Émile Zola, Novelist and Reformer: An Account of His Life & Work

by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

1893-1897

Zola's personal appearance—A palmist's reading of his hand—Some of his petty manias and superstitions—His powers of observation—His memory—Characteristics of his intellect—His daily life—His orderliness—His "confession"—The drama of his life—A childless home—Birth of an illegitimate daughter and son—Some great men and the moral law—Some eminent women and the popular standard of morality—The alleged "new Zola"—Sermonising novels—"L'Attaque du Moulin" as an opera—The trilogy of "Lourdes," "Rome," and "Paris"—Faith, hope, and charity to be replaced by fruitfulness, work, truth, and justice—Attacks on "Lourdes"—Arrest of Dreyfus—Zola, his book "Rome," and Pope Leo XIII.—His stay in the Eternal City—He visits his Italian relatives—Difficulties of writing "Rome"—Its publication—Charges of plagiarism and Zola's answer—His volume "Nouvelle Campagne—His opinion of a clairvoyante"—His first defence of the Jews.

In middle age Zola was about five feet seven inches high. His trunk was short, his legs being rather long for a man of the stature indicated, but he had a broad and prominent chest, and his shoulders were well set. His left foot was sensibly shorter than the right, his instep was very arched. He had small wrists, but large though shapely hands with small round nails. According to Dr. Édouard Toulouse[1] all the diameters of his skull were distinctly above the average, but his brain was never weighed, for at the time of his death his friends resisted applications made to them by certain scientists to whom, it seems, Zola himself had almost promised that his remains would be at their disposal.

Being very short-sighted, he usually wore glasses, seen though which his eyes seemed deep and somewhat stern; but in intimacy they softened and sparkled freely. At one period he wore his hair short, at another long, and according to these variations his forehead seemed to change, assuming at one time an appearance of abnormal height. His lips were somewhat thick and sensual, inclined to pout. He had large ears, and heard better with the left than with the right. For music, in spite of his long association with M. Bruneau, the composer, he really had little ear, though he possessed a keen sense of rhythm. On looking at him the feature that most struck one was certainly his nose, which had a gradually broadening, lobulated tip. Edmond de Goncourt declared that Zola's physiognomy was summed up in this somewhat peculiar nasal organ,[2] which, he jestingly remarked, resembled the muzzle of a sporting dog, and assumed all sorts of expressions—indicating, in turn, approval, condemnation, wonder, amusement, sadness, or whatever else might be its owner's opinion or mood. While making all allowance for humoristic exaggeration, there was certainly some truth in Goncourt's words.[3]

Zola's hands, to which reference has been made above, were examined on one occasion by a "palmist"; and for the benefit of those who believe in chiromancy one may mention that the sibyl's pronouncement was to this effect: " A great change at forty years of age; a long life; a sudden death; fond of family life and travelling; proficient in art and partial to military music; confident in the future but having little confidence in himself personally; a large heart but more philanthropically inclined towards collectivities than towards individuals; possessed of a deep sense of justice, the slightest injustice exasperating him; admiring audacity, strength, and authority while fond of liberty for himself; influenced more by his mind than by sensual passion at the outset of his love affairs, but afterwards extremely ardent."[4]

The lack of self-confidence indicated by the palmist was confirmed by Zola to Dr. Toulouse, who found that the novelist's doubt of himself was excessive and unreasonable. He frequently feared that he might be unable to accomplish his daily task, finish the book he had begun, or conclude the speech he was delivering. At one period, before he could go to bed he had to satisfy a peculiar craving to touch and retouch certain articles of furniture, open and reopen certain drawers. Arithmomania pursued him: he was for ever counting the gas lamps in one or another street, and the number of the houses. He long believed multiples of three to be of good augury, but later, as he told Goncourt, multiples of seven inspired him with most confidence. Moreover, he was so susceptible to thunder and lightning that whenever a storm burst over Médan all the shutters had to be closed and all the lamps lighted, after which he would often bandage his eyes with a handkerchief. Even when there was no storm and he found himself in absolute darkness, he was occasionally troubled by what seemed to be luminous phenomena.

A dreadful idea came to him now and then: it was that his heart had moved into his arm or his thigh, and that he could feel it beating there. It must be said, too, that he was most sensitive to physical pain[5] and extremely subject to emotion, which brought on attacks of a form of angina from which he suffered, periodically, over a period of thirty years. The insults levelled at him by unscrupulous journalists, as much with respect to the alleged obscenity of his writings as to his share in the Dreyfus case, constantly led to such attacks, but his mind being always superior to his body, he never swerved from what he regarded as his duty—the enunciation of inconvenient truths—even though he knew he would be savagely denounced for it and that his ailment would necessarily return. Briefly, as Dr. Toulouse has said, his émotivité, although morbid, always left his mind in a state of perfect lucidity and equilibrium. To the psychologist and the physician his example demonstrated, in the most unimpeachable manner, the authority of the mind over the body, the power of the will over disease.

His powers of observation were exceptionally keen. Dr. Toulouse, in the course of an experiment he made with him, placed a photograph of an idiot child before his eyes for a few moments. He immediately noticed certain anatomical peculiarities which as a rule would only strike a medical man, and he noticed them although they were scarcely perceptible in the photograph, which had greatly faded. But, adds Dr. Toulouse, as soon as Zola ceased to observe consciously, his attention flagged, and at times he did not even recognise acquaintances whom he met in the street. "They think," he said to the doctor, "that when I forget to acknowledge them I am absorbed in deep meditation about my next novel, but as a matter of fact I am not thinking of anything." It was the same with his memory. When he wished to remember any object or scene, the details became printed on his mind as clearly and fully as if they had been photographed. But unless he made a voluntary effort, his memory did not serve him. When he was Président de la Société des Gens de Lettres three months elapsed before he could repeat the names of the twenty-four members of the committee. If he had been as deeply interested in those gentlemen as he was in the facts he collected for his books, he would certainly have recalled their names at once.

Some novelists note everything around them,—people, places, and occurrences,—and store them up for subsequent use in one or another book; but that was not Zola's system. If he were writing about peasants, other matters scarcely interested him. You might have told him something curious about soldiers or financiers, he would have given it little heed. He isolated his mind, as it were, concentrated it entirely on the subject he had in hand. Moreover, his imagination was as systematic as his memory. As stated in a previous chapter, he first decided on the general ideas he would illustrate, then, by deduction, he imagined the characters likely to illustrate those ideas. A thousand concrete facts thereupon arose in his mind, grouped themselves in his system, and imparted life to his philosophical abstractions. That faculty, that power of assembling affinitive images, tending to a logical end, was preponderant in Zola. By its means the psychical processus is canalised, mental effort and waste are diminished, and the will is able to act in a well-defined manner. In Zola such power was developed to the highest degree, and therein will be found the reason of his intellectual superiority. It links him with all the great creators possessed of systematic minds, the men who have gone, not groping darkly, but with patient effort and in full light, towards their objects. Hugo and Balzac showed by their writings that their brains were organised in the same manner. The quick and inconsiderate mind, so unequal in its inspirations, which is often attributed to artists, does not seem compatible with great creative power, the latter acting in a much more uniform manner. Zola's particular mentality explains both his life and his work. He systematised in literature the realistic tendencies of the philosophy of Comte and Taine; and he carried that systematisation to its farthest limit by creating the novel of complete observation (le roman d'observation intégrale), in which he studied heredity under all its aspects, recoiling from no audacity either of observation or of expression.