Chapter 10

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.

On the little writing-table near the middle window were first a small inkstand belonging to the hotel, then a few paper-weights covering memoranda jotted down on little square pieces of paper, about three inches long either way, together with an old yellowish newspaper which did duty as a blotting pad; and a pen with a 'j' nib and a very heavy ivory handle, so heavy, indeed, that though the master often offered it to me I could never write with it. With this pen, however, he himself did all his work. That work he generally cleared away before lunch, and locked up in his bedroom wardrobe, so that by the time a visitor arrived there was never any litter in the sitting-room.

The road, viewed from the writing-table window, was at times fairly lively. Nursemaids and children, bicyclists and others passed constantly to and fro. Stylish carriages also rolled by during the afternoon, and at intervals a little green omnibus went its way at a slow jog-trot. The detached villa residences on the other side of the road were, however, singularly lifeless. One day M. Zola remarked to me: 'I have never seen a soul in those houses during all the months I have been here. They are occupied certainly, for the window blinds are pulled up every morning and lowered every evening, but I can never detect who does this; and I have never seen anybody leave the houses or enter them.'

At last one afternoon he told me that one of these villas had woke up, for on the previous day he had espied a lady in the garden watering some flowers.

Rather lower down the road there was a livelier house, one which had a balconied window, which was almost invariably open, and here servants and children were often to be seen. 'That,' said M. Zola, 'is the one little corner of life and gaiety, amidst all the other silence and lack of life. Whenever I feel dull or worried I look over there.'

As a rule the Queen's Hotel itself is, as I have already mentioned, a very quiet place; but now and again a wedding breakfast was given there. Broughams and landaus would then roll over the gravel sweep, and M. Zola and I would at times lean out of the windows and exchange opinions with respect to the bridal pair and the guests. What surprised and amused him, on one occasion when a wedding party came to the hotel, was to notice that all the coachmen of the carriages wore yellow flowers and favours; for in France yellow is not only associated with jealousy, but also with conjugal faithlessness.

'If those flowers ware to be taken as an omen,' said M. Zola to me, 'that happy pair will soon be in the Divorce Court.'

During the latter part of his stay at Norwood, when the door between his bedroom and sitting-room remained open, one could see on a chest of drawers in the former apartment a pair of life-size porcelain cats, coloured a purplish maroon, with sparkling yellow glass eyes, and an abundance of fantastic yellow spots. These cats had been bought by him as a souvenir of England and English art, for he was much struck by their oddity. He had been offered others--for instance, white ones with little coloured landscapes printed all over their backs and sides--surely as idiotic an embellishment as any insane potter could devise--but although these had sorely tempted him he had finally decided in favour of the maroon and yellow abominations.

A little girl of mine, who found herself face to face with these cats one day in his room, was quite startled by them, and has since expressed the opinion that Sir John Tenniel ought to have seen them before he drew the Cheshire cat for 'Alice in Wonderland.' For my own part I can imagine the laughter and the jeers of M. Zola's artistic friends when those choice specimens of British art are shown to them in Paris.

At intervals during his long sojourn at the Queen's Hotel M. Zola received a few brief visits from French friends, chiefly literary men and politicians, whose names need not be mentioned, but who have identified themselves with the cause of Revision. At times these gentlemen found themselves in London on other matters, and profited by the opportunity to run down to Norwood. On other occasions they made the journey from France for the especial purpose of quieting M. Zola's impatience, and telling him that he must not yet think of returning home. Again, M. Fasquelle, the French publisher, came over four or five times, now on business and now in a friendly way.

I think that during the seven or eight months that M. Zola stayed at the Queen's Hotel, he received altogether some ten visits from compatriots, which visits were often of only an hour or two's duration. Thus, Mme. Zola having returned to France, he was frequently very much alone.

During the last months of his exile my wife fell seriously ill, and I could not then go so often to Norwood. Afterwards ague caught me in its grip, and my visits ceased for two or three successive weeks. All I could do in an emergency was to place my eldest daughter or my son at M. Zola's disposal.

The foreign visitors he received--by foreign I mean non-French--were (apart from the Warehams, myself and family) very few in number. I think that an eminent Russian _publiciste_ who happened to be a personal friend (M. Zola has long been popular in Russia, where even the Emperor has read many of his books) saw him on one occasion. Then, when M. Yves Guyot called, he brought with him an English friend who was pledged to secrecy.

A well-known English novelist and art critic, M. Zola's oldest English friend, and his earliest champion in this country, likewise saw him. Further, in a friendly capacity he received an English journalist for whom he has much regard, and who came to see him quite apart from any journalistic matters. To this list I will add the names of Mr. Andrew Chatto and Mr. Percy Spalding of Messrs. Chatto and Windus, and Mr. George P. Brett, of the Macmillan Company of New York.

Such, then, were M. Zola's visitors and guests--say, apart from the Warehams, myself and family, less than a score of persons, the total duration of whose visits added together amounted perhaps to a hundred and twenty hours spread over many long and trying months.

At times when we chatted together, M. Zola and myself, and mention was made of his friends--of persons occasionally whom we both knew--he referred to the many estrangements caused by the divergence of views on the Dreyfus affair. Friends of twenty and thirty years' standing, men who had laboured sided by side often in pursuit of the same ideal, had not only quarrelled and parted but had assailed each other with the greatest virulence in the Press and at public meetings.

Many whom he himself had regarded as close and sincere friends had trodden upon all the past and attacked him abominably, as though he were the veriest scum of the earth. Some in the earlier stages of the affair had hypocritically feigned sympathy, in order to provoke his confidence, and had then turned round to hold him up to execration and ridicule. One or two had behaved so badly that he had refused ever to receive them at his house again.

He spoke to me of an eminent French _litterateur_ who at the outset of the agitation on behalf of Dreyfus had immediately promised his help, and had even prepared articles and appeals on behalf of the prisoner of Devil's Island. But this _litterateur_ had of recent years been lapsing into mysticism, and at the behests of the reverend father his confessor, he had abruptly destroyed what he had written, and gone over to the other side to wage desperate warfare upon the cause he had promised to help.

The writer in question (one who will probably leave a name in French literature) was tortured by the everlasting fear that he might go to hell when he died, and he was the more timorous, the more easily influenced by certain persons, as he suffered from a horrible, incurable complaint, and feared that his medical man--a bigoted Romanist--might abandon him to all the pangs of sudden death if he did not comply with the injunctions of the Church.

Then there was a friend of many years' standing, a Minister in successive Cabinets, who feigned that by remaining in office he would be able to favour the cause, and who, instead of that, did his utmost against it. A playwright wrote: 'I am heartily with you, but for God's sake don't say it, for my plays might be hissed.'* Another prominent man started on a long journey to avoid having to express any opinion. Nearly all the baser passions of humanity were made manifest in some degree--treachery, rancour, jealousy, and moral and physical cowardice.

* Apropos of the stage, it is a curious circumstance that nine-tenths of 'the profession' in France are ardent Dreyfusards. Nearly every actor and actress and vocalist of note has been on the same side as M. Zola from the outset.

But, of course, there was another and a brighter side to the picture. There were men of high intellect and courage who had not hesitated to state their views and plead for truth and justice, men who, when in office, had been arbitrarily suspended and removed. There were many who had risked their futures, many too who, after years of labour, were well entitled to rest and retirement, yet had come forward with all the ardour of youth to do battle for great principles and save their country from the shame of a cruel crime.

Adversity makes one acquainted with strange bedfellows, and M. Zola was more than once struck by the heterogeneous nature of the Revisionist army. He found men of such varied political and social views banded together for the cause. It all helped to remove sundry old-time prejudices of his.

For instance, he said to me one day: 'I never cared much for the French Protestants; I regarded them as people of narrow minds, fanatics of a kind, far less tolerant and human than the great mass of the Catholics. But they have behaved splendidly in this battle of ours, and shown themselves to be real men.'

All through the spring M. Zola eagerly followed the inquiry which the Cour de Cassation was conducting, and when M. Ballot-Beaupre was appointed reporter to the Court, there came a fresh spell of anxiety. M. Ballot-Beaupre is a man of natural piety, and the anti-Revisionist newspapers, basing themselves on his religious views, at first made certain that he would show no mercy to the Jew Dreyfus, but would report strongly in favour of the prisoner's guilt. Certain Dreyfusite journals, on the other hand, bitterly attacked the learned judge for his supposed clerical leanings; and indeed so much was insinuated that M. Zola for a short time half believed it possible that M. Ballot-Beaupre might show himself hostile to revision.

When I saw M. Zola he repeatedly expressed to me his feelings of disquietude. Then everything suddenly changed. Certain newspapers discovered that M. Ballot-Beaupre, if pious, was by no means a fanatic, and, further, that he was a very sound lawyer, much respected by his colleagues. This cleared the atmosphere, for it seemed impossible that any man of rectitude and judgment could pass over the damning revelations which the Cour de Cassation's inquiry, as published in 'Le Figaro,' had produced.

Time went on, and at last the issue, so frequently postponed, so longingly awaited, came in sight. The week before the public proceedings of the Cour de Cassation opened M. Zola said to me: 'I shall have finished the last chapter of "Fecondite" by Saturday or Sunday, so I shall have my hands quite free and be able to give all my attention to what takes place at the Courts. I am hopeful, yes, very hopeful, and yet at moments some horrid doubt will spring up to torture me. But no! you'll see, our cause will gain the day, revision will be granted, and justice will be done.'

And at last came the fateful week which was to prove the accuracy of his surmises.

XV

LAST DAYS--DEPARTURE

I spent the afternoon of Saturday, May 27, with M. Zola, and we then spoke of the proceedings impending before the Cour de Cassation. All our information pointed to the conclusion that the Court would give judgment on the Saturday following, and it was decided that M. Zola should return to France a few days afterwards. The date ultimately agreed upon was Tuesday, June 6, and the train selected was that leaving Charing Cross for Folkestone at 2.45 in the afternoon.

Though according to every probability the Court's judgment would be in favour of revision, M. Zola was resolved to return home whatever might be the issue, and such were his feelings on the matter that nothing any friend might have urged would have prevented him from doing so. As a matter of fact one friend did regard the return as somewhat unwise, and intimated it both by telegram and letter. This compelled me to see M. Zola again on the following Tuesday (May 30), but the objections were overruled by him, and the arrangements which had been planned were adhered to.

M. Zola had now drafted the declaration which he proposed issuing on the morrow of his return home, and this he gave me to read. It was the article 'Justice,' published in 'L'Aurore,' to which I have occasionally referred in the course of the present narrative.

I left M. Zola rather late that Tuesday night in the expectation that everything which had been arranged would follow in due course. As the writing of 'Fecondite' was now finished he had time on his hands, and a part of this he proposed to devote to taking a few final snapshots of Norwood, the Crystal Palace, and surrounding scenery. He needed something to do, for he could not sit hour by hour in his room at the Queen's Hotel anxiously waiting for news of the proceedings at the Paris Palais de Justice.

For my part I had begun to prepare the present narrative, and as he would not listen to my repeated offers to take him to the Derby, it was arranged that I should not see him again until the end of the week. On Friday, however, reports were already in circulation to the effect that M. Fasquelle (M. Zola's French publisher) had come to London for the purpose of escorting him home.

This was true, and I foresaw that the rumours might lead to some modifications of our programme; for M. Zola did not wish his return to have any public character. He had forbidden all the demonstrations which his friends in Paris were anxious to arrange in his honour, declaring that he desired to go back quietly and privately, and then at once place himself at the disposal of the public prosecutor.

On Friday I sent my daughter Violette to Norwood with a parcel of M. Zola's photographs, received by Messrs. Chatto and Windus from Miss Loie Fuller, who being greatly interested in the Clarence Ward of St. Mary's Hospital, particularly wished M. Zola to sign these portraits in order that they might be sold at a bazaar which was to be held for the benefit of the hospital referred to. I told my daughter that I should myself go down to the Queen's Hotel on the morrow, and she brought me back a message to the effect that I really must go, as complications had arisen, and M. Zola particularly desired to see me.

On the following day, Saturday, I therefore betook myself to Norwood with a parcel of M. Zola's books, which I had received from Messrs. Macmillan & Co. on behalf of the Countess of Bective, who (prompted by the same spirit as Miss Loie Fuller) wished to sell these volumes at the 'Bookland' stall on the occasion of the Charing Cross Hospital Bazaar. And when I arrived I found indeed that it was most desirable that the programme of M. Zola's departure should be modified.

He had already seen M. and Mme. Fasquelle, the former of whom was much annoyed at the reports of his presence in London, and thought it most advisable to precipitate the departure. Delay might, indeed, be harmful if it was desired to avoid demonstrations. Besides, why should he wait until the ensuing Tuesday? Why not return the very next night--that of Sunday, June 4--by the Dover and Calais route? Mme. Fasquelle had declared that she in no way objected to travelling at night time; and so far as the departure from London was concerned, there would be few people about on a Sunday evening, which was another point to be considered. I cordially assented, for now that the imminence of M. Zola's return to Paris had been reported in the newspapers it was certain that delay meant a possibility of demonstrations both for and against him. In spite of his prohibition, many of his friends still wished to greet him like a conquering hero on his arrival at the Northern Railway Station in Paris. And the other side would unfailingly send out its recruiting agents to assemble a contingent of loafers at two francs per demonstration, who would be duly instructed to yell 'Conspuez,' and 'A bas les juifs.' Then a brawl would inevitably follow.

Now M. Zola (as I have already mentioned) did not wish for a homecoming of that kind. There was no question of refusing to 'face the music,' of shunning a hostile crowd, and so forth. It was purely and simply a matter of dignity and of doing nothing that might lead to a disturbance of the public peace. The triumph of justice was undoubtedly imminent, and it must not be followed by disorder.

When I had expressed my concurrence in the views held by M. Zola and M. Fasquelle, M. Zola and I attended to business. First came the question of Lady Bective's books, in each of which a suitable inscription was inserted. Afterwards, in a friend's birthday book M. Zola inscribed his famous, epoch-making phrase, 'Truth is on the march, and nothing will be able to stop it.' Finally, a few brief notes were written and posted, and work was over.

For a little while we chatted together. Some notable incidents connected with the interminable Affair had occurred during the last few days. Colonel du Paty de Clam, for whose arrest the Revisionist journals had clamoured so long and so pertinaciously, had at last been cast into prison. In M. Zola's estimation, the Colonel's arrest had been merely a question of time ever since the day when one had learnt that he had disguised himself with a false beard and blue glasses when he went to meet the notorious Esterhazy.

'A man may be guilty of any misdeed and may yet find forgiveness and even favour,' M. Zola had then said to me, 'but he must not make himself, his profession, and his cause ridiculous. In France, as you know, "ridicule kills." The false beard and the blue spectacles, following the veiled lady, are decisive. One need scarcely trouble any further about M. du Paty de Clam. His fate is as good as sealed.'

And now that the Colonel had at last been arrested, the master remarked, 'The military party is throwing him over to us as a kind of sop; it would be delighted to make him the general scapegoat, and thereby save all the other culprits. But it won't do. There are men higher placed than Du Paty who must bear their share of censure and, if need be, punishment.'