“This is not all. I have also been thinking of your clothes, dear little one, and I send you a shawl for your walks, a white frock with drawers to match, a figured foulard frock, a striped frock without drawers, and a sleeved pinafore.
“Good-bye, dear good child. You must tell me if my selection is to your taste. Love me and enjoy yourself, so that I may find you tall and plump and pretty, when I come to see you again.
“J. Drouet.”
At other times, Victor Hugo himself wrote affectionately to his friend’s child. It is necessary to read these letters, so full of thoughtful tenderness, to gain a better knowledge of the warmth of the poet’s heart. Much should be forgiven him in consideration of it.
“We love you very much,” he wrote to Claire on May 23rd, 1833, “and you have a sweet mother who, though absent, thinks a great deal about you. You must get well quickly, and thank the good God in your prayers every night for giving you such a good little mother, as she on her part thanks Him for her charming little daughter.”[36]
And a few days after, in a postscript to a letter to Juliette: “Monsieur Toto sends love and kisses to his little friend, and wishes he could still have her to travel everywhere with him. But, above all, he would like to caress her and look after her as his own child.”[37]
As his own child—those words were indeed characteristic of Victor Hugo’s feeling concerning the little girl thus thrown across his path by chance, and unhesitatingly adopted by him. At first, Claire either did not realise, or was unwilling to return, his affection. She was jealous of the big gentleman who stole some of her mother’s attention from her. She was reserved and disagreeable. Juliette was indignant, but the poet did not relax his efforts to win her. With the authority of Pradier, who was only too pleased to delegate it to him,[38] he placed Claire, on April 15th, 1836, in a school at St. Mandé, 35, Avenue du Bel-Air, kept by a Madame Marre. From that moment, whether he paid her a surprise visit in the parlour on Thursday afternoons, with a Juliette beaming from the enjoyment of the trip, or whether she spent Sundays with her mother, Claire Pradier insensibly grew to connect Victor Hugo with Juliette in her affections, to give to them both equal respect, and to link them together in her prayers. Exceedingly sensitive by nature, more eager for love than for learning, she fell into habits of day-dreaming in school, or out in the meadows, and only seemed to recover the brightness of cheeks and eyes when the lovers fetched her, and toasted her little cold, contracted fingers in their warm ones. Then the apartment in the Rue St. Anastase resounded with her merry chatter, and she joined eagerly in the rites of which Victor Hugo was the god and Juliette the priestess.
In 1840, when she had attained her fifteenth year, Claire’s mother thought it right to confide to her the secret of her irregular birth. She told her also of Pradier’s neglect, and Victor Hugo’s goodness. She exhorted her to be simple in her ideas, and not to set her ambitions too high. Claire manifested much chagrin and vexation at first, but presently her natural piety awoke and Juliette was able to write: “Claire is for ever in church.” Victor Hugo took upon himself to open the girl’s eyes to the practical side of life, and to point out to her the necessity of preparing for a profession as early as possible.[39] In response to these appeals to her reason, Claire soon accepted her lot with a brave heart. It was settled that at the age of eighteen, that is to say in 1844, she should be engaged as an assistant mistress in Madame Marre’s school, in exchange for board and lodging, but without salary. She agreed also to study for a diploma, and she hoped, when once she had gained it, to find some honourable and paid employment, by Victor Hugo’s help.
Claire fell to work with an ardour, a good-humour, and an intelligence, that drew from Juliette the warmest commendation for her daughter and gratitude for Victor Hugo.