Читать книгу Émile Zola, Novelist and Reformer: An Account of His Life & Work - Ernest Alfred Vizetelly - Страница 8

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.

His mother and grandmother spoilt him, as the saying goes. His father's death filled them with indulgence for his childish faults. He was a boy to be petted and humoured, for the greatest of misfortunes had fallen on him. Spending so much of his time in the open air, he was becoming quite a sturdy little fellow, sun-tanned, with soft, thoughtful eyes and a perky nose, and his incessant questions seemed to indicate the possession of an intelligent and eager mind. But, as yet, no attempt was made to educate him. His mother was already busy with her lawyers, striving to enforce her claims, and endeavouring also to obtain influential support. When Thiers came to Aix some four months after François Zola's death, the widow presented her little son to the great man in the hope of thereby arousing his sympathy. And Thiers certainly responded with fair words, though whether he went further is doubtful. At all events, lawsuits were started, and to the worry they entailed one must ascribe the comparative neglect in which young Émile remained a little longer.

At last, in the autumn of 1847, it was decided to send him to school. Some doubt as to the result of the lawsuits was already arising in the minds of Madame Zola and her parents, and they felt that they must at least provide for the boy's future by giving him a sound education. It was suggested that he should be sent immediately to the College of Aix—now called the Lycée Mignet; but as he did not even know his letters, Madame Aubert, his grandmother, sensibly decided to select a preparatory school. One was found near the Notre Dame gate, from which it derived its appellation of Pension Notre Dame. It was kept by a worthy and indulgent pedagogue, named Isoard, who after infinite trouble—for the boy was stubborn and bitterly regretted his careless life in the open air—contrived to teach him to read the Fables of La Fontaine. It was at this time that young Émile formed his earliest life-friendships; he became attached to two of his school-fellows, one of whom, Solari, a sculptor of distinguished talent, is still alive, while the other, Marius Roux, acquired a passing reputation as a "popular" novel writer.[6] These two were Zola's usual playmates at marbles, tops, and leap-frog, his first companions also in the rambles in which he began to indulge.

For some reason or other, Madame Zola and the Auberts moved from the Impasse Sylvacanne to the Pont-de-Beraud, in the open country, on the road to Toulon, and then young Émile had fields before him with a picturesque stream, the Torse, so called on account of its capricious windings—"a torrent in December, the most timid of rivulets in the fine weather," as he called it afterwards in his "Contes à Ninon." And the charms of the country, the inviting banks of the Torse, often made a truant of him—a truant who remained unpunished, for as his grandparents generally said "It was not right to cross the poor fatherless boy."

The position of the family was now, however, becoming difficult. The widow's savings were dwindling away in legal and living expenses; and some who had been willing to help her were at present unable to do so, having lost authority, influence, and, at times, even means. France had passed through a revolution, Louis Philippe had been overthrown; unrest was widespread throughout the period of the Second Republic; and when Louis Napoleon strangled that régime in the night, Provence became convulsed, there were risings, excesses, bloodshed, even as Émile Zola subsequently depicted in the pages of "La Fortune des Rougon." The new municipality of Aix, appointed after the Coup d'État, was not inclined to effect any reasonable compromise with those Orléanist protégés, the Zolas. One on whom they had largely relied, Thiers, was himself virtually a fugitive. Again, in those days of trouble the law's delays became greater than ever; apart from which it would seem that Madame Zola's actions were altogether ill-conducted. Nevertheless, in the summer of 1852, though her affairs were taking a very unfavourable course, and it was becoming necessary to trench upon the investments whence the Auberts derived their modest personal income, it was at last decided to send Émile to the College of Aix as a boarder, and the family, in order to be nearer to him, moved into the town, its new home being in the Rue Bellegarde.

The boy could now see that the family resources were diminishing. The last servant had been dismissed, and it was his grandmother, the still lively and sturdy Beauceronne, who attended to most of the housework. Moreover, she and her daughter had largely taken the lad into their confidence, and he, precociously realising that his future would most likely depend on his own exertions, resolved to turn over a new leaf. Though his love for the open air in no wise diminished, he studied profitably from the time of entering the College of Aix in October, 1852. He was placed in the seventh class (the lowest but one), and at the expiration of the school year, in August, 1853, he was awarded first prizes for history and geography, recitation, and the translation of Latin into French, and second prizes for grammar, arithmetic, religious instruction, and the translation of French into Latin.[7] In the following year, in the sixth class, he was less successful, some antipathy, it is said, existing between him and one of the professors.[8] Nevertheless, his name was inscribed on the tableau d'honneur, and he obtained a first prize for history and geography, a first accessit[9] in religious instruction, and third accessits in excellence and recitation.

Next, 1854–1855, he passed into the fifth class, in which he gained two first prizes for Latin, translation and composition; a second prize for the translation of Greek into French, a first accessit in excellence, and third accessits in French, history, geography, and recitation. At the end of the ensuing school year, when he joined the fourth class, he secured four first prizes—excellence, Latin composition, Latin verse, translation from Latin into French; and three second prizes—history and geography, grammar, and Greek exercise. Finally, in 1856–1857 (his last completed year, spent in the third class) he was awarded: the tableau d'honneur prize, first prizes for excellence, French composition, arithmetic, geometry, physics, chemistry, natural history, and recitation; second prizes for religious instruction and translation from the Latin; with a first accessit in history and geography. He was then in his eighteenth year, and if prize-winning might be taken as a criterion, there was every likelihood that he would achieve a distinguished career.

But one must now go back a little, for other matters marked those school days at Aix. At first the boy boarded at the college, then he became a half-boarder, and finally an externe, or day pupil, taking his meals at home; these changes being necessitated by the gradually declining position of his family. Already while he was a boarder, that is, barely in his teens, his literary bent began to assert itself, a perusal of Michaud's "Histoire des Croisades" inspiring him to write a romance of the middle ages, copiously provided with knights, Saracens, and fair damsels in distress. That boyish effort, though the almost illegible manuscript was preserved through life by its author, remained unprinted, and a like fate attended a three-act comedy in verse, entitled "Enfoncé le Pion," or "The Usher Outwitted." However, given these literary leanings, and a fervent admiration for some of the poets, as will presently be shown, it may at first seem strange that on entering the third class in 1856, and being called upon to choose between letters and sciences, Zola, then over seventeen, should have selected the latter. In this respect, as Paul Alexis says, he was influenced in part by the fact that, however proficient he might be in the dead languages, he had no real taste for them, whereas the natural sciences interested him; but his choice was also partially governed by the fact that he was the son of an engineer, and that a scientific career would be in accordance with his parentage. In his studies he was guided by one simple, self-imposed rule, a rule which he carried into his after-life, and which largely proved the making of him. He did not eschew play and other recreation, he did not spend interminable hours in poring over books, there was nothing "goody-goody" about him; but he invariably learnt his lessons, prepared his exercises, before he went to play. And, all considered, no more golden rule can be offered to the schoolboy.

Zola and his disciple Paul Alexis, who also studied at the Aix College, have sketched it as it was at that time—a former convent, old and dank, with a somewhat forbidding frontage, a dark chapel, and grimly barred windows facing a quiet little square, on which still stands the rococo fountain of the Four Dolphins. Within the gate were two large yards, one planted with huge plane trees, and the other reserved chiefly for gymnastic exercises, while all around were the class-rooms, the lower ones dismal, damp, and stuffy, and the upper ones more cheerful of aspect, with windows overlooking the greenery of neighbouring gardens. The refectory again was quite a den, always redolent of dish-water; but comparative comfort might be found in the infirmary, managed by some "gentle sisters in black gowns and white coifs." The masters, if Zola's subsequent account of them in "L'Œuvre" may be trusted, were generally ridiculed by the boys, who gave them opprobrious nicknames. One, never known to smile, was called "Rhadamantus"; another, "who by the constant rubbing of his head had left his mark on the wall behind every seat he occupied, was named, plumply, 'Filth'"; and a third had his wife's repeated infidelity openly cast in his face.

Of course, the boys also had their nicknames, Zola, says Paul Alexis, acquiring that of "Franciot," or "Frenchy," which was given him because his pronunciation of various words differed from that of his Provençal school-fellows. This was not to be wondered at, the parent to whom he owed his mother tongue being a Beauceronne. Other anecdotes which picture him suffering from an impediment in his speech may be taken with a grain of salt, perhaps, as the official records show that he gained prizes and accessits for recitation. As had been the case at the Pension Notre Dame, he formed a close friendship with a few of his school-fellows. One of these was a lawyer's son, named Marguery, a bright, merry lad with musical tastes, who a few years later, to the general amazement, blew his brains out in a fit of insanity. Another was Antony Valabrègue, afterwards a tasteful poet, whose family, curiously enough, became connected with that of Captain Dreyfus. Valabrègue being some years younger than Zola, their companionship at school did not go very far, but they subsequently corresponded, and intimacy ensued between them. At the college Zola's more particular chums were Cézanne and Baille, the former afterwards well known as an impressionist painter, the second as a professor at the École Polytechnique. Baille, Cézanne, and Zola became inseparables, and though all three were fairly diligent pupils in class-time, they indulged in many a boyish prank together during the earlier years of their sojourn at the college.

One morning, in a spirit of mischievousness, they burnt the shoes of a school-fellow, a lank lad called Mimi-la-Mort, alias the Skeleton Day Boarder, who smuggled snuff into the school. Then one winter evening they purloined some matches in the chapel and smoked dry chestnut leaves in reed pipes there. Zola, who was the ringleader on that occasion, afterwards frankly confessed his terror; owning that a cold perspiration had come upon him as he scrambled out of the dark choir. Again, another day, Cézanne hit upon the idea of roasting some cock-chafers in his desk to see whether they were good to eat, as people said they were. So terrible became the stench, so dense the smoke, that the usher rushed for some water, under the impression that the place was on fire. At another time they sawed off the wooden seats in one of the courtyards, and carried them like corpses round the basin of so-called ornamental water in the centre of the yard, other boys joining them, forming in procession, and singing funeral dirges. But in the midst of it all, Baille, who played the priest, tumbled into the basin while trying to scoop some water into his cap, which was to have served as a holy-water pot.[10]

The three inseparables engaged also in many a stone-throwing fight with the town lads, clambered over the old, crumbling, ivy-clad ramparts, and basked on "King René's chimney"[11] on occasions when the mistral thundered by—"buffeting the houses, carrying away their roofs, dishevelling the trees, and raising great clouds of dust, while the sky became a livid blue, and the sun turned pale."[12] There were excursions also, sometimes by way of escorting regiments, which on changing garrison passed through the town, at other moments on the occasion of religious processions when the clergy appeared in their finest vestments, their acolytes swinging censers and ringing hells, the military and municipal bands discoursing music, the white-gowned girls carrying banners, and the boys scattering roses and golden broom.

Although Émile Zola eventually lost all faith in the dogmas of the Roman Church, the pomp of its cult impressed him throughout his life, as is shown by many passages in his works. And in his boyhood the processions of Aix delighted him. He himself sometimes took part in them—acting on at least one occasion, in 1856, as a clarionet player of the college fanfare, for his friend Marguery had imparted to him some taste for music.

Then as now Aix had its theatre, which Zola and his young friends patronised whenever they could afford a franc for a pit seat, but they eschewed café life and the gambling which usually attends it in the provinces, for whenever they had time at their disposal they infinitely preferred to roam the country. The environs of Aix are strangely picturesque. There is the famous Mont Ste. Victoire, ascended through thickets of evergreen oaks and holly, pines, wild roses, and junipers, till at last only some box plants dot the precipitous slopes, veined like marble; while in a cavern near the summit is the weird bottomless pit of Le Garagay, whose demon-spirits Margaret of Anjou vainly interrogated in "Anne of Geierstein." Again, there is the historic castle of Vauvenargues, the ruined castle of Puyricard, the hermitage of St. Honorat, and there are other mountainous hills with goat paths, gorges, and ravines, and also stretches of plain, watered now by the Arc or the Torse, now by the canal which François Zola planned. In his son's youth that canal had not yet transformed the thirsty expanse; when Émile roamed the region with his friends "the red and yellow ochreous fields, spreading under the oppressive sun, were for the most part planted merely with stunted almond and olive trees, with branches twisted in positions which seemed to suggest suffering and revolt. Afar off, like dots on the bare stripped hills, one saw only the white-walled bastides, each flanked by dark, bar-like cypresses. The vast expanse was devoid of greenery; but on the other hand, with the broad folds and sharply defined tints of its desolate fields, it possessed some fine outlines of a severe, classic grandeur."[13]