The lovers were unpleasantly surprised by the week of tempests which ushered in the equinox, and was followed without a pause by the setting in of winter. “Everything became sombre, grey, violent, terrible, stormy, severe.” Day and night rain fell, and “the drops chased each other down the window-panes like silver hairs.”[51] Amidst the uproar to which frenzied Nature suddenly delivered herself, the daily tramps were perforce discontinued. Fortunately for Juliette, Victor Hugo found Nelson House warmer than his house at Marine Terrace. His wife had recently joined him, but had brought with her neither comfort nor the serene atmosphere propitious for an author’s labours. As in the old days of the Rue St. Anastase, therefore, he set up a writing-table near the fire in Juliette’s sitting-room, with a few volumes of Michelet and Quinet, and a novel or two by Georges Sand; and every day, after lunching with his own family, the poet came to work in his friend’s room. Juliette determined to “find the way back to his heart through his appetite,”[52] as she wrote to him, so she insisted upon his dining with her. She appealed to his greediness as well as to his hospitable instincts, assuring him that nowhere else could he so successfully entertain his new companions, the exiles, as at her abode. Soon she gave two “exiles’ dinners” a week, then three, then four; finally, she had one every day.
With the assistance of his two sons, whom he had at length presented to Juliette, Victor Hugo presided at these feasts with an affability born in part of a desire for popularity. Juliette showed herself more reserved, more severe. Accustomed to treat the poet as a divinity, she could not tolerate the familiarity of these petty folk. “A brotherly cobbler is not to my taste,” she said harshly. “I cannot resign myself to this consorting of vulgar mediocrity with your genius.”
Her sweetness to the two sons of the poet was as marked as the haughtiness of her manner towards the victims of the Coup d’État. For twenty years she had longed to be friends with them. As far back as 1839, on the occasion of a distribution of prizes at which Charles and François Victor were to cover themselves with honours, she wrote: “What a pity I cannot witness their triumph! I love them with all my heart, and would give my life for them; but that is not enough. I will avenge myself by praying that they may remain always as they are at present: charming and good.”
Later we find her treasuring their portraits, anxious about their little childish ailments, pleading for them when they incurred punishment, and overwhelming them with little presents manufactured by her pen or needle, whenever she received the master’s sanction to do so.
What joy it must have given her to receive officially at her table these children grown to manhood! As soon as she became acquainted with them, she raised the young men to the level of Victor Hugo in the order of her preoccupations, and resolved to do nothing for the father, in the way of spoiling and cherishing, that she did not do also for the sons. If she copied Les Contemplations, she protested that she must also write out François Victor’s translation of Shakespeare. If she sent Suzanne to Marine Terrace with a herb soup for the master, she bade her carry six lilac shirts for Charles.
Even young Adèle and Madame Victor Hugo accepted her good offices without demur. For Adèle, Juliette picked the earliest strawberries and the first roses of the Nelson Hall garden; she embroidered handkerchiefs on which Charles had designed the monogram, and bound together the serial stories of Madame Sand, cut from magazines. For Madame Victor Hugo she prepared a certain soup made of goose, which, she said, was most succulent. She lent her Suzanne, her own servant, for the whole time Marine Terrace was without a cook, and meanwhile went without a servant herself, and did her own cooking. She spoilt her skin and wore down her nails, but she took a pride in her devotion and self-abnegation, and resolved to carry them even further. She dreamt of entering Victor Hugo’s household for good, to assume in all humility the position of an ex-mistress become housekeeper.
However numerous may have been the wrongs Victor Hugo inflicted upon this woman, whose jealousy he never ceased to excite, one must admit that he felt and appreciated the greatness of her love. Like a great many men, the artist in him recognised a moral worth that no longer satisfied his needs as a lover; he experienced generous revulsions, under the influence of which he paid her carefully studied attentions, which bore a semblance of impulse and spontaneity gratifying to her feelings.
III
The young queen, Victoria, having paid France, in the person of Napoleon III, the gracious compliment of a visit in August 1855, the exiles of Jersey dared address an insolent letter to her, which was published by their quaintly-named journal, L’Homme. True to his native chivalry, Victor Hugo declined to sign this manifesto[53]; but he was indignant when the authorities of Jersey marked their disapproval by expelling its three authors. He protested vigorously against their punishment, and was in his turn driven from the island on August 31st.
He went to Guernsey, a neighbouring island, bleaker and less temperate in climate. He settled at first at No. 20, Rue Hauteville, St. Pierre Port. On May 16th, 1856, he bought a roomy, substantial house built on the shore at some former period by an English pirate. It only required restoration, to make it a suitable residence. It was called Hauteville House.