by David Bellos
19. Description adapted from Charles Hugo, Les Hommes de l’Exil, quoted in Sartorius, ‘L’Éditeur Albert Lacroix’, p. 18.
20. Quoted in Hovasse, Victor Hugo, p. 669.
21. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 350 (Lacroix to Hugo, 5 June 1862).
22. Victor Hugo to Paul Meurice, 19 December 1861, quoted in Hovasse, Victor Hugo, pp. 675–6.
23. Juliette Drouet to Victor Hugo, 5 December 1861, quoted in Hovasse, Victor Hugo, p. 676.
24. Correspondance, vol. 2, p. 379.
25. The first working submarine cable in the world, from Weymouth via Alderney and Guernsey to St Helier in Jersey, was opened for use on 7 September 1858. It was at the cutting edge of technology and kept on breaking down. On 24 February 1862, the Guernsey–Jersey cable failed again, and in May, the Guernsey office closed for good. During the few months when it was able to provide a reliable service, the Channel Islands Telegraph Company set prices that stunned even Victor Hugo. See Miete, A History of the Telegraph in Jersey.
26. Years later, Hugo gave them to Juliette in a hand-made box. They are now at the Château des Roches at Bièvres.
27. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, pp. 123–4 (Hugo to Lacroix, 12 January 1862).
28. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 156 (Hugo to Lacroix, 7 February 1862).
29. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 144 (31 January 1862), p. 155 (7 February 1862).
30. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 139.
31. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 159.
32. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 208.
33. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 147 (Lacroix to Hugo, 2 February 1862).
34. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 308 (Lacroix to Hugo, 11 May 1862).
35. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 149.
36. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 165 (Hugo to Lacroix, 12 February 1862).
37. French books were sold with pages sewn but not cut and the volume not bound. This explains why Les Misérables could be put on sale so soon after printing.
38. Dickens, Great Expectations, pp. 16, 373.
39. See Bellos, ‘Sounding Out’, for a fuller treatment of diction in Les Misérables.
40. William Shakespeare, quoted in Leuilliot, ‘Présentation’, p. 57.
41. I owe these insights to Michael Hoffheimer’s ‘Jean Valjean’s Nightmare’.
42. Gogol, The Overcoat, p. 565.
43. The word passant, often used to draw attention to heroes and especially war victims honoured in memorials and monuments, is an echo of Lamentations I.12.21, ‘all ye that pass by’ (‘vous qui passez par le chemin’).
Part Four: War, Peace and Progress
1. Myriel refused to acknowledge Napoleon when he passed through Digne, one of the very few actions that Hugo criticizes in his saintly bishop (I.1.xi, 46).
2. Leuilliot, ‘Présentation’, pp. 55–6.
3. On Hugo’s use (and abuse) of his sources, see Descotes, Victor Hugo et Waterloo.
4. ‘Réponse à un acte d’accusation’, in Contemplations I.7, lines 65–6: ‘Je fis souffler un vent révolutionnaire / Je mis un bonnet rouge au vieux dictionnaire’ (‘I made a revolutionary wind blow / I put a red cap on the old dictionary’).
5. Huard, ‘Le Petit-Picpus des Misérables’, p. 374.
6. ‘la forme d’une ville / Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d’un mortel’, from ‘Le Cygne’, in Les Fleurs du mal, 1857.
7. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 161 (Lacroix to Hugo, 9 February 1862).
8. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, pp. 161, 162 (Lacroix to Hugo, 9 February 1862).
9. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 177 (Hugo to Lacroix, 18 February 1862).
10. Sokologorsky, ‘Victor Hugo et le XIXe siècle russe’, p. 197.
11. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 155 (Hugo to Lacroix, 7 February 1862).
12. Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party, footnote to the title of Section 1, ‘Bourgeois and Proletarians’.
13. Bouchet, Le Roi et les barricades, p. 69.
14. Heine, De la France, p. 149.
15. IV.11.iv, 969.
16. Heine, De la France, p. 243.
17. See Blix, ‘Le Livre des passants’; Brombert, Victor Hugo and the Visionary Novel, pp. 90–94.
18. Information provided by Serguei Oushakine.
19. Sokologorsky, ‘Victor Hugo et le XIXe siècle russe’, p. 197.
20. II.5.x, 425; II.3.x, 386; III.8.xx, 724; III.8.xx, 721; V.3.viii, 1,168.
21. No authoritative study of the vocabulary of Les Misérables yet exists. My figure is derived from the tables in Étienne Brunet’s larger linguistic survey of a corpus of works by Victor Hugo. Computations of this kind must always be taken with a pinch of salt, since they do not usually count different words that are spelled the same way (English ‘light’ and ‘light’, for example) or distinguish between words used with radically different meanings (such as (railway) ‘train’ and (bridal) ‘train’).
22. The American Heritage Dictionary claims there are 29,066 distinct word-forms in Shakespeare’s complete works, but that figure includes proper names. Other estimates put Shakespeare’s vocabulary range between 18,000 and 25,000.
23. II.8.iii, 487; II.7.iii, 464; V.1.i, 1,051; I.1.viii, 31.
24. IV.6.ii, 866, as ‘mosquito net’.
25. V.6.ii, 1,231.
26. See Brunet, Le Vocabulaire de Victor Hugo, for a full study of Hugo’s lexical exuberance and a list of all the hapax legomena (‘one-time-only’ words) in his work. Hugo also enriched the geography of the Middle East with the fictitious location of Jérimadeth, invented because ‘I have to rhyme on “dé”’(‘j’ai rime à “dait”’), Booz endormi, l. 81.
27. I.1.iv, 15; other instances of southern dialects can be found at I.1.i, 6 and I.2.i, 64; IV.15.i, 1,031 (Norman).
28. I.3.vii, 127.
29. Javert’s pronunciation of ‘Allons vite’ (‘let’s get a move on’) as ‘allonouaite’ (I.8.iv, 266) doesn’t represent a social or regional accent so much as peremptory, harsh and contemptuous diction.
30. Sainéan, Le Langage parisien, p. 95.
31. Paris, ‘Ti, signe d’interrogation’.
32. Vaux, ‘A Vocabulary of the Flash Language’.
33. Ibid.
34. Vidocq, Mémoires.
35. Huard, ‘Le Petit-Picpus des Misérables’, p. 384. There were also two older guides to ‘rough language’ that Hugo could have used in the 1840s: Leroux’s Dictionnaire comique of 1718, and Histoire et recherches des antiquités de la ville de Paris by Henri Sauval (1724), one of the main sources for Notre-Dame de Paris.
36. Gillery and Rivière, Je me suis raconté, p. 18.
37. See Halliday, ‘Anti-Languages’, for a comparative study of linguistic phenomena similar to thieves’ slang.
38. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 358 (Lacroix to Hugo, 8 June 1862).
39. I.7.ix, 245; III.8.vi, 673.
40. ‘m’allant coucher je trouvis … je m’y couchis’. I.6.v, 445, not represented in the translation; IV.1.iii, 748.
41. I.1.viii, 31; I.3.vii, 125; I.3.vii, 128; III.1.iv, 522; IV.12.i, 976; III.4.v, 608.
42. I.3.vii, 126, 130.
43. III.8.xxii, 735.
Part Five: Great Expectations
1. Parfait, L’Aurore d’un beau jour.
2. Robb, Victor Hugo, p. 407.
3. Edwards, Ebenezer Le Page, pp. 89–90.
4. Hovasse, Victor Hugo, p. 693.
5. A. Nefftzer, Le Temps (2 April 1862); Adolphe Gaiffe, La Presse (2 April 1862), quoted in Bach, ‘Critique et politique’, p. 595.
6. Adèle Hugo to Victor Hugo, 6 April 1862; quote
d in Hovasse, Victor Hugo, vol. 2, p. 700.
7. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 256 (Lacroix to Hugo, 13 April 1862).
8. Adapted from Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 315 (15 May 1862).
9. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables p. 74 gives a good summary of Hugo’s views on these matters.
10. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, pp. 361–2 (Hugo to Lacroix, 11 June 1862).
11. Hovasse, Victor Hugo, p. 706–7.
12. A wit has claimed that Hugo addressed the critic as ‘Villier-Fleury’ so as not to write the sound of a word even more vulgar than Cambronne’s merde, namely cul, meaning ‘arse’.
13. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 312 (12 May 1862).
14. Hugo to Janin, 18 May 1862, quoted in Hovasse, Victor Hugo, p. 712.
15. Jules Claye to Victor Hugo, 15 May 1862, quoted in Hovasse, Victor Hugo, p. 710.
16. Reported by Adèle in a letter to Hugo, 28 April 1862, quoted in Hovasse, Victor Hugo, p. 702. The play was Paul Meurice’s Jean Baudry, performed at the Comédie française.
17. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 323, note 9.
18. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 331 (Lacroix to Hugo, 25 May 1862).
19. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 286 (27 April 1862) and p. 335 (28 May 1862).
20. Le Boulevard, 20 April 1862, in Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 224.
21. Baudelaire, Correspondance, vol. 2, p. 254.
22. Flaubert to Mme Roger des Genettes, in Correspondance, vol. 3, p. 235.
23. Mérimée, Correspondance Générale, vol. 11, p. 177.
24. Dumas, Correspondances, p. 288.
25. The Latin tag is translated on p. 218 above.
26. Hugo, letter to Gino Daëlli, 18 October 1862. Included as an afterword in the last edition of Les Misérables published in Hugo’s lifetime.
27. The phrase was used by Romain Gary in episode 4 of his interview with Patrice Galbeau to explain why his Litwak mother, alongside thousands of other inhabitants of Wilno and Kaunas, thought of emigrating only to France.
28. Hovasse, Victor Hugo, p. 720; but see also p. 1,156 n. 236, which reports that government estimates were much lower.
29. Publishers’ Weekly (2 September, 1916), quoted in Hoffheimer, ‘Copyright’, p. 174, n. 47.
30. Preface signed ‘A. F. Richmond, May, 1863’.
31. My thanks to Jessica Christy for finding the Richmond edition.
32. Pickett, Pickett and His Men, pp. 357–9.
33. Stiles, Four Years Under Marse Robert, p. 252.
34. Solntsev, ‘Les Misérables en Russie et en URSS’.
35. My thanks to Tuo Liu for this information.
36. A. R. W. James, ‘Waterloo sans Cambronne’.
37. Adèle Hugo to Victor Hugo, 11 May 1862, quoted in Hovasse, Victor Hugo, p. 704.
38. Dickens, The Public Readings, contains the transcripts.
39. V.1.xxiii, 1,123.
40. Der Giber in Keyten, Warsaw, 1911; a ‘life drama in six tableaux’ under the same title, dramatized by H. Dashevsky, Vilna, undated; and a separate stage play, Gavrosh, ‘baarbt in Idish fun Yekhezekl Dobrishin’, Moscow, undated.
41. Item 970 in the official catalogue of the Lumières’ films at catalogue.lumière.com.
42. Gamel and Serceau, Le Victor Hugo des cinéastes, pp. 255–61, gives an exhaustive list of cinema versions of Les Misérables down to 2005; see Grossman and Stephens, Les Misérables and Its Afterlives, for more up-to-date discussions of film adaptations.
43. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 366.
44. Laffont edition, vol. 12, p. 536.
45. Ibid, p. 537.
46. Ibid, p. 559.
47. That’s why this fragment is referred to as ‘The Soul’ in some editions.
48. My thanks to Michael Ferrier for sending me the manga and to Patrick Schwemmer for translating and explaining it to me.
49. (Re Mizeraburu Shōjo Kozetto), Nippon Animation, 2007.
50. I owe much of this information to Jessica Christy.
51. ‘Madeleine’ is also the biblical name of a sinner who repents, which makes it quite apt for Valjean in his new guise.
52. I.5.iv, 155.
53. See Bellos, ‘Momo et Les Misérables’.
54. Gary, La Nuit sera calme, p. 25.
55. He can never cease to be an escaped convict and officially a member of the ‘most dangerous’ class of men.
56. Sartorius, ‘L’Éditeur Albert Lacroix’, which also reproduces the photographs of the guests and the menu.
57. Correspondance, vol. 3, p. 144.
Index of Names
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
A Little in Love, sequel by Susan Fletcher
Aeantis, a Greek tribe
Aedapteon, city in Ancient Greece
Africa
Ah! Ah! Mujo, film by Ushihara
ALBERT OF SAXE–COBURG AND GOTHA, Prince Consort, 1819–1861
Algeria
ALLEGRI (Gregorio), Italian composer, 1582–1652
Aloette na uta, manga by Inuki Takako
America, see under United States
Amsterdam
An Archive of Our Own, fan fiction website
Anglo-Norman Islands, see also under Channel Islands
Angoulême (Charente)
Annecy (Haute-Savoie)
Année Terrible, L’, memoir by Victor Hugo
Antwerp
Aquila, steamship
Arabic language
Ardennes
Arras (Pas-de-Calais)
Art of Being A Grandfather, poetry collection by Victor Hugo
ASTÉRIX, cartoon character
Atonement, play by W Muskerry
AUGUSTULUS, last emperor of Rome CE
AUGUSTUS, first emperor of Rome BCE–14 CE
Austerlitz, Battle of
Australia
Austria, Austrian Empire
BABET
BABEUF (Gracchus), 1760–1797
Baden-Baden
BALZAC (Honoré de), French novelist, 1799–1850
BAMATABOIS
Banque Perregaux, Laffitte et Cie
Barbados
BARDOT (Brigitte), French actress
BARNACLE (Nora), wife of James Joyce, 1884–1951
Barneville (Manche)
BARROT (Madame)
BARROT (Odilon), French politician, 1791–1883
BART (Lionel), English composer, 1930–1999
BARTHOLDI (Frédéric Auguste), French sculptor, 1834–1904
BARTLEBY, a character in Melville
BASHMACHKIN (Akaky Akakyevich), a character in Gogol
BATMAN, cartoon character
Battles, see under Austerlitz, Borodino, Cifuentes, Cogolhudo, Copenhagen, Dresden, Eylau, Jena, Killiecrankie, Lodi, Marengo, Montenotte, Pyramids, Roncevaux, Rivoli, Siguenza, Thermopylae, Trafalgar, Wagram, Waterloo, Zaragoza
BAUDELAIRE (Charles), French poet, 1821–1867
Belgium
Benito Cereno, story by Melville
Berezina, River
Berlaymont Building
Berlin
BERNARD (Raymond), French film director, 1891–1977
BERTIN (Louis-François), French journalist, 1766–1841
Besançon (Doubs)
BIARD (François-Auguste), French painter, 1799–1882
BIARD (Léonie, née d’ Aunet), French novelist and Arctic explorer
Bilbao
BINET (Catherine), French film director, 1944–2006
Birmingham
BIZET (Georges), French composer, 1838–1875
BLIMBER (Dr), a schoolmas
ter in Dickens
Blois (Loir-et-Cher)
BLÜCHER (Gebhard von), Prussian Field Marshal, 1742–1819
BOLESLAWSKI (Richard), Polish theatre and film director, 1889–1937
BOMBARDA, restaurateur
BONAPARTE (Louis-Napoléon), later Napoleon III, 1808–1873
BONAPARTE (Napoléon-François), also Napoléon II and King of Rome, 1811–1832
BONAPARTE (Napoleon), later Napoleon I, 1769–1821
BORDEAUX, Duc de, see under Henri d’Artois
Borodino, Battle of
BOSSUET