Little more need be added here. Henry Vizetelly left a long account of his prison experiences which the writer may some day print. He was fairly well treated at Holloway,[33] but he writes that after he had left the infirmary (of which he was long an inmate, as the result of the neglect in which he was left immediately after his trial) he had great difficulty in obtaining water of the requisite heat for the treatment of his complaint, his room (previously occupied by Edmund Yates) being so far from the kitchens that, as a rule, the water was almost cold by the time it reached him. His health naturally deteriorated in confinement, but he did his best to look at things cheerfully, and found occupation in planning various literary enterprises. Several friends, notably Edmund Yates, showed great kindness at this time. Mr. George Moore did his best to ventilate the whole question of the prosecution and Robert Buchanan wrote an able pamphlet under the grim title of "On Descending into Hell." Ernest Vizetelly was then chiefly occupied in preparing and circulating a memorial to the Home Secretary, praying for his father's release on various grounds. Though two or three of the newspapers were already beginning to think that matters had been carried too far, few journalists, unless friends, were asked for their signatures; but Vizetelly's son had the satisfaction of securing the support of several notable authors with whom he had never previously held communication. Their letters of sympathy touched him deeply, and showed him that though the newspaper press might be so largely under the thumb of the "National Vigilants," there were men of letters of high standing who retained all their independence of thought. A few, it is true, made certain reserves with respect to Zola's works, but all felt that Henry Vizetelly ought not to have been treated so harshly. The writer, unfortunately, has preserved no complete list of those who signed the petition (from one hundred to one hundred and fifty in number), and he must apologise for the many omissions in the one that follows. It will be noticed that it contains the names of half a dozen lady writers, as well as those of some prominent artists, who remembered Vizetelly's work as a wood-engraver, and all he had done for the pictorial press:
"Sir Algernon Borthwick (now Lord Glenesk), M. P., Sir E. W. Watkin, M. P., T. P. O'Connor, M. P., Samuel Storey, M. P., Charles Bradlaugh, M. P., Dr. C. Cameron, M. P., The Earl of Desart, Sir J. E. Millais, R. A., Sir John Gilbert, R. A., W P. Frith, R. A., Birket Foster, Linley Sambourne, Harry Furniss, George du Maurier, Prof. Henry Morley, Prof. Geddes, J. Arthur Thomson, Edmund Gosse, Dr. R. Garnett, Dr. F. J. Furnivall, Oscar Browning, John Addington Symonds, Leslie Stephen, Dr. R. Maitland Coffin, Norman Maccoll, James S. Cotton, St. Loe Strachey, Hon. Roden Noel, Havelock Ellis, Robert Buchanan, Walter Besant, Hon. Lewis Wingfield, Thomas Hardy, George Moore, W. Clark Russell, H. Rider Haggard, Hall Caine, 'Ouida,' Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett, Mrs. E. Lynn Linton, Mrs. Mona Caird, 'John Strange Winter,' Olive Schreiner, Mabel Collins, Harriett Jay, G. A. Sala, Edmund Yates, Frank Harris, Archibald Forbes, H. W. Lucy, H. D. Traill, A. W. Pinero, William Archer, Augustus Harris, Sir Henry Irving, Henry Arthur Jones, Fitzgerald Molloy, Ernest Rhys, S. W. Orson, Hon. F. C. Lawley, H. Sutherland Edwards, J. C. Parkinson, D. L., Arthur Symons, Alex. C. Ewald, W. R. S. Ralston, Max O'Rell, Savile Clarke, Brinsley Nicholson, G. Laurence Gomme, Frank A. Marshall, Grant Allen, Frederick and James Greenwood, G. B. Le Fanu, F. C. Philips, William Sharp, C. N. Williamson, William Senior, H. T. Wharton, Julius Mayhew, W. H. Dircks, Frank T. Marzials, W. Faux, of W. H. Smith & Sons."
Various persons in official positions, whom etiquette prevented from signing the memorial—for instance Lord Lytton ("Owen Meredith"), then British Ambassador in Paris,—conveyed privately to Ernest Vizetelly their hope that it might prove successful, but the only response of the Home Secretary was that he could not advise her Majesty to interfere in the case. Thus Vizetelly completed his "time" at Holloway, being released at the end of August, 1889. He returned to his home at Putney, and afterwards removed with his daughter and his son Arthur to Heatherlands, near Tilford, Surrey, where he spent, in suffering, the few years that were left him. They happily sufficed for him to see in England a considerable revulsion of feeling with respect to Émile Zola—of whom he had prophesied, in his letter to Sir A. K. Stephenson, that time would bring round its revenges. It will be necessary to allude to him hereafter in connection with Zola's first stay in London, but here one need only add that he died on January 1, 1894, after a final distressing illness. And the little graveyard of the village of Churt became the last resting-place of the man who was persecuted by the Pecksniffs of Great Britain, and whom the "Dictionary of National Biography" describes as the pioneer of the world's pictorial press.
[1] See ante, p. 214.
[2] The writer has a copy of this article, a very able one, cut from the pages of a review or magazine, which, unfortunately he has been unable to identify.
[3] Researches made by the late James T. G. Vizetelly, who was long the senior member of the family (1818-1897), traced it back to Ravenna, whence it removed to Venice. Henry Vizetelly, when preparing his autobiography, had no family documents before him and fell into various errors in his account of his forerunners.
[4] Even his business, that of Vizetelly, Branston & Co., printers and publishers, was at one time known merely by the name of the "Co.," that is as Whitehead's, though J. H. Vizetelly was managing partner. He had served his apprenticeship with the Coxes, and did not take up his freedom (his father and grandfather had been freemen of the city before him) till September, 1827. He was a man of considerable gifts; he wrote for several periodicals, produced a variety of verse (privately printed by himself) initiated the famous "Boy's Own Book," as well as "Cruikshank's Comic Almanack" of which he became the "Rigdum Funnidos," and was one of the best amateur actors of his time. He was very intimate with Edmund Kean, whom he greatly resembled in appearance, and it is said that more than once when Kean was hopelessly drunk he took his place on the boards. Such at least was the story often told to the writer by his grandmother (James Henry's widow) and expressly confirmed to him by an old family friend, Mr. Lemprière, son of the Lemprière of the "Classical Dictionary."
[5] He has related the greater part of his career in his "Glances Back through Seventy Years," and an account of it, of some length, will be found in the "Dictionary of National Biography." But for the purpose which the present writer has in view he considers it as well to recapitulate its chief features.
[6] Among others, James Hannay, Edmund Yates, Robert Brough, G. A. Sala, Sutherland Edwards, J. C. Parkinson, Augustus Mayhew, Frederick and James Greenwood, Tom Robertson, John Hollingshead, "Phiz," Birket Foster, Henry Meadows, Gustave Doré, Charles Keene, Edmond Morin, Gustave Janet, the Claxton sisters, Matt. Morgan, etc.