In honour of the staff and company of the Ambigu, the authors of the play ended by giving a ball at the Élysée Montmartre, which, by the way, figured in Zola's story, and Mr. George Moore, the well-known author of "A Mummer's Wife" and "Esther Waters," has related that his first meeting with Zola—of whom he became for several years the chief English supporter—occurred at this particular entertainment.[14] Mr. Moore—who had then only produced his "Flowers of Passion," and was therefore known in Parisian literary and art circles as a young poet—attended the ball dressed as a Parisian workman, and was engaged to dance with Gervaise. He had no opportunity for conversation when Manet introduced him to Zola, but he called at Médan a few weeks afterwards, and a close friendship sprang up between him and the author of "L'Assommoir." Each, however, was possessed of strong personal convictions, and, as years went by, Zola's life and work gradually took a course of which Mr. Moore did not approve, perhaps because—as admitted by himself—he failed to understand it.
The law of the world is evolution. L'homme absurde est celui qui ne change jamais; and Zola, amid the very triumph of "L'Assommoir," at the very moment when he was expounding the principles of Naturalism in the "Viestnik Yevropi" and "Le Voltaire" (which he joined when "Le Bien Public" ceased publication), was already, and quite unconsciously, perhaps, undergoing a change. He was in some degree carried away by the sudden accession of ample means after years of poverty and years of battle. In the long run he showed himself superior to fortune, whether it were favourable or adverse, but he found its first smile irresistible, as so often happens with those who have long toiled and suffered and cursed their fate. Briefly, he proved no exception to the general rule, and he was taunted with having failed to depart from it, being candidly told in print that, like Herbert Spencer and Gustave Flaubert, he ought to have been quite content with mere lodging-house surroundings, and that he made a ridiculous use of his comparative wealth.
Most of his money, it may be mentioned, was lavished on his property at Médan, to which he made many additions, building, for instance, a large square tower in which he fitted up a spacious workroom, whose huge window suggested that of a studio. In that room in later years most of his books were written. And as wealth accrued a second large tower was added to the first, followed by some smaller ones flanking the entrance of the property. All this was denounced as bad taste; and unquestionably, from an architectural point of view, Médan, with one bit of building added here and another there, became a strange-looking place. At the same time it remains an interesting memorial of the rise of Zola's fortunes. One knows, for instance, that the first tower was built with money derived from "L'Assommoir," that the second was erected with some of the proceeds of "Nana," that this and that enlargement were paid for by "La Terre" or "La Débâcle." Certainly no common parvenu would have left such a tell-tale record. It is doubtful whether he would have been content to dwell during the greater part of the year in an out-of-the way village like Médan; and even had he retained possession of the property he would surely have demolished the original humble little house and have erected some grand Louis Treize château on the site.
But another charge preferred against Zola was that he wasted time and money in collecting works of art and curios—the latter more often than the former. In his novel, "L'Œuvre," he gave an explanation of this which is worth quoting:
"His [Sandoz's, otherwise Zola's] drawing-room was becoming crowded with old furniture, old tapestry, nick-nacks of all countries and all times—an overflowing torrent of things which had begun at Batignolles with an old pot of Rouen ware, which Henriette [Madame Zola] had given her husband on one of his fête days. They ran about the curiosity shops together; they felt a joyful passion for buying; and he now satisfied the old longings of his youth, the romanticist aspirations which the first books he had read had engendered. Thus this writer, who was so fiercely modern, lived amid the worm-eaten middle ages which he had dreamt of when he was a lad of fifteen. As an excuse, he laughingly declared that handsome modern furniture cost too much, whereas with old things, even common ones, you immediately obtained some effect and colour. There was nothing of the collector about him, his one concern was decoration, broad effects; and to tell the truth, the drawing-room, lighted by two lamps of old Delft ware, derived quite a soft, warm tone from the dull gold of the dalmaticas used for upholstering the seats, the yellowish incrustations of the Italian cabinets and Dutch show-cases, the faded hues of the Oriental door-hangings, the hundred little notes of the ivory, the crockery and the enamel work, pale with age, which showed against the dull red hangings."[15]
No doubt, among the great quantity of tapestry, carved wood, old furniture, pottery, church embroideries, and so forth, which Zola thus gathered together, there were occasionally things which did not suggest the best taste or the greatest accuracy of judgment. But the statement quoted above shows that he disclaimed collecting in the ordinary sense, and made purchases solely for decorative purposes. And, in any case, even if he bought a few things whose only recommendation was their quaintness, or accepted an object as genuine when an expert would have known it to be spurious, his transgressions in those matters were of no importance to the world at large, and one is surprised that some of his "candid friends" should have thought it worth while to expatiate on them.
It has been urged, however, that directly money came to Zola, instead of yielding to a desire for comfort, he ought to have devoted himself to travel and study, and particularly have restrained his literary output. He would have derived benefit from foreign travel undoubtedly, but his self-set task of the Rougon-Macquart series long riveted him to France. As for study, he was always studying, books as well as men, and Mr. George Moore's suggestion that he had little acquaintance with the heart of French literature[16] was erroneous, for abundant proof of the contrary will be found in the eight volumes of his collected essays and articles. These also show that he kept abreast of the literature of his time, and all his friends are aware that new books and literary periodicals, to say nothing of a profusion of newspapers, encompassed him during the last twenty years of his life. But, in a large degree, he certainly set the literature of the past behind him, regarding it as being chiefly of historical value. And whether he were right or wrong in that matter, it must be obvious that his attitude was in keeping with his character as an evolutionist. In a word, he was more concerned respecting the future of literature than respecting its antecedents.
But it has been said that a change began to appear in Zola about the time of "L'Assommoir," and the change we more particularly mean is that by which the novelist expanded into a reformer. As scores of his newspaper articles, collected and uncollected, testify, the injustice of the social system had always been manifest to him. With the degradation of many individual lives he was well acquainted. His own rise to affluence made him yet more conscious of the difference between the rich and the poor. His descent into the mire of life, to seek there his Coupeau, his Lantier, and his Gervaise, left on his mind some impress of the horror which he imparted to others. And thus, with him, art no longer remained art for art's sake only,—a broad humanitarianism gradually entered into his literary conceptions.
At the outset the novelist and the reformer were certainly more or less at variance. The cuisine of politics still remained distasteful to Zola, and he is often found protesting that he is merely a literary man and does not wish to intervene in passing events. But as the years elapse the reforming instinct becomes more and more powerful, gathers increased strength from such works as "Germinal" and "La Terre," till at last the humanitarian feeling, triumphing over everything else, trampling unrestrained upon all literary canons, finds voice in "Lourdes" and "Paris," "Fécondité" and "Travail," and at a supreme moment impels Zola to champion the chosen victim of Roman Catholic fanaticism and military infallibility.