by Lyndon Orr
THE STORY OF THE HUGOS
Victor Hugo, after all criticisms have been made, stands as a literarycolossus. He had imaginative power which makes his finest passagesfairly crash upon the reader's brain like blasting thunderbolts. Hisnovels, even when translated, are read and reread by people of everydegree of education. There is something vast, something almost Titanic,about the grandeur and gorgeousness of his fancy. His prose resemblesthe sonorous blare of an immense military band. Readers of English careless for his poetry; yet in his verse one can find another phase of hisintellect. He could write charmingly, in exquisite cadences, poemsfor lovers and for little children. His gifts were varied, and he knewthoroughly the life and thought of his own countrymen; and, therefore,in his later days he was almost deified by them.
At the same time, there were defects in his intellect and characterwhich are perceptible in what he wrote, as well as in what he did. Hehad the Gallic wit in great measure, but he was absolutely devoid of anysense of humor. This is why, in both his prose and his poetry, his mosttremendous pages often come perilously near to bombast; and this is why,again, as a man, his vanity was almost as great as his genius. He hadgood reason to be vain, and yet, if he had possessed a gleam of humor,he would never have allowed his egoism to make him arrogant. As it was,he felt himself exalted above other mortals. Whatever he did or said orwrote was right because he did it or said it or wrote it.
This often showed itself in rather whimsical ways. Thus, after he hadpublished the first edition of his novel, The Man Who Laughs, an Englishgentleman called upon him, and, after some courteous compliments,suggested that in subsequent editions the name of an English peer whofigures in the book should be changed from Tom Jim-Jack.
"For," said the Englishman, "Tom Jim-Jack is a name that could notpossibly belong to an English noble, or, indeed, to any Englishman. Thepresence of it in your powerful story makes it seem to English readers alittle grotesque."
Victor Hugo drew himself up with an air of high disdain.
"Who are you?" asked he.
"I am an Englishman," was the answer, "and naturally I know what namesare possible in English."
Hugo drew himself up still higher, and on his face there was a smile ofutter contempt.
"Yes," said he. "You are an Englishman; but I--I am Victor Hugo."
In another book Hugo had spoken of the Scottish bagpipes as "bugpipes."This gave some offense to his Scottish admirers. A great many personstold him that the word was "bagpipes," and not "bugpipes." But hereplied with irritable obstinacy:
"I am Victor Hugo; and if I choose to write it 'bugpipes,' it IS'bugpipes.' It is anything that I prefer to make it. It is so, because Icall it so!"
So, Victor Hugo became a violent republican, because he did not wishFrance to be an empire or a kingdom, in which an emperor or a kingwould be his superior in rank. He always spoke of Napoleon III as "M.Bonaparte." He refused to call upon the gentle-mannered Emperor ofBrazil, because he was an emperor; although Dom Pedro expressed anearnest desire to meet the poet.
When the German army was besieging Paris, Hugo proposed to fight a duelwith the King of Prussia, and to have the result of it settle the war;"for," said he, "the King of Prussia is a great king, but I am VictorHugo, the great poet. We are, therefore, equal."
In spite, however, of his ardent republicanism, he was very fond ofspeaking of his own noble descent. Again and again he styled himself "apeer of France;" and he and his family made frequent allusions to theknights and bishops and counselors of state with whom he claimed anancestral relation. This was more than inconsistent. It was somewhatludicrous; because Victor Hugo's ancestry was by no means noble. TheHugos of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were not in anyway related to the poet's family, which was eminently honest andrespectable, but by no means one of distinction. His grandfather wasa carpenter. One of his aunts was the wife of a baker, another of abarber, while the third earned her living as a provincial dressmaker.
If the poet had been less vain and more sincerely democratic, he wouldhave been proud to think that he sprang from good, sound, sturdystock, and would have laughed at titles. As it was, he jeered atall pretensions of rank in other men, while he claimed for himselfdistinctions that were not really his. His father was a soldier who rosefrom the ranks until, under Napoleon, he reached the grade of general.His mother was the daughter of a ship owner in Nantes.
Victor Hugo was born in February, 1802, during the Napoleonic wars, andhis early years were spent among the camps and within the sound of thecannon-thunder. It was fitting that he should have been born and rearedin an age of upheaval, revolt, and battle. He was essentially thelaureate of revolt; and in some of his novels--as in Ninety-Three--thedrum and the trumpet roll and ring through every chapter.
The present paper has, of course, nothing to do with Hugo's public life;yet it is necessary to remember the complicated nature of the man--allhis power, all his sweetness of disposition, and likewise all his vanityand his eccentricities. We must remember, also, that he was French, sothat his story may be interpreted in the light of the French character.
At the age of fifteen he was domiciled in Paris, and though still aschoolboy and destined for the study of law, he dreamed only of poetryand of literature. He received honorable mention from the FrenchAcademy in 1817, and in the following year took prizes in a poeticalcompetition. At seventeen he began the publication of a literaryjournal, which survived until 1821. His astonishing energy becameevident in the many publications which he put forth in these boyishdays. He began to become known. Although poetry, then as now, was notvery profitable even when it was admired, one of his slender volumesbrought him the sum of seven hundred francs, which seemed to himnot only a fortune in itself, but the forerunner of still greaterprosperity.
It was at this time, while still only twenty years of age, that he meta young girl of eighteen with whom he fell rather tempestuously in love.Her name was Adele Foucher, and she was the daughter of a clerk in theWar Office. When one is very young and also a poet, it takes very littleto feed the flame of passion. Victor Hugo was often a guest at theapartments of M. Foucher, where he was received by that gentlemanand his family. French etiquette, of course, forbade any directcommunication between the visitor and Adele. She was still a very younggirl, and was supposed to take no share in the conversation. Therefore,while the others talked, she sat demurely by the fireside and sewed.
Her dark eyes and abundant hair, her grace of manner, and the picturewhich she made as the firelight played about her, kindled a flame in thesusceptible heart of Victor Hugo. Though he could not speak to her,he at least could look at her; and, before long, his share in theconversation was very slight. This was set down, at first, to hisabsent-mindedness; but looks can be as eloquent as spoken words. Mme.Foucher, with a woman's keen intelligence, noted the adoring gaze ofVictor Hugo as he silently watched her daughter. The young Adele herselfwas no less intuitive than her mother. It was very well understood,in the course of a few months, that Victor Hugo was in love with AdeleFoucher.
Her father and mother took counsel about the matter, and Hugo himself,in a burst of lyrical eloquence, confessed that he adored Adele andwished to marry her. Her parents naturally objected. The girl was buta child. She had no dowry, nor had Victor Hugo any settled income. Theywere not to think of marriage. But when did a common-sense decision,such as this, ever separate a man and a woman who have felt thethrill of first love! Victor Hugo was insistent. With his supremeself-confidence, he declared that he was bound to be successful, andthat in a very short time he would be illustrious. Adele, on her side,created "an atmosphere" at home by weeping frequently, and by goingabout with hollow eyes and wistful looks.
The Foucher family removed from Paris to a country town. Victor Hugoimmediately followed them. Fortunately for him, his poems had attractedthe attention of Louis XVIII, who was flattered by some of the verses.He sent Hugo five hundred francs for an ode, and soon afterward settledupon him a pension of a thousand francs. Here
at least was an income--avery small one, to be sure, but still an income. Perhaps Adele's fatherwas impressed not so much by the actual money as by the evidence of theroyal favor. At any rate, he withdrew his opposition, and the two youngpeople were married in October, 1822--both of them being under age,unformed, and immature.
Their story is another warning against too early marriage. It is truethat they lived together until Mme. Hugo's death--a married life offorty-six years--yet their story presents phases which would have madethis impossible had they not been French.
For a time, Hugo devoted all his energies to work. The record of hissteady upward progress is a part of the history of literature, and neednot be repeated here. The poet and his wife were soon able to leave thelatter's family abode, and to set up their own household god in a homewhich was their own. Around them there were gathered, in a sort ofsalon, all the best-known writers of the day--dramatists, critics,poets, and romancers. The Hugos knew everybody.
Unfortunately, one of their visitors cast into their new life a drop ofcorroding bitterness. This intruder was Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve,a man two years younger than Victor Hugo, and one who blended learning,imagination, and a gift of critical analysis. Sainte-Beuve is to-daybest remembered as a critic, and he was perhaps the greatest critic everknown in France. But in 1830 he was a slender, insinuating youth whocultivated a gift for sensuous and somewhat morbid poetry.
He had won Victor Hugo's friendship by writing an enthusiastic notice ofHugo's dramatic works. Hugo, in turn, styled Sainte-Beuve "an eagle,""a blazing star," and paid him other compliments no less gorgeous andHugoesque. But in truth, if Sainte-Beuve frequented the Hugo salon, itwas less because of his admiration for the poet than from his desire towin the love of the poet's wife.
It is quite impossible to say how far he attracted the serious attentionof Adele Hugo. Sainte-Beuve represents a curious type, which is far morecommon in France and Italy than in the countries of the north. Humannature is not very different in cultivated circles anywhere. Man loves,and seeks to win the object of his love; or, as the old English proverbhas it:
It's a man's part to try, And a woman's to deny.
But only in the Latin countries do men who have tried make theirattempts public, and seek to produce an impression that they have beensuccessful, and that the woman has not denied. This sort of man, inEnglish-speaking lands, is set down simply as a cad, and is excludedfrom people's houses; but in some other countries the thing is regardedwith a certain amount of toleration. We see it in the two books writtenrespectively by Alfred de Musset and George Sand. We have seen it stilllater in our own times, in that strange and half-repulsive story inwhich the Italian novelist and poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio, under a verythin disguise, revealed his relations with the famous actress, EleanoraDuse. Anglo-Saxons thrust such books aside with a feeling of disgust forthe man who could so betray a sacred confidence and perhaps exaggeratea simple indiscretion into actual guilt. But it is not so in France andItaly. And this is precisely what Sainte-Beuve attempted.
Dr. George McLean Harper, in his lately published study of Sainte-Beuve,has summed the matter up admirably, in speaking of The Book of Love:
He had the vein of emotional self-disclosure, the vein of romantic orsentimental confession. This last was not a rich lode, and so he was atpains to charge it secretly with ore which he exhumed gloatingly, butwhich was really base metal. The impulse that led him along this falseroute was partly ambition, partly sensuality. Many a worse man wouldhave been restrained by self-respect and good taste. And no man with asense of honor would have permitted The Book of Love to see the light--asmall collection of verses recording his passion for Mme. Hugo, anddesigned to implicate her.
He left two hundred and five printed copies of this book to bedistributed after his death. A virulent enemy of Sainte-Beuve was nottoo expressive when he declared that its purpose was "to leave on thelife of this woman the gleaming and slimy trace which the passage of asnail leaves on a rose." Abominable in either case, whether or not theimplication was unfounded, Sainte-Beuve's numerous innuendoes in regardto Mme. Hugo are an indelible stain on his memory, and his infamy notonly cost him his most precious friendships, but crippled him in everyhigh endeavor.
How monstrous was this violation of both friendship and love may be seenin the following quotation from his writings:
In that inevitable hour, when the gloomy tempest and the jealous gulfshall roll over our heads, a sealed bottle, belched forth from theabyss, will render immortal our two names, their close alliance, and ourdouble memory aspiring after union.
Whether or not Mme. Hugo's relations with Sainte-Beuve justified thelatter even in thinking such thoughts as these, one need not inquire toominutely. Evidently, though, Victor Hugo could no longer be the friendof the man who almost openly boasted that he had dishonored him. Thereexist some sharp letters which passed between Hugo and Sainte-Beuve.Their intimacy was ended.
But there was something more serious than this. Sainte-Beuve had in factsucceeded in leaving a taint upon the name of Victor Hugo's wife. ThatHugo did not repudiate her makes it fairly plain that she was innocent;yet a high-spirited, sensitive soul like Hugo's could never forget thatin the world's eye she was compromised. The two still lived togetheras before; but now the poet felt himself released from the strictobligations of the marriage-bond.
It may perhaps be doubted whether he would in any case have remainedfaithful all his life. He was, as Mr. H.W. Wack well says, "a man ofpowerful sensations, physically as well as mentally. Hugo pursued everyopportunity for new work, new sensations, fresh emotion. He desired toabsorb as much on life's eager forward way as his great nature craved.His range in all things--mental, physical, and spiritual--was so farbeyond the ordinary that the gage of average cannot be applied to him.The cavil of the moralist did not disturb him."
Hence, it is not improbable that Victor Hugo might have broken throughthe bonds of marital fidelity, even had Sainte-Beuve never written hisabnormal poems; but certainly these poems hastened a result which may ormay not have been otherwise inevitable. Hugo no longer turned whollyto the dark-haired, dark-eyed Adele as summing up for him the whole ofwomanhood. A veil was drawn, as it were, from before his eyes, and helooked on other women and found them beautiful.
It was in 1833, soon after Hugo's play "Lucrece Borgia" had beenaccepted for production, that a lady called one morning at Hugo's housein the Place Royale. She was then between twenty and thirty years ofage, slight of figure, winsome in her bearing, and one who knew the artswhich appeal to men. For she was no inexperienced ingenue. The name uponher visiting-card was "Mme. Drouet"; and by this name she had been knownin Paris as a clever and somewhat gifted actress. Theophile Gautier,whose cult was the worship of physical beauty, wrote in almost lyricprose of her seductive charm.
At nineteen, after she had been cast upon the world, dowered with thatterrible combination, poverty and beauty, she had lived openly with asculptor named Pradier. This has a certain importance in the historyof French art. Pradier had received a commission to execute a statuerepresenting Strasburg--the statue which stands to-day in the Placede la Concorde, and which patriotic Frenchmen and Frenchwomen drape inmourning and half bury in immortelles, in memory of that city of Alsacewhich so long was French, but which to-day is German--one of Germany'sgreat prizes taken in the war of 1870.
Five years before her meeting with Hugo, Pradier had rather brutallysevered his connection with her, and she had accepted the protectionof a Russian nobleman. At this time she was known by her realname--Julienne Josephine Gauvin; but having gone upon the stage, sheassumed the appellation by which she was thereafter known, that ofJuliette Drouet.
Her visit to Hugo was for the purpose of asking him to secure for hera part in his forth-coming play. The dramatist was willing, butunfortunately all the major characters had been provided for, and hewas able to offer her only the minor one of the Princesse Negroni. Thecharming deference with which she accepted the offered part attractedHu
go's attention. Such amiability is very rare in actresses who have hadengagements at the best theaters. He resolved to see her again; and hedid so, time after time, until he was thoroughly captivated by her.
She knew her value, and as yet was by no means infatuated with him.At first he was to her simply a means of getting on in herprofession--simply another influential acquaintance. Yet she brought tobear upon him the arts at her command, her beauty and her sympathy, and,last of all, her passionate abandonment.
Hugo was overwhelmed by her. He found that she was in debt, andhe managed to see that her debts were paid. He secured her otherengagements at the theater, though she was less successful as an actressafter she knew him. There came, for a time, a short break in theirrelations; for, partly out of need, she returned to her Russiannobleman, or at least admitted him to a menage a trois. Hugo underwentfor a second time a great disillusionment. Nevertheless, he was not tooproud to return to her and to beg her not to be unfaithful any more.Touched by his tears, and perhaps foreseeing his future fame, she gaveher promise, and she kept it until her death, nearly half a centurylater.
Perhaps because she had deceived him once, Hugo never completely losthis prudence in his association with her. He was by no means lavish withmoney, and he installed her in a rather simple apartment only a shortdistance from his own home. He gave her an allowance that was relativelysmall, though later he provided for her amply in his will. But it wasto her that he brought all his confidences, to her he entrusted all hisinterests. She became to him, thenceforth, much more than she appearedto the world at large; for she was his friend, and, as he said, hisinspiration.
The fact of their intimate connection became gradually known throughParis. It was known even to Mme. Hugo; but she, remembering the affairof Sainte-Beuve, or knowing how difficult it is to check the will of aman like Hugo, made no sign, and even received Juliette Drouet in herown house and visited her in turn. When the poet's sons grew up tomanhood, they, too, spent many hours with their father in the littlesalon of the former actress. It was a strange and, to an Anglo-Saxonmind, an almost impossible position yet France forgives much to genius,and in time no one thought of commenting on Hugo's manner of life.
In 1851, when Napoleon III seized upon the government, and when Hugo wasin danger of arrest, she assisted him to escape in disguise, and with aforged passport, across the Belgian frontier. During his long exilein Guernsey she lived in the same close relationship to him and to hisfamily. Mme. Hugo died in 1868, having known for thirty-three years thatshe was only second in her husband's thoughts. Was she doing penance, orwas she merely accepting the inevitable? In any case, her position wasmost pathetic, though she uttered no complaint.
A very curious and poignant picture of her just before her death hasbeen given by the pen of a visitor in Guernsey. He had met Hugo and hissons; he had seen the great novelist eating enormous slices of roastbeef and drinking great goblets of red wine at dinner, and he hadalso watched him early each morning, divested of all his clothing andsplashing about in a bath-tub on the top of his house, in view ofall the town. One evening he called and found only Mme. Hugo. She wasreclining on a couch, and was evidently suffering great pain. Surprised,he asked where were her husband and her sons.
"Oh," she replied, "they've all gone to Mme. Drouet's to spend theevening and enjoy themselves. Go also; you'll not find it amusing here."
One ponders over this sad scene with conflicting thoughts. Was therereally any truth in the story at which Sainte-Beuve more than hinted?If so, Adele Hugo was more than punished. The other woman had sinned farmore; and yet she had never been Hugo's wife; and hence perhaps itwas right that she should suffer less. Suffer she did; for after herdevotion to Hugo had become sincere and deep, he betrayed her confidenceby an intrigue with a girl who is spoken of as "Claire." The knowledgeof it caused her infinite anguish, but it all came to an end; and shelived past her eightieth year, long after the death of Mme. Hugo. Shedied only a short time before the poet himself was laid to rest in Pariswith magnificent obsequies which an emperor might have envied. In herold age, Juliette Drouet became very white and very wan; yet she neverquite lost the charm with which, as a girl, she had won the heart ofHugo.
The story has many aspects. One may see in it a retribution, or one maysee in it only the cruelty of life. Perhaps it is best regarded simplyas a chapter in the strange life-histories of men of genius.