Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-08-17
THE LIBRARY TABLE
By the BooklOUeV

In "Zola and His Time" Matthew
Josephson TRACES the development Of
the French naturalist, follower of Bal
FAC. from his childhood spent at AK,
where, in spite of poverty, he was
happy rambling about the hills and
wales of Provence with his two friends,
Cezanne and Baille, through his desti-
tute, Bohemian young manhood to sue
cess in middle life and his stupid"
death at 81. His literary achievement
was the Rougon -Macquart series of
novels, probably suggested by Balzac's
Coincide Humane" which follows the
history of very unlovely family during
five generations. There are 20 volumes
of this Natural and Social History Of
Family" Some of the more i'm
portant are La Fortune des Rougon"
(the f1rst), lie Ventre de Paris" story
of the famous Halles or market Of
Paris; La Faute de liable Mouret,"
"L'AsSommoir," a story Of the effects
OF drink on various human beings;
Mama" "Germinal," a story of class
struggle as exhibited in strike of
miners; "Loeuvre." which lis filled
youth; La Terre," a brutal novel OF
the soil; La Debacle," story of the
Franco Prussian War; "L'Argent," a
story of "frenzied finance and stock
gambling" and "Docteur Pascal" (the
last), largely photographed of a
liaison in his later life. All are docu-
mentary novels, with theses, often read
ing like notebooks. In preparation for
the series lola read much on the sub
ject of heredity and prepared genoa
logical tree of the Rougon- Macquart
family. "Heredity, implacable, prede-
termined would be for his modern epic
hot de for he
Far from becoming slave to a theory,
which would turn his books into a mass
of clinical observations, he saw with
a flash of intuition that the long chain
of episodes he visioned. the descent OF
a vast family. of a world in agitation
would be completely unified by the
force of heredity. Instead Of being the
victims of the gods vengeance, his
characters, all members of one vast
family. would be victims OF heredlty.
1t was simply more modern, more
scientific; it was no different" So
he started his fictional family with
Adelaide Fouque, a deranged girl who
becomes the mother of the legitimate
Rougons and the illegitimate Macquarts.
The death of lola was due to his
neurotic habits, among them his fear
Of night air. Nine. Charpentier,
friend. exclaimed when she heard Of
it, How stupid" Mr.. Josephson de-
scribes it briefly and dramatically. On
a September night of 1902 the Zolas
retired as usual, "he locking the doors
as was his wont, and all the windows,
Theoretically, while counting to him
self those habitual numbers and mo-
tions. A small fire Is dying out in
the fireplace. There seems to be a
frk. ~
he chokeS for air. He thinks: All!
and what If should never awake! &.
1 dare not fall asleep So familiar
is this agony Cola was subject to just
such Nightmares habitually) that he
heSitates to waken his wife. Decades,
ages pass. The clock sounds three times.
And now the pains in his head have
become unbearable. He arises soft
Iy and leaves the bed chamber. for
awakened his wife. She stares with
wide eyes through the darkness. He
returns and remains standing beside
the bed. I feel sick. My head is split
ting I, too, feel upset. Shall We call
the servants, perhaps?' No. don't you
see the dog is sick, too? We are both
i'll; it must be something We have
eaten. It will pass away. Let us not
bother them His voice terminates
in pain. She rises, too and re-
turns. ut seems to have occurred to
neither one of them to open window,
which would have saved Zola'S life.)
1t may have been a few moments later,
she awakes again, feeling a terrible
sensation through her drowsineSS. And
there he is, standing beside the bed in
the darkness. Emile, Emile, go to
sleept He has approached to lie down
again. then drunkenly, Keeling, without
a sound falls to the floor face down
beside the dais of the great Louis XIII
bed. And then. as her confused visions
recall. she struggles to sit up, to crawl
out of bed, to pull the cord that will
bring the sleeping servants. But the
deadly carbon monoxide gas has af-
fected her, = too! Everything turns
round and round. Her voice seems to
be strangled in her throat by a great
soft hand She falls back upon her
pillow in swoon. All is silent. The
mute. heavy tapestries of the princely
bed chamber hang motionless. And
so they were found in the morning.
The servants. disquieted at not hearing
q sound. no murmur of the daily ablu-
tions behind the locked door, first CALL
then pound the door, then hurtle
against 1t and burst it in. Their mas
ter, with livid face, is stretched on the
floor near the bed, and their mistress,
deadly pale, is lying upon her pillow
She responds feebly to their first aid:
but in the mans purpled face there is
death. He, placed some four feet low
er than she, had succumbed complete
ly in the dense zone of heavier-than-
air coal gas. emitted all night by the
blocked chimney. His body is still
warm; they try rhythmic fractions of
the tongue. swift maSSaging of the
limbs, the body" Nine. lola survived
her husband many years and lived to
be Sc.
John Erskine satirizes Homer and
Co.. or. those poets, Homer" in
''Penelope's Man" a book in the style
of The Private Life of Helen of Troy"
but far less clever. He holds that
Ulysses, or OdySseus. was no great hero
but just an ordinary man and that his
exploits were largely the work of his
good advertisers. the poets. and his own
inventive genius. He was in reality,
says Mr.. Erskine, not at all hard
worker but was on the contrary time
waster and lover of pleasure. He could
have arrived at his Ithacan home and
joined his waiting wife much sooner If
he had not spent seven years in the
thrall of Calypso and fingered again
in the land of the Lotus Eaters. Mr..
Erskine's satire is most trenchant when
he relates the expurgated account which
Ulysses gives of his wanderings to
Penelope on his return to Ithaca.
X y
Sir Hugh Clifford. governor and high
commissioner of Malaga, has written
book, "Bushwhacking. And Other
Asiatic Tales and Memories which is
based on nearly half a century of ex-
perience. He has been a British official
in the Far East under three sovereigns
The ten tales in the book give glimpses
of the relations of white and brown
races and of different brown races to