The Disappearance of Émile Zola Read online

  Then, in another of his impersonal sentences, he indicated to Jeanne that someone (‘on’ in French, meaning ‘one’) had been told to send Jacques a box of model soldiers for Christmas and a box of ‘petits travaux de demoiselle’ (little girl’s things) for Denise. In other words, Zola had asked Alexandrine to buy specific presents for the children when she was back in Paris. He asked Jeanne to buy them each four or five things to put by the chimney. She should take Zola’s place and say to the children that little Jesus had brought them as ordered by Papa.

  He was now not complaining about his solitary life, he said. In the evenings he was immersing himself in an orgy of newspapers and there was a good chance that he would be back home between Christmas and the New Year. ‘Kiss our Denise and our Jacques tenderly, who were born out of what was the best in us, my passion and your goodness.’

  But then, later the same day, 11 December, he had to write again to Jeanne to tell her that, in fact, he wouldn’t be able to get back in January. He knew that this would upset her but he could see from her letters how reasonable she was being. The children had to take care over their homework. ‘Tell them, that if they win prizes, I will give them as many books as they have prizes.’

  There was a third missive sent by Zola on this special day, 11 December. He (or was it Vizetelly?) bought a coloured card, decorated with flowers and with ‘Joyful Greetings’ written on it. On the card Zola wrote:

  To my beloved Jeanne,

  a thousand good kisses from the depths of exile,

  in memory of the eleventh of December 1888,

  and in thanks for our ten years as a happy couple [‘ménage’],

  and for the bond between us that has been forever strengthened,

  by the arrival of our Denise and Jacques.

  England, 11 December, 1898.

  He also wrote to Alexandrine on the same day. He thought that her calculation that he wouldn’t be back till after April was pessimistic.

  Meanwhile a French newspaper, L’Evènement, worryingly leaked the news that Madame Zola had left London, returned to Paris, and that she was accompanied by M. Ernest Vizetelly. M. Zola was living, the paper said, near Crystal Palace. The significance of this was that anyone who really wanted or needed to could track him down. Vizetelly confessed to Zola that Alexandrine must have been recognised at Victoria Station when he went off to get the tickets. Their cases were in another room and had a sticker on them saying that they had come from Crystal Palace. In reply to Vizetelly, Zola seemed more concerned with getting Vizetelly to send him a recipe for reheating and serving Christmas puddings.

  On 15 December, he warned Jeanne of yet further delays in coming back – two months perhaps. ‘Ah! if only we could take up our life at Summerfield again …’

  At this point, Zola mooted the idea that they could meet up in Italy. He told her that everything was the same, he didn’t see a living soul, he didn’t even open his mouth. He had put in the order (to the unmentioned Alexandrine) for Jacques’s and Denise’s toys. Jacques would get his ‘Cuban War’ game – a board game that had been rushed out for boys to re-enact the very recent war between the USA and Spain over supremacy in the Caribbean. Denise would get a toy (‘joujou’). She seemed to have come first in class, so why not Jacques? All Jacques needed to do was work.

  In a letter to Labori on the same day he lamented the state of France: ‘Ah our poor country! It’s it I worry about every hour of the day. On the morrow of our great victory, what a heap of rubble it is! Will we ever be able to rebuild the house, with such rotten materials? That is the terrible tomorrow.’

  On 18 December Zola was still much concerned about presents. He had done all he could to send them a pudding, made by the baker nearby. It wasn’t very beautiful and it wasn’t very good, he told her, but in the end she and the children could eat it and drink to his health. With the letter he would enclose a note so that Jeanne would know how to reheat and serve the pudding … but they couldn’t expect to be reunited before the end of February. By now there was also the matter of Jeanne’s teeth. He urged her several times to take care of them as he was in despair over what she had told him about her health.

  On 22 December he received the proofs of the first twelve chapters of Fécondité. Alexandrine had taken the manuscript with her to Zola’s publisher, Fasquelle, and the 22nd was also the day she came back to the Queen’s Hotel. It was Alexandrine he would be spending Christmas with. The 22nd was also a day to write to Jeanne, in particular to tell her that he had been told (by Alexandrine, but again not stated), that the children’s presents would arrive straight after Christmas. He advised Jeanne to keep them hidden until New Year’s Day.

  Tell yourself that the beautiful days will return, that the future certainly holds for us other journeys, other holidays where we will find ourselves alone again, with our tenderness, freer and happier. Happy Christmas! Happy Christmas! be full of joy and hope, my three dear little darlings, and I send you all the kisses from the bottom of my heart.

  Zola also bought an English card with the message:

  My recompense is thanks

  that’s all

  Yet my goodwill is great

  although the gift is small!

  (This is a quote from Shakespeare’s Pericles.) Zola then wrote:

  Happy Christmas

  to my adorable Jeanne

  who I kiss with all my heart.

  England

  December 1898

  Émile Zola

  Neither Zola nor Alexandrine decked the rooms in the Queen’s Hotel with anything other than a large sprig of mistletoe hanging over the mantelpiece. Zola had bought it himself after Vizetelly told him about what the locals did under mistletoe at Christmas.

  On Christmas Day Zola told Jeanne that he was distraught to hear that the Christmas pudding had arrived in bits. He was still worried about the children’s marks. Jeanne had to speak kindly to their little chap and explain to him how getting bad marks in composition was upsetting for Zola and Jeanne. He wasn’t worried about Denise’s spelling mistakes but he admitted he was very anxious, even frightened, that his little Jacques was refusing to become an intelligent and wise man.

  Assuming that Vizetelly was as assiduous as ever in bringing Zola his newspapers, 27 December must have been more interesting than usual. The Times ran three Zola stories that day. The first was part of its extensive, regular coverage of the Dreyfus and Zola cases – the usual mix of fact and opinion. The Times’s tone by this point was blending incredulity with contempt for how the French justice system appeared to be making a mess of both cases, underpinned by shock that anti-semitism was so vocal and public. The paper’s journalists engaged in some detail with the wisdom (or not) of Zola’s tactics in the matter, speculating as to whether he had been ‘vulgar’ in bringing the Dreyfus case into public view in the way that he had.

  The second story in the paper that day was a snippet on Madame Tussaud’s exhibition. Here Zola would have read that the waxwork of himself in a cameo with Dreyfus, along with a separate one of Lord Kitchener, was drawing the ‘largest share of the visitors’ attention’. What a contrast between the clusters of visitors crowding around a waxwork of Zola in Baker Street and Upper Norwood where the man himself was sitting in a cold room with five tables.

  The third story was a supposed scoop: the ‘Paris Correspondent’ could now reveal exactly what had happened on the day of Zola’s flight from France in June. Yet again the article was a bizarre pot-pourri of half-truth and pure invention. One or two moments in the tale have the smell of melodrama, as with the detail of someone supposedly having the time and wit to sew some bank-notes into Zola’s jacket just prior to his heading off to the Gare du Nord.

  According to the story, Zola had ended up at Charing Cross Station, and from there travelled to a village on the Birmingham line. Wareham or Vizetelly are transformed into a helpful ‘clergyman’, Vizetelly’s daughter Violette becomes Kate, and since his arrival Zola has stayed at five diffe
rent places including a house in Middlesex. All the inhabitants local to this clergyman’s house know where Zola is but there hasn’t been the ‘slightest indiscretion’. Zola, the newspaper claimed,

  speaks with admiration of this fidelity in preserving his secret, which he had not even requested, and of the delicate attentions everywhere paid him, and if on his return he writes, as is expected, his impressions of England, they will certainly show his gratitude for these good people who have thus softened for him the tedium and bitterness of exile.

  Perhaps this last point arose from Vizetelly feeding the correspondent some pro-British material for The Times readers. Though coverage of the Dreyfus and Zola cases was often couched in liberal terms, what underlay the tone was Great Power rivalry and casual but virulent anti-French sentiment. ‘He now reads English newspapers fluently, studies the laws and customs of the country, and certainly appreciates the liberty, legality, and toleration the benefit of which he has enjoyed.’

  Following The Times coverage, the story was taken up by several other papers. Anyone interested in French politics, the Dreyfus case, curious about the life and times of a notorious novelist, or just following celebrity tit-bits would know that Zola was still in England.

  On 29 December, he wrote to Jacques telling him that Mummy had said that he had written his nice little letter all by himself and Zola congratulated him on it because it didn’t contain many mistakes.

  If you make good progress, you know how much this will make us happy … You have to work at school with all your heart in order to try to be amongst the first in your class; as it would be shameful if you stayed amongst those at the bottom. Mummy and I wouldn’t dare go out in the streets, while if we had a clever boy, we would take him to the theatre and everywhere in order to show how proud we are of him.

  To Jeanne, he said that he thought Jacques was indeed doing better and his spelling wasn’t bad. If it was Denise’s own fault that she was getting a cold, she would have a red nose and no one would marry her. He also sent Jeanne a card with ‘A Christmas Greeting’ on it, in order to wish her Happy New Year. He told her he owed her a New Year’s present which he would give her as soon as he got back to Paris.

  New Year’s Day was a Sunday which, he told Jeanne, he would have loved to have celebrated with them together. It seemed to him that they were coming to the last days of the ‘monstrous Affair’ so perhaps he would be back soon. He hoped that the person charged with giving them flowers, sweets and the little blue bird (ceramic, presumably) had done as asked. He told her not to worry about the story that had appeared in L’Evènement. The only real worry was if people found out exactly where he was, because he would be overwhelmed by letters and visitors. ‘As for you, don’t breathe a word to anyone …’

  He told Denise that Mummy had explained to him that she was making progress with the piano; she should learn a lovely piece to play when he got back. ‘We’ll have a party and you can get us all dancing.’ He said to Jacques that he hoped he would show him all his toys and they would play with them together. ‘You’ll also tell me how you’re doing at school and I will give you good advice so that you can sometimes come first, which would make Mummy and me very pleased.’ Now that the holidays were over, Jacques should get down to some serious work. Then, when he became clever, Mummy would be proud, Zola would be very happy and he would see how lovely this all was. ‘And you, my beloved wife, will make me a nice cup of tea, every evening, so that we can stay together for the longest possible time, holding each other, looking after our children.’

  By the 3rd – and subsequently – he was telling his friends that Alexandrine was suffering from a heavy cold, didn’t dare go out and it was driving the pair of them mad. Vizetelly called it ‘bronchitis and kindred ailments’, and noted that Alexandrine was unwilling to see ‘any medical man’ and that she remained ‘absolutely imprisoned’ in their rooms for three or four weeks. In a letter to one of the leading Dreyfusards, Zola said that their unhappy country was sick and was showing all the signs of acute dementia. ‘How will we ever restore it to health?’

  On the same day, 3 January, he voiced worries about the articles about him that were appearing in the daily press. He tried to reassure Vizetelly that the claim by The Times journalist that he had interviewed him was purely and simply a lie. Meanwhile, it seems as if one Frederic Lees, an American journalist based in Paris, had fetched up at Wareham’s house asking for information on Zola. This worried Vizetelly because he thought it would compromise the letters passing between them all. It would also enable the justice system in France to write to them. From now on, all letters should go via another intermediary. Meanwhile, the Daily News was ramping up the pressure by claiming that their correspondent had met a lady from Scotland Yard who had learned that the police had received an order from the French government to arrest Zola!

  On 5 January, rather curiously, he told Jeanne that he thought the children had nothing to complain about as she had taken them to the Nouveau Cirque (‘New Circus’). In all this, it was only her who had suffered from his being away. (Presumably, Zola had little sense that children cared about such things as an absent father.)

  He had asked Fasquelle, the publisher, to send Jeanne four or five of the most recent interesting novels he had published. He was also sending her 5,000 francs. ‘The last year has been disastrous but we’re not going to do without bread.’ He told her that Clemenceau (who had published ‘J’Accuse’ a year before) had been to see him at the hotel on the 3rd and that Clemenceau had been full of hope that it would all be over by the end of February.

  The weather was superb, though, and he had been for a two-hour walk. Work wasn’t going too well. Even so, he reckoned that he would have Fécondité finished before the end of April. He wanted to hear about the books that Denise was ‘printing’, the boats that Jacques was putting on the water and whether he was sticking to his big promise to work better. He was thinking of the happy day, when he would arrive home, carrying as usual a bouquet of violets for each of them. ‘A million kisses, my three adorable darlings.’

  For the children directly, he asked Denise to print a page of her writing so that Mummy could send it to him and later, ‘I will give you one of my books to print.’ He told Jacques that everything he told him about the Cuba War game was making him want to get back straight away to see such wonders.

  When I get back, you must put it all in front of me on the table and show me your beautiful books, as well. If you’re good, I’ll give you some more even more beautiful ones. But now you must make good progress at school … It wouldn’t be honest of you to have presents and not work hard.

  By the 8th he had got news that the Truth–Justice–Liberty Committee was going to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the publication of ‘J’Accuse’. They would have a banquet on 12 January. Zola was asked if he would send some words that could be read out before they toasted him. No, he wouldn’t. He didn’t want to perform any public act in France as long as justice wasn’t victorious. He would come back, and resume when justice itself had resumed. If he were to send a couple of lines that could be read in public, he thought it would spoil his legal case. ‘I am like Lazarus, dead, for as long as the sacred trumpet of justice which will eventually triumph has not awoken me.’

  On Sunday 8th he told Jeanne not to worry about the stories about him that were coming out in the papers. It was all lies. No law could allow him to be extradited. He was ‘lost in the crowd’ in England, as unknown as when Jeanne and the children were here.

  Nobody looks at me, or suspects anything, when I’m out for a walk. In the hotel, I don’t think that either the managers or the waiters know who I am …

  Six weeks more – and I’ll be in your arms. I’m not on my own here any more, as you know. But I will spend a fortnight on my own before coming back. I would prefer to arrive on my own …

  Jeanne should tell Jacques that it was very good (‘gentil’) of him to finish fourth. One more little effort, and
he’d be first. It’s the place he must strive for. Did Denise dance at Madame Dieterlen’s party? Jeanne hadn’t told him. Then he begged Jeanne to write about what was going on around them. It gave him great pleasure when she talked to him of their little daily round (‘petit traintrain quotidien’). ‘Now, with each letter, we can say, that was one fewer. And when we kiss, it won’t be coldly, on paper, but in each other’s arms, on the mouth.’

  On the 12th, knowing that back in Paris they would be calling out his name at the banquet, he expressed some doubts to Jeanne: perhaps this ‘monstrous abomination’ wasn’t going to end well. But the only thing that made him suffer was being separated from her and the children.

  I am ready to come and live with you in the land of the sun (‘pays du soleil’). It would do us all good. We could spend several years, very calmly and very happily … Our great strength is that the truth is with us, and the truth will always end up triumphant.

  On Sunday 15th Zola had a major worry that Jeanne hadn’t sent him a letter. But all was well, it turned up later in the day. ‘You tell me that you are sad, without knowing why.’ But Zola knew (he was trying to be positive for Jeanne’s sake) that the Supreme Court could find Dreyfus innocent without having to send the whole case back to the Council of War. If the court did not find Dreyfus innocent, it would delay his return by two or three months. Yet it was his intention, he told her, to come back in spite of all this; he couldn’t wait till Dreyfus returned to France. This time, if his friends thought he shouldn’t, it was nearly certain that he wouldn’t listen to them, at least so long as they couldn’t produce unanswerable reasons. He also said that she was right to be worried about Jacques’s piano lessons and dear little Denise was very good to do her work so carefully. It was three months, to the day, that Jeanne and the children had been gone and it was his firm hope that he would be with them in around one month.