Young Hugo first fol-
lowed in the footsteps of the so-called great man of his time, and
thus won a number of prizes in the poetical competitions of his early
years.
lowed in the footsteps of the so-called great man of his time, and
thus won a number of prizes in the poetical competitions of his early
years.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v13 - Her to Hux
I'll be
bound you shall hear it. "
"May it come speedily," said Blake, and then settled himself
in his seat.
"Eyes in the boat-mind now, steady all; watch the stroke
and don't quicken. "
These are Miller's last words; every faculty of himself and
the crew being now devoted to getting a good start. This is no
difficult matter, as the water is like glass, and the boat lies
lightly on it, obeying the slightest dip of the oars of bow and
two, who just feel the water twice or thrice in the last minute.
Then, after a few moments of breathless hush on the bank, the
last gun is fired and they are off.
The same scene of mad excitement ensues, only tenfold more
intense, as almost the whole interest of the races is to-night
concentrated on the two head boats and their fate.
At every
gate there is a jam, and the weaker vessels are shoved into the
ditches, upset, and left unnoticed. The most active men, includ-
ing the O. U. B. coxswain, shun the gates altogether and take
the big ditches in their stride, making for the long bridges, that
they may get quietly over these and be safe for the best part of
the race.
They know that the critical point of the struggle will
be near the finish.
Both boats make a beautiful start; and again, as before in
the first dash, the St. Ambrose pace tells, and they gain their
boat's-length before first winds fail: then they settle down for a
long, steady effort. Both crews are rowing comparatively steady,
## p. 7703 (#517) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7703
Thus they
reserving themselves for the tug of war up above.
pass the Gut, and so those two treacherous corners, the scene
⚫ of countless bumps, into the wider water beyond, up under the
willows.
•
Miller's face is decidedly hopeful; he shows no sign, indeed,
but you can see that he is not the same man as he was at this
place in the last race. He feels that to-day the boat is full of
life, and that he can call on his crew with hopes of an answer.
H well-trained eye also detects that while both crews are at
full stretch, his own, instead of losing as it did on the last
night, is now gaining inch by inch on Oriel. The gain is scarcely
perceptible to him even; from the bank it is quite imperceptible:
but there it is; he is surer and surer of it, as one after another
the willows are left behind.
he
And now comes the pinch. The Oriel captain is beginning to
be conscious of the fact which has been dawning on Miller, but
will not acknowledge it to himself; and as his coxswain turns
boat's head gently across the stream, and makes for the Berkshire
side and the goal, now full in view, he smiles grimly as he
quickens his stroke, he will shake off these light-heeled gentry
yet, as he did before.
Miller sees the move in a moment and signals his captain,
and the next stroke St. Ambrose has quickened also; and now
there is no mistake about it,-St. Ambrose is creeping up slowly
but surely. The boat's-length lessens to forty feet, thirty feet;
surely and steadily lessens. But the race is not lost yet; thirty
feet is a short space enough to look at on the water, but a good
bit to pick up foot by foot in the last two hundred yards of a
desperate struggle. They are over under the Berkshire side
now, and there stands up the winning-post, close ahead, all but
won. The distance lessens and lessens still, but the Oriel crew
stick steadily and gallantly to their work, and will fight every inch
of distance to the last. The Orielites on the bank, who are rush-
ing along, sometimes in the water, sometimes out, hoarse, furious,
madly alternating between hope and despair, have no reason to
be ashamed of a man in the crew. Off the mouth of the Cher-
well there is still twenty feet between them. Another minute,
and it will be over one way or another. Every man in both
crews is now doing his best, and no mistake: tell me which boat
holds the most men who can do better than their best at a
pinch, who will risk a broken blood-vessel, and I will tell you
## p. 7704 (#518) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7704
how it will end. "Hard pounding, gentlemen: let's see who will
pound longest," the Duke is reported to have said at Waterloo,
and won.
"Now, Tummy, lad, 'tis thou or I," Big Ben said as
he came up to the last round of his hardest fight, and won. Is
there a man of that temper in either crew to-night? If so, now's
his time. For both coxswains have called on their men for the
last effort; Miller is whirling the tassel of his right-hand tiller
rope round his head, like a wiry little lunatic; from the towing-
path, from Christ Church meadow, from the rows of punts, from
the clustered tops of the barges, comes a roar of encouragement
and applause, and the band, unable to resist the impulse, breaks
with a crash into the 'Jolly Young Waterman,' playing two bars
to the second. A bump in the Gut is nothing-a few partisans
on the towing-path to cheer you, already out of breath; but up
here at the very finish, with all Oxford looking on, when the
prize is the headship of the river-once in a generation only do
men get such a chance.
Who ever saw Jervis not up to his work? The St. Ambrose
stroke is glorious. Tom had an atom of go still left in the very
back of his head, and at this moment he heard Drysdale's view
halloo above all the din: it seemed to give him a lift, and other
men besides in the boat, for in another six strokes the gap is
lessened and St. Ambrose has crept up to ten feet, and now to
five, from the stern of Oriel. Weeks afterward Hardy confided
to Tom that when he heard that view halloo he seemed to feel
the muscles of his arms and legs turn into steel, and did more
work in the last twenty strokes than in any other forty in the
earlier part of the race.
Another fifty yards and Oriel is safe; but the look on the
captain's face is so ominous that their coxswain glances over his
shoulder. The bow of St. Ambrose is within two feet of their
rudder. It is a moment for desperate expedients. He pulls his
left tiller rope suddenly, thereby carrying the stern of his own
boat out of the line of the St. Ambrose, and calls on his crew
once more: they respond gallantly yet, but the rudder is against
them for a moment, and the boat drags. St. Ambrose overlaps.
"A bump, a bump! " shout the St. - Ambrosians or shore. "Row
on, row on! " screams Miller. He has not yet felt the electric
shock, and knows he will miss his bump if the young ones slacken
for a moment. A young coxswain would have gone on making
shots at the stern of the Oriel boat, and so have lost.
## p. 7705 (#519) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7705
A ump now and no mistake: the bow of the St. Ambrose
boat jams the oar of the Oriel stroke, and the two boats pass the
winning-post with the way that was on them when the bump
was made. So near a shave was it.
To describe the scene on the bank is beyond me. It was a
hurly-burly of delirious joy, in the midst of which took place a
terrific combat between Jack and the Oriel dog,—a noble black
bull terrier belonging to the college in general, and no one in
particular, who always attended the races and felt the misfortune.
keenly. Luckily, they were parted without worse things happen-
ing; for though the Oriel men were savage, and not disinclined
for a jostle, the milk of human kindness was too strong for the
moment in their adversaries, and they extricated themselves from
the crowd, carrying off Crib, their dog, and looking straight
before them into vacancy.
-
"Well rowed, boys," says Jervis, turning round to his crew,
as they lay panting on their oars.
"Well rowed, five," says Miller, who, even in the hour of
such a triumph, is not inclined to be general in laudation.
"Well rowed, five," is echoed from the bank; it is that cun-
ning man, the recruiting sergeant. "Fatally well rowed," he
adds to a comrade, with whom he gets into one of the punts to
cross to Christ Church meadow: "we must have him in the Uni-
versity crew. "
"I don't think you'll get him to row, from what I hear,"
answers the other.
"Then he must be handcuffed and carried into the boat by
force," says the coxswain O. U. B. : "why is not the press gang
an institution in this university? "
THE FIGHT BETWEEN TOM BROWN AND WILLIAMS
From Tom Brown's School Days'
TOM
Oм felt he had got his work cut out for him, as he stripped
off his jacket, waistcoat, and braces. East tied his hand-
kerchief round his waist, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves
for him.
"Now, old boy, don't you open your mouth to say a word, or
try to help yourself a bit,—we'll do all that: you keep all your
breath and strength for the Slogger. "
## p. 7706 (#520) ###########################################
7706
THOMAS HUGHES
1
Martin meanwhile folded the clothes, and put them under the
chapel rails; and now Tom, with East to handle him and Martin
to give him a knee, steps out on the turf and is ready for all
that may come; and here is the Slogger too, all stripped, and
thirsting for the fray.
It doesn't look a fair match at first glance. Williams is nearly
two inches taller and probably a long year older than his oppo-
nent, and he is very strongly made about the arms and shoul-
ders; "peels well," as the little knot of big fifth-form boys, the
´amateurs, say,-who stand outside the ring of little boys, looking
complacently on but taking no active part in the proceedings.
But down below he is not so good by any means: no spring
from the loins, and feeblish, not to say shipwrecky, about the
knees. Tom, on the contrary, though not half so strong in the
arms, is good all over; straight, hard, and springy from neck to
ankle, better perhaps in his legs than anywhere. Besides, you
can see by the clear white of his eye and fresh bright look of
his skin that he is in tiptop training, able to do all he knows;
while the Slogger looks rather sodden, as if he didn't take much
exercise and eat too much tuck. The time-keeper is chosen, a
large ring made, and the two stand up opposite each other for
a moment, giving us time just to make our little observations.
"If Tom'll only condescend to fight with his head and heels,"
as East mutters to Martin, "we shall do. "
But seemingly he won't, for there he goes in, making play
with both hands. Hard all, is the word: the two stand to each
other like men; rally follows rally in quick succession, each fight-
ing as if he thought to finish the whole thing out of hand.
"Can't last at this rate," say the knowing ones, while the par-
tisans of each make the air ring with their shouts and counter-
shouts of encouragement, approval, and defiance.
"Take it easy, take it easy-keep away, let him come after
you," implores East, as he wipes Tom's face after the first round,
with wet sponge; while he sits back on Martin's knee, supported
by the Madman's long arms, which tremble a little from excite-
ment.
"Time's up! " calls the time-keeper.
"There he goes again, hang it all! " growls East, as his man
is at it again as hard as ever.
A very severe round follows, in which Tom gets out-and-out
the worst of it, and is at last hit clean off his legs and deposited
on the grass by a right-hander from the Slogger.
## p. 7707 (#521) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7707
Loud shouts rise from the boys of Slogger's house, and the
schoolhouse are silent and vicious, ready to pick quarrels any-
where.
"Two to one in half-crowns on the big 'un," says Rattle, one
of the amateurs, a tall fellow, in thunder-and-lightning waistcoat,
and puffy, good-natured face.
"Done! " says Groove, another amateur of quieter look, taking
out his note-book to enter it-for our friend Rattle sometimes
forgets these little things.
Meantime East is freshening up Tom with the sponges for
next round, and has set two other boys to rub his hands.
"Tom, old boy," whispers he, "this may be fun for you, but
it's death to me. He'll hit all the fight out of you in another
five minutes, and then I shall go and drown myself in the island
ditch. Feint him use your legs! - draw him about! he'll lose
his wind then in no time, and you can go into him. Hit at his
body, too; we'll take care of his frontispiece by-and-by. "
Tom felt the wisdom of the counsel, and saw already that he
couldn't go in and finish the Slogger off at mere hammer-and-
tongs, so changed his tactics completely in the third round. He
now fights cautious, getting away from and parrying the Slogger's
lunging hits, instead of trying to counter, and leading his enemy
a dance all round the ring after him.
"He's funking: go in, Williams! " "Catch him up! "
him off! " scream the small boys of the Slogger party.
"Just what we want," thinks East, chuckling to himself, as
he sees Williams, excited by these shouts, and thinking the
game in his own hands, blowing himself in his exertions to get
to close quarters again, while Tom is keeping away with perfect
ease.
"Finish
They quarter over the ground again and again, Tom always
on the defensive.
The Slogger pulls up at last for a moment, fairly blown.
"Now then, Tom," sings out East, dancing with delight.
Tom goes in in a twinkling, and hits two heavy body blows,
and gets away again before the Slogger can catch his wind;
which when he does he rushes with blind fury at Tom, and
being skillfully parried and avoided, overreaches himself and falls
on his face, amid terrific cheers from the schoolhouse boys.
"Double your two to one? " says Groove to Rattle, note-book
in hand.
## p. 7708 (#522) ###########################################
7708
THOMAS HUGHES
"Stop a bit,” says that hero, looking uncomfortably at Will-
iams, who is puffing away on his second's knee, winded enough,
but little the worse in any other way.
After another round the Slogger too seems to see that he can't
go in and win right off, and has met his match or thereabouts.
So he too begins to use his head, and tries to make Tom lose
patience and come in before his time. And so the fight sways
on, now one and now the other getting a trifling pull.
It is grim earnest now, and no mistake. Both boys feel this,
and summon every power of head, hand, and eye to their aid.
A piece of luck on either side, a foot slipping, a blow getting
well home, or another fall, may decide it. Tom works slowly
round for an opening; he has all the legs, and can choose his
own time: the Slogger waits for the attack, and hopes to finish
it by some heavy right-handed blow. As they quarter slowly
over the ground, the evening sun comes out from behind a cloud
and falls full on Williams's face. Tom darts in; the heavy right
hand is delivered, but only grazes his head. A short rally at
close quarters, and they close; in another moment the Slogger is
thrown again heavily for the third time.
"I'll give you three to two on the little one in half-crowns,”
said Groove to Rattle.
"No, thank 'ee," answers the other, diving his hands further
into his coat-tails.
Just at this stage of the proceedings the door of the turret
which leads to the doctor's library suddenly opens, and he steps
into the close and makes straight for the ring, in which Brown
and the Slogger are both seated on their seconds' knees for the
last time.
"The doctor! the doctor! " shouts some small boy who catches
sight of him; and the ring melts away in a few seconds, the
small boys tearing off, Tom collaring his jacket and waistcoat
and slipping through the little gate by the chapel, and round the
corner to Harrowell's with his backers, as lively as need be;
Williams and his backers making off not quite so fast across
the close; Groove, Rattle, and the other bigger fellows trying to
combine dignity and prudence in a comical manner, and walk-
ing off fast enough, they hope, not to be recognized, and not fast
enough to look like running away.
## p. 7708 (#523) ###########################################
## p. 7708 (#524) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO.
## p. 7708 (#525) ###########################################
#7
•
VICTOR HI GO
41 218851
BY ADOLI
TOR MARIE HUN Way's fenti
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greatest French poet; he is one of the greater
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## p. 7708 (#526) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO.
6397
## p. 7709 (#527) ###########################################
7709
VICTOR HUGO
·
(1802-1885)
BY ADOLPHE COHN
ICTOR MARIE HUGO, always mentioned as Victor Hugo, is un-
questionably the greatest literary figure of nineteenth-century
France. By almost universal consent he is recognized as the
greatest French poet; he is one of the greater poets of the world.
His birthplace was Besançon, an old town and fortress of the East
of France; which, having belonged to the Dukes of Burgundy, passed
with all their possessions to the Emperor Charles V. , King of Spain,
and grandson by his father of Duchess Mary of Burgundy, the only
child of the celebrated Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold. Besan-
çon did not return to France until 1677, when it was ceded to King
Louis XIV. by the treaty of Nimeguen. This explains how, in a kind
of autobiographical poem, Hugo could call the city of his birth "an
old Spanish town. " In the same poem he says: "The century was
two years old.
Already, under Bonaparte, Napoleon was ap-
pearing. " Thus he states the year of his birth, and the political con-
dition of France when he first saw the light of day, on February 26th,
1802,- or, according to the calendar then in use, on the seventh day
of the month of Ventôse, in the year Ten of the French Republic.
His father, Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo, a major in the service
of the Republic, later rose to the rank of general; accompanied Joseph
Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, first to Naples and then to Madrid,
when Joseph reluctantly gave up the crown of Naples for the title of
King of Spain; and died in the year 1828, a lieutenant-general in the
armies of Louis XVIII. , King of France. The son was already famous,
and was ardently defended and as ardently attacked as the foremost
leader in that literary and artistic revolution which has received the
name of Romanticism.
He was still very young, only twenty-six, but his name had been
before the public for six years, - his first volume of verse, 'Odes and
Diverse Poems,' having appeared in 1822. From the beginning, read-
ers had been struck by the passionate fervor, the dazzling color, the
splendid imagery, and the magnificent rhythm of his lyric utterances.
Most of these were qualities that French poetry had not known be-
fore, at least till the publication of Lamartine's first 'Meditations' in
1820; and their appearance in Hugo's first productions is, at least
partly, to be ascribed to the circumstances of his education.
## p. 7710 (#528) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7710
To a certain extent he had shared his father's wandering exist-
ence. With his mother and brothers he had left Paris, where the
family had come after leaving Besançon, and joined General Hugo in
Madrid; there he became a boarding pupil in an institution reserved
for the children of Spanish noblemen, among whom he was entitled
to be educated on account of the title of "count" granted to his
father by King Joseph. The disasters that overtook the French in
Spain compelled the Hugo family to seek safety in flight, and soon
he was in Paris again. One morning his mother stopped him in front
of a poster announcing that a number of officers concerned in the
almost successful plot of General Malet to overthrow Napoleon, had
been court-martialed and shot in the plains of Grenelle. In the list,
Madame Hugo directed her son Victor's attention to one name, that
of General Laboise; adding simply these words: "He was your god-
father. " In fact, Laboise had been more than a godfather to young
Victor and his brothers. While they were living in a part of the old
convent of the Feuillantines, he, proscribed and compelled to hide,
had one day mysteriously appeared, and had soon become the boys'
chief instructor. Then he had as mysteriously disappeared, soon to
end his life by the bullets of the executing platoon. Upon a mind
gifted with remarkable receptivity, upon an imagination which trans-
formed everything into a visible picture, upon an eye which seized
small details and absorbed color with lightning rapidity, such scenes,
such dramas, such contrasts, could not fail to produce the deepest
impression.
These gifts were, however, not the first that manifested themselves
when the youth began to pass from impression to expression. His
mastery of words, his power of verbal combination, is the only one of
his great characteristics which is visible in his first poetical outpour-
ings. The old classical school of French poetry was then dying a
lingering death; like those rivers which, after carrying a majestic
and beneficent flow of water through magnificent landscapes, finally
turn into myriads of small rivulets soon absorbed by barren sands.
The poetical forms that had been so powerful in the hands of Cor-
neille and Racine, now handled by inferior writers possessing depth
neither of thought nor of feeling, were gradually destroyed under a
heap of barren periphrases and circumlocutions. To hint instead of
naming, to use twenty words when one would have sufficed, seemed
to be the highest achievement of these writers; and good Abbé
Delille came to be considered a great poet.
Young Hugo first fol-
lowed in the footsteps of the so-called great man of his time, and
thus won a number of prizes in the poetical competitions of his early
years.
The catastrophes in which Napoleon's power disappeared, the
strange events which accompanied and followed the restoration of
## p. 7711 (#529) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7711
the Bourbons to the throne of France, soon gave to his poetry a more
serious tone. To him, as to every lover of French poetry, the success
of Lamartine's 'Meditations' was a revelation, a beacon showing new
pathways to greatness. Not simply general ideas, but individual
thought and personal emotion, were seen to be legitimate subjects.
for poetical treatment. Hugo's first Odes, published in 1822, chiefly
expressed the thoughts awakened in the young man by the dramatic
scenes just enacted upon the stage of the world. While Lamartine
at thirty mainly sang of his loves, and turned every sigh of his heart
into a harmonious stanza, Hugo at twenty attempted to give to the
French people lessons in political philosophy,—a phenomenon not to
be wondered at: the man of thirty had lived and suffered, the youth
of twenty had merely followed with intelligent and passionate inter-
est the development of one of the most awful dramas in history.
The small collection published in 1822 grew little by little until
1827, when it appeared in the form and with the title it has pre-
served ever since: four books of Odes and one of Ballads being col-
lected under the title of Odes and Ballads. ' The growth of the
book is the growth of the man. The author of the first Odes-of
'Moses on the Nile,' for instance- was hardly more than a child; the
poet of 1827 was a man, who several times already, conscious of
bringing to France a new kind of poetry, had assumed in the prefaces
in which he explained and justified it a tone of authority.
The most remarkable piece in the collection shows Hugo for the
first time in a character which was often to be his in later years,-
that of spokesman of public opinion, of interpreter of public feeling.
It is the famous 'Ode to the Colonna,' which he wrote as a protest,
on hearing that at a reception at the Austrian Embassy the servant,
in announcing several of Napoleon's marshals, had by order of the
ambassador refused to give them the titles of nobility won by them
on the battle-fields of Europe. The publication of such a poem was
the more remarkable that the poet, till then, had been known as a
fervent royalist, as an enemy of Napoleonic pretensions, and that he
had in the same volume an earlier Ode, 'Buonaparte,' in which the
great warrior is represented almost as a "messenger of hell. ”
The same year that witnessed the completion of the 'Odes and
Ballads' saw also the publication of Hugo's first drama, 'Cromwell. '
The poet had begun the work with the intention of having the title
part acted by the great tragedian Talma, who had accepted it. But
Talma died before the drama was ready, and Hugo then determined
to pay no attention to the requirements of the stage, and to make
his drama a work for the reading public, not for the play-goer; but
at the same time he wrote for his 'Cromwell' a preface which was
at once considered as the manifesto of the "Romantic School. " In
•
## p. 7712 (#530) ###########################################
7712
VICTOR HUGO
this preface he attacks the dramatic system then in vogue, which
consisted of a slavish adherence to the rules followed by Corneille
and Racine, after the reasons for these rules had long ceased to exist.
He especially assailed the rule of the "three unities,”—of place, time,
and action,-affirming his allegiance only to the third rule, unity
of action; and at the same time he advocated introducing into the
plays what soon came to be called "local color," and invited young
dramatic writers to study Shakespeare rather than the masters of the
French classical stage.
In novel-writing also, in which Hugo so greatly distinguished him-
self afterward, he had already manifested his activity. In 1825 he
published his novel 'Hans of Iceland,' a weird story; which had been
preceded by a tale of San Domingo, full of descriptions of violent
passions, 'Bug Jargal. ' These two works are to be remembered only
as the forerunners of Hugo's great novels of later years, 'Notre Dame
de Paris,' 'Les Misérables,' and 'Ninety-three. '
All this work Hugo had achieved when twenty-six years of age.
In 1829 came out his second collection of lyrics, Les Orientales. '
Almost all these poems deal with the East, the bright colors of which
the poet was fond of reproducing. But there was something in the
book besides its æsthetic value. All Europe was then enthusiastic for
the cause of Greek independence. A few years before had occurred
Byron's death at Missolonghi. The Turkish fleet had just been an-
nihilated in the Bay of Navarino by the united squadrons of England,
France, and Russia. In his 'Orientales' Hugo gave expression to the
feelings of admiration with which Canaris and the other heroes of
Greece filled all his countrymen. His fiery lines were often written
under the direct inspiration of Byron's poems,-the poem 'Mazeppa,'
for instance, under the title of which stands a motto taken from the
English bard's 'Mazeppa. ' The book created a great deal of discus-
sion, and was warmly defended by its author in brilliant prefaces
introducing rapidly succeeding editions.
But Hugo was then thinking of the stage more than of anything
else. The Romantic School, of which he was now the acknowledged
head, was, in spite of some successes won by Alfred de Vigny and
Alexandre Dumas, taunted with being unable to produce any dra-
matic masterpiece. The publication of 'Cromwell,' the performance
of which its author himself admitted to be impossible, seemed to jus-
tify the taunt. Hugo had to take up the challenge and answer it.
This he did in the most striking fashion. The first work he prepared
for the stage was his drama of Marion Delorme. ' It was received by
the Comédie Française, and was about to be performed, when the
ministers of King Charles X. bethought themselves that the charac-
ter of his ancestor Louis XIII. was presented in the drama in a way
## p. 7713 (#531) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7713
The per-
not calculated to increase the public respect for royalty.
formance was forbidden. The manager was almost heart-broken. But
within a few weeks, under the excitement produced by the royal
government's arbitrary act, the poet wrote his immortal drama of
'Hernani'; full of the passions of love and honor, one of the great
poems of youthful enthusiasm for what is lovable and beautiful.
'Hernani' was performed on February 25th, 1830, on the last day
of the poet's twenty-eighth year. The date is considered one of the
great dates in the history of French literature. It is known as the
"Battle of Hernani. " The advocates of the old and new schools met,
determined to give decisive battle to each other. Applause and hiss-
ing mingled; more direct arguments were used; blows even were
given and received. On each night the fight was renewed, with this
result that the applause grew stronger every time the play was
given, until criticism was finally silenced and drowned under the
majestic flow of poetry that came from the lips of Hernani and
Doña Sol, Don Carlos and Ruy Gomez de Silva.
<
Attention has often been called to the fact that in their most
poetical plays, both Corneille and Hugo treated Spanish subjects. But
while Corneille found in the plays of Guilhen de Castro the plot of his
'Cid, the plot of Hernani' is entirely original. No incident in the
life of Hugo's Don Carlos- that is, of the Emperor Charles V. -ever
happened, upon which to build such a drama as the one in which the
French poet gives him such a conspicuous part. But Hugo had re-
tained a very vivid memory of his stay in Spain as a boy, and both
the country and time in which he places the development of his plot
were favorite ones with the Romanticists. Both offered great oppor-
tunities for the display of that local color in scenery, costumes, and
even speech, upon which the new school so much depended; and by
the impression left in the minds of men they also somewhat justified
and made acceptable to the public the exaggerations, the sharp con-
trasts, which had from the start formed an important part of Hugo's
literary equipment. Hernani' presents to us a struggle between a
bandit and a king, both in love with the same woman. The king
experiences within his own heart a struggle of no mean importance,
in which his better nature finally triumphs, when by his election as
Emperor he is called to higher responsibilities. The girl who is loved
by him and by Hernani, Doña Sol, is also loved by an old uncle, a
pattern of nobility and loftiness, and none the less passionate because
of his years; so that we have the contrast not only of king and
bandit, but also of old age and youth. The poet carries us through
the phases best calculated to set off his scenes of love and his con-
tests of passions: the castle of Silva, Charlemagne's tomb, the illumin-
ated palace of the former bandit, now "Don Juan of Aragon,” on the
XIII-483
## p. 7714 (#532) ###########################################
7714
VICTOR HUGO
night of his bridal fête. But more than any of the features of the
plot, which after all is hardly more than a very skillfully constructed
melodrama, that which caused the success of the play, and makes it
one of the masterpieces of literature, is the enchanting poetry of all
the love passages.
All the joys and all the torments, all the hopes
and all the doubts, the triumph and the despair of this eternally
young passion, find there melodious expressions which remain for-
ever in the mind and ear of readers and spectators. When Hernani
and Doña Sol, their vital parts already withered by the deadly poi-
son which old Silva had prepared for one of them, and which both
have absorbed, say,- one had almost written sing,-"Toward new
and brighter lights we shall expand our wings. With even flight
we set forth towards a better world," we all envy their happiness;
and in their final embrace, Death disappears under the tread of all-
conquering Love.
It need hardly be said that in the construction of his play Hugo
departed entirely from the old classical system: there was no unity of
time, no unity of place. But he is, it must be admitted, still further
away from Shakespeare than from Racine and Corneille. Nothing
differs more from Shakespearean simplicity of style than Hugo's
majestic, harmonious, and dazzlingly rhetorical, metaphorical, dodeca-
syllabic lines. Indeed, the beauties of this play are decidedly more
lyrical than dramatic. But the fact remained that a French play
which is a masterpiece had been written in a system different from
the old one; and the victory had been won for the "new school. "
The triumph of 'Hernani' was nothing less than a literary revolu-
tion. It was soon followed by a political revolution. In July 1830,
the government of the Bourbons, which had been reinstated in France
by the victorious foreigners after the defeat and fall of Napoleon,
was brought to an end by a rising of the Paris population, enthusias
tically applauded by the whole of France. Hugo, who had been in
youth a stanch supporter of the Bourbons, had like many others
been estranged, little by little, by the contempt which the Bourbons
and the court circles showed for the glorious soldiers of the Revo-
lution and the Empire, and by a succession of arbitrary measures
which showed that the spirit of the ancien régime was far from dead
and still threatened the dearly bought liberty of France. He shared
the popular enthusiasm for the Revolution of 1830, hailed it as a
promise of greatness for France and of enfranchisement for the peo-
ple, and returned to his literary labors with a faith in his own powers
increased by the ever growing applause of the public.
The thirteen years that followed may be called Hugo's happy
years. They were years of remarkable productiveness. In 1831 he
published his first great novel, 'Notre Dame de Paris. ' The same
## p. 7715 (#533) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7715
year witnessed the first performance of 'Marion Delorme'; and ix
other dramas-three in prose, Marie Tudor,' 'Lucrèce Borgia,' and
'Angelo, Tyran de Padua,' and three much greater in verse, 'Le Roi
s'Amuse' (The King's Diversion), 'Ruy Blas,' and 'Les Burgraves'-
followed each other between 1832 and 1843. In the same period
appeared four collections of lyrics, in no way inferior to those that
had preceded them: Les Feuilles d'Automne' (Autumn Leaves), 'Les
Chants du Crépuscule (Twilight Songs), 'Les Voix Intérieures' (Inner
Voices), and 'Les Rayons et les Ombres' (Sunbeams and Shadows).
This alone would suffice for the glory of a great writer. It is only a
small part, and assuredly not the highest, of Hugo's magnificent pro-
duction.
―
Perhaps the most successful of these works was 'Notre Dame de
Paris, the great novel often bearing the English title 'The Hunch-
back of Notre Dame'. a title to some extent misleading. Quasimodo
the Hunchback, though undoubtedly a very important character, is
certainly not the centre of the novel. The bewitching gipsy girl,
Esmeralda, plays as important a part in it as he does; and perhaps
the same may be said of the terrible priest, Claude Frollo. In Hugo's
mind the centre of the novel was the church of Notre Dame itself.
True to the tendencies of the literary school which acknowledged him
as its head, after seeking inspiration in the East and in Spain he
undertook to do for the Middle Ages what Châteaubriand, in 'Atala'
and in Les Martyrs,' had attempted to do for Christianity. Both
of these themes had been kept out of French literature by the Clas-
sical School. Their right to be in it was one of the tenets of the
Romanticists, and 'Notre Dame de Paris' gloriously established the
soundness of their position. The Gothic cathedral is the centre
of the novel, as it was the centre of mediæval life: everything and
everybody, king and poet, priest and Bohemian, the knight clad in
brilliant armor and Clopin Trouillefou the hideous truand, Quasimodo
the hunchback and La Sachette the bestialized lunatic,-in whom
still survives the saintliest feeling of mankind, maternal love,— move
in and around the majestic building whose uplifted towers carry up
to heaven the prayer and lamentation of suffering humanity. The
central character is the relentless force under which every human
destiny bends: the Fate of the ancients, whose Greek name, Anankè,
deciphered by the poet on an old forgotten wall, is taken as title of
one of the most astonishing chapters of this prodigious work.
The dramas were not all equally successful. Marion Delorme'
did not win, and did not deserve, the same popularity as 'Hernani. '
'Le Roi s'Amuse' - the plot of which has become so popular with
opera-goers in Verdi's 'Rigoletto,' and with theatre-goers under its
English name of 'The Fool's Revenge' — was taken from the boards
-
## p. 7716 (#534) ###########################################
7716
VICTOR HUGO
after its first performance, by order of the government, which de-
clared it to be an immoral play. The real reason was that an
immoral part in it is ascribed to a king of France, Francis I. ; the
proscription being one of the signs that though crowned by a revolu-
tion, King Louis Philippe the citizen king cared more for his crown
than for the liberal aspirations to which he owed it. The poet claimed
redress from the courts, without any satisfaction save the opportunity
of delivering a superb oration in defense of the rights of authors.
The drama was at last revived, under the Third Republic, fifty years
after its first performance.
The prose dramas were not very favorably received. It seemed
that the public could hardly conceive of Hugo's characters expressing
themselves otherwise than in verse. One of these dramas, 'Lucrèce
Borgia,' provided Donizetti with the libretto of his famous opera.
'Ruy Blas' was a decided success, and with Hernani' and 'Les
Burgraves' represents the best work that Hugo has done as a dram-
atist. Like Hernani,' 'Ruy Blas' is a Spanish play; that is, the
action takes place in Spain, and the characters are Spanish. But
there is this difference between the two dramas: that while in 'Her-
nani' Hugo drew everything from his imagination, in Ruy Blas he
made use of a great deal of historical material. The plot itself - the
story of the lackey who under an assumed name rises to the high-
est dignities of the State, and who, filled with the purest love and
reverence for the unhappy queen, is rewarded by the gift of her
heart-is entirely imaginary; but the picture of the court of Spain
under Charles II. is in many respects a historical picture, except
that everything which Hugo ascribes to Charles II. 's second wife was
true not of her, but of his first wife, a French princess, daughter of
Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orléans, who died but a short time
after her marriage with the King of Spain.
-
In 'Ruy Blas,' as in 'Hernani,' the means chiefly used by the
poet to produce emotion in the spectator is contrast. The characters
are a queen, who is no better than a prisoner; a nobleman, Don
César de Bazan, who is a beggar and a tramp; a lackey, Ruy Blas,
who loves a queen. The mover of the plot, Don Salluste de Bazan,
is a disgraced nobleman, who, after being dismissed by the influence
of the queen, suddenly disappears, and while moving in the darkness
tries to ensnare her into a situation in which her honor and reputa-
tion are bound to perish. She is saved by the devotion and readi-
ness of Ruy Blas, but not until he has given up his life with the last
sigh of his love for her. 'Ruy Blas' is perhaps a better constructed
drama than 'Hernani,' and yet it does not hold the spectator as
powerfully as its predecessor. The reason is that while the love
passages are supremely poetical, the situation is too impossible to be
## p. 7717 (#535) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7717
made credible. But with all its shortcomings, 'Ruy Blas' remains a
beautiful drama, which may perhaps share with 'Hernani' the honor
of remaining on the stage long after the other dramas of Hugo shall
be known only by the reading public.
Can we say the same of 'Les Burgraves'? It is hard to answer.
When first performed, in 1843, the drama was a failure. It has never
been revived since; and yet it is a favorite with Hugo's greatest
admirers, and every year some of its scenes are successfully pre-
sented in France by the young men and women who are preparing
to enter the dramatic profession. The lassitude of the public toward
a drama full of the most extraordinary contrasts may well be under-
stood. Would it, however, strike in the same way spectators who
had not had presented to them in a dozen years all the dramatic
works of Hugo? The question is likely to receive some day a prac-
tical answer, for 'Les Burgraves' holds such a place in the affections
of lovers of French poetry that it is sure to be put upon the boards
again. Some of the characters of this play are almost too great and
too powerful to be human. Barbarossa, Job, Magnus, the relentless
old woman Guanhumara, might be accepted in a music drama; but
when they use the words and the voice which are used in every-day
life, we cannot but see in them men and women like ourselves, while
their actions are impossible for such men and women. And yet there
is a logic in the drama, a nobleness of inspiration, that compel ad-
miration. Side by side with the gigantic and the degenerate figures
that battle against each other, and call up before our eyes the robber
barons of mediæval Germany, we have the fresh love idyl of Otbert
and Regina, which casts a ray of sunshine over the darkness of the
background. Whatever verdict may be ultimately passed upon 'Les
Burgraves' as a drama, it is certainly a powerful poem, and in parts
an exquisite one.
But for the highest poetical outpourings of Victor Hugo during
this period of his life, we must turn to his collection of lyrics. He
is essentially a lyric poet; and his glory rests more upon such pro-
ductions as 'Les Feuilles d'Automne' and 'Les Chants du Crépus-
cule than upon any of his dramas save 'Hernani. '
The lyric poems published between 1830 and 1843 cover as wide
a range of private and public events as anything a poet ever wrote.
All the qualities for which Hugo has been praised appear in them,
carried to the highest degree. His poems on childhood, a theme
which perhaps no poet ever treated so felicitously, are especially
notable. Later in life, in 1877, he published a volume of verse
entirely devoted to children, 'L'Art d'Être Grand-père' (The Art of
Grandfatherhood), the heroes of which were his grandchildren George
and Jeanne.
In the earlier book the children were his own children,
## p. 7718 (#536) ###########################################
7718
VICTOR HUGO
Charles and François-Victor, Adèle and Léopoldine,-fated, alas! all
to precede him to the grave save one, whose fate was sadder than
death itself, since her vanished reason did not even allow her to
know whether her illustrious father remained among the living or
slept among the dead! But the greatest poems undoubtedly are
those that deal with themes of public interest. It is the period in
which the worship of Napoleon reached its highest point. It came to
its climax on December 15th, 1840, when, under a dazzling sky and
through the crispest and coldest air Paris ever knew, the remains of
the great soldier, given back to France by England, were carried to
the home of the old soldiers of France, and laid under the dome of
the Invalides, giving fulfillment at last to the wish of the Emperor:
"I wish to rest on the banks of the Seine, among those Frenchmen
whom I have loved so much! " No writer so constantly and fervently
joined, or rather led, in this Napoleonic worship as Victor Hugo; and
we must add that in no subject was he so much at ease as in these
Napoleonic themes. The greatness of the man, the greatness of the
events, the contrast between the height of power to which he attained
and the depth of misery which succeeded the splendor of his tri-
umphs, all these elements admirably blended with the love of the
gigantic, the admiration for contrast and antithesis, the gorgeous
imagery which distinguished Hugo's muse. The poet took hold of
every occasion that presented itself of celebrating the hero of the
century. When Napoleon's son died, he wrote his 'Napoleon II. . '
one of his most perfect productions; when the Chamber of Deputies
refused to replace Napoleon's statue on the top of the Vendôme
column, he wrote his second 'Ode to the Column of the Place Ven-
dôme'; when Napoleon's remains returned to France, the 'Return of
the Emperor's Ashes,' etc. These various pieces, which at a later
period culminated in the Expiation,' form together a Napoleonic epic
of great splendor and stateliness, in every way worthy of the prodi-
gious man around whom it centres.
For nearly ten years after the performance of 'Les Burgraves'
Hugo published very little. He wrote a great deal, for he was an
indefatigable worker; but completed no drama, no novel, brought no
collection of verse to that point of perfection which he required of
his productions before submitting them to the public. The reason
we find in a terrible domestic calamity which befell him in the fall
of 1843. His oldest daughter, Léopoldine, who had but a few months
before become the wife of a young man of great promise, M. Charles
Vacquerie, was with her husband drowned in the Seine, at Villequier,
not very far from the mouth of the river. The exact circumstances
of the catastrophe have never been discovered. Its effect was to
destroy in the poet, so happy till then, this joy of life which some
1
## p. 7719 (#537) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7719
natures need as much as the air which they breathe. Hugo sought
diversion from his grief in the study of public questions and in
political activity. Louis Philippe made him a peer of France; and
the people, after the fall of Louis Philippe and the establishment of
the Republic (1848), made him a member of the National Assembly.
There Hugo for a while hesitated between the Conservatives and
the Democrats. The savage measures which, after the socialistic in-
surrection of June 1848, were adopted and enforced by the victorious
bourgeoisie against the deluded, rebellious, but thoroughly honest and
moreover starving workingmen of Paris, put a stop to his hesitations.
He cast in his lot with the party of mercy, that is, with the advanced
Republicans. In their camp he soon became one of the foremost
leaders. He soon discerned in Louis Bonaparte an ambition which
foreboded evil to the republic of which, as the nephew of Napoleon
the Great, he had been elected President, and in a memorable and
fiery oration dubbed him Napoleon the Little.
The military coup d'état of December 2d, 1851, by which the re-
publican constitution was violently destroyed, found Hugo among the
citizens most energetically determined to resist by force the violation
of the supreme law. He risked his life in defending the rights of
the people against the imperial usurper, and after the final defeat
of the Constitutionalists had to flee from the country, swearing not
to return as long as liberty itself remained an exile from France.
His exile lasted longer than he had expected, but was not an un-
fruitful one. During the eighteen years 1853-1870-which he spent
first in Brussels, whence he was soon expelled by the Belgian govern-
ment; then in the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey, where he
finally bought an estate, Hauteville House, which became to him a
real home - he published a political pamphlet, 'Napoleon the Little,'
four great collections of verse,- - 'Les Châtiments (The Chastise-
ments), 'Les Contemplations,' 'La Légende des Siècles' (The Legend
of the Ages), 'Les Chansons des Rues et des Bois' (Songs of the
Streets and Woods); and three novels, of which 'Les Misérables' is
considered one of the masterpieces of the century, the other two
being 'Les Travailleurs de la Mer (The Toilers of the Sea), and
'L'Homme Qui Rit' (The Man Who Laughs).
This does not include all that he wrote during his exile. Indeed,
the first work which he composed after leaving France, the History
of a Crime,'-which, begun on December 13th, 1851, was completed
on May 5th, 1852,—was not published until twenty-five years later, in
1877. Instead of the history of the political crime committed by Louis
Bonaparte on December 2d, 1851, Hugo published in 1852 his immortal
pamphlet 'Napoleon the Little,' every page of which reads as though
his pen had been dipped in incandescent lava; and a year later
## p. 7720 (#538) ###########################################
7720
VICTOR HUGO
(1853) The Chastisements,' which must perhaps rank in the whole
range of poetry as the highest masterpiece of political invective.
These two works, Napoleon the Little' and 'The Chastisements,'
are inseparable from each other; the latter is the poetical comment-
ary of the former. As long as Napoleon III. reigned, their circula-
tion was absolutely forbidden in France, and nearly every Frenchman
who took a trip out of the country was asked by his friends to
smuggle in some copies of the forbidden books on his return.
The chief beauty of The Chastisements,' the most perfect produc-
tion of Hugo's poetical genius, lies in the incredible variety of the
book. It is not all political invective: it contains superb pieces of
pure narrative poetry, like the Memory of the Night of the Fourth,'
the simple story of the death and burial of a child killed by a stray
bullet of Napoleon's soldiers; comic songs; pieces of poetical fancy,
like the 'Imperial Mantle'; weird and severe dialogues between man
and his conscience, like 'The Seaside'; humorous dialogues, like 'The
Three Horses'; and amid this profusion of minor pieces one composi-
tion of truly epic grandeur, 'L'Expiation,' where the greatness of the
first Napoleon is contrasted with the unworthiness of his successor,
and where the poet, discovering by the light of events the stain on
his former hero's escutcheon,- that is, the insatiable ambition which
led him early in his career to the coup d'état of the 18th Brumaire of
the year VIII. (November 9th, 1799), by which he substituted his own
personal power for the free republican institutions then possessed by
France, shows in the success of the nephew's nefarious deed the
punishment of the uncle's insufficiently requited sin.
―――――――――――
'Contemplations,' which followed in 1856, is a very different work.
The book contains pieces belonging to various and widely distant
years of the poet's life. Some pieces are dated 1834, some 1854. It
is a record of the poet's inner being. A whole division of the work,
'Pauca Meæ,' consists of pieces devoted to the memory of his dead
daughter. Hugo never wrote anything finer, purer, more touching,
than these verses. And in another part of the book we find an
'Answer to an Impeachment,' which is an admirably witty (we had
almost said saucy), poetical, and lucid explanation of what he had
considered his literary mission to be.
In 1859 he published the 'Legend of the Ages,' or rather a vol-
ume containing a number of the pieces which now form, in the com-
plete collection of his writings, a much larger work by the same title.
The finest pieces of the 'Legend of the Ages'-'The Consecration of
Woman,' 'The First Meeting of Christ at the Tomb,' 'Roland's Mar-
riage,' 'The Little King of Galicia,' 'Aymerillot the Satyr'— belong
to the collection of 1859. It is of this book alone that Theodore de
Banville, a poet himself, was thinking when he said that nothing finer
## p. 7721 (#539) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7721
in French poetry has been written than the 'Legend of the Ages. '
Hugo's purpose had been to select in the historical and imaginative
life of mankind a number of episodes sketching out the development
of the race in the past, and opening some vistas into the farthest
distant future. The Bible both in the Old and New Testaments, the
traditions of classical Greece, the medieval poems, the heroic deeds
of the great discoverers and conquistadores of the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries, provided him with themes, the treatment of which
affords a singularly striking combination of his personal gifts with
the spirit of his sources of inspiration. In the 'Legend of the Ages'
his power of verbal invention and arrangement is almost beyond
belief, while yet the expression is always as translucid as the waters
of the purest mountain spring.
The universal applause with which the 'Legend of the Ages' was
received was still audible when in quick succession, between April 3d
and June 30th, 1862, appeared the five parts of Hugo's longest work,
his novel 'Les Misérables. ' The success of the work was astounding.
For the great mass of the reading public it has a decided superiority
over all the other productions of Hugo, in that it is entertaining.
Even for one who does not care for Hugo's magnificence of style, or
for his striking way of presenting humors and social problems, or for
the stream of poetry that runs through everything he wrote, the story
told in 'Les Misérables' is as fascinating as anything written by that
greatest of amusers, Alexandre Dumas. Jean Valjean—who appears
at the beginning of the work as a kind of ticket-of-leave man, who
has just served his term in a penitentiary where he had been sent
for a theft committed under stress of starvation; who several times
builds up anew for himself the modest edifice of a small social posi-
tion, and every time is thrown ruthlessly down when his antecedents
are discovered - passes through so many strange adventures that
he who does not want to think need not think, while simply looking
upon the succession of incidents. He thus visits Monseigneur Myriel,
the venerable bishop, the very incarnation of Christian philanthropy;
as well as the old member of the National Convention, now shunned
by all for having conscientiously declared Louis XVI. guilty of a cap-
ital crime.
bound you shall hear it. "
"May it come speedily," said Blake, and then settled himself
in his seat.
"Eyes in the boat-mind now, steady all; watch the stroke
and don't quicken. "
These are Miller's last words; every faculty of himself and
the crew being now devoted to getting a good start. This is no
difficult matter, as the water is like glass, and the boat lies
lightly on it, obeying the slightest dip of the oars of bow and
two, who just feel the water twice or thrice in the last minute.
Then, after a few moments of breathless hush on the bank, the
last gun is fired and they are off.
The same scene of mad excitement ensues, only tenfold more
intense, as almost the whole interest of the races is to-night
concentrated on the two head boats and their fate.
At every
gate there is a jam, and the weaker vessels are shoved into the
ditches, upset, and left unnoticed. The most active men, includ-
ing the O. U. B. coxswain, shun the gates altogether and take
the big ditches in their stride, making for the long bridges, that
they may get quietly over these and be safe for the best part of
the race.
They know that the critical point of the struggle will
be near the finish.
Both boats make a beautiful start; and again, as before in
the first dash, the St. Ambrose pace tells, and they gain their
boat's-length before first winds fail: then they settle down for a
long, steady effort. Both crews are rowing comparatively steady,
## p. 7703 (#517) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7703
Thus they
reserving themselves for the tug of war up above.
pass the Gut, and so those two treacherous corners, the scene
⚫ of countless bumps, into the wider water beyond, up under the
willows.
•
Miller's face is decidedly hopeful; he shows no sign, indeed,
but you can see that he is not the same man as he was at this
place in the last race. He feels that to-day the boat is full of
life, and that he can call on his crew with hopes of an answer.
H well-trained eye also detects that while both crews are at
full stretch, his own, instead of losing as it did on the last
night, is now gaining inch by inch on Oriel. The gain is scarcely
perceptible to him even; from the bank it is quite imperceptible:
but there it is; he is surer and surer of it, as one after another
the willows are left behind.
he
And now comes the pinch. The Oriel captain is beginning to
be conscious of the fact which has been dawning on Miller, but
will not acknowledge it to himself; and as his coxswain turns
boat's head gently across the stream, and makes for the Berkshire
side and the goal, now full in view, he smiles grimly as he
quickens his stroke, he will shake off these light-heeled gentry
yet, as he did before.
Miller sees the move in a moment and signals his captain,
and the next stroke St. Ambrose has quickened also; and now
there is no mistake about it,-St. Ambrose is creeping up slowly
but surely. The boat's-length lessens to forty feet, thirty feet;
surely and steadily lessens. But the race is not lost yet; thirty
feet is a short space enough to look at on the water, but a good
bit to pick up foot by foot in the last two hundred yards of a
desperate struggle. They are over under the Berkshire side
now, and there stands up the winning-post, close ahead, all but
won. The distance lessens and lessens still, but the Oriel crew
stick steadily and gallantly to their work, and will fight every inch
of distance to the last. The Orielites on the bank, who are rush-
ing along, sometimes in the water, sometimes out, hoarse, furious,
madly alternating between hope and despair, have no reason to
be ashamed of a man in the crew. Off the mouth of the Cher-
well there is still twenty feet between them. Another minute,
and it will be over one way or another. Every man in both
crews is now doing his best, and no mistake: tell me which boat
holds the most men who can do better than their best at a
pinch, who will risk a broken blood-vessel, and I will tell you
## p. 7704 (#518) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7704
how it will end. "Hard pounding, gentlemen: let's see who will
pound longest," the Duke is reported to have said at Waterloo,
and won.
"Now, Tummy, lad, 'tis thou or I," Big Ben said as
he came up to the last round of his hardest fight, and won. Is
there a man of that temper in either crew to-night? If so, now's
his time. For both coxswains have called on their men for the
last effort; Miller is whirling the tassel of his right-hand tiller
rope round his head, like a wiry little lunatic; from the towing-
path, from Christ Church meadow, from the rows of punts, from
the clustered tops of the barges, comes a roar of encouragement
and applause, and the band, unable to resist the impulse, breaks
with a crash into the 'Jolly Young Waterman,' playing two bars
to the second. A bump in the Gut is nothing-a few partisans
on the towing-path to cheer you, already out of breath; but up
here at the very finish, with all Oxford looking on, when the
prize is the headship of the river-once in a generation only do
men get such a chance.
Who ever saw Jervis not up to his work? The St. Ambrose
stroke is glorious. Tom had an atom of go still left in the very
back of his head, and at this moment he heard Drysdale's view
halloo above all the din: it seemed to give him a lift, and other
men besides in the boat, for in another six strokes the gap is
lessened and St. Ambrose has crept up to ten feet, and now to
five, from the stern of Oriel. Weeks afterward Hardy confided
to Tom that when he heard that view halloo he seemed to feel
the muscles of his arms and legs turn into steel, and did more
work in the last twenty strokes than in any other forty in the
earlier part of the race.
Another fifty yards and Oriel is safe; but the look on the
captain's face is so ominous that their coxswain glances over his
shoulder. The bow of St. Ambrose is within two feet of their
rudder. It is a moment for desperate expedients. He pulls his
left tiller rope suddenly, thereby carrying the stern of his own
boat out of the line of the St. Ambrose, and calls on his crew
once more: they respond gallantly yet, but the rudder is against
them for a moment, and the boat drags. St. Ambrose overlaps.
"A bump, a bump! " shout the St. - Ambrosians or shore. "Row
on, row on! " screams Miller. He has not yet felt the electric
shock, and knows he will miss his bump if the young ones slacken
for a moment. A young coxswain would have gone on making
shots at the stern of the Oriel boat, and so have lost.
## p. 7705 (#519) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7705
A ump now and no mistake: the bow of the St. Ambrose
boat jams the oar of the Oriel stroke, and the two boats pass the
winning-post with the way that was on them when the bump
was made. So near a shave was it.
To describe the scene on the bank is beyond me. It was a
hurly-burly of delirious joy, in the midst of which took place a
terrific combat between Jack and the Oriel dog,—a noble black
bull terrier belonging to the college in general, and no one in
particular, who always attended the races and felt the misfortune.
keenly. Luckily, they were parted without worse things happen-
ing; for though the Oriel men were savage, and not disinclined
for a jostle, the milk of human kindness was too strong for the
moment in their adversaries, and they extricated themselves from
the crowd, carrying off Crib, their dog, and looking straight
before them into vacancy.
-
"Well rowed, boys," says Jervis, turning round to his crew,
as they lay panting on their oars.
"Well rowed, five," says Miller, who, even in the hour of
such a triumph, is not inclined to be general in laudation.
"Well rowed, five," is echoed from the bank; it is that cun-
ning man, the recruiting sergeant. "Fatally well rowed," he
adds to a comrade, with whom he gets into one of the punts to
cross to Christ Church meadow: "we must have him in the Uni-
versity crew. "
"I don't think you'll get him to row, from what I hear,"
answers the other.
"Then he must be handcuffed and carried into the boat by
force," says the coxswain O. U. B. : "why is not the press gang
an institution in this university? "
THE FIGHT BETWEEN TOM BROWN AND WILLIAMS
From Tom Brown's School Days'
TOM
Oм felt he had got his work cut out for him, as he stripped
off his jacket, waistcoat, and braces. East tied his hand-
kerchief round his waist, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves
for him.
"Now, old boy, don't you open your mouth to say a word, or
try to help yourself a bit,—we'll do all that: you keep all your
breath and strength for the Slogger. "
## p. 7706 (#520) ###########################################
7706
THOMAS HUGHES
1
Martin meanwhile folded the clothes, and put them under the
chapel rails; and now Tom, with East to handle him and Martin
to give him a knee, steps out on the turf and is ready for all
that may come; and here is the Slogger too, all stripped, and
thirsting for the fray.
It doesn't look a fair match at first glance. Williams is nearly
two inches taller and probably a long year older than his oppo-
nent, and he is very strongly made about the arms and shoul-
ders; "peels well," as the little knot of big fifth-form boys, the
´amateurs, say,-who stand outside the ring of little boys, looking
complacently on but taking no active part in the proceedings.
But down below he is not so good by any means: no spring
from the loins, and feeblish, not to say shipwrecky, about the
knees. Tom, on the contrary, though not half so strong in the
arms, is good all over; straight, hard, and springy from neck to
ankle, better perhaps in his legs than anywhere. Besides, you
can see by the clear white of his eye and fresh bright look of
his skin that he is in tiptop training, able to do all he knows;
while the Slogger looks rather sodden, as if he didn't take much
exercise and eat too much tuck. The time-keeper is chosen, a
large ring made, and the two stand up opposite each other for
a moment, giving us time just to make our little observations.
"If Tom'll only condescend to fight with his head and heels,"
as East mutters to Martin, "we shall do. "
But seemingly he won't, for there he goes in, making play
with both hands. Hard all, is the word: the two stand to each
other like men; rally follows rally in quick succession, each fight-
ing as if he thought to finish the whole thing out of hand.
"Can't last at this rate," say the knowing ones, while the par-
tisans of each make the air ring with their shouts and counter-
shouts of encouragement, approval, and defiance.
"Take it easy, take it easy-keep away, let him come after
you," implores East, as he wipes Tom's face after the first round,
with wet sponge; while he sits back on Martin's knee, supported
by the Madman's long arms, which tremble a little from excite-
ment.
"Time's up! " calls the time-keeper.
"There he goes again, hang it all! " growls East, as his man
is at it again as hard as ever.
A very severe round follows, in which Tom gets out-and-out
the worst of it, and is at last hit clean off his legs and deposited
on the grass by a right-hander from the Slogger.
## p. 7707 (#521) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7707
Loud shouts rise from the boys of Slogger's house, and the
schoolhouse are silent and vicious, ready to pick quarrels any-
where.
"Two to one in half-crowns on the big 'un," says Rattle, one
of the amateurs, a tall fellow, in thunder-and-lightning waistcoat,
and puffy, good-natured face.
"Done! " says Groove, another amateur of quieter look, taking
out his note-book to enter it-for our friend Rattle sometimes
forgets these little things.
Meantime East is freshening up Tom with the sponges for
next round, and has set two other boys to rub his hands.
"Tom, old boy," whispers he, "this may be fun for you, but
it's death to me. He'll hit all the fight out of you in another
five minutes, and then I shall go and drown myself in the island
ditch. Feint him use your legs! - draw him about! he'll lose
his wind then in no time, and you can go into him. Hit at his
body, too; we'll take care of his frontispiece by-and-by. "
Tom felt the wisdom of the counsel, and saw already that he
couldn't go in and finish the Slogger off at mere hammer-and-
tongs, so changed his tactics completely in the third round. He
now fights cautious, getting away from and parrying the Slogger's
lunging hits, instead of trying to counter, and leading his enemy
a dance all round the ring after him.
"He's funking: go in, Williams! " "Catch him up! "
him off! " scream the small boys of the Slogger party.
"Just what we want," thinks East, chuckling to himself, as
he sees Williams, excited by these shouts, and thinking the
game in his own hands, blowing himself in his exertions to get
to close quarters again, while Tom is keeping away with perfect
ease.
"Finish
They quarter over the ground again and again, Tom always
on the defensive.
The Slogger pulls up at last for a moment, fairly blown.
"Now then, Tom," sings out East, dancing with delight.
Tom goes in in a twinkling, and hits two heavy body blows,
and gets away again before the Slogger can catch his wind;
which when he does he rushes with blind fury at Tom, and
being skillfully parried and avoided, overreaches himself and falls
on his face, amid terrific cheers from the schoolhouse boys.
"Double your two to one? " says Groove to Rattle, note-book
in hand.
## p. 7708 (#522) ###########################################
7708
THOMAS HUGHES
"Stop a bit,” says that hero, looking uncomfortably at Will-
iams, who is puffing away on his second's knee, winded enough,
but little the worse in any other way.
After another round the Slogger too seems to see that he can't
go in and win right off, and has met his match or thereabouts.
So he too begins to use his head, and tries to make Tom lose
patience and come in before his time. And so the fight sways
on, now one and now the other getting a trifling pull.
It is grim earnest now, and no mistake. Both boys feel this,
and summon every power of head, hand, and eye to their aid.
A piece of luck on either side, a foot slipping, a blow getting
well home, or another fall, may decide it. Tom works slowly
round for an opening; he has all the legs, and can choose his
own time: the Slogger waits for the attack, and hopes to finish
it by some heavy right-handed blow. As they quarter slowly
over the ground, the evening sun comes out from behind a cloud
and falls full on Williams's face. Tom darts in; the heavy right
hand is delivered, but only grazes his head. A short rally at
close quarters, and they close; in another moment the Slogger is
thrown again heavily for the third time.
"I'll give you three to two on the little one in half-crowns,”
said Groove to Rattle.
"No, thank 'ee," answers the other, diving his hands further
into his coat-tails.
Just at this stage of the proceedings the door of the turret
which leads to the doctor's library suddenly opens, and he steps
into the close and makes straight for the ring, in which Brown
and the Slogger are both seated on their seconds' knees for the
last time.
"The doctor! the doctor! " shouts some small boy who catches
sight of him; and the ring melts away in a few seconds, the
small boys tearing off, Tom collaring his jacket and waistcoat
and slipping through the little gate by the chapel, and round the
corner to Harrowell's with his backers, as lively as need be;
Williams and his backers making off not quite so fast across
the close; Groove, Rattle, and the other bigger fellows trying to
combine dignity and prudence in a comical manner, and walk-
ing off fast enough, they hope, not to be recognized, and not fast
enough to look like running away.
## p. 7708 (#523) ###########################################
## p. 7708 (#524) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO.
## p. 7708 (#525) ###########################################
#7
•
VICTOR HI GO
41 218851
BY ADOLI
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## p. 7708 (#526) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO.
6397
## p. 7709 (#527) ###########################################
7709
VICTOR HUGO
·
(1802-1885)
BY ADOLPHE COHN
ICTOR MARIE HUGO, always mentioned as Victor Hugo, is un-
questionably the greatest literary figure of nineteenth-century
France. By almost universal consent he is recognized as the
greatest French poet; he is one of the greater poets of the world.
His birthplace was Besançon, an old town and fortress of the East
of France; which, having belonged to the Dukes of Burgundy, passed
with all their possessions to the Emperor Charles V. , King of Spain,
and grandson by his father of Duchess Mary of Burgundy, the only
child of the celebrated Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold. Besan-
çon did not return to France until 1677, when it was ceded to King
Louis XIV. by the treaty of Nimeguen. This explains how, in a kind
of autobiographical poem, Hugo could call the city of his birth "an
old Spanish town. " In the same poem he says: "The century was
two years old.
Already, under Bonaparte, Napoleon was ap-
pearing. " Thus he states the year of his birth, and the political con-
dition of France when he first saw the light of day, on February 26th,
1802,- or, according to the calendar then in use, on the seventh day
of the month of Ventôse, in the year Ten of the French Republic.
His father, Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo, a major in the service
of the Republic, later rose to the rank of general; accompanied Joseph
Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, first to Naples and then to Madrid,
when Joseph reluctantly gave up the crown of Naples for the title of
King of Spain; and died in the year 1828, a lieutenant-general in the
armies of Louis XVIII. , King of France. The son was already famous,
and was ardently defended and as ardently attacked as the foremost
leader in that literary and artistic revolution which has received the
name of Romanticism.
He was still very young, only twenty-six, but his name had been
before the public for six years, - his first volume of verse, 'Odes and
Diverse Poems,' having appeared in 1822. From the beginning, read-
ers had been struck by the passionate fervor, the dazzling color, the
splendid imagery, and the magnificent rhythm of his lyric utterances.
Most of these were qualities that French poetry had not known be-
fore, at least till the publication of Lamartine's first 'Meditations' in
1820; and their appearance in Hugo's first productions is, at least
partly, to be ascribed to the circumstances of his education.
## p. 7710 (#528) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7710
To a certain extent he had shared his father's wandering exist-
ence. With his mother and brothers he had left Paris, where the
family had come after leaving Besançon, and joined General Hugo in
Madrid; there he became a boarding pupil in an institution reserved
for the children of Spanish noblemen, among whom he was entitled
to be educated on account of the title of "count" granted to his
father by King Joseph. The disasters that overtook the French in
Spain compelled the Hugo family to seek safety in flight, and soon
he was in Paris again. One morning his mother stopped him in front
of a poster announcing that a number of officers concerned in the
almost successful plot of General Malet to overthrow Napoleon, had
been court-martialed and shot in the plains of Grenelle. In the list,
Madame Hugo directed her son Victor's attention to one name, that
of General Laboise; adding simply these words: "He was your god-
father. " In fact, Laboise had been more than a godfather to young
Victor and his brothers. While they were living in a part of the old
convent of the Feuillantines, he, proscribed and compelled to hide,
had one day mysteriously appeared, and had soon become the boys'
chief instructor. Then he had as mysteriously disappeared, soon to
end his life by the bullets of the executing platoon. Upon a mind
gifted with remarkable receptivity, upon an imagination which trans-
formed everything into a visible picture, upon an eye which seized
small details and absorbed color with lightning rapidity, such scenes,
such dramas, such contrasts, could not fail to produce the deepest
impression.
These gifts were, however, not the first that manifested themselves
when the youth began to pass from impression to expression. His
mastery of words, his power of verbal combination, is the only one of
his great characteristics which is visible in his first poetical outpour-
ings. The old classical school of French poetry was then dying a
lingering death; like those rivers which, after carrying a majestic
and beneficent flow of water through magnificent landscapes, finally
turn into myriads of small rivulets soon absorbed by barren sands.
The poetical forms that had been so powerful in the hands of Cor-
neille and Racine, now handled by inferior writers possessing depth
neither of thought nor of feeling, were gradually destroyed under a
heap of barren periphrases and circumlocutions. To hint instead of
naming, to use twenty words when one would have sufficed, seemed
to be the highest achievement of these writers; and good Abbé
Delille came to be considered a great poet.
Young Hugo first fol-
lowed in the footsteps of the so-called great man of his time, and
thus won a number of prizes in the poetical competitions of his early
years.
The catastrophes in which Napoleon's power disappeared, the
strange events which accompanied and followed the restoration of
## p. 7711 (#529) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7711
the Bourbons to the throne of France, soon gave to his poetry a more
serious tone. To him, as to every lover of French poetry, the success
of Lamartine's 'Meditations' was a revelation, a beacon showing new
pathways to greatness. Not simply general ideas, but individual
thought and personal emotion, were seen to be legitimate subjects.
for poetical treatment. Hugo's first Odes, published in 1822, chiefly
expressed the thoughts awakened in the young man by the dramatic
scenes just enacted upon the stage of the world. While Lamartine
at thirty mainly sang of his loves, and turned every sigh of his heart
into a harmonious stanza, Hugo at twenty attempted to give to the
French people lessons in political philosophy,—a phenomenon not to
be wondered at: the man of thirty had lived and suffered, the youth
of twenty had merely followed with intelligent and passionate inter-
est the development of one of the most awful dramas in history.
The small collection published in 1822 grew little by little until
1827, when it appeared in the form and with the title it has pre-
served ever since: four books of Odes and one of Ballads being col-
lected under the title of Odes and Ballads. ' The growth of the
book is the growth of the man. The author of the first Odes-of
'Moses on the Nile,' for instance- was hardly more than a child; the
poet of 1827 was a man, who several times already, conscious of
bringing to France a new kind of poetry, had assumed in the prefaces
in which he explained and justified it a tone of authority.
The most remarkable piece in the collection shows Hugo for the
first time in a character which was often to be his in later years,-
that of spokesman of public opinion, of interpreter of public feeling.
It is the famous 'Ode to the Colonna,' which he wrote as a protest,
on hearing that at a reception at the Austrian Embassy the servant,
in announcing several of Napoleon's marshals, had by order of the
ambassador refused to give them the titles of nobility won by them
on the battle-fields of Europe. The publication of such a poem was
the more remarkable that the poet, till then, had been known as a
fervent royalist, as an enemy of Napoleonic pretensions, and that he
had in the same volume an earlier Ode, 'Buonaparte,' in which the
great warrior is represented almost as a "messenger of hell. ”
The same year that witnessed the completion of the 'Odes and
Ballads' saw also the publication of Hugo's first drama, 'Cromwell. '
The poet had begun the work with the intention of having the title
part acted by the great tragedian Talma, who had accepted it. But
Talma died before the drama was ready, and Hugo then determined
to pay no attention to the requirements of the stage, and to make
his drama a work for the reading public, not for the play-goer; but
at the same time he wrote for his 'Cromwell' a preface which was
at once considered as the manifesto of the "Romantic School. " In
•
## p. 7712 (#530) ###########################################
7712
VICTOR HUGO
this preface he attacks the dramatic system then in vogue, which
consisted of a slavish adherence to the rules followed by Corneille
and Racine, after the reasons for these rules had long ceased to exist.
He especially assailed the rule of the "three unities,”—of place, time,
and action,-affirming his allegiance only to the third rule, unity
of action; and at the same time he advocated introducing into the
plays what soon came to be called "local color," and invited young
dramatic writers to study Shakespeare rather than the masters of the
French classical stage.
In novel-writing also, in which Hugo so greatly distinguished him-
self afterward, he had already manifested his activity. In 1825 he
published his novel 'Hans of Iceland,' a weird story; which had been
preceded by a tale of San Domingo, full of descriptions of violent
passions, 'Bug Jargal. ' These two works are to be remembered only
as the forerunners of Hugo's great novels of later years, 'Notre Dame
de Paris,' 'Les Misérables,' and 'Ninety-three. '
All this work Hugo had achieved when twenty-six years of age.
In 1829 came out his second collection of lyrics, Les Orientales. '
Almost all these poems deal with the East, the bright colors of which
the poet was fond of reproducing. But there was something in the
book besides its æsthetic value. All Europe was then enthusiastic for
the cause of Greek independence. A few years before had occurred
Byron's death at Missolonghi. The Turkish fleet had just been an-
nihilated in the Bay of Navarino by the united squadrons of England,
France, and Russia. In his 'Orientales' Hugo gave expression to the
feelings of admiration with which Canaris and the other heroes of
Greece filled all his countrymen. His fiery lines were often written
under the direct inspiration of Byron's poems,-the poem 'Mazeppa,'
for instance, under the title of which stands a motto taken from the
English bard's 'Mazeppa. ' The book created a great deal of discus-
sion, and was warmly defended by its author in brilliant prefaces
introducing rapidly succeeding editions.
But Hugo was then thinking of the stage more than of anything
else. The Romantic School, of which he was now the acknowledged
head, was, in spite of some successes won by Alfred de Vigny and
Alexandre Dumas, taunted with being unable to produce any dra-
matic masterpiece. The publication of 'Cromwell,' the performance
of which its author himself admitted to be impossible, seemed to jus-
tify the taunt. Hugo had to take up the challenge and answer it.
This he did in the most striking fashion. The first work he prepared
for the stage was his drama of Marion Delorme. ' It was received by
the Comédie Française, and was about to be performed, when the
ministers of King Charles X. bethought themselves that the charac-
ter of his ancestor Louis XIII. was presented in the drama in a way
## p. 7713 (#531) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7713
The per-
not calculated to increase the public respect for royalty.
formance was forbidden. The manager was almost heart-broken. But
within a few weeks, under the excitement produced by the royal
government's arbitrary act, the poet wrote his immortal drama of
'Hernani'; full of the passions of love and honor, one of the great
poems of youthful enthusiasm for what is lovable and beautiful.
'Hernani' was performed on February 25th, 1830, on the last day
of the poet's twenty-eighth year. The date is considered one of the
great dates in the history of French literature. It is known as the
"Battle of Hernani. " The advocates of the old and new schools met,
determined to give decisive battle to each other. Applause and hiss-
ing mingled; more direct arguments were used; blows even were
given and received. On each night the fight was renewed, with this
result that the applause grew stronger every time the play was
given, until criticism was finally silenced and drowned under the
majestic flow of poetry that came from the lips of Hernani and
Doña Sol, Don Carlos and Ruy Gomez de Silva.
<
Attention has often been called to the fact that in their most
poetical plays, both Corneille and Hugo treated Spanish subjects. But
while Corneille found in the plays of Guilhen de Castro the plot of his
'Cid, the plot of Hernani' is entirely original. No incident in the
life of Hugo's Don Carlos- that is, of the Emperor Charles V. -ever
happened, upon which to build such a drama as the one in which the
French poet gives him such a conspicuous part. But Hugo had re-
tained a very vivid memory of his stay in Spain as a boy, and both
the country and time in which he places the development of his plot
were favorite ones with the Romanticists. Both offered great oppor-
tunities for the display of that local color in scenery, costumes, and
even speech, upon which the new school so much depended; and by
the impression left in the minds of men they also somewhat justified
and made acceptable to the public the exaggerations, the sharp con-
trasts, which had from the start formed an important part of Hugo's
literary equipment. Hernani' presents to us a struggle between a
bandit and a king, both in love with the same woman. The king
experiences within his own heart a struggle of no mean importance,
in which his better nature finally triumphs, when by his election as
Emperor he is called to higher responsibilities. The girl who is loved
by him and by Hernani, Doña Sol, is also loved by an old uncle, a
pattern of nobility and loftiness, and none the less passionate because
of his years; so that we have the contrast not only of king and
bandit, but also of old age and youth. The poet carries us through
the phases best calculated to set off his scenes of love and his con-
tests of passions: the castle of Silva, Charlemagne's tomb, the illumin-
ated palace of the former bandit, now "Don Juan of Aragon,” on the
XIII-483
## p. 7714 (#532) ###########################################
7714
VICTOR HUGO
night of his bridal fête. But more than any of the features of the
plot, which after all is hardly more than a very skillfully constructed
melodrama, that which caused the success of the play, and makes it
one of the masterpieces of literature, is the enchanting poetry of all
the love passages.
All the joys and all the torments, all the hopes
and all the doubts, the triumph and the despair of this eternally
young passion, find there melodious expressions which remain for-
ever in the mind and ear of readers and spectators. When Hernani
and Doña Sol, their vital parts already withered by the deadly poi-
son which old Silva had prepared for one of them, and which both
have absorbed, say,- one had almost written sing,-"Toward new
and brighter lights we shall expand our wings. With even flight
we set forth towards a better world," we all envy their happiness;
and in their final embrace, Death disappears under the tread of all-
conquering Love.
It need hardly be said that in the construction of his play Hugo
departed entirely from the old classical system: there was no unity of
time, no unity of place. But he is, it must be admitted, still further
away from Shakespeare than from Racine and Corneille. Nothing
differs more from Shakespearean simplicity of style than Hugo's
majestic, harmonious, and dazzlingly rhetorical, metaphorical, dodeca-
syllabic lines. Indeed, the beauties of this play are decidedly more
lyrical than dramatic. But the fact remained that a French play
which is a masterpiece had been written in a system different from
the old one; and the victory had been won for the "new school. "
The triumph of 'Hernani' was nothing less than a literary revolu-
tion. It was soon followed by a political revolution. In July 1830,
the government of the Bourbons, which had been reinstated in France
by the victorious foreigners after the defeat and fall of Napoleon,
was brought to an end by a rising of the Paris population, enthusias
tically applauded by the whole of France. Hugo, who had been in
youth a stanch supporter of the Bourbons, had like many others
been estranged, little by little, by the contempt which the Bourbons
and the court circles showed for the glorious soldiers of the Revo-
lution and the Empire, and by a succession of arbitrary measures
which showed that the spirit of the ancien régime was far from dead
and still threatened the dearly bought liberty of France. He shared
the popular enthusiasm for the Revolution of 1830, hailed it as a
promise of greatness for France and of enfranchisement for the peo-
ple, and returned to his literary labors with a faith in his own powers
increased by the ever growing applause of the public.
The thirteen years that followed may be called Hugo's happy
years. They were years of remarkable productiveness. In 1831 he
published his first great novel, 'Notre Dame de Paris. ' The same
## p. 7715 (#533) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7715
year witnessed the first performance of 'Marion Delorme'; and ix
other dramas-three in prose, Marie Tudor,' 'Lucrèce Borgia,' and
'Angelo, Tyran de Padua,' and three much greater in verse, 'Le Roi
s'Amuse' (The King's Diversion), 'Ruy Blas,' and 'Les Burgraves'-
followed each other between 1832 and 1843. In the same period
appeared four collections of lyrics, in no way inferior to those that
had preceded them: Les Feuilles d'Automne' (Autumn Leaves), 'Les
Chants du Crépuscule (Twilight Songs), 'Les Voix Intérieures' (Inner
Voices), and 'Les Rayons et les Ombres' (Sunbeams and Shadows).
This alone would suffice for the glory of a great writer. It is only a
small part, and assuredly not the highest, of Hugo's magnificent pro-
duction.
―
Perhaps the most successful of these works was 'Notre Dame de
Paris, the great novel often bearing the English title 'The Hunch-
back of Notre Dame'. a title to some extent misleading. Quasimodo
the Hunchback, though undoubtedly a very important character, is
certainly not the centre of the novel. The bewitching gipsy girl,
Esmeralda, plays as important a part in it as he does; and perhaps
the same may be said of the terrible priest, Claude Frollo. In Hugo's
mind the centre of the novel was the church of Notre Dame itself.
True to the tendencies of the literary school which acknowledged him
as its head, after seeking inspiration in the East and in Spain he
undertook to do for the Middle Ages what Châteaubriand, in 'Atala'
and in Les Martyrs,' had attempted to do for Christianity. Both
of these themes had been kept out of French literature by the Clas-
sical School. Their right to be in it was one of the tenets of the
Romanticists, and 'Notre Dame de Paris' gloriously established the
soundness of their position. The Gothic cathedral is the centre
of the novel, as it was the centre of mediæval life: everything and
everybody, king and poet, priest and Bohemian, the knight clad in
brilliant armor and Clopin Trouillefou the hideous truand, Quasimodo
the hunchback and La Sachette the bestialized lunatic,-in whom
still survives the saintliest feeling of mankind, maternal love,— move
in and around the majestic building whose uplifted towers carry up
to heaven the prayer and lamentation of suffering humanity. The
central character is the relentless force under which every human
destiny bends: the Fate of the ancients, whose Greek name, Anankè,
deciphered by the poet on an old forgotten wall, is taken as title of
one of the most astonishing chapters of this prodigious work.
The dramas were not all equally successful. Marion Delorme'
did not win, and did not deserve, the same popularity as 'Hernani. '
'Le Roi s'Amuse' - the plot of which has become so popular with
opera-goers in Verdi's 'Rigoletto,' and with theatre-goers under its
English name of 'The Fool's Revenge' — was taken from the boards
-
## p. 7716 (#534) ###########################################
7716
VICTOR HUGO
after its first performance, by order of the government, which de-
clared it to be an immoral play. The real reason was that an
immoral part in it is ascribed to a king of France, Francis I. ; the
proscription being one of the signs that though crowned by a revolu-
tion, King Louis Philippe the citizen king cared more for his crown
than for the liberal aspirations to which he owed it. The poet claimed
redress from the courts, without any satisfaction save the opportunity
of delivering a superb oration in defense of the rights of authors.
The drama was at last revived, under the Third Republic, fifty years
after its first performance.
The prose dramas were not very favorably received. It seemed
that the public could hardly conceive of Hugo's characters expressing
themselves otherwise than in verse. One of these dramas, 'Lucrèce
Borgia,' provided Donizetti with the libretto of his famous opera.
'Ruy Blas' was a decided success, and with Hernani' and 'Les
Burgraves' represents the best work that Hugo has done as a dram-
atist. Like Hernani,' 'Ruy Blas' is a Spanish play; that is, the
action takes place in Spain, and the characters are Spanish. But
there is this difference between the two dramas: that while in 'Her-
nani' Hugo drew everything from his imagination, in Ruy Blas he
made use of a great deal of historical material. The plot itself - the
story of the lackey who under an assumed name rises to the high-
est dignities of the State, and who, filled with the purest love and
reverence for the unhappy queen, is rewarded by the gift of her
heart-is entirely imaginary; but the picture of the court of Spain
under Charles II. is in many respects a historical picture, except
that everything which Hugo ascribes to Charles II. 's second wife was
true not of her, but of his first wife, a French princess, daughter of
Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orléans, who died but a short time
after her marriage with the King of Spain.
-
In 'Ruy Blas,' as in 'Hernani,' the means chiefly used by the
poet to produce emotion in the spectator is contrast. The characters
are a queen, who is no better than a prisoner; a nobleman, Don
César de Bazan, who is a beggar and a tramp; a lackey, Ruy Blas,
who loves a queen. The mover of the plot, Don Salluste de Bazan,
is a disgraced nobleman, who, after being dismissed by the influence
of the queen, suddenly disappears, and while moving in the darkness
tries to ensnare her into a situation in which her honor and reputa-
tion are bound to perish. She is saved by the devotion and readi-
ness of Ruy Blas, but not until he has given up his life with the last
sigh of his love for her. 'Ruy Blas' is perhaps a better constructed
drama than 'Hernani,' and yet it does not hold the spectator as
powerfully as its predecessor. The reason is that while the love
passages are supremely poetical, the situation is too impossible to be
## p. 7717 (#535) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7717
made credible. But with all its shortcomings, 'Ruy Blas' remains a
beautiful drama, which may perhaps share with 'Hernani' the honor
of remaining on the stage long after the other dramas of Hugo shall
be known only by the reading public.
Can we say the same of 'Les Burgraves'? It is hard to answer.
When first performed, in 1843, the drama was a failure. It has never
been revived since; and yet it is a favorite with Hugo's greatest
admirers, and every year some of its scenes are successfully pre-
sented in France by the young men and women who are preparing
to enter the dramatic profession. The lassitude of the public toward
a drama full of the most extraordinary contrasts may well be under-
stood. Would it, however, strike in the same way spectators who
had not had presented to them in a dozen years all the dramatic
works of Hugo? The question is likely to receive some day a prac-
tical answer, for 'Les Burgraves' holds such a place in the affections
of lovers of French poetry that it is sure to be put upon the boards
again. Some of the characters of this play are almost too great and
too powerful to be human. Barbarossa, Job, Magnus, the relentless
old woman Guanhumara, might be accepted in a music drama; but
when they use the words and the voice which are used in every-day
life, we cannot but see in them men and women like ourselves, while
their actions are impossible for such men and women. And yet there
is a logic in the drama, a nobleness of inspiration, that compel ad-
miration. Side by side with the gigantic and the degenerate figures
that battle against each other, and call up before our eyes the robber
barons of mediæval Germany, we have the fresh love idyl of Otbert
and Regina, which casts a ray of sunshine over the darkness of the
background. Whatever verdict may be ultimately passed upon 'Les
Burgraves' as a drama, it is certainly a powerful poem, and in parts
an exquisite one.
But for the highest poetical outpourings of Victor Hugo during
this period of his life, we must turn to his collection of lyrics. He
is essentially a lyric poet; and his glory rests more upon such pro-
ductions as 'Les Feuilles d'Automne' and 'Les Chants du Crépus-
cule than upon any of his dramas save 'Hernani. '
The lyric poems published between 1830 and 1843 cover as wide
a range of private and public events as anything a poet ever wrote.
All the qualities for which Hugo has been praised appear in them,
carried to the highest degree. His poems on childhood, a theme
which perhaps no poet ever treated so felicitously, are especially
notable. Later in life, in 1877, he published a volume of verse
entirely devoted to children, 'L'Art d'Être Grand-père' (The Art of
Grandfatherhood), the heroes of which were his grandchildren George
and Jeanne.
In the earlier book the children were his own children,
## p. 7718 (#536) ###########################################
7718
VICTOR HUGO
Charles and François-Victor, Adèle and Léopoldine,-fated, alas! all
to precede him to the grave save one, whose fate was sadder than
death itself, since her vanished reason did not even allow her to
know whether her illustrious father remained among the living or
slept among the dead! But the greatest poems undoubtedly are
those that deal with themes of public interest. It is the period in
which the worship of Napoleon reached its highest point. It came to
its climax on December 15th, 1840, when, under a dazzling sky and
through the crispest and coldest air Paris ever knew, the remains of
the great soldier, given back to France by England, were carried to
the home of the old soldiers of France, and laid under the dome of
the Invalides, giving fulfillment at last to the wish of the Emperor:
"I wish to rest on the banks of the Seine, among those Frenchmen
whom I have loved so much! " No writer so constantly and fervently
joined, or rather led, in this Napoleonic worship as Victor Hugo; and
we must add that in no subject was he so much at ease as in these
Napoleonic themes. The greatness of the man, the greatness of the
events, the contrast between the height of power to which he attained
and the depth of misery which succeeded the splendor of his tri-
umphs, all these elements admirably blended with the love of the
gigantic, the admiration for contrast and antithesis, the gorgeous
imagery which distinguished Hugo's muse. The poet took hold of
every occasion that presented itself of celebrating the hero of the
century. When Napoleon's son died, he wrote his 'Napoleon II. . '
one of his most perfect productions; when the Chamber of Deputies
refused to replace Napoleon's statue on the top of the Vendôme
column, he wrote his second 'Ode to the Column of the Place Ven-
dôme'; when Napoleon's remains returned to France, the 'Return of
the Emperor's Ashes,' etc. These various pieces, which at a later
period culminated in the Expiation,' form together a Napoleonic epic
of great splendor and stateliness, in every way worthy of the prodi-
gious man around whom it centres.
For nearly ten years after the performance of 'Les Burgraves'
Hugo published very little. He wrote a great deal, for he was an
indefatigable worker; but completed no drama, no novel, brought no
collection of verse to that point of perfection which he required of
his productions before submitting them to the public. The reason
we find in a terrible domestic calamity which befell him in the fall
of 1843. His oldest daughter, Léopoldine, who had but a few months
before become the wife of a young man of great promise, M. Charles
Vacquerie, was with her husband drowned in the Seine, at Villequier,
not very far from the mouth of the river. The exact circumstances
of the catastrophe have never been discovered. Its effect was to
destroy in the poet, so happy till then, this joy of life which some
1
## p. 7719 (#537) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7719
natures need as much as the air which they breathe. Hugo sought
diversion from his grief in the study of public questions and in
political activity. Louis Philippe made him a peer of France; and
the people, after the fall of Louis Philippe and the establishment of
the Republic (1848), made him a member of the National Assembly.
There Hugo for a while hesitated between the Conservatives and
the Democrats. The savage measures which, after the socialistic in-
surrection of June 1848, were adopted and enforced by the victorious
bourgeoisie against the deluded, rebellious, but thoroughly honest and
moreover starving workingmen of Paris, put a stop to his hesitations.
He cast in his lot with the party of mercy, that is, with the advanced
Republicans. In their camp he soon became one of the foremost
leaders. He soon discerned in Louis Bonaparte an ambition which
foreboded evil to the republic of which, as the nephew of Napoleon
the Great, he had been elected President, and in a memorable and
fiery oration dubbed him Napoleon the Little.
The military coup d'état of December 2d, 1851, by which the re-
publican constitution was violently destroyed, found Hugo among the
citizens most energetically determined to resist by force the violation
of the supreme law. He risked his life in defending the rights of
the people against the imperial usurper, and after the final defeat
of the Constitutionalists had to flee from the country, swearing not
to return as long as liberty itself remained an exile from France.
His exile lasted longer than he had expected, but was not an un-
fruitful one. During the eighteen years 1853-1870-which he spent
first in Brussels, whence he was soon expelled by the Belgian govern-
ment; then in the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey, where he
finally bought an estate, Hauteville House, which became to him a
real home - he published a political pamphlet, 'Napoleon the Little,'
four great collections of verse,- - 'Les Châtiments (The Chastise-
ments), 'Les Contemplations,' 'La Légende des Siècles' (The Legend
of the Ages), 'Les Chansons des Rues et des Bois' (Songs of the
Streets and Woods); and three novels, of which 'Les Misérables' is
considered one of the masterpieces of the century, the other two
being 'Les Travailleurs de la Mer (The Toilers of the Sea), and
'L'Homme Qui Rit' (The Man Who Laughs).
This does not include all that he wrote during his exile. Indeed,
the first work which he composed after leaving France, the History
of a Crime,'-which, begun on December 13th, 1851, was completed
on May 5th, 1852,—was not published until twenty-five years later, in
1877. Instead of the history of the political crime committed by Louis
Bonaparte on December 2d, 1851, Hugo published in 1852 his immortal
pamphlet 'Napoleon the Little,' every page of which reads as though
his pen had been dipped in incandescent lava; and a year later
## p. 7720 (#538) ###########################################
7720
VICTOR HUGO
(1853) The Chastisements,' which must perhaps rank in the whole
range of poetry as the highest masterpiece of political invective.
These two works, Napoleon the Little' and 'The Chastisements,'
are inseparable from each other; the latter is the poetical comment-
ary of the former. As long as Napoleon III. reigned, their circula-
tion was absolutely forbidden in France, and nearly every Frenchman
who took a trip out of the country was asked by his friends to
smuggle in some copies of the forbidden books on his return.
The chief beauty of The Chastisements,' the most perfect produc-
tion of Hugo's poetical genius, lies in the incredible variety of the
book. It is not all political invective: it contains superb pieces of
pure narrative poetry, like the Memory of the Night of the Fourth,'
the simple story of the death and burial of a child killed by a stray
bullet of Napoleon's soldiers; comic songs; pieces of poetical fancy,
like the 'Imperial Mantle'; weird and severe dialogues between man
and his conscience, like 'The Seaside'; humorous dialogues, like 'The
Three Horses'; and amid this profusion of minor pieces one composi-
tion of truly epic grandeur, 'L'Expiation,' where the greatness of the
first Napoleon is contrasted with the unworthiness of his successor,
and where the poet, discovering by the light of events the stain on
his former hero's escutcheon,- that is, the insatiable ambition which
led him early in his career to the coup d'état of the 18th Brumaire of
the year VIII. (November 9th, 1799), by which he substituted his own
personal power for the free republican institutions then possessed by
France, shows in the success of the nephew's nefarious deed the
punishment of the uncle's insufficiently requited sin.
―――――――――――
'Contemplations,' which followed in 1856, is a very different work.
The book contains pieces belonging to various and widely distant
years of the poet's life. Some pieces are dated 1834, some 1854. It
is a record of the poet's inner being. A whole division of the work,
'Pauca Meæ,' consists of pieces devoted to the memory of his dead
daughter. Hugo never wrote anything finer, purer, more touching,
than these verses. And in another part of the book we find an
'Answer to an Impeachment,' which is an admirably witty (we had
almost said saucy), poetical, and lucid explanation of what he had
considered his literary mission to be.
In 1859 he published the 'Legend of the Ages,' or rather a vol-
ume containing a number of the pieces which now form, in the com-
plete collection of his writings, a much larger work by the same title.
The finest pieces of the 'Legend of the Ages'-'The Consecration of
Woman,' 'The First Meeting of Christ at the Tomb,' 'Roland's Mar-
riage,' 'The Little King of Galicia,' 'Aymerillot the Satyr'— belong
to the collection of 1859. It is of this book alone that Theodore de
Banville, a poet himself, was thinking when he said that nothing finer
## p. 7721 (#539) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7721
in French poetry has been written than the 'Legend of the Ages. '
Hugo's purpose had been to select in the historical and imaginative
life of mankind a number of episodes sketching out the development
of the race in the past, and opening some vistas into the farthest
distant future. The Bible both in the Old and New Testaments, the
traditions of classical Greece, the medieval poems, the heroic deeds
of the great discoverers and conquistadores of the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries, provided him with themes, the treatment of which
affords a singularly striking combination of his personal gifts with
the spirit of his sources of inspiration. In the 'Legend of the Ages'
his power of verbal invention and arrangement is almost beyond
belief, while yet the expression is always as translucid as the waters
of the purest mountain spring.
The universal applause with which the 'Legend of the Ages' was
received was still audible when in quick succession, between April 3d
and June 30th, 1862, appeared the five parts of Hugo's longest work,
his novel 'Les Misérables. ' The success of the work was astounding.
For the great mass of the reading public it has a decided superiority
over all the other productions of Hugo, in that it is entertaining.
Even for one who does not care for Hugo's magnificence of style, or
for his striking way of presenting humors and social problems, or for
the stream of poetry that runs through everything he wrote, the story
told in 'Les Misérables' is as fascinating as anything written by that
greatest of amusers, Alexandre Dumas. Jean Valjean—who appears
at the beginning of the work as a kind of ticket-of-leave man, who
has just served his term in a penitentiary where he had been sent
for a theft committed under stress of starvation; who several times
builds up anew for himself the modest edifice of a small social posi-
tion, and every time is thrown ruthlessly down when his antecedents
are discovered - passes through so many strange adventures that
he who does not want to think need not think, while simply looking
upon the succession of incidents. He thus visits Monseigneur Myriel,
the venerable bishop, the very incarnation of Christian philanthropy;
as well as the old member of the National Convention, now shunned
by all for having conscientiously declared Louis XVI. guilty of a cap-
ital crime.
