VICTOR HUGO'S HUMANITARIANISM.
In 1829 Victor Hugo published anonymously his _Le Dernier Jour d'un
Condamne_ ('The Last Day of a Convict'). It thrilled the heart of Paris
by its vivid recitals. While having no pretensions to the character of a
regular tale, it was, as a writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ remarked,
one of the most perfect things the author had as yet produced. It was
the representation of one peculiar state of mind--that of a criminal
faced by the certainty of his approaching death under the guillotine.
Like Sterne, Hugo had taken a single captive, shut him up in his
dungeon, and 'then looked through the twilight of the grated door, to
take his picture.' The work is a chronicle of thoughts, a register of
sensations; and it is amazing to see what variety and dramatic movement
may be imparted to a monologue in which the scene shifts only from, the
Bicetre to the Conciergerie, the Hotel de Ville, and the Place de Greve.
Few descriptions could be found in literature to vie with that in which
Victor Hugo places the criminal before us as he enters the court to
receive his sentence on a lovely August morning. But all the incidents
attending the trial, the condemnation, and the execution are depicted
with graphic skill and powerful energy. No one knows better than Victor
Hugo how to relieve unutterable gloom by some brilliant ray of human
affection, and so upon this condemned prisoner he causes to break a
temporary vision of youth and innocence. The intensity all through this
piece is such as to give the reader a strange realization of the
criminal, with his weight of guilt, and his terrible and conflicting
emotions.
But the critic of the _Edinburgh_ would have us believe that all this
was merely due to a desire by Victor Hugo to exhibit his literary skill.
He even calls it absurd to regard the sketch as a pleading against the
punishment of death, and roundly denies that the author had any such
esoteric purpose. Unfortunately for him, there is conclusive evidence to
prove that Victor Hugo had a deeper intent in this painful
representation than a mere literary play upon the feelings. In a preface
to the edition of 1832 he distinctly avows his purpose: 'It is the
author's aim and design that posterity should recognise in his work
_not_ a mere special pleading for any one particular criminal, which is
always easy and always transitory, but a general and permanent appeal in
behalf of all the accused, alike of the present and of the future. Its
great point is the right of humanity urged upon society.'
Moreover, there is another powerful argument to be considered. Ever
since 1820 Victor Hugo had been deeply moved on the question of capital
punishment, and resolved to labour for its abolition. It will be
convenient here to review briefly his public utterances on the subject,
both before and subsequent to the appearance of _Le Dernier Jour d'un
Condamne_. We shall thereby be enabled to keep the literary and personal
thread of our narrative intact. In the year above named Victor Hugo had
seen Louvel, the murderer of the Duke of Berry, on his way to the
scaffold. The culprit was a being for whom he had not the slightest
sympathy; but his fate begat pity, and he began to reflect on the
anomaly that society should, in cold blood, commit the same act as that
which it punished. From that time, observes Madame Hugo, he had an idea
of writing a book against the guillotine. Two executions which he
witnessed during the next few years strengthened his convictions, and
led to the work we have already discussed. Subsequently he wrote _Claude
Gueux_, founded upon the sad and miserable story of a man of that name.
Gueux was condemned to death in 1832 for a crime to which the pangs of
hunger had impelled him. The case was doubly painful from the fact that
the father of Claude, a very old man, had been sentenced to a punishment
in the prison of Clairvaux, and the son, in order to bring help to him,
committed an act whose consequences brought him within the walls of the
same prison. Strenuous exertions were made by Hugo and others to save
Gueux, but the Council of Ministers rejected the appeal. The man was
executed, and a noble protest which Victor Hugo afterwards issued
greatly moved the public conscience, and rendered society still more
familiar with the writer's views.
In May, 1839, one Barbes was condemned to death for his share in the
insurrection in the Place Royale. Victor Hugo immediately sent this
message of appeal to the King:
'By your guardian-angel fled away like a dove,
By your royal child, a sweet and frail reed,
Pardon yet once more, pardon in the name of the tomb!
Pardon in the name of the cradle!'
The King, against the advice of his Ministers, insisted on pardoning
Barbes. More than twenty years afterwards the latter figured as a
character in _Les Miserables_, and a correspondence, alike honourable to
both, ensued between him and the author. Twice as a peer of France
Victor Hugo was called upon to give verdicts in cases where capital
punishment would follow conviction, and in both instances he voted in
favour of perpetual imprisonment and against the death-penalty. When the
question of capital punishment came before the Assembly in 1848, Victor
Hugo ascended the tribune and made an impassioned speech, from which I
take these extracts:
'What is the penalty of death? It is the especial and eternal mark of
barbarism. Wherever the penalty is, death is common, barbarism
dominates; wherever the penalty of death is rare, civilization reigns
supreme. You have just acknowledged the principle that a man's private
dwelling should be inviolate; we ask you now to acknowledge a principle
much higher and more sacred still--the inviolability of human life. The
nineteenth century will abolish the penalty of death. You will not do
away with it, perhaps, at once; but be assured, either you or your
successors will abolish it. I vote for the abolition, pure, simple, and
definitive, of the penalty of death.'
In March, 1849, Victor Hugo made an unsuccessful appeal in the case of
Daix, condemned to death for the affair of Brea; and in the following
year the poet himself appeared as an advocate in the Court of Assize. He
defended his eldest son, Charles Hugo, who had been summoned for
protesting in his journal, _L'Evenement_, against the execution, which
had been accompanied by revolting circumstances. In the course of his
eloquent pleadings, Victor Hugo said: 'The real culprit in this matter,
if there is a culprit, is not my son. It is I myself. I, who, for a
quarter of a century, have not ceased to battle against all forms of the
irreparable penalty--I, who, during all this time, have never ceased to
advocate the inviolability of human life.... Yes, I assert it, this
remains of barbarous penalties--this old and unintelligent law of
retaliation--this law of blood for blood--I have battled against it all
my life; and, so long as there remains one breath in my body, I will
continue to battle against it with all my power as an author, and with
all my acts and votes as a legislator. And I make this
declaration'--(_the pleader here stretched out his arm towards the
crucifix at the end of the hall above the tribunal_)--'before the Victim
of the penalty of death, whose effigy is now before us, who is now
looking down upon us, and who hears what I utter. I swear it, I say,
before this sacred tree, on which, nearly two thousand years ago, and
for the instruction of men to the latest generation, the laws,
instituted by men, fastened with accursed nails the Divine Son of God!'
In conclusion, the orator exclaimed, 'My son! thou wilt this day receive
a great honour. Thou art judged worthy of fighting, perhaps of
suffering, for the sacred cause of truth. From to-day thou enterest the
just and true manly life of our time, the struggle for the true. Be
proud, thou who art now admitted to the ranks of those who battle for
the human and democratic idea! Thou art seated on the bench where
Beranger and Lamennais have sat.' Notwithstanding his father's defence,
which powerfully moved the whole court, Charles Hugo was sentenced to
six months' imprisonment.
While living in exile in Jersey, in 1854, Victor Hugo made an appeal on
behalf of a man who was to be hanged in Guernsey. One of his letters was
addressed to the people of Guernsey, who petitioned, but in vain, for
the life of the convict Tapner. Another was addressed to Lord
Palmerston, who gave the usual orders for the execution; and probably no
English Minister ever received, either before or since, a communication
couched in such burning and passionate language. The writer was
literally overwhelming in his indignant rhetoric.
For John Brown, of Harper's Ferry, the anti-slavery enthusiast, Victor
Hugo put in a strong plea with the United States. He told that country
that 'Brown's executioner would neither be the Attorney Hunter, nor the
Judge Parker, nor the Governor Wyse, nor the State of Virginia; it would
be, though one shudders to think it, and still more to say it, the great
American Republic itself.... When we consider that this nation is the
glory of the whole earth; that, like France, England, and Germany, it
is one of the organs of civilization, that it has even gone beyond
Europe in certain sublime strokes of bold progress, that it is at the
summit of the whole world, that it wears on its brow the star of
liberty, we are tempted to affirm that John Brown will not die; for we
shrink back horrified at the idea of so great a crime being committed by
so great a nation!' The writer predicted that 'the murder of Brown would
make in the Union a rent, at first concealed, but which would end by
splitting it asunder.' John Brown was executed, and Hugo's prediction
was verified. The South did indeed discover that the spirit of Brown was
'marching on'; and the American Union was for a time convulsed to its
centre, ostensibly on the ground of union, but practically on account of
slavery. Brown, the martyr, was justified by the event, and slavery was
abolished in the United States.
During the year 1861, a Belgian jury pronounced, on a single occasion
only, nine sentences of death. Thereupon a writer, assuming the name of
Victor Hugo, published some verses in the Belgian journals, imploring
the King's pardon for the nine convicts. Hugo's attention was drawn to
the verses, when he replied that he was quite willing for his name to be
used, or even abused, in so good a cause. As his _alter ego_ had
addressed the King, so he now addressed the nation. He called upon it to
arrest this great sacrifice of life, and to abolish the scaffold. 'It
would be a noble thing that a small people should give a lesson to the
great, and by this fact alone should become greater than they. It would
be a fine thing that, in the face of the abominable growth of darkness,
in the presence of a growing barbarism, Belgium, taking the place of a
great Power in civilization, should communicate to the human race by one
act the full glare of light.' The sentence of seven of the condemned men
was commuted, but the two remaining convicts were executed.
When the Republic of Geneva revised its constitution in 1862, the
principal question remitted to the people was the abolition of the
punishment of death. M. Bost, a Genevese author, appealed to Victor Hugo
for his intervention in the discussion. The poet replied by a long and
exhaustive communication, in which he reviewed the leading cases in
various European countries where the scaffold had recently been called
into requisition, and he closed with this exordium: 'O people of Geneva,
your city is situate on a lake in the Garden of Eden! you live in a
blessed place! all that is most noble in creation surrounds you! the
habitual contemplation of the beautiful reveals the truth and imposes
duties on you! Your civilization ought to be in harmony with nature.
Take counsel of all these merciful marvels. Believe in your sky so
bright; and as goodness descends from the sky, abolish the scaffold. Be
not ungrateful. Let it not be said that in gratitude, and, as it were,
in exchange for this admirable corner of the earth, where God has shown
to man the sacred splendour of the Alps, the Arve and the Rhone, the
blue lake, and Mont Blanc in the glory of sunlight, man has offered to
the Deity the spectacle of the guillotine.' The question had already
been decided by the retention of the scaffold when this letter reached
Geneva, but Victor Hugo now addressed the people. His second letter had
an immense effect, and secured the rejection of the constitution
proposed by the Conservatives. It also brought over a great number of
adherents to the cause of abolition, which ultimately triumphed.
On many subsequent occasions, and notably in connection with Italy and
Portugal, Victor Hugo wrote and strove for the abolition of capital
punishment. In France his pressing personal appeals more than once
availed to procure a commutation of the death-punishment. To his _Last
Day of a Convict_ was due the introduction of extenuating circumstances
in the criminal laws of France, and he projected a work to be entitled
_Le Dossier de la Peine de Mort_.
It is not my intention here, nor, indeed, is it necessary, to discuss
the arguments which may be advanced for or against capital punishment.
It has been simply my object to present Victor Hugo in a light which,
while it may divide men in their judgments, will unite them in their
sympathies. The cases I have cited will be more than sufficient to
demonstrate that noble enthusiasm of humanity which forms so conspicuous
a feature in Victor Hugo's character.