THROUGH THE AUTUMN

Important events were now taking place in Paris. Cavaignac resigned the position of War Minister and was succeeded by Zurlinden; Du Paty de Clam was turned out of the army; Esterhazy, who had likewise been ‘retired,’ fled from France, Mme. Dreyfus addressed to the Minister of Justice a formal application for the revision of her unfortunate husband’s case; and that application was in the first instance referred to a Commission of judges and functionaries. Then General Zurlinden resigned his Ministerial office, and again becoming Governor of Paris, apprehended the gallant Picquart on a ridiculous charge of forgery, and cast him into close confinement in a military prison. There was talk, too, of a military plot in Paris, and again and again were attempts made to prevent the granting of Revision.

Throughout those days of alternate hope and fear M. Zola suffered keenly. It was, too, about this time that he heard of the death of his favourite dog an incident to which I have previously referred as coming like a blow of fate in the midst of all his anxiety.

When he rallied he spoke to me of his desire to familiarise himself in some degree with the English language, with the object principally of arriving at a more accurate understanding of the telegrams from Paris which he found in the London newspapers. A dictionary, a conversation manual, and an English grammar for French students were then obtained; and whenever he felt that he needed a little relaxation, he took up one or another of these books and read them, as he put it to me, ’from a philosophical point of view.’

Later I procured him a set of Messrs. Nelson’s ‘Royal Readers’ for children, when he greatly praised, declaring them to be much superior to the similar class of work current in France. Afterwards he himself purchased a prettily illustrated edition of the classic ’Vicar of Wakefield’ (the work to which all French young ladies are put when learning our language), but he found portions difficult to understand, and a French friend then procured him an edition in which the text is printed in French and English on alternate pages.

One day when he had been dipping into English papers and books he tackled me on rather a curious point. ‘Why is it,’ said he, ’that the Englishman when he writes of himself should invariably use a capital letter? That tall “I” which recurs so often in a personal narrative strikes me as being very arrogant. A Frenchman, referring to himself, writes je with a small j; a German, though he may gratify all his substantives with capital letters, employs a small i in writing ich; a Spaniard, when he uses the personal pronoun at all, bestows a small y on his yo, while he honours the person he addresses with a capital V. I believe, indeed though I am not sufficiently acquainted with foreign languages to speak with certainty on the point that the Englishman is the only person in the world who applies a capital letter to himself. That “I” strikes me as the triumph of egotism. It is tall, commanding, and so brief! “I” and that suffices. How did it originate?’

It was difficult for me to answer M. Zola on the point; I am a very poor scholar in such a matter, and I could find nothing on the subject in any work of reference I had by me. I surmised, however, that the capital I, as a personal pronoun, was a survival of the time when English, whether written or printed, was studded with capitals, even as German is to-day. If I am wrong, perhaps some one who knows better will correct me. One thing I have often noticed is that a child’s first impulse is to write ‘i,’ and that it is only after admonition that the aggressive and egotistical ‘I’ supplants the humbler form of the letter. This did not surprise M. Zola, since vanity, like most other vices, is acquired, not inherent in our natures. But in a chaffing way he suggested that one might write a very humorous essay on the English character by taking as one’s text that tall, stiff, and self-assertive letter ‘I.’

How far M. Zola actually carried his study of English I could hardly say, but during the last months of his exile he more than once astonished me by his knowledge of an irregular verb or of the correct comparative and superlative of an adjective. And if he seldom attempted to speak English, he at least made considerable progress in reading it. By the time he returned to France he could always understand any Dreyfus news in the English papers. Of course the language in which the news was couched was of great help to him, as in three instances out of four it was simply direct translation from the French.

In this connection, while praising many features of the English Press, M. Zola more than once expressed to me his surprise that so much of the Paris news printed in London should be simply taken from Paris journals. Some correspondents, said he, never seemed to go anywhere or to see anybody themselves. They purely and simply extracted everything from newspapers. This he was able to check by means of the many Paris prints which he received regularly.

‘Here,’ he would say, ’this paragraph is taken verbatim from “Le Figaro”; this other appeared in “Le Temps,” this other in “Le Siecle,"’ and so forth. And he was not alluding to extracts from editorials, but to descriptive matter accounts of demonstrations and ceremonies, fashionable weddings and other social functions, interviews, and so forth. The practice upset all his ideas of a foreign correspondent’s duties, which should be to obtain first-hand and not second-hand information.

In principle this is of course correct, but a correspondent cannot be everywhere at the same time; and nowadays, moreover, English journalists in Paris do not enjoy quite the same facilities as formerly. As regards more particularly the Dreyfus business, the French, with a sensitiveness that can be understood, have all along deprecated anything in the way of foreign interference, and the English Pressman of inquiring mind on the subject has more than once met with a rebuff from those in a position to give information. Again, the political difficulties between the two countries of recent years have often placed the Paris correspondents in a very invidious position.

This brings me to the Fashoda trouble, which arose last autumn while M. Zola was still in his country retreat. The great novelist’s enemies have often alleged that he was no true Frenchman; but for my part, after thirty years’ intimacy with the French, I would claim for him that his country counts no better patriot. He is on principle opposed to warfare, but there is a higher patriotism than that which consists in perpetually beating the big drum, and that higher patriotism is Zola’s.

The Fashoda difficulties troubled him sorely, and directly it seemed likely that the situation might become serious he told me that it would be impossible for him to remain in England. The progress of the negotiations between France and Great Britain was watched with keen vigilance, and M. Zola was ready to start at the first sign of those negotiations collapsing. As all his friends were opposed to his return to France (they had again virtually forbidden it late in September when the Brisson Ministry finally submitted the case for revision to the Criminal Chamber of the Cour de Cassation), he would probably have gone to Belgium, but I doubt whether he would have remained long in that country.

I have said that M. Zola is opposed to warfare on principle. His views in this respect have long been shared by me. Life’s keenest impressions are those acquired in childhood and youth. And in my youth I was but seventeen, though already acting as a war correspondent, the youngest, I suppose, on record I witnessed war attended by every horror: A city, Paris, starved by the foreigner and subsequently in part fired by some of its own children. And between those disasters, having passed through the hostile lines, I saw an army of 125,000 men with 350 guns, that of Chanzy, irretrievably routed after battling in a snowstorm of three days’ duration, cast into highways and byways, with thousands of barefooted stragglers begging their bread, with hundreds of farmers bewailing their crops, their cattle, and their ruined homesteads, with mothers innumerable weeping for their sons, and fair girls in the heyday of their youth lamenting the lads to whom their troth was plighted. And in that ‘Retraite Infernale,’ as one of its historians has called it, I saw want, hunger, cupidity, cruelty, disease, stalking beside the war fiend; so no wonder that, like Zola, I regard warfare as the greatest of abominations that fall upon the world. I often regret that, short of actual war itself and its disaster and misery, there should be no means of bringing the whole horror of the thing home to those silly, arm-chair, jingo journalists of many countries, our own included, who, viewing war simply as a means of imposing the will of the stronger upon the weaker, and losing sight of all that attends it, save martial pomp and individual heroism, ever clamour for the exercise of force as soon as any difficulty arises between two governments.

Ties of affection, bonds of marriage, as well as long years of intimacy, link me moreover to the French people; and more keenly, perhaps, than even the master himself, did I realise what war between France and England might mean; thus we both had an anxious time during the Fashoda trouble. Fortunately for the general peace hostilities were averted, and M. Zola was thus able to remain in his secluded English home, and to continue the writing of his novel.

The weather was still very fine, and now and again he ventured upon a little excursion. The principal one was to Virginia Water, where he strolled round the lake, then drove through part of the Great Park, and thence on to Windsor Castle, where he saw all the sights, the State apartments, St. George’s Hall and Chapel, the Albert Memorial Chapel, and so forth. And, as he had brought his hand camera with him, he was able to take a few snapshots of what he saw. I was not present on that occasion; his companions were a French gentleman, a very intimate friend, and my daughter, but I was pleased to hear that he had, at all events, seen Windsor. As a rule, it was extremely difficult to induce him to emerge from his solitude. When he took a walk or a bicycle ride his destination was simply some sleepy Surrey village or deserted common.

He appreciated English scenery. Around Oatlands he had been much struck by the beauty of the trees, and was greatly astonished to find such lofty and perfect hedges of holly running at times for a mile almost without a break on either side of the roads. I suppose that some of the finest holly hedges in England are to be found in that district. Then, too, the rookeries surprised and interested him. There was one he could see from his window at the last half of his country residences, and many an idle half-hour was spent by him in watching the flight of the birds or their occasional parliaments.

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.