The Disappearance of Émile Zola Read online

  As a consequence, on 12 September, Zola wrote: ‘The Fifth Act’, which appeared in L’Aurore. ‘I am terrified,’ he wrote:

  What I feel is no longer anger, no longer indignation and the craving to avenge it, no longer the need to denounce a crime and demand its punishment, in the name of truth and justice. I am terrified, filled with the sacred awe of a man who witnesses the supernatural: rivers flowing backwards towards their sources and the earth toppling over under the sun. I cry out with consternation, for our noble and generous France has fallen to the bottom of the abyss.

  … for the past two years, suffering has been no stranger to me. I have heard mobs hound me with their death cries; I have seen a filthy flood of threats and insults flow by my feet; I have known the despairs of exile for eleven months. And there have also been two trials, two deplorable displays of baseness and iniquity. But, compared with the trial of Rennes, my trials have been refreshing and idyllic scenes, with hope in full blossom!

  Back in Britain, by Sunday 17 September there were over 120,000 names on a giant petition on behalf of Dreyfus and between 50,000 and 80,000 people demonstrated in Hyde Park against the Rennes decision. Historians have asked why and how did the Dreyfus case arouse such feeling in Britain, and was Zola any part of that? This matter is complicated by a good deal of anti-French sentiment swirling around Britain at the time. The Fashoda Incident had only just ended, while others leaped on the story as the treatment of both Dreyfus and Zola ‘proved’ that something – or even a lot – was supposedly wrong with the ‘French character’.

  This raises the question of how exactly had Zola’s ‘J’Accuse’ and his trials gone down with the British public? We’ve already seen how the Left swung behind Dreyfus and Zola following Jaurès’s move, but what of the rest of public opinion? To understand this, we need to go back to 17 January 1898, straight after Zola had published ‘J’Accuse’. Vizetelly had instantly stepped forward to support Zola for writing ‘J’Accuse’. He pointed out that ‘literary men’ had occasionally failed in promoting the cause of justice but he wanted his readers to remember someone who had succeeded: Voltaire.

  … there lives in France at the present day a writer of books, novels, stories, and essays on art, literature, and social problems, who is regarded by many as an individual of scurrilous proclivities, a picker-up of filth and garbage, a reviler of religion, who is personally excommunicated, and several of whose books figure on the ‘Index Expurgatorius’ of Rome. His name is Émile Edouard Charles Antoine Zola. Truth has been the one passion of his life.

  I … venture to say that if he has come forward so prominently in this Dreyfus case, it is not because he feels that wrong has been done, but he is absolutely convinced of it.

  Vizetelly made an analogy between Zola’s writing method – meticulous research – and the kind of knowledge and proof he would have brought to the Dreyfus Affair. But in doing this, Zola was running a greater risk than Voltaire had faced.

  Fanatical Jew-baiters march through the streets anxious for an opportunity to wreck his house and murder not only himself but his wife also in the sacred name of Patriotism …

  At the end, possibly, lie imprisonment, fine, disgrace, ruin. How jubilantly some are already rubbing their hands in the bishops’ palaces, the parsonages, the sacristies of France! Ah! no stone will be left unturned to secure a conviction! But Émile Zola does not waver. It may be that the truth, the whole truth, will only be known to the world in some distant century; but he, anxious to hasten its advent and prevent the irreparable, courageously stakes all that he has – person, position, fame, affections and friendships, possibly even the best of his declining years. And this he does for no personal object whatsoever, but in the sole cause of truth and justice, ever repeating the cry common to both Goethe and himself, ‘Light, more Light!’

  Punch printed a cartoon of Zola, entitled ‘The Dreyfus “Scape-goat”’, a parody of the famous painting by Holman Hunt, and in February, when Zola himself was sentenced, the Manchester Guardian wrote:

  The condemnation of M. Zola yesterday to a year’s imprisonment will come as a shock to every generous mind. At a time when France is torn by doubts as to the integrity of the chiefs of her army, which have been confirmed by the efforts of the Cabinet, the War Office, and the Chambers to stifle discussion, M. Zola alone of all Frenchmen has had the courage to accuse the War Office of double-dealing, with the express purpose of compelling inquiry into the facts of the case.

  It was a heroic act. M. Zola had everything to lose – the popularity which he has earned by years of toil and upon which as a novelist he has to depend for a livelihood, and even his personal liberty. On the other hand, he had nothing to gain but the satisfaction of having repaired a judicial error and rescued an innocent man from a horrible captivity. Yet, in the teeth of the Government and of public opinion, M. Zola took up the cause of Dreyfus, and by his outspoken denunciations of the War Office authorities drove the Government to prosecute him.

  Then the article turned to how Zola’s own trial proceeded, where he was forced into defending one tiny part of ‘J’Accuse’ – the part where he claimed that Esterhazy was found innocent by those who knew he was guilty. It was a ‘shameful burlesque’, the paper said.

  At the pleasure of the judge, witnesses might be cross-examined for the defendant or they might be told to keep silence; military witnesses might discuss the Dreyfus affair if they wished to pledge their honour that Dreyfus was guilty, but other witnesses must respect the chose jugée; generals in uniform might address the jury in impassioned terms, and then hold their peace when asked to substantiate their assertions; if a witness gave evidence reflecting on the War Office, the head of the Bar must apologise to the generals present and assure them of his sympathy.

  Such scenes as have occurred during the past fifteen days in the Paris Court of Assizes would be thought incredible on the stage or in a novel, and yet, after this mockery of justice, M. Zola is condemned. It speaks volumes for the dogged bravery of the man that he should have fought this cause to the last, and his glory is the disgrace of those who have deliberately trampled on the law to bring about his fall.

  The Daily Chronicle of 24 February 1898 singled out Zola for personifying the honour of France, while all others betrayed it. The Daily Telegraph of the same day appeared to praise Zola’s ‘courage’ for ‘confronting’ a tribunal in what he ‘asserted to be a just cause’ – the word ‘asserted’ being the classic journalese get-out of not appearing to agree with the cause too closely. More positively, the article said that, on hearing his sentence, Zola ‘looked defiant and still full of fight’. The Times of that particular day presented Zola as having failed to do what he wanted, which was to use his own trial as an opportunity for practical revision of the Dreyfus case, but, ‘It has been a rare intellectual treat for educated men everywhere to watch the splendid fight made by M. Zola’s counsel against the heaviest odds.’ Zola’s ‘offence’ was to make himself:

  the mouthpiece of the intelligent and thoughtful portion of the French public whose conscience has been profoundly disturbed and whose apprehensions of the safety of social rights have been aroused by the proceedings carried on in the name of French justice. His real offence is that he has dared to stand up for truth and civil liberty at a moment when many saw the peril but no other was ready to brave the extremity of personal danger in order to aid in averting it. For that courageous vindication of elementary civil rights he will be honoured wherever men have free souls.

  At the same time, it was noted that Zola had taken a stand on anti-semitism. In The Humanitarian of February 1898, Robert Sherard, author of the biography of Zola in 1893, wrote: ‘The cry of “À bas les Juifs” (‘Down with the Jews’) is to be heard all over Paris. To this the cry of “À bas Zola” (‘Down with Zola’) is now added …’

  Zola told Sherard that he was greatly surprised to find how widespread the anti-semitic movement was, and how great its force:

  ‘It seems
incredible to me,’ Zola said, ‘that one hundred years after the French Revolution, by which the equality of men was proclaimed and an end put to all enmities between races and creeds, it should be possible to raise up so many Frenchmen, grandsons of the Revolution, against other Frenchmen, because the latter are men of a different ethnical derivation, professing a different creed.’

  Anti-semitism had been accepted by the mass of the people, Zola claimed, as the ‘newest form of Socialism’:

  ‘The Jews have been made to represent in the eyes of the ignorant, the Have-Alls, the Capitalists, against whom the demagogues have always directed the furies of the proletariat. Instead of crying as they used to cry ten years ago, “Down with the Capitalists”, the people are now taught to cry, “Down with the Jews”, the leaders of the Anti-Semitic Campaign acting largely in the interests of the Catholic party, having induced them into the belief that all the capitalists are Jews, that it is the Jewish money which employs the labour of France, that the whole nation is a vassal to the purse of the Rothschilds, and such-like absurdities.’

  The people were saying these things, Zola argued, knowing full well that it was an ‘imbecility’. The words ‘Capitalist’ and ‘Jew’ were not synonymous: ‘there are some very rich Jews in France, there are also thousands of poor Jews – of very poor Jews’. Zola saw in the campaign a return to the Middle Ages, an undoing of all that civilisation and enlightenment had done towards the realisation of what is the ideal of us all: ‘the federation of man, the commonwealth of nations’.

  ‘I have no words to express my abhorrence of it.

  ‘… the Anti-Semites are shouting into the ears of the people that the destruction of Jews would mean the dawn of a new era which the demagogues of social reform have always been promising to their followers …

  ‘We are trying to wipe out the frontiers of the nations, we are dreaming of the community of the peoples, we draw together into congresses the priests of all religions so that they may fall into each other’s arms, we feel ourselves the brothers in the common sufferings of humanity, and we wish to work for the relief of all from the pains of existence by raising up a single altar to Human Pity. And a handful of madmen, cunning or idiotic, come and shout in our ears every morning: “Let us kill the Jews. Let us devour the Jews. Let us massacre them. Let us exterminate them. Let us get back to the days of the gibbet and stake.” Is it not inconceivable? Could anything be more foolish? Could anything be more abominable? …

  ‘Anti-Semitism as it exists to-day in France is a hypocritical form of Socialism.’

  As for the accusation that Jews have ‘no love for anything but the acquisition of wealth by the labour of others’, Zola pointed out that if Jews had ‘superiority’ in the matter of money-getting it was because ‘we trained them to this in an apprenticeship of eighteen hundred years’.

  During those eighteen hundred years of cruel persecution, when we herded them like lepers in the ghetto, when we insulted them and outraged them and beat them, living like a conquered people amongst their conquerors … [i]t was then and there that they learned the science of finance, for the trade of money was the only occupation which contemptuously was abandoned to them.

  Then Sherard turned his attention to the ‘syndicate’ – the supposed conspiracy of Jews which was supporting Dreyfus. Zola replied,

  ‘The famous syndicate of which I am supposed to be a member. That is all sheer nonsense. There are as many Jews against Dreyfus as there are for him, more indeed … There is no syndicate of Jews to free Dreyfus. There is no syndicate of Jews, the world over, for any purpose. That they are helpful to each other, that amongst members of no other religious faith is there such great solidarity, that a Jew can always count on the assistance of his fellows is a fact, and the primary cause of this … is that they were bound together by centuries of common suffering …’

  In truth, though this was presented as an interview, much of it was taken from Zola’s articles on anti-semitism written before he joined the campaign to free Dreyfus. However, this was one of the first occasions when these articles would have been seen in English and shows how Zola’s profile in Britain was changing just prior to his exile. No matter how odd or imperfect Zola’s arguments against racism towards Jews were, they remain one of the few examples at this time of a non-Jew taking a stance against anti-semitism. Even rarer was to find a socialist of any complexion taking up this position, and it was through Zola’s attachment first to the Dreyfus case, then through convincing Jaurès to join in, that the socialist movement started to argue against antisemitism.

  The official voice for the British Jewish community at this time was the Jewish Chronicle. On 21 January 1898 it described ‘J’Accuse’ as a ‘bold step’. It reported on the antisemitic riots and attacks on Jews, with ‘Anarchists’ fighting the ‘anti-Semites’ in the fog in a Paris street. ‘Professors’ were almost the only people supporting Zola, it said. The paper criticised The Times for not giving Zola ‘sufficient credit for the public spirit of his action … but it fails, we think, to recognise the keynote of M. Zola’s literary temper, namely devotion to truth for its own sake.’ This will ‘justify him in history even if he has to suffer very severely in the present …’

  A week later, Zola was described as ‘incisive’ and the paper published ‘J’Accuse’ in its entirety as a supplement. Again, in great detail it reported on the anti-semitic outbreaks and attacks. Just as Zola was leaving England in June 1899, one ‘J. M. L.’ wrote to the paper. The letter was given the heading, ‘Testimonial to Zola’:

  It seems to me that the time has arrived when every Jew and Jewess in every part of the world ought to desire to shew their full recognition of the valuable service rendered to the cause of Judaism by the one man and he (an alien to the Jewish faith) the great man Zola, whose courage and energy in the cause of right and justice, has been the means of bringing to light the unjust sentence passed on the unfortunate Dreyfus. I therefore propose that a subscription be raised to present him with a suitable testimonial to shew that his great work has found an echo in the heart of every lover of Judaism and justice. Should this suggestion take root, I shall be pleased to send my ‘widow’s mite’.

  How representative of mainstream Jewish opinion this was is not clear, other than to say that the paper wouldn’t have published it unless it had some currency.

  In the Contemporary Review of April 1898, David Christie Murray reviewed the Zola trial and said of Zola, ‘I still think his methods mistaken. I still think his work baneful. But I shall never again do him the injustice to doubt the loftiness and essential purity of his desire.’ He also brought an image of Zola in court to English speakers: ‘In his anxiety to be heard throughout the hall he pitched his voice too high, and the effect was painfully harsh and dissonant. He cracked into a shrill falsetto, and the crowd at the back of the court broke into a roar of insulting laughter.’ Murray also made clear that he was prepared to overcome his dislike of Zola’s ‘rhetoric’ to approve of his actions.

  More positive was the National Review. Between March 1898 and October 1899 the editor, Leo Maxse, devoted many pages to campaigning for the revision of the Dreyfus case and analysed ‘J’Accuse’ in positive tones. As evidence of the way in which Zola passed into mythic or proverbial consciousness at this time, the historian Martyn Cornick cites the example of Conan Doyle, who ‘assumed Zola’s mantle’ when defending a ‘foreign’ solicitor’s wrongful imprisonment a few years later.

  Three books appeared on the Dreyfus case in 1899, each with thoughts on Zola’s intervention. In order of how far on in the progress of the Affair they were written, they were: The Dreyfus Case by Fred. C. Conybeare; A History of the Dreyfus Case by George Barlow; and The Tragedy of Dreyfus by G. W. Steevens.

  Conybeare devoted a chapter to Zola. As was customary, he distanced himself from what he called Zola’s ‘indecencies’ but he didn’t join with others in condemning ‘the excessive vigour of his denunciations’ in ‘J’Accuse’. It was
only Zola’s ‘fierce denunciation’ that had brought the matter to the attention of the nation. ‘The time was past for gentler methods, and he penned that most terrible of all philippics, his letter beginning “J’accuse”.’ Conybeare also bore witness to the vehemence of the language used in court against Zola:

  The Procureur-Genéral said, ‘M. Zola has defamed others, because he is gifted with immeasurable pride, because he fancies himself as being the Messiah of the ideal, and representing the genius of France, to have the power of driving deep into the rebellious conscience of the nation a distrust of the court-martial’s verdict …’

  Barlow was more expansive in his admiration of Zola’s actions: a man of ‘perfect good faith … he was fighting against France for the sake of France’. Readers of Zola’s prose essays would know that ‘he loves truth and hates humbug with a thoroughly English love and hate …’ What’s more, anyone who had read his novel La Débâcle would know that he was someone who could write a ‘complete and unflinching exposure of the causes which led to the disastrous break-down of the French army in 1870 …’ In fact, according to Barlow, the French generals had never forgiven Zola for telling the world the whole truth about their predecessors of 1870. And now, in similar fashion, what Zola had done was break down the ‘conspiracy of silence’ around the Dreyfus case.

  In summing up the contribution Zola had made through ‘J’Accuse’ and his defence of it in court, Barlow claimed that Zola ‘had acted from the most generous and humane motives, from love of France and true regard for his country’s honour, and with the most absolute good faith’ – all presumably extremely positive aspects of his character to lay before a British readership. What’s more, Zola had ‘saved the honour of French literary men’.