Victor Hugo: His Life and Work
by George Barnett Smith · English · Gutenberg #37635 · 391,817 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Victor Hugo: His Life and Work
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Victor Hugo: His Life and Work
Author: George Barnett Smith
Release date: October 5, 2011 [eBook #37635]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37635
Credits: Produced by Steven Gibbs, Martin Pettit and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTOR HUGO: HIS LIFE AND WORK ***
Produced by Steven Gibbs, Martin Pettit and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
VICTOR HUGO
_HIS LIFE AND WORK_
BY G. BARNETT SMITH,
AUTHOR OF
'SHELLEY: A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY,' 'POETS AND NOVELISTS,' ETC.
_WITH A PORTRAIT OF VICTOR HUGO._
LONDON:
WARD AND DOWNEY,
12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
1885.
[_All Rights Reserved._]
[Illustration: Victor Hugo]
I INSCRIBE THIS VOLUME TO ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE,
REJOICING THUS TO CONNECT THE GREAT BARD AND PROPHET OF FRANCE
WITH THE ENGLISH SINGER OF A YOUNGER DAY,
WHO HAS DRUNK DEEPLY OF THE MASTER'S SPIRIT.
_G. B. S._
PRELIMINARY NOTE.
I began this study of Victor Hugo in December last, and arrangements
were made for its early publication. The great poet has now passed away,
and this melancholy event gives the biographical portion of the present
volume a completeness not originally anticipated. Notwithstanding the
multitude of criticisms which have appeared in our own and other
languages upon Hugo's works, this is the only book which relates the
full story of his life, and now traces to its close his literary career.
More than twenty years have elapsed since the publication of Madame
Hugo's memorials of the earlier portion of the poet's history, and since
that time M. Barbou's work (excellently translated by Miss Frewer) is
the only narrative of a biographical character which has appeared. The
writings of various French and English critics, the two works I have
named, and those valuable chroniclers, the journals of London and Paris,
have been of considerable service to me in the preparation of the
biography now offered to the public.
The writings of Victor Hugo are so varied and multifarious, and many of
them are so well known to English readers, that I have not deemed it
necessary to subject them to a detailed analysis. At the same time, the
reader unfamiliar with these powerful works will, I trust, be able to
gather something of their purport and scope from the ensuing pages. As
they have impressed all minds, moreover, by their striking originality,
I thought that it would not be without its value if, while venturing to
record my own impressions, I gave at the same time a representation of
critical contemporary opinion upon them. Finally, it has been my object
to present to the reader, within reasonable compass, a complete survey
of the life and work of the most celebrated Frenchman of the nineteenth
century.
G. BARNETT SMITH.
HIGHGATE, LONDON, N.,
_June 3rd, 1885_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. EARLY YEARS 1
II. DAWNINGS OF GENIUS 18
III. VICTOR HUGO'S HUMANITARIANISM 37
IV. THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 49
V. 'NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS' 65
VI. 'MARION DE LORME' AND OTHER DRAMAS 77
VII. LAST DRAMATIC WRITINGS 92
VIII. THE FRENCH ACADEMY 110
IX. PERSONAL AND POLITICAL 121
X. THE POET IN EXILE 141
XI. IN GUERNSEY.--'LES MISERABLES' 152
XII. LITERARY AND DRAMATIC 169
XIII. PARIS AND THE SIEGE 186
XIV. 'QUATRE-VINGT-TREIZE.'--POLITICS, ETC. 201
XV. POEMS ON RELIGION 217
XVI. PUBLIC ADDRESSES, ETC. 223
XVII. 'LA LEGENDE DES SIECLES,' ETC. 237
XVIII. HONOURS TO VICTOR HUGO 248
XIX. PERSONAL AND MISCELLANEOUS 261
XX. THE POET'S DEATH AND BURIAL 274
XXI. GENIUS AND CHARACTERISTICS 304
VICTOR HUGO:
HIS LIFE AND WORK.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY YEARS.
The glory of France touched its zenith at the period when our narrative
opens. Europe virtually lay at the feet of Napoleon, who had risen to a
height of authority and power which might well have satisfied the most
vaulting ambition. Nations whose records extended back into the ages of
antiquity trembled before him; and only one people, that of this
sea-girt isle of Britain, declined to bend the knee to the
all-conquering First Consul. Yet the philosophic mind, reflecting that
the stability of a nation or a throne must be measured by its growth,
must surely have distrusted the permanence of a grandeur and a greatness
thus rapidly achieved. And speedily would such prevision have been
justified, for in little more than one brief decade the sun of Napoleon
set as suddenly as it arose.
But while as yet the fame and the splendour of the conqueror were in
their noonday, there was born at Besancon another child of genius, whose
triumphs were to be won in a different and a nobler sphere. He was
destined to touch, as with Ithuriel's spear, the sleeping spirit of
French poesy, and to animate it with new life, vigour, and enthusiasm;
he was to recall the divine muse from the drear region of classicism,
and, by revivifying almost every branch of imaginative literature, he
was himself to gain the triple crown of poet, romancist, and dramatist.
And not alone for this was the child Victor Hugo to grow into manhood
and venerable age. He was to become a great apostle of liberty, and as
his life opened with the triumphs of the first Napoleon, so before its
close he was destined to behold the last of that name pass away in the
whirlwind, and France recover much of her prosperity and her power under
the aegis of the Republic, of which the poet sang and for which he
laboured.
The ancestry of Victor Hugo were not undistinguished. Documents
concerning them before the fifteenth century were lost in the pillage of
Nancy, but since that time a clear genealogy is claimed. There was one
Hugo, a soldier, who obtained in 1535 letters patent of nobility for
himself and his descendants from Cardinal Jean de Lorraine, Archbishop
of Rheims, which letters were subsequently confirmed by the Cardinal's
brother, Antoine, Duke of Lorraine. The fifth descendant from this
warrior-noble, Charles Hyacinthe Hugo, obtained new letters patent; and
his grandson, Joseph Leopold Sigisbert, was the father of the poet. In
the seventeenth century, a member of the Hugo family was known both in
the Church and in literature, and became Abbe of Estival and Bishop of
Ptolemais. Another who lived in the eighteenth century, Louis Antoine
Hugo, was a member of the Convention, and was executed for moderatism.
Thus in career, as in character, there was much variety in the Hugo
family.
Sigisbert Hugo, who entered the army as a cadet in 1788, ultimately
attained the rank of General under the First Empire. Although the
hereditary title of Count was the appanage of this rank, he never took
it up. While brave and fearless in war, he is represented as being
devotion and goodness personified, and humane to a fault. 'He set his
children a fine example of duty, being ever their instructor in the
paths of honour.' During a period of military service at Nantes, he
became acquainted with Sophie Trebuchet, the daughter of a wealthy
shipowner. An attachment soon sprang up between them, and they were
married in Paris, Hugo having been summoned thither as reporter to the
first council of war on the Seine.
Though the grandfather of Victor Hugo on the maternal side was engaged
in commerce, he belonged to an old family, and one famous in La Vendee
for its devotion to the Royalist cause. A cousin of Madame Hugo was the
Count de Chasseboeuf, better known as Volney, the author of _Les
Ruines_; and another cousin was Count Cornet, who was very prominent in
political matters both before and during the First Empire. Two sons were
born to Major Hugo and his wife, and then they looked forward with hope
to the birth of a daughter, whom it was decided to name Victorine.
Another son, however, came instead, and one so weakly and diminutive
that the accoucheur declared strongly against his chances of life. The
babe was taken to the mairie at Besancon, and registered as having been
born on the 26th of February, 1802. He received the names of Victor
Marie Hugo, and his godfather was Major Hugo's intimate friend, General
Lahorie, chief of the staff to General Moreau. It has been pointed out
that the word Hugo in old German was the equivalent of the Latin word
_spiritus_, and this fact, combined with the Christian name of Victor,
caused Dumas the elder to say that 'the name of Victor Hugo stands forth
as the conquering spirit, the triumphant soul, the breath of victory.'
But for some time there could be little presage of triumph or victory in
connection with Victor Hugo. Languid and ailing in body, he became
unusually sad for a child of such tender years, and 'was sometimes
discovered in a corner, weeping silently without any reason.' He
afterwards described his untoward childhood in the opening lines of the
_Feuilles d'Automne_. For some time the Hugo family accompanied its head
in his military journeyings; but when Major Hugo was ultimately ordered
to join the army of Italy, he settled his wife and their three young
children in Paris, in the Rue de Clichy. That the youngest scion of the
house could not really have been as feeble and frail as he looked, and
that he must have had the basis of a good, sound constitution, is proved
by his long life; but we must not forget also in this regard the great
care and assiduous attention lavished upon him by his mother. His career
furnishes another illustration of the truth that while the most glorious
promise sometimes sets in gloom and premature death, on the other hand
genius also not infrequently advances from the wavering spark to a noble
flame, and out of weakness is made strength.
Major (afterwards General) Hugo rendered conspicuous service in Italy by
the capture of the notorious bandit chief, Fra Diavolo, and the
pacification of Naples. For these acts he was made Colonel of Royal
Corsica and Governor of Avellino. When not quite five years old Victor
was taken by his mother, with his brothers, Abel and Eugene, to
Avellino, and the journey to Italy is associated with his first
observations of natural scenery. Though so young, his imagination was
fired by all he saw, and the impressions he formed were very
distinct--so much so that in after life he would discuss with Alexandre
Dumas the aspects of the country through which he had travelled in his
childhood.
In 1808 Colonel Hugo was sent to Madrid in the train of Joseph
Bonaparte; but, as Spain was disturbed by war, he would not hazard the
presence of his wife and children in that country. Madame Hugo
accordingly went to Paris, and established herself at the house No. 12,
in the Impasse des Feuillantines, where she now devoted herself to the
education of her children. Late in life, Victor Hugo described the
household in the Feuillantines. Near by there was an aged priest, who
acted as tutor to the boys, teaching them a good deal of Latin, a
smattering of Greek, and the barest outlines of history. In the gardens,
and amid the ruins of an old convent in the grounds, the Hugo boys
passed many happy days. 'Together in their work and in their play,
rough-hewing their lives regardless of destiny, they passed their time
as children of the spring, mindful only of their books, of the trees,
and of the clouds, listening to the tumultuous chorus of the birds, but
watched over incessantly by one sweet and loving smile.' 'Blessings on
thee, O my mother!' was the invocation of the poet in his later years.
Once the family received an accession in the person of General Lahorie,
who had been connected with Moreau's conspiracy, and was condemned to
death for contumacy. Madame Hugo, in her secluded dwelling, and in a
little chapel buried amongst the foliage, gave him a secure shelter for
eighteen months. Young Victor did not then know that the stranger in
whom he took so deep an interest, and in whom he begat an equal
interest, was his godfather. Lahorie took kindly to the boy, and
frequently conversed with him, saying to him on one occasion with great
impressiveness, 'Child, everything must yield to liberty!' The
precautions of Lahorie and his friends were in the end of no avail. In
1811 he was arrested at the Feuillantines, tried and condemned by
court-martial, and shot on the plain of Grenelle. Napoleon was
implacable in his revenge; his wrath might sleep, but it was never
allowed to die.
Another visitor to the Feuillantines was General Louis Hugo, uncle to
the youths. With that strong poetic imagery which characterized him,
little Victor said that the entrance of his uncle into the salon 'had on
us the effect of the Archangel Michael appearing on a beam of light.'
The visitor came at the request of his brother to hasten the departure
of the family for Spain. The boys Hugo were informed by their mother
that they must learn Spanish, and just as they would have performed much
more impossible feats under such a command, they acquired the language
in the course of a few weeks.
In the spring of 1811, Madame Hugo and her children began their journey
into Spain. At Bayonne they had to await a convoy for Madrid. Here the
travellers paid several visits to the theatre, which made a deep
impression upon Victor, yet one which, while more lasting perhaps, was
not so deep as that made by the little daughter of a widow, who seems to
have quite captivated the boy. He afterwards referred to this attachment
as bearing the same relation to love that the light of dawn bears to the
full blaze of day. But he never saw again the youthful _inamorata_ who
stirred 'the first cry of the awakening heart.'
The dilatory progress of the convoy to Madrid, though irksome to Madame
Hugo, was not so to her youngest son. He delighted in observing the
features of the scenery and the towns through which they passed. With
Ernani he was especially pleased, and subsequently gave to one of his
dramas the name of this town. After a number of adventures, some of them
of a trying character, the convoy entered Madrid, and Madame Hugo and
her family were accommodated at the palace of Prince Masserano. Their
rooms and all the appointments were very sumptuous, and there was a
great display of Bohemian and Venetian glass and magnificent China
vases. Concerning the latter, Victor Hugo said that he had 'never since
met with any so remarkable.' Victor's eldest brother, Abel, was made a
page to King Joseph, and it was intended that Victor himself should
follow his example. Meanwhile Eugene and Victor were placed in the
Seminary of Nobles, a proceeding which affected them deeply, and made
them inexpressibly miserable after the happiness they had found in the
Masserano Palace.
But great and dire events were impending in Napoleonic history. By the
beginning of the year 1812 the position of French affairs generally
became so threatening that General Hugo decided to send his wife and the
two younger children back to Paris. Not many months elapsed before his
prescience was justified. Bonaparte's army was decimated by the
inclement snows of Russia after the burning of Moscow, and the kings he
had set up in the European capitals began to tremble for the stability
of their thrones.
Madame Hugo and her two sons safely reached Paris after a tedious
journey, and once more established themselves in the Feuillantines. The
biographical work written by the poet's wife shows that Madame Hugo had
liberal ideas on the subject of education: that where religion was in
question she was averse to forcing any particular persuasion on her
sons, or to interfere with their natural tendencies; neither did she
wish to tax their intelligence any more than their consciences. In the
matter of reading she was equally liberal: the boys were allowed the
greatest freedom, and read Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, and other
authors; but the works of such writers paled in comparison with Captain
Cook's travels, which had a great fascination for the young students.
Madame Hugo judged that any errors her sons were likely to imbibe in
their wide and catholic reading would be rendered innocuous by the
influence of a good example and the purity of the home life. She
restrained them by her authority, and, while attending to their mental
and moral development, she did not neglect the physical. She desired
them to grow up healthy and complete in mind and body alike.
The troubles in Spain thickened apace, and King Joseph left Madrid,
being followed by General Hugo. The victory of the Allies at Vittoria
practically settled the fate of Joseph Bonaparte and the Spanish crown.
The King dismissed his retinue of officers and retired into private
life, and General Hugo returned to Paris with his son Abel. Madame Hugo
and the other children had moved into the Rue du Cherche-Midi. Having
herself been an invader, it was now the turn of France to be invaded.
General Hugo was no favourite with the Emperor (who had not forgotten
the Moreau conspiracy), but when his country was in danger he could not
remain inactive. So he volunteered, and went into the provinces, where
he rendered conspicuous service. He long held Thionville, keeping the
Allies at bay, and refused to open the town until he received official
despatches from his General-in-Chief announcing the cessation of
hostilities. The restoration of the Bourbons followed, and, although
this was hailed with great joy by Madame Hugo, it led to General Hugo
being deprived of his command and removed from active employment,
together with all the officers who had shared in the defence of
Thionville.
Eugene and Victor Hugo now lost the liberty they had for some time
enjoyed, and were sent to school, being placed in the College Cordier et
Decotte, in the Rue Ste. Marguerite. At first the removal was especially
bitter to Victor, as it separated him from Adele Foucher, a young girl
who had completely won his youthful heart. This love continued to grow
from its inception in the Rue du Cherche-Midi till the time when Adele
became his devoted wife, and returned Victor Hugo's affection with an
ardour equal to his own.
The Hugo boys were naturally the subject of a cross-fire in regard to
politics. Their father was devoted to the Empire, and their mother was
equally devoted to the Royalists. But as the influence of a mother
always has priority in regard to time, Victor Hugo was for a season
enthusiastic about royalty. He could not, with his warm temperament and
lively imagination, be half-hearted about anything. Nor need it surprise
us that he yielded first to the influence of his mother as regarded the
Bourbons, and then to that of his father as regarded the Bonapartes. In
youth it is the imagination which is developed; the judgment is formed
by slow stages. It would have surprised us more if Victor Hugo had not
shown himself amenable to the potent influences of his home training.
His father and mother were of no ordinary type; they had both great
latent force of nature and character, which deeply impressed itself upon
their children. In estimating the career of Victor Hugo, then, with its
later changes of opinion, the circumstances which surrounded his early
years, and greatly assisted in moulding his character, must not be
forgotten.
Early in 1815 Paris was electrified by the news that Napoleon had
returned from Elba. For a brief period the magic of his name once more
exercised a profound influence; and under this revival of Bonapartist
prospects General Hugo was again despatched to take the command of
Thionville. He exhibited the same capacity and spirit as before, but all
was of no avail. The crowning disaster of Waterloo extinguished the
hopes of the Bonapartists, and Napoleon fell, 'like Lucifer, never to
rise again.'
It is matter for regret that the differences between General and Madame
Hugo on the subject of politics and dynasties led to a separation
between them, though one that was mutually desired. Each felt too
strongly on these subjects to give way, and thereby stultify his or her
convictions. But political disagreements did not affect the deep
interest of both parents in their children. The boys made great progress
at school, and also attended courses of lectures in physics, philosophy,
and mathematics at the College Louis-le-Grand. Their proficiency was
especially marked in mathematics, and it obtained for both honourable
mention in the examinations.
Poetry, however, even thus early, was the real mistress of Victor Hugo.
His tentative efforts in this direction were as varied as they were
numerous, and he has left an amusing record of his first wooings of the
Muse. He alternated fights at the college (he and Eugene were the kings
of the school) with flights of the imagination. Nothing came amiss to
him, whether ode, satire, epistle, lyric, tragedy, elegy, etc.; and he
imitated Ossian and translated from Virgil, Horace, and Lucan at an age
when others only just begin to acquire an appreciation and understanding
of those authors. Nor were such writers as Martial and Ausonius unknown
to him. Then from poetry he would turn to romances, fables, stories,
epigrams, madrigals, logographs, acrostics, charades, enigmas, and
impromptus; and he even wrote a comic opera.
In one of these youthful pieces he deprecated the exercise of the
reader's satirical rage over the effusion; and certainly the chief
impression which these initial attempts at composition leave upon the
reader is not a critical one founded upon their manifest crudity and
inconsequences of thought, but one of surprise at the exuberance of
fancy and command of expression so soon and so singularly displayed.
There was more than sufficient in them to the observant eye to
foreshadow the genius which their author afterwards developed. Each of
these poems was an effort of the imagination after strength of wing. But
of all those who perused these early poetic efforts, Madame Hugo was
probably the only one able to gauge the great promise of the writer. She
could not but anticipate much from that genius which was just essaying
to unfold itself in the sun. Yet even she could not fully foresee the
magnificent, eagle-like flights of which these imaginings were but the
first faint flutterings of the eaglet's wing.
CHAPTER II.
DAWNINGS OF GENIUS.
Victor Hugo was not quite thirteen when he wrote his first poetical
essay, which had for its subject _Roland and Chivalry_. This was
followed in the same year, 1815, by an intensely Royalist poem, and one
breathing indignation against the Emperor, after the disaster of
Waterloo. The poet had been thrown constantly into the midst of Royalist
influences and surroundings; not only his mother, but General Lahorie
and M. Foucher, her most intimate friends, were enemies of the Empire,
and the youth consequently imbibed at the same time hatred of the Empire
and love of the Bourbons.
His first tragedy, _Irtamene_, was written in honour of Louis XVIII.,
and though professedly dealing with Egyptian themes, it was really a
defence of the French King. There is a usurper in it, who meets with
condign chastisement, and the play ends with the coronation of the
legitimate monarch. 'Those who hate tyrants should love kings,' said the
writer, to whom at that time the restoration of the Bourbons meant
liberty. But these things must not be made too much of. The poet was at
that nebulous stage when the fact of writing poetry was more to him than
the subject-matter of his exercises. He read voluminously, but he had
not as yet begun to separate, to weigh, and to discriminate.
A course of the _Theatre de Voltaire_ led him to begin a new tragedy,
_Atheli; or, the Scandinavians_, all in dramatic order, with its five
acts, and its due regard to narrative, scenery, etc. Before he had
completed it, however, he turned to a comic opera, _A Quelque Chose
Hasard est Bon_. Then he reverted to the drama, and wrote a play in
three acts, with two interludes, entitled _Inez de Castro_. From the
point of view of literary art, little is to be said of these things; but
there are many scattered passages in them which reveal remarkable
insight on the part of one so young. In the year 1817 he first sought
publicity for his compositions, competing for the poetical prize
annually offered by the French Academy. The subject chosen was, _The
Advantages of Study in every situation of Life_, and amongst the
competitors were Lebrun, Delavigne, Saintine, and Loyson, who all on
this occasion made their poetical debut. The first prize was divided
between Saintine and Lebrun, and Hugo received honourable mention; but
when the poems came to be declaimed in public, the warmest applause
followed that by Victor Hugo. The Academy judges were considerably
puzzled by Master Hugo's exercise. In one place he wrote as though he
had arrived at years of discretion and comparative maturity, and then
demolished this idea by the lines--
'I, who have ever fled from courts and cities,
Scarce three short lustres have accomplished yet.'
The judges came to the conclusion that the young poet was playing with
them, and in their report accordingly threw doubt upon his statement
that he was only fifteen years old. The production of his birth
certificate set this question at rest, and Victor's name now became
prominent in the newspapers. M. Raynouard, the cultured Secretary of the
Academy, finding that the 'most potent, grave, and reverend signors'
had not been deceived, expressed the great pleasure he had in making the
youthful competitor's acquaintance. Other distinguished men followed
suit, and Hugo was described as 'the sublime child,' either by
Chateaubriand or Soumet. The evidence points to the latter having first
made use of this phrase, but its origin matters little, for
Chateaubriand fully adopted it, remarking that anyone might naturally
have used the words, they expressed so decided a truth. Hugo was taken
by a friend to see the author of _Atala_, and the impression made upon
his mind by this man of genius found utterance in the exclamation, 'I
would be Chateaubriand or nothing.'
In 1818 Victor's brother Eugene was awarded a prize at the floral games
of Toulouse. The younger brother's ambition was touched, and in the
following year he secured two prizes from the same Academy for his poems
on _The Statue of Henry IV._, and _The Virgins of Verdun_. The former
poem gained the golden lily, and the latter the golden amaranth. It
seems that just as the writer was about to set to work on the
first-named poem, Madame Hugo was seized with inflammation of the
chest. She lamented that her son would be unable to complete his poem in
time; but he set to work, wrote it in a single night, and it was
despatched next morning in time to compete for the prize. The President
of the Toulouse Academy admitted that it was an enigma for one so young
to exhibit such remarkable talents in literature.
A poem, _Moses on the Nile_, gained him a third prize at Toulouse, and
this constituted him Master of the Floral Games, so that at the age of
eighteen he became a provincial academician. He was still Royalist in
his opinions, and on the few occasions when he was in the company of his
father, the latter did not attempt to change his views, feeling that it
would be useless to attempt to set the arguments of a few hours against
a daily and hourly influence. But he had a true apprehension of his
son's character, and on one occasion, when Victor had expressed himself
warmly in favour of the Vendeans, General Hugo turned to General
Lucotte, and said: 'Let us leave all to time. The child shares his
mother's views; the man will have the opinions of his father.'
Victor Hugo was now the subject of conflicting claims. There was the
law, which he had chosen as a profession, with its demands upon him, and
there was literature, which he loved too much to surrender; while at the
same time love and politics also claimed their share in him. He
determined to throw himself ardently into literature. Separated from the
object of his youthful affections, he wrote his _Han d'Islande_, in
which, while there are many crimes and horrors, there are also passages
of tenderness, wherein he sought to embalm and reveal his feelings of
love. His courage sustained him through many trials, but at last he was
called upon to bear one that made a profound impression upon his heart.
Madame Hugo, who was now living in the Rue Mezieres, was seized with
serious illness after working in her garden, which was her favourite
occupation. For some time she struggled successfully with the disease,
but it had obtained too firm a hold upon her, and she died suddenly on
the 27th of June, 1821. On the evening of the funeral, Adele Foucher,
unconscious of what had occurred, was dancing at a party given in
celebration of her birthday. Next morning Victor called upon her, and
the lovers, mingling their tears together, mutually renewed their old
vows of attachment. Victor, to whom life had seemed without an object on
the death of his mother, speedily found another after his betrothal to
Adele. Her parents no longer actively opposed the union, but stipulated
for its postponement until Victor could provide a home.
In conjunction with several friends, Hugo had already founded the
_Conservateur Litteraire_, to which he contributed articles on Sir
Walter Scott, Byron, Moore, etc., and a number of political satires. He
had a sum of seven hundred francs, upon which he subsisted for a year,
and the method by which he did it will be found related in the
experiences of Marius in _Les Miserables_. Translations from Lucan and
Virgil, which appeared under the name of D'Auverney, and the Epistles
from Aristides to Brutus on _Thou_ and _You_, emanated from his pen. He
also wrote a very noticeable article on Lamartine's _Meditations
Poetiques_, which had just appeared. Then came the first instalment of
his own _Odes et Ballades_, a work in which his genius began to attain a
fuller freedom and a richer expression. The volume was received with
very wide favour, and though, as M. Barbou has observed, it presents
many ideas that would find no approval now, the poet, nevertheless,
declared that he could proudly and conscientiously place the work side
by side with the democratical books and poems of his matured manhood.
This, he said, he should be prepared to do, because in 'the fierce
strife against early prejudices imbibed with a mother's milk, and in the
slow rough ascent from the false to the true, which to a certain extent
makes up the substance of every man's life, and causes the development
of his conscience to be the type of human progress in general; each step
so taken represents some material sacrifice to moral advancement, some
interest abandoned, some vanity eschewed, some worldly benefit
renounced--nay, perhaps, some risk of home or even life incurred.' This
justification may fairly be accepted, but from another aspect also these
_Odes_ are worthy of attention. They were the first noble efforts of the
poet to emancipate French poetry from the trammels which had too long
governed it, and which had rendered it almost dead, and effete alike in
spirit and in form. At length imagination was to resume its rightful
sway, and exhibit some return to its pristine vigour.
The _Odes_ not only brought the author friends like Emile Deschamps and
Alfred de Vigny, but they were pecuniarily successful. The first edition
yielded him a profit of seven hundred francs, and a second quickly
followed. The attention of the King was called to the poems, and the
interest his Majesty took in them, together with a romantic incident in
connection with the Saumur plot, led to a pension of 1,000 francs being
conferred upon the poet from the King's privy purse. He now thought he
was entitled to press the question of his marriage. His father, who had
married again, offered no opposition; the Fouchers also gave way, and
bestowed the hand of their daughter Adele upon the young and now
successful poet. Victor Hugo had shortly before this made the
acquaintance of the celebrated priest Lamennais, and it was from his
hands that he received the certificate of confession required before he
could get married. 'I trust with all my heart,' wrote the priest, 'that
God will bless this happy union, which He appears Himself to have
prepared by implanting in you a long and unchanged affection, and a
mutual love as pure as it is sweet.'
The Saumur plot, to which I have referred, took place in 1822, and
amongst those implicated in it was a young man named Delon, who had been
an intimate friend of Victor Hugo in his childhood. On hearing of
Delon's danger, Hugo wrote to the conspirator's mother, offering an
asylum for her son in his own house, and remarking that as the writer
was well known for his devotion to the Bourbons, he would never be
sought in such a retreat. This letter fell into the hands of the King,
but instead of its prejudicing him against Victor Hugo, he generously
said, 'That young man has a good heart as well as great genius; he is an
honourable fellow; I shall take care he has the next pension that falls
vacant.' This was the origin of the poet's pension, which was in nowise
due to an expressed wish or desire on his own part.
_Hans of Iceland_, the first published romance of Victor Hugo, appeared
anonymously in 1823. The work at once attracted attention by reason of
its graphic power and the startling nature of its contrasts. It combines
horror with tenderness, the deepest gloom with flashes of the purest
light. The author himself had a great affection for it, on the personal
ground already mentioned. But its chief features are of a different
order. In this northern romance, as one critic has observed, the
youthful novelist has turned to great account the savage wilds, gloomy
lakes, stormy seas, pathless caves, and ruined fortresses of
Scandinavia. 'A being savage as the scenery around him--human in his
birth, but more akin to the brute in his nature; diminutive, but with a
giant's strength; whose pastime is assassination, who lives literally as
well as metaphorically on blood--is the hero; and round this monster are
grouped some of the strangest, ghastliest, and yet not wholly unnatural
beings which it is possible for the imagination to conceive--Spiagudry,
the keeper of the dead-house, or _morgue_, of Drontheim, and Orugex, the
State executioner--while gentler forms, the noble and persecuted
Schumacker, and the devoted and innocent Ethel, relieve the monotony of
crime and horror.' M. Charles Nodier, one of the ablest of French
contemporary critics, in a review of the work in the _Quotidienne_,
remarked upon the fact that there were men of a certain organization, to
whom glory and distinction were temptations, just as happiness and
pleasure tempted other men. 'Precocious intellects and deep sensibility
do not take the future into consideration--they devour their future.
The passions of a young and powerful mind know no to-morrow; they look
to satiate their ambition and their hopes with the reputation and
excitement of the present moment. _Han d'Islande_ has been the result of
this kind of combination, if indeed one can describe as a combination
that which is only the thoughtless instinct of an original genius, who
obeys, without being aware of it, an impulse at variance with his true
interests, but whose fine and wide career may not improbably justify
this promise of excellence, and may hereafter redeem all the anxiety he
has caused by the excusable error he committed when he first launched
himself upon the world.' M. Nodier then discussed with much freedom, and
yet with almost as much fairness, the peculiar features of the romance,
its close and painful search into the morbidities of life, its pictures
of the scaffold and the _morgue_, etc., as well as its strong local
colouring, its historical truth, its learning, its wit, and its vigorous
and picturesque style.
The author and his critic became personally acquainted. The latter
called upon Victor Hugo, who, after other changes of abode, had now
established himself in the Rue de Vaugirard. A second pension of 2,000
francs had been awarded him by the King; hence his migration into
comparatively sumptuous quarters. Other literary friendships besides
that with M. Nodier were formed as the result of Victor Hugo's first
romance.
At this period he wrote an ode on the _Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile_, and
there were many indications that his early Royalist opinions were in
process of abandonment. He visited his father at Blois, and the General
was not slow to observe the changes taking place in his son's views.
While he could not admire Napoleon personally, he began to do justice to
those who had planted the French standard in all the capitals of Europe.
But it seemed as though the King was resolved to retain him by favours,
for there was now conferred upon him the coveted badge of the Legion of
Honour. He attended the coronation of Charles X. at Rheims, and from
thence went to pay a visit to Lamartine. A project was formed and a
treaty signed with a publisher, by which M. Lamartine, Victor Hugo, M.
Charles Nodier, and M. Taylor engaged to prepare a work detailing a
poetical and picturesque trip to Mont Blanc and the Valley of Chamouni.
For four meditations Lamartine was to receive 2,000 francs, Hugo 2,000
for four odes, Taylor 2,000 for eight drawings, and Nodier 2,250 for all
the text. The travellers set out, Hugo being accompanied by his wife and
child. On reaching Geneva--after a temporary arrest of Hugo, some time
before, on account of the delay of his passport in its journey from
Paris--the visitors found the police regulations very annoying. Each
hotel possessed a register, in which every traveller was bound to write
his name, his age, his profession, the place from whence he came, and
his object in travelling. M. Nodier was so exasperated that in reply to
the last query he wrote, 'Come to upset your Government.' For a few
moments the hotel-keeper was not unnaturally electrified. The travellers
got their jaunt, but owing to the insolvency of the publisher with whom
they had arranged, the literary scheme was never carried out.
In ascending the Alps to the Mer de Glace, Victor Hugo had a narrow
escape. His guide, who was new to the business, took the wrong path, and
landed the visitor upon a dangerous tongue of ice. From this he was
rescued with great difficulty, and for several moments, which seemed
like hours, he was suspended over a terrible abyss. Victor Hugo wrote a
description of the journey from Sallenches to Chamouni, which was
translated by Madame Hugo, and published in her sketch of the poet.
_Bug Jargal_, the second romance by Victor Hugo, but the earliest in
point of time, was published in 1826. It had been originally written for
the _Conservateur Litteraire_; but after its appearance there, it was
almost entirely remodelled and rewritten. It is a tale of the
insurrection in St. Domingo. The essential improbability of such a
character as Bug Jargal (by what means did the author get such an
uncouth name?), a negro of the noblest moral and intellectual character,
passionately in love with a white woman, has been unfavourably commented
upon. The hero is represented as not only tempering the wildest passion
with the deepest respect, but he even sacrifices life itself at last in
behalf of the woman of his love, and of her husband. It was objected
that this was too violent a call upon the imagination, but knowledge of
the negro character would tend to prove that such a devotion as Bug
Jargal's is by no means impossible. In any case, as the novelist is
allowed great license, this objection cannot be regarded as fatal to the
romance. Notwithstanding its alleged defects of plot, however, this
story has many enthralling passages. No reader is likely to forget 'the
scenes in the camp of the insurgent chief Biassou, or the death-struggle
between Habihrah and d'Auverney on the brink of the cataract. The
latter, in particular, is drawn with such intense force, that the reader
seems almost to be a witness of the changing fortunes of the fight, and
can hardly breathe freely till he comes to the close.' Whatever else
these early romances demonstrated, or failed to demonstrate, they were
at least inspired by enthusiasm, and tinged with aspirations of a noble
order.
The genius of the author had drawn towards him the admiration, and very
speedily the friendship, of such men as M. Mery, the journalist; M.
Rabbe, author of the 'History of the Popes;' M. Achille Deveria and M.
Louis Boulanger, the eminent artists; M. Sainte-Beuve, one of the most
incisive of critics, and others whose names have since occupied
considerable space in the roll of fame. Hugo was indefatigable in his
literary efforts. _La Revue Francaise_, a periodical which
unfortunately had but a brief existence, bore testimony to this, as well
as his poetical miscellany entitled _La Muse Francaise_. He also wrote a
criticism upon Voltaire, which was afterwards reprinted in his _Melanges
de Litterature_; but this estimate did not reveal the breadth of view
which the writer manifested in later years, when he passed an eloquent
eulogium upon the philosopher of Ferney.
For a new edition of the _Odes_ issued in 1826, and now separated from
the _Ballades_, the author wrote an introduction in which he distinctly
unfolded his principles of liberty in the realm of literature. He
expressed his belief that 'in a literary production the bolder the
conception the more irreproachable should be the execution;' and he
added that liberty need not result in disorder. It was the first
occasion on which the claims of what was called, for want of a better
word, romanticism were formally promulgated by a writer eminent in that
school. We shall shortly see how Victor Hugo translated these ideas into
a concrete form in his works. Meantime, in February, 1827, an incident
occurred which led to a stirring poem by Hugo, and one which made him
friends in a new quarter, while it lost them in an old one.
It appears that at a ball given by the Austrian Ambassador in Paris, the
distinguished French marshals who attended were deliberately shorn of
their legitimate titles. Thus, the Duke of Taranto was announced as
Marshal Macdonald; the Duke of Dalmatia as Marshal Soult; the Duke of
Treviso as Marshal Mortier, and so on. The insult was studied and
deliberate on the part of the Ambassador; 'Austria, humiliated by titles
which recalled its defeats, publicly denied them. The marshals had been
invited in order to show contempt for their victories, and the Empire
was insulted in their persons. They immediately quitted the Embassy in a
body.' Victor Hugo's blood was stirred by this incident, and, without
counting the cost, he took his revenge. Throwing all the weight of his
indignation into the _Ode a la Colonne_, he hurled that effusion at the
enemies of France. He was now only anxious to show that he was a
Frenchman first, and a Vendean afterwards.
The Ode made a great sensation, but it had a wider effect than its
author anticipated. The Opposition welcomed him as one of themselves,
for in celebrating the marshals had not the poet celebrated the Empire?
The Royalists, on the other hand, seeing this bitter attack upon the
Austrians, who were the most powerful friends of the Bourbons, naturally
thought that Victor Hugo had abandoned the Royalist cause. Neither side
could quite understand how such a burst of invective as that witnessed
in the Ode might be due alone to the outraged feelings of a Frenchman,
without being intended in the least to partake of the nature of a
political manifesto. To these fierce partisans, party was everything; to
Victor Hugo it was the nation that was everything. But his rupture with
the Royalists is naturally enough traced to this period. He and they
could never be the same again to each other. The poet passed now from
his admiration of the Bourbons to an acknowledgment of the glory and
prowess of the Empire, as at a later period he pressed still further
forward, and hailed the fuller liberty of Republican France.
CHAPTER III.
VICTOR HUGO'S HUMANITARIANISM.
In 1829 Victor Hugo published anonymously his _Le Dernier Jour d'un
Condamne_ ('The Last Day of a Convict'). It thrilled the heart of Paris
by its vivid recitals. While having no pretensions to the character of a
regular tale, it was, as a writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ remarked,
one of the most perfect things the author had as yet produced. It was
the representation of one peculiar state of mind--that of a criminal
faced by the certainty of his approaching death under the guillotine.
Like Sterne, Hugo had taken a single captive, shut him up in his
dungeon, and 'then looked through the twilight of the grated door, to
take his picture.' The work is a chronicle of thoughts, a register of
sensations; and it is amazing to see what variety and dramatic movement
may be imparted to a monologue in which the scene shifts only from, the
Bicetre to the Conciergerie, the Hotel de Ville, and the Place de Greve.
Few descriptions could be found in literature to vie with that in which
Victor Hugo places the criminal before us as he enters the court to
receive his sentence on a lovely August morning. But all the incidents
attending the trial, the condemnation, and the execution are depicted
with graphic skill and powerful energy. No one knows better than Victor
Hugo how to relieve unutterable gloom by some brilliant ray of human
affection, and so upon this condemned prisoner he causes to break a
temporary vision of youth and innocence. The intensity all through this
piece is such as to give the reader a strange realization of the
criminal, with his weight of guilt, and his terrible and conflicting
emotions.
But the critic of the _Edinburgh_ would have us believe that all this
was merely due to a desire by Victor Hugo to exhibit his literary skill.
He even calls it absurd to regard the sketch as a pleading against the
punishment of death, and roundly denies that the author had any such
esoteric purpose. Unfortunately for him, there is conclusive evidence to
prove that Victor Hugo had a deeper intent in this painful
representation than a mere literary play upon the feelings. In a preface
to the edition of 1832 he distinctly avows his purpose: 'It is the
author's aim and design that posterity should recognise in his work
_not_ a mere special pleading for any one particular criminal, which is
always easy and always transitory, but a general and permanent appeal in
behalf of all the accused, alike of the present and of the future. Its
great point is the right of humanity urged upon society.'
Moreover, there is another powerful argument to be considered. Ever
since 1820 Victor Hugo had been deeply moved on the question of capital
punishment, and resolved to labour for its abolition. It will be
convenient here to review briefly his public utterances on the subject,
both before and subsequent to the appearance of _Le Dernier Jour d'un
Condamne_. We shall thereby be enabled to keep the literary and personal
thread of our narrative intact. In the year above named Victor Hugo had
seen Louvel, the murderer of the Duke of Berry, on his way to the
scaffold. The culprit was a being for whom he had not the slightest
sympathy; but his fate begat pity, and he began to reflect on the
anomaly that society should, in cold blood, commit the same act as that
which it punished. From that time, observes Madame Hugo, he had an idea
of writing a book against the guillotine. Two executions which he
witnessed during the next few years strengthened his convictions, and
led to the work we have already discussed. Subsequently he wrote _Claude
Gueux_, founded upon the sad and miserable story of a man of that name.
Gueux was condemned to death in 1832 for a crime to which the pangs of
hunger had impelled him. The case was doubly painful from the fact that
the father of Claude, a very old man, had been sentenced to a punishment
in the prison of Clairvaux, and the son, in order to bring help to him,
committed an act whose consequences brought him within the walls of the
same prison. Strenuous exertions were made by Hugo and others to save
Gueux, but the Council of Ministers rejected the appeal. The man was
executed, and a noble protest which Victor Hugo afterwards issued
greatly moved the public conscience, and rendered society still more
familiar with the writer's views.
In May, 1839, one Barbes was condemned to death for his share in the
insurrection in the Place Royale. Victor Hugo immediately sent this
message of appeal to the King:
'By your guardian-angel fled away like a dove,
By your royal child, a sweet and frail reed,
Pardon yet once more, pardon in the name of the tomb!
Pardon in the name of the cradle!'
The King, against the advice of his Ministers, insisted on pardoning
Barbes. More than twenty years afterwards the latter figured as a
character in _Les Miserables_, and a correspondence, alike honourable to
both, ensued between him and the author. Twice as a peer of France
Victor Hugo was called upon to give verdicts in cases where capital
punishment would follow conviction, and in both instances he voted in
favour of perpetual imprisonment and against the death-penalty. When the
question of capital punishment came before the Assembly in 1848, Victor
Hugo ascended the tribune and made an impassioned speech, from which I
take these extracts:
'What is the penalty of death? It is the especial and eternal mark of
barbarism. Wherever the penalty is, death is common, barbarism
dominates; wherever the penalty of death is rare, civilization reigns
supreme. You have just acknowledged the principle that a man's private
dwelling should be inviolate; we ask you now to acknowledge a principle
much higher and more sacred still--the inviolability of human life. The
nineteenth century will abolish the penalty of death. You will not do
away with it, perhaps, at once; but be assured, either you or your
successors will abolish it. I vote for the abolition, pure, simple, and
definitive, of the penalty of death.'
In March, 1849, Victor Hugo made an unsuccessful appeal in the case of
Daix, condemned to death for the affair of Brea; and in the following
year the poet himself appeared as an advocate in the Court of Assize. He
defended his eldest son, Charles Hugo, who had been summoned for
protesting in his journal, _L'Evenement_, against the execution, which
had been accompanied by revolting circumstances. In the course of his
eloquent pleadings, Victor Hugo said: 'The real culprit in this matter,
if there is a culprit, is not my son. It is I myself. I, who, for a
quarter of a century, have not ceased to battle against all forms of the
irreparable penalty--I, who, during all this time, have never ceased to
advocate the inviolability of human life.... Yes, I assert it, this
remains of barbarous penalties--this old and unintelligent law of
retaliation--this law of blood for blood--I have battled against it all
my life; and, so long as there remains one breath in my body, I will
continue to battle against it with all my power as an author, and with
all my acts and votes as a legislator. And I make this
declaration'--(_the pleader here stretched out his arm towards the
crucifix at the end of the hall above the tribunal_)--'before the Victim
of the penalty of death, whose effigy is now before us, who is now
looking down upon us, and who hears what I utter. I swear it, I say,
before this sacred tree, on which, nearly two thousand years ago, and
for the instruction of men to the latest generation, the laws,
instituted by men, fastened with accursed nails the Divine Son of God!'
In conclusion, the orator exclaimed, 'My son! thou wilt this day receive
a great honour. Thou art judged worthy of fighting, perhaps of
suffering, for the sacred cause of truth. From to-day thou enterest the
just and true manly life of our time, the struggle for the true. Be
proud, thou who art now admitted to the ranks of those who battle for
the human and democratic idea! Thou art seated on the bench where
Beranger and Lamennais have sat.' Notwithstanding his father's defence,
which powerfully moved the whole court, Charles Hugo was sentenced to
six months' imprisonment.
While living in exile in Jersey, in 1854, Victor Hugo made an appeal on
behalf of a man who was to be hanged in Guernsey. One of his letters was
addressed to the people of Guernsey, who petitioned, but in vain, for
the life of the convict Tapner. Another was addressed to Lord
Palmerston, who gave the usual orders for the execution; and probably no
English Minister ever received, either before or since, a communication
couched in such burning and passionate language. The writer was
literally overwhelming in his indignant rhetoric.
For John Brown, of Harper's Ferry, the anti-slavery enthusiast, Victor
Hugo put in a strong plea with the United States. He told that country
that 'Brown's executioner would neither be the Attorney Hunter, nor the
Judge Parker, nor the Governor Wyse, nor the State of Virginia; it would
be, though one shudders to think it, and still more to say it, the great
American Republic itself.... When we consider that this nation is the
glory of the whole earth; that, like France, England, and Germany, it
is one of the organs of civilization, that it has even gone beyond
Europe in certain sublime strokes of bold progress, that it is at the
summit of the whole world, that it wears on its brow the star of
liberty, we are tempted to affirm that John Brown will not die; for we
shrink back horrified at the idea of so great a crime being committed by
so great a nation!' The writer predicted that 'the murder of Brown would
make in the Union a rent, at first concealed, but which would end by
splitting it asunder.' John Brown was executed, and Hugo's prediction
was verified. The South did indeed discover that the spirit of Brown was
'marching on'; and the American Union was for a time convulsed to its
centre, ostensibly on the ground of union, but practically on account of
slavery. Brown, the martyr, was justified by the event, and slavery was
abolished in the United States.
During the year 1861, a Belgian jury pronounced, on a single occasion
only, nine sentences of death. Thereupon a writer, assuming the name of
Victor Hugo, published some verses in the Belgian journals, imploring
the King's pardon for the nine convicts. Hugo's attention was drawn to
the verses, when he replied that he was quite willing for his name to be
used, or even abused, in so good a cause. As his _alter ego_ had
addressed the King, so he now addressed the nation. He called upon it to
arrest this great sacrifice of life, and to abolish the scaffold. 'It
would be a noble thing that a small people should give a lesson to the
great, and by this fact alone should become greater than they. It would
be a fine thing that, in the face of the abominable growth of darkness,
in the presence of a growing barbarism, Belgium, taking the place of a
great Power in civilization, should communicate to the human race by one
act the full glare of light.' The sentence of seven of the condemned men
was commuted, but the two remaining convicts were executed.
When the Republic of Geneva revised its constitution in 1862, the
principal question remitted to the people was the abolition of the
punishment of death. M. Bost, a Genevese author, appealed to Victor Hugo
for his intervention in the discussion. The poet replied by a long and
exhaustive communication, in which he reviewed the leading cases in
various European countries where the scaffold had recently been called
into requisition, and he closed with this exordium: 'O people of Geneva,
your city is situate on a lake in the Garden of Eden! you live in a
blessed place! all that is most noble in creation surrounds you! the
habitual contemplation of the beautiful reveals the truth and imposes
duties on you! Your civilization ought to be in harmony with nature.
Take counsel of all these merciful marvels. Believe in your sky so
bright; and as goodness descends from the sky, abolish the scaffold. Be
not ungrateful. Let it not be said that in gratitude, and, as it were,
in exchange for this admirable corner of the earth, where God has shown
to man the sacred splendour of the Alps, the Arve and the Rhone, the
blue lake, and Mont Blanc in the glory of sunlight, man has offered to
the Deity the spectacle of the guillotine.' The question had already
been decided by the retention of the scaffold when this letter reached
Geneva, but Victor Hugo now addressed the people. His second letter had
an immense effect, and secured the rejection of the constitution
proposed by the Conservatives. It also brought over a great number of
adherents to the cause of abolition, which ultimately triumphed.
On many subsequent occasions, and notably in connection with Italy and
Portugal, Victor Hugo wrote and strove for the abolition of capital
punishment. In France his pressing personal appeals more than once
availed to procure a commutation of the death-punishment. To his _Last
Day of a Convict_ was due the introduction of extenuating circumstances
in the criminal laws of France, and he projected a work to be entitled
_Le Dossier de la Peine de Mort_.
It is not my intention here, nor, indeed, is it necessary, to discuss
the arguments which may be advanced for or against capital punishment.
It has been simply my object to present Victor Hugo in a light which,
while it may divide men in their judgments, will unite them in their
sympathies. The cases I have cited will be more than sufficient to
demonstrate that noble enthusiasm of humanity which forms so conspicuous
a feature in Victor Hugo's character.
CHAPTER IV.
THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM.
The war between the two great schools of French poetry, the classic and
the romantic, passed into an acute stage shortly before the publication
of Victor Hugo's _Cromwell_. Romanticism meant more than was implied in
the definition of Madame de Stael, viz., the transference to French
literature of 'the poetry originating in the songs of the troubadours,
the offspring of chivalry and Christianity.' Victor Hugo, and men of a
kindred if not an equal genius, were engaged in a struggle for the very
life and soul of poetry. Poetic genius in France was wrapped in the
grave-clothes of classicism; it was a corpse that needed galvanizing
into life; and it was practically Victor Hugo who rose and said, 'Loose
her, and let her go.'
Goethe had already fought the battle of literary freedom from old
superstitions in Germany, and Byron had done the same in England. It was
now the turn of France to feel the new gush of life, and to gather
strength and lustre in the revival. As M. Asselineau has observed of the
French romanticists, 'to their sincerity, their detestation of
tediousness, their sympathy with life and joy and freshness, as well as
to their youthful audacity, that was not abashed either by ridicule or
insult, belongs the honour of securing to the nineteenth century the
triumph of liberty, invaluable for its preciousness in the world of
art.' And in enumerating the leaders of the movement, he cites as the
most prominent and influential, Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo, Madame de
Stael, Lamartine, Dumas, Alfred de Vigny, Balzac, George Sand, Theophile
Gautier, Merimee, Philarete Chasles, Alfred de Musset, and Jules Janin.
Certainly the influence that developed the talents of such a galaxy of
genius, so far from being despised, should be acclaimed as a force
worthy of all admiration. It was one, in fact, that practically saved
French literature from expiring of inanition.
But the romantics were fiercely assailed; so fiercely that Victor Hugo
said, if they had been thieves, murderers, and monsters of crime, they
could not have been exposed to severer condemnation. Duvergier de
Hauranne treated romanticism as a brain disease, and recommended a
careful diagnosis of those suffering from it, in order to recover for
them gradually their lost senses. But pleasantries such as these were
not likely to affect a man in severe earnest. The literary
revolutionaries of the Cenacle Club, whose leading spirit was Victor
Hugo, laughed at the denunciations hurled against them, knowing that
their opportunity had come. There was only one writer who, having put
his hand to the plough, turned backward. This was Sainte-Beuve. The
temper of his mind was critical, and after the first burst of enthusiasm
with which he hailed the new school, and under whose influence he for a
time joined it, had spent itself, he threw off his allegiance to the
movement, and vowed that he had never really belonged to the reforming
band.
Victor Hugo soon gave a pledge, though not in some respects a successful
one, of the sincerity of his own convictions. M. Taylor, Commissaire
Royal at the Comedie Francaise, and afterwards widely known in the world
of art, asked the poet on one occasion why he never wrote for the
theatre. Hugo replied that he was thinking of doing so, and had already
commenced a drama on the subject of Cromwell. 'A Cromwell of your
writing should only be acted by Talma,' said Taylor; and he forthwith
arranged a meeting between the famous tragedian and the dramatist. Talma
was at that time greatly depressed, taking gloomy views of the stage,
and asserting that his own career had been a failure--had never
fulfilled its ends. No one knew what he might have been, he confided to
Hugo, but now he expected to die without having really acted once.
Nevertheless, from the genius of Hugo he did look for something
original, and he had always longed to act Cromwell. In response, the
author explained his intentions with regard to the proposed play, and
also his views upon the drama generally. These views he afterwards
enlarged upon in the preface to the play. He asserted that there were
three epochs in poetry, each corresponding to an era in society; and
these were the ode, the epic, and the drama. 'Primitive ages are the
lyric, ancient times the heroic, and modern times the dramatic. The ode
sings of eternity, the epic records history, the drama depicts life....
The characters of the ode are colossal--Adam, Cain, Noah; those of the
epic are gigantic--Achilles, Atreus, Orestes; those of the drama are
human--Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth. The ode contemplates the ideal; the
epic, the sublime; the drama, the real. And, to sum up the whole, this
poetical triad emanates from three fountain-heads--the Bible, Homer, and
Shakespeare.'
In _Cromwell_, urged Hugo, he intended to substitute a drama for a
tragedy, a real man for an ideal personage, reality for conventionalism;
the piece was to pass from the heroic to the positive; the style was to
include all varieties, epic, lyric, satiric, grave, comic; and there
were to be no verses for effect. The author repeated his first line,
'_Demain, vingt-cinq juin, mil six cent cinquante-sept_,' which was
certainly ludicrously matter-of-fact. Talma was delighted with the whole
idea, and begged the poet to complete his work at once. Unfortunately
the actor died soon afterwards, and the dramatist now went leisurely on
with his play. While engaged upon the preface he saw some Shakespearean
dramas performed in English at the Odeon, and the representations
affected him deeply, and tinged his dramatic views. At the close of
1827 _Cromwell_ was published, and great indeed was the controversy to
which it gave rise. The period dealt with was not what would be
considered one of the most dramatic in the career of the Protector. It
was that 'when his ambition made him eager to realize the benefits of
the King's death,' when, having attained what any other man would have
reckoned the summit of fortune, being not only master of England, but by
his army, his navy, and his diplomacy, master of Europe too, he was
urged onwards to fulfil the visions of his youth, and to make himself a
king. Cromwell's final relinquishment of the kingly idea, with the
preliminary stages which led up to his resolution, were delineated with
subtle power and psychological skill.
But it was not the play so much as its preface--which the author put
forward as the manifesto of himself and his literary friends--that
stirred the gall of the critics. A writer in the _Gazette de France_,
referring to Hugo's avowed aim to break 'all those threads of spiders'
web with which the army of Liliput have undertaken to chain the drama
whilst slumbering,' reminded him that in this liliputian army there
were some dwarfs to be found not so despicable after all; and amongst
others stood out those men who had written for the stage from _Le Cid_
down to _Cromwell_. 'But what would these men be worth in the eyes of
him who calls Shakespeare the god of the Theatre? It is necessary to
possess some strength to venture to attack giants; and when one
undertakes to dethrone writers whom whole generations have united in
admiring, it would be advisable to fight them with weapons which, if not
equal to theirs, are at least so constructed as to have some chance.' M.
de Remusat in _Le Globe_ endeavoured to hold the scales of justice
between the contending parties, while the famous Preface acted as a
rallying-cry for the supporters of the new principles. M. Soumet, Hugo's
old friend, wrote concerning the drama: 'It seems to me full of new and
daring beauties; and although in your preface you spoke mercilessly of
mosses and climbing ivy, I cannot do less than acknowledge your
admirable talent, and I shall speak of your work--grand in the style of
Michael Angelo--as I formerly spoke of your odes.'
About the time of the publication of _Cromwell_, Victor Hugo was
severely visited in his domestic relations. Madame Foucher, his wife's
mother, and a woman of many and great virtues, passed away; and on the
28th of January, 1828, the poet's father died suddenly of apoplexy. The
General and his second wife had been quite reconciled to Victor and his
brothers, and the Government had once more recognised the title of the
old soldier as General of Division. He was happy in the affection of his
sons, his daughter-in-law, and Victor Hugo's two children--Leopoldine
and Charles. On the evening of his death he had spent several happy
hours with the poet, but in the night the apoplexy struck him with the
rapidity of a shot, and he immediately expired. The incident, as may be
imagined, profoundly affected the sensitive and impressionable spirit of
Victor Hugo.
Some years before these events, Victor Hugo had, in conjunction with M.
Soumet, written a play entitled _Amy Robsart_, founded upon Scott's
_Kenilworth_. Not being able to agree as to the value of each other's
contributions, the two authors separated, each bearing away his own
dramatic goods. Hugo afterwards handed over his play to his
brother-in-law, Paul Foucher, who produced the piece in his own name at
the Odeon. It was loudly hissed. There were passages in it that
unmistakably bore the impress of Victor Hugo, and the latter
chivalrously wrote to the newspapers to say that those parts which had
been hissed were his own work. This acknowledgment drew a number of
young men to the theatre, who were as loud in their applause as a large
portion of the audience were in their condemnation. Altogether, matters
became so lively that the Government interfered, and, to allay the
tumult, interdicted the play.
In the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs there were some rare meetings of poets
and wits, when Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset would recite poems
composed during the day, and Merimee and Sainte-Beuve would engage in
arguments. M. Henri Beyle, M. Louis Boulanger, and M. Eugene Delacroix
were also to be seen there; and once the venerable Benjamin Constant was
a guest. When Beranger was condemned to three months' imprisonment for
one of his songs, Victor Hugo visited him in his cell. He found that the
French Burns, though obnoxious to the authorities, was the idol of the
populace. His cell was generally full of visitors, and he was inundated
with pates, game, fruit, and wine.
Another great stride in romanticism was made by the publication of
Victor Hugo's _Orientales_, which appeared in 1828. These lyrical poems
were full of energy and inspiration, and it was clear that the very
antithesis of the classical style had now been reached. They enhanced
the reputation of the writer, while they charmed all readers by their
freshness, simplicity, and vigour.
In July, 1829, a brilliant company assembled at Hugo's house to listen
to the reading of a new play by the poet, the famous _Marion de Lorme_,
originally called _A Duel under Richelieu_. The writer, it was soon
seen, had avoided the faults which marked the construction of
_Cromwell_, and had produced a real drama, and one well adapted for
stage representation. The company present at the reading included
Balzac, Delacroix, Alfred de Musset, Merimee, Sainte-Beuve, Alfred de
Vigny, Dumas, Deschamps, and Taylor. Dumas, with the generous frankness
which always characterized him, afterwards wrote respecting the play: 'I
listened with admiration the most intense, but yet an admiration that
was tinged with sadness, for I felt that I could never attain to such a
powerful style. I congratulated Hugo very heartily, telling him that I,
deficient in style as I was, had been quite overwhelmed by the
magnificence of his.' But there was one point upon which Dumas,
supported by Sainte-Beuve and Merimee, pleaded, and pleaded
successfully. Not feeling satisfied that Didier should meet his death
without forgiving Marion, Hugo yielded to the pressure put upon him, and
altered the drama accordingly. The news of a new play by Victor Hugo
brought forward the managers at once, but it had already been promised
to M. Taylor for the Theatre Francais. However, there was the ordeal of
the censors yet to pass through, and fears were entertained as to the
fourth act, in which Louis XIII. was described as a hunter, and
represented as governed by a priest--points in which everybody would see
a resemblance to Charles X. Permission to perform the play was refused.
Victor Hugo appealed to the King, who removed from office the Minister
of the Interior (M. de Martignac), the dramatist's chief enemy, and
promised to read the offending act himself. Having done so, his Majesty
declined to give his sanction to the representation of the drama, but
by way of a solatium granted the poet a fresh pension of 4,000 francs.
Hugo was indignant, and at once wrote declining the pension, upon which
the _Constitutionnel_ remarked, 'Youth is less easily corrupted than the
Ministers think.' With regard to the drama itself, it has been well
remarked that 'had Marion, in spite of her heroism and her repentance,
been adequately chastised for her lapse from virtue, probably much of
the sentimentality would have been avoided, which, although now
exploded, at the time caused a great depravity of taste, and invested
the "Dames aux Camellias" and the "Mimis" of Bohemian life with an
interest that they did not deserve.'
Undismayed by what had occurred, Victor Hugo now devoted himself to the
composition of another drama, and his _Hernani_ was shortly in the hands
of M. Taylor for production. The censors again interfered, and in the
course of a very impertinent report, observed that the play was 'a
tissue of extravagances, generally trivial, and often coarse, to which
the author has failed to give anything of an elevated character. Yet
while we animadvert upon its flagrant faults, we are of opinion that
not only is there no harm in sanctioning the representation of the
piece, but that it would be inadvisable to curtail it by a single word.
It will be for the benefit of the public to see to what extremes the
human mind will go, when freed from all restraint.' These literary
censors did, however, require the alteration or removal of certain
passages in which the kingly state and dignity were handled with too
much freedom; and they forbade the name of Jesus to be used throughout
the piece.
The supporters of the classical drama strenuously exerted themselves to
prevent the play from being produced, but in vain. Of course, this
creation of a new style meant the decline of the old one. The play went
into rehearsal, and the author had a passage of arms with Mademoiselle
Mars, who took the part of Dona Sol. This lady, whose power had made her
imperious, found her master in Hugo, and when threatened with the loss
of her part, she consented to deliver a disputed phrase as written. The
time for production came, and when the author was asked to name his
systematic applauders, according to custom, he declined to do so,
stating that there would be no systematic applause. The play excited
the liveliest curiosity. Benjamin Constant was amongst those who
earnestly begged for seats, and M. Thiers wrote personally to the author
for a box. The literary friends of Victor Hugo attended in great
numbers, including Gautier, Borel, and Balzac. The theatre was crowded,
and the feeling of all parties intense. As the play progressed from act
to act, nevertheless, it gained in its hold upon the audience. When the
fourth act closed, M. Maine, a publisher, sought out Victor Hugo, and
offered him 6,000 francs for the play, but the matter, he said, must be
decided at once. The author protested, remarking that the success of the
piece might be less complete at the end. 'Ah, that's true, but it may be
much greater,' replied the publisher. 'At the second act I thought of
offering 2,000 francs; at the third act I got up to 4,000; I now at the
fourth act offer 6,000; and after the fifth I am afraid I should have to
offer 10,000.' Hugo laughingly concluded the bargain for 6,000 francs,
and went with the eager publisher into a tobacco shop to sign a roughly
improvised agreement. The play concluded brilliantly, Mademoiselle Mars
securing a great triumph in the last act. The whole house applauded
vociferously, and the triumph of romanticism was complete.
The literary war which ensued was very fierce. In the provinces, as in
Paris, it divided the public into hostile camps, and so deep were the
feelings which it excited that in Toulouse a duel was fought over the
play, and one of the antagonists was killed. Armand Carrel was
especially bitter in his assaults upon _Hernani_, but Hugo was more than
consoled for this and other attacks by the following letter from
Chateaubriand: 'I was present, sir, at the first representation of
_Hernani_. You know how much I admire you. My vanity attaches itself to
your lyre, and you know the reason. I am going--you are coming. I
commend myself to the remembrance of your muse. A pious glory ought to
pray for the dead.' As an amusing pendant to this, it may be mentioned
in connection with the poet and _Hernani_, that a provincial Frenchman
(in making his will) ordered the following inscription to be placed on
his tombstone: 'Here lies one who believed in Victor Hugo.'
In spite of the attacks in the press, also of personal threats and of
the deliberate and almost unparalleled attempts to stifle the play in
the theatre itself, _Hernani_ held its own, and continued to be played
with great pecuniary success until the enforced absence of Mademoiselle
Mars, when it was withdrawn from the stage, and not acted again for some
years. But the play had practically established the new drama. It was
the herald of the renaissance, and for this reason must continue to
occupy a conspicuous position whenever an attempt is made to estimate
the dramatic work and influence of Victor Hugo.
CHAPTER V.
'NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS.'
There is a natural desire to know something of the personal aspect of
men who have become great. What would the world give, for example, for a
faithful account of the character, the appearance, the sayings, the
habits of Shakespeare, written by a friend and a contemporary? In the
case of Victor Hugo we fortunately have such a description from the pen
of one of his most enthusiastic admirers, Theophile Gautier. The sketch
represents the poet as he appeared at the time which we have now reached
in his history, that is when he was about twenty-eight years of age.
Gautier was exceedingly nervous over his contemplated interview with
Victor Hugo, and twice failed to summon up the necessary courage for the
meeting. On the third occasion he found himself in the poet's study.
All his prepared eloquence, we are told, at once vanished away; the long
apostrophe of praise which he had spent whole evenings in composing came
to nothing. He felt like Heine, who, when he was going to have an
interview with Goethe, prepared an elaborate speech beforehand, but at
the crucial moment could find nothing better to say to the author of
_Faust_ than that the plum-trees on the road between Jena and Weimar
bore plums that were very nice when one was thirsty. But the Jupiter of
German poetry was probably more flattered by his visitor's bewilderment
than he would have been by the most glowing eulogium. Passing over
Gautier's panegyrics, here is what he wrote concerning the person of
Hugo: 'He was then twenty-eight years of age, and nothing about him was
more striking than his forehead, that like a marble monument rose above
his calm and earnest countenance: the beauty of that forehead was
well-nigh superhuman; the deepest of thoughts might be written within,
but it was capable of bearing the coronet of gold or the chaplet of
laurel with all the dignity of a divinity or a Caesar. This splendid brow
was set in a frame of rich chestnut hair that was allowed to grow to
considerable length behind. His face was closely shaven, its peculiar
paleness being relieved by the lustre of a pair of hazel eyes, keen as
an eagle's. The curved lips betokened a firm determination, and when
half opened in a smile, displayed a set of teeth of charming whiteness.
His attire was neat and faultless, consisting of black frock-coat, grey
trousers, and a small lay-down collar. Nothing in his appearance could
ever have led anyone to suspect that this perfect gentleman was the
leader of the rough-bearded, dishevelled set that was the terror of the
smooth-faced _bourgeoisie_. Such was Victor Hugo. His image, as we saw
it in that first interview, has never faded from our memory. It is a
portrait that we cherish tenderly; its smiles, beaming with talent,
continue with us, ever diffusing a clear and phosphorescent glory!'
In the year 1831 Victor Hugo published a work which, if he had written
nothing else, would have given him a place amongst the immortal writers
of France. This was his _Notre-Dame de Paris_, undertaken and produced
under extraordinary circumstances. It was received with mixed favour by
the critics, but at once made its way to the heart of the people. Any
number of hostile reviews would have been insufficient to check the
progress of so singular and powerful a work. The author had made an
engagement to write this book for a publisher named Gosselin, and the
latter now claimed the execution of the contract. The work was
originally to have been ready by the close of 1829, but in July, 1830,
it was not yet begun, and a new contract was prepared, under which it
was to be completed by the ensuing December. Political events greatly
disturbed the progress of the romance, and a further difficulty was
created by the loss of manuscript notes which had taken two months to
collect. In the removal of Hugo's books and manuscripts from the house
in the Rue Jean Goujon to the Rue du Cherche-Midi, these valuable notes
went astray. They were not recovered till some years afterwards, when
they were incorporated in a later edition of the novel. A still further
delay was granted by the publisher, in accordance with which the author
was to complete the story by February, 1831, having just five months in
which to accomplish the task.
Hugo set to work with marvellous energy, and some amusing details are
given of the way in which he laboured with his romance. 'He bought a
bottle of ink, and a thick piece of grey worsted knitting which
enveloped him from the neck to the heels; he locked up his clothes, in
order not to be tempted to go out, and worked at his novel as if in a
prison. He was very melancholy.' It appears that he never left the
writing-table except to eat and to sleep, and occasionally to read over
some chapters to his friends. The book was finished on the 14th of
January, and as the writer concluded his last line and his last drop of
ink at the same moment, he thought of changing the title of the novel,
and calling it 'The Contents of a Bottle of Ink.' This title, which was
not thus used, however, was subsequently adopted by Alphonse Karr.
On being asked by his publisher for some descriptive notes upon the
work, which might be useful in advertising it, Victor Hugo wrote: 'It is
a representation of Paris in the fifteenth century, and of the fifteenth
century in its relations to Paris. Louis XI. appears in one chapter, and
the King is associated with, or practically decides, the _denouement_.
The book has no historical pretensions, unless they be those of painting
with some care and accuracy--but entirely by sketches, and
incidentally--the state of morals, creeds, laws, arts, and even
civilization, in the fifteenth century. This is, however, not the most
important part of the work. If it has a merit, it is in its being purely
a work of imagination, caprice, and fancy.' Nevertheless, the author has
underrated in certain respects the value of his own work. Powerful as it
is from the imaginative point of view, it is no less remarkable for the
way in which the writer has brought together a mass of historical and
antiquarian lore. Its thoroughness and careful construction in regard to
such details may be recommended to less accurate writers in the field of
historical romance. Paris, with its myriad interests, is vividly
represented by one to whom it had given up its past as well as its
present. Whether we see life beneath the shadow of Notre-Dame, in the
Cour des Miracles, the Place de Greve, the Palais de Justice, the
Bastille or the Louvre, it is all the same--the master-hand has given
life and vitality to all it has touched.
The gipsy girl Esmeralda, a fascinating creation, has been compared with
the Fenella of Scott, the La Gitanilla of Cervantes, and the Mignon of
Goethe. But she has a character of her own distinct from all of these.
In her history the power of love is once more exemplified, and if round
her centres the finest pathos of the work, so also is she its noblest
gleam of light and grace and beauty. It has been said that love makes
the learned archdeacon forget his studies, his clerical character, his
reputation for sanctity, to court the favours of a volatile Bohemian.
'Love for this same Parisian Fenella softens the human savage Quasimodo,
the dumb one-eyed bell-ringer of Notre-Dame, and transforms him into a
delicate monster, a devoted humble worshipper of the Bohemian. While
she, who is the cynosure of neighbouring eyes, the object of adoration
to these singular lovers, is herself hopelessly attached in turn to a
giddy-pated captain of the guard, who can afford to love no one but
himself.' In his grand and startling effects, the writer has been
compared with the painter Martin. There is an almost unparalleled
breadth, which gives the work a Rembrandtish effect in all the chief
scenes. The siege of the cathedral by the banded beggars and vagabonds
of Paris in the night is one not readily effaced from the memory; and
this is equally true of the terrible interview between the infatuated
monk and his victim in the filthy dungeons of the Palais de Justice; of
the weird scene of the Fete de Fous in the Hall of the Palace; of the
Alsatian picture of the examination and projected hanging of Gringoire
among the thieves in the Cour des Miracles; of the execution of
Esmeralda; and of the fearful fate of the impassioned monk.
The strange fatality attending upon mere passion is insisted on all
through; it binds together in one miserable chain the priest who is
prepared to sacrifice all that is sacred in duty for love, the heartless
soldier, and the trusting maiden. As to the _dramatis personae_, the
_Athenaeum_, observed, 'No character can be more intimately identified
with the genius of Victor Hugo than the interesting, generous, and
high-minded gipsy girl Esmeralda. The character of Phoebus de
Chateaupers, the bold, reckless, gay, gallant, good-tempered,
light-hearted, and faithless captain of gendarmerie, is also original,
and wrought out with great skill. The Archdeacon Claude Frollo is a
striking specimen of those churchmen of the fifteenth century who united
the grossest superstition to the most consummate hypocrisy, and applied
the influences of religion to acts of the blackest perfidy. There are
many historical characters in this work, and, among others, our old
acquaintances in Quentin Durward, Louis XI., Olivier-le-Daim, and the
squinting Provost, Tristan l'Hermite.' In eloquence, in vigour, in
animation, and in all the masterly pageantry of a bygone age, this work
will continue to hold a unique position amongst symbolical and
historical romances.
_Notre-Dame_ was assailed by the majority of the Parisian journals, but
in the minority warmly in its favour were to be found some of the first
writers of the age. Touching the style of the work, Sainte-Beuve said,
'There is a magical facility and freedom in saying all that should be
said; there is a striking keenness of observation, especially is there a
profound knowledge of the populace, and a deep insight into man in his
vanity, his emptiness, and his glory, whether he be mendicant, vagabond,
_savant_, or sensualist. Moreover, there is an unexampled comprehension
of form; an unrivalled expression of grace, material beauty, and
greatness; and altogether a worthy presentment of an abiding and
gigantic monument. Alike in the pretty prattlings of the nymph-like
child, in the cravings of the she-wolf mother, and in the surging
passion, almost reaching to delirium, that rages in a man's brain, there
is the moulding and wielding of everything just at the author's will.'
Alfred de Musset, while unable to take in the scope of the work,
acknowledged that it was colossal. Jules Janin remarked that 'of all the
works of the author it is pre-eminently that in which his fire of
genius, his inflexible calmness, and his indomitable will are most
conspicuous. What accumulation of misfortunes is piled up in these
mournful pages! What a gathering together there is of ruinous passion
and bewildering incident! All the foulness as well as all the faith of
the Middle Ages are kneaded together with a trowel of gold and of iron.
At the sound of the poet's voice all that was in ruins has risen to its
fullest height, reanimated by his breath.... Victor Hugo has followed
his vocation as poet and architect, as writer of history and romance;
his pen has been guided alike by ancient chronicle and by his own
personal genius; he has made all the bells of the great city to clang
out their notes; and he has made every heart of the population, except
that of Louis XI., to beat with life! Such is the book; it is a
brilliant page of our history, which cannot fail to be a crowning glory
in the career of its author.' Finally, Eugene Sue wrote: 'If the useless
admiration of a barbarian like myself had the power to express and
interpret itself in a manner worthy of the book which has inspired it, I
should tell you, sir, that you are a great spendthrift; that your
critics resemble those poor people on the fifth story, who, whilst
gazing on the prodigalities of the great nobleman, would say to each
other, with anger in their hearts, "I could live during my whole life on
the money spent in a single day."'
The publisher had some doubts of the pecuniary success of the novel, but
these speedily disappeared, as edition after edition was called for. In
the course of a year only, eight large editions had been disposed of,
and the number of editions which have been issued since that time may be
described as legion. From thinking, as he did originally, that he had
made a bad bargain, M. Gosselin soon had reason to arrive at the
conclusion that he had made a remarkably good one. Together with other
publishers, he now pestered the author continually for more novels.
Hugo protested that he had none to give them; but wearied at length by
their importunities he furnished the titles of two stories he proposed
to write, which were to be called the _Fils de la Bossue_ and _La
Quinquengrogne_. The latter name was the popular designation of one of
the towers of Bourbon l'Aschembault, and in the novel the author
intended to complete the account of his views concerning the art of the
Middle Ages. Notre-Dame was the cathedral, La Quinquengrogne was to be
the dungeon.
Victor Hugo wrote at this time his admirable descriptive work _Le
Rhin_--a work full of learning, vivacity, and humour--but he never
proceeded with the two projected novels. _Notre-Dame_ remained for many
years the only romance in which the author revealed his marvellous power
of moulding human sympathies, of throwing into imaginative conceptions
the very form and substance of being, and of realizing a dead-past age
as though it were that of the actual and the living.
CHAPTER VI.
'MARION DE LORME' AND OTHER DRAMAS.
That despotic monarch, Charles X., having been driven from his throne by
the Revolution of July, 1830, there naturally followed the removal of
the interdict from the theatres. Victor Hugo was at once applied to by
the Comedie Francaise for his drama of _Marion de Lorme_, which had been
in enforced abeyance. But when the political reaction was an absolute
certainty, the sensitive mind of Hugo shrank from a demonstrative
triumph. It is true that he was now in the full tide of masculine
judgment, and that his ideas of progress and liberty were crystallized
and matured; but he could not forget his early opinions. Though crudely
formed, and based upon sentiment and not upon reason, they had been
genuine and disinterested, and his chief feeling at this later period
was not one of hatred of the King, but rather of rejoicing with the
people.
However, after a year had elapsed from Charles's fall, there was no
reason why a drama should be lost to the stage simply because it
contained an historical presentment of Louis XIII. After declining many
offers, the author resolved to give the play to M. Crosnier, for the
theatre of the Porte St. Martin; and he also entered into an agreement
to write yearly two works of importance for this theatre. Dumas's
_Antony_ was being performed at the Porte St. Martin, but on the
conclusion of its run _Marion de Lorme_ was produced, with Madame Dorval
in the part of Marion, and M. Bocage in that of Didier. Difficulties as
usual were thrown in the way of the new play, but it eventually
triumphed over them. The journals, nevertheless, were hostile, the
_Moniteur_ especially so, affirming that the author had never yet
conceived anything more meagre and commonplace, and more full of
eccentricities, than this piece. One critic asserted that the character
of Didier was taken from that of Antony, although Hugo's play had been
written first. Those friends who formerly applauded Hugo and Dumas
conjointly, now divided themselves into two parties, one of which
persistently assailed the writer of _Marion de Lorme_. From a variety of
causes the play was only performed four nights on its first production,
but the performances were afterwards resumed. It may be added that the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_, whose judgment was better worth having than
that of most of its contemporaries, remarked that Victor Hugo had never
so truly shown himself a poet, nor attained to so high a range of
vision, nor so wide a field of judgment, as in this piece.
A tragic incident which occurred not long after the representation of
this play affected the poet deeply. Amongst the warmest of his band of
admirers was M. Ernest de Saxe-Coburg, whose race and origin are
indicated by his name. He and his mother lived in Paris, on a pension
granted them by the Duke. Ernest was taken seriously ill, and the
distracted parent rushed to the house of Victor Hugo, exclaiming, 'You
alone can save him! Come at once!' But the unfortunate young man was
already dead; and a painful scene took place in the chamber of death on
the arrival of Victor Hugo and the mother. 'The unhappy woman, who had
but this only child in the world to love, would not believe that he was
dead. He was but cold, she said; and she threw herself on his bed,
encircling him in her arms in order to impart warmth to the corpse. She
frantically kissed his marble face, which was already cold. Suddenly she
felt within herself that it was all over; she raised herself, and
haggard and wild as she was, though still beautiful, she exclaimed, "He
is dead!" M. Victor Hugo spent the night by the side of the mother and
the corpse.' It was the lot of Hugo to awaken by his genius many
personal attachments and enthusiasms such as that felt for him by this
ill-fated youth; and these attachments were invariably strengthened and
deepened by subsequent friendship.
In 1832 the poet wrote his _Le Roi s'Amuse_. It has been charged against
this play that it presents an unredeemed picture of vice and
licentiousness. It has 'overstepped all bounds,' wrote one critic;
'history, reason, morality, artistic dignity, and refinement, are all
trampled under foot. The whole piece is monstrous; history is set at
nought, and the most noble characters are slandered and vilified. The
play is entirely void of interest, and the horrible, the mean, and the
immoral are all jumbled together into a kind of chaos.' As we shall
see, Victor Hugo traversed the whole of these and similar judgments.
Baron Taylor secured the play for the Theatre Francais, Triboulet being
assigned to M. Ligier, Saint-Vallier to M. Joanny, Blanche to
Mademoiselle Anais, and Francis I. to M. Perrier. A preliminary flourish
occurred between Hugo and M. d'Argout, the Minister of Public Works, in
whose department the theatres lay. The Minister first demanded the
manuscript, then sent for the author, and finally wrote that the
Monarchical principle in France must suffer from the author's attacks on
Francis I., which would be taken as being levelled against Louis
Philippe. The poet replied that the interests of history were to be
consulted before those of royalty, but he denied that there was anything
in the piece reflecting on Louis Philippe. The play was produced on the
22nd of November, and met with a very mixed reception, the hisses
predominating. It was partly damned by the defects of the actors. When
the curtain fell upon the last act, and it was felt that the play had
failed, the leading performer said to the author, 'Shall I mention your
name?' Hugo answered haughtily, 'Sir, I have a rather higher opinion of
my play now it is a failure.'
Next day the play was suspended, the reason given being that it was an
offence against public morality. It appears that a number of devotees of
the classical school had persuaded the Minister that a drama which had
for its subject the assassination of a king was not to be tolerated on
the very day after the existing monarch had himself escaped
assassination; that the play was an apology for regicides, etc. Victor
Hugo was not the man to be thus crushed without an effort to save his
drama. In the first place he issued a manifesto to the public, briefly
summarizing the plot of the piece, and denying that it was immoral. Then
he entered a civil suit before the Board of Trade to compel the Theatre
Francais to perform _Le Roi s'Amuse_, and likewise to compel the
Government to sanction the performance. The trial opened in a densely
crowded court, many celebrities being amongst the audience. They had
been attracted by the announcement that the author would plead his own
case. Hugo's speech was applauded by a band of very sympathetic
listeners, and on its conclusion M. de Montalembert assured him that he
was as great an orator as he was a writer, and that if the doors of the
theatre were closed against him, the tribune was still available.
Judgment was given against the poet, and for the Minister. M. Paul
Foucher, describing the scene on the night of the first performance of
_Le Roi s'Amuse_, observed that while the whole theatre was in an
uproar, and Hugo's name was drowned in the sea of roaring voices, 'the
author's face exhibited no sign of despondency at the failure any more
than it had shown passion or excitement during the struggle. His
Olympian brow had withstood the tempest with the firmness of a rock, and
after the curtain fell, he went to offer his thanks and encouragements
to the actors and actresses, saying, "You are a little discomposed
to-night; but you will find it different the day after to-morrow!" In
spite of the hissing, he was sanguine about his play; nevertheless, it
was not destined to be repeated.'
The poet's enemies now caused him considerable annoyance on the subject
of his pension. He had ceased to receive the 1,000 francs granted him by
Louis XVIII. out of his privy purse, but still received the 2,000 francs
allowed him by the Home Minister. In reply to the recriminations of the
Ministerial journals, he wrote a letter to M. d'Argout, showing that
this pension was clearly granted to him on literary grounds, quite apart
from political opinions. But he had decided to accept it no longer, and
thus stated his reasons: 'Now that the Government appears to regard what
are called literary pensions as proceeding from itself, and not from the
country, and as this kind of grant takes from an author's independence;
now that this strange pretension of the Government serves as the basis
to the somewhat shameful attacks of certain journals, the management of
which is, unfortunately, though no doubt incorrectly, imagined to be in
your hands; as it is also of importance to me to maintain my relations
with the Government in a higher region than that in which this kind of
warfare goes on--without discussing whether your pretensions relating to
this indemnity have the smallest foundation, I hasten to inform you that
I entirely relinquish it.' The Minister replied, taking the poet's view,
that the pension was a debt due from the country, and stating that it
should still be reserved for him; but Victor Hugo never took it up from
this time forward.
For a brief period managers held aloof from the dramatist, and when he
wrote _Le Souper a Ferrare_, which title was afterwards changed to that
of _Lucrece Borgia_, no one was eager for it. But this attitude changed
after his speech at the tribunal, and M. Harel, director of the Porte
St. Martin, sought for and obtained the play. Admirable representatives
were found for the chief parts, Frederick Lemaitre taking that of
Grennaro, Delafosse that of Don Alphonse d'Este, Mademoiselle Georges
that of Lucretia, and Mademoiselle Juliette that of the Princess
Negroni. Meyerbeer and Berlioz composed the music for the song which was
sung at the supper given by the Princess Negroni. Only one person was
allowed to be present at the final rehearsal, and that was Sainte-Beuve.
The critic was playing a double part towards the dramatist, with whom he
had been out of sympathy for some time past, and it is recorded that at
the close of the rehearsal of _Lucrece Borgia_ he warmly congratulated
the author upon his drama, and went away circulating reports everywhere
that the piece was an utter absurdity! 'It was solely due to his
treachery and infamous gossip that on the morning of the day on which
the piece was to be performed in the evening, several newspapers
announced that they were in possession of the plot, and that the whole
production was in the highest degree obscene, depicting orgies terrible
and indecent beyond conception.'
Great interest, notwithstanding, was manifested in the play, and amongst
those who implored the author for first-night seats was General
Lafayette. The representation was a triumphant success, and for awhile
nothing was talked about in Paris but the new play. The monetary success
was equal to the literary and dramatic. The receipts for the first three
performances amounted to 84,769 francs--a sum which no other work had
equalled or approached during M. Harel's management. Referring to two of
his most widely known dramas, Victor Hugo predicted that _Le Roi
s'Amuse_ would one day prove to be the principal political era, and
_Lucrece Borgia_ the principal literary era of his life. He had
purposely presented deformities in both, but he believed that by uniting
monsters to humanity, one could not fail to excite interest and perhaps
sympathy. 'Physical deformity, sanctified by paternal love, this is what
you have in _Le Roi s'Amuse_; moral deformity, purified by maternal
love, this is what you find in _Lucrece Borgia_.'
Hugo was fated to be the victim of misunderstanding with regard to
almost all his dramas, and he found no exception in _Lucrece Borgia_.
From an attitude of delight and complacency, M. Harel, the director of
the theatre, passed to one of studious neglect and insolence. He took
off the play, and then demanded a new one, which he averred the poet had
agreed to write for him. A quarrel ensued, and the manager challenged
the dramatist to a duel. It would have taken place, but M. Harel thought
better of the affair, and apologized, whereupon Hugo agreed to give him
his next piece. M. Harel remarked upon the whole incident, 'You are
probably the first author to whom a manager has said, "Your play or your
life!"'
_Marie Tudor_, produced in November, 1833, was the next play by Victor
Hugo. It was concerned with a queen, a favourite, and an executioner, a
trio as common in history as upon the mimic stage. The dramatist had now
two difficulties to contend with. In the first place, the partisans of
Dumas sowed dissension between the two authors, and spread lying
reports respecting Hugo and his attitude towards Dumas; and in the
second place, the writer's own friends grew alarmed at various reports
which gained currency. 'I hear on all sides,' wrote one of them, 'that
your play is more than ever a tissue of horrors--that your Mary is a
bloodthirsty creature, that the executioner is perpetually on the stage,
and several other reproaches all equally well founded.' Hugo remained
calm and unmoved, though he was warned that the presence of the
executioner on the stage had been given as the watchword to those who
intended to hiss the play. The piece was produced in due course, and
Mademoiselle Georges looked superbly and acted well. But the author's
enemies kept up a persistent hissing, and there was a strong contest
between those who formed a genuine judgment upon the play and greatly
admired it, and those who were resolved upon its ruin. The first night
left the result dubious, but the piece continued to be played beyond the
time generally regarded as constituting an average success. On its
withdrawal, all the relations between the author and the Porte St.
Martin naturally ceased, and the treaty with M. Harel for a third drama
was destroyed by mutual consent.
Hugo's dramatic work was now interrupted by the composition of his
_L'Etude sur Mirabeau_, which may be taken as an apology for his
advanced political and social views. He felt it necessary to review his
past career, and to make known to the world the processes of education
through which his mind had passed since his early days of Royalist
fervour. This study, which appeared in his _Litterature et Philosophie
Melees_, is a defence of conscience, and illustrates the power of
growing convictions to emancipate the mind from prejudice and error,
regarding the matter, of course, from the standpoint of the writer
himself.
In 1835 the Theatre Francais applied to Victor Hugo for a new drama, and
in response he gave to it his _Angelo_, one of his best pieces for
construction and for rapid and vigorous effects. It was the author's
intention in this drama, as he has himself stated, 'to depict two sad
but contrasted characters--the woman in society, and the woman out of
society; the one he has endeavoured to deliver from despotism, the other
he has striven to defend from contempt; he has shown the temptations
resisted by the virtue of the one, and the tears shed over her guilt by
the other; he has cast blame where blame is due, upon man in his
strength and upon society in its absurdity; in contrariety to the two
women, he has delineated two men--the husband and the lover, one a
sovereign and one an outlaw, and, by various subordinate methods, has
given a sort of summary of the relations, regular and irregular, in
which a man can stand with a woman on the one hand, and with society in
general on the other.' There is nothing more characteristic of the
author's dramas than this exhibition of striking contrasts; and, indeed,
in all his poetic work is to be traced this juxtaposition of the
strongest lights and shades of which human life and human emotion are
capable.
The two leading stars in _Angelo_ were Mademoiselle Mars and Madame
Dorval. Unfortunately, a serious feud arose in consequence of the former
discovering that the part she had chosen was not the most forcible and
picturesque; and it required all the strong will of Victor Hugo to bring
the actress to reason. The two ladies had their partisans in the theatre
when the play came to be acted, but the representation passed over
without mishap, and it was conceded that a fair success had been
achieved.
Whatever might be Victor Hugo's defects as a dramatist, and however he
might divide in opinion the theatre-going public of Paris upon the
general claims of his plays, he had certainly infused life into the
dramatic literature of the time. He had attained a commanding position,
and although his genius was marred by some eccentricities, it was also
as unquestionably distinguished for its grand conceptions, its dramatic
felicities, and its splendours of diction.
CHAPTER VII.
LAST DRAMATIC WRITINGS.
In some respects, no man of equal genius was ever so unfortunate as
Victor Hugo in his relations with the stage. I refer, of course, to the
earlier part of his career, for there came a time when the appreciation
of him as a dramatist was as high and universal as was the admiration of
his literary excellence. But during the long struggle between the old
and the new drama there were always enemies ready to denounce and hiss
whatsoever he produced; and had he given them a _Romeo and Juliet_ or a
_Hamlet_, the result would have been precisely the same.
We have seen the alternations of failure and success which attended the
plays already passed in review; and the same mixed reception was awarded
to those final efforts in connection with the drama which led him to
adopt the resolution to quit the stage for ever. An operatic venture
into which the poet was drawn in 1836 resulted in the same ill-fortune
which had marked more regular dramatic compositions. Meyerbeer and other
celebrated musicians had begged Victor Hugo to make an opera of
_Notre-Dame de Paris_, but he had steadfastly declined all such
proposals. At length he yielded to friendship, and wrote the libretto of
an opera called _La Esmeralda_, the music being composed by Mademoiselle
Bertin, daughter of the conductor of the _Journal des Debats_. Curiously
enough, the libretto ended with the word 'fatality,' and this
represented the misfortune of the piece and its performers. Though
boasting a singular array of talent in its production and
representation, it was hissed. Mademoiselle Falcon, the leading singer,
lost her voice; M. Nourrit, the tenor, subsequently went to Italy, and
killed himself; the Duke of Orleans gave the name of _Esmeralda_ to a
valuable mare, which was killed at a steeplechase; and finally, a ship
called the Esmeralda was lost in crossing from England to Ireland, and
every soul on board perished.
A domestic grief visited the poet in the following year, when his
brother Eugene died. For some time before his death he had been insane,
and towards the end his one favourite relative, Victor, even could not
visit him, as the sight of his brother conjured up illusions which made
him dangerously violent. Though of strong constitution naturally, when
the sufferer's mind gave way his physical health began to fail also, and
he gradually wasted away until death released him in February, 1837.
This was the brother who had been Victor Hugo's constant companion in
early life, and the news of his death deeply agitated the survivor,
keenly awakening the slumbering recollections of childhood.
Louis Philippe gave a grand fete at Versailles in the summer of 1837, on
the occasion of the marriage of the Duke of Orleans. Victor Hugo, Dumas,
Balzac, and other men of letters were invited, and were obliged to
appear in fancy dress, the result being ludicrous in some cases, as in
that of Balzac, who had on the dress of a marquis, which, it was
jokingly said, fitted him as badly as the title itself would. Hugo was
an object of special distinction by the Royal family. The King conversed
with him, and the Duchess of Orleans paid him marked attention. There
were two people, she said, with whom she wished to become acquainted--M.
Cousin and himself. She had often spoken of him to Monsieur de Goethe;
she had read all his works, and knew his poems by heart. Her favourite
book was the _Chants du Crepuscule_; and she added, 'I have visited
_your_ Notre-Dame.' Hugo was promoted to the rank of Officer of the
Legion of Honour, and he received from the Duchess a painting by M.
Saint-Evre representing Inez de Castro. It was a valuable work, and on
the gilding of the frame was inscribed, '_Le Duc et la Duchesse
d'Orleans a M. Victor Hugo, 27 Juin, 1837_.'
At this juncture the poet brought a second action before the Board of
Trade, to compel the Comedie Francaise to fulfil its agreement with him
by producing his plays. He also claimed compensation for past neglect.
Hugo's advocate, M. Paillard de Villeneuve, in an effective speech,
demonstrated the injustice of a theatre supported by the State becoming
the monopoly of a clique; showed how the existing state of things
pressed heavily upon such men of genius as his client; and asserted that
not only had no pieces ever realized greater profits, but that actually
at that moment, while they were prohibited in France, they were drawing
large and appreciative audiences in London, Vienna, Madrid, Moscow, and
other important cities. Victor Hugo himself also spoke, complaining that
the manager of the French theatre had deceived him, and that he wore two
masks--one of which was intended to deceive authors, and the other to
elude justice. The Board gave judgment in the poet's favour, sentencing
the Comedie Francaise to pay 6,000 francs damages, and to perform
_Hernani_, _Marion de Lorme_, and _Angelo_ without delay. An appeal was
entered against this judgment, and when it came on for hearing Hugo
pleaded his cause in person, asserting that there was an organized
effort to close the stage against the new and rising school of
literature. The appeal was dismissed, and justice was at length done to
the dramatist. In conformity with the judgment, _Hernani_ was first
produced, and the play was brilliantly successful.
I must refer in this place to some of Victor Hugo's lyrical efforts. Not
without reason has the volume entitled _Feuilles d'Automne_ held a high
place in the regard of his admirers. It is the poetry of the emotions
expressed in such graceful lyric verse as has rarely been penned. In
these tender and exquisite poems, as M. Alfred Nettement observed, the
poet's 'lay is of what he has seen, of what he has felt, of what he has
loved: he sings of his wife, the ornament of his home; of his children,
fascinating in their fair-haired beauty; of landscapes ever widening in
their horizon; of trees under which he has enjoyed a grateful shade.'
Nature and personal experiences--from the opening thoughts of the child
to the greater aspirations of the man--are blended in beautiful harmony
in these poems, which may be turned to again and again for their
sweetness and melody. In 1835 appeared _Les Chants du Crepuscule_, which
truly represent a kind of twilight of the soul. 'As compared with what
had gone before, the book exhibits the same ideas; the poet is
identically the same poet, but his brow is furrowed by deeper lines, and
maturity is more stamped upon his years; he laments that he cannot
comprehend the semi-darkness that is gathering around; his hope seems
damped by hesitation; his love-songs die away in sighs of misgiving; and
when he sees the people enveloped in doubt, he begins to be conscious of
faltering too. But from all this temper of despondency he quickly
rallies, and returns to a bright assurance of a grand development of
the human race.' The volume has tones of gentleness and also tones of
lofty scorn. To the suffering and the unfortunate the poet was ever
tender and pitiful; but to the mean, the base, and the vicious he was as
a whip and a scourge. He always endeavoured to separate the worthy from
the unworthy, and wherever the latter were to be found, whether in the
ranks of friends or foes, they were never suffered to escape the lash of
his indignation.
Another volume of poems, _Les Voix Interieures_, was published in 1837.
'The poet in this production,' says one of his biographers, 'regards
life under its threefold aspect, at home, abroad, and at work; he
maintains that it is the mission of the poet not to suffer the past to
become an illusion to blind him in the present, but to survey all things
calmly, to be ever staunch yet kind, to be impartial, and equally free
from petty wrath and petty vanity; in everything to be sincere and
disinterested. Such was his ideal, and in accordance with it Victor Hugo
spared no effort to improve the minds and morals of men in general, and
by his poetry, as well as by his romances and his plays, he desired to
constitute himself the champion of amelioration.' This same desire for
the elevation of the race ran through all his efforts--social, literary,
and political. He may have been mistaken in his means sometimes, never
in the honesty and purity of his intent.
Returning to the stage, Victor Hugo had become so impressed with the
idea that the French nation had a right to have a theatre in which the
higher drama should be performed, that he was brought to consent to
several interviews on the subject with M. Guizot. The latter admitted
that there never was a more legitimate request; he agreed with the poet
that a new style of art required a new style of theatre; that the
Comedie Francaise, which was the seat of Tradition and Conservatism, was
not the proper arena for original literature of the day; and that the
Government would only be doing its duty in creating a theatre for those
who had created a department of art. A scheme was perfected for a new
theatre, and M. Antenor Joly was named as manager. No building but a
very old one was to be had, however, and this--which was in a bad
situation--was transformed into the Theatre de la Renaissance. For this
theatre Hugo wrote his _Ruy Blas_, a drama which, as is well known,
deals with the love of a queen for a valet who subsequently becomes a
minister. The play was in five acts, and the leading character was
sustained by Lemaitre. The actor strongly approved the first three acts,
but was more than dubious about the fourth and fifth. During the final
rehearsals of this piece Victor Hugo had a marvellous escape of his
life. Two of the actors happening to station themselves awkwardly, he
got up in order to indicate their right positions. Scarcely had he left
his chair when a great bar of iron fell upon it from an arch above,
smashing it to atoms. The author would undoubtedly have been killed on
the spot but for this momentary rising to correct the mistake of the
actors.
The body of the theatre being incomplete when the play came to be
produced, difficulties beset the representation. It was winter, and many
of the audience were chilled by violent draughts. But the play soon
warmed them into enthusiasm. In the fifth act, we are told by one who
was present, Lemaitre rivalled the greatest comedians, and success was
more decided than ever. 'The way in which he tore off his livery, drew
the bolt, and struck his sword on the table, the way in which he said to
Don Sallustre:
'"_Tenez_,
Pour un homme d'esprit, vraiment vous m'etonnez!"
--the way in which he came back to entreat the Queen's pardon, and
finally drank off the poison--everything had so much greatness, truth,
depth, and splendour, that the poet had the rare joy of seeing the ideal
of which he had dreamt become a living soul.'
The play was successful with that part of the public which was
unprejudiced, and the press generally was in its favour. But it appears
that the theatre was wanted by the co-manager for comic opera, so the
fourth act of Hugo's play was persistently hissed at every
representation by interested persons. The _claqueurs_ were detected and
instantly recognised. _Ruy Blas_ ran for fifty nights, the same
programme of hissing being carried through to the end. The manuscript of
the piece was sold to the manager of a publishing company, M. Delboye.
The company also purchased the right of publication of the whole of the
poet's works for eleven years, for which they agreed to pay 240,000
francs; and the poet on his part agreed to add two unpublished volumes.
Victor Hugo produced no drama after this for several years; but in 1840
he issued his work _Les Rayons et les Ombres_, consisting of poems which
had previously been read to his friends Lamartine, Deschamps, De
Lacretelle, and others. Here again he sought expression for his
ever-widening aspirations after human perfectibility. Once more in this
work 'he claims the right of expressing his goodwill for all who labour,
his aversion to all who oppress; his love for all who serve the good
cause, and his pity for all who suffer in its behalf; he declares
himself free to bow down to every misery, and to pay homage to all
self-sacrifice.' In the poetical alternations and contrasts in this
volume will be discovered a profound love and appreciation of Nature, as
well as an undercurrent of affection for the human. The poet himself,
looking back upon what he had accomplished, and forward towards what he
hoped to do, at the transition period before he went into exile,
asserted his thesis that 'a poet ought to have in him the worship of
conscience, the worship of thought, and the worship of Nature; he should
be like Juvenal, who felt that day and night were perpetual witnesses
within him; he should be like Dante, who defined the lost to be those
who could no longer think; he should be like St. Augustine, who,
heedless of any accusation of Pantheism, declared the sky to be an
intelligent creation.' And it is under such inspiration that 'he has
attempted to write the poem of humanity. He loves brightness and
sunshine. The Bible has been his Book; Virgil and Dante have been his
masters; he has laboured to reconcile truth and poetry, knowing that
knowledge must precede thought, and thought must precede imagination,
while knowledge, thought, and imagination combined are the secret of
power.' It would be impossible for a poet with any vigour of
imagination, and any perception of the soul of beauty in all things, to
fail with these sublime ideals before him.
I now come to the last of Victor Hugo's writings for the stage, and in
_Les Burgraves_ we have in some respects the best of his dramatic works.
It was written towards the close of 1842, and produced (like its
predecessors) in the midst of difficulties in March, 1843, at the
Comedie Francaise. At the time of its production, the author's
political opinions had arrived at a stage of compromise. Though he was a
Republican in theory, he had no strong objection to such a monarchy as
that of Louis Philippe, which was liberty itself compared with that
which it overthrew. For a sovereign who refrained from tyranny, and was
not inimical to progress, he had some sympathy, and he was willing to
wait until the time became ripe for the advent of the Republic. Writing
to M. Thiers, indeed, to beg for some amelioration in the lot of an
imprisoned editor, he said of himself, 'I do not at the present time
take any definite political part. I regard all parties as acting with
impartiality, full of affection for France, and anxious for progress. I
applaud sometimes those in power, sometimes the opposition, according as
those in power or in opposition seem to me to act best for the country.'
The catholic spirit in which he looked upon public affairs was
manifested in his study upon Mirabeau. Defining the position of the wise
politician, he remarked that 'he must give credit to the moderate party
for the way in which they smooth over transitions; to the extreme
parties for the activity with which they advance the circulation of
ideas, which are the very life-blood of civilization; to lovers of the
past for the care which they bestow on roots in which there is still
life; to people zealous for the future, for their love of those
beautiful flowers which will some day produce fine fruits; to mature men
for their moderation, to young men for their patience; to those for what
they do, to those for what they desire to do; to all the difficulty of
everything.' So, some years later he stated that the aim he had in view
was 'to agree with all parties in what is liberal and generous, but with
none in what is illiberal and mischievous.' The form of government he
regarded as a secondary affair; liberty and progress demanded the first
and most urgent thought. Herein, of course, he differed from the
professional politician, who has ever looked at great questions not from
the poet's point of view, but from the immediately personal and
practical. Many of his humanitarian ideas appeared Quixotic and
chimerical to those who viewed politics as a matter of party, or as a
means of personal triumph; while unjust and illiberal men were not also
wanting in the ranks of the Republicans.
Then there were some who, like Armand Carrel, were prepared to go with
Victor Hugo in politics, but rejected his new literary ideas. They clung
to the old form of the drama, and found a new star in Ponsard, the
author of _Lucrece_, a tragedy which had for its subject the expulsion
of the Tarquins and the establishment of a Republic in Rome. So the
Parisians were beguiled by the name of Ponsard, who found a great and
useful ally in Rachel; and Hugo was contemned, in spite of such
strictures as those of Thierry in _Le Messager_, who drew a comparison
between the ostracism with which his countrymen visited such brilliant
writers as Hugo, and that of the Athenians, who punished people whose
renown lasted too long.
It was at this juncture that _Les Burgraves_ was produced, and even the
genius of the writer himself added to the difficulties by which he was
beset. He had conceived three stupendous characters, Job, Otbert, and
Barbarossa; and although the actors who sustained these characters, MM.
Beauvallet, Geffroy, and Ligier, were undoubtedly men of dramatic
instinct and ability, neither they nor any other living tragedians could
adequately set forth these epic creations. In the matter of this
magnificent trilogy, the author has been not inaptly compared with
AEschylus. 'The first of Greek tragedians, AEschylus, after he had long
stirred the emotions of the Athenians, was finally deserted by them;
they preferred Sophocles to him, and full of dejection he went into
exile, saying, 'I dedicate my works to Time;' and Time at last did him
ample justice, though he did not live to enjoy his triumph. But in this,
Hugo differed from the glorious Greek, for he lived to witness the
repentance of the people.
_Les Burgraves_ was ill received on the first night, but this was
nothing compared with the opposition subsequently manifested. At every
representation, sneers and hissing interrupted the progress of the
piece; but the manager and the actors struggled on and played the drama
for thirty nights. Some of the most influential journals joined
themselves to the enemy, and the time was marked by the defection of
Lamartine to the side of Ponsard. Theophile Gautier was one of the small
band who boldly applauded Hugo's drama in the press. 'In our day,' he
asserted, 'there is no one except M. Hugo who is capable of giving the
epic tone to three great acts, or of maintaining their lyric swing.
Every moment seems to produce a magnificent verse that resounds like
the stroke of an eagle's wing, and exalts us to the supremest height of
lyric poetry. The play is diversified in tone, and displays a singular
flexibility of rhythm, making its transitions from the tender to the
terrible, from the smile to the tear, with a happy facility that no
other author has attained.'
With the production of this play dates Victor Hugo's final abandonment
of the stage. Strange fate this for a writer for whom Charles Nodier
claimed the honour of being, after Rabelais and Moliere, one of the most
original geniuses that French literature ever saw. But the dramatist was
disgusted with the literary hostility, the political insincerity, and
the personal antipathy which abounded, and although he had a play, _Les
Jumeaux_, which had never been produced, he resolved to give no more of
his writings to the stage. He was repeatedly pressed in after years to
depart from this resolution, but in vain. 'My decision is final,' he
said on one occasion. 'Under no pretext shall any more of my plays
appear on the stage during my life.'
The poet wrote several plays not for publication after this time, and
one of them, _Torquemada_, has been published. Others, named
respectively _L'Epee_, _La Grand'mere_, and _Peut-etre Frere de
Gavoche_, will only appear posthumously. That there will be in them
characters which will live, and that the plays themselves are such as to
enhance the public view of Victor Hugo's dramatic talents, are points
upon which we have explicit assurances from those who have had the
privilege of listening to the pieces as read by the late venerable
author himself.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FRENCH ACADEMY.
A seat amongst the 'forty Immortals' is the high and honourable aim of
every distinguished Frenchman. But the chequered history of the Academy
since its formation by Richelieu two centuries and a half ago, furnishes
another evidence of the truth that merit does not always secure its just
reward. Again and again have men illustrious in letters been passed
over, whilst those who had no claim upon the nation's regard have
snatched fortuitous honours by unworthy means. Amongst those who knocked
on more than one occasion at the doors of the French Academy in vain,
was Victor Hugo. That such a man must be ultimately successful was
beyond a doubt; but it says little for the Academy that it failed to
recognise his claims until its hostile attitude had become a scandal to
literature.
As a kind of apology for, or defence of his career, in 1834 Hugo
published his _Litterature et Philosophie Melees_. For those who could
see nothing but tergiversation in the development of his views, as
regarded from the Royalist standpoint of 1819 and the Revolutionary
standpoint of 1834, these collected papers presented a series of
progressive arguments well worthy of study. Nor was it merely from the
personal point of view that the author issued this work; he believed
that the gradual changes of thought which they revealed, all tending
towards a fuller liberty in art, politics, and literature, were but
typical of the states of mind through which a very large moiety of the
young thinkers of his generation had passed. That he did not spare the
crudities and defects which marked his own period of literary
adolescence will be apparent from this passage, in which he frankly
discusses his early compositions: 'There were historical sketches and
miscellaneous essays, there were criticism and poetry; but the criticism
was weak, the poetry weaker still; the verses were some of them light
and frivolous, some of them tragically grand; the declamations against
regicides were as furious as they were honest; the men of 1793 were
lampooned with epigrams of 1754, a species of satire now obsolete, but
very fashionable at the date at which they were published; next came
visions of regeneration for the stage, and vows of loyalty to the State;
every variety of style is represented; every branch of classical
knowledge made subordinate to literary reform; finally, there are
schemes of government and studies of tragedies, all conceived in college
or at school.'
The time had now come in which he demanded a larger scope. His ideas had
expanded, and while not abandoning the life contemplative, he desired to
become in some way the man of action, and to mingle in the literary and
political conflicts going forward around him. Taxed with forsaking the
study of Nature, the poet replied that he still loved that holy mother,
but in this century of adventure a man must be the servant of all.
Reviewing his political position, he felt that he had more than paid his
debt to the fallen monarchy, while he could at the same time
conscientiously acknowledge Louis Philippe. The recollection of a
pension was balanced by the confiscation of a drama, observes Madame
Hugo, and he was now his own master to follow out his convictions. In
the adoption of a public career there were two courses nominally open to
him. But with respect to one of these, that of entering the Chamber of
Deputies, he was met by an obstacle which completely disbarred him. He
was not a wealthy man, and by the electoral law of that day only wealthy
men could become deputies. Moreover, if he could have secured by some
means a nominal qualification, the electors looked askance upon literary
men. They regarded them as more fitted for the quietude of the study
than the bustling activity of the tribune. Lamartine was a deputy, it is
true, but he was a rare exception.
Abandoning all idea of the Chamber of Deputies at that time, Victor Hugo
next thought of the Chamber of Peers. But here again he was met by a
practical difficulty. In the selection of peers the King could only
choose men who had attained to certain dignities; and in Hugo's case
election to the Academy was the only qualifying dignity that was open to
him. To the Academy accordingly he appealed. The first vacancy occurred
in 1836. But Victor Hugo had enemies, and amongst these was Casimir
Delavigne, who had considerable weight amongst the Forty. M. Barbou
states that 'the poet of the imperial era was sickly and asthmatic, and
he detested Victor Hugo simply for his robustness and power.' When Dumas
canvassed Delavigne in the interest of his friend, the author of
_Notre-Dame_, Delavigne replied with warmth that he would vote for Dumas
with all his heart, but for Hugo never. The Academicians elected M.
Dupaty, probably on the principle that his fame was of such a restricted
character that it could not in the least detract from their own lustre.
Commenting upon his defeat, Hugo said, 'I always thought the way to the
Academie was across the Pont des Arts; I find that it is across the Pont
Neuf.'
Three years later there was another vacancy, and Hugo canvassed the
Academicians in turn. But the whole nature of his work was opposed in
spirit to the exclusives of the Academy, and it is not to be wondered
at, from this standpoint, that he failed to meet with a favourable
appreciation. However brilliant a candidate might be, most of the
members were unable to take a large and liberal view. Alexandre Duval
was especially bitter against Hugo, and when the poet was asked what he
had done to offend him, he replied, 'I had written _Hernani_.' Though in
a dying condition, Duval insisted upon being taken from his bed to vote
against Hugo. M. Mole was elected. In 1840 a third vacancy occurred, and
although Hugo was again a candidate, the Academicians elected M.
Flourens.
At length, in 1841, on the occasion of his fourth candidature, Victor
Hugo was successful. Amongst the distinguished men who voted for him
were Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Villemain, Mignet, Cousin, and Thiers. In
the list of those who opposed him were the names of only two men of real
note, Delavigne and Scribe. One, M. Viennet, voted for Hugo, though the
amusing anecdote is told concerning him that when the poet was made a
Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, he said he should like to claim 'the
cross of a chevalier for everyone who had the courage to read right
through any work of a romantic, and the cross of an officer for everyone
who had the wit to understand it!' Amidst much that is paltry in the
jealousies of literary men, it deserves to be stated to the honour of
Balzac that this eminent writer declined to become a candidate against
Victor Hugo.
The new Academician, who was by no means universally congratulated upon
his success, was received on the 3rd of June, 1841. According to custom
he was called on to pronounce a eulogium upon his predecessor, M.
Nepomucene Lemercier. His oration began with a description of the
splendour and power of Napoleon. Before his greatness, said the speaker,
the whole universe bowed down, with the exception of six contemplative
poets. 'Those poets were Ducis, Delille, Madame de Stael, Benjamin
Constant, Chateaubriand, and Lemercier. But what did their resistance
mean? Europe was dazzled, and lay, as it were, vanquished and absorbed
in the glory of France. What did these six resentful spirits represent?
Why, they represented for Europe the only thing in which Europe had
failed--they represented independence; and they represented for France
the only thing in which France was wanting--they represented liberty.'
Alluding still more directly to M. Lemercier, Hugo related that he was
on brotherly terms with Bonaparte the consul, but that when the consul
became an emperor he was no longer his friend. Finally, the orator
declared with much eloquence that it was the mission of every author to
diffuse civilization; and avowed that for his own part it had ever been
his aim to devote his abilities to the development of good fellowship,
feeling it his duty to be unawed by the mob, but to respect the people;
and although he could not always sympathize with every form of liberty
which was advocated, he was yet ever ready to hold out the hand of
encouragement to all who were languishing through want of air and space,
and whose future seemed to promise only gloom and despair. To ameliorate
the condition of the masses he would have every generous and thinking
mind lay itself out by devising fresh schemes of improvement; and
libraries, studies, and schools should be multiplied, as all tending to
the advancement of the human race, and to the propagation of the love of
law and liberty.
Victor Hugo's address was enthusiastically received by the bulk of the
members of the Academy, and the press generally commented upon it in
flattering terms. Times had changed since the poet had first called upon
M. Royer-Collard to solicit his vote, when the latter professed his
entire ignorance of Victor Hugo's name, and the following conversation
took place:
'I am the author of _Notre-Dame de Paris_, _Bug Jargal_, _Le Dernier
Jour dun Condamne_, _Marion Delorme_, etc.'
'I never heard of any of them.'
'Will you do me the honour of accepting a copy of my works?'
'I never read new books.'
The later relations of Hugo with the Academy are of considerable
interest. A generous forgetfulness of offence characterized him. When
Casimir Delavigne died, and it fell upon Hugo to deliver the funeral
oration over one who had been his enemy, he testified to the fine
talents of Delavigne, and magnanimously exclaimed: 'Let all the petty
jealousies that follow high renown, let all disputes of the conflicting
schools, let all the turmoil of party feeling and literary rivalry be
forgotten. Let them pass into the silence into which the departed poet
has gone to take his long repose!' In January, 1845, Hugo had to reply
to the speech of M. Saint Marc Girardin, and shortly afterwards--which
was a much more difficult and delicate matter--to the opening address
of M. Sainte-Beuve. In the early stage of the poet's career,
Sainte-Beuve, as we have seen, warmly hailed his advent, but he
afterwards became his enemy, turning his back upon all his old literary
beliefs. By way of covering his retreat, he advocated in the _Revue des
Deux Mondes_ a union between the classics and romanticists; and while he
did justice to every other writer whom he named, he arrested his praise
when he came to the name of Victor Hugo. He remarked that all signs of
magnificent promise were forgotten, 'as soon as we think of his numerous
stubborn relapses, or consider the way in which he holds to theories
which public opinion has already condemned. Sentiments of humanizing
art, which might easily enough be praised, are utterly ignored, and M.
Hugo clings with a steadfast persistence to his own peculiar style.' The
public were naturally curious to know how Hugo would speak of one who
had acted treacherously towards him, but with his usual high-minded
courtesy, the speaker uttered not one word of a personal character
against the man who had been so unjust towards himself.
The Academy had few members who were so regular in attendance, or were
so useful to that august body, as Victor Hugo. He brought into all his
relations with it the same energy and conscientiousness which marked his
course in connection with literature and the drama. His association with
the Academy was virtually the first stage of a new departure in his
career.
CHAPTER IX.
PERSONAL AND POLITICAL.
Amongst all Victor Hugo's contemporaries there was no greater admirer of
the poet than Balzac. There mingled with his admiration a feeling which
amounted almost to reverence; and probably the proudest moment in the
novelist's life was that in which he received Hugo at the Jardies. Leon
Grozlan tells us that he awaited his arrival with eagerness; indeed, so
great was his anxiety that he could not remain for an instant in one
place.
These distinguished men of letters were noticeable in their attire,
which was certainly far from Solomon-like in its splendour. 'Balzac was
picturesque in rags. His pantaloons, without braces, receded from his
ample waistcoat _a la financiere_; his shoes, trodden down, receded from
his pantaloons; the knot of his cravat darted its points close to his
ear; his beard was in a state of four days' high vegetation. As to
Victor Hugo, he wore a grey hat of a rather doubtful shade; a faded blue
coat with gilt buttons, and a frayed black cravat, the whole set off by
green spectacles of a shape and form to rejoice a rural bailiff.' During
breakfast, in speaking of literature and the drama, Hugo incidentally
mentioned his large profits as a dramatist. 'Balzac listened with the
air of a martyr listening to an angel, while he heard Hugo recount the
enormous sums which had accrued to him from his magnificent dramas. This
_coup de soleil_ was likely to excite Balzac's brain for a long time to
come.' At that period the author of the _Comedie Humaine_ was a personal
authority on the bitterness of poverty. The talk proceeded to royalty,
to the patronage of talent, and such like matters. Balzac spoke
eloquently upon the lustre which men of genius have shed upon their own
times. 'The pen alone,' he said, 'can save kings and their reigns from
oblivion. Without Virgil, Horace, Livy, Ovid, who would recognise
Augustus in the midst of so many of his name?... Without Shakespeare the
reign of Elizabeth would gradually disappear from the history of
England. Without Boileau, without Racine, without Corneille, without
Pascal, without La Bruyere, without Moliere, Louis XIV., reduced to his
mistresses and his wigs, is but a crowned goat, like the sign of an inn.
Without the pen, Philippe le Roi would leave behind him a name less
known than that of Philippe the eating-house keeper of the Rue
Montorgueil, or of Philippe the famous pilferer and juggler. Some day it
will be said (at least, I hope so, for his Majesty's sake), "Once upon a
time there lived a king called Louis Philippe, who, by the grace of
Victor Hugo, Lamartine, etc."' French rulers were emphatically destined
to live in the pages of Victor Hugo, but in the case of at least one
sovereign it was to be by the immortality of contempt.
At the residence of Hugo in the Place Royale, whither he had moved on
leaving the Rue Jean Goujon, there was a frequent visitor in the person
of one Auguste Vacquerie. This young poetic enthusiast was born at
Villequier, in La Seine Inferieure, in the year 1820. He was educated
first at Rouen, but having an unconquerable longing to see and be near
Victor Hugo, he went to complete his studies at the Pension Favart,
Paris, within a few doors of Hugo's house. In one of his poems he
confessed that though he ardently sighed for Paris, that city meant to
him Hugo and nothing beside--it was the shrine of the poet's fame. Like
his friend Paul Meurice, he lived in the inspiration of Victor Hugo's
name, and the two youths became constant and intimate visitors at the
house in the Place Royale. Vacquerie fell seriously ill, and he was
nursed with all the devotion of a mother by Madame Hugo. After his
recovery, and in acknowledgment of the care bestowed on his son, M.
Vacquerie, senior, invited Madame Hugo to occupy his chateau at
Villequier during the summer vacation. The offer was gladly accepted,
and Madame Hugo and her four children left Paris for Normandy on this
pleasurable excursion. In the course of this visit, Auguste Vacquerie's
brother Charles was introduced to Leopoldine Hugo, and these
impressionable natures at once fell in love. An engagement of no long
duration followed, for the young couple were married in the following
spring of 1843. The wedded life of the poet's daughter was unfortunately
as brief as it was happy and joyous. After a period of five months only
it came to a sad and tragic termination. The catastrophe with which it
closed is thus described: 'The Vacquerie family property at Yillequier
is on the banks of the Seine, which is tidal as far as Rouen; but the
periodical rising of the water was a matter of no uneasiness to the
family, who were accustomed to make excursions almost daily from
Villequier to Caudebec. One of these excursions was arranged for the 4th
of September, when M. Charles Vacquerie, with his wife, his uncle, and
cousin, started to make a trial trip in a large new boat. They all set
out in high spirits upon what was quite an ordinary outing; but a sudden
squall came on, and the boat capsized. Leopoldine had always been taught
that in the event of being upset, the safest thing to do was to cling to
the boat, and accordingly she now instinctively grasped its side amidst
convulsions of alarm; her husband was a good swimmer, and, anxious to
carry her off, did his utmost to make her relax her hold. But all his
efforts were unavailing; in her agony she seemed to have embedded her
finger-nails in the wood; his very attempt to break her fingers proved
ineffectual. He was but a few yards from the shore, but finding it was
impossible to save her, he determined not to survive her, and, taking
her into his embrace, sank with her in the stream. The two bodies were
recovered a few hours afterwards.'
One can well understand the accession of melancholy which would come
over the poet and his wife in consequence of such a disaster as this.
Gloom fell upon the house in the Place Royale, but Victor Hugo found
consolation in the affection of the partner of his youth, whose devotion
had seemed thus far to increase with the lapse of years. Again and again
she animated his lyre, and gave his verse much of its sweetest and
noblest inspiration. She entered fully into his high aspirations, and
received with grace and _bonhomie_ visitors like Lamartine and Madame de
Girardin, who came to exchange the courtesies of friendship and genius.
Victor Hugo was given to silent wanderings by night in the Champs
Elysees and the vicinity, and he has stated that many of his finest
thoughts occurred to him during these midnight walks. On one occasion
this habit nearly proved of serious import to him, for as he was passing
along near the Rue des Tournelles, wrapped in meditation, he was
attacked and knocked down by a band of pickpockets, and would in all
probability have suffered severe injury had not some passers-by caused
his assailants to take precipitate flight. The incident caused no
modification in the poet's custom, for of physical or moral fear he had
scant knowledge.
Notwithstanding his advanced political views in later life, Victor Hugo,
as I have already had occasion to observe, moved forward towards a
republic by gradual stages. He had no faith in the stability of a
government which was merely the result of revolt, and in 1832, when
there appeared considerable danger of insurrectionary bloodshed, he
wrote: 'Some day we shall have a republic, and it will be a good one.
But we must not gather in May the fruit which will only be ripe in
August. We must learn to be patient, and the republic proclaimed by
France will be the crown of our hoary heads.' His political honesty
impressed his contemporaries. Louis Blanc saw a noble unity in his
political progressiveness; and another critic, M. Spuller, in eulogizing
the three great French poets of the nineteenth century, Chateaubriand,
Lamartine, and Hugo, observed that although they were all born outside
the pale of the Revolution, they proved to be the very men to help
forward and to glorify the democracy, Hugo especially being a noble
exponent of the new social truths.
There naturally came a time, therefore, when Hugo desired actual contact
with political life. At first, as I have remarked, he formed the design
of getting returned for the Chamber of Deputies, but this idea had to be
abandoned. Then he was sent for by Louis Philippe. This monarch, though
generally immovable on social and literary questions, and caring little
for the conciliation of the democracy, was much impressed by the power
he recognised in Victor Hugo. Stories are told of interviews, prolonged
into the night, between the King and the poet. The result was that on
the 13th of April, 1845, Hugo was created a peer--an event which was
warmly applauded by the bulk of the people. In taking his seat in the
Upper Chamber the new peer was by profession an independent
Conservative, but there was in him already a large Republican leaven.
His maiden speech was delivered in defence of artists and their
copyright, and this was followed in March, 1846, by a vigorous address
on Poland. As was the case with many other literary men, Victor Hugo
sympathized deeply with the Poles. He denounced the avowed policy of M.
Guizot, that France could do nothing towards re-establishing the Polish
nationality. 'He maintained that it was not a material but a moral
intervention that was required, and that such intervention ought to be
made in the name of European civilization, of which the French were the
missionaries and the Poles the champions. He reminded his audience how
Sobieski had been to Poland what Leonidas had been to Greece, and he
claimed the gratitude and moral support of France for a people who had
done their part in the noble defence of freedom.' But, apart from the
fact that Poland had few friends, the ideas of freedom expounded by Hugo
excited little sympathy in the breasts of the French aristocracy.
In 1847 the new peer showed his catholicity of spirit by supporting the
petition of Prince Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, praying that his family
might be allowed to return to France. His chief arguments were: that the
Chamber would evidence its strength by its generosity; that it was
repugnant to his feelings for any Frenchman to be an exile or an outlaw;
that any pretender must be harmless in the midst of a nation where
there was freedom of work and of thought; and that by mercifulness the
Chamber would consolidate its power with the people. Louis Philippe was
so impressed by these views that he allowed the Bonapartes to return.
That momentous revolutionary year, 1848, did not come upon Victor Hugo
altogether as a surprise. That which astonished him was not the
character, but the strength of the new movement. He had long before seen
that the stability of any French Government would depend upon its
attitude towards the people and the pressing social and political
questions of the time. If a Government ignored, or attempted to crush
the forces which were at work in society, then it was inevitably doomed
to fall before them. He had indulged some hope that the Government of
Louis Philippe would inaugurate an enlightened policy; but it failed to
do this, while it perpetuated abuses which had long been obnoxious. That
which the far-seeing predicted actually occurred; the monarchy was swept
away. Hugo thought for a moment that a compromise might be effected by
constituting the Duchess of Orleans regent; but he speedily saw that
the popular movement was against all Royalty and its forms, and he gave
in his adhesion to the Republic. The Provisional Government having fixed
the elections for the 23rd of April, Hugo was nominated as a candidate
for Paris; but he was unsuccessful. Shortly afterwards, however, he was
returned to the National Assembly, on the occasion of the supplementary
elections rendered necessary in Paris. He took an independent part in
the debates in the Assembly, voting now with the Right and now with the
Left. His socialistic views found expression during the discussion upon
the national factories, which had borne such lamentable results.
'Admitting the necessity which might seem to justify their
establishment, he insisted that practically they had had a most
disastrous influence upon business, and pointed out the serious danger
which they threatened, not alone to the finances, but to the population
of Paris. As a socialist, he addressed himself to socialists, and
invoked them to labour in behalf of the perishing, but to labour without
causing alarm to the world at large; he implored them to bestow upon the
disendowed classes, as they were called, all the benefits of
civilization, to provide them with education, with the means of cheap
living; and, in short, to put them in the way of accumulating wealth
instead of multiplying misery.' From the point of view of the social
reformer, his utterances were wise and conciliatory. During the
sanguinary days of June he went from place to place, striving to avert
bloodshed; and after the outbreak he was instrumental in saving the
lives of several of the insurgents. He advocated mercy, and in the
Assembly proposed that an entire amnesty should be proclaimed. A deputy
rose and embraced him, and with this deputy, who was none other than
Victor Schoelcher, a close friendship was formed. Hugo would have no
part in the proceedings against Louis Blanc, and he declined to assent
to the vote that Cavaignac deserved the gratitude of his country. He
opposed the project of having but one Chamber, and it has been pointed
out that the existence of a second Chamber would in all probability have
saved France from the _Coup d'Etat_. From his place in the Assembly he
spoke strongly in favour of the liberty of the press and of the
abolition of capital punishment. In April, 1848, he started the journal
_L'Evenement_, which had for its motto 'Intense hatred to anarchy,
tender love for the people,' and which included amongst its contributors
Charles Hugo, Paul Meurice, Auguste Vitu, Theophile Gautier, and Auguste
Vacquerie. This journal, which supported the cause of the Revolution,
was for a time, but a brief one only, successful.
In January, 1849, the Constituent Assembly was dissolved, and a
Legislative Assembly summoned in its stead a few months afterwards. Hugo
was elected one of the twenty-eight deputies for Paris, his name
standing tenth on the list. He has left it on record in _Le Droit et la
Loi_ that this year formed an epoch in his life. He became at this time
a thorough Republican. 'An inanimate body was lying on the ground; he
was told that that lifeless thing was the Republic; he drew near and
gazed, and lo! it was Liberty; he bent over it and raised it to his
bosom. Before him might be ruin, insult, banishment, and scorn, but he
took it unto him as a wife! From that moment there existed within his
very soul the union between Liberty and the Republic.' The
uncompromising attitude he now assumed seems to have alarmed some
persons, who charged him with apostasy; but they must have been
superficial students of his career. The poet had long been drifting
towards this end. With the advance in his political views there seems to
have come an expansion in his eloquence; and the tribune witnessed many
impassioned speeches from the deputy--speeches which moved his auditors
to the utmost depths of emotion. When he defended Italy at the time the
French entered Rome--and in doing so strongly attacked the abuses
attendant upon ecclesiastical domination--he incurred the anger of his
former friend Montalembert. Replying to the Comte he said: 'There was a
time when he employed his noble talents better. He defended Poland as
now I defend Italy. I was with him then; he is against me now. The
explanation is not far to seek. He has gone over to the side of the
oppressors: I have remained on the side of the oppressed.'
Presiding at the Peace Congress of Paris, held on the 21st of August,
1849, and addressing Richard Cobden and his fellow-delegates from
various parts of the world, Hugo gave expression to his sanguine
humanitarian sentiments. 'You have come,' he observed to these
representatives of peace, 'to turn over, if it may be, the last and
most august page of the Gospel, the page that ordains peace amongst the
children of the one Creator; and here in this city, which has rejoiced
to proclaim fraternity to its own citizens, you have assembled to
proclaim fraternity to all men.' The orator expressed his conviction
that universal peace was attainable, and at the closing sitting of the
Congress, held on the 24th, the anniversary of St. Bartholomew, he spoke
in this impassioned strain: 'On this very day, 277 years ago, this city
of Paris was aroused in terror amidst the darkness of the night. The
bell, known as the silver bell, chimed from the Palais de Justice, and a
bloody deed, unprecedented in the annals of crime, was perpetrated; and
now, on that self-same date, in that self-same city, God has brought
together into one general concourse the representatives of that old
antagonism, and has bidden them transform their sentiments into
sentiments of love. The sad significance of this mournful anniversary is
removed; each drop of blood is replaced by a ray of light. Well-nigh
beneath the shadow of that tower whence tolled the fatal vespers of St.
Bartholomew, not only Englishmen and Frenchmen, Germans and Italians,
Europeans and Americans, but actually Papists and Huguenots have been
content to meet, happy, nay proud, to unite themselves together in an
embrace alike honourable and indissoluble.' These words excited a
strange fervour and enthusiasm in the audience, and amidst the waving of
hats and handkerchiefs, and other demonstrations of applause, a Roman
Catholic abbe and a Protestant pastor might have been seen embracing,
overcome by the power of the orator's language.
During the debate on the new Education Bill, introduced by M. de Falloux
in January, 1850, Victor Hugo adversely criticized the measure as
placing too much power in the hands of the clergy. He announced that he
should oppose any scheme which entrusted the education of youth to the
clerical party, who were always seeking to fetter the human mind. Church
and State must pursue independent courses. 'Your law,' he exclaimed,
directly addressing the Minister, 'is a law with a mask. It says one
thing, it does another. It may bear the aspect of liberty, but it means
thraldom. It is practically confiscation under the name of a deed of
gift. But it is all one with your usual policy. Every time that you
forge a new chain you cry, "See, here is freedom!"' During the same
session Hugo appealed for mercy for the political criminals, and
condemned the law of transportation, by which they were not only
banished but liable to be shut up in citadels. His speech on this
occasion created such a profound impression that it was afterwards
printed and distributed throughout the country, and a medal was struck
in honour of the orator.
Troublous times were again looming over France. The protestations of
Louis Napoleon that he desired to rank as a patriot only, and not as a
Bonaparte, had been accepted by Victor Hugo, Louis Blanc, and others, in
good faith. In his prison at Ham, he had been visited by several staunch
Republicans, who believed his asseverations that he had no other end in
view than the welfare of France and the consolidation of her liberties.
Indeed, when the exile returned to Paris he sought out Victor Hugo, and
in the most frank and unambiguous language said to him, 'What would it
be for me to be Napoleon over again? Why, it would not simply be an
ambition, it would be a crime. Why should you suppose me a fool? I am
not a great man, and when the Republic is made I shall never follow the
steps of Napoleon. As for me, I am honest; and I shall follow in the way
of Washington.' It never struck the poet that his visitor protested too
much. Upright and sincere himself, he liked to believe in the integrity
of others, and he little dreamt that Louis Napoleon, who had sworn
fidelity to the Constitution, and again and again declared himself bound
by his oath, would in a short time strangle the Republic with his own
hands.
But, alas! it was not long before the poet and his friends were
disillusioned, for, as Proudhon remarked, 'Citizen Bonaparte, who but
yesterday was a mere speck in the fiery heavens, has become an ominous
cloud, bearing storm and tempest in its bosom.' Hugo, seeing what was
advancing, bore himself courageously, and from his place in the tribune
never ceased to advocate the cause of freedom, while he bade the people
repose securely in their own strength. The reactionary policy began with
the curtailment of the liberty of the press, and culminated in the _Coup
d'Etat_ of the 2nd December, 1851. On that date the Legislative Assembly
was dissolved; universal suffrage was established, and Paris was
declared to be in a state of siege. Thiers, Cavaignac, and others were
arrested and sent to the Castle of Vincennes. About 180 members of the
Assembly, with M. Berryer at their head, on endeavouring to meet, were
also arrested, and Paris was occupied by troops. Sanguinary conflicts
ensued between the people and the soldiery, but the troops were
victorious. Napoleon put a pistol at the head of Paris, and ultimately,
by means which will be condemned in history to all ages, the Empire was
established.
Victor Hugo did all in his power for the maintenance of the rights of
the people, but in vain. In the tribune he indignantly inveighed against
the tyranny of Napoleon, and was in consequence placed at the head of
the list of the proscribed. He supported the Committee of Resistance in
their efforts to depose the Prince; but the people were paralyzed by the
display of power, and he was obliged to fly from Paris. A sum of 25,000
francs was offered to anyone who would either kill or arrest him, and so
great was the terror of the populace that no one could be found who
would give the friend of freedom an asylum. At length he secured
temporary shelter beneath the roof of a relation, remaining here until
the 12th of December, when he left Paris, completely disguised, by the
Northern Railway Station. The expatriated poet reached Brussels in
safety, but his sons and the rest of the staff of _L'Evenement_ had been
cast into prison. It was a momentous time for the friends of Victor
Hugo, who were naturally anxious for his safety when so many of the
friends of the Republic had been seized and incarcerated.
In his retreat the great patriot found himself confronted by a new task.
He resolved to compile a history of the infamous events which had driven
him into exile. 'His lashes should reach to the faces of Napoleon and
his acolytes at the Tuileries; he became at once the Tacitus and Juvenal
of his time, only his accents were mightier than theirs, because his
indignation was greater and his wrath more just.' Napoleon had
triumphed, but the scourge was soon to descend which should leave him
exposed to the derision and contempt of the world to the end of time.
The sword is powerful; but the pen, which is the stronger weapon, has
always overtaken it, and adjusted the historical balance in the
interests of humanity.
CHAPTER X.
THE POET IN EXILE.
In Brussels Victor Hugo came upon friends, amongst them being the
novelist, Alexandre Dumas. The latter was living in this city because he
was the better able to pursue his literary work there, undistracted by
the myriad claims which such a centre as Paris presents. He had never
mixed ardently in politics, but he was so chagrined at the banishment of
Hugo that he chivalrously resolved never to visit Louis Napoleon or the
Tuileries again; and he resolutely adhered to this decision. Victor
Schoelcher followed Hugo to Brussels, having escaped from his pursuers
in the disguise of a priest. Towards the close of December, 1851, the
poet began to write his stirring narrative, _L'Histoire d'un Crime_, and
the work was completed by the following May. It was not published until
1877, and I shall make some references to it in a later chapter. Amongst
other exiles in Brussels were the ill-assorted couple Emile de Girardin
and General Lamoriciere. But Belgium also sheltered in this hour of
peril Ledru Rollin, the sculptor David, Barbes, Louis Blanc, Edgar
Quinet, and Eugene Sue. Indeed, many of the finest and choicest spirits
of France had been driven from their native soil.
The sons of Victor Hugo joined their father in January, 1852, and the
poet determined to remain in Brussels so long as Napoleon III. reigned
at the Tuileries. Fate, nevertheless, decreed otherwise. The Belgian
Government, though favourable to Hugo, was still more anxious to
maintain friendly relations with the new French Empire. Victor Hugo soon
made it impossible, however, for the Belgian rulers to run with the hare
and hunt with the hounds. The publication of his _Napoleon le Petit_
fell like a thunderbolt over both Paris and Brussels. That scathing work
made the Dictator writhe amid the splendours of his palace. It was
charged with wit, pathos, sarcasm, and invective. Amongst the many
personal passages denunciatory of Louis Napoleon was the following: 'He
will never be other than the nocturnal strangler of liberty; he will
never be other than the man who has intoxicated his soldiers, not with
glory, like the first Napoleon, but with wine; he will never be other
than the pigmy tyrant of a great people. Grandeur, even in infamy, is
utterly inconsistent with the character and calibre of the man. As
Dictator, he is a buffoon; let him make himself Emperor, he would be
grotesque. That would at once put an end to him. His destiny is to make
mankind shrug their shoulders. Will he be less severely punished for
that reason? Not at all: contempt does not in his case mitigate anger.
He will be hideous, and he will remain ridiculous. That's all. History
laughs, and crushes. What would you have the historian do with this
fellow? He can only lead him to posterity by the ear. The man once
stripped of success, the pedestal removed, the dust fallen, the lace and
spangles and the great sabre taken away, the poor little skeleton laid
bare and shivering--can anyone imagine anything meaner and more
miserable?' This powerful satire closed with a vision of vengeance: 'You
do not perceive that the 2nd of December is nothing but an immense
illusion, a pause, a stop, a sort of working curtain, behind which the
Deity, that marvellous machinist, is preparing and constructing the last
act, the final and triumphant scene of the French Revolution! You look
stupefied upon the curtain, upon the things painted upon the coarse
canvas, this one's nose, that one's epaulettes, the great sabre of a
third, those embroidered vendors of _eau-de-Cologne_ whom you call
generals, those _poussahs_ that you call magistrates, those worthy men
that you call senators, this mixture of caricatures and spectres--and
you take them all for realities. You do not hear yonder in the shade
that hollow sound! You do not hear some one going backwards and
forwards! You do not see that curtain shaken by the breath of Him who is
behind!'
The excitement caused by this work proved too much for the Belgian
Government, and, desirous of keeping well with Napoleon III., it
reluctantly decided that the author must be expelled. As there was no
law bearing upon Hugo's case, the Belgian Chamber passed one to meet it,
and Hugo was cast out from what he deemed to be a secure asylum. He
embarked for England, but only on his way to Jersey, which he had
decided upon as his next place of habitation. He landed at St. Helier on
the 5th of August, 1852, and was received by a body of French
compatriots and exiles.
Hugo was now somewhat straitened in means, as he derived nothing from
his dramas and his various works. From his very ability and genius, he
was singled out as a special object of disapprobation on the part of the
French rulers. The poet first settled down in a small house on the
Marine Terrace, and the money he received from the sale of his effects
in Paris was a very welcome addition to his small store. But he had
passed through too many periods of hardship and vicissitude to repine
over these altered circumstances--he rather rejoiced to suffer for
conscience' sake. He now gave himself up to intellectual labour, and
found much happiness in his leisure hours in the bosom of his family,
every member of which was deeply attached to him; and in the interchange
of affectionate confidences with his intimate friends, Vacquerie, Paul
Meurice, and others. He was treated with great distinction by the
islanders, not (as he himself said) because he was Victor Hugo the poet,
but because he was a peer of France. In consequence of his rank,
observes one writer, 'he enjoyed certain privileges, one of which was
that he was exempt from the obligation of sweeping his doorstep and
clearing away the grass from the front of his house!' But he was obliged
to supply the suzerain of the Duchy of Normandy with two fowls every
year, a tax that was religiously exacted from 'his lordship.'
Yet even in the little island home of their adoption the exiles were not
permitted to rest in peace. Spies were sent amongst them, who
endeavoured to gather evidence of sedition, and although Jersey had its
own laws, as Napoleon was now the ally of England the situation was not
without its dangers. One Imperial spy, named Hubert, was discovered; and
when the exiles determined that he should die for his treachery, Hugo,
with his usual large-hearted magnanimity, came forward and saved his
life.
Another terrible denunciation of Napoleon and his satellites was penned
by Hugo during his stay in Jersey. _Les Chatiments_, this new satire,
was even more powerful and telling than _Napoleon le Petit_. Its verse
burned with indignation. The poet spared no one who was in any degree
responsible for the crime of the 2nd December. 'Sometimes he is full of
pity for the victims of the dastardly aggression, pouring out his
sympathy for those whom the convict-ships were conveying to the deadly
climates of Cayenne and Lambessa, to receive for political offences the
fate of the worst of felons; sometimes he sounds forth their virtues in
brilliant strophes; and sometimes he rises into grandeur as he scourges
the great men of the Second Empire, whilst at others he uses the lash of
satire, and depicts them all as circus grooms and mountebanks. Page
after page seems to bind his victim to an eternal pillory.' The work
showed, in its various divisions, how society was 'saved,' order
re-established, the dynasty restored, religion glorified, authority
consecrated, stability assured, and the deliverers themselves delivered.
It was first published in Brussels, but only in a mutilated form, the
Belgian Government dreading the effects of some of its bitter attacks
upon the ruler of France. In vain the poet protested against this
infringement of liberty. A complete edition of the work, however, soon
appeared at St. Helier, and it speedily got into circulation in all the
European capitals, ingeniously defying every effort to suppress it. 'The
more it was hunted down the more thoroughly it penetrated France. It
had as many disguises as an outlaw. Sometimes it was enclosed in a
sardine-box, or rolled up in a hank of wool; sometimes it crossed the
frontier entire, sometimes in fragments; concealed occasionally in
plaster busts or clocks, laid in the folds of ladies' dresses, or even
sewn in between the double soles of men's boots.'
Matters were thus rendered righteously unpleasant for Napoleon, who
dreaded these attacks upon his person and power. A man of genius
fighting for liberty is sometimes stronger than a throne; and it was
possible that this might be the issue between the poet and the Dictator.
The work brought no profit to its author, but he had the far higher
reward of seeing it carry terror into the midst of the Tuileries, while
it at the same time stirred the slumbering conscience of the French
nation. For two or three years the Jersey exiles remained unmolested,
but Napoleon, feeling insecure, determined that they should 'move on.'
Victor Hugo on several occasions delivered funeral orations over
departed patriots. He never spared the French rulers, and invariably
expressed sympathy with 'the heartrending cry of humanity which made
the crowned criminal turn pale upon his throne.'
At the obsequies of one Felix Bony, who had been a victim of Imperial
tyranny, the poet referred to the British alliance with the Emperor of
the French as a degradation to England. Upon this, Sir Robert Peel
intimated in the House of Commons that he should feel it his duty to put
an end to this kind of language on the part of French refugees as soon
as possible. Ribeyrolles, the editor of _L'Homme_, the French newspaper
in Jersey, retorted that England was England no longer, and Victor Hugo
returned the following answer: 'M. Bonaparte has driven me from France
because I have acted on my rights as a citizen, and as a representative
of the people; he has driven me from Belgium because I have written
_Napoleon le Petit_, and he will probably drive me from England because
of the protests that I have made and shall continue to make. Be it so.
That concerns England more than it concerns me. America is open to me,
and America is sufficiently after my heart. But I warn him, that whether
it be from France, from Belgium, from England, or from America, my voice
shall never cease to declare that sooner or later he will have to
expiate the crime of the 2nd of December. What is said is true: there
_is_ a personal quarrel between him and me; there is the old quarrel of
the judge upon the bench and the prisoner at the bar.'
The tension became too great when Felix Pyat published in _L'Homme_ a
'Letter to Queen Victoria,' commenting in sarcastic but foolish terms
upon her Majesty's visit to the Emperor and Empress of the French. Some
of the personal portions of the pamphlet affecting the Queen were
perfectly unjustifiable, and the result was a serious agitation in
Jersey for the expulsion of the exiles. At one moment their lives were
in danger. Hugo confessed that he did not care for this, but he should
greatly regret the destruction of his manuscripts. His compositions,
which represented thirty years' labour, and included _Les
Contemplations_, _La Legende des Siecles_, and the first portion of _Les
Miserables_, were accordingly secured in a strong iron-bound chest.
Madame Hugo, though warned of her danger, resolutely remained by the
side of her husband.
The conductors of _L'Homme_ were at once expelled from Jersey, whereupon
Victor Hugo drew up a protest on behalf of the exiles. 'The _Coup
d'Etat_,' said this document, 'has penetrated into English liberty.
England has reached this point that she now banishes exiles.' It then
went onto inveigh against the crimes of 'treason, perjury, spoliation,
and murder,' committed by Napoleon III., for which he had been legally
condemned by the French Court of Assize, and morally by the bulk of the
English press. The protest received thirty-seven signatures, amongst
them being those of Louis Blanc and Victor Schoelcher. After a period
of uncertainty, the English Government consented to the expulsion of the
refugees.
On the 27th of October, 1855, the news was communicated to Victor Hugo
that he must quit the island by the 2nd of November. The poet said to
the constable of St. Clement, the bearer of the tidings, 'I do not await
the expiration of the respite that is given me. I hasten to quit a land
where honour has no place, and which burns my feet.' After paying a
farewell visit to the graves of their dead comrades, the exiles
dispersed, leaving Jersey for various destinations; and on the 31st of
October, Hugo and his family embarked for Guernsey.
CHAPTER XI.
IN GUERNSEY.--'LES MISERABLES.'
Though harassed in mind and in person, Victor Hugo had reserved to
himself, during his troubled stay in Jersey, leisure in which to devote
himself to the Muses pure and simple. As the result of these periods of
meditation, there appeared in Paris in 1856 _Les Contemplations_. This
work, which speedily went through several editions, was the lyrical
record of twenty-five years. According to the author himself, it holds,
more than any other of the numerous collections of his poetry, 'as in a
rocky chalice, the gathered waters of his life.' And, again, he observed
that 'the author has allowed this book to form itself, so to speak,
within him. Life, filtering drop by drop, through events and sufferings,
has deposited it in his heart.'
Divided into two parts, the earlier division of the work dealt with
other times, the second with 'to-day.' From the trials and the joys
through which the poet had passed he endeavoured to extract the
philosophy of life. Everything is tinged with deep feeling, for it would
be superfluous to say that Hugo was ever the subject of profound
emotions. He felt more deeply and strongly than other men, and this
gives that intense personal realism to his work which distinguished it
from the first recorded utterance to the last. Virulently attacked in
some quarters, this series of poems was as warmly welcomed in others.
With the public it found ready favour, and speedily ran through numerous
editions. It may safely be affirmed that criticism which is merely
captious has never yet permanently injured any work. Wherever there is
genius, it will force its way through such obstacles, and find an honest
public appreciation. If Hugo had not himself had faith in the poetic
seed in such works as _Les Contemplations_, he must have despaired; but
with that egotism of talent which is never offensive, he left his work
confidently to the judgment of minds which could think and souls which
could feel. Of that gigantic work, _La Legende des Siecles_, the first
part of which appeared in 1859, I shall speak in greater detail when
referring to its completion.
Expelled from Jersey, the poet found a home in Guernsey; for although
the islands are geographically near, the sentiments of the islanders
differed greatly on the subject of political refugees. At Hauteville
House, which, as its name implies, occupied a commanding elevation,
Victor Hugo found a home which is now peculiarly linked with his name.
The re-arrangement of the place was a work of time. Writing to Jules
Janin, Hugo announced his getting into new quarters: 'England has hardly
been a better guardian of my fireside than France. My poor fireside!
France broke it up, Belgium broke it up, Jersey broke it up; and now I
am beginning, with all the patience of an ant, to build it up anew. If
ever I am driven away again I shall turn to England, and see whether
that worthy prude Albion can help me to find myself _at home_.... I have
taken a house in Guernsey. It has three stories, a flat roof, a fine
flight of steps, a courtyard, a crypt, and a look-out; but it is all
being paid for by the proceeds of _Les Contemplations_.'
Innumerable are the pilgrimages which have been made to Hauteville
House, with consequent descriptions of the residence. A brief sketch of
the leading features of the poet's home, for which I am indebted to an
account written by one of such visitors, will not be unacceptable.
Hauteville House, which overlooks the city and fort beneath, and
commands a vast expanse of sea, is likewise famed for its interior
treasures. The visitor finds carvings of the Renaissance and the Middle
Ages, and porcelain, enamels, and glass, the work of Venetian and
Florentine masters. Entering the house by a vestibule, there is first
perceived on the upper lintel a _basso-relievo_ representing the chief
subject in _Notre-Dame de Paris_. On the right and left, in carved oak,
are two medallions, by David, of Victor Hugo and his second daughter. A
fine Renaissance column supports the whole. Passing on, the monumental
door of the dining-room is reached. Upon one of the panels is written
'Love and Believe;' and over one of the doors, and below a statuette of
the Virgin, is the word of welcome to the visitor, '_Ave_.' In the
billiard-saloon are hung the poet's designs, framed in varnished fir. To
his other evidences of ability Hugo adds that of a graphic artist. Many
of his sketches have a breadth and power which strongly recall the
pencil of Rembrandt, though in the matter of drawing and some other
points they will not, of course, sustain comparison with the work of
that wonderful master.
The tapestry-parlour is an apartment of special interest, the
mantelpiece particularly fixing the attention. Imagine a cathedral of
carved oak, which, rising vigorously from the floor, springs up to the
ceiling, where its upper carving touches the tapestry. The doorway
corresponds to the fireplace; the rosace is a convex mirror, placed
above the mantelpiece; the central gable is a firm entablature covered
with fantastic foliage, and decorated by arches of exquisite taste, in
which the Byzantine mingles with the rococo; the two towers are two
counterforts, which repeat all the ornamentation of the entire mass. The
coping, very imposing in its effect, recalls the fronts of the houses in
Antwerp and Bruges. A face appears amid the woodwork, vigorously thrown
out. It is that of a bishop, whose crosier alone is gilded. On each side
of it is a shield, with the witty motto:
'Crosier of wood, bishop of gold:
Crosier of gold, bishop of wood.'
On two scrolls, representing rolled parchment, are inscribed the names
of those whom Victor Hugo looks upon as the principal poets of
humanity--Job, Isaiah, Homer, AEschylus, Lucretius, Dante, Shakespeare,
Moliere. On the opposite side are the names of Moses, Socrates, Christ,
Columbus, Luther, Washington. Two oaken statues lean from the double
entablature of the chimney-piece. One represents St. Paul reading, with
an inscription on the pedestal--'The Book;' the other shows a monk in
ecstasy, with his eyes uplifted, and on the pedestal is written
'Heaven.' The working-room contains another fine monumental piece of
work, bearing a motto taken from the fourth act of _Hernani_, '_Ad
augusta per angusta_.' The dining-room walls are covered with splendid
Dutch delf of the seventeenth century, and the room has also a
magnificent mirror and a piece of Gobelin tapestry representing the
riches of Summer. Vases and statuettes are to be met with everywhere;
and on panels are carved various legends--'Man,' 'God,' 'My country,'
'Life is exile.' An armchair of carved oak, which was regarded by the
poet as the ancestral seat at his table, is closed by a chain, and
bears the inscription, 'The absent are here.' The galleries and rooms
of the first story are likewise rich in Renaissance work, and in Chinese
and Japanese treasures. The Oak Gallery, which is a kind of
guest-chamber, has six windows looking out upon Fort St. George, which
distribute the light through a perfect forest of carved oak. The
mantelpiece--a marvellous piece of work, represents the sacrifice of
Isaac. A state bed and a massive candelabrum in oak, surmounted by a
figure carved by Victor Hugo, are also noticeable objects; but they are
almost eclipsed by the splendid door of entrance, which, as seen from
the interior, is as brilliant as a church window. Two spiral columns
sustain a pediment of oak with Renaissance grotesques, surrounded by
arabesques and monsters; it advances with two folds, which are
resplendent with paintings, among which are eight large figures of the
martyrs, attired in gold and purple, the principal being St. Peter.
There is inscribed on the lintel, '_Surge, perge_,' and close by the
words of Lucan, 'The conquerors have the gods, with the conquered Cato
remains.' There are also numerous maxims, poetic and otherwise. Hugo's
own room was the look-out--a little belvedere open in all directions,
but very small in extent. It contains the poet's writing-table and an
iron bed. Whether regarded from the point of view of its noble
situation, or from that of the artistic treasures which find a lodgment
in its interior, Hauteville House is a place to inspire a poet of a far
less expansive imagination than Victor Hugo.
While the author of _Notre-Dame_ pursued his studies and compositions in
the belvedere, the other inmates of Hauteville House were generally
engaged in a variety of pursuits beneath. The elder son, Charles,
devoted himself to the writing of dramas and romances, while the second
son, Victor Francois, undertook with much spirit and success a
translation of Shakespeare. Adele, the one daughter now remaining,
composed music; Auguste Vacquerie plunged into a series of curious
literary studies, which resulted in the production of _Les Mielles de
l'Histoire_ and _Profils et Grimaces_; and Madame Victor Hugo busied
herself in collecting notes for her husband's _Life_. Unfortunately,
owing to her death, her task was never completed, a portion only of her
labour of love seeing the light in 1863. The whole family ever
cordially welcomed any Frenchmen who sought a refuge at Hauteville
House, and Gerard de Nerval, Balzac, and many others occupied in turns a
room specially set apart for the use of such visitors.
Two or three years after Hugo established himself in Guernsey, an
amnesty was announced by the Emperor of the French. The proclamation was
dated the 15th of August, 1859. The poet refused to avail himself of the
act of grace, and in conjunction with Louis Blanc, Edgar Quinet, and
others, replied to the Imperial pardon by a counter manifesto. He was
blamed by some for this step, it being urged that it was his duty to
return to France during the days of the Second Empire, and to use every
effort to procure that amelioration of the condition of the people, and
the fruition of their hopes, which he and other patriots desired. But
Victor Hugo was very depressed at this time, and saw little prospect of
the realization of his own aspirations and of those who felt and acted
with him. But an idea of the vast personal influence attributed to the
poet may be gathered from such language as the following which was used
concerning him at this time: 'Had Victor Hugo stood forward, as he was
morally bound to do, the fatal day of Sadowa might never have happened,
the disastrous Ministry of M. Emile Ollivier would have been impossible,
and France could have been spared the overwhelming ruin which fell upon
her when absolutely abandoned to the counsels and government of the
feeblest mediocrity.' It is impossible, of course, to say that these
sanguine expectations would have been justified; but they will at least
serve to show the high esteem in which the poet was held, and the weight
attached to his individual will and example.
Another epoch in the literary career of Victor Hugo was reached in 1862
by the publication of the celebrated romance, _Les Miserables_. This
work had been begun many years before, and was to have been published in
1848. Its original conception was vastly extended in course of time,
until what was at first meant to occupy only two octavo volumes
ultimately spread over ten. The work appeared simultaneously in Paris,
London, Brussels, New York, Madrid, Berlin, Turin, St. Petersburg,
Leipzig, Milan, Rotterdam, Warsaw, Pesth, and Rio de Janeiro. The first
Paris edition amounted to 15,000 copies, the first Brussels edition to
12,000, and the first Leipzig edition to 3,000. No fewer than 150,000
copies were sold in one year, and altogether, in various forms and
editions, more than three times this immense number of copies were
disposed of. The book was found everywhere, from the Steppes of Russia
to the battlefields of the United States, where it solaced many a
soldier during the Civil War.
This stupendous work is divided into five parts, entitled respectively
'Fantine,' 'Cosette,' 'Marius,' 'L'Idylle Rue Plumet et l'Epopee Rue St.
Denis,' and 'Jean Valjean.' Each of these parts consists of eight or
more books, which are again divided into chapters. It was complained
that the book was partly the offspring of a poet, and partly the
offspring of a social philosopher, and that while the poetry was noble
the philosophy was detestable. At the same time it was admitted that the
writer had stamped upon every page the hall-mark of genius, and the
loving patience and conscientious labour of a true artist. The romance
opens with a finely-sketched portrait of a worthy bishop, called by the
people Monseigneur Bienvenu, a noble creation, which surprised those
who looked upon Hugo merely as a curser of the Church and all its works.
A scene of strong dramatic power occurs in Chapter X., which deals with
an interview between the bishop and a dying conventionnel, who had all
but voted for the death of the King. Victor Hugo's unequalled command of
language and his terse and vigorous emphasis come here into full play.
'All French writers of mark,' says a writer in the _Quarterly Review_,
'are divisible into two schools; the one is characterized by the polish
and smoothness to which the romance element is carried in a Racine, or,
in more modern times, a Lamartine; the other is full of a _viel esprit
Gaulois_, a Moliere or a La Fontaine. For this rugged force of speech,
all knots, the bark still on, M. Hugo is very remarkable. The terseness
with which he throws into a word the compressed power which a feebler
but more elegant writer would draw out into a whole sentence, indicates
an amount of genius which belongs only to the kinglier spirits of an
age, and which in French literature has only been matched by Rabelais,
in Italian by Dante.'
The real hero of the story is Jean Valjean, the son of a woodcutter of
Faverolles. Losing his father and mother when a child, he grew up to
carry on the former's craft, supporting thereby an elder sister (left a
widow) and her seven children. One night, in that terrible year of
famine, 1795, Jean Valjean broke into a baker's shop to steal a loaf for
the starving children at home. He was arrested for the theft, and
condemned to five years at the galleys. Frequent attempts to escape
added fourteen years more to his punishment. At length, after nineteen
years, he was liberated; but, while now free, his lot was as hard as
though he were still in confinement. No one will recognise or aid this
pariah of civilization, and he enters the episcopal town of D---- in
despair. The good bishop alone will receive the outcast, and he
entertains him, and has a bed provided for him. In the middle of the
night Valjean is overcome by wild impulses. He steals the spoons from
the cupboard over the bed of the sleeping bishop, and escapes through
the garden. In the morning he is caught and brought back, but the bishop
only heaps coals of fire upon his head in return for his perfidy.
Valjean is allowed to go out into the world, but there is a terrible
struggle between the good and the evil nature within him. The
psychological power of this part of the novel is marvellous. The
conflict between right and wrong is renewed periodically in Valjean's
breast all through the romance, and it is the influence of the Christian
bishop which prevents the miserable man from becoming dead to all his
better instincts. The third book of the first part is devoted to the
episode of Fantine, an unhappy being who is more sinned against than
sinning, and whose sorrows are vividly and painfully described, with
some few delicate lights thrown in upon child-life. A striking portrait
of Javert, a severe French _agent de police_, testifies once more to
Victor Hugo's power of human analysis; but the most thrilling scenes
still centre round Valjean. The ex-convict becomes a respectable
provincial mayor under an assumed name, and when a man is arrested in
his old name of Valjean, after a tremendous struggle, in which he sees
the dead bishop calling upon him to be true to his conscience, he
resolves to deliver himself up and save the innocent man. I cannot
follow all the ramifications of this extraordinary work, which
absolutely teems with exciting incidents, all graphically told, and
having for their central and cardinal motive the trials of Valjean and
the revolt against society. In the last volume we have the marriage of
Cosette, daughter of Fantine, with one Marius, both of whom owed their
lives to Valjean. Marius and Cosette shrink from Valjean when they hear
his confession that he is a liberated convict. But when Marius learns
further that Valjean had saved his life and conveyed him from the
barricades to his grandfather's house, and that he had also secured for
him his wife's dowry of 600,000 francs, remorse overcomes him for his
ingratitude. He and Cosette seek out Valjean at his lodgings, but only
arrive in time to witness the death of the suffering, sinning,
struggling convict, and to receive his last blessing.
This romance contains passages which, for grandeur of conception and
skill in execution, have never been equalled by any other French writer.
At the same time the work is not without its defects, chief of which is
the frequent recurrence of prolix digressions. For example, at a very
critical point in the story, when Jean Valjean has effected his escape
with Marius in his arms from the pursuit of the soldiery, the reader is
treated to some hundred pages of speculation on the valuable uses to
which the sewage of large towns may be put. Other eccentricities might
be pointed out, but high and above them all burns the light of the
original genius of the author, which transforms the book for us into a
veritable wizard's spell. Hugo, even with his perversities and his
literary contradictions, can move us as no other man can. Writing to
Lamartine, who had been considerably exercised by the social views
promulgated in this book, the author said: 'A society that admits
misery, a humanity that admits war, seem to me an inferior society and a
debased humanity; it is a higher society, and a more elevated humanity
at which I am aiming--a society without kings, a humanity without
barriers. I want to universalize property, not to abolish it; I would
suppress parasitism; I want to see every man a proprietor, and no man a
master. This is my idea of true social economy. The goal may be far
distant, but is that a reason for not striving to advance towards it?
Yes, as much as a man can long for anything I long to destroy human
fatality. I condemn slavery; I chase away misery; I instruct ignorance;
I illumine darkness; I discard malice. Hence it is that I have written
_Les Miserables_.' So much for one side of the work; but if its social
and political philosophy be condemned to the exclusion of its manifold
excellences and beauties, then I can only pity the mole-like blindness
of those who, in their haste to be critical, have lost that key-note of
human sympathy which alone can unlock the treasures of _Les Miserables_.
CHAPTER XII.
LITERARY AND DRAMATIC.
Utopian as some of Victor Hugo's social theories might be, his
aspirations after the perfection of the race were unquestionably noble.
What is more, he furnished practical evidence of the sincerity of his
desire to bridge over the gulf which separates humanity into classes. At
his house in Guernsey he entertained periodically the children of the
poor, frequently to the number of forty, at his own table. They would be
accompanied by their mothers, and would sit down to an excellent repast,
the hospitable board being presided over by the poet himself. In this
fraternal spirit he endeavoured to carry out his democratic ideas. At
one of his Christmas feasts at Hauteville House, Hugo remarked: 'My idea
of providing a substantial dinner for the destitute has been well
received almost everywhere; as an institution of fraternity it is
accepted with a cordial welcome--accepted by Christians as being in
conformity with the Gospel, and by democrats as being agreeable to the
principles of the Revolution.' He also advocated the education of
children, as well in the principles of justice and real happiness as in
the various branches of knowledge; for by elevating the child they would
elevate the people of the future.
The good work thus initiated in Guernsey was imitated by humanitarians
in London, who provided acceptable meals for the poor in the Ragged
Schools, and for the neglected and the outcast. Hugo's example was
therefore not barren of results, though systematic care for the poor was
still a dream of the future.
A strangely interesting scene took place at Brussels, when Victor Hugo's
publishers in that city, Messrs. Lacroix and Verboeckhoven, gave a grand
banquet to the author in celebration of the success of _Les Miserables_.
Distinguished representatives of the English, French, Italian, Spanish
and Belgian press attended, and amongst the chief guests were the
Burgomaster of Brussels, the President of the Chamber of
Representatives, MM. Eugene Pelletan, De Banville, Champfleury, and
Louis Blanc. The illustrious exile was much moved as he listened to
speeches breathing sympathy and affection for himself as a man, and
admiration for him as a writer. 'Eleven years ago, my friends,' he said
in reply, 'you saw me departing from among you comparatively young. You
see me now grown old. But though my hair has changed, my heart remains
the same. I thank you for coming here to-day, and beg you to accept my
best and warmest acknowledgments. In the midst of you I seem to be
breathing my native air again; every Frenchman seems to bring me a
fragment of France; and while thus I find myself in contact with your
spirits, a beautiful glamour appears to encircle my soul, and to charm
me like the smile of my mother-country.' The Empire had made this
gathering impossible in Paris, the city where it should naturally have
been held.
A pleasant act of reparation for past injustice was performed when, on
the 18th of May, 1860, the inhabitants of Jersey once more welcomed Hugo
to their island. He went over upon the requisition of five hundred
sympathizers with liberty, who invited him to speak on behalf of the
subscription which was being raised to assist Garibaldi in the
liberation of Italy. The occasion was pre-eminently one to unseal the
fount of eloquence in the exile and the poet. His own deep love for
France led him to feel profoundly with the noble patriot who was
struggling for a united Italy. Hugo spoke with great energy, first
depicting Italy in her bondage, then pleading for her freedom and
independence, and prophesying the near approach of the time when, with
the sword of Garibaldi, aided by the support of France and England,
Italy would rise victorious in the struggle for liberty.
A few years later, and we have some glimpses of the domestic relations
of the poet. His son Charles was married in 1866, at Brussels, to the
ward of M. Jules Simon. In April, 1867, Victor Hugo became a
grandfather, and amongst the many evidences of his affection for
children this little letter, written upon his grandson's birth, is well
worthy of preservation: 'Georges,--Be born to duty, grow up for liberty,
live for progress, die in light! Bear in thy veins the gentleness of thy
mother, the nobleness of thy father. Be good, be brave, be just, be
honourable! With thy grandmother's kiss, receive thy father's
blessing.' The child had scarcely come, however, to gladden the
household before he was taken away again. He lived a twelvemonth only;
but in his place there soon came another Georges, and he was followed by
a sister Jeanne--offshoots of humanity which twined themselves round the
heart of the grandfather, and on more than one occasion inspired his
pen.
In the summer of 1866, the poet and his two sons, with a party of
friends, went upon a tour of pleasure through Zealand. But the journey,
which was intended to be pursued strictly incognito, became in reality a
kind of progress. The principal traveller was recognised at Antwerp, and
Charles Hugo, who afterwards published a work entitled _Victor Hugo en
Zelande_, remarked that though his father had come to discover Zealand,
Zealand had discovered him instead. Many pleasant incidents marked the
journey, not the least gratifying being a reception at Ziericsee, when,
in addition to being welcomed by the municipal authorities, two little
girls, dressed in white, came forward and presented Hugo with
magnificent bouquets. On leaving Dordrecht, the farewell was one that
might have been tendered to a sovereign.
Shortly before making this tour Hugo had issued _Les Chansons des Rues
et des Bois_. In these songs of the streets and the woods will be
discovered the amusing recreations of a great spirit and the
representations of its lighter moods. Applying to the volume a
standpoint quite out of keeping with its scope and motive, some of the
reviewers saw in it a decadence of ge
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/37635