The Glozel Comedy

Is Glozel the Seat of Valuable Prehistoric Treasures or a Factory of Standardized Fakes?

PAUL MORAND

UPERSTITION is not the exclusive privilege of past centuries. Almost daily, in our own period of enlightenment and speed, we not only hear of incredible frauds and swindles, but learn that their numerous victims refuse to admit the truth. Mediums and fortune tellers seem to lose none of their victims through being exposed. The case is the same with spurious works of art, which are now being produced on a bolder scale. The famous tiara of Saitapharnes was even admitted to the Louvre, and it might still be there under glass if the fabricator had not chosen to acknowledge his work, thus depriving the archaeologist Salomon Reinach of a diadem which had become a dunce's cap. In all these exploitations of human credulousness there is a sort of poetry, a fine romantic flavour one hesitates to renounce.

Glozel is a little hamlet near Vichy. Whoever knows the overwhelming dreariness of watering-places in summer—the emptiness of the hours that follow the cure, the dullness of a landscape seen too often, the disappointments of the gaming tables—must admit that nothing less than genius was required to rouse the tired bathers from their apathy by offering them something picturesque and novel, an attraction never before produced on any stage. Briefly, this is what happened. Some years ago, in a field belonging to the Fradins, the sort of French peasants that Maupassant described—greedy, hard-working, united against outsiders and divided among themselves—the plow brought to light a collection of curious objects—curious not only in shape, but also by virtue of the strange characters inscribed upon them. These objects were destined to yield the Fradins a more bountiful harvest than even their richest wheat.

THEY carried their discoveries to Dr.Morlet, a respectable physician who was spending his vacation in the neighbourhood. As soon as lie caught sight of these potsherds, the spirit descended upon him: he proclaimed that the Fradins had unearthed a treasure of prehistoric times. Nearly twenty years before, two "cupulate" bricks had been turned up by the plow. The whole region is rich in ornaments, tools, and utensils that were fashioned by the first men. Glozel, said Dr. Morlet, was merely a spot, more favoured than others. It offered two points of novelty, however—first, the accumulation in such a limited area of such an incredible variety of objects, and second, the presence on these objects of inscriptions.

The archaeological world was aroused. A man of limitless erudition, the author of fifty works on Greek epigraphy, on Roman and Cimmerian antiquities, on all the ages, all the arts, all religions—M. Salomon Reinach of the French Institute—soon contributed the weight of his convictions. For him, the Glozel discoveries were truly prehistoric; they represented a link between the palaeolithic and neolithic eras. All Europe was taking a hand in the case. Professors Mendes Correa, of Oporto, and L. Mayet, of Lyons, announced in September, 1927, that Reinach's assumptions were correct. Other scientists were sceptical or hostile. Between the two camps, the friends of peace sought a middle course: they suggested that the first discoveries were probably authentic, but that spurious objects had later been smuggled in—the field of excavations had, as it were, been "salted." Had the Fradins unearthed an ancient burial ground? Then why were there no skeletons, and only a very few human bones? Had Glozel been the haunt of a Gallic sorcerer, and could the inscriptions he regarded as his magic formulas? All these hypotheses were successively abandoned. We were left to explain the presence of several thousand objects: chipped or polished stones, clay pots, round pebbles, some of which were pierced, rings, bone needles, hooks, harpoons, androgynous statues, Freudian emblems. . . . A commission delegated by the Ministry of Public Instruction provisionally classified Glozel as a national monument, and the newspapers, always greedy in summer for sensational events, made the most of this windfall. The Fradins grew rich, amid the hate and pride of the village.

IF the objects are authentic, the Glozelians A must have invented writing long before the peoples of the East. In fact, we are assured that these primitives were full of intuitive learning, and that although they were hardly able to bake pottery, they had imagined a system of signs to express their thoughts. The great number of coincidences with the characters of future alphabets proves, moreover, that they possessed a really disturbing capacity for divination. We are told that they foresaw the Latin D, T, and C; the Greek sigma Ʃ, xy ξ, and lambda λ the Phoenician W, and even the Aeolian digamma ???; the two legs A with ٨ which the Chinese represent a man; several of the signs employed in mathematics, as +,=,>,<,; in punctuation, as :, !, « » (the last being the French guillemets, or quotation marks) ; in proofreading, as ??? (bring together), ⊐ (indent) ; in astronomy, as ♁ (the earth), ♀ (Venus); in Roman numeration, as XII, CIƆ (an older symbol for 1000), XL, etc.; in the art of symbols, as ‡ (the anchor: hope), and even ??? (the ladder of the Scaligers). Finally, on one fragment, the very name of Glozel can be read.1 O11 a clay tablet, and this may seem rather daring to those who are not professional archaeologists, these prehistoric men had traced an inscription still to he found in the hallways of European hotels: WC— Let me add, merely to prove that these last citations are not coarse and rather malicious jokes, that one need merely refer to the monograph2 of M. Butavard the engineer, an ardent Glozelist, and observe the inscriptions there reproduced.

I have found it most amusing to follow the dispute between Glozelists and anti-Glozelists as it developed from day to day in the newspapers, meanwhile collecting the assertions of some, the denials of others, and the insults offered by both the warring sides. If the name of Salomon Reinach is attached to the unlucky tiara of Saitapharnes, it also recalls the Dreyfus affair.

In September, 1925, Dr. Morlet announced, "The discoveries furnish a new proof that glass existed in western Europe during neolithic times."

In October of the same year, Colonel de Saint-Hillier, writing in Le Matin, informed us that Glozel was a Cretan colony. (Did Phedra then hear of Glozel from King Minos, her father?)

In February, 1926;, clouds appeared on the horizon and M. Clement, formerly the schoolmaster of a neighbouring village, accused Emile Fradin of being "the real inventor of Glozel." On August 20, in Les Debuts, M. Camille Jullian proclaimed that the Glozel alphabet was in no wise neolithic; it was merely a Latin cursive script. In the Academy of Inscriptions, a few days later, he would speak of the relics as being "sorcerers' gimcracks and magic scrawls." M. Loth, his colleague, a partisan of Reinach's neolithic hypothesis, thereupon accused M. Jullian of "telling witch stories."

THAT same month, M. Seymour de Ricci A submitted a detailed report at the request of M. Herriot, the Minister of Public Instruction. A copy of this document can still be consulted at the Saint-Germain Museum. "Everything about these discoveries," said M. de Ricci, "points to their being a clever hoax, perpetrated by some one whose first attempts were rather timid, but who little by little acquired the sureness of audacity." The Glozelists were furious. On all sides there was a clash of weapons—of flint weapons, naturally.

The lie was passed. "Arrant impostures, an unhealthy atmosphere, a total absence of real scientific methods," wrote Abbe Breuil the following year. Salomon Reinach replied in his Ephernerides: "These statements are so many regrettable and malicious errors." And Bjorn the Norwegian exclaimed from his chair in the University of Oslo, "As for the question of authenticity, one must be blind or dishonest to bring it up again." M. Schopfer, chief engineer of the Nice tramways (!), had watched the excavations and now agreed with Bjorn. He added that "only a human serpent, by unheard-of acrobatics," could have introduced spurious articles into the tombs. And insults went hissing like arrows through the air.

On September 18, 1927, Le Journal revealed all that was said at a secret meeting of the Academy. "M. Reinach cried out, 'If Glozel is annihilated, all prehistory must he rewritten.' At which M. Dussaud shrugged his shoulders with an air of polite regret and helplessness." —"A stupid article!" wrote Salomon Reinach in reply. "This piece of slanderous gossip will remain the most regrettable incident of the Affair."—"A practical joke," says Clement Vautel a few days later, also in Le Journal. Epigrams are made. Poems are written. Paris amuses itself. It is amused by the swindle, hut it would he still more amused if the discoveries were authentic.

Comoedia is pitiless. Even M. Paul Souday is moved to comment on the affair: "This winter Glozel will be given a scene in every revue and a naughty song in every cabaret." (Le Temps, October 23.)

Meanwhile the Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts was considering the question of whether Glozel should he permanently classified as a national monument. A so-called international commission, consisting of eight well-known scientists, was formed in hopes of ending the dispute. Le Temps, on November 13, in an article entitled De Bello Glozelico, published two conflicting opinions: that of Salomon Reinach and that of Dussaud the anti-Glozelist. The only result of this impartiality was to pour fresh oil on the fire.

The report of the international commission was generally unfavourable to Glozel. However, Le Matin declared on December 24 that the mystery w7as not yet explained. Les Debats suggested that this strange affair would take high rank "among the most daring of scientific hoaxes." Paul Souday proclaimed that Dussaud's discussion of the question was luminous. "Doubtless he hasn't read it," Reinach dared to insinuate. And Dussaud retorted, in an open letter to Dr. Morlet, "You have won immortality, Monsieur, by deluding us all." The affair was continued from day to day; it was serialized like a detective story. The spectre of anti-clericalism was introduced once more. The more radical newspapers asserted that the Glozel dispute was "a monument to scientific Jesuitism," and Severine, in Le Petit Provencal, openly denounced the priesthood. But Louis Forest, a columnist who prides himself on his good sense, looked at the brighter side of the affair. "These discussions," he wrote in Le Matin on December 29, "will accustom the public to thinking of prehistory, of the generations that flourished ten thousand years ago, and, to emerge from savagery, slowly conquered civilization by successive ingenuities." This serene philosophy, alas!, calmed nobody's temper. And now came a graver note: Emile Fradin brought suit for libel against Dussaud and his other accusers. In the College de France, M. Loth, who was defending Reinach's thesis with increasing fervour, was forced to abandon his lecture under a bombardment of stinkbombs. The following card wTas distributed in Paris:

FRADIN ART COMPANY A VERY LIMITED LIABILITY CORPORATION

REPRODUCTIONS FROM THE ANTIQUE

PALAEOLITHIC AND NEOLITHIC OBJECTS A SPECIALTY Glozel (Allier)

Is the conclusion drawing near? The Minister of Public Instruction informed Dr. Morlet (February 10. 1928) that he was abandoning the project of classifying Glozel as a field of scientific interest. Dussaud's attorney, Maitre Gargon, brought suit for falsification against persons unknown; a search warrant was issued and the police descended on the Fradin household, returning with tw7o basketfuls of pottery. This search aroused a hue and cry of indignation. Emile Fradin, who had come to Paris for the trial, was the prey of newspaper men. The verdict has still to be rendered, but it is expected during the fall. We are awaiting it with impatience and respect. "Glozel is perhaps not authentic as yet," people say, "but give it time. . . ."

Meanwhile, the village has become a sort of shrine, like Stratford-onAvon or Napoleon's tomb. It boasts of a museum, where the price of admission varies from six to ten francs, depending on the prosperity of the visitor. Hotels—"palaces"—with flaming colours and no less flaming prices are being erected on every side; Glozel is growing like a Western mining town. Inexhaustible, the sacred field continues to yield its treasures with liberality.

After the anthropologists and archaeologists, artists are beginning to take a hand in the dispute. A painter and art critic well known in America, M. Jacques-Emile Blanche, who is esteemed for his independence of judgment and his open mind, has recently come hack from Vichy and Glozel absolutely convinced, from the purely aesthetic point of view7, that what he saw at Dr. Morlet's and the Fradins' was authentic. He has no opinion on the Glozel alphabet, but the drawings impressed him as being traced by such a skillful hand—as being the product of such an evident art—that he declared: "There are not ten men in the wrnrld who are capable of making such designs or of drawing with so much vigour. Picasso or Derain would have the necessary ability, hut as for a set of fraudulent peasants—never!"

However the case may stand, we, the credulous public, can only applaud. They have deprived us one by one of all our illusions: first of mythological fables, then of diabolic apparitions, and finally of religious miracles. Will they now7 forbid us to believe in impostors, those last idealists?

(1) "They had foreseen everything, even the future name of their village," said Le Petit Parisien on September 18. 1927.

(2) Glozel et ses Inscriptions Neolithiques. Paris: Chiron, editeur. 1928.