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I can still see before me the sitting-room on the second floor of the Queen's Hotel, in which M. Zola spent so much of his time and wrote so many pages of 'Fecondite' during the last six months or so of his exile. A spacious room it was, if a rather low one, with three windows overlooking the road which passes the hotel.
With regard to his novel 'Fecondite' he had, as the saying goes, 'warmed to his work, which he pursued at the Queen's Hotel with unflagging energy. Then we would talk business, communicate to one another such news as might be necessary, and at times exchange impressions with regard to the incidents of the day.
And again and again, reading of the great battle being waged in France, he longed to return home, and grew restless and impatient. Moreover a complaint from which he has suffered on and off for some years troubled him on more than one occasion. He always rallied, however, and returned to his work with renewed energy. 'Fecondite' was already taking shape in the leafy solitude in which he dwelt.
Coming back to 'Fecondite, I should say that M. Zola wrote an average of three pages per day of that book during his exile in England. Work ceased at the luncheon hour, as I have said, and consequently he could dispose of his afternoons.
M. Zola's views are summed up in the words: 'Let all be exposed and discussed, in order that all may be cured! He regards Neo-Malthusianism and its practices as abominable, and when he had learnt more of the actual situation in England he was emphatically of opinion that his book 'Fecondite, though applied to France alone, might well, with little alteration, be applied to this country also.
M. Zola's device is Nulla dies sine linea, and even before the materials for 'Fecondite' were brought to him from France he had given an hour or two each day to the penning of notes and impressions for subsequent use. With the arrival of his books and memoranda, work began in a more systematic way.
Thus the few chapters of 'Fecondite, which he thought he might be able to pen in England, multiplied and multiplied till they at last became thirty the entire work. It was M. Desmoulin who brought the necessary materials memoranda, cuttings, and a score of scientific works from Paris.
He himself, heavy hearted as he was when the first novelty of his strolls around Oatlands had worn off, felt that he must have something to do, and was therefore well pleased at the prospect of receiving the materials for his new book, 'Fecondite.
Mais M. Bunsen, l'artisan de la complication de Cologne, n'a pas la main heureuse, et la fecondite de son genie, secondant son ardeur de courtisan, pourroit bien, en pretendant servir les tendances vagues de piete de son maitre, embarquer celui-ci dans les plus graves difficultes en provoquant l'opposition des vieux protestans reunis aux rationalistes allemands.
Unless some other courageous man had arisen to tear the veil away from before human life, such as it is in so-called civilised communities, and show society its own self in all its rottenness, foulness, and hypocrisy so that on more than one occasion, shrinking guiltily from its own image, it has denounced the plain unvarnished truth as libel there would have been no 'Nana' and no 'Pot Bouille, no 'Assommoir, and no 'Germinal. And no 'La Terre. 'La Debacle, and 'Lourdes, and 'Rome, 'Paris, and 'Fecondite, and all the other books that have flowed from Emile Zola's busy pen would have remained unwritten.
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