Chapter XXI: M. Anatole France speaking at Zola's Funeral (1)

ÉMILE ZOLA

NOVELIST AND REFORMER

I

INTRODUCTORY

THE ZOLA FAMILY--BIRTH OF ÉMILE ZOLA

The meaning of "Zola"--Localities of that name--The Zola family of Brescia and Venice--Giovanni Battista Zola, saint and martyr--The Abate Giuseppe Zola and his chequered career--The military Zolas of Venice--Benedetta Kiariaki and her offspring--Francesco, father of Émile Zola--His military training--He becomes an engineer and plans one of the first "railways" in Europe--His service in the French Foreign Legion and its strange ending--He plans new docks for the port of Marseilles--His schemes for fortifying Paris and providing Aix in Provence with water--He meets Françoise Émilie Aubert--His romantic courtship and marriage--His home in the Rue St. Joseph, Paris--Birth of Émile Zola--Literature in England, America, and France in 1840--The birth of Émile Zola followed by that of Alphonse Daudet--Contrasting characteristics of those writers.

It has been contended, with some plausibility, that the Italian word _zola_ is simply a variant of _zolla_, which means, in a restricted sense, a clod or lump of earth, and, in a broader one, the glebe or soil This circumstance has suggested to certain detractors of Émile Zola and his writings the scornful remark that he was at least well named, having been, indeed, of the earth earthy. Others have retorted, however, that he may well have taken pride in such association, for, far from disowning his Mother Earth, he acknowledged and proclaimed her beneficence, showed himself her worthy son, and a true and zealous brother to all compounded of her clay. In the course of the present memoir it will become necessary to examine the blame and praise so freely showered upon Zola by his enemies and his admirers; but this can be done irrespective of any such fanciful consideration as the alleged meaning of his name. All discussion of that meaning may be left to philologists and those who are superstitiously inclined to detect predestination in nomenclature. At the same time, it may be as well to point out that the name of Zola is borne by several localities in Northern Italy. For instance, there are two villages so called in Lombardy,--one near Palestro in the province of Pavia, and another in the Valle di sotto, province of Sondrio. In the Emilia, moreover, towards Bologna, there is the small but ancient township of Zola-Predosa, which takes its name from two castellanies united early in the fourteenth century. And as far south as Tuscany, in the province of Florence, one finds a village called Zola incorporated in the Comune di Terra del Sole, and yet another which is named Zola di Modigliana. If, as is possible, the family to which Émile Zola belonged derived its patronymic from some specific locality, this may well have been one of the Lombardian Zolas; for though all the published accounts of the great novelist's progenitors associate them chiefly with Venice, it is certain that they were long connected with Brescia, Lombardy's fairest city, and one which passed for a time under Venetian rule.

The first notable Zola of whom some account has been preserved was a certain Giovanni Battista, born at Brescia between 1570 and 1580. Educated for the Church, he joined the Society of Jesus, and, in or about 1600, proceeded to Goa as a missionary. From India he made his way to Japan, whither St. Francis Xavier and others, following Mendez Pinto, had carried the cross half a century earlier. Remarkable success attended the first endeavours of the Jesuit missionaries among the Japanese, but their principles were incompatible with tolerance. Throwing caution to the winds, they dictated when they should have been content to teach and persuade, destroyed native shrines, and plotted with disaffected nobles, in such wise that Christianity, after recruiting, it is said, some two hundred thousand adherents in the realm of the Rising Sun, was placed under interdict by the Emperor. Terrible slaughter ensued, and among those who perished at the hands of the Shintoists and Buddhists was the zealous Giovanni Battista Zola. In our own times, under the pontificate of Pius IX, he was placed, like the other holy martyrs of Japan, among the saints of the Roman Catholic Church.

At the confluence of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, another Zola, likewise a Churchman, rose to a position of some eminence. This was the Abate Giuseppe Zola, born in 1739 at Concesio, near Brescia, in which city he became successively librarian, professor of morals, and rector of the university. But he was a man of broad views, one whose dream was to reform and rejuvenate the Church--even like Abbé Pierre Froment in Émile Zola's "Lourdes" and "Rome." In 1771 the theological views professed by Giuseppe Zola brought him into conflict with his Bishop and the Jesuits. He was forced to quit the university; a three-volume work which he had written on the early Christians prior to Constantine and two volumes of his theological lectures were denounced to the Congregation of the "Index expurgatorius"; and--in this instance also like Abbé Pierre Froment--he journeyed to Rome in the hope of justifying himself. In the end--once more anticipating Abbé Pierre--he had to make his submission. Then, for three years, he remained at Rome, teaching morals; but the influence of his enemies, the Jesuits, was waning, and not long after the promulgation of Ganganelli's historic brief suppressing Loyola's Order, Zola obtained an appointment as rector and professor of ecclesiastical history at a seminary for Hungarian students, established at Pavia by the Emperor Joseph II.

He proved a zealous partisan of that monarch's reforms; he imagined, too, that the suppression of the Jesuits meant the dawn of a new era for the Church. Thus he indulged fearlessly in advanced religious and political views, his persuasive eloquence carrying most of the professors of Pavia with him. The Church then again treated him as a rebel; he was accused of infecting his seminary with heresy; and not only was he deprived of his rectorship, but the institution itself was closed. At last came the French Revolution; and the victories of the Republican arms in Italy brought Zola the professorships of history, jurisprudence, and diplomacy at the Pavian University. During the brief revival of Austrian rule (1799-1800) he was once more cast out, to be reinstated, however, immediately after Marengo. The last important incident of his life was a journey to Lyons as one of the Lombardian deputies whom Napoleon summoned thither when he constituted his Kingdom of Italy. A year later, 1806, Giuseppe Zola passed away at his native place. He was a man of considerable erudition, broad sympathies, and untiring energy. Besides writing a dozen volumes on theological and historical subjects, he edited and annotated numerous books,[1] invariably turning to literature for consolation amid the vicissitudes of his career, which has been recounted here at some little length because it is of a suggestive nature when one remembers that the Abate Giuseppe was a kinsman of the progenitors of Émile Zola.

Those progenitors belonged to a branch of the family which had established itself at Venice, and which became noted for its men of the sword, even as the Brescian branch was noted for its Churchmen. The Zolas of Venice held military rank under the last Doges, then under the Cisalpine Republic, and eventually under Napoleon as King of Italy. Two of them fell in the great conqueror's service, one then holding the rank of colonel, the other that of major. A third, who became a colonel of engineers and inspector of military buildings, married a young girl of the island of Corfu, which had been subject to Venice since the close of the fourteenth century. Her name was Benedetta Kiariaki, and she introduced a Greek element into the Zola blood. It seems probable that she had several children, among whom were certainly two sons. The elder, called Marco, became a civil engineer, and rose to the highest rank in the State roads-and-bridges service. He had three children, two daughters named respectively Benedetta and Catarina, and a son, Carlo. Benedetta died unmarried, while Catarina was wedded to Cavaliere Antonio Petrapoli of Venice; but their only offspring, a daughter, was snatched from them in her childhood.

Carlo Zola, meantime, followed the profession of the law, and, after the foundation of the present Kingdom of Italy (1866), was appointed a judge of the Appeal Court of Brescia. He died comparatively few years ago. Contemporary with him there were other Venetian and Brescian Zolas, cousins, presumably, of various degrees. In family letters of the first half of the last century, one reads of a Lorenzo, a Giuseppa, a Marius, and a Dorina Zola, but all these have passed away, and at the present time (1903) the only representative of the family in Italy would seem to be the Signora Emma Fratta, _née_ Zola, a widow lady with four children.

But, besides Marco Zola, Benedetta Kiariaki, the Corfiote, had a son called Francesco in his earlier years, and François after he took up his residence in France. As a matter of fact he bore four Christian names, Francesco Antonio Giuseppe Maria--which may be taken as some indication of the family's gentle status. In the present narrative, in which it is necessary to speak of him at some little length, for he became the father of Émile Zola, it may be best to call him François. He was born at Venice on August 8, 1795, and entered the Royal Military School of Pavia in October, 1810. A corporal-cadet in March, 1811, a serjeant two months later, he obtained his first commission, as a sub-lieutenant in the Fourth Light Infantry, in April, 1812. In July of the same year he was transferred to the Royal Italian Artillery, with the rank of lieutenant. He was then only seventeen. Until the collapse of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1814 he served under the viceroy Prince Eugène Beauharnais, and his regiment being afterwards incorporated in the Austro-Italian forces, he remained with it till 1820.[2]

But the exile of Napoleon to St. Helena had brought Europe a period of peace, and some leisure fell to the lot even of military men in active service. In all probability the "First Light Battery," to which François Zola belonged, was stationed at Padua; in any case, while still in the army, the young man perfected his studies at the Paduan University and secured the degree of doctor in mathematics. In 1818 he published a treatise on levelling ground,[3] which was adopted by the authorities at Milan (the capital of the Austrian dominions in Italy) as a text-book for the engineers of their roads-and-bridges service, and which procured for the young author, then three and twenty, the title of Associate of the Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts of Padua.[4]

If in 1820 he withdrew from military service, it was, as shown by a document in his own handwriting, preserved at the French War Office, because the Austrian Emperor "had been graciously pleased to order the introduction of the bastinado into his Italian regiments"; but although François Zola denounced this as a barbarous proceeding, he does not appear to have entertained any hatred of the Austrians generally. From a speech delivered at his funeral, one gathers that on quitting the army he worked under his brother Marco, then chief inspector of roads and bridges, became a properly qualified engineer, and was eventually sent to Upper Austria on some official surveying business. While there, he became acquainted with the Ritter von Gerstner and an engineer named Bergauer, in conjunction with whom he constructed the first tramway line laid down on the continent of Europe.[5]

It has been called a railway, and such it undoubtedly was, though not in the sense usually given to the word "railway" nowadays; for relays of horses were employed for traction. The line extended from Linz on the Danube to Budweis in Bohemia, a distance of seventy-eight miles; and though it seems to have been largely devised for the transport of timber from the Bohemian forests to the great waterway, there was also a passenger service, which still existed in our time.[6]

While constructing this line, Zola, in June, 1823, obtained personally the imperial authorisation to make another one, connecting Linz with Gmunden and the Salzkammergut--the so-called "Austrian Switzerland," industrially important for its extensive salt-works. But he became disappointed with the financial results of the Budweis line, and, accordingly, in September, 1830, he sold the Gmunden concession. It seems likely that he had then already quitted Austria. There are indications that he may have visited England with Ritter von Gerstner, and have sojourned for a time in Holland; but before the end of 1830 he was certainly in France, writing to King Louis Philippe respecting a scheme he had devised for the fortification of Paris. In the spring of 1831 he was in communication with the French War Office on this same subject, whilst also soliciting an appointment in the Foreign Legion, in Algeria, with the rank of captain.[7] The fortification scheme was shelved, but the appointment was granted, excepting in one respect: it was as a lieutenant, not as a captain, that François Zola entered the Foreign Legion in July, 1831.

His career in that corps proved very brief, and ended strangely. Many years afterwards an unprincipled journalist, anxious to discredit Émile Zola's championship of Captain Dreyfus, raked up the episode in order to denounce the novelist as the son of a thief. But it is certain that some documents cited at the time were entirely forged, that others were falsified in part, and that others, again, were suppressed. This can occasion no surprise when it is remembered that one of the _dossiers_ concerning François Zola, preserved at the French War Office, passed for a time into the possession of the notorious forger, Colonel Henry;[8] and that an unscrupulous Minister, General Billot, by asserting authoritatively that certain papers did not exist,[9] contrived to delay their discovery. Those matters will require notice hereafter; at this stage one need only mention that the attack on François Zola's memory was answered first in a work called "Le Père d'Émile Zola" by a Socialist journalist, writing under the name of "Jacques Dhur," and secondly by Émile Zola himself in a series of newspaper articles, which he reprinted in a volume entitled "La Vérité en Marche."

After studying those books and the documents they quote, nobody of impartial mind can entertain the graver charges preferred against the novelist's father. In his time (1831-1832) great confusion prevailed in the Algerian army of occupation. Commanders and officers were constantly being changed, and Zola himself, after serving at first as a company officer, was temporarily entrusted with wardrobe matters, in his management of which some irregularities appear to have arisen, in consequence, perhaps, of the aforesaid confusion, or of Zola's inexperience of such duties, or even neglect of them. In this connection, it is asserted that he became involved in an intrigue with a married woman, the wife of an ex-non-commissioned officer, of German origin, named Fischer. It is alleged that in May, 1832, when this woman and her husband were on the point of sailing for France, Zola disappeared from his quarters; and that, some garments belonging to him having been found on the seashore near Algiers, it was at first thought he had committed suicide, or had been drowned while bathing. Somebody suggested, however, that he might be with the Fischers, and accordingly the vessel on which they had taken passage was searched. Zola was not there, but the Fischers acknowledged that a sum of fifteen hundred francs, out of four thousand found in their possession, belonged to him. This seemed a matter for investigation, particularly as a deficit in the wardrobe accounts had now been discovered. The Fischers, therefore, were arrested and brought on shore.

But Zola, from some unknown retreat,--unknown, that is, at the present time,--wrote to the Commander-in-Chief, General the Duke of Rovigo, offering to come forward, make up his accounts, and pay whatever deficit might be found. According to the Duke of Rovigo, as Zola was only suspected of bad management, and no judicial complaint had been laid against him, this offer was accepted. No court-martial was held, though the lieutenant, on presenting himself, was placed under arrest until his accounts had been adjusted. He then paid over what was due, and the _conseil d'administration_ of the Foreign Legion having given him a discharge in full, the Duke of Rovigo ordered his release.

Meantime, Zola had tendered the resignation of his commission, and Marshal Soult, the Minister of War, who had been informed of the whole affair, objected that he ought not to have been set at liberty while this was still under consideration. Rovigo then wrote to the Minister justifying his own action;[10] and, in the result, after reference to the King in person, Zola's resignation was accepted.

Such are those facts of the case which seem to be well authenticated. It is known that several documents have disappeared from one of the Zola _dossiers_ at the French Ministry of War, and that at least one letter attributed to Colonel Combe, who commanded the Foreign Legion in Zola's time, was forged; while another, couched in the strangest and wildest language, was doctored if not entirely invented. In such circumstances it is impossible to ascertain the whole truth concerning the affair, but the lenient view taken of it by the Duke of Rovigo, the life of high rectitude and able work which Zola led in after as in earlier years, the favour subsequently shown him by King Louis Philippe, to whom his case had been submitted, his later correspondence with Marshal Soult, to whom every particular was also known,--all tend to show that whatever may have been the exact nature of his delinquency, it was far less grave than his son's enemies wished one to imagine.

It is even possible that the documents which have disappeared from his _dossier_ would have shown that he ended by completely justifying himself. Indeed, those documents may have been abstracted for the express purpose of leaving suspicion on his memory. On the other hand, there may have been some imprudence on his part, some neglect or infringement of the cast-iron military regulations; and, as Émile Zola himself has admitted, if it be true that his father became infatuated with Madame Fischer, he may for a moment have lost his head--particularly, one may add, at the thought of her approaching departure from Algiers. None can say how it really happened that the Fischers had some of Zola's money in their possession. Had it been coaxed, or extorted, or, indeed, perhaps stolen from him?[11] In such a case many suppositions are allowable. Even if Zola absconded from his regiment in a moment of madness, it does not necessarily follow that he intended to flee with the woman; in fact, his subsequent behaviour suggests other conclusions. Moreover, the assertions respecting the amount of the deficit in Zola's accounts are contradictory; and when it is observed that he can only have been charged temporarily with the wardrobe department of the Foreign Legion, in the place, it would seem, of a certain Lieutenant Ridoux,[12] the question even arises how far he himself was really responsible for the deficit. In any case, he speedily discharged his liability.

On quitting the service, if there had been anything particularly reprehensible in Zola's conduct, any reason why he should have shunned all who knew the particulars of his case, he would scarcely have established himself at Marseilles, the chief port by which France communicated with Algeria, one whose intercourse with the new colony was continuous. Yet that is what he did. He is found practising the profession of a civil engineer at Marseilles, residing in the Rue de l'Arbre till 1835, then on the Cannebière till 1838, and employing three draughtsmen and two pupils. He takes part in all sorts of enterprises, a scheme to improve the lighting of the city streets, another to increase its supply of fresh water, and a third to develop its port, in which last affair he proposed the construction of new maritime docks. He first turned his attention to that matter in 1834, and it gave him occupation for over four years, during which he busied himself with surveying and sounding work, drew up fourteen explanatory memoirs, prepared innumerable plans, journeyed four or five times to Paris, obtained private audiences of the King and the Prince de Joinville, held converse with statesmen and members of parliament, disbursed in expenses of divers kinds a hundred thousand francs--partly earned and partly inherited from his mother, who died in or about 1836--and carried on, meantime, an incessant newspaper campaign in support of his ideas.

But Marseilles preferred to construct the present Port de la Joliette, which has proved neither so safe nor so commodious an anchorage as was then anticipated, in such wise that more than once, of recent years, there has been talk of reverting to the skilful but contemned plans of François Zola. The latter was born before his time. In his various engineering enterprises, he constantly showed himself to be in advance of his age,--such as it was in France,--full of faith in science, gifted with remarkable foresight as to possible developments, and possessed of an energy which no rebuff could overcome. In 1831 his schemes for the fortification of Paris had been shelved; but directly that question was publicly revived by the French government (1839-1840), François Zola, undismayed by the failure of his long efforts at Marseilles, again did battle for his ideas. It is a curious circumstance, established by his writings and supplying strong proof of his foresight, that he was opposed to the construction of a rampart round the city, and advocated a system of detached forts. Long years afterwards, the Franco-German War of 1870 demonstrated the general accuracy of his views; the rampart, raised contrary to his advice, then proved absolutely useless, and is now being removed, in part at all events; while the advanced forts of the time, though their system was imperfect, alone rendered efficient service against the besiegers. But it is remarkable to find that of recent years, in adding to the forts which did duty during the German investment, in erecting others in advance of them so as to enclose a larger stretch of country, whence the city might derive supplies of food in time of siege, the French military authorities have followed in all noteworthy respects the line traced by François Zola, first in 1831, and secondly in 1840!

Thus time brings round its revenges. François Zola was a gifted and able man, and well might a son be proud of having such a father. How proud Émile Zola was to have sprung from one who showed such practical and far-seeing genius, how he vindicated his memory, and smote his traducers, all may read in the little volume entitled "Truth on the March."

But before François Zola made fresh efforts in the matter of fortifying Paris, he had quitted Marseilles for Aix, the old capital of Provence, having observed in the course of some visits how greatly that ancient city and some of the surrounding country suffered from a lack of water. The idea of damming certain gorges, forming huge reservoirs into which the mountain torrents might fall, and bringing the water to Aix by a canal, occurred to him, and he had already studied the matter for some months, when, in September, 1838, the chief local journal, "Le Mémorial d'Aix," gave publicity to his views. A preliminary agreement with the Municipal Council followed in December, and from that moment, what with this canal scheme, the Marseilles project, and the plans for fortifying Paris, Zola had his hands full. He was frequently compelled to visit the capital, and on one such occasion he fell in love and married.

This occurred early in 1839. François Zola, who is described as being a genuine Italian in appearance, dark, with a very expressive face, a delicately curved mouth, a well-shaped nose, and piercing eyes, was then three and forty, while his bride was in her twentieth year, simple, gentle, and very pretty. Their first meeting recalled that of Faust and Marguerite. He perceived her as she was leaving church, fell in love with her on the spot, sought her home and her parents in the Rue de Cléry, and wooed her with all the ardour of his Italian temperament. Her name was Françoise Émilie Aubert. Born in 1819, under the shadow of the tower of Philip Augustus, in the little town of Dourdan,[13] between the forest of that name and the great grain-producing plain of La Beauce--where Émile Zola laid the scene of his novel "La Terre"--she was of modest condition, her father having retired from business as a tradesman at Dourdan, and made his home in Paris, where he lived on a small income. But François Zola was no dowry hunter. He loved Émilie Aubert, and that sufficed. Her parents consenting to the match, everything was settled in a few weeks, the marriage taking place at the town hall of the First Arrondissement of Paris, on March 16, 1839.

Immediately afterwards the engineer carried his bride southward, and their honeymoon was spent amid the glowing scenery of Provence. For a twelvemonth they remained at Aix and Marseilles, Zola busying himself the while with his canal and dock plans; the first then beginning to take shape and the second approaching final rejection. At last, early in 1840, he repaired to Paris again, probably on account of the fortification scheme; and this time, accompanied as he was by his wife, who now expected to become a mother, and foreseeing that their sojourn in the capital might prove a long one, he did not, as previously, betake himself to any _maison meublée_, but rented and furnished the fourth floor of a house in the Rue St. Joseph, a narrow lane-like street, running from the Rue Montmartre to the Rue du Sentier, at two minutes' walk from the Boulevards and within a stone's throw of the Bourse.

Parisian historians tell us that in mediæval days this Rue St. Joseph was called the Rue du Temps Perdu, the Street of Lost Time, a name which none of them has been able to explain. In 1640, at the end near the Rue Montmartre, a chapel dedicated to St. Joseph was erected in a graveyard apportioned to the parishioners of St. Eustache. And here were buried in succession two men of genius, whose names will endure with the French language. The first was the great Molière, the second the good La Fontaine. But the Revolution swept both chapel and graveyard away,--a market and houses arose in their place,--and the tombs of the illustrious dead were consigned to a museum, to be removed ultimately to Père-Lachaise.

The new home of François Zola stood, then, on an historic and once consecrated spot. It was a house erected in 1839, with five stories above its ground floor. The fifth and uppermost stood back a little, being faced by a terrace with iron railings. Beneath this terrace were the five front windows of Zola's flat, for which he paid an annual rental of twelve hundred francs; and the window nearest to the Rue du Sentier was that of the bedroom which he occupied with his wife, the dining-room being in the rear, where it overlooked the Rue du Croissant, famous in the history of French journalism. Nowadays the Rue St. Joseph itself--including the very house where François Zola resided[14]--harbours several publishing offices; in fact, newspapers, periodicals, and books pour forth from these streets incessantly. But such would not seem to have been the case in 1840, when the newspaper trade of Paris was carried on chiefly in and about the Rue de la Victoire.

Directly the Zolas were installed in their new abode the young wife had to make preparations for her expected babe. In this matter she was assisted by her mother, Madame Aubert, a bright and sturdy woman, who had sprung from that peasantry which is the backbone of France. And soon afterwards, at eleven o'clock on the night of Wednesday, April 2, on a camp-bedstead, placed near the bedroom window already mentioned, there was born a child, who to the great delight of parents and grandparents was found to be a boy. Two days later the birth was registered at the Municipal Offices of the district, and the babe then received the names of Émile Édouard Charles Antoine.[15]

Born on the spot where Molière and La Fontaine had slumbered, that boy was destined like them to rise to literary celebrity. The laugh which Molière cast over human vileness, the light archness of La Fontaine, were never his. It was with deep earnestness that he stripped every Tartuffe of his last shred of clothing, that he bared every social sore to the gaze of a shrinking world. And the moral of his disclosures was not pointed in any vein of half-indulgent sarcasm, but writ large, in letters of fire, which burnt and branded. Moreover, a supreme destiny was reserved for him: his voice became at one moment that of the conscience of mankind.[16]

At the time of his birth the Victorian age was dawning in England. The Queen had lately married. Most of Tennyson's work was still undone, and so was Ruskin's. Bailey had just leapt into renown with "Festus." Browning, in 1840, produced his "Sordello," and his wife her "Drama of Exile"; while Hood meandered "Up the Rhine," and Tupper basked in the continued popularity of his book of platitudes, already two years old. Meantime Faraday had published the first edition of his "Experimental Researches in Electricity"; Darwin, advancing slowly and methodically towards great pronouncements, was preparing the "Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle"; John Stuart Mill was meditating on his "System of Logic." And while Southey completed his naval History, while Agnes Strickland began to issue her "Lives of the Queens," and Harriet Martineau her History of thirty years, Macaulay wrote his Essays, and Carlyle discoursed on "Heroes and Hero-worship."

For the _bon ton_ of London, the Countess of Blessington's now forgotten "Belle of the Season" was one of the novels of the day; but in that same year, 1840, Dickens published his "Old Curiosity Shop," Thackeray his "Catherine" and his "Paris Sketch Book," Ainsworth his "Tower," James his "Man at Arms," Marryat his "Poor Jack," Hook his "Cousin Geoffrey," and Frances Trollope her "Widow Married," with which she hoped to repeat the success of her clever "Widow Barnaby." Bulwer, for his part, was writing "Night and Morning," and Lever was recording the exploits of "Charles O'Malley," while Disraeli, who had produced his tragedy "Alarcos" the previous year, turned for a time from literature. The Brontës and Kingsley had given nothing as yet; the Rossettis were children, like George Meredith, then twelve years old; and among those who in 1840 first saw the light were John Addington Symonds and Thomas Hardy.

Meantime, across the Atlantic, Van Buren being President of the United States, Emerson was writing his "Method of Nature"; Longfellow his "Voices of the Night"; Lowell, "A Year's Life"; Irving on his side contributing "Wolfert's Roost" to the "Knickerbocker," Willis publishing his "Corsair," and Poe his "Tales of the Grotesque."

To English and American readers those imperfect summaries may give some idea of the "literary movement" in Great Britain and the United States at the time when Émile Zola was born. But what of his own country, France? During nearly ten years Louis Philippe had been reigning there; and a few months later the ashes of Napoleon were to be brought back from St. Helena; for the Orléans monarchy, which had now reached its zenith, imagined itself to be quite secure. Indeed, when in August, that same year, the great conqueror's nephew descended on Boulogne, with a tame eagle upon his arm and a proclamation in his pocket, he covered himself with ridicule instead of the glory he had anticipated. And, again, though it was in 1840 that Louis Blanc first issued his "Organisation du Travail," before beginning his "Histoire de Dix Ans," Republican and Socialist propaganda was not as yet sufficiently advanced to bear much fruit.

Literature flourished, and cast upon the reign the glory which it failed to glean on other fields, for little came from Algerian exploits, however dashing, and none at all was harvested by an adventurous diplomacy. But a generation of remarkable writers had arisen, some among them great, many of them eminent in their respective spheres. In 1840, no doubt, the shadows were gathering around Chateaubriand, Casimir Delavigne could see his transient popularity declining, Alfred de Vigny's best work was already done; but Hugo, "Victor in drama, victor in romance," pursued with undimmed lustre his triumphal course. Moreover, Lamartine had just issued his "Recueillements poétiques," and Musset was publishing his tales in prose. Meantime, Michelet and the Thierrys gave life to History; while Ste. Beuve--when not wandering after petticoats, and meditating on that "Livre d'Amour" which he was to produce three years later, and afterwards to destroy, as far as possible, with his own hands--was penning those Monday criticisms which may still be read with so much profit as well as pleasure.

Gautier was in Spain, having left the critical arm-chair of "La Presse" to the gifted and ill-fated Gérard de Nerval; but Janin discoursed in the "Débats" with his usual flippancy, at one moment suggesting (in ignorance that any "Mrs. Grundy" would ever assert herself) that Paul de Kock and his indecorum were best suited to the English taste, whereas Monsieur de Balzac might well seek popularity in Russia. Thither, as it happened, the great delineator of "La Comédie Humaine" repaired for the first time towards the close of that year, which found him in a despondent mood. In March, "Vautrin" had been produced and promptly laid under interdict, because Frédérick Lemaître, who impersonated the great rascal, had "made himself a head" like the King's. And sixteen volumes and twenty acts, written in a twelvemonth, Balzac complained, had not brought him freedom from pecuniary worries, even though the proceeds amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand francs.

If Balzac took his pecuniary cares to heart, there was little if any fretting on the part of that splendid prodigal the great Dumas, who now issued his "Chevalier d'Harmental," an inferior work, no doubt, yet one which showed traces of the lion's paw. Sue's contribution to the literature of 1840, "La Vigie de Koat-Ven," is now almost forgotten; so is Legouvé's "Edith de Falsen," though it ran through several editions. Doubtless one of the most popular novels of the day was still Charles de Bernard's best work, "Gerfaut," the fifth edition of which now came from the press. George Sand, for her part, was penning a minor work, "Pauline"; Soulié was building his "Château des Pyrénées"; and Mérimée, diffident and painstaking, was copying and modifying, sixteen times in succession, his still familiar tale of "Colomba." Stendhal had given his "Chartreuse de Parme" to the world in the previous year. Flaubert was but a young man of nineteen, travelling in southern France and plunging, at Marseilles, into a transient love affair, which was to suggest an episode of "Madame Bovary." Finally, in that same year, 1840,--within six weeks after the birth of Émile Zola,--Alphonse Daudet, who was destined to become his friend, and, in a sense, his rival for fame, came into the world at Nîmes in Provence.

In these two, Zola and Daudet, was repeated a phenomenon often observed in the history of French literature: the advent of a superior man of strong masculinity, attended or soon followed by that of another, distinguished by femininity of mind. Thus Corneille and Racine, Voltaire and Rousseau, Hugo and Lamartine. Very similar was the _accouplement_ of Zola and Daudet, who, the one appealing to the reason, the other to the heart, stood in the domain of fiction, at least at one period of their careers, head and shoulders above every contemporary. Daudet waged his battle with a quick and slender rapier, Zola brandished a heavy mace--akin to those redoubtable weapons with which the warriors of mediæval days beat down the helms of their antagonists. Some, too, have likened Daudet to an Arab horse, all eagerness and nerves, while Zola has been called a cactus of Provence that had sprouted between the paving-stones of Paris. The great city was his birthplace, and he was proud of it; yet Provence certainly had many claims on him, for there he was conceived, and there, as the following pages will show, he spent the greater part of his childhood under circumstances which exercised no little influence on his disposition, life, and work.

NOTES

[1] Only one of Giuseppe Zola's works--"Lezioni di Storia delle Leggi e di Costume de' popoli," etc., Milan, 1809--is in the British Museum Library. Among the others, in addition to the volumes placed in the "Index expurgatorius," were some elaborate commentaries on the history of the Church (3 vols., 1780-1786), a dissertation on the theological authority of St. Augustine, a treatise on Death, etc.

[2] "La Vérité en Marche," by Émile Zola, Paris, 1901, p. 259. (Documents in the Dossier François Zola at the French War Office.)

[3] "Trattato di Livellazione topografica," by Francesco Zola, Dr. in Math., Lieut., Padua, 1818. 8vo.

[4] Funeral oration on F. Zola, by Maître Labot, Advocate at the Bar of the French Council of State.

[5] Documents printed by the "Neue Freie Presse" of Vienna (No. 12,028, February 17, 1898) and quoted in "Le Père d'Émile Zola," by Jacques Dhur, Paris, 1899.

[6] Baedecker's "Southern Germany and Austria," 1871.

[7] "La Vérité en Marche," pp. 259, 280-282.

[8] Probably in March, 1898. "La Vérité en Marche," pp. 251-253.

[9] _Ibid._, pp. 277-279.

[10] "La Vérité en Marche," pp. 264-266.

[11] This idea has suggested itself to many people, and, curiously enough, is embodied in a five-act drama entitled "Fatalité," by M. Eugène Quènemeur, produced at Nantes in March, 1903, with Parisian artists in the chief parts. The play is a strange blending of François Zola's adventure and the Dreyfus case.

[12] "Le Père d'Émile Zola," pp. 176, 177.

[13] The birthplace also of the famous La Bruyère of the "Caractères," and of Francisque Sarcey, the eminent French critic.

[14] At the time referred to, this house was No. 10 _bis_ (or as one would put it in England, 10 _a_) in the street. But owing to various changes it has become the only No. 10. M. Mongrédien's publishing business, and the offices of a popular weekly, "La Semaine illustrée," are now (1903) installed in the house, the accompanying view of which is from a photograph taken under exceptional difficulties (owing to the extreme narrowness of the street) by the author's friend, M. Auguste Waser, architect, of Paris.

[15] See _post_, Appendix A. Declaration of the birth of Émile Zola.

[16] Anatole France, October 5, 1902.

II

EARLY YEARS

1840-1860

François Zola in Paris--A rebuff and a success--Progress of his canal scheme--He is struck down by the "mistral" and dies--His obsequies and his grave--Difficulties of his widow and son--Lawsuits--Aix, a city of Philistines or of enlightenment?--Émile Zola, a spoilt child--His first schooling and first chums--He plays the truant--Declining family circumstances--Zola is sent to the Aix College--His many prizes, and his first literary attempts--The college and its masters--Zola, Baille, and Cézanne; their pranks and their rambles--The country round Aix--Zola's lines on Provence--He is influenced by Hugo and Musset--Ideal love: Gratienne and Ninon--Increasing family penury--Madame Zola seeks help in Paris--She is joined there by her son--Zola at the Lycée St. Louis--He is "ploughed" for a degree in Paris--His vacations in Provence--Early poetry--He is "ploughed" at Marseilles--His studies stopped--A gloomy outlook.

The infancy of Émile Zola was spent in Paris, his father's enterprises compelling the family to remain there till 1843. Throughout 1840 the engineer was preparing plans of his fortification scheme, issuing pamphlets, corresponding with Thiers, and interviewing General Despans-Cubières, Minister of War. He renewed his efforts when Thiers fell from power and was succeeded by Marshal Soult; but he was unable to overcome the stolid indifference of General Dode, the war-office director of fortifications, who, without even examining his plans, reported against them on the ground that the government and the defence committee had made up their minds four years previously with respect to what system should be adopted. As Soult accepted this view of the matter, Zola's efforts again came to nothing. His only consolation was that, early in 1841, when the Paris fortification bill was finally discussed by the legislature, his ideas found supporters in General Schneider and M. Dufaure, a subsequent prime minister of France.[1] A better result attended Zola's invention of an appliance for removing the masses of earth, which, he foresaw, would be thrown up in digging the moat of the Paris rampart. He patented this invention in June, 1841, and after his appliance had been constructed at some works in the Rue de Miromesnil in 1842, it was employed successfully in the excavations at Clignancourt.[2]

A few months later the indomitable engineer again turned to his scheme for providing Aix with water. Removing thither with his wife and child, he signed, in April, 1843, a new agreement with the municipality, followed in June by another with the mayor of Le Tholonet, for a large dam was to be constructed near that village, at the entrance of the Infernet gorges. But although Zola's earlier suggestions had now prompted the neighbouring city of Marseilles to cut a canal from Pertuis on the Durance,--an enterprise carried out by a distinguished engineer named Montrichet between 1839 and 1849,--some of the good people of Aix and its vicinity remained uninfluenced by the example, and a long battle ensued.

The waters which Zola had finally decided to bring to Aix were those of the little rivers Causse and Bayou, and the interested villages were gradually won over, though, now and again, territorial magnates like the Marquis de Galliffet, Prince de Martigues,--father of the well-known general officer and owner of the château of Le Tholonet,--remained hostile to the scheme. Fortunately Zola, besides having a good friend in M. Aude, the mayor of Aix, obtained support in Paris, notably from Thiers and Mignet, whose association with the old Provençal city is well known; and thus, in May, 1844, he obtained a royal declaration of the public utility of his project, with leave to expropriate landowners, purchase land, and capture water on terms which were to be arranged. The landowners, however, often set extravagant prices on their property, bitter disputes arose over valuations, and all sorts of authorities, with interests at stake, raised one and another claim and difficulty, the Council of State at last having to re-adjust Zola's agreements with municipalities and others, in such wise that a final covenant was only signed in June, 1845. Zola then returned to Paris with his wife and son, for, apart from all municipal help, a considerable amount of money had to be raised for the enterprise, and it was not until midsummer, 1846, that the Zola Canal Company was at last constituted.[3]

Then the engineer went southward once more. One reads in contemporary newspapers that the great struggle had affected his health, that he was no longer so strong as formerly, but it is certain that he felt full of confidence. His courageous efforts were about to yield fruit: the work was begun, the first sod was cut, the first blasting operations were carried out successfully. Zola stood, as it were, on the threshold of the promised land. And then, all at once, destiny struck him down. One morning, after three months' toil, while he was superintending his men, the "mistral" wind, that scourge of southern France, descended upon the valley where they were working. The icy blast laid its clutch upon Zola, but, although he already felt its chill, he would not defer a business visit to Marseilles. He repaired thither, installing himself, as was his habit, at the Hôtel de la Méditerranée kept by one Moulet, in the Rue de l'Arbre. That same night he was attacked by pleurisy, and on the morrow it became necessary to summon his wife, who had remained at Aix. All remedies proved unavailing, and within a week he expired in her arms. Thirty years afterwards that sudden death, in a second-class hotel, amid unpacked trunks and the coming and going of heedless travellers, suggested to Zola's son the account of Charles Grandjean's death given in "Une Page d'Amour."[4]

It was on Saturday, March 27,1847, that François Zola thus passed away. His remains were embalmed, and the obsequies took place at Aix on the ensuing Tuesday, when the clergy went in procession to the Place de la Rotonde, beyond the walls, to receive the body on its arrival. The pall-bearers were the sub-prefect, the mayor, the government district engineer, and Maître Labot, an eminent advocate of the Council of State and the Court of Cassation, who had been one of Zola's leading supporters. The capitular clergy, headed by a Canon-bishop of St. Denis, officiated at the rites in the cathedral; and, as chief mourner, immediately behind the hearse, when escorted by the civil and military authorities it took the road to the cemetery, between crowds of spectators, there walked a pale-faced little boy, barely seven years of age, who moved as in a dream. In after years he retained little recollection of his father. He pictured him best, he was wont to say, by the aid of all that his mother had related of his affectionate tenderness, his unflagging energy, his high and noble views. Thus how great was the son's amazement, indignation, and sorrow when, long years afterwards, unscrupulous enemies tried to make the world believe that his father had been a thief.

On that matter the reader will form his own opinion, and it is largely to enable him to do so that the chief facts of François Zola's career of honourable and untiring industry have been recapitulated in these pages. But another purpose also has been served. As the narrative of Émile Zola's life proceeds, it will be observed how truly he was his father's son, evincing in manhood the same energy, industry, and perseverance, the same passion to strive against obstacles, and, by striving, overcome them. In his case, the prompting of inherited nature is the more manifest as he was of such tender years when his father died, and thus escaped the influence of companionship and example, which so often increase the resemblance of father and son. Ah, that poor contemned doctrine of heredity, as old as the world itself, how could Émile Zola fail to believe in it when he himself was a striking illustration of its workings?

François Zola's widow placed a modest slab upon her husband's grave in the cemetery of Aix, in which she herself was to be laid three and thirty years later. A cedar shades the tomb from the flaring sky poised over that glowing field of death, whence the view spreads to many a hill and mountain, clad in blue and purple. And on the slab, which is protected by iron chains dangling from granite billets, one reads: "François Zola, 1795-1847. Françoise Émilie Zola, _née_ Aubert, 1819-1880." Aix, however, does not need the presence of that tomb to remind it of one of its most notable benefactors. Although François Zola died when his work was only in its first stage, although a little later his original scheme was foolishly cut down, in such wise as to necessitate other subsequent costly undertakings, and although thirty-one years elapsed before the water he had coveted at last entered Aix, the enterprise he planned has always been known popularly as the Zola Canal. Further, after its completion in 1868, the local municipality then in office, to efface in a measure the inconsiderate treatment of his widow and his son by previous municipalities, bestowed the name of Boulevard François Zola on a thoroughfare till then called the Boulevard du Chemin-neuf.[5]

The expression "inconsiderate treatment" is certainly not too severe a one to be applied to the action of some of the authorities of Aix in their dealings with Zola's widow, who, in her own name and her son's, inherited her husband's interest in the canal scheme. But she had to contend also with others associated with the work. It was virtually a repetition, or rather a variation, of the familiar story of the confiding inventor and the greedy capitalist. In this instance the inventor was dead, and only his heirs remained. He had fully disclosed his scheme, prepared his plans, and others were eager to profit by them. Thus his widow and his little boy were gradually regarded as incumbrances, nuisances. Why not set them aside? Why not rob them? Are not the widow and the orphan robbed every day? Besides, it is often easy to bamboozle a young and inexperienced woman in matters of law. Already at this time Madame Zola's parents had come to live with her at Aix; but her father was aged, and deficient, it would seem, in business capacity; while her mother, however bright, active, and thrifty, was not the woman to give unimpeachable advice on intricate legal questions. As for little Émile, now seven years old, he did not even know his letters; he spent happy, careless days in the sunshine, blissfully ignorant that trouble was assailing the home, and would some day destroy it. Yet it was he who, long years afterwards, avenged his father and his mother, in the only manner possibly in which they could be avenged. Perhaps it did not affect the despoilers personally; many of them, indeed, must have been dead at the time, and those who survived may have only sneered, for the gold was theirs. None the less the pictures of Aix and its society, traced in four or five volumes of the Rougon-Macquart novels, were instinct with retribution. Aix still raises ineffectual protests whenever it hears that name of Plassans which the novelist gave it, and which, though its origin was simple enough,--for it was merely a modification of Plassans, the name of a village near Brignoles, southeast of Aix,--acquired under Zola's caustic pen an element of opprobrium.

The displeasure of Aix in this respect has been the more marked as the city's past is not destitute of grandeur. One of the earliest stations of the Romans in Gaul, it became the metropolis of the Second Narbonensis, but its walls, porticoes, thermæ, arena, and temples were largely destroyed when the Saracens sacked it in the eighth century, and few memorials of its classic era now exist. As the capital of Provence in the days of "good King René," whose court was described by Scott in "Anne of Geierstein," Aix regained some lustre, followed half a century later by a period of trouble, many of its mediæval monuments being wrecked during the struggle between Francis I and Charles V, who was crowned King of Arles in the fane of St. Sauveur. Nevertheless, girdled by picturesque mountains, with its old town, new town, and faubourg, rich in stately edifices, pleasant promenades, and elegant fountains, Aix remains one of the notable cities of southern France. And if, administratively, as the French say, it is now only a sub-prefecture of the department of the Bouches-du-Rhône, it continues to be an archbishop's see, and retains its courts of justice and its faculties of theology, law, and letters. Its university is perhaps its greatest boast, though it is also proud of its museum and its splendid library, which is known to scholars all the world over. Thus Aix claims to be a city of enlightenment, not a town of Philistines, as it was largely pictured by Émile Zola; but one must remember that he described things as they were in his time, and that if a new and more active generation has arisen nowadays, it was preceded by others, somnolent and neglectful.

Aix has given several distinguished sons to France: the elder Vanloo; Vauvenargues, the moralist; Mignet, the historian; Brueys, the poet, and Brueys, the admiral who fell at the battle of the Nile; Michel Adanson and Piton de Tournefort, the eminent naturalists; François Granet, who translated Newton into French, and François Marius Granet, his nephew, who distinguished himself in art, and became one of the city's benefactors. Again, Portalis, the great jurisconsult, who prepared the Concordat which still binds France and the Papal See, was for a time one of the shining lights of the city, and Thiers, though born at Marseilles, completed his studies at Aix, took his degrees, and was called to the bar there. Curiously enough, the house where Thiers had lived in his student days was the first home of the Zolas at Aix. It stood at the end of a strip of road, a "no thoroughfare," called picturesquely the Impasse Sylvacanne. There was a large garden to the house, and in that garden little Émile disported himself as he listed.