Gustave Flaubert / Signed autograph letter / to Émile Zola / Theatre / Paris

  

Autograph letter signed “Gve Flaubert” to Émile Zola
Croisset, Oct.

8vo, on a blue laid folded sheet
Folding marks inherent to the original sealing
Small typographical pencil annotations
Very slight foxing, very light tab mark on the fourth page.

Flaubert asks about his friend Zola’s latest theatrical project.

“My dear friend,
How are the rehearsals going?
Charpentier [the publisher of the naturalist writers] wrote to me that you were upset.
Can you tell me the exact time when you think the play will be performed?
I need to know for my own little personal arrangements.
Give me some details about your affair.”

Here Flaubert is referring to Zola’s play Les Héritiers Rabourdin, a three-act comedy that would be staged at the Théâtre de Cluny a few weeks later, on November 4, 1874, and published at the same time by Charpentier. The play was a failure, ignored by both critics and the public.

Zola’s long, anguished reply, written the next day, is known; here is an excerpt:

“If I did not write to you sooner, it is because I did not want to alarm you too much by writing to you under the impression of my first rehearsals, which went abominably.]
I advise you to be very firm about the casting of your comedy [Flaubert also had a theatrical project at the time, with his play Le Sexe faible].

”

Edmond de Goncourt, for his part, wrote a few cutting words in his journal:

“A letter from Zola forces me today [November 1] to go and see the rehearsal of his play. It is at Cluny: a theater that, in the middle of Paris, manages to resemble a provincial playhouse [. On the stage, comic actors, with the chilled gaiety of poor actors who do not dine every day. It is heartbreaking, for a man of talent, to be represented in such a hall by such actors.

And I cannot think without sadness of Flaubert, whose turn will come in a month [Le Sexe faible].”

This letter remained in the Zola family until the end of the 20th century. Mentioned as “not found” in the Pléiade edition, Alexandrine Zola had passed on a simple copy to René Descharmes during her lifetime. He later published it for the Centenary edition (see below).

Private collection of Émile Zola
Then Alexandrine Zola, by descent
Then Le Blond-Zola family, by descent.

876 (transcription inaccurate in places)
Complete works, Corr. René Descharmes, Centenary Edition, Librairie de France, 1923, p.