Victor Hugo: His Life and Works Part 6

CHAPTER XIII.

PARIS AND THE SIEGE.

Having vowed never again to visit the land that was 'the resting-place of his ancestors and the birthplace of his love' until she had been restored to liberty, it is not surprising that Victor Hugo rejected the renewed amnesty offered him by Napoleon in 1869. The past ten years had wrought in him no signs of relenting, and when he was urged by his friend M. Felix Pyat to accept this new offer of a truce, he replied, '_S'il n'en reste qu'un, je serai celui-la_' ('If there remain only one, I will be that one'). When the Republican journal _Le Rappel_ was started, with Charles and Francois Hugo, Auguste Vacquerie, and Paul Meurice as its princ.i.p.al contributors (joined subsequently by M.

Rochefort), he wrote for the opening number a congratulatory manifesto addressed to the editors. By every means in his power, indeed, he endeavoured to advance Republican principles.

Early in 1870 Napoleon was so impressed by the spread of Republican feeling that he resolved to test the stability of his power and the magic of his name by a _plebiscite_. This step was condemned by Hugo, who asked why the people should be invited to partic.i.p.ate in another electoral crime. He thus gave vent to his burning indignation at the proposal: 'While the author of the _Coup d'etat_ wants to put a question to the people, we would ask him to put this question to himself, "Ought I, Napoleon, to quit the Tuileries for the Conciergerie, and to put myself at the disposal of justice?" "Yes!"' This bold and stinging retort led to the prosecution of the journal and the writer for inciting to hatred and contempt of the Imperial Government. But the poet went on his course unmoved, now engaged in writing his study of _Shakespeare_, and now in responding to the appeals made to him from various quarters, including those from the insurgents of Cuba, the Irish Fenians who had just been convicted, and the friends of peace at the Lausanne Congress.

He had suffered another domestic grief in 1868 by the death of his wife, his unfailing sympathizer and consoler in his early struggles, and other sorrows were impending.

The war with Prussia in 1870 led to the disaster of Sedan, and the collapse of the Empire. Hugo at once hastened to France, where he was welcomed with heartfelt enthusiasm by his friends of the Revolutionary Government formed on the 4th of September. M. Jules Claretie, who accompanied the poet on the journey from Brussels to Paris, has written a graphic account of his return to the beloved city. At Landrecies Hugo saw evidences of the rout and the ruin which had overtaken France. 'In the presence of the great disaster, whereby the whole French army seemed vanquished and dispersed, tears rolled down his cheeks, and his whole frame quivered with sobs. He bought up all the bread that could be secured, and distributed it among the famished troops.' The scene in Paris on Hugo's arrival was a memorable one. 'Through the midst of the vast populace,' continues the narrator, 'I followed him with my gaze. I looked with admiration on that man, now advancing in years, but faithful still in vindicating right, and never now do I behold him greeted with the salutations of a grateful people without recalling the scene of that momentous night, when with weeping eyes he returned to see his country as she lay soiled and dishonoured and well-nigh dead.'

Concerning this scene, M. Alphonse Daudet also wrote: 'He arrived just as the circle of investment was closing in around the city; he came by the last train, bringing with him the last breath of the air of freedom.

He had come to be a guardian of Paris; and what an ovation was that which he received outside the station from those tumultuous throngs already revolutionized, who were prepared to do great things, and infinitely more rejoiced at the liberty they had regained than terrified by the cannon that were thundering against their ramparts! Never can we forget the spectacle as the carriage pa.s.sed along the Rue Lafayette, Victor Hugo standing up, and being literally borne along by the teeming mult.i.tudes.' At one point, in acknowledging his enthusiastic reception, Hugo said: 'I thank you for your acclamations. But I attribute them all to your sense of the anguish that is rending all hearts, and to the peril that is threatening our land. I have but one thing to demand of you. I invite you to union. By union you will conquer. Subdue all ill-will; check all resentment. Be united, and you shall be invincible.

Rally round the Republic. Hold fast, brother to brother. Victory is in our keeping. Fraternity is the saviour of liberty!' Addressing also the crowd a.s.sembled in the Avenue Frochot, the place of his destination, the poet a.s.sured them that that single hour had compensated him for all his nineteen years of exile.

Installed at the house of his friend Paul Meurice, Hugo remained in Paris all through the siege. The Empire having fallen, the cause of strife had ceased, and Hugo addressed a manifesto to the Germans, in which he said: 'This war does not proceed from us. It was the Empire that willed the war; it was the Empire that prosecuted it. But now the Empire is dead, and an excellent thing too. We have nothing to do with its corpse; it is all the past, we are the future. The Empire was hatred, we are sympathy; that was treason, we are loyalty. The Empire was Capua, nay, it was Gomorrha; we are France. Our motto is "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity;" on our banner we inscribe, "The United States of Europe." Whence, then, this onslaught? Pause a while before you present to the world the spectacle of Germans becoming Vandals, and of barbarism decapitating civilization.' But the victorious Germans did not share the peaceful sentiments of the writer, and it would have gone ill with him if, like his manifesto, he had fallen into the hands of the Prussian Generals.

The siege went on, and the poet laid the funds from his works at the feet of the Republic. Readings were given of _Les Chatiments_, and other poems, and the proceeds expended in ammunition. It was a brave struggle on the part of the Parisians. Gambetta called on Hugo to thank him for his services to the country, when the latter replied: 'Make use of me in any way you can for the public good. Distribute me as you would dispense water. My books are even as myself; they are all the property of France.

With them, with me, do just as you think best.' The poet kept up a brave heart during the privations of hunger, and cheered many of the younger spirits at his table by his pleasantry and wit, which relieved the gloom that pressed so heavily over all. When the great and terrible time of peril and suffering was past, he left it on record: 'Never did city exhibit such fort.i.tude. Not a soul gave way to despair, and courage increased in proportion as misery grew deeper. Not a crime was committed. Paris earned the admiration of the world. Her struggle was n.o.ble, and she would not give in. Her women were as brave as her men.

Surrendered and betrayed she was; but she was not conquered.' One can scarcely wonder that men who loved Paris as a woman loves her child can never forget the humiliation she was called upon to pa.s.s through.

In the list of the Committee of Public Safety, which was responsible for the insurrectionary movement of the 31st of October, the name of Victor Hugo appeared; but he disavowed its use, and on the ensuing 5th of November he declined to become a candidate at the general election of the mayors of Paris. Nevertheless, 4,029 suffrages were accorded him in the 15th arrondiss.e.m.e.nt. In the elections of February, 1871, he was returned second on the list with 214,000 votes, Louis Blanc coming first with 216,000, and Garibaldi third with 200,000 votes. Speaking on the 1st of March in the National a.s.sembly--which met at Bordeaux--Hugo strongly denounced the preliminaries of peace. The treaty, however, was ratified. Interposing in the debate which subsequently took place on the election of Garibaldi, he said: 'France has met with nothing but cowardice from Europe. Not a Power, not a single King rose to a.s.sist us.

One man alone intervened in our favour; that man had an idea and a sword. With his idea he delivered one people; with his sword he delivered another. Of all the Generals who fought for France, Garibaldi is the only one who was not beaten.' A strange scene of tumult arose upon this speech, many members of the Right gesticulating and threatening violently. Rising in the midst of an uproar that was indescribable, Hugo announced that he should send in his resignation.

This he accordingly did, and remained firm, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties to withdraw it on the part of the President, M. Grevy. Next day, in consequence, there was nothing for the President to do but to announce the resignation, which was couched in these terms: 'Three weeks ago the a.s.sembly refused to hear Garibaldi; now it refuses to hear me. I resign my seat.' Louis Blanc expressed his profound grief at the resignation; it was, he said, adding another drop of sorrow to a cup that seemed already over-full; and he grieved that a voice so powerful should be hushed just at an emergency when the country should be showing its grat.i.tude to all its benefactors. Garibaldi thus wrote to Hugo: 'It needs no writing to show that we are of one accord; we understand each other; the deeds that you have done, and the affection that I have borne for you make a bond of union between us. What you have testified for me at Bordeaux is a pledge of a life devoted to humanity.'

It was at this juncture that the poet was called upon to mourn the loss of his son Charles, who died suddenly from congestion of the brain.

There had been an unusually close bond between the two, and the shock came with great force upon the father. The body of the deceased was brought to Paris for interment, Hugo following the hea.r.s.e on foot to the family vault at Pere la Chaise. Funeral orations were delivered by Auguste Vacquerie and Louis Mie.

From Brussels, whither he had gone after his son's death, the poet protested against the horrors of the Commune. He also vainly tried to preserve the column in the Place Vendome from destruction. He wrote his poem, _Les deux Trophees_, referring to the column and the Arc de Triomphe, with the object of staying the hands of the destroyers, but the mad work went forward. Nevertheless, it was characteristic of him that after the insurrection was at an end, he pleaded for mercy towards the offenders. In his house at Brussels many fugitives found shelter, until the Belgian Government banished them from the country. In reply to this edict Hugo published an article in _L'Independance_. He declared that although Belgium by law might refuse an asylum to the refugees, his own conscience could not approve that law. The Church of the Middle Ages had offered sanctuary even to parricides, and such sanctuary the fugitives should find at his home; it was his privilege to open his door if he would to his foe, and it ought to be Belgium's glory to be a place of refuge. England did not surrender the refugees, and why should Belgium be behindhand in magnanimity? But these arguments were of no avail with the exasperated Belgians. A few of the more ruffianly spirits of Brussels actually made an attack upon the poet's house, which they a.s.saulted with stones, to the great danger of Madame Charles Hugo and her children. Defeated in their attempts to break in the door or to scale the house, the a.s.sailants at length made off. So far at first from any redress being granted to Hugo for this outrageous a.s.sault, or any punishment being meted out to the offenders, the poet himself was ordered to quit the kingdom immediately, and forbidden to return under penalties of the law of 1865. A debate took place in the Chamber, and as the result of this debate and various protests, the Government did not order the indiscriminate expulsion of all exiles, as they had contemplated. They also made some show of satisfaction to Hugo by ordering a judicial inquiry into the attack upon his residence. In the end a son of the Minister of the Interior was fined a nominal sum of 100 francs for being concerned in the outrage.

Hugo now made a tour through Luxemburg, and afterwards visited London, returning to Paris at the close of the year 1871. After the trial of the Communists he pleaded earnestly, but in vain, for the lives of Rossel, Lullier, Ferre, Cremieux, and Maroteau. In the elections of January, 1872, he got into a difficulty with the Radicals of Paris in consequence of his refusal to accept the _mandat imperatif_. This, he explained, was contrary to his principles, for conscience might not take orders. He was willing to accept a _mandat contractuel_, by which there could be a more open discussion between the elector and the elected. Hugo was defeated, receiving only 95,900 votes, as against 122,435 given to his opponent, M. Vautrain, a result partly accounted for by Hugo's amnesty proposals. The poet published, in September, 1873, _La Liberation du Territoire_, a poem which was sold for the benefit of the inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine. In it the writer strongly condemned the adulation poured upon the Shah of Persia, then on a visit to France, and respecting whose cruelty and barbarism many anecdotes were current.

On the morning following Christmas Day, 1873, the poet was again called upon to bear a great loss by the death of his only remaining son, Francois Victor. At the funeral Louis Blanc delivered a short address, in which he extolled the literary ability, the integrity, and the virtues of the deceased. To the shouts of '_Vive Victor Hugo! Vive la Republique!_' the weeping poet was led away from the grave-side.

During the siege of Paris, Hugo kept a diary of this lurid history, and upon this he constructed his poem _L'Annee Terrible_--the events celebrated extending from August, 1870, to July, 1871. Speaking of this work, a writer whom I have already quoted remarked that 'the poems of the siege at once demand and defy commentary; they should be studied in their order as parts of one tragic symphony. From the overture, which tells of the old glory of Germany before turning to France with a cry of inarticulate love, to the sad majestic epilogue which seals up the sorrowful record of the days of capitulation, the various and continuous harmony flows forward through light and shadow, with bursts of thunder and tempest, and interludes of suns.h.i.+ne and sweet air.' The variety of note in these tragic poems has also been well insisted upon. 'There is an echo of all emotions in turn that the great spirit of a patriot and a poet could suffer and express by translation of suffering into song; the bitter cry of invective and satire, the clear trumpet-call to defence, the triumphal wail for those who fell for France, the pa.s.sionate sob of a son on the stricken bosom of a mother, the deep note of thought that slowly opens into flower of speech; and through all and after all, the sweet unspeakable music of natural and simple love. After the voice which reproaches the priest-like soldier, we hear the voice which rebukes the militant priest; and a fire, as the fire of Juvenal, is outshone by a light as the light of Lucretius.' Mr. Dowden sees in these poems the work of a Frenchman throughout, not a man of the Commune, nor a man of Versailles. 'The most precious poems of the book are those which keep close to facts rather than concern themselves with ideas. The sunset seen from the ramparts; the floating bodies of the Prussians borne onward by the Seine, caressed and kissed and still swayed on by the eddying water; the bomb which fell near the old man's feet while he sat where had been the Convent of the Feuillantines, and where he had walked in under the trees in Aprils long ago, holding his mother's hand; the petroleuse, dragged like a chained beast through the scorching streets of Paris; the gallant boy who came to confront death by the side of his friends--memories of these it is which haunt us when we have closed the book--of these, and of the little limbs and transparent fingers, and baby-smile, and murmur like the murmur of bees, and the face changed from rosy health to a pathetic paleness of the one-year-old grandchild, too soon to become an orphan.' But other critics, while acknowledging the force of the writing and the n.o.ble aspirations of the author, place the work on a considerably lower level as a whole. Yet no one who knows the work can surely deny that the poet has thrown a halo of glory round the concrete facts of a disastrous and momentous period.

While the language of despair was held by many of his friends at this dark crisis in French history, Victor Hugo never once wavered in his hopes for the future of his country. So far from being annihilated, he predicted that France would rise to enjoy a greater height of prosperity, and a more durable peace, than she had ever enjoyed under the Empire.

CHAPTER XIV.

'QUATRE-VINGT-TREIZE.'--POLITICS, ETC.

In 1874 appeared the last of Victor Hugo's great romances, _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_. It was published on the same day in ten languages. This grand historical and political novel was a fitting close to a series of works unexampled in scope and breadth of conception. A great prose epic upon that terrible year in French history, 1793, it excited the liveliest interest throughout Europe, and critics of all shades of opinion hastened to do justice to its extraordinary merits.

Even those warm admirers of the author's superb imaginative genius, who had looked forward with misgiving to this daring excursion into the historic field, admitted that his complete success had justified the effort. They extolled the work as 'a monument of its author's finest gifts; and while those who are, happily, endowed with the capacity of taking delight in n.o.bility and beauty of imaginative work will find themselves in possession of a new treasure, the lover of historic truth, who hates to see abstractions pa.s.sed off for actualities, and legend erected in the place of fact, escapes with his praiseworthy sensibilities unwounded.'

The work is on a colossal scale, exhibiting great breadth of touch, while the style has now the power of the lightning, and now the calm and the depth of the measureless sea. 'With La Vendee for background, and some savage incidents of the b.l.o.o.d.y Vendean war for external machinery, Victor Hugo has realized his conception of '93 in three types of character--Lantenac, the Royalist marquis; Cimourdain, the Puritan turned Jacobin; and Gauvain, for whom one can as yet find no short name, he belonging to the Millenarian times.' It was said that there is nothing more magnificent in literature than the last volume of this work, and while its author had no rival in the sombre, mysterious heights of imaginative effect, he was equally a master in strokes of tenderness and the most delicate human sympathy. Rapidity and profusion are the pre-eminent characteristics of this work--'a profusion as of starry worlds, a style resembling waves of the sea, sometimes indeed weltering dark and ma.s.sive, but ever and anon flas.h.i.+ng with the foamy lightning of genius. The finish and rich accurate perfection of our own great living poet Tennyson are absent. Hugo is far more akin to Byron; but his range is vaster than Byron's. He has Byron's fierce satire, and more than Byron's humour, though it is the fas.h.i.+on to generalize and say that the French have none. He is both a lyrical and epic poet. He is a greater dramatist than Byron; and whether in the dramas or prose romances, he shows that vast sympathy with, and knowledge of, human nature which neither Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, Coleridge, nor Wordsworth had.

Scott could be his only rival. In France they had lived dramatic lives for the last ninety years; we have lived much more quietly in England, and in France there is a real living drama.'

As this book, full-hearted in its pa.s.sion, and deeply-veined with human emotion, is the last of Victor Hugo's prose romances, some brief general allusions to him as a novelist will be appropriate. Taking the five books (which have been referred to in the order of their publication) alone, viz., _Notre-Dame_, _Les Miserables_, _Les Travailleurs_, _L'Homme qui Rit_, and _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_--they would have made the fame of any writer; and yet, it has been justly remarked, they are but one facade of the splendid monument that Victor Hugo has erected to his own genius. I am not one of those who would contend that Hugo's style is everywhere immaculate. On the contrary, he sometimes sins greatly; but these occasions are rare compared with his mighty triumphs. Still, justice must not be extinguished in admiration. My own view of Hugo's literary gifts, as expressed more especially in his romances, has been so fairly put by another writer that I shall transfer, and at the same time in the main adopt, his language: 'Everywhere we find somewhat the same greatness, somewhat the same infirmities. In his poems and plays there are the same unaccountable protervities that have already astonished us in the romances; there, too, is the same feverish strength, welding the fiery iron of his idea under forge-hammer repet.i.tions; an emphasis that is somehow akin to weakness; a strength that is a little epileptic. He stands so far above all his contemporaries, and so incomparably excels them in richness, breadth, variety, and moral earnestness, that we almost feel as if he had a sort of right to fall oftener and more heavily than others; but this does not reconcile us to seeing him profit by the privilege so freely. We like to have in our great men something that is above question; we like to place an implicit faith in them, and see them always on the platform of their greatness: and this, unhappily, cannot be with Hugo. As Heine said long ago, his is a genius somewhat deformed; but, deformed as it is, we accept it gladly; we shall have the wisdom to see where his foot slips, but we shall have the justice also to recognise in him the greatest artist of our generation, and, in many ways, one of the greatest artists of all time. If we look back, yet once, upon these five romances, we see blemishes such as we can lay to the charge of no other man in the number of the famous; but to what other man can we attribute such sweeping innovations, such a new and significant view of life and man, such an amount, if we think of the amount merely, of equally consummate performance?' It is in the nature of the human intellect, finite as it is, to relax sometimes from its highest strain, and if Victor Hugo failed at times to scale his loftiest note of thought or expression, it may be remembered also that even Shakespeare was not always in the mood for producing _Hamlets_.

There appeared, in 1874, Hugo's pathetic sketch 'Mes Fils,' containing a tribute of affection to his own dead children; and in 1875-6 was published his _Actes et Paroles_. This justificatory work was in three parts, which dealt respectively with the period before exile, the period of exile, and the period since exile. 'The trilogy is not mine,' said the author, 'but the Emperor Napoleon's; he it is who has divided my life; to him the honour of it is due. That which is Bonaparte's we must render to Caesar.' Although he first strongly countenanced resistance, the writer concluded with an exhortation to clemency, holding that resistance to tyrants should not be deemed inconsistent with mercy to the vanquished. We have here a complete collection of Hugo's addresses, orations, and confessions of faith, etc., during the preceding thirty years. _Pour un Soldat_, a little brochure written in favour of an obscure soldier, appeared in 1875. Its publication not only resulted in saving the life of the soldier, who had been condemned for a venial crime, but the sufferers in Alsace and Lorraine reaped the pecuniary fruits of its popularity. The second part of _La Legende des Siecles_ was published in 1877. At this time the poet was living in the Rue de Clichy, No. 21, sharing part of the house with Madame Charles Hugo, who, after a widowhood of some years, married M. Charles Lockroy, deputy for the Seine, and also known as a man of letters. Madame Drouet, who had befriended the poet when he was proscribed in 1851, placed her salon in this house at the poet's disposal for the reception of his friends. M.

Barbou, who saw much of Hugo in this residence, thus describes the man and his habits: 'The hand, no doubt, is too slow for the gigantic work that the poet conceives. And yet no moment is ever lost. Generally up with the sun, he writes until mid-day, and often until two o'clock.

Then, after a light luncheon, he goes to the Senate, where, during intervals of debate, he despatches all his correspondence. He finds his recreation generally by taking a walk, although not unfrequently he will mount to the top of an omnibus just for the sake of finding himself in the society of the people, with whom he has shown his boundless sympathy. At eight o'clock he dines, making it his habit to invite not only his nearest friends, but such as he thinks stand in need of encouragement, to join him and his grandchildren at their social meal.

At table Victor Hugo relaxes entirely from his seriousness. The powerful orator, the earnest pleader, becomes the charming and attractive host, full of anecdote, censuring whatever is vile, but ever ready to make merry over what is grotesque.... Hale and vigorous in his appearance, precise and elegant in his attire, with unbowed head, and with thick, white hair crowning his unfurrowed brow, he commands involuntary admiration. Round his face is a close white beard, which he has worn since the later period of his sojourn in Guernsey as a safeguard against sore throat; but he shows no token of infirmity. His countenance may be said to have in it something both of the lion and the eagle, yet his voice is grave, and his manner singularly gentle.'

The same writer devotes a chapter to Hugo's love of children, _a propos_ of his _L'Art d'etre Grand-pere_. It is perfectly true that women, and children also, stirred in the poet an element of chivalrous devotion.

He also strove to exalt woman as something far beyond the mere pa.s.sion and plaything of man; while as to children, 'he is pathetic over an infant's cradle, he is delighted at childhood's prattle, and to him the fair-haired head of innocence is as full of interest as the glory of a man.' Nor was there anything derogatory to his genius in this, or in his making Georges and Jeanne, his two grandchildren, the hero and heroine of the work above named. When the wisdom of his indulgence was questioned, he replied that he agreed with M. Gaucher, who held that 'a father's duties are by no means light; he has to instruct, to correct, to chastise; but with the grandfather it is different, he is privileged to love and to spoil.' But he taught the oneness of humanity even to his grandchildren; and once, when they were about to enjoy the good and pleasant things of this life, he bade the children fetch in some houseless orphans who were crouching under the window, in order to share their appetizing dishes. Unconquered by his opponents, Hugo confessed himself a captive to the children, and he defined Paradise as 'a place where children are always little, and parents are always young.'

Towards the close of his eighth decade, the poet seemed to have almost abandoned political life, but he had not forgotten his friends and the electors of Paris. Innumerable letters published in the public press proved this, as well as his presence as chairman at a number of Democratic conventions, and the delivery of a number of public discourses, such as those p.r.o.nounced at the obsequies of M. Edgar Quinet and Madame Louis Blanc. Preparatory to the first Senatorial elections, M. Clemenceau, President of the Munic.i.p.al Council of Paris, waited upon the poet, and in the name of the majority of his colleagues offered him the function of delegate. Hugo accepted, and at once issued his manifesto, ent.i.tled 'The Delegate of Paris to the Delegates of the 36,000 Communes of France,' in which he reiterated, with redoubled energy, his old idea of the abolition of monarchy by the federation of the peoples. On the 30th of January, 1876, he was elected Senator of Paris, but only after a keen struggle. He was fourth out of five, and was not returned until after a second scrutiny, when it was found that he had secured 114 votes out of a total of 216.

Soon after his election, Hugo introduced a proposal in the Senate for granting an amnesty to all those condemned for the events of March, 1871, and to all those then undergoing punishment for political crimes or offences in Paris, including the a.s.sa.s.sins of the hostages. On the 22nd of May he delivered an eloquent oration in support of his motion.

Towards the close of his address, he described the state of the prisoners in New Caledonia. Having painted their agony, and deplored the continuation of the prosecutions and the last transport of convicts, he said: 'That is how the 18th of March has been atoned for. As for the 2nd of December, it has been glorified, it has been adored and venerated, it has become a legal crime. The priests have prayed for it, the judges have judged by it, and the representatives of the people, at whom the blows were dealt by this crime, not only received them, but accepted and submitted to them, acting with all rigour against the people and all baseness before the Emperor. It is time to put a stop to the astonishment of the human conscience; it is time to renounce that double shame of two weights and two measures. I ask a full amnesty for the events of the 18th of March.' The motion was rejected, only about seven hands being held up for the amnesty. The poet-orator again pleaded the same cause in January, 1879, but his proposal was coldly received.

Nevertheless, in the following month an Amnesty Bill was pa.s.sed by the Chamber of Deputies.

Early in 1877 appeared the second part of the _Legende des Siecles_; and it is pleasant to recall an interchange of courtesies which took place in this year between Victor Hugo and our own greatly-honoured poet, Lord Tennyson. In the month of June, 1877, there appeared in the _Nineteenth Century_ the following sonnet, addressed to Hugo by the Poet Laureate:

'Victor in Poesy, Victor in Romance, Cloud-weaver of phantasmal hopes and fears, French of the French, and lord of human tears; Child-lover; Bard whose fame-lit laurels glance, Darkening the wreaths of all that would advance, Beyond our strait, their claim to be thy peers; Weird t.i.tan, by the winter-weight of years As yet unbroken, stormy voice of France; Who dost not love our England--so they say; I know not--England, France, all man to be Will make one people ere man's race be run: And I, desiring that diviner day, Yield thee full thanks for thy full courtesy To younger England in the boy, my son.'

To this sonnet the French poet returned a reply which I may translate as follows: 'My dear and eminent _confrere_, I read with emotion your superb lines. It is a reflection of your own glory that you send me. How shall I not love that England which produces such men as you! The England of Wilberforce, the England of Milton and of Newton! The England of Shakespeare! France and England are for me one people only, as Truth and Liberty are one light only. I believe in the unity of humanity, as I believe in the Divine unity. I love all peoples and all men. I admire your n.o.ble verses. Receive the cordial grasp of my hand. It made me happy to know your charming son, for it seemed to me that while clasping his hand I was pressing yours.'

In 1877-78 appeared Hugo's _L'Histoire d'un Crime_. It possessed special interest from its autobiographical character, and, like many of its predecessors, it was instinct with energy and pa.s.sion. By way of preface to this history, the author remarked, 'This work is more than opportune; it is imperative. I publish it.' Then came the following explanatory note: 'This work was written twenty-six years ago at Brussels, during the first months of exile. It was begun on the 14th of December, 1851, and on the day succeeding the author's arrival in Belgium, and was finished on the 5th of May, 1852, as though chance had willed that the anniversary of the death of the first Bonaparte should be countersigned by the condemnation of the third. It is also chance which, through a combination of work, of cares, and of bereavements, has delayed the publication of this history until this extraordinary year, 1877. In causing the recital of events of the past to coincide with the events of to-day, has chance had any purpose? We hope not. As we have just said, the story of the _Coup d'etat_ was written by a hand still hot from the combat against the _Coup d'etat_. The exile immediately became an historian. He carried away this crime in his angered memory, and he was resolved to lose nothing of it: hence this book. The ma.n.u.script of 1851 has been very little revised. It remains what it was, abounding in details, and living, it might be said bleeding, with real facts. The author const.i.tuted himself an interrogating judge; all his companions of the struggle and of exile came to give evidence before him. He has added his testimony to theirs. Now history is in possession of it; it will judge. If G.o.d wills, the publication of this book will shortly be terminated. The continuation and conclusion will appear on the 2nd of December. An appropriate date.'

When the second part of the work was issued at the beginning of 1878, France had fortunately pa.s.sed through a time of great political excitement without those fearful consequences which have frequently followed such periods in her history. The continuation of Victor Hugo's work did not consequently create such popular fervour as it might otherwise have done. But the author was as scathing as ever in his invectives, and no one knew such strong depths of bitterness and indignation as he. The satellites of Louis Napoleon were sketched with the pen of a Swift, and in the delineation of their master we find such touches as this: 'Louis Napoleon laid claim to a knowledge of men, and his claim was justified. He prided himself on it, and from one point of view he was right. Others possess discrimination; he had a nose. 'Twas b.e.s.t.i.a.l, but infallible.' As for the members of his court, 'they lived for pleasure. They lived by the public death. They breathed an atmosphere of shame, and throve on what kills honest people.' There are many interesting episodes in a momentous period dealt with throughout this work, which, like everything else by its author, is instinct with his strong personality.

CHAPTER XV.

POEMS ON RELIGION.

Victor Hugo's att.i.tude on religion was the subject of frequent comment.

It is now known that so far from being a sceptic, as was frequently declared, he had a firm belief in G.o.d and immortality. When a rationalist on one occasion said to him that though he himself had a dim belief in immortality, he doubted whether the outcasts of society could have any belief in their own immortality, the poet replied, 'Perhaps they believe in it more than you do.'

a.r.s.ene Houssaye has left an interesting sketch of certain religious confidences with which Hugo favoured him some years before his last illness. 'I am conscious within myself of the certainty of a future life,' the poet expressly said. 'The nearer I approach my end the clearer do I hear the immortal symphonies of worlds that call me to themselves. For half a century I have been outpouring my volumes of thought in prose and in verse, in history, philosophy, drama, romance, ode, and ballad, yet I appear to myself not to have said a thousandth part of what is within me; and when I am laid in the tomb I shall not reckon that my life is finished; the grave is not a _cul-de-sac_, it is an avenue; death is the sublime prolongation of life, not its dreary finish; it closes in the twilight, it opens in the dawn. My work is only begun; I yearn for it to become brighter and n.o.bler; and this craving for the infinite demonstrates that there is an infinity.' He denied that there were any occult forces responsible for the creation of man and nature; there was a luminous force, and that was G.o.d. Continuing the thought as to his own future existence, he added, 'I am nothing, a pa.s.sing echo, an evanescent cloud; but let me only live on through my future existences, let me continue the work I have begun, let me surmount the perils, the pa.s.sions, the agonies, that age after age may be before me, and who shall tell whether I may not rise to have a place in the council-chamber of the Ruler that controls all, and whom we own as G.o.d?'

If his creed had not many doctrines, it was at least very clear upon those which he did hold. He set against the G.o.d of the Papists, as he conceived him, another being whom he regarded as the personification of the true, the just, and the beautiful, who made his influence everywhere felt, but nowhere more deeply or more permanently than in the human conscience. In April, 1878, Hugo gave a concrete form to some of his religious ideas in his poem ent.i.tled _Le Pape_. It represented the Pope--though not the existing or any particular Pontiff--as having a long dream. He finds himself treading in the steps of Christ, mixing with and succouring the poor and the afflicted, eschewing all pomp, interposing between two hostile armies and preventing bloodshed, saving the malefactor from the scaffold, and finally leaving Rome for Jerusalem. All this, of course, is a fearful mistake; his Holiness wakes up, declares that he has had a frightful dream, and clings to the Syllabus and worldly state more firmly than ever. The contrast was very sharply drawn between the good, ideal pastor, and the worldly and sensual father too often met with. Hugo's evolvement of his own ideas led to much controversy, and his book was severely attacked. By way of reply he issued _La Pitie Supreme_. For those who sinned through ignorance and defective education, he inculcated pity and forgiveness; and the work generally furnished but another ill.u.s.tration to many which had gone before of the liberality of his mind, and his support of the doctrine of universal toleration. At a still later date, in his _L'ane_, he once more denounced false teachers. Desiring, like Rabelais, to lash his kind, the poet put his denunciations into the mouth of an a.s.s, which animal was taken to be the type of unsophisticated man. In the pages of this satire, observed Louis Ulbach, 'the poet at the climax of his life, dazzled though he is by the nearness of the dawn beyond, glances back at those whom he has left behind, addresses them with raillery keen enough to stimulate them, but not stern enough to discourage them, and from the standpoint of his severity, puts a fool's cap upon all false science, false wisdom, and false piety.' Nevertheless, the work was regarded as a failure, in spite of its scintillations of genius, the satiric power of Victor Hugo being one rather of fierce denunciation than that which consists in the perception of the incongruous in humanity.

Another work in which Hugo endeavoured to place the false and the true in religion side by side, was his _Religions et Religion_, issued in 1880. 'This book,' said the author in a prefatory note, 'was commenced in 1870, and completed in 1880. The year 1870 gave infallibility to the Papacy, and Sedan to the Empire. What is the year 1880 to bring forth?'

_Religions et Religion_ was an attack not only upon various systems of religion, but also upon those who attack all religion. The writer made an a.s.sault upon the system of Milton, and established a system of religion of his own, which in its catholicity should embrace all spirits who love the good. The work was regarded as part of the great epic _Le Fin de Satan_, which had been foreshadowed many years before. But, as one of his critics remarked, if Hugo had fallen into the mistake of thinking that this book was not only a poem full of the loveliest sayings and the n.o.blest aspirations, but a valuable treatise on theology and philosophy, it was but a mistake which he had been making ever since he began to write. Hugo's new poem 'is an emphatic, not to say a violent, answer to two different systems of poetic religion, each of which is itself at war with the other--the system of Dante and the system of Milton. Without h.e.l.l, Dante would never have been able to write a line of the Inferno; and without the Devil, Milton would have been in a condition equally forlorn. Yet M. Hugo's book is an attack upon both these venerable beliefs, and also upon the positivists who are trying to undermine them.' Hugo, in short, gave his support to the unconscious humourist who complained of _Paradise Lost_ that it proved nothing.