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We had a right merry little dinner that evening. We were all in the best of humours. M. Zola's face was radiant. A great victory had been won; and then, too, he was going home! He recalled the more amusing incidents of his exile; it seemed to him, said he, as if for months and months he had been living in a dream.
Some of these things were significantly marked with the letter 'Z, and for this reason it was desirable that they should be recovered. Here I may mention that during the next few days my wife repeatedly called at the Grosvenor for M. Zola's correspondence, a circumstance which doubtless gave rise to the rumour that Mme. Zola had joined her husband in London.
There can be no doubt in the mind of the judicial critic that in the pages of "A Love Episode" the reader finds more of the poetical, more of the delicately artistic, more of the subtle emanation of creative and analytical genius, than in any other of Zola's works, with perhaps one exception.
She to this earth belonged, where beauty fast To direst fate is borne: A rose, she lasted, as the roses last, Only for one brief morn. French painters have made subjects of many episodes in M. Zola's works, but none has been more popular with them than Albine's pathetic, perfumed death amidst the flowers. I know several paintings of great merit which that touching incident has inspired.
The grounds of M. Zola's new retreat were very extensive, and in part very shady, which last circumstance proved extremely welcome to the novelist, who on coming to 'cold, damp, foggy England, as the French put it, had never imagined that he would have to endure a temperature approaching that of the tropics.
To me the manner in which your poorer classes are housed in the suburbs, packed closely together in flimsy buildings, where every sound can be heard, suggests a form of socialism communism, or perhaps rather the phalansterian system. But Earlsfield was already passed, and we were reaching Wimbledon. Here M. Zola's impressions changed.
He, too, was swayed by his literary notions concerning the importance of the subject. In painting the theme may count for little and yet a great picture result; in Zola's field there must be an appreciable subject, else no fiction. But what cant it is to talk about "dignity." Zola admits ingrained romanticism.
The only way of appealing to the public is by strong writing, powerful creations, and by the number of volumes given to the world." Theory-ridden Zola's polemical writings, like those of Richard Wagner's, must be set down to special pleading.
Her exquisite pictures of pastoral life are idealizations of it; her representations of the peasant are not corroborated by Zola's; to the last she approaches the shield of human nature from the golden side. But for herself at least she has found a real secret of happiness in country life, tranquil work, and a right direction given to her own heart and conscience.
On other occasions they made the journey from France for the especial purpose of quieting M. Zola's impatience, and telling him that he must not yet think of returning home. Again, M. Fasquelle, the French publisher, came over four or five times, now on business and now in a friendly way.
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