Émile Zola famously shone a light on the murky Dreyfus Affair with his open newspaper letter entitled J’accuse…!.
But another Emile – Irish, despite the name – was the star of the foreign press that flocked to Paris to cover the sensational 1899 retrial of Alfred Dreyfus wherein, despite mounting evidence of a conspiracy, the French army officer’s guilt on spying charges was restated.
Writing for the Daily Telegraph, Dublin-born Emile Joseph Dillion (1854–1933) conveyed the court drama in the style that made him the best-known and best-paid journalist of his time.
He wrote: “Colonel Jouaust’s voice was unsteady, and seemed to have a funeral ring in it as he held up three sheets of paper in his left hand and read out the judgment. Was his voice loud enough for Captain Dreyfus in his little room away off the hall to hear? Few people knew what he was reading. An unerring instinct kept them on the watch for the essential words. Suddenly we heard, ‘Yes; the accused man is guilty’, and a shudder convulsed the frames of the public.”
Described both as “the greatest and most accomplished journalist of our time, if not of all time” (by a Daily Telegraph proprietor) and as “a most unreliable scoundrel” (by a British diplomat), Dublin-born Dillon equipped himself for a life as foreign correspondent via a mastery of many languages.
But he was also nearly killed once for dressing as himself
By one account, probably exaggerated, he spoke 26. But he was certainly a polyglot, which opened doors to him everywhere. His wide-ranging wardrobe helped too. A Vanity Fair profile in 1918 said of him: “Few journalists are so internationally recognised…” This was ironic, because central to his modus operandi was a genius for disguise.
[ The Dublin-born journalist who became a foreign correspondent in Imperial RussiaOpens in new window ]
Going undercover to report Turkish massacres of Armenian Christians in 1895, he dressed by turns as an Armenian woman, a Russian army officer and a Kurdish chief. Elsewhere he posed as a Greek monk.
But he was also nearly killed once for dressing as himself. Emerging from a Dominican monastery during the 1910 Portuguese revolution, he attracted the suspicions of an anti-clerical crowd. “Shoot him. He’s a priest in disguise!” they shouted. Dillon pacified them with the cry: “Long live the Republic!”
A journalistic superstar – he had a lavish expense account and sometimes two secretaries to accompany his travels – Dillon somehow evaded biographers in his lifetime and for almost a century afterwards. Kevin Rafter’s assiduous account breaks new ground and brings a forgotten but fascinating figure back to life.
