In this double rôle it might be supposed that she would be reluctant to receive the exiles presented to her by Victor Hugo, whose society is so distasteful to her. Not so. Once more Juliette accepts, through duty and devotion, that which she never would have tolerated on her own account.
The poet was bored, alas! Though he was composing splendid poetry, his long dialogue with Mother Nature was beginning to pall upon him. His somewhat theatrical genius demanded more than a fine stage; it required a public. Without it, the author of Les Châtiments was but the shadow of the poet of Ruy Blas. No doubt the bronzing of his skin by the salt breath of the sea, and the virulence of his spite against Napoleon III, lent him a fictitious appearance of spring and vigour; but there were times when he flagged sadly, and when despondency and fatigue expressed themselves in the droop of his lips, the sagging of his ill-shaved cheeks, the wrinkles on his brow, and, especially, the heavy pockets beneath his eyes. His attire betrayed his complete neglect of himself. When he walked through the Place de Hauteville in his Girondin hat all battered by the wind, his cashmere neckcloth carelessly knotted under an untidy collar, his open coat revealing a buttonless shirt in summer, and in winter, a faded scarlet waistcoat which Robespierre himself would have despised, the little children he so loved ran from him as if he were accursed.[55]
Juliette grasped these mute warnings, and, as soon as she was established in the vast frame of Hauteville Féerie, she attempted to reconstitute the society she had once presided over at Jersey. She even endeavoured to enlarge the circle and admit a few new-comers.
Juliette was able to maintain the simple dignity to which she attached so much importance, and from which she departed only in favour of her poet, in the most delicate circumstance of her life, namely, when Madame Victor Hugo offered her her friendship. She did not decline it, but, where many might have erred by an excess of satisfaction and familiarity, she showed a discreet reserve highly creditable to her. Since their exile, the relations of the two women had undergone a great change. On the one hand, Madame Victor Hugo’s perpetual pursuit of pleasure, her constant fatigue, her laziness, and her incapacity to manage a house, had gradually involved her in the network of attentions, civilities, and petting, Juliette lavished upon her and hers. The reports brought to her by her sons and servants of the doings at Hauteville Féerie, had given her a good opinion of our heroine; her natural kindliness did the rest, and she showed herself disposed to treat in neighbourly, and even friendly, fashion one whom she might justly have hated as a rival.
On the other hand, Juliette no longer felt that jealousy of the mistress against the legitimate wife, that she had experienced at the beginning of her love-story. But actual friendship between Madame Victor Hugo and Juliette was hindered for a long time, by the fear of English criticism, and of those Guernseyites of whom Victor Hugo wrote, that they made even the scenery of the island look prim. Juliette dreaded the unkind tittle-tattle the exiles would not fail to retail to her, if she accepted the advances from Hauteville House. Therefore, during the first ten years at Guernsey, she only set foot in her friend’s house once, in 1858, to inspect the treasures the master had collected in it. Madame Victor Hugo was absent that day.
At the end of 1864, the wife of the poet became more urgent in her invitations. She was about to depart to the Continent, to undergo treatment for her eyes; her absence might be, and indeed was, indefinitely prolonged. However careless she might be in housekeeping matters, she was probably loath to commit her husband to the tender mercies of her sister, Madame Julie Chenay, who boasted of possessing neither aptitude for business nor a head for figures. She saw the use that might be made of the poet’s friend, and opened negotiations by inviting her to dinner. But Juliette declined. This policy of self-effacement was continued by her even during the long absence of Madame Victor Hugo in 1865 and 1866. When Victor Hugo pressed her to dine with him, in secret if necessary, she wrote: “Permit me to refuse the honour you offer me, for the sake of the thirty years of discretion and respect I have observed towards your house.”
In the end, however, Madame Victor Hugo gained the day, and overcame this dignified reticence. On her return to Guernsey on January 15th, 1867, she declared her intention of paying Juliette a visit. The diplomatic abilities of the poet were taxed to the uttermost in the regulation of the details of this important event. The visit took place on January 22nd. It was impossible to avoid returning it. Juliette did so on the 24th, and thenceforth, no longer hesitated to cross the threshold of Hauteville House. She went there almost every day, to revise the manuscript and the copies of Les Misérables with the help of Madame Chenay; in 1868, she spent the whole month of May under its roof, while her faithful Suzanne was in France.
Similarly, she no longer minded being seen in public with Victor Hugo and his sons, and even his wife, during the journeys they made together. Whereas in 1861, for instance, on a journey to Waterloo and Mont St. Jean, we still find her dining apart, and seeming to ignore Charles Hugo, in 1867, she is constantly at the latter’s house in Brussels, attending the family dinners and enjoying the charm of what she calls “a delicate and discreet rehabilitation” by Madame Hugo and her daughter-in-law. She took her share in their joys as in their sorrows.
It was at Brussels that the three grandchildren of the poet were born, and there also that he lost successively, in April and August 1868, his eldest grandchild and his wife. He mourned the latter with the sorrow of a man from whom the memory of his early love has not faded. As for Juliette, her regret was thoroughly sincere. She did not venture to attend the funeral, in deference to outside gossip; but when, a few days later, she went to the house and saw the empty arm-chair Madame Victor Hugo’s indulgent personality had been wont to occupy, she could not restrain her tears.
Victor Hugo and his friend returned to Guernsey on October 6th, 1868. They continued to inhabit separate houses, but dined together at one or the other. They also resumed their sea-side walks, and their long talks, of which the chief topic was the second son of Charles Hugo, an infant who had been left behind at Brussels.