CURRENT LITERATURE.
With M. Zola in England. (Chatto & Windus. 3s. Cd.)—The chief characteristic of this book is its perfect simplicity. We know not which are the more ingenuous, M. Zola's observations upon a foreign country, or Mr. Vizetelly's astonished adoration of his friend and master. But they are both surprised,—there is no doubt of that, ourprised that they were together in London, and still more surprised that they attracted so little notice. However, the flight from Versailles was conducted in absolute secrecy, and
M. Zola got away unobserved because he selected the most obvious route. While all the reporters were watching the trains that might have carried him off to Norway or to Switzerland, he merely drove to the Gare du Nord, and took the night express to
London. Arrived at Victoria, he called a cab, and despite. the driver's protest, he drove the few yards which separated the station from his first resting-place. That so familiar a figure as M. Zola's should escape detection at the Grosvenor Hotel proves how easily a man may hide himself in London. But M. Zola did not like the fourth floor of his hotel ; moreover he was worried by the blue wall of the corridor. Then a casual recognition in the Buckingham Palace Road struck terror into his soul, and he fled incontinent to the wilds of Wimbl•don. Presently he found shelter in Oatlands Park, where once the Duke of York gave his famous parties, and where Charles Greville found the best material for his memoirs. . But Upper Norwo id was his ultimate home, and very humorous is this association of M. Zola with a Southern suburb. There we . may picture him watching the nursemaids, of whose conduct he disapproved, or sitting down in his lonely room to the study of English. He does not seem to have progressed very far in this - crabbed study, but he learnt the use of grammar and dictionary, - and was afterwards promoted to "a set of Messrs. Nelson's .
Royal Readers." From these he passed to "The Vicar of Wakefield." but he found that masterpiece unintelligible without . a crib, so that he is obviously well-equipped for the impartial consideration of English institutions. Indeed, he has already made up his mind upon many difficult subjects, and there is no reason why he should not complete his famous trilogy—Lourdes, Rome, Paris— with the long-promised satiric drama of London. In the mean- time he has discovered that, owing to careless mothers and wicked nursemaids, the English race is deteriorating ; he has already - sketched an essay "On the Physiology of the English Guillotine Window," and proved to his own satisfaction that British arro- • gance springs from the too frequent use of the capital "I." If only we had written the first personal pronoun with a small " i," who knows but we might not have thrust the French from Fashoda? But M. Zola's favourite pastime as he wandered up and down the streets of Norwood was to count the hairpins which lay discarded on the pavements. This waste, said he, proves the carelessness wherewith English women fasten their hair, and the generalisation gives us a quick glimpse of the realist at work, We have always thought that the novelist who starts with a thesis and then gathers his facts is the least trustworthy of men. But surely it was unkind of Mr. Vizetelly first to give away his hero's method, and then to suggest that in this case the hairpins, and not the women, were at fault. "The great loss of hairpins," observed the biographer with proper gravity, "does not proceed so much from the carelessness of women, as from their penny-wise and pound-foolish system of buying cheap hair- pins." And he hastened to conclude that "to the best of his belief the aforesaid hairpins were 'made in Germany." A similar reasoning might expose many of M. Zola's errors, and we regret that Mr. Vizetelly has withheld from us the master's answer to his objection. But simplicity of mind is a great virtue even if it involve an absence of humour. And maybe M. Zola, deserved a better fate than that meted out to him. Two years since he undertook a work of justice with the courage and unsel- fishness that have always been his. At one point in the game it was imperative he should leave France, and he might have lived unmolested in Brighton or in Berkeley Square. But the feeling of romance which is in him entered into his over- zealous friends. They espied a detective in every passer-by, and thought the lamplighter was a journalist. Consequently Mr. Vizetelly has provided us with some two hundred pages of trivial gossip, and he leaves us with the reflection that whatever be the virtues of the hero-worshipper, discretion is not among them.
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