With Zola in England | Page 2

is that for some
years now I have translated M. Zola's novels into English, and that I
have taken my share of the proceeds of the translations. For the rest our
intercourse has been purely and simply that of friends.
It is because, I believe, I know and understand Emile Zola so well, that
I never once lost confidence in him throughout the events which led to
his exile in England. That exile, curiously enough, I foreshadowed in a
letter addressed to the 'Star' some months before it actually began.
When, however, one has been intimate with the French for thirty years
or so it is not, to my thinking, so very difficult to tell what is likely to
happen in a given French crisis. The unexpected has to be reckoned
with, of course; and much depends on ability to estimate the form
which the unexpected may take. Here experience, familiarity with

details of contemporary French history, and personal knowledge of the
men concerned in the issue, become indispensable.
On January 16, 1898, three days after M. Zola's famous 'J'accuse' letter
appeared in 'L'Aurore,' and two days before the French Government
instructed the Public Prosecutor to proceed against its author, I wrote to
the 'Westminster Gazette' a long letter dealing with M. Zola's position.
In this letter, which appeared in the issue of the 19th, I began by
establishing a comparison between Zola and Voltaire, whose action
with regard to the memory of Jean Calas I briefly epitomised.
Curiously enough at that moment M. Zola, as I afterwards learnt, was
telling the Paris correspondent of the 'Daily Chronicle' that the
opposition offered to his advocacy of the cause of Alfred Dreyfus was
identical with that encountered by Voltaire in his championship of
Calas. This was a curious little coincidence, for I wrote my letter
without having any communication with M. Zola respecting it. It
contained some passes which I here venture to quote. In a book dealing
with the great novelist these passages may not be out of place, as they
serve to illustrate his general attitude towards the Dreyfus case.
'Truth,' I wrote, 'has been the one passion of Emile Zola's life.* "May
all be revealed so that all may be cured" has been his sole motto in
dealing with social problems. "Light, more light!"--the last words
gasped by Goethe on his death-bed--has ever been his cry. Holding the
views he holds, he could not do otherwise than come forward at this
crisis in French history as the champion of truth and justice. Silence on
his part would have been a denial of all his principles, all his past
life. . . . Against him are marshalled all the Powers of Darkness, all the
energy of those who prefer concealment to light, all the enmity of the
military hierarchy which has never forgotten "La Debacle," all the
hatred of the Roman hierarchy which will never forgive "Lourdes" and
"Rome." And the fetish of Patriotism is brandished hither and thither,
rallying even free-thinkers to the cause of concealment, while each and
every appeal for light and truth is met by the clamorous cry: "Down
with the dirty Jews!"
* He himself wrote these very words seventeen months later in his
article 'Justice,' published in Paris on his return from exile.
'For even as Jean Calas was guilty of being a Protestant so is Alfred
Dreyfus guilty of being a Jew, and at the present hour unhappily there

are millions of French people who can no more believe in a Jew's
innocence than their forerunners could believe a Protestant to be
guiltless. Zola, for his part, is no Jew, nor can he even be called a friend
of the Jews--in several of his books he has attacked them somewhat
violently for certain tendencies shown by some of their number--but
most assuredly does he regard them as fellow-men and not as
loathsome animals. In the same way Voltaire wrote pungent pages
against the narrow practices of Calvinism and yet espoused the causes
of Calas and Sirven, even as Zola has espoused that of Dreyfus. The
only remaining question is whether Zola will prove as successful as his
famous forerunner. [Nearly the whole of the European press was at that
stage expressing doubt on this point.] In this connection I may say that
I regard Zola as a man of very calm, methodical, judicial mind. He is
no ranter, no lover of words for words' sake, no fiery enthusiast. Each
of his books is a most laborious, painstaking piece of work. If he ever
brings forward a theory he bases it on a mountain of evidence, and he
invariably subordinates his feeling to his reason. I therefore venture to
say that if he has come forward so prominently in this Dreyfus case it is
not