Complete Works of Emile Zola (1869 page)

Nobody recognised him on his rambles. I even doubt if people, generally, thought him a foreigner. He had long ceased to wear his rosette of the Legion of Honour, and he had replaced his white billycock by an English straw hat. Towards the close of the fine weather he purchased a ‘bowler,’ which greatly altered his appearance. Indeed, there is nothing like a ‘bowler’ to make a foreigner look English.

Wareham and I had now quite ceased to fear that any attempt would be made to serve the Versailles judgment on M. Zola. We were only troubled by gentlemen of the Press, both French and English, for since Esterhazy had fled from France and the case for revision had been formally referred to the Cour de Cassation, several newspapers had become desirous of ascertaining M. Zola’s views on the course of events. My instructions remained, however, the same as formerly: I was to tell every applicant that M. Zola declined to make any public statement, and that he would receive nobody. I was occasionally inclined to fancy that some of those who called on me imagined that these instructions were of my own invention, and that I was simply keeping M. Zola
au secret
for purposes of my own. But nothing was further from the truth.

Personally, at certain moments, when the revision proceedings began, when M. Brisson fell from office, when M. Dupuy, listening to the clamour of a pack of jackals, transferred the revision inquiry from the Criminal Chamber to the entire Court of Cassation, I thought that it might really be advisable for him to speak out. But, anxious though he was, disgusted, indignant, too, at times, he would do nothing to add fuel to the flame. Passions were roused to a high enough pitch already, and he had no desire to inflame them more.

Besides the cause was in very good hands; Clemenceau and Vaughan, Yves Guyot and Reinach, Jaures and Gerault-Richard, Pressense, Cornely, and scores of others were fighting admirably in the Press, and his intervention was not required. Many a man circumstanced as M. Zola was would have rushed into print for the mere sake of notoriety, but he condemned himself to silence, stifling the words which rose from his throbbing heart. And, after all, was not that course more worthy, more dignified?

Thus I could only return one answer to the newspaper men who wrote to me or called at my house. Late in autumn there was an average of three applications a week. One or two gentlemen, I believe, imagined that M. Zola was staying very near me, and, failing to learn anything at my place, they tried to question one or two tradesmen in the neighbourhood. One of these, a grocer, became so irate at the frequent inquiries as to whether a Frenchman, who wrote books and had a grey beard, and wore glasses, was not staying in the vicinity, that he ended by receiving the reporters with far more energy than politeness, not only ordering them out of his shop at the double quick, but pursuing them with his vituperative eloquence. ‘Taking one consideration with another, a reporter’s lot, at times, is not a happy one.’

A climax was reached when one gentleman, after communicating with M. Zola by letter through various channels and receiving no answer from him, ascertained my address and called there. As servants are not always to be depended upon, we had made it virtually a rule at home that whenever a stranger was seen at the front door my wife herself should, if possible, answer it. And she did so in the instance I am referring to.

Well, the gentleman first asked for me, and on learning that I was absent, he explained that he was a friend, a private friend of M. Zola, whom he wished to see on an important private matter. Could she, my wife, oblige him with M. Zola’s address? No, she could not; he had better write, and his letter would be duly forwarded by me. Then the applicant started on another story. It was no use his writing, he must see me. Should I be at home on the morrow? The matter was of great importance, it would mean a large sum of money for myself and so on. My wife had not much confidence in what was told her, but she requested the visitor to leave his name and address in order that I might make an appointment with him, should I think such a course advisable.

She was, at the moment, far more amazed and amused than indignant. She bade the gentleman keep his money, and then showed him to the door. To me that evening she did not mention the incident, and, indeed, I only heard of it after I had taken the trouble to communicate with M. Zola respecting the gentleman’s urgent private business, which (so it turned out) was purely and simply connected with journalism, my visitor having acted on behalf of the owner of a well-known London newspaper.

I do not know whether his principal had any knowledge of his impudent attempt at bribery. For my own part I much regret that my wife (I suppose in the interests of peace) should have kept it from me at that time as she did, for the gentleman might otherwise have experienced, as he deserved, a rather unpleasant ten minutes.

XII

THE FINAL RESTING-PLACE

At last the time arrived when it became necessary to remove M. Zola from his country quarters, and by his desire Wareham and I then looked around us for a suitable suburban hotel. The autumn was now far spent and M. Zola felt confident that he would be back in Paris by the end of the year. Had he foreseen that his exile would prove so long, he would certainly have sent for a couple of his French servants, and have set up a quiet establishment in some other furnished house. But for another month or two he considered that hotel accommodation would well suffice.

The place selected for him by Wareham and myself was the Queen’s Hotel, Upper Norwood, and there he remained from late in the autumn of 1898 until his departure from England.

A glance at the Queen’s Hotel shows one that it is composed of what were once separate houses, now connected together by buildings of one storey only. Each of these houses, or, as one may perhaps call them, pavilions, has a separate entrance and staircase; and the advantage of this, to one circumstanced as M. Zola was, must be obvious. A person lodging in one of the pavilions can come and go freely. There is no vast hall to cross, with a dozen servants standing around, ready to scrutinise you as you pass in and out. You have your suite of rooms in one or another pavilion, you take your meals there in your own dining-room, and you can shut yourself off, as it were, from the greater part of the establishment and enjoy privacy and quiet. This, no doubt, is the reason why so many well-to-do people, who dislike the stir and bustle of the ordinary hotel, patronise the hostelry at Upper Norwood.

There at one time — when consulting Sir Morell Mackenzie, I believe — stayed the unfortunate Emperor Frederick; and now it may add to its list of patrons the most famous Frenchman of his day.

It seemed to Wareham and me that the Queen’s Hotel would, under the circumstances, prove an ideal retreat for M. Zola. Moreover, Upper Norwood stands on very high ground, and it was probable therefore that he would largely escape the winter fogs. Of course the Crystal Palace was comparatively near, but it was not very largely patronised in the winter, and, besides, if M. Zola wished to escape a crowd, he had only to take his walks in another direction.

The Queen’s Hotel stands back from the road; but, in the first instance, as a precautionary measure it was thought best to select for M. Zola a suite of rooms overlooking the extensive gardens. As time went on, however, the trees lost their last leaves, the vista from these rooms, charming enough in summer, became very cheerless. So the master’s quarters were shifted to a larger suite on the ground floor, with the windows of the two communicating sitting-rooms overlooking both the road and the garden.

The two sitting-rooms were an advantage, particularly during the time that Mme. Zola stayed at the Queen’s Hotel (for she joined her husband on and off), as he could devote one of them entirely to his work. But when Mme. Zola finally left England (in a very ailing state, after a terrible cold had kept her within doors for some weeks) her husband moved once again, and installed himself on the second floor, where the rooms were smaller and therefore easier to warm. It was then mid-winter.

The various rooms M. Zola occupied and in which he spent from seven to eight months — that is by far the greater portion of his exile — were all part of the same house or pavilion, this being the last of the pavilions constituting the hotel proper. Adjoining is a lower building, belonging to the same proprietary as the hotel, but, in a measure, distinct from it. Most of M. Zola’s tenancy was spent in the topmost rooms. After bringing the master up from the country, I took him one morning down to Norwood, and he cordially approved of the arrangements which had been made for him. There was only one thing amiss. Wareham and I had been promised that he should have a waiter speaking French to attend on him; and the one provided knew perhaps just a few words of that language. However, he was very intelligent, very discreet, very willing to oblige — a pattern waiter of the good old English school. And when I had explained to him exactly what would be required, he took due note of everything, and for many months the arrangements that were made worked virtually without a hitch.

If M. Zola’s surroundings had altered, the routine of his life remained the same as formerly. With regard to his novel ‘Fecondite’ he had, as the saying goes, ‘warmed to his work,’ which he pursued at the Queen’s Hotel with unflagging energy.

Knowing his habits I never (unless under exceptional circumstances) visited him till he had finished his daily quantum of ‘copy,’ that was about the luncheon hour. Then we would talk business, communicate to one another such news as might be necessary, and at times exchange impressions with regard to the incidents of the day.

Among other matters often discussed were the English birth-rate and the rearing of English children, points which deeply interested M. Zola, as they were germane to the subject of ‘Fecondite.’ I could at first only give him general information, but the Rev. R. Ussher, vicar of Westbury, Bucks, the able author of ‘Neo-Malthusianism,’ very kindly sent me a copy of his exhaustive work, which contained many particulars on the points that principally interested M. Zola. Moreover, Mr. George P. Brett, the President of the Macmillan Company of New York (M. Zola’s American publishers), supplied him with some interesting information respecting the United States.

With regard to England, M. Zola had been much struck by certain proceedings instituted during his exile against medical men, midwives, and others, proceedings which seemed to point to the existence in this country of a state of affairs much akin to that prevailing in France. The affair of the brothers Chrimes, who first sold bogus medicines and then proceeded to blackmail the women who had purchased them, was, in Zola’s estimation, particularly significant, for here were hundreds and hundreds of Englishwomen applying to those men for the means of accomplishing the greatest crime against Nature there could be.

On that point M. Zola spoke in no uncertain language. He understood well enough that the authorities could not justly single out a few of those hundreds of women for prosecution and punishment: but he censured the women quite as much as he censured the convicted men, who were, after all, but common scoundrels.

And he was amazed to find that so few English newspapers ventured to speak out on the matter. There were plenty of leaderettes on the cunning shown by the men, but the alacrity of the women to purchase the bogus medicines was, as a rule, lightly passed over; and great as is M. Zola’s admiration for the English Press in many respects, he could but regard its attitude towards the Chrimes case as lamentably inadequate and lacking in moral courage.

‘A great responsibility,’ said he, ‘rests with those who, possessing commanding influence, refrain from requisite action, and who, instead of seeking to cure proved and acknowledged evils, connive at driving them beneath the surface, where, in secret, they steadily grow and expand.’ And all this for the sake of the ‘young person,’ to whose mythical innocence the welfare of a whole nation is often sacrificed. M. Zola’s views are summed up in the words: ‘Let all be exposed and discussed, in order that all may be cured!’

He regards Neo-Malthusianism and its practices as abominable, and when he had learnt more of the actual situation in England he was emphatically of opinion that his book ‘Fecondite,’ though applied to France alone, might well, with little alteration, be applied to this country also.

The fluctuations in the English birth-rate from 1872 to 1897 were to him full of meaning. At a certain period, for instance, they showed all the harm wrought by the abominable Bradlaugh-Besant campaign. But what he dwelt on still more was the absolute physical incapacity of so many English mothers to suckle their own offspring. Circumstances are much the same both in France and the United States, at least among the older Colonial families. In three or four generations the women of a family in which the practice of suckling has ceased, are altogether unable to give the breast; and the ‘bottle’ ensues, with its thousand evils and a gradual deterioration of the race.

On the last occasion when James Russell Lowell came to England he was asked what change, if any, he remarked since his last visit, among the people he met, and he replied that he was most struck by the falling off in height, and breadth of shoulders, of the average man in the London streets.

Though matters have not yet reached such a point as in France and elsewhere, it is I think incontestable that the English race, like many another, is physically deteriorating. Athletics tend to improve the standard, but there must be proper material to work upon, and M. Zola, I found, held the view that for a race to be healthy its womenfolk should be willing and able to discharge the primary duties of Nature. When he discovered that so many Englishwomen would not or could not suckle their babes, he remarked that England had started on the same downward course as France.

He often watched the troops of nursemaids and children whom he met during his afternoon strolls. He noticed and told me how many of the former neglected their charges, standing about, flirting or gossiping, or looking into shop windows, while the baby in the bassinette or the mail-cart sucked away at that vile invention the bone and gutta-percha ‘soother,’ and he was astonished that ladies should apparently consider it beneath them to accompany baby on the promenade. Indeed the invariable absence of the mothers gave him a rather bad opinion of them: for surely they must know that many of the nurse-girls neglected the infants and yet they exercised no supervision. ‘Of course,’ said he, ‘they are visiting or receiving, or reading novels, or bicycling or playing lawn tennis. Ah! well, that is hardly my conception of a mother’s duty towards her infant, whatever be her station in life.’