The Story Of The Hugos

Victor Hugo, after all criticisms have been made, stands as a literary

colossus. He had imaginative power which makes his finest passages

fairly crash upon the reader's brain like blasting thunderbolts. His

novels, even when translated, are read and reread by people of every

degree of education. There is something vast, something almost Titanic,

about the grandeur and gorgeousness of his fancy. His prose resembles

the onorous blare of an immense military band. Readers of English care

less for his poetry; yet in his verse one can find another phase of his

intellect. He could write charmingly, in exquisite cadences, poems

for lovers and for little children. His gifts were varied, and he knew

thoroughly 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 character

which are perceptible in what he wrote, as well as in what he did. He

had the Gallic wit in great measure, but he was absolutely devoid of any

sense of humor. This is why, in both his prose and his poetry, his most

tremendous 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 had

good 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 or

wrote was right because he did it or said it or wrote it.



This often showed itself in rather whimsical ways. Thus, after he had

published the first edition of his novel, The Man Who Laughs, an English

gentleman called upon him, and, after some courteous compliments,

suggested that in subsequent editions the name of an English peer who

figures in the book should be changed from Tom Jim-Jack.



"For," said the Englishman, "Tom Jim-Jack is a name that could not

possibly belong to an English noble, or, indeed, to any Englishman. The

presence of it in your powerful story makes it seem to English readers a

little 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 names

are possible in English."



Hugo drew himself up still higher, and on his face there was a smile of

utter 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 persons

told him that the word was "bagpipes," and not "bugpipes." But he

replied 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 I

call it so!"



So, Victor Hugo became a violent republican, because he did not wish

France to be an empire or a kingdom, in which an emperor or a king

would be his superior in rank. He always spoke of Napoleon III as "M.

Bonaparte." He refused to call upon the gentle-mannered Emperor of

Brazil, because he was an emperor; although Dom Pedro expressed an

earnest desire to meet the poet.



When the German army was besieging Paris, Hugo proposed to fight a duel

with 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 Victor

Hugo, the great poet. We are, therefore, equal."



In spite, however, of his ardent republicanism, he was very fond of

speaking of his own noble descent. Again and again he styled himself "a

peer of France;" and he and his family made frequent allusions to the

knights and bishops and counselors of state with whom he claimed an

ancestral relation. This was more than inconsistent. It was somewhat

ludicrous; because Victor Hugo's ancestry was by no means noble. The

Hugos of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were not in any

way related to the poet's family, which was eminently honest and

respectable, but by no means one of distinction. His grandfather was

a carpenter. One of his aunts was the wife of a baker, another of a

barber, while the third earned her living as a provincial dressmaker.



If the poet had been less vain and more sincerely democratic, he would

have been proud to think that he sprang from good, sound, sturdy

stock, and would have laughed at titles. As it was, he jeered at

all pretensions of rank in other men, while he claimed for himself

distinctions that were not really his. His father was a soldier who rose

from 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, and

his early years were spent among the camps and within the sound of the

cannon-thunder. It was fitting that he should have been born and reared

in an age of upheaval, revolt, and battle. He was essentially the

laureate of revolt; and in some of his novels--as in Ninety-Three--the

drum 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--all

his power, all his sweetness of disposition, and likewise all his vanity

and his eccentricities. We must remember, also, that he was French, so

that 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 a

schoolboy and destined for the study of law, he dreamed only of poetry

and of literature. He received honorable mention from the French

Academy in 1817, and in the following year took prizes in a poetical

competition. At seventeen he began the publication of a literary

journal, which survived until 1821. His astonishing energy became

evident in the many publications which he put forth in these boyish

days. He began to become known. Although poetry, then as now, was not

very profitable even when it was admired, one of his slender volumes

brought him the sum of seven hundred francs, which seemed to him

not only a fortune in itself, but the forerunner of still greater

prosperity.



It was at this time, while still only twenty years of age, that he met

a 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 the

War Office. When one is very young and also a poet, it takes very little

to feed the flame of passion. Victor Hugo was often a guest at the

apartments of M. Foucher, where he was received by that gentleman

and his family. French etiquette, of course, forbade any direct

communication between the visitor and Adele. She was still a very young

girl, 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 picture

which she made as the firelight played about her, kindled a flame in the

susceptible heart of Victor Hugo. Though he could not speak to her,

he at least could look at her; and, before long, his share in the

conversation was very slight. This was set down, at first, to his

absent-mindedness; but looks can be as eloquent as spoken words. Mme.

Foucher, with a woman's keen intelligence, noted the adoring gaze of

Victor Hugo as he silently watched her daughter. The young Adele herself

was 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 Adele

Foucher.



Her father and mother took counsel about the matter, and Hugo himself,

in a burst of lyrical eloquence, confessed that he adored Adele and

wished to marry her. Her parents naturally objected. The girl was but

a child. She had no dowry, nor had Victor Hugo any settled income. They

were 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 the

thrill of first love! Victor Hugo was insistent. With his supreme

self-confidence, he declared that he was bound to be successful, and

that in a very short time he would be illustrious. Adele, on her side,

created "an atmosphere" at home by weeping frequently, and by going

about with hollow eyes and wistful looks.



The Foucher family removed from Paris to a country town. Victor Hugo

immediately followed them. Fortunately for him, his poems had attracted

the attention of Louis XVIII, who was flattered by some of the verses.

He sent Hugo five hundred francs for an ode, and soon afterward settled

upon him a pension of a thousand francs. Here at least was an income--a

very small one, to be sure, but still an income. Perhaps Adele's father

was impressed not so much by the actual money as by the evidence of the

royal favor. At any rate, he withdrew his opposition, and the two young

people 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 true

that they lived together until Mme. Hugo's death--a married life of

forty-six years--yet their story presents phases which would have made

this impossible had they not been French.



For a time, Hugo devoted all his energies to work. The record of his

steady upward progress is a part of the history of literature, and need

not be repeated here. The poet and his wife were soon able to leave the

latter's family abode, and to set up their own household god in a home

which was their own. Around them there were gathered, in a sort of

salon, 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 of

corroding 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-day

best remembered as a critic, and he was perhaps the greatest critic ever

known in France. But in 1830 he was a slender, insinuating youth who

cultivated a gift for sensuous and somewhat morbid poetry.



He had won Victor Hugo's friendship by writing an enthusiastic notice of

Hugo's dramatic works. Hugo, in turn, styled Sainte-Beuve "an eagle,"

"a blazing star," and paid him other compliments no less gorgeous and

Hugoesque. But in truth, if Sainte-Beuve frequented the Hugo salon, it

was less because of his admiration for the poet than from his desire to

win the love of the poet's wife.



It is quite impossible to say how far he attracted the serious attention

of Adele Hugo. Sainte-Beuve represents a curious type, which is far more

common in France and Italy than in the countries of the north. Human

nature is not very different in cultivated circles anywhere. Man loves,

and seeks to win the object of his love; or, as the old English proverb

has 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 their

attempts public, and seek to produce an impression that they have been

successful, and that the woman has not denied. This sort of man, in

English-speaking lands, is set down simply as a cad, and is excluded

from people's houses; but in some other countries the thing is regarded

with a certain amount of toleration. We see it in the two books written

respectively by Alfred de Musset and George Sand. We have seen it still

later in our own times, in that strange and half-repulsive story in

which the Italian novelist and poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio, under a very

thin disguise, revealed his relations with the famous actress, Eleanora

Duse. Anglo-Saxons thrust such books aside with a feeling of disgust for

the man who could so betray a sacred confidence and perhaps exaggerate

a simple indiscretion into actual guilt. But it is not so in France and

Italy. 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 or

sentimental confession. This last was not a rich lode, and so he was at

pains to charge it secretly with ore which he exhumed gloatingly, but

which was really base metal. The impulse that led him along this false

route was partly ambition, partly sensuality. Many a worse man would

have been restrained by self-respect and good taste. And no man with a

sense of honor would have permitted The Book of Love to see the light--a

small collection of verses recording his passion for Mme. Hugo, and

designed to implicate her.



He left two hundred and five printed copies of this book to be

distributed after his death. A virulent enemy of Sainte-Beuve was not

too expressive when he declared that its purpose was "to leave on the

life of this woman the gleaming and slimy trace which the passage of a

snail leaves on a rose." Abominable in either case, whether or not the

implication was unfounded, Sainte-Beuve's numerous innuendoes in regard

to Mme. Hugo are an indelible stain on his memory, and his infamy not

only cost him his most precious friendships, but crippled him in every

high endeavor.



How monstrous was this violation of both friendship and love may be seen

in the following quotation from his writings:



In that inevitable hour, when the gloomy tempest and the jealous gulf

shall roll over our heads, a sealed bottle, belched forth from the

abyss, will render immortal our two names, their close alliance, and our

double memory aspiring after union.



Whether or not Mme. Hugo's relations with Sainte-Beuve justified the

latter even in thinking such thoughts as these, one need not inquire too

minutely. Evidently, though, Victor Hugo could no longer be the friend

of the man who almost openly boasted that he had dishonored him. There

exist 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 fact

succeeded in leaving a taint upon the name of Victor Hugo's wife. That

Hugo did not repudiate her makes it fairly plain that she was innocent;

yet a high-spirited, sensitive soul like Hugo's could never forget that

in the world's eye she was compromised. The two still lived together

as before; but now the poet felt himself released from the strict

obligations of the marriage-bond.



It may perhaps be doubted whether he would in any case have remained

faithful all his life. He was, as Mr. H.W. Wack well says, "a man of

powerful sensations, physically as well as mentally. Hugo pursued every

opportunity for new work, new sensations, fresh emotion. He desired to

absorb as much on life's eager forward way as his great nature craved.

His range in all things--mental, physical, and spiritual--was so far

beyond 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 through

the bonds of marital fidelity, even had Sainte-Beuve never written his

abnormal poems; but certainly these poems hastened a result which may or

may not have been otherwise inevitable. Hugo no longer turned wholly

to the dark-haired, dark-eyed Adele as summing up for him the whole of

womanhood. A veil was drawn, as it were, from before his eyes, and he

looked on other women and found them beautiful.



It was in 1833, soon after Hugo's play "Lucrece Borgia" had been

accepted for production, that a lady called one morning at Hugo's house

in the Place Royale. She was then between twenty and thirty years of

age, slight of figure, winsome in her bearing, and one who knew the arts

which appeal to men. For she was no inexperienced ingenue. The name upon

her visiting-card was "Mme. Drouet"; and by this name she had been known

in Paris as a clever and somewhat gifted actress. Theophile Gautier,

whose cult was the worship of physical beauty, wrote in almost lyric

prose of her seductive charm.



At nineteen, after she had been cast upon the world, dowered with that

terrible combination, poverty and beauty, she had lived openly with a

sculptor named Pradier. This has a certain importance in the history

of French art. Pradier had received a commission to execute a statue

representing Strasburg--the statue which stands to-day in the Place

de la Concorde, and which patriotic Frenchmen and Frenchwomen drape in

mourning and half bury in immortelles, in memory of that city of Alsace

which so long was French, but which to-day is German--one of Germany's

great prizes taken in the war of 1870.



Five years before her meeting with Hugo, Pradier had rather brutally

severed his connection with her, and she had accepted the protection

of a Russian nobleman. At this time she was known by her real

name--Julienne Josephine Gauvin; but having gone upon the stage, she

assumed the appellation by which she was thereafter known, that of

Juliette Drouet.



Her visit to Hugo was for the purpose of asking him to secure for her

a part in his forth-coming play. The dramatist was willing, but

unfortunately all the major characters had been provided for, and he

was able to offer her only the minor one of the Princesse Negroni. The

charming deference with which she accepted the offered part attracted

Hugo's attention. Such amiability is very rare in actresses who have had

engagements at the best theaters. He resolved to see her again; and he

did 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 her

profession--simply another influential acquaintance. Yet she brought to

bear 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, and

he managed to see that her debts were paid. He secured her other

engagements at the theater, though she was less successful as an actress

after she knew him. There came, for a time, a short break in their

relations; for, partly out of need, she returned to her Russian

nobleman, or at least admitted him to a menage a trois. Hugo underwent

for a second time a great disillusionment. Nevertheless, he was not too

proud 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 gave

her promise, and she kept it until her death, nearly half a century

later.



Perhaps because she had deceived him once, Hugo never completely lost

his prudence in his association with her. He was by no means lavish with

money, and he installed her in a rather simple apartment only a short

distance from his own home. He gave her an allowance that was relatively

small, though later he provided for her amply in his will. But it was

to her that he brought all his confidences, to her he entrusted all his

interests. She became to him, thenceforth, much more than she appeared

to the world at large; for she was his friend, and, as he said, his

inspiration.



The fact of their intimate connection became gradually known through

Paris. It was known even to Mme. Hugo; but she, remembering the affair

of Sainte-Beuve, or knowing how difficult it is to check the will of a

man like Hugo, made no sign, and even received Juliette Drouet in her

own house and visited her in turn. When the poet's sons grew up to

manhood, they, too, spent many hours with their father in the little

salon of the former actress. It was a strange and, to an Anglo-Saxon

mind, 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 was

in danger of arrest, she assisted him to escape in disguise, and with a

forged passport, across the Belgian frontier. During his long exile

in Guernsey she lived in the same close relationship to him and to his

family. Mme. Hugo died in 1868, having known for thirty-three years that

she was only second in her husband's thoughts. Was she doing penance, or

was she merely accepting the inevitable? In any case, her position was

most pathetic, though she uttered no complaint.



A very curious and poignant picture of her just before her death has

been given by the pen of a visitor in Guernsey. He had met Hugo and his

sons; he had seen the great novelist eating enormous slices of roast

beef and drinking great goblets of red wine at dinner, and he had

also watched him early each morning, divested of all his clothing and

splashing about in a bath-tub on the top of his house, in view of

all the town. One evening he called and found only Mme. Hugo. She was

reclining 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 the

evening and enjoy themselves. Go also; you'll not find it amusing here."



One ponders over this sad scene with conflicting thoughts. Was there

really 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 far

more; and yet she had never been Hugo's wife; and hence perhaps it

was right that she should suffer less. Suffer she did; for after her

devotion to Hugo had become sincere and deep, he betrayed her confidence

by an intrigue with a girl who is spoken of as "Claire." The knowledge

of it caused her infinite anguish, but it all came to an end; and she

lived past her eightieth year, long after the death of Mme. Hugo. She

died only a short time before the poet himself was laid to rest in Paris

with magnificent obsequies which an emperor might have envied. In her

old age, Juliette Drouet became very white and very wan; yet she never

quite lost the charm with which, as a girl, she had won the heart of

Hugo.



The story has many aspects. One may see in it a retribution, or one may

see in it only the cruelty of life. Perhaps it is best regarded simply

as a chapter in the strange life-histories of men of genius.