Sometimes the books we find in Special Collections hold absolute magic between the covers. Sometimes those finds are serendipitous, often the product of a familiar request—”I saw a cool old book in the Reading Room that I want to look at again. I think the cover was green” (or white, or blue …). We love these wonderful little reference scavenger hunts in our department because they have frequently revealed unexpected treasures as we pulled promising items that might be “the one,” but instead found dazzling diversions, adjacent to or apart from the sought-after book. Such is the case with the 1891 French novel Zézette: Moeurs Foraines by Oscar Méténier, which surfaced when Head of Special Collections, Maureen Brunsdale, went looking for a “probably red” volume on the shelves.
This copy of Zézette is part of the Circus & Allied Arts Collection and is unique in the most incredible ways, including page after page of marginalia in the form of original watercolor illustrations—96 in total. These paintings are still a bit of a mystery, which makes the book fun and full of the untapped potential for future research.
Zézette is a fictional story about traveling circus performers that is centered on the titular character and her father François Chausserouge, an animal trainer. The pair are struggling within the harsh environment of a traveling menagerie show and the story hinges on their despair and financial hardship. The culmination of the tale involves the violent death of a debt-collecting usurer.
The novel was written by Oscar Méténier, whose name will be familiar to anyone aware of the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, or theater of horrors. He founded the performance space in 1897 to produce plays that highlighted largely unseen people from Parisian society, including prostitutes, criminals, and street urchins. The theater went on to produce grisly, gory plays that rejected social propriety until it closed in 1967. Zézette, written six years before the theater was founded, showcases suspenseful themes and elements that would later appear in Méténier’s theatrical productions.
Our copy of Zézette was inscribed and signed by Oscar Méténier, though most of the inscription has been erased so it is unreadable to the naked eye. The book also has multiple title pages and the verso of one has a 1929 stamp that appears to be from the Odessa Library, begging the question of whether they erased the writing but kept the signature.
Most excitingly, the inside pages of the book are covered with watercolors signed by the notable artists Richard Ranft (Swiss painter and illustrator) and Albert Joseph Pénot (French painter). All of the images capture the signature styles of the two painters. Pénot was known largely for portraits of women with backgrounds containing scant detail and that style can be seen in his signed images throughout the book. Ranft was known for his lithographic poster art, in addition to his paintings, and several of his illustrations in the book have the distinct look of a circus poster.
It’s unclear exactly how or why these paintings by at least two different artists (68 of the images are unsigned) came to grace the pages, but they beautifully capture the essence of desperation and terror that unfolds in the story.
Zézette can be read in the original French on Internet archive and at Project Gutenberg. There is an English translation by Daniel Corrick available in the volume Three Decadent Stories.
Our illustrated volume of Zézette is available to view in the Special Collections Reading Room on Floor 6, Milner Library.
