No doubt when he was invited to London, purely and simply on account of the office he held, it was not foreseen that his visit would develop as it did. But although he was accompanied by several notable men he speedily dwarfed them all, becoming the centre of attraction at every gathering of the Institute of Journalists. There was a great dinner at the Crystal Palace, a reception at the Imperial Institute, and another, which was given to the journalists by the Lord Mayor, at the Guildhall. That historic building was then thronged to overflowing, and it was strange indeed—remembering all that had gone before—to see Zola and his wife marching in a kind of state procession, preceded by the City's trumpeters and followed by the Lord Mayor, the President of the Institute and other dignitaries, while some official who cleared the way called persistently: "Monsieur Zola! Madame Zola!" as though a couple of royalties were approaching.
Other entertainments were given at this time. Some of the theatres were thrown open to the guests of the Institute of Journalists; Sir Edward Lawson gave them a lunch at Taplow, there was a cordial little reception at the Press Club; while the Athenæum Club conferred honorary membership on Zola for the period of his stay in London. That last distinction was the most unexpected of all, and assuredly the Bishops belonging to the Athenæum cannot have known of it. At the Authors' Club dinner, which closed the round of "semi-official" gatherings, there were some eighty men of letters, with a sprinkling of publishers and others, present. When Mr. Oswald Crawfurd had proposed Zola's health—which he did in excellent French and very laudatory terms—the novelist, no orator, as he had carefully stated at the outset of his sojourn, read his reply, which may be given here as a specimen of his few public utterances, for he did not read or make more than a score of speeches in the whole course of his career.
"Since I reached London," he said, "I have received so many greetings and have so often been called upon to respond thereto, that I am a little ashamed to speak again. I need not, however, solicit your indulgent attention for any length of time. Indeed, in all modesty, I ask your permission to be very brief on this occasion. Nothing could have touched me more deeply than your very flattering invitation. I know that eminent writers are here assembled to extend to me the right hand of fellowship, and I feel that it is no longer the journalist but the novelist that is being entertained. (Applause.) Moreover, you have reminded me that in Paris I am the president of the Société des Gens de Lettres; so that in my person you honour all French literature. (Applause.) I should wish, therefore, to allow my own personality to disappear, and be nothing more than the delegate of my French brethren, to whom I shall attribute by far the greater part of the very cordial homage you have paid to me. I desire, indeed, gentlemen, to insist upon the feeling of fitting modesty that I shall carry away with me from all these functions. You have told me, Mr. Chairman, that, after conquering the world, I have come to conquer England. Will you allow me to reply that I know what I ought to think of my conquest? Amidst all the plaudits, I well understand that the opinion of your critics has not changed in regard to my works. Only, you have now seen their author, and have found him less black than report painted him. (Laughter and applause.) Then, too, you have reflected—'Here is a man who has fought hard and worked a great deal'; and belonging as you do to a great nation of workers, you have honoured work in me. (Applause.) Lastly, it has occurred to you that a man cannot have conquered the world—according to the facetious expression of two of your number—without being worthy of some praise. Works of a different order in art to your own may have affronted you, but you were too sensible to refrain from according them some recognition as soon as you understood how much effort and sincerity they embodied. I am leaving London, not, indeed, as one who has triumphed, but as a man who is happy at leaving some sympathetic feelings behind him. My heart overflows with gratitude for the hospitality, so extensive and so refined, that you have accorded me. Here I say good-bye, or rather au revoir (loud applause); and I say it, through you, to your compatriots. I wish, through you, to assure my brother authors, my fellow-novelists, that I shall never forget the truly royal reception that a mere French writer has received in this huge city of London, throbbing with life and so worthy of inspiring masterpieces. And, gentlemen, as at the close of every banquet it is right to propose a toast, I drink now alike to the novelists of England and the novelists of France, to the good-fellowship of all authors in one universal republic of letters. (Loud applause.)"[27]
Ernest Vizetelly was present at the Authors' Club dinner, and spent half an hour in the crush at the Guildhall, besides hearing Zola read his paper on anonymity. But he abstained from attending most of the other festivities. Every morning at an early hour he arrived at the Savoy Hotel to assist the novelist with his correspondence, the hundreds of applications for autographs and interviews, which poured in upon him, and after the first few days,—as soon as Zola had a little leisure,—he took him to see one and another of the sights of London. Mr. George Moore also escorted the Zolas to Greenwich; Mr. Andrew Chatto gave them a friendly luncheon; Mr. afterwards Sir Campbell Clarke acted as their cicerone at the National Gallery, and Dr. Garnett at the British Museum Library. There were also some interesting visits to the French Hospital and the French Club under M. Petilleau's guidance, an excursion with Vizetelly and a fellow-journalist to County Council and Rowton lodging-houses, Rothschild almshouses, various sweaters' dens, sundry Jewish homes in Whitechapel, and Italian ones at Saffron Hill. On the whole, however, Zola was not impressed by what he saw of London poverty; he declared it to be nothing in comparison with what might be found in Paris. There was much want, no doubt, but it struck him that the passer-by saw little of it. And to emphasise his meaning he reminded Vizetelly of the Parisian ragpickers' "Ile des Singes" and the woeful Route de la Révolte, which certainly has never had its parallel in modern London.
Westminster Abbey naturally interested him, though his visit was a very perfunctory one, owing to the haste of the usual verger with the sing-song voice. When one first entered the abbey, however, some afternoon service was in progress, and after standing and watching for a time, Zola whispered to Vizetelly: "I did not know this was still a Catholic Church." "It is Church of England—Protestant," Vizetelly answered, whereupon Zola seemed lost in astonishment. "Protestant?" he whispered again, "well, all that is very much like Mass to me." Then he shrugged his shoulders and led the way outside, where one waited till the service was over. At the National Gallery he was most interested in Turner, whom he called la palette incarnée and whom he regarded as being far superior to Claude. And he greatly admired Turner's water-colour sketches in the little rooms in the basement of the building, where he lingered for nearly a couple of hours. The British Museum Library also pleased him immensely, notably on account of its perfect arrangements which, were so superior, said he, to those of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. However, what he admired in London most of all was the Thames, at Westminster, at Waterloo Bridge, and again at the docks and away towards Greenwich. Of Hyde Park he formed a very poor opinion, while that royal barracks, Buckingham Palace, seemed to him a national disgrace: a view which most intelligent foreigners share.
On the whole, Zola was extremely well pleased with his stay in London, he had been received there with perfect courtesy, Sir Edward Lawson, Mr. Oswald Crawfurd, Mr. Charles Williams, then president of the London district of the Institute of Journalists, Mr. Lucien Wolf, and others had done all that lay in their power; and Zola on his side had at least made a breach in the wall of British prejudice. The result could not be otherwise than good, he said to Vizetelly; there would probably be less antagonism to his writings among English people in the future; but the point which interested him most of all was the effect his reception might have in Paris, notably among the members of the French Academy. He had been denounced more hotly in England than in any other country, he remarked, and the fact that English people were now beginning to take a more reasonable view of his work might possibly react on French opinion. But, as we know, the Academy did not disarm. The majority of its members would not suffer his presence among them on any consideration.
Moreover, he had scarcely quitted England when the fanatics once more raised their heads. At the Church Congress which assembled at Birmingham that year, Dr. Perowne, the Bishop of Worcester, had the effrontery to declare that "Zola had spent his life in corrupting the minds and souls not only of thousands of his fellow-countrymen and especially of the young but also, by the translation of his works, thousands and hundreds of thousands of young souls elsewhere." At the same gathering Mr. J. E. C. Welldon, then Headmaster of Harrow School and later Bishop of Bombay, denounced the novelist as "infamous," and besought the aid of Churchmen for the "National Vigilant Association," of which, according to "The National Observer," he, Mr. Welldon, was "a conspicuous ornament."[28] The Bishop of Truro, speaking at a church gathering in the west of England took a similar line, and complained bitterly that translations of Zola's horrible books were sold at the railway-station bookstalls, which, said he, would never have been allowed in the lifetime of that good man, Mr. W. H. Smith. Ernest Vizetelly answered the prelate in a newspaper of his diocese, pointing out that the only Zola translations sold at Messrs. Smith's bookstalls were those of "La Débâcle" and "Le Docteur Pascal" by himself, and that of "Le Rêve" by Miss Eliza Chase; and he defied the bishop to find in any one of those three books a single sentence that could give offence to any sensible man. Other correspondents reinforced Vizetelly; but the bishop, quite content with having uttered his slander, preserved absolute silence, that being a characteristic trait with some bishops—of various churches and countries—who, regarding themselves as very superior persons, seldom if ever offer reparation for the aspersions they may cast upon laymen. Yet the law of libel applies to them as to others, and it is perhaps a pity it is not enforced against them. But the lawyers say, or at least they said to Vizetelly: "It is useless to proceed against an English bishop. There is so much cant in this country that you would never obtain a verdict against him, however complete your evidence might be."
As for Bishop Perowne of Worcester he was answered in "The Speaker" by its contributor, Mr. A. T. Quiller-Couch, as well as by sundry correspondents, one of whom pointed out that this chartered slanderer "had not so much evidence to back his insinuations and assertions as would wrap round a mustard seed." Mr. Welldon was also dealt with at length and very ably by Mr. Quiller-Couch, the controversy in "The Speaker" being prolonged until the latter part of November.[29] Ernest Vizetelly was at first unaware of it, but a friend who, having little acquaintance with literature, read that Liberal weekly chiefly for its political articles, said to him one day: "You ought to see 'The Speaker.' There's a lawyer who is defending Zola and your father in it very vigorously. He is the kind of man your father ought to have had as counsel at his trial." "A lawyer?" Vizetelly replied, "why, what is his name?" "Oh! he only appends his initials 'A. T.' to his articles; but I felt interested, and so I consulted the law-list at my club. He's a Queen's counsel, by the way; and the only Queen's counsel whose initials are A. T. is the Hon. Alfred Thesiger, so he undoubtedly is the man." The truth, however, had suddenly dawned on Vizetelly, who began to laugh as he answered: "The initials are A. T., you say; but the writer puts Q. C. after them, does he not? I thought so. Well, I am much obliged to you for your information, but you are all at sea. Your Hon. Alfred Thesiger, Q. C., is none other than Mr. A. T. Quiller-Couch!" Then, while his friend was expressing his astonishment, Vizetelly began to think of fame.
In the controversy in question Mr. Welldon, who ended by admitting that he had read only three of Zola's books, received the support of clerics of various denominations. One of them, Canon MacColl, of Ripon, who would seem to have been then very fond of writing to the newspapers on all sorts of subjects, raised the old argument that even if Zola might have had some justification for publishing, for instance, "La Terre" in France, there could have been none for its issue in English and in England by Henry Vizetelly. No doubt the canon was right. As was set forth in a previous chapter the rural districts of England were and are terrestrial paradises, where immorality and beastliness were and are absolutely unknown. The observers who assert the contrary must be either liars or deluded fools. The clergy who are to be found in every village vouch for the high moral tone of their parishioners, and it follows that one must not believe those who chance to sit on juries at provincial assizes to try the various horrible cases, frequently from the aforesaid rural districts, which are never reported by a decorous press. Everything is for the best, then, in rural England, and the most perfect men in the whole world are the truth-speaking bishops who begin life in modest circumstances and end by leaving huge fortunes to their families, the many-sided canons fond of joining in every controversy, and the dogmatic clerical schoolmasters who take as their guide the saying attributed, perhaps erroneously,[30] to Richelieu: "Give me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find in them enough to have him hanged."
Henry Vizetelly, to whom his son forwarded "The Speaker" while the controversy continued, observed with some surprise Mr. Quiller-Couch's assertion that the public conscience would not permit a repetition of such proceedings as had been taken against him. He thereupon wrote to Mr. Quiller-Couch saying that in his opinion the public conscience could only find expression through the press, and that in the event of a new prosecution the press would again remain silent until the "National Vigilants" had secured a verdict, when it would once more join in approving the "vindication of the law." That view was shared by Vizetelly's son. Indeed, though Zola had been so well received in London, even by some of the provincial journalists who attended the Institute's Congress, though, too, newspaper men of education had come to a truer perception of his aims, and several wrote very favourably about his more recent books, it remained quite certain that he still had numerous enemies on all sides. At the close of that year, 1893, or more correctly on the first morning of the ensuing one, Henry Vizetelly died, and immediately afterwards another controversy began, this time in the London "Daily Chronicle." The chief features of the prosecutions of 1888 and 1889 were recalled by Robert Buchanan, Frank Harris, and George Moore, the first of whom dwelt on the attitude of the press with respect both to those proceedings and to Zola generally. Various protests arose, and, according to some people, it was quite untrue that the English press had ever flung mud at Zola or his publisher. The absurdity of that contention was made manifest by the publication, at that very moment, of several articles in which all the old lies and aspersions were repeated. These, it is true, appeared mostly in provincial journals; but two or three London prints did not hesitate to befoul yet once again the dead publisher as well as the recently banqueted novelist, whom G. W. Story, when recounting the controversy in "The New York Tribune," foolishly described as being "the most lewd writer in the world." It must be said, to Story's credit, that his article was a signed one, whereas the valiant scribes of the British press remained anonymous. They found, undoubtedly, that "anonymity in journalism" had its advantages, and wisely decided to cling to it. Since that time, however, the practice of signing critical articles has spread considerably and may some day become the general rule.