeder of indigestion--was the invention of a savage race.
And why, when a prime steak was grilled, should the cook water it in
order to produce 'gravy,' instead of applying to it a little butter and
chopped parsley? This, Dundreary-wise, was one of those things which
nobody, not even M. Zola, could understand.
However, a visit to a fishmonger's shop had made him acquainted with the
haddock, the kipper, and likewise the humble bloater; and occasionally, I
believe, when his appetite needed a stimulant he turned to the smoked
fish, which seemed so novel to his palate. The cook, of course, was
mightily incensed thereat. For her part, she most certainly would not eat
haddock or kippers for dinner; she had too much self-respect to do such a
thing, so she boiled or roasted a leg of mutton for her own repast and
the maids'. I do not say that she was wrong; and, indeed, M. Zola never
forced people to eat what they did not care for.
But in the same way he wished for something that he himself could eat,
and he was weary of the perpetual joint and the vegetables _a l'eau_. One
day, when in a jocular spirit he was talking to me on this subject, I
told him that we English had a saying to the effect that 'God sent us
food, but the devil invented cooks.'
'You are quite right,' he replied, 'only as a Frenchman I should put it
this way: "God sent us food, but the devil invented English cooks."'
Towards the end of August he again became very dispirited. The 'cause'
did not at that time appear to be prospering in France, where so many
people remained under the spell of the deceptive declarations and
documents which had been made public in the Chamber of Deputies by War
Minister Cavaignac early in July.
Of course the Revisionists were still hard at work, but in the face of M.
Cavaignac's speech, placarded throughout the 36,000 townships of France,
they seemed to have a very uphill task before them. The anti-Dreyfusites
on their side were more arrogant than ever, and although M. Zola never
once lost faith in the justice of his cause and its ultimate triumph, he
did, on more than one occasion, question whether that triumph would come
in a peaceful way.
Felix Faure was then still President of the Republic, and I am abusing, I
think, no confidence in saying that M. Zola regarded that vain, showy man
as one of the great obstacles to the victory of truth and justice. Faure,
he said to me, had undoubtedly at one time enjoyed well-deserved
popularity; he, Zola, had been received by him and in the most cordial
manner. But the President's intercourse with crowned heads, and his
intimacy with arrogant general officers, coupled with all the flummery of
the Protocole, all the pomp and display observed whenever he stirred from
the Palace of the Elysee, had virtually turned his head. He was in the
hands of those military men who opposed revision, and he shielded them
because their downfall would mean his own. He was bent on the hushing-up
course lest his Presidency should become synonymous with a great judicial
crime; he feared that he might be forced to resign even before his term
of office was over, or, at all events, that he might have to abandon all
hope of re-election.
And thus with the President and the more prominent generals opposed to
revision, M. Zola, though confident in the final issue, more than once
said to me that there might be serious trouble before all was over.
He was now kept very well informed of all that took place in France;
intelligence often reached him before it appeared in the newspapers; and
now and again he told me what was brewing. Going backward, too, he
confided to me some curious particulars of the genesis of the Revisionist
campaign. But he will himself some day tell all this in a book of his
own, and I must not anticipate him. I will only say that various
important things he mentioned to me in the autumn of 1898 have since
become well-known, acknowledged facts, and I have every reason to believe
that time will duly show the accuracy of those which have not as yet been
publicly revealed.
There is one point to which I must refer at more length. In his
declaration 'Justice,' published on the expiration of his exile, M. Zola
stated that he had long suspected Colonel Henry, though he had possessed
no actual proof of that officer's guilt. This is so true, that I well
recollect listening to a conversation between him and M. Desmoulin during
the first days of their sojourn in England, when they compared notes with
respect to their impressions of Henry, whom they had particularly noticed
at Versailles on the occasion of M. Zola's sentence by default.
They had then observed how nervous and crestfallen the colonel
looked--the very picture, indeed, of a man who dreads the discovery of
his guilt. This was the more remarkable, as Henry's confident arrogance
at the earlier trial in Paris had been so conspicuous. The man had a
skeleton in his cupboard--to Zola and Desmoulin that was certain.
M. Zola is a good physiognomist, and his friend (as a portraitist) is
scarcely less gifted in that respect, and they felt equally certain of
Henry's culpability. As yet they could not say that it was he who had
actually forged that famous 'absolute proof' of Dreyfus's guilt, which
they knew to have been forged by some one, but that time would prove him
guilty of some abominable machination was to them a foregone conclusion.
One day, it must have been I suppose the 31st of August, a rather strange
telegram in French reached me for transmission to M. Zola. It came from
Paris, and was, so far as I remember, to this effect: 'Be prepared for a
great success.'
A name I was acquainted with followed; but what the telegram might mean I
knew not. There was absolutely nothing in the newspapers with reference
to any great success achieved at that moment by the Revisionist party;
but possibly the message might refer to one or another of M. Zola's
lawsuits, such as that with the 'Petit Journal' or that with the
handwriting experts. I re-telegraphed it to M. Zola, and that day, at all
events, I thought no more of the matter.
But I afterwards learnt that the telegram had perplexed him quite as much
as it perplexed me. A great success? What could it be? He racked his mind
in vain. He reviewed all the phases and aspects of the Dreyfus case,
wondering whether this or that had happened, but not suspecting the
public revelations which were then impending, the tragedy which was being
enacted.
For a while he walked up and down, feverish and anxious (he was at the
time in poor health), and then he would fling himself on a sofa, still
and ever indulging in his surmises. With that kind of prescience which he
had so frequently displayed in the Dreyfus affair, he felt certain that
something very important had occurred, for otherwise such a mysterious
telegram would never have been sent him. This lasted the whole evening.
My daughter Violette was with him at the time, and his feverishness
doubtless gained on her. At last she retired to rest, while M. Zola,
according to his wont, carried a lamp into his own room to sit there a
while and read some French newspapers which had reached him, via Wareham,
by the evening delivery. There was nothing in them of a nature to explain
the mysterious telegram; still he read on and on in the hope, as it were,
of quieting himself.
It was, I believe, between eleven o'clock and midnight when he rose to go
to bed, and as he did so he heard some loud exclamations, followed by a
cry. At first he fancied that the calls came from one of the servants'
rooms, and he paused on the landing. Then, however, as they were
repeated, he found that they came from my daughter's apartment. With
fatherly solicitude he waited and listened. Violette was calling in her
sleep.
Practical enough in matters of everyday life, this girl of mine has
literary partialities of a somewhat gruesome kind, and her avowed
ambition (I quote her own words) is to write, some day, stories full of
witches and wizards, that shall make people's flesh creep. For this
reason I keep such of Anne Radcliffe's uncanny novels as I possess
carefully locked up.
I can well remember my daughter telling me at times of strange things
dreamt by her in her sleep; but not of being of a romantic or a mystical
turn myself, I have usually pooh-poohed all this as nonsense. And such I
believe is the course which fathers usually adopt if their daughters'
imaginations begin to run riot.
As for M. Zola, when he heard Violette calling in her sleep, his first
impulse was to rouse her, but all suddenly became still again. The girl
had probably sunk into a more peaceful slumber. And so, after waiting a
few minutes longer, he thought it best to leave her as she was.
Nothing further disturbed M. Zola that night; but on the following
morning, when he met Violette downstairs, he asked her how she felt, and
told her that he had heard her calling in her sleep. He had probably
formed the same opinion as I should have formed under the circumstances,
namely, that it was a case of indigestion or a little excitement.
But she turned to him and replied, 'Oh! I had such a frightful dream. . .
I was in a big black place, and there was a man on the ground covered
with blood, and people were crowding round him, talking with great
excitement. And I saw you, Monsieur Zola, and you came up looking like a
giant and waved your arms again and again, and seemed well pleased.'
M. Zola was dumbfounded. He could make nothing of it. A man in a pool of
blood and others round him; and he, Zola, waving his arms and looking
well pleased! It was nonsense; and he was disposed to laugh at the girl
and chide her. But a little later, with the arrival of some morning
newspapers, the position suddenly changed.
Here I should mention that as the Paris journals only reached M. Zola
with a delay of twelve or four-and-twenty hours, it had just been
arranged that he should be supplied with two or three London papers every
morning, and that he and Violette between them should put the telegrams
concerning the Dreyfus business into French.
He opened one of these English newspapers--which it was I do not
recollect--and there he saw a whole column dealing with the arrest and
confession of Colonel Henry. The heading to the telegrams, the very words
'arrest' and 'confession,' made everything intelligible to M. Zola; and
beneath all this came a brief wire headed, I think, 'Paris, midnight,'
and worded much to this effect: 'Colonel Henry has been found dead in his
cell at Mont Valerien.'
So that was the man whom Violette, in her dream, had seen weltering in a
pool of blood, surrounded by his custodians, who had rushed in full of
excitement! M. Zola's presence in that vision was, so to say, symbolical.
'He had waved his arms and had seemed well pleased'--so the girl had put
it in her frank, artless way. 'Well pleased' may perhaps appear to be
scarcely the correct expression. At all events, it needs to be
interpreted. Most certainly Zola never desired the death of a sinner;
but, on the other hand, he could only feel some satisfaction at knowing
that Henry's crime was at last divulged to the world.
This, then, is how my daughter dreamt Henry's death. I do not wish to
insist unduly on the incident, and I have no intention of appealing to
the Psychical Research Society to test, corroborate, or disprove the
case.
There was one rather curious feature that I have not yet mentioned. My
daughter has assured me that during the same night she dreamt the same
thing over and over again. She tried to banish the vision, but ever and
ever it returned, as if to impress itself indelibly upon her mind. And
ever did she see M. Zola waving his arms as he hovered round the scene.
At that time the girl knew nothing of Colonel Henry; she understood very
little about the Dreyfus case; and all she had to go upon was the
enigmatical telegram and M. Zola's talk during the evening, when he was
expressing his thoughts aloud. But at that moment he had foreseen no
death, murder, or suicide, and if the possibility of any arrest had
occurred to him it was that of M. du Paty de Clam, which the Revisionist
papers were then demanding.
It is true that in infancy my daughter had often seen Mont Valerien, as I
lived for some years at Boulogne-sur-Seine, and the hill and fortress
towering across the river were then familiar objects to us all. But the
girl was little more than a baby at the time, and so this circumstance
can have exercised no influence upon her. Moreover, she has told me that
she had no notion as to what might be the actual scene of her dream; it
merely appeared to her that she was in France, because the people she saw
raised ejaculations in French.
Passing from this incident, I may point out that the telegram sent to M.
Zola through me was explained by the news in the English newspapers. It
was evident that the 'great success' referred to in the message was the
discovery of Henry's forgery and possibly his arrest.
Directly I saw the news in a London newspaper I hurried off to M. Zola's,
and when I reached his abode about noon I found him expecting me. We then
went over matters together, the press telegrams, my daughter's dream and
the probable outcome of the whole affair.
As was natural, M. Zola was quite excited. First, the document which
Henry had confessed to having forged was the very one that General de
Pellieux had imported into the Zola trial in Paris as convincing proof of
Dreyfus's guilt. At that time already its effect had been very great; it
had destroyed all chance of M. Zola's acquittal. Then, too, it had been
solemnly brought forward in the Chamber of Deputies by War Minister
Cavaignac, who had vouched for its authenticity. And now, as previously
alleged by Colonel Picquart, it was shown to be a forgery of the
clumsiest kind.
Here at least was 'a new fact' warranting the revision of the whole
Dreyfus case. Surely the blindest bigot could not resist such evidence of
the machinations of those who had sent Dreyfus to Devil's Island; truth
and justice would speedily triumph, and in a week or two he, Zola, would
be able to return to France again.
But he did not take sufficient account of human obstinacy and vileness.
His friends, to whom he appealed on the subject of his return, urged him
to remain where he was, for the battle, they said, was by no means over,
and his name was still like the red scarf of the matador that goads the
bull to fury. The advice proved good, for again were passions stirred.
Henry, the ignoble forger, was raised to the position of martyr, and
Cavaignac and Zurlinden and Chanoine in turn strove to impede the course
of justice. 'Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,' and thus M. Zola,
finding so many difficulties in the way of his return, abandoned for a
time all work and fell into brooding melancholy.
XI
THROUGH THE AUTUMN
Important events were now taking place in Paris. Cavaignac resigned the
position of War Minister and was succeeded by Zurlinden; Du Paty de Clam
was turned out of the army; Esterhazy, who had likewise been 'retired,'
fled from France, Mme. Dreyfus addressed to the Minister of Justice a
formal application for the revision of her unfortunate husband's case;
and that application was in the first instance referred to a Commission
of judges and functionaries. Then General Zurlinden resigned his
Ministerial office, and again becoming Governor of Paris, apprehended the
gallant Picquart on a ridiculous charge of forgery, and cast him into
close confinement in a military prison. There was talk, too, of a
military plot in Paris, and again and again were attempts made to prevent
the granting of Revision.
Throughout those days of alternate hope and fear M. Zola suffered keenly.
It was, too, about this time that he heard of the death of his favourite
dog--an incident to which I have previously referred as coming like a
blow of fate in the midst of all his anxiety.
When he rallied he spoke to me of his desire to familiarise himself in
some degree with the English language, with the object principally of
arriving at a more accurate understanding of the telegrams from Paris
which he found in the London newspapers. A dictionary, a conversation
manual, and an English grammar for French students were then obtained;
and whenever he felt that he needed a little relaxation, he took up one
or another of these books and read them, as he put it to me, 'from a
philosophical point of view.'
Later I procured him a set of Messrs. Nelson's 'Royal Readers' for
children, when he greatly praised, declaring them to be much superior to
the similar class of work current in France. Afterwards he himself
purchased a prettily illustrated edition of the classic 'Vicar of
Wakefield' (the work to which all French young ladies are put when
learning our language), but he found portions difficult to understand,
and a French friend then procured him an edition in which the text is
printed in French and English on alternate pages.