alone for my usual constitutional, and want to shake off some worrying
thoughts, I often amuse myself by counting the number of hairpins which I
see lying on the foot-pavement. Oh! you need not laugh, it is very
curious, I assure you. I already had ideas for two essays--one on the
capital "I" in its relation to the English character, and another on the
physiology of the English "guillotine" window and the forms it affects,
not forgetting the circumstance that whenever an architect introduces a
French window into an English house, it invariably opens outwardly so as
to be well buffeted by the wind, instead of into the room as it should
do. Well, now I am beginning to think that I might write something on the
carelessness of Englishwomen in fastening up their hair, and the
phenomenal consumption of hairpins in England. For the consumption must
be enormous since the loss is so great, as I will show you.'
Then he proceeded to ocular demonstration. As we walked on for half an
hour or so, principally along roads bordered by the umbrageous gardens of
villa residences, we counted all the hairpins we could see. There were
about four dozen. And he was careful to point out that we had chiefly
followed a route where there was but a moderate amount of traffic.
Not one man in a thousand probably would have thought of counting the
lost hairpins in the streets; but then M. Zola is an observer, and if I
tell this anecdote, which some may think puerile, it is by way of
illustrating his powers of observation and the length to which he
occasionally carries them.
On one point, I told him, he was rather in the wrong. The great loss of
hairpins did not proceed so much from the carelessness of women in
fastening their hair, as from their 'pennywise and pound-foolish' system
of buying cheap hairpins with few and inefficient 'twists.' These cheap
hairpins never 'caught' properly in their coiled-up tresses. The women
went out, walked rapidly, tossed their heads perchance, and one at least
of their hairpins fell to the ground. Supposing one hundred women passed
along a certain road or street in the course of the day, it would not be
surprising to find that at least thirty hairpins were lost there. And I
concluded by saying that, to the best of my belief, the aforesaid
hairpins were 'made in Germany.'
Another thing which amused and interested M. Zola when he took his walks
around Norwood was to note the often curious and often high-sounding
names bestowed on villa residences. As a rule the smaller the place the
more grandiose the appellation bestowed on it. Some of the names M. Zola,
having now made progress with his English, could readily understand;
others, too, were virtually French, such as Bellevue, Beaumont, and so
forth; but there were several that I had to interpret, such as Oakdene,
Thornbrake, Beechcroft, Hillbrow, Woodcote, Fernside, Fairholme,
Inglenook, etc. And there was one name that I could not explain to him at
all--an awful name, which I fancied might be Gaelic or Celtic, though I
appealed in vain to Scottish, Irish, and Welsh friends for an
interpretation of its meaning. It was written thus: 'Ly-ee-Moon.'
Nobody of my acquaintance was able to explain it to me. M. Zola wrote it
down in his memorandum-book as an abstruse puzzle. However, while this
narrative was appearing in the 'Evening News,' several correspondents
kindly informed me that Ly-ee-Moon (at times written 'Lai-Mun') was
Chinese, being the name of a narrow passage or strait between the island
of Hong-Kong and the mainland of China (now transferred to Great
Britain), at the eastern entrance to the harbour of the city of Victoria
on the island.
It seems also that Ly-ee-Moon is a name often given to ships sailing in
the China seas. And in the case of the Norwood house, built by a retired
shipowner and sea captain, the name was taken from a vessel plying on the
Australian coast for many years, and ultimately wrecked with great loss
of life. The owner of the Norwood house had an engraving of the ship
executed on a plate-glass window of this hall. Until these explanations
reached me both M. Zola and myself were quite as much at sea (with regard
to 'Ly-ee-Moon') as ever its owner and captain was.
When I spent an afternoon at Norwood with M. Zola we generally returned
to the hotel about half-past four for a cup of tea. And on the way back
(particularly during the last months) I frequently purchased postage
stamps for him at the chief post-office. He might, of course, have bought
them himself, and as a matter of fact he did at times do so. But he was
aware, I think, that he was regarded with some suspicion by the young
lady clerks under the control of the Duke of Norfolk.
At certain periods, Christmas time and the New Year, for instance, M.
Zola's correspondence became extensive, and on the first occasion when he
entered the Upper Norwood post-office and asked for fifty 2 1_2 d. stamps
he was looked at with surprise. When, a couple of days later, he applied
for another fifty, the young ladies eyed him as if he were a genuine
curiosity. A hundred 2 1_2 d. stamps in four days! What could he do with
them? Nobody could tell. When, shortly afterwards, he returned for
another supply of the same kind, the Norwood post-office was convulsed.
And I doubt if even now some of the young ladies have quite got over that
brief but extraordinary run on the so-called 'foreign stamp.'
I hope they do not imagine that M. Zola was hungry, and bought those
stamps to eat.
XIII
WINTER DAYS
The winter was hardly a cold one, but it proved very tempestuous, and
Upper Norwood, standing high as it does, felt the full force of the
gales. Christmas found M. Zola alone; still, this did not particularly
affect him, as Christmas, save as a religious observance, is but little
kept up in France, where festivity and holiday-making are reserved for
the New Year. In M. Zola's rooms the only token of the season was a huge
branch of mistletoe hanging over the chimney-piece. This he had bought
himself, after I had told him of the privileges attached to mistletoe in
England. There were, however, no young ladies to kiss, and, if I remember
rightly, Mme. Zola, who had been absent in Paris, did not return to
Norwood until a day or two before the New Year.
While her husband formed a fairly favourable opinion of England, its
customs and its climate, Mme. Zola, I fear, was scarcely pleased with
this country. At all events, she finally left it vowing that she would
never return. But then for three or four weeks bronchitis and kindred
ailments had kept her absolutely imprisoned in her room--her illness
lasting the longer, perhaps, because she was unwilling to place herself
in the hands of any medical man.
The New Year was but a day or two old, when one of the London morning
newspapers announced with a great show of authority that an application
for the extradition of M. Zola was imminent. Somebody, moreover, informed
the same journal that he had recognised and interviewed M. Zola an
evening or two previously, to which statement was appended a brief
account of some of M. Zola's views. All this amazed me the more as on the
very day mentioned in the newspaper I had been with the master till nine
P.M. and I could hardly believe than anybody had interviewed him after
that hour. Moreover, my wife had since seen him, and he had said nothing
to her of any visit or interview. Nevertheless, as other papers proceeded
to copy the statements to which I have referred, I thought it well to
communicate with our exile on the subject.
Through the carelessness of one of M. Zola's friends, Wareham's name and
address had lately been given to an English journalist usually resident
in Paris, and this journalist had then come to London to try to discover
the master's whereabouts. It was therefore possible that there might be
some truth in the story. But M. Zola promptly wired to me that such was
not the case, and followed up his telegram with a note in which he said:
'My dear confrere and friend,--I have just telegraphed to you that the
whole story of a journalist having interviewed me is purely and simply a
falsehood. I have seen nobody. Again, there can be no question of
extradition in my case; all that could be done would be to serve me with
the judgment of the Assize Court. Those people don't even know what they
write about.
'As for -----'s indiscretion, this is to be regretted. I am writing to
him. For the sake of our communications, I have always desired that
Wareham's name and address should be known only to those on whom one can
depend. Tell him that he must remain on his guard and _never_ acknowledge
that he knows my address. Persevere in that course yourself. I will wait
a few days to see if anything occurs before deciding whether the
correspondence arrangements should be altered. It would be a big affair;
and I should afterwards regret a change if it were to prove uncalled for.
Let us wait.'
Going through the many memoranda and notes I received from M. Zola during
his exile, I also find this, dated February: 'You did right to refuse Mr.
----- my address. I absolutely decline to see anybody. No matter who may
call on you, under whatever pretext it be, preserve the silence of the
tomb. Less than ever am I disposed to let people disturb me.'
Again, a little later: 'No; I will see neither the gentleman nor the
lady. Tell them so distinctly, in order that they may worry you no more.'
With the New Year, it will be remembered, had come a succession of
startling events which kept M. Zola in a state of acute anxiety. The
violent attacks of the anti-Revisionists on the Criminal Chamber of the
Cour de Cassation culminated in the resignation of Q. de Beaurepaire, in
an inquiry into the Criminal Chamber's methods of investigation, and
finally in the passing of a law which transferred the task of the
Criminal Chamber to the whole of the Supreme Court. On the many intrigues
of that period I often conversed with M. Zola, who was particularly
angered by the blind opposition of President Faure and the impudent
duplicity of Prime Minister Dupuy. These two were undoubtedly doing their
utmost to impede the course of justice.
Then suddenly, on February 17, came a thunderbolt. Faure had died on the
previous evening, and by his death one of the greatest obstacles to the
triumph of truth was for ever removed. We talked of the defunct president
at some length, M. Zola adhering to the opinions that he had expressed
during the summer.
But the great question was who would succeed M. Faure. When M. Brisson
had fallen from office after initiating the Revision proceedings, M. Zola
had said to me: 'Brisson's present fall does not signify; it was bound to
come. But hereafter he will reap his reward for his courage in favouring
revision. Brisson will be Faure's successor as President of the
Republic.'
In expressing this opinion M. Zola had imagined that Faure would live to
complete his full term of office. His death in the very midst of the
battle entirely changed the position. M. Brisson's time had not come, and
considering his age it indeed now seemed as if he might never attain to
the supreme magistracy. The future looked blank; but M. Loubet was
elected President, and a feeling of great relief followed.
I have reason to believe that M. Zola regards the death of President
Faure as the crucial turning-point in the whole Dreyfus business. Had
Faure lived every means would still have been employed to shield the
guilty; all the influence of the Elysee would, as before, have been
brought to bear against the unhappy prisoner of Devil's Island.
During those January and February days M. Zola was an eager reader of the
newspapers. Rumours of all kinds were in circulation, and once again in
M. Zola's mind did despondency alternate with hopefulness. I must say,
however, that he was not particularly impressed by Paul Deroulede's
attempt to induce General Roget to march on the Elysee. He regards
Deroulede as a scarcely sane individual, and holds views on Parisian
demonstrations which may surprise some of those who believe everything
they read in the newspapers.
These views may be epitomised as follows: The Government can always put
down trouble in the streets when it desires to do so. If trouble occurs
it is because the Government allows it. Three-fourths of the
'demonstrations' that have taken place in Paris during the last year or
two have been simply 'got up' by professional agitators. The men who
start the shouting and the marching are paid for their services, the
tariff being as a rule two francs per demonstration. With 500 francs,
that is 20 l., one can get 250 men together. These are joined by as many
fools and a small contingent of enthusiasts, and then you have a rumpus
on the boulevards, and half the newspapers in Europe announcing on the
morrow: 'Serious Disturbances in Paris. Impending Revolution.' Some
people may ask, Where does the money for many of these demonstrations
come from? The answer is that it comes largely from much the same sources
as those whence General Boulanger's funds were derived--that is, from the
Orleanist party.
As for military insubordination, plotting, or anything of that kind, M.
Zola often pointed out to me that no general could effect a revolution,
for the simple reason that he could not rely on his men to follow him in
an illegal attempt. It was quite possible that now and again other
generals besides Boulanger had dreamt of overturning the Republic, but
they had not the means to do so. It was as likely as not that the officer
foolhardy enough to make the attempt would be shot in the back by some of
the Socialists among the rank and file. Boulanger no doubt could have
counted on a good many men and 'non-coms.,' as he was popular with them,
but few if any officers above the rank of captain would have followed
him.
To-day, moreover, intense jealousy still reigns among the French general
officers. There is not one among them of sufficient pre-eminence and
popularity to gather round him a large contingent of military men of high
rank for any political purpose. And this, of course--quite apart from the
opinions of the masses--largely makes for a continuance of the Republican
regime.
With a weak Government in office, one with a policy of drift, everything
may become possible; but, so long as foresight and vigilance are shown,
the Republic remains impregnable. If military malcontents become
obstreperous it is only necessary to treat them as General Boulanger was
treated.
I recollect hearing M. Yves Guyot, who was a member of the Cabinet which
put down 'the brave general on the black horse,' and who was also one of
the few French friends who visited M. Zola during his exile, give a brief
account of some of the decisive steps which were taken to stop the
Boulangist agitation. The Prefect of Police of that time was summoned to
the Ministry of the Interior, where two or three members of the
Government awaited his arrival. Amongst other orders given him was one
(if I remember rightly) for the dissolution of M. Deroulede's 'League of
Patriots,' which then, as more recently, was at the bottom of much of the
agitation.
The Prefect hesitated; he was afraid to execute his orders. 'Very well,
then,' said M. Constans, M. Guyot, and others, 'you may regard your
resignation as accepted; you are not the man for the situation; if you
are afraid, there are plenty who are not; and we shall immediately
replace you.'
The threat of the loss of office wrought an immediate change in the
Prefect. He became as brave as he had been timorous, and with all due
energy he proceeded to carry out his instructions. Boulangism was crushed
and held up to public opprobrium and ridicule; and but for the culpable
weakness and connivance of M. Felix Faure and his favourite Prime
Minister, M. Meline, it would never have revived in its varied forms of
anti-Semitism, anti-Dreyfusism, etc.
French functionaries, those of the Civil Service, are, as a rule, a
docile set; but every now and again a Government finding some laxity
among prefects and sub-prefects makes a few examples. Three or four
prefects of departments are transferred in disgrace to less important
towns; two or three are cashiered, and the same method is followed with
some of the sub-prefects. Thereupon, all the others, prefects and 'subs,'
throughout the eighty and odd departments of France, hasten to show
themselves vigilant and, if need be, energetic. Taking one consideration
with another, this system of frightening the prefects into obedience and
vigilance has, so far as the maintenance of public order is concerned,
answered admirably well whenever it has been applied during the last
fifty years. It has undoubtedly been adopted at times for the furtherance
of purely despotic or arbitrary aims; but if ever it was justified such
was the case during the Dreyfus agitation. If the Government had not
connived, for purposes of its own, at the proceedings of what the French
call the 'militarist' party, there would have been no turmoil at all.
But those in power desired to shield culprits of high rank and to defend
the effete organisation of the French War-office. And those who thus
misused the power they held, who sacrificed the national interests, who
trampled truth and justice under foot, and rendered their country an
object of amazement, distrust, and ridicule throughout the length and
breadth of Europe (Russia not excepted) will be censured and condemned in
no uncertain voice by the France of to-morrow.
But I am forgetting the prefects and sub-prefects. I mentioned them
partly because M. Zola himself might have been one of them. It is not
generally known, I believe, that at the time of the Franco-German war he
in some degree assisted one of the sub-prefects in the discharge of his
duties, and (had he only so chosen) might even have become a sub-prefect
himself. He had been an opposition, a Republican journalist, before the
fall of the Empire, and M. Gambetta, during his virtual dictatorship
throughout the latter part of the Franco-German war, was very fond of
appointing journalists of that description to office, both in the army
and the Civil Service. M. Zola, then, might have become a sub-prefect to
begin with; and, later, a full-blown prefect. Picture him in a cocked hat
and a uniform bedizened with gold lace, and with a slender sword dangling
by his side. That, at all events, was how sub-prefects and prefects used
to array themselves when 'in the exercise of their functions.'
I doubt of M. Zola would ever have made a good functionary. His character
is too independent, and in all likelihood he would have resigned the very
first time that he happened to have 'a few words' with his Minister. But
politics having caught him in their grasp he would doubtless (like the
few functionaries of independent views who throw up their posts in
France) have next come forward as a candidate for the Chamber or the
Senate. And then--why not? He might have been an Under-Secretary of
State, later a Minister, and finally President of the Republic. True, as
he himself knows, and readily admits, he is no orator; but then orators
are not always the men who get on in France. Thiers was a ready and
fluent speaker, but MacMahon could scarcely say (or learn by heart)
twenty consecutive words. Grevy, it is true, could be long-winded, prosy,
and didactic; but the powers of elocution which Carnot and Felix Faure
possessed were infinitesimal. And so the idea of Emile Zola, President of
the Republic, may not be so far-fetched after all, particularly when one
remembers Zola's great powers of observation, analysis, and foresight.
Had he taken to politics in his younger days he would at least have made
his mark in the career thus chosen. And it may be that, in some respects,
French public life might then have been healthier than it has proved
during the last quarter of a century. Perchance, too, on the other hand,
many old maids and young persons, not to mention ecclesiastics and
vigilance societies, would have been spared manifold pious ejaculations
and gasps of horror. Again, my poor father--imprisoned, ruined, and
hounded to his death--might still have been alive.
Unless some other courageous man had arisen to tear the veil away from
before human life, such as it is in so-called civilised communities, and
show society its own self in all its rottenness, foulness, and
hypocrisy--so that on more than one occasion, shrinking guiltily from its
own image, it has denounced the plain unvarnished truth as libel--there
would have been no 'Nana' and no 'Pot Bouille,' no 'Assommoir,' and no
'Germinal.' And no 'La Terre.' 'La Debacle,' and 'Lourdes,' and 'Rome,'
'Paris,' and 'Fecondite,' and all the other books that have flowed from
Emile Zola's busy pen would have remained unwritten. But for my own part
I would rather that the world should possess those books than that Zola
when tempted, as he was, should have cast literature aside to plunge into
the abominable and degrading vortex of politics.
Like all men of intellect he certainly has his views on important
political questions, and again and again he has enunciated them in the
face of fierce opposition. In the Dreyfus case, however, he has been no
politician, but simply the indignant champion of an innocent man. And his
task over, truth and justice vindicated, he asks no reward, no office; he
simply desires to take up his pen once more and revert to his life
work:--The delineation and exposure of the crimes, follies, and
short-comings of society as now constituted, in order that those who
_are_ in politics, who control human affairs, may, in full knowledge of
existing evils, do their utmost to remedy them and prepare the way for a
better and a happier world.
XIV
'WAITING FOR THE VERDICT'
I can still see before me the sitting-room on the second floor of the
Queen's Hotel, in which M. Zola spent so much of his time and wrote so
many pages of 'Fecondite' during the last six months or so of his exile.
A spacious room it was, if a rather low one, with three windows
overlooking the road which passes the hotel.
A very large looking-glass in a gilt frame surmounted the mantelpiece, on
which stood two or three little blue vases. Paper of a light colour and a
large flowing arabesque pattern with a broad frieze covered the walls.
There was not a single picture of any kind in the room, neither steel
engraving, nor lithograph, nor chromo; and remembering what pictures
usually are, even in the best of hotels, it was perhaps just as well that
there should have been none in that room at the Queen's. Yet during the
many hours I spent there the bareness of the walls often worried me.
Against the one that faced the fireplace stood a small sideboard. Then on
another side was a sofa, and here and there were half a dozen chairs. The
room was rich in tables, it counted no fewer than five. On a folding
card-table in one corner M. Zola's stock of letter and 'copy' paper, his
weighing scales for letters, his envelopes, pens, and pencils, were duly
set out. Then in front of the central window was the table at which he
worked every morning. It was of mahogany, little more than three feet
long and barely two feet wide. Whenever he raised his eyes from his
writing, he could see the road below him, and the houses across the way.
On a similar table at another of the windows he usually kept such books
and reviews as reached him from France.
In the centre of the room, under the electric lights--which, however,
were only fitted towards the end of M. Zola's sojourn at the hotel, so
that throughout the winter a paraffin lamp supplied the necessary
illumination--stood the table at which one lunched and dined. It was
round and would just accommodate four persons. Finally, beside M. Zola's
favourite arm-chair, near the fireplace, was a little gipsy table, on
which he usually kept the day's newspapers, and perchance the volume he
was reading at the time.
A doorway on the same side as the fireplace gave ingress to the
bedchamber, which was smaller than the sitting-room, and adequately, but
by no means luxuriously furnished.