September 7.
A Misunderstood Moralist.
Mary R—— was telling us to-day the details of Zola's accidental death—if it was an accident. There are a few, she tells me, who whisper privately that the enemies he made by "Lourdes" and "Rome" are of the sort who wait long and patiently, and strike hard, and strike at the back when the time of vengeance comes. That sounds rather sensational, and certainly the general public have heard no such suggestion.
The story of the death-chamber is like a chapter from one of his own books, and one can't but feel how gruesome and vivid he would have made the account of the tragedy could he have recorded it.
It's rather odd how the multitude still judge Zola at the rating of twenty years since, before he had developed the meaning of his methods and proved himself one of the greatest of the moral teachers.
It was certainly as long ago as that when a battered, grimy copy of "Nana" drifted by some swirl of chance into my youthful hands. I was quite old enough to realize that my pastors and masters would be convulsed with horror did they at all suspect what I was at, but being in those days as omnivorous as Lamb—"Shaftesbury was not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low"—everything on which a hand could be laid passed into my greedy mental maw, from Locke "On the Human Understanding" to the novels of the Duchess, and I had intelligence enough not to chatter about every book I opened.
I remember with perfect vividness the moral revelation given me by the chapter descriptive of the drunken orgie in Nana's rooms, where they wound up the gaieties of the evening by the spirited jest of pouring the champagne into the piano. In a flash was made clear to me what I had never previously suspected, that vice was tedious and unamusing!
Until that moment I had accepted in perfect good faith the insistence of the moralists upon the delicious, exciting, irresistible nature of vice, which, though deplorable in its eventual effects, was too agreeable to be refrained from unless fortified by either religion or the choicest collection of moral maxims.
We were the contented owners, at that same period, of a large engraving of a popular painting entitled "The Prodigal Son"; one of those pictures supposed to have a "good moral" and help silently, in season and out of season, to point towards virtue like a sign at the crossroads. The engraving was divided into three parts, like a triptych; the central, and by far the largest portion, showed the famous ne'er-do-weel prodigalling with all his might in a sort of lordly pleasure dome, all columns and sweeping curtains and steps, open to the sunshine on every side, and decorated with the most expensive cut flowers. A meal, which plainly deserved to be called by no meaner name than a banquet, was toward, and the naughty young gentleman, bedecked in velvet and soothed by the music of viols, was feasting amid a medley of young ladies of the most dazzling physical charms, all attired in those sketchy toilets which have no visible means of support, and which allow the artist to prove his inexhaustible talent for drawing arms and busts. So vivacious and sumptuous was this scene that at first one hardly noticed the narrow panels to right and left, in one of which the profuse prodigal was on a subsequent occasion dining en famille with the swine, and later journeying toward forgiveness and veal.
The moralists, from Isaiah down, have so dearly loved to show their talent for drawing arms and busts. The delineation of vice always usurps all the foreground of the canvas. According to them, the broad road is unfailing in its crops of flowers, the wine is always red in the cup, "with beaded bubbles winking at the brim." The frisky enchantresses are without exception young and charming. The reverse of the picture is depressingly bleak—by way of proper dramatic contrast, perhaps, though to any one less austere than a moralist it would seem unintelligent to point out that in one direction all was gay, brilliant, and agreeable, yet one must follow the gloomy, tedious, and unpleasant road in order to find some intangible spiritual satisfaction, which to youthful and ardent minds seems drearily remote, and unsatisfying when reached. Besides it really isn't true. Life as a matter of fact is certainly more agreeable when one behaves one's self decently. Nothing was ever more blatantly untrue than the cynical proverb which declares that everything pleasant is either indigestible, expensive, or immoral. But the mind of youth is almost touchingly credulous. It rarely questions the accuracy of the descriptions of the moralists, who claim to be experts, though instinctively it develops a necessity for experimenting a little with those forbidden sweets of which it has heard so much praise.