Victor Hugo: His Life and Work

by George Barnett Smith

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 Schœlcher 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 Émile de Girardin and General Lamoricière. But Belgium also sheltered in this hour of peril Ledru Rollin, the sculptor David, Barbès, Louis Blanc, Edgar Quinet, and Eugène 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 Napoléon 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 Châtiments, this new satire, was even more powerful and telling than Napoléon 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 Félix 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 Napoléon 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 Félix 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 Légende des Siècles, and the first portion of Les Misérables, were accordingly secured in a strong iron-bound chest. Madame Hugo, though warned of her danger, resolutely remained by the side of her husband.