Émile Zola, Novelist and Reformer: An Account of His Life & Work. Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_ce07421b-5962-5e83-b91b-0da92a7d6550">[18] Zola's "L'Aérienne" (1860) in Alexis, l. c., p. 265 et seq.
[19] Zola's "Nos Auteurs Dramatiques," p. 42.
[20] "Documents Littéraires," p. 90.
[21] "L'Œuvre," Chap. II.
[22] Zola's Verses, "À mes Amis" (Lycée St. Louis, 1858).
[23] Zola's first book, inspired largely by memories of Provence, and issued in Paris in 1864.
[24] Zola's "Nina," 1859. Readers of "La Fortune des Rougon" (which Zola wrote some ten years later) will remember that the old tombstone figures also in that work, in which the inscription is given as "Here lieth … Marie … died … ," the finger of time having effaced the rest. There is, however, an evident connection between the names Nina and Ninon, and perhaps they suggested Nana.
[25] From the mediæval Latin, barrium (Ducange).
[26] See ante, p. 27.
[27] Alexis, l. c., pp. 40, 41.
[28] It seems probable that he had already spent his Easter holidays there that year; for some of his verses, "Ce que je veux," are dated Aix, May, 1859. See Alexis, l. c., p. 297.
III
BOHEMIA—DRUDGERY—FIRST BOOKS
1860–1866
A clerkship at the Docks Napoléon—Peregrinations through the Quartier Latin—Zola joined there by Cézanne—He lives in a glass cage—"L'Amoureuse Comédie"—Poetry and poverty—"Genesis"—Spring rambles—The Quartier Latin in 1860—Love in a garret—"La Confession de Claude," and the den in the Rue Soufflot—The fairy of one's twentieth year—Terrible straits—"Playing the Arab"—"Good for nothing"—Help from Dr. Boudet—Zola is engaged by M. Hachette and emerges from Bohemia—Hachette's authors and Zola—Fresh Peregrinations—Short stories—Zola's "band"—His correspondence with Antony Valabrègue—"Contes à Ninon"—Zola weaned from idyl and fable—"Madame Bovary"—Duality of Zola's nature—His improved circumstances—Newspaper articles—The lesson of "Henriette Maréchal—"La Confession de Claude" published—Zola's opinion of it—Barbey d'Aurévilly's attack and a threatened prosecution—Zola quits Hachette's, and refuses to pander to fools.
After choosing a scientific career, and then aspiring to poetic fame as great as that of Hugo or Musset, to sink even momentarily to a junior clerkship, worth sixty francs a month,[1] at the "Docks" in the Rue de la Douane, was hard indeed. Yet such became Zola's fate. Some who have written of the episode have fallen into various errors. An American account says that the young man became a dock labourer; an English biographer has referred to his place of employment as a business house. But on consulting any plan of Paris as it was in 1860 or thereabouts, it will be seen that a great entrepôt, with offices for the collection of the state customs and the municipal dues, then adjoined the "Docks Napoléon," where goods, coming into Paris by the St. Martin Canal, were landed. The establishment of this entrepôt and its adjuncts was carried out between 1833 and 1840;[2] the adjoining Rue de la Douane took its name from the enterprise, and it was there, then, that Zola, after failing at his examinations, secured employment as a clerk, the situation being found for him by his father's friend, Maître Labot, the advocate.
But the salary was the barest pittance. How could a young man of twenty live, in Paris, on two francs a day? Moreover, there was no prospect whatever of any "rise." At the expiration, therefore, of two months—after trudging a couple of miles twice a day between the "Docks" and the Quartier Latin, passing on the road the great Central Markets, whose wondrous life he now began to observe—Zola threw up this employment; and from the beginning of March, 1860, till the end of that year, then all through 1861, and the first three months of 1862, he led a life of dire Bohemian poverty. On arriving in Paris in February, 1858, he had lived with his mother at 63, Rue Monsieur-le-Prince. Thence, in January, 1859, they had moved to 241, Rue St. Jacques, a narrow and ancient thoroughfare, long one of the main arteries of Paris, intimately associated, too, with the student history of the original Quartier Latin. But in April, 1860, at the time when Zola quitted the "Docks," he and his mother found a cheaper lodging at 35, Rue St. Victor, another old street, on the slope of the "Montagne Ste. Geneviève," towards the Halle aux Vins and the Jardin des Plantes.
Here Zola's room was one of a few lightly built garrets, raised over the house-roof proper, and constituting a seventh "floor"; the leads in front forming a terrace whence the view embraced nearly all Paris. While Zola was lodging here, living very precariously and trying by fits and starts to secure some remunerative work, his friend Paul Cézanne arrived from Aix with the hope of making his way in the art world of the capital. Cézanne was more fortunately circumstanced than Zola, having a small monthly allowance to depend upon; and it was perhaps by way of helping his friend that he at first took up his residence with him in that seventh-floor garret. Zola was wonderfully cheered by the companionship; before long he again became as enthusiastic as Cézanne, and the two friends dreamt of conquering Paris, one as a poet, the other as a painter.
When the summer arrived they often laid a paillasse on the terrace outside their attic, and spent the mild and starry night in discussing art and literature. Moreover, while Cézanne began to paint, Zola wrote another poem à la Musset, which he entitled "Paolo"; as well as a tale, "Le Carnet de Danse," which was subsequently included in "Les Contes à Ninon." But there was no improvement in his position. Indeed, things went from bad to worse; and in the autumn of the year, as he had too much delicacy to sponge on Cézanne, whose allowance, moreover, was only just sufficient for himself, they ceased to live together, though they remained close friends.
About the same time Zola and his mother separated. She, over a term of years, had now and again secured some trifling sum of money by compromising one or another law-suit—sacrificing a considerable claim for little more than a morsel of bread. For the rest, she was helped by a few relatives of her own and by some friends of her deceased husband. In October, 1860, as her son could not as yet provide for her, she went to live at a pension in the Quartier Latin, assisted there, perhaps, by some friends, or else obtaining some employment in the house, for she was skilful with her needle. At all events, her son found himself for a time quite alone.
He now went to reside in the Rue Neuve St. Étienne du Mont, near the ancient church of that name, and his lodging, as usual, was at the very top of the house. This time it was a kind of belvedere or glass cage in which Bernardin de St. Pierre, the author of "Paul and Virginia," was said to have sought a refuge from the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. It was there, then, amid all the breezes of heaven, and inspired perhaps by the position of his retreat, that Zola wrote another poem, called "L'Aérienne," which he added to the pieces entitled "Rodolpho" and "Paolo," the first written at Aix, the second in the Rue St. Victor. These three compositions formed, as it were, a trilogy which he named "L'Amoureuse Comédie,"—"Rodolpho" representing the hell, "L'Aérienne" the purgatory, and "Paolo" the paradise of love.[3]