DAWNINGS OF GENIUS.
Victor Hugo was not quite thirteen when he wrote his first poetical
essay, which had for its subject _Roland and Chivalry_. This was
followed in the same year, 1815, by an intensely Royalist poem, and one
breathing indignation against the Emperor, after the disaster of
Waterloo. The poet had been thrown constantly into the midst of Royalist
influences and surroundings; not only his mother, but General Lahorie
and M. Foucher, her most intimate friends, were enemies of the Empire,
and the youth consequently imbibed at the same time hatred of the Empire
and love of the Bourbons.
His first tragedy, _Irtamene_, was written in honour of Louis XVIII.,
and though professedly dealing with Egyptian themes, it was really a
defence of the French King. There is a usurper in it, who meets with
condign chastisement, and the play ends with the coronation of the
legitimate monarch. 'Those who hate tyrants should love kings,' said the
writer, to whom at that time the restoration of the Bourbons meant
liberty. But these things must not be made too much of. The poet was at
that nebulous stage when the fact of writing poetry was more to him than
the subject-matter of his exercises. He read voluminously, but he had
not as yet begun to separate, to weigh, and to discriminate.
A course of the _Theatre de Voltaire_ led him to begin a new tragedy,
_Atheli; or, the Scandinavians_, all in dramatic order, with its five
acts, and its due regard to narrative, scenery, etc. Before he had
completed it, however, he turned to a comic opera, _A Quelque Chose
Hasard est Bon_. Then he reverted to the drama, and wrote a play in
three acts, with two interludes, entitled _Inez de Castro_. From the
point of view of literary art, little is to be said of these things; but
there are many scattered passages in them which reveal remarkable
insight on the part of one so young. In the year 1817 he first sought
publicity for his compositions, competing for the poetical prize
annually offered by the French Academy. The subject chosen was, _The
Advantages of Study in every situation of Life_, and amongst the
competitors were Lebrun, Delavigne, Saintine, and Loyson, who all on
this occasion made their poetical debut. The first prize was divided
between Saintine and Lebrun, and Hugo received honourable mention; but
when the poems came to be declaimed in public, the warmest applause
followed that by Victor Hugo. The Academy judges were considerably
puzzled by Master Hugo's exercise. In one place he wrote as though he
had arrived at years of discretion and comparative maturity, and then
demolished this idea by the lines--
'I, who have ever fled from courts and cities,
Scarce three short lustres have accomplished yet.'
The judges came to the conclusion that the young poet was playing with
them, and in their report accordingly threw doubt upon his statement
that he was only fifteen years old. The production of his birth
certificate set this question at rest, and Victor's name now became
prominent in the newspapers. M. Raynouard, the cultured Secretary of the
Academy, finding that the 'most potent, grave, and reverend signors'
had not been deceived, expressed the great pleasure he had in making the
youthful competitor's acquaintance. Other distinguished men followed
suit, and Hugo was described as 'the sublime child,' either by
Chateaubriand or Soumet. The evidence points to the latter having first
made use of this phrase, but its origin matters little, for
Chateaubriand fully adopted it, remarking that anyone might naturally
have used the words, they expressed so decided a truth. Hugo was taken
by a friend to see the author of _Atala_, and the impression made upon
his mind by this man of genius found utterance in the exclamation, 'I
would be Chateaubriand or nothing.'
In 1818 Victor's brother Eugene was awarded a prize at the floral games
of Toulouse. The younger brother's ambition was touched, and in the
following year he secured two prizes from the same Academy for his poems
on _The Statue of Henry IV._, and _The Virgins of Verdun_. The former
poem gained the golden lily, and the latter the golden amaranth. It
seems that just as the writer was about to set to work on the
first-named poem, Madame Hugo was seized with inflammation of the
chest. She lamented that her son would be unable to complete his poem in
time; but he set to work, wrote it in a single night, and it was
despatched next morning in time to compete for the prize. The President
of the Toulouse Academy admitted that it was an enigma for one so young
to exhibit such remarkable talents in literature.
A poem, _Moses on the Nile_, gained him a third prize at Toulouse, and
this constituted him Master of the Floral Games, so that at the age of
eighteen he became a provincial academician. He was still Royalist in
his opinions, and on the few occasions when he was in the company of his
father, the latter did not attempt to change his views, feeling that it
would be useless to attempt to set the arguments of a few hours against
a daily and hourly influence. But he had a true apprehension of his
son's character, and on one occasion, when Victor had expressed himself
warmly in favour of the Vendeans, General Hugo turned to General
Lucotte, and said: 'Let us leave all to time. The child shares his
mother's views; the man will have the opinions of his father.'
Victor Hugo was now the subject of conflicting claims. There was the
law, which he had chosen as a profession, with its demands upon him, and
there was literature, which he loved too much to surrender; while at the
same time love and politics also claimed their share in him. He
determined to throw himself ardently into literature. Separated from the
object of his youthful affections, he wrote his _Han d'Islande_, in
which, while there are many crimes and horrors, there are also passages
of tenderness, wherein he sought to embalm and reveal his feelings of
love. His courage sustained him through many trials, but at last he was
called upon to bear one that made a profound impression upon his heart.
Madame Hugo, who was now living in the Rue Mezieres, was seized with
serious illness after working in her garden, which was her favourite
occupation. For some time she struggled successfully with the disease,
but it had obtained too firm a hold upon her, and she died suddenly on
the 27th of June, 1821. On the evening of the funeral, Adele Foucher,
unconscious of what had occurred, was dancing at a party given in
celebration of her birthday. Next morning Victor called upon her, and
the lovers, mingling their tears together, mutually renewed their old
vows of attachment. Victor, to whom life had seemed without an object on
the death of his mother, speedily found another after his betrothal to
Adele. Her parents no longer actively opposed the union, but stipulated
for its postponement until Victor could provide a home.
In conjunction with several friends, Hugo had already founded the
_Conservateur Litteraire_, to which he contributed articles on Sir
Walter Scott, Byron, Moore, etc., and a number of political satires. He
had a sum of seven hundred francs, upon which he subsisted for a year,
and the method by which he did it will be found related in the
experiences of Marius in _Les Miserables_. Translations from Lucan and
Virgil, which appeared under the name of D'Auverney, and the Epistles
from Aristides to Brutus on _Thou_ and _You_, emanated from his pen. He
also wrote a very noticeable article on Lamartine's _Meditations
Poetiques_, which had just appeared. Then came the first instalment of
his own _Odes et Ballades_, a work in which his genius began to attain a
fuller freedom and a richer expression. The volume was received with
very wide favour, and though, as M. Barbou has observed, it presents
many ideas that would find no approval now, the poet, nevertheless,
declared that he could proudly and conscientiously place the work side
by side with the democratical books and poems of his matured manhood.
This, he said, he should be prepared to do, because in 'the fierce
strife against early prejudices imbibed with a mother's milk, and in the
slow rough ascent from the false to the true, which to a certain extent
makes up the substance of every man's life, and causes the development
of his conscience to be the type of human progress in general; each step
so taken represents some material sacrifice to moral advancement, some
interest abandoned, some vanity eschewed, some worldly benefit
renounced--nay, perhaps, some risk of home or even life incurred.' This
justification may fairly be accepted, but from another aspect also these
_Odes_ are worthy of attention. They were the first noble efforts of the
poet to emancipate French poetry from the trammels which had too long
governed it, and which had rendered it almost dead, and effete alike in
spirit and in form. At length imagination was to resume its rightful
sway, and exhibit some return to its pristine vigour.
The _Odes_ not only brought the author friends like Emile Deschamps and
Alfred de Vigny, but they were pecuniarily successful. The first edition
yielded him a profit of seven hundred francs, and a second quickly
followed. The attention of the King was called to the poems, and the
interest his Majesty took in them, together with a romantic incident in
connection with the Saumur plot, led to a pension of 1,000 francs being
conferred upon the poet from the King's privy purse. He now thought he
was entitled to press the question of his marriage. His father, who had
married again, offered no opposition; the Fouchers also gave way, and
bestowed the hand of their daughter Adele upon the young and now
successful poet. Victor Hugo had shortly before this made the
acquaintance of the celebrated priest Lamennais, and it was from his
hands that he received the certificate of confession required before he
could get married. 'I trust with all my heart,' wrote the priest, 'that
God will bless this happy union, which He appears Himself to have
prepared by implanting in you a long and unchanged affection, and a
mutual love as pure as it is sweet.'
The Saumur plot, to which I have referred, took place in 1822, and
amongst those implicated in it was a young man named Delon, who had been
an intimate friend of Victor Hugo in his childhood. On hearing of
Delon's danger, Hugo wrote to the conspirator's mother, offering an
asylum for her son in his own house, and remarking that as the writer
was well known for his devotion to the Bourbons, he would never be
sought in such a retreat. This letter fell into the hands of the King,
but instead of its prejudicing him against Victor Hugo, he generously
said, 'That young man has a good heart as well as great genius; he is an
honourable fellow; I shall take care he has the next pension that falls
vacant.' This was the origin of the poet's pension, which was in nowise
due to an expressed wish or desire on his own part.
_Hans of Iceland_, the first published romance of Victor Hugo, appeared
anonymously in 1823. The work at once attracted attention by reason of
its graphic power and the startling nature of its contrasts. It combines
horror with tenderness, the deepest gloom with flashes of the purest
light. The author himself had a great affection for it, on the personal
ground already mentioned. But its chief features are of a different
order. In this northern romance, as one critic has observed, the
youthful novelist has turned to great account the savage wilds, gloomy
lakes, stormy seas, pathless caves, and ruined fortresses of
Scandinavia. 'A being savage as the scenery around him--human in his
birth, but more akin to the brute in his nature; diminutive, but with a
giant's strength; whose pastime is assassination, who lives literally as
well as metaphorically on blood--is the hero; and round this monster are
grouped some of the strangest, ghastliest, and yet not wholly unnatural
beings which it is possible for the imagination to conceive--Spiagudry,
the keeper of the dead-house, or _morgue_, of Drontheim, and Orugex, the
State executioner--while gentler forms, the noble and persecuted
Schumacker, and the devoted and innocent Ethel, relieve the monotony of
crime and horror.' M. Charles Nodier, one of the ablest of French
contemporary critics, in a review of the work in the _Quotidienne_,
remarked upon the fact that there were men of a certain organization, to
whom glory and distinction were temptations, just as happiness and
pleasure tempted other men. 'Precocious intellects and deep sensibility
do not take the future into consideration--they devour their future.
The passions of a young and powerful mind know no to-morrow; they look
to satiate their ambition and their hopes with the reputation and
excitement of the present moment. _Han d'Islande_ has been the result of
this kind of combination, if indeed one can describe as a combination
that which is only the thoughtless instinct of an original genius, who
obeys, without being aware of it, an impulse at variance with his true
interests, but whose fine and wide career may not improbably justify
this promise of excellence, and may hereafter redeem all the anxiety he
has caused by the excusable error he committed when he first launched
himself upon the world.' M. Nodier then discussed with much freedom, and
yet with almost as much fairness, the peculiar features of the romance,
its close and painful search into the morbidities of life, its pictures
of the scaffold and the _morgue_, etc., as well as its strong local
colouring, its historical truth, its learning, its wit, and its vigorous
and picturesque style.
The author and his critic became personally acquainted. The latter
called upon Victor Hugo, who, after other changes of abode, had now
established himself in the Rue de Vaugirard. A second pension of 2,000
francs had been awarded him by the King; hence his migration into
comparatively sumptuous quarters. Other literary friendships besides
that with M. Nodier were formed as the result of Victor Hugo's first
romance.
At this period he wrote an ode on the _Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile_, and
there were many indications that his early Royalist opinions were in
process of abandonment. He visited his father at Blois, and the General
was not slow to observe the changes taking place in his son's views.
While he could not admire Napoleon personally, he began to do justice to
those who had planted the French standard in all the capitals of Europe.
But it seemed as though the King was resolved to retain him by favours,
for there was now conferred upon him the coveted badge of the Legion of
Honour. He attended the coronation of Charles X. at Rheims, and from
thence went to pay a visit to Lamartine. A project was formed and a
treaty signed with a publisher, by which M. Lamartine, Victor Hugo, M.
Charles Nodier, and M. Taylor engaged to prepare a work detailing a
poetical and picturesque trip to Mont Blanc and the Valley of Chamouni.
For four meditations Lamartine was to receive 2,000 francs, Hugo 2,000
for four odes, Taylor 2,000 for eight drawings, and Nodier 2,250 for all
the text. The travellers set out, Hugo being accompanied by his wife and
child. On reaching Geneva--after a temporary arrest of Hugo, some time
before, on account of the delay of his passport in its journey from
Paris--the visitors found the police regulations very annoying. Each
hotel possessed a register, in which every traveller was bound to write
his name, his age, his profession, the place from whence he came, and
his object in travelling. M. Nodier was so exasperated that in reply to
the last query he wrote, 'Come to upset your Government.' For a few
moments the hotel-keeper was not unnaturally electrified. The travellers
got their jaunt, but owing to the insolvency of the publisher with whom
they had arranged, the literary scheme was never carried out.
In ascending the Alps to the Mer de Glace, Victor Hugo had a narrow
escape. His guide, who was new to the business, took the wrong path, and
landed the visitor upon a dangerous tongue of ice. From this he was
rescued with great difficulty, and for several moments, which seemed
like hours, he was suspended over a terrible abyss. Victor Hugo wrote a
description of the journey from Sallenches to Chamouni, which was
translated by Madame Hugo, and published in her sketch of the poet.
_Bug Jargal_, the second romance by Victor Hugo, but the earliest in
point of time, was published in 1826. It had been originally written for
the _Conservateur Litteraire_; but after its appearance there, it was
almost entirely remodelled and rewritten. It is a tale of the
insurrection in St. Domingo. The essential improbability of such a
character as Bug Jargal (by what means did the author get such an
uncouth name?), a negro of the noblest moral and intellectual character,
passionately in love with a white woman, has been unfavourably commented
upon. The hero is represented as not only tempering the wildest passion
with the deepest respect, but he even sacrifices life itself at last in
behalf of the woman of his love, and of her husband. It was objected
that this was too violent a call upon the imagination, but knowledge of
the negro character would tend to prove that such a devotion as Bug
Jargal's is by no means impossible. In any case, as the novelist is
allowed great license, this objection cannot be regarded as fatal to the
romance. Notwithstanding its alleged defects of plot, however, this
story has many enthralling passages. No reader is likely to forget 'the
scenes in the camp of the insurgent chief Biassou, or the death-struggle
between Habihrah and d'Auverney on the brink of the cataract. The
latter, in particular, is drawn with such intense force, that the reader
seems almost to be a witness of the changing fortunes of the fight, and
can hardly breathe freely till he comes to the close.' Whatever else
these early romances demonstrated, or failed to demonstrate, they were
at least inspired by enthusiasm, and tinged with aspirations of a noble
order.
The genius of the author had drawn towards him the admiration, and very
speedily the friendship, of such men as M. Mery, the journalist; M.
Rabbe, author of the 'History of the Popes;' M. Achille Deveria and M.
Louis Boulanger, the eminent artists; M. Sainte-Beuve, one of the most
incisive of critics, and others whose names have since occupied
considerable space in the roll of fame. Hugo was indefatigable in his
literary efforts. _La Revue Francaise_, a periodical which
unfortunately had but a brief existence, bore testimony to this, as well
as his poetical miscellany entitled _La Muse Francaise_. He also wrote a
criticism upon Voltaire, which was afterwards reprinted in his _Melanges
de Litterature_; but this estimate did not reveal the breadth of view
which the writer manifested in later years, when he passed an eloquent
eulogium upon the philosopher of Ferney.
For a new edition of the _Odes_ issued in 1826, and now separated from
the _Ballades_, the author wrote an introduction in which he distinctly
unfolded his principles of liberty in the realm of literature. He
expressed his belief that 'in a literary production the bolder the
conception the more irreproachable should be the execution;' and he
added that liberty need not result in disorder. It was the first
occasion on which the claims of what was called, for want of a better
word, romanticism were formally promulgated by a writer eminent in that
school. We shall shortly see how Victor Hugo translated these ideas into
a concrete form in his works. Meantime, in February, 1827, an incident
occurred which led to a stirring poem by Hugo, and one which made him
friends in a new quarter, while it lost them in an old one.
It appears that at a ball given by the Austrian Ambassador in Paris, the
distinguished French marshals who attended were deliberately shorn of
their legitimate titles. Thus, the Duke of Taranto was announced as
Marshal Macdonald; the Duke of Dalmatia as Marshal Soult; the Duke of
Treviso as Marshal Mortier, and so on. The insult was studied and
deliberate on the part of the Ambassador; 'Austria, humiliated by titles
which recalled its defeats, publicly denied them. The marshals had been
invited in order to show contempt for their victories, and the Empire
was insulted in their persons. They immediately quitted the Embassy in a
body.' Victor Hugo's blood was stirred by this incident, and, without
counting the cost, he took his revenge. Throwing all the weight of his
indignation into the _Ode a la Colonne_, he hurled that effusion at the
enemies of France. He was now only anxious to show that he was a
Frenchman first, and a Vendean afterwards.
The Ode made a great sensation, but it had a wider effect than its
author anticipated. The Opposition welcomed him as one of themselves,
for in celebrating the marshals had not the poet celebrated the Empire?
The Royalists, on the other hand, seeing this bitter attack upon the
Austrians, who were the most powerful friends of the Bourbons, naturally
thought that Victor Hugo had abandoned the Royalist cause. Neither side
could quite understand how such a burst of invective as that witnessed
in the Ode might be due alone to the outraged feelings of a Frenchman,
without being intended in the least to partake of the nature of a
political manifesto. To these fierce partisans, party was everything; to
Victor Hugo it was the nation that was everything. But his rupture with
the Royalists is naturally enough traced to this period. He and they
could never be the same again to each other. The poet passed now from
his admiration of the Bourbons to an acknowledgment of the glory and
prowess of the Empire, as at a later period he pressed still further
forward, and hailed the fuller liberty of Republican France.