Notes from Exile

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French studies at the University
of Guelph.

Notes from Exile is a marvellous book. Dorothy Speirs, whose grandfather
was a friend of Zola’s, and Yannick Portebois provide a clear and
precise chronology of the Dreyfus Affair, the political scandal that
divided France at the end of the 19th century. (In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus,
a Jewish artillery officer, was wrongly convicted of treason and
high-ranking officers covered up the error.) It is because of this case
that Zola, who had published J’accuse! and other texts in defence of
the Jewish officer, fled to England in 1898 in order to avoid
imprisonment in France. He stayed in London and in various country
houses for 11 months, always fearing the French would come and get him.

While in England, Zola wrote Notes from Exile. Speirs, curator of the
Zola Archives at the University of Toronto, has translated the text into
English and published it together with 43 photographs that Zola, an avid
photographer, took of the English countryside, which he explored by
bicycle.

Zola’s comments on the Dreyfus Affair are moving and of great
political interest. What he says of England is fascinating. He was not
too fond of English cooking, nor did he like English furniture or the
“double-hung” windows. But he loved the Surrey landscape and found
the English agreeably discreet and democratic.

Zola was a hard-working writer. In fact, he believed that reading and
writing possessed stabilizing and healing powers; writing a daily
minimum of five pages every morning, he finished a 750-page novel,
Fécondité, while in England.

Although one need not be a Zola specialist to enjoy this book, it will
be of particular value to students of Zola and the Dreyfus Affair.