OBITUARY.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 12256, 1 October 1902, Page 3

OBITUARY.

CABLEGRAM H. [MBPfilfla ASSOCIATION.-—COPYRIGHT.]

DEATH OF M. KOLA. London, September 29. The death is announced of M. Emile Zola, aged 62. Death was caused by suffocation, in consequence of a defective etove-pipe in his bedroom. Madame Zola was also affected, but she is recovering. Received September 30,9.35 p.m. September 30. M. 7o!r. returned from the country on Sunday, The house was cold, and a fire was lighted in the fire place. The chimney smoked, and the .errant, lowered a metal sheet, leaving blocks of fuel to smoulder. They opened the windows, but closed them again at night. There are indications that the blocks burned slowly and exhaled gas, which, accumulating in the defective chimney, penetrated to the bedroom. The servants knocked at the bedroom door. As there was no response they entered, and found M. Zola lying on the floor quite dead. Madame Zola was in bed. She was unconscious When animation was restored she stated that the had had a headache. She had asked her husband to open the window. When he left the bed he fell. She then fainted. Experts say the fumes were strongest near the floor.

M. Zola was perhaps the best known writer in Europe during the last decade or two, and the sale of his works all over Europe probably made a record until the day of the American popular novelist. Zola was born 62 years ago, and it in curious to learn that he failed to take his degree at the university, being rejected in literature. He took his revenge on his examiners later on. His first employment was with Messrs Hachetto and Co., the publishers, and it was while in their service that he wrote the “Stories for Ninon,” which contain some of his pleasantest writing. He soon associated himself with a number of writers, all of whom achieved a high reputation—Daudet, Flaubert, and the Goncourti, and formed what is frequently referred to as the naturalist school. There was nothing very original in the principles which these writers professed, and they did not succeed in fquaring their practice with their principles with very great success, Zola in particular, though the details of his work exhibit very clearly the scrupulous accuracy of the confirmed notetaker, was for the great part of his life the slave of a theory—an idealist rather than a realist. To this theory he devoted the famous series of the Bougon-Macquart novels, which occupied him for nearly 20 years. He wrote two ether series—that of the three cities, Lourdes, Rome, and Paris, and that of the four Gospels, the first of which, “ Feoonditd,” appeared three years ago, and which is still incomplete. Zola is perhaps best known to Eng ish people by his fervent advocacy of the cause of Captain Dreyfus, which resulted in bis flight to Englmd and his condemnation by default. As a novelist he probably appealed less to Kngli-h paoplo than most writers of equal power His passion for often uninteresting detail, his parade of scientific theory, bis preoccupation with the unclean aide of life, have interfered with his popularity.