“My dear Murray,—Its being a week-end will prevent my
coming up for I have always several visitors. I hope when
you can come down you will let me know. Very much interested
in your views upon the Dreyfus case. I fancy that the
Government may know upon evidence which they dare not
disclose (spy or traitor evidence) that he is guilty and
have convicted him on a bogus document,—Yours
very truly,
“(Sgd.) A. Conan Doyle.”
For nine long days I went over the photographs of the authentic letters and the incriminating Bordereau with a powerful magnifier, and in the end I succeeded in establishing no fewer than twenty-two distinct and characteristic differentiations between them. I had already entered upon the preparation of an alphabetical synopsis when I learned of the existence of that work of monumental patience and research which had been prepared by Monsieur Bernard Lazare of Paris, and a consultation of its pages showed me that part of the work I had undertaken had already been performed by Monsieur Gustave Bridier, an acknowledged expert in handwriting in Switzerland.
I caused all the documents at my disposal to be photographed on glass, and thus prepared I betook myself from my home in North Wales to London, where I found an immediate and enthusiastic helper in the person of Mr J. N. Maskelyne of the Egyptian Hall. He lent me the use of the most powerful oxyhydrogen magnifying lantern in London and prepared for me a great screen on to which the photographs could be most delicately and accurately thrown in an enormously magnified form. Until the fact of my intended demonstration was announced by the Press, I had not the remotest idea as to the intense interest with which the case was regarded by the British public.
I had caused it to be announced that anybody desiring to be present might secure a ticket of admission by forwarding to me a stamped directed envelope. The Egyptian Hall seated about 360 people, and I received applications which would certainly have enabled me to fill the vast auditorium of the Albert Hall twice over. The result was that I was enabled to make a choice, and when the night arrived the little hall was packed with the pick of the brains of London, drawn from both Houses of Parliament, from the Bench, the Bar, the diplomatic services of Europe, the Royal Academy, the learned professions generally and the Press of London. When a page of the Bordereau was first thrown upon the screen side by side with the authentic handwriting of the prisoner at Devil's Island, I knew that I had my work cut out for me, for there were murmurs everywhere of “Identical!” “Damnatory!” “That settles the whole question,” and so on. The mood of the audience was not to be doubted for an instant, but I knew my case and I was confident. Litde by little, as demonstration succeeded demonstration, the temper changed, and at the conclusion I achieved a triumph such as I have never before or since enjoyed. I hope sincerely that I do not take more credit to myself for that night's work than I deserve, but so far as I could judge there was not one of my hearers who went away unconvinced. The Metropolitan Press woke up and in its turn awakened the yet more influential journals of the provinces, who exert an intenser as well as a narrower influence, and in a very little time there came a reverberating boom in answer from the other side of the Atlantic. Before the lecture was delivered I received many threatening letters from truculent Frenchmen, who regarded any foreign criticism of the evidence on which Dreyfus had been found guilty as an insolent assault upon the honour of the French army. Two of my correspondents threatened me with assassination if I should dare to carry out my project, and scores of them expressed themselves in terms of indignation and contempt. The most popular idea appeared to be that I was a hireling in the employ of the Jews, and that I was being very handsomely subsidized to take up the cudgels in a base and disgraceful cause. I confess that I rather wished that this idea of a subsidy were true, for in time and money I had spent considerably more than I could legitimately afford, but the truth remains that Mr Maskelyne and I stood the whole racket and that, so far as we were concerned, there might as well have been no Israel in Great Britain or outside it.
It was this incident in my career which brought me acquainted with Emile Zola, for whose work I had until that time felt a profound aversion. I do not profess to be in sympathy with that work even now, but I got to know the man and to recognise his purpose. When he published in the pages of L'Aurore, his famous article entitled “J'accuse,” and was brought to trial on account of it, I went over to Paris, eager to meet him and to assure him that the intelligence of the world outside the boundaries of France was entirely with him. I reached Paris a day before the trial was appointed to begin, and I made my way at once to the office of the Steele, where I applied to my old friend, Monsieur Yves Guyot, for an introduction. He refused it flatly: “The man,” he said, “is up to his eyes in responsibilities and labour. Every moment he can spare is given to consultation with Maître Labori, who is engaged to defend him, and I must refuse in his own interest to trouble him further.” It was impossible not to recognise the justice of Monsieur Guyot's plea, but when all was said and done I felt that I was there as one of the rank and file in a losing cause, and that I had something of a right to be near my leader. “I assure you,” said M. Guyot, in parting from me, “that nothing will persuade Zola to receive a stranger at this time. He is one of those publicists who hate publicity, and he knows you already as one of the bitterest critics of his literary methods; it is quite hopeless to dream of bringing you together now.” In my perplexity I bethought me of Monsieur Bernard Lazare who, as Zola's acknowledged champion in the Press, was in constant communication with him, and who had sent to me an enthusiastic appreciation of the effect of my London lecture. I went to see him and in one minute over the telephone an interview was arranged for six o'clock that evening. I was there to the minute, but at the entrance to the Rue de Bruxelles I was stopped by a posse of gendarmes and subjected to a vigorous examination. Zola's house was like a castle in a state of siege. It became evident later on that he was under police protection and that it was felt necessary to guard him against the violence of the mob, but it appeared at first sight as if he were a pre-judged criminal whose escape it was necessary to make impossible. When the gates of the courtyard were at last opened reluctantly to me, I was ushered into a chamber which might have been one of the exhibition rooms of a dealer in bric-à-brac. There was a sedan chair in one corner, and it was hardly possible to move without disturbing some Japanese or Chinese grotesquerie in brass or porcelain.
I waited here alone for half an hour and then in came Zola with both hands hospitably outstretched. “Vous parlez Français?” he began, “Bien!” and with that he thrust me to a sofa and talked as I never heard man talk before. “We know all,” he said, by way of exordium, “all, all, all! and here is the history of this lamentable case.” That half-forgotten American chronicler of English manners—Mr N. P. Willis—somewhere described Disraeli as “talking as a racehorse runs.” That was Zola's way that evening; he threw himself headlong into his narrative and he talked with head and feet and arms and shoulders. His speech was almost incredibly brilliant and painted, but I have very often thought since then that in the constant preoccupation of his mind with this one theme and the constant repetition of the strongest points he had to make, he had acquired, as it were, the faculty of threading all his conversational pearls upon a single string, and that he was, in fact, presenting himself to his latest audience with a discourse which was already finished and polished at Adunguen. He gave me a description of the scene of Dreyfus's public degradation on the Champ de Mars which was like a chapter of Carlyle's French Revolution at first hand. It was crammed with detail and so intensely dramatic that it made the scene live over again. I asked him at last in surprise: “But surely you were not there?” “No,” he explained eagerly, “I was not there, but you know my method; I have had the scene described by a thousand eye-witnesses, and at last I have reconstructed it for myself.” He told me of the prospect for the defence and described the man upon whom the burden would mainly rest—“un véritable géant,” he told me with a voice to rally an army in retreat.
I met Maître Labori in Court next morning and admired the cool intrepidity of his defence, though it was only when he came to address the jury that he gave us a real touch of his quality. I know little of the French method of judicial procedure, but anything more transparently hollow than the pretence of justice which was offered to Emile Zola it would not be easily possible to conceive. Whenever the defending counsel put a question to any one of the witnesses for the prosecution which bade fair to touch the marrow of the case, Monsieur Delegorgue consulted with his colleagues and invariably closed the consultation by saying: “La question ne sera pas passée.” In that case it was Labori's habit to answer: “I shall have to enter an interpolation,” which he did, to the effect that the progress of the case was arrested for a space of anything from five minutes to a quarter of an hour, until he had drawn up his formal protest. Meanwhile the courtyard of the Palais de Justice was rigorously closed against all who could not establish a right to entry, but outside the railings a great mob continually surged, and at such times as they could escape from their scholastic labours an army of students marched up and down singing: “Conspuez Zola!” to a tune roughly based on the air of “La Donna é mobile.” Evening after evening Zola and his defenders had to escape from the court under the shelter of a cavalry escort, and on occasion the crowd made an ugly rush in its effort to get at them.
I was standing near the locked gate in the great courtyard awaiting the outcoming party, when I witnessed an episode which was very prettily illustrative of one aspect of the popular mind. In the crowd outside, close to the railings, stood a big man and a little one. I don't know whether I was in at the beginning of the altercation, or if it had been led up to in any way, but what I heard and saw was this. “Tu es juif, n'est ce pas?” said the big man, with a sort of bullying jocundity. “Mais oui, monsieur,” the little man assented. “Ah!” said the other, “you wear your nose too long for your face.” With that simple but sufficing explanation, the big man hit the little man on the obnoxious feature and felled him to the pavement. There was a bit of a student rush at that moment, and the crowd went over the prostrate figure, but a detachment of the gardes de ville which happened to be near at hand, went in and rescued him, and he was borne away all muddy and tattered and bleeding.
The sport of Jew-baiting went on quite merrily all over Paris at this time, and on the Place Bouge, on the Sunday afternoon on which M. Henri Rochefort elected to surrender himself to the prison authorities, there was at least a score of merry little chases in which a hundred or so of whooping and roaring citizens would pursue some member of the unpopular race until he found refuge amongst the soldiery or the police, when he was hustled on to take his chance amidst another portion of the crowd. There was more horse-play than anger in all this, and cases in which serious mischief was inflicted were rare. But the mob was in a highly explosive state for all that, and any sturdy attempt at resistance or self-defence might at any moment have led to bloodshed.
The surrender of M. Rochefort was really, when all things are considered, one of the drollest spectacles I have ever seen. That venerable political firebrand had been adjudged guilty of contempt of court and had been sentenced to seven days' imprisonment as a first-class misdemeanant. He was mulct in some inconsiderable fine as well, and he was allowed to suit his own convenience and fancy as to the time and manner of surrender. He chose to present himself to his gaolers on a Sunday, and to arrive in an open carriage at the head of a small procession. All Paris turned out to see him. There were fifteen thousand troops along the line of route, and fifty thousand more of all arms quartered near at hand. Why there should have been any necessity for the collection of such a force, or for the provocation of a possible riot under the conditions, it was difficult to see. The crowd groaned and cheered with tremendous enthusiasm, and when at last somebody waved a tri-colour flag from an upper window, it went roaring mad with cries of Vive Rochefort! Vive la France! Vive Fannie! In the end it dribbled away quite peacefully, overflowing into all the neighbouring cabarets, or trailing off homeward through the dusk and mud. Here and there a street orator found his chance and gathered a crowd about him, but these were quietly moved on by the police, and before seven o'clock, that part of Paris had resumed its normal aspect. I tried hard to discover some intelligible reason for this curious outburst of popular feeling, but I could find none except that the condition of the popular mind was such that almost any excuse for gathering in crowds, and indulging in noisy cheers and groans, was welcome as a sort of safety valve.