Home Life of Great Authors Part 11

or the "Characteristics," it would stand aloof in wonder, in admiration, almost in awe. But when with his own hand--for he was primarily the cause of all--he stripped away the privacy which he had guarded so jealously through life, and through the "Reminiscences" and his wife's letters, which he prepared for publication, took, as we may say, the roof off from the house, that all the world might look in, then indeed he fell from his lofty pedestal and became like one of us. Hero-wors.h.i.+p was no longer possible, but loud abuse and recrimination, or apology and a cry for charitable construction, became the order of the day. We may say that he had only himself to thank for it; but who can help regretting that the man in his old age should so have destroyed the fair fabric of his own fame? We are not so rich in heroes that we can afford to lose even the least of the kingly band; and we have felt that we have sustained an irreparable loss ever since the luckless day when we took up the first of the intensely interesting but most painful books relating to this great life.

Let us look a little at this hero's domestic life. What was its foundation, what its outcome? That there was something wrong at the foundation seems to be clear. And it was not so much the fact that neither party married the first choice of the heart,--though it is true that Jane Welsh loved with all the ardor of her nature Edward Irving first, and that Carlyle undoubtedly would have married his first love, the fair and amiable Margaret Gordon, the original of Blumine in "Sartor Resartus," had not poverty prevented,--but rather was it their unsuitability to each other. She was a lady, delicately reared, and with a taste for society and the refinements of life; with a love for admiration, too, and a wish to s.h.i.+ne in her little sphere. He was a peasant, coa.r.s.ely bred, and scorning the amenities of life to which he was unaccustomed,--scorning, too, the chivalric feeling with which better bred men look upon women and treat their wives. He told her this, bluntly and brutally, before marriage. They two were to be one, and he that one. He had the peasant idea of being master, and to the end of his days held fast to it. They were never, to his mind, equals, but he was the chief and she the subject. This was what put her down intellectually. In her youth she had literary tastes and ambitions, and doubtless much ability; but after marriage we hear no more of that. Even in the seven years at Craigenputtoch, when one would think that out of sheer weariness and want of occupation she would have written or studied, we hear nothing of any such attempts. Her married life seems to have quenched all this utterly.

Then all the domestic drudgery, which to her seemed such a burden, and appears to have afflicted her to the end of life, seemed to him to be the natural and proper thing for a woman. He had all his life been accustomed to see his mother and sisters at their tasks, naturally and uncomplainingly, and he could never understand why all women should not feel in the same way. Then he was fond of solitude, and looked upon a visitor as an emissary of the devil; and he failed to see that a gay, pleasure-loving, volatile, sparkling girl could not share his feelings.

So he shut her up remorselessly,--never dreaming that he was cruel. That she was fond of admiration was nothing to him, though he was fond of it himself in his own grim way; _he_ was the central figure of this household, and if she was deprived of a natural enjoyment it seemed a trifle to him. In short, their whole philosophy of life was different, their characters unsuited to each other, and their tempers of the order described as "difficult." It is not necessary to blame one or the other entirely for what followed. He saw everything in one light, she in another; what but disappointment and unrest could ensue?

Had she clung to her original determination not to marry him, would it have been better? Doubtless, yet it is certain that she learned to love him, even too much for her peace of mind; and it is foolish to picture her, as some have done, as a loveless wife. Probably at marriage she was not what is usually styled "in love" with him, but that she did love him through life is not to be doubted. And that, spite of all his neglect and harshness and selfishness, he truly loved her and was essentially loyal to her is as little to be doubted. Whence then came the unhappiness,--an unhappiness which, we think, has in some places been greatly exaggerated? As we said before, from their different points of view. Take, for instance, the hards.h.i.+ps of Craigenputtoch. They seemed nothing to him, brought up as he had been, but much to her, who from her youth had been the petted darling of a handsome home. This terrible place, which has been described as worse than a desert island, was a large and recently renovated old manor-house standing in fields of its own, only fifteen miles from where her mother lived, and twelve miles from Dumfries. Everything had been made comfortable for them by her mother, and in the farm-cottage near were his brother and sister, Jane and Alexander Carlyle, who had three men and two women; and Mrs.

Carlyle herself always one servant. Much has been written of her hards.h.i.+ps here,--and they were very real hards.h.i.+ps to her; but from his point of view they did not seem so bad. She did some work, but one cannot help thinking that with so many about her, if she habitually did such drudgery as is represented, it was her own fault. There will come domestic crises in all households, when the hands of the mistress must take hold to save from chaos; but on the whole it would seem that she was not so very great a martyr in this.

The lack of society was the real evil; and this Carlyle did not feel, absorbed as he was in his mighty work, his brain burning with the great thoughts to which he must give utterance. How could he appreciate the vacuity of her life,--who had always had young and cheerful company about her, and a mother to pity and cheer her smallest sorrow? It was very pitiful that he could not see, but not so very strange. Many another man would have been equally obtuse.

His sisters would not have minded it; he did not mind it, and it was not given him to see that she minded it as much as she really did. For it is certain that those seven years left marks upon her which she never outgrew. They almost seem to have changed her very nature. Yet Carlyle with his peasant nature did not see it, but wrote cheerfully upon a time, "Jane is far heartier, now that she has got to work." A mistake, says Froude: "Mrs. Carlyle had not strength for household work, and doing it, she permanently broke down her health."

And again Carlyle writes, with a little more appreciation of the situation:--

"Her life beside me, constantly writing here, is but a dull one; however, she seems to desire no other. . . . I tell her many times there is much for her to do, if she were trained for it,--her whole s.e.x to deliver from the bondage of frivolity, dollhood, and imbecility, into the freedom of valor and womanhood."

Of the solitude which had nearly killed his wife, he after a time wearied himself; and then he effected a change. One laughs to think of the second moving, and wonders if it was as bad as the first, which he thus described:--

"In this mansion we have had a battle like that of Saint George and the dragon. Neither are we yet conquerors. Smoke, and wet, and chaos! May the good Lord keep all Christian men from moving."

If it seemed as bad as this to him, what did it seem to her, delicately reared and hating the disagreeables of life? Still she did not complain, but wrote to his mother about this time: "I could wish him a little less yellow, and a little more peaceable; otherwise he is perfect." And she soon learned, compelled to it possibly by dire necessity, to take upon herself all of the practical and prosaic part of the management of their affairs.

It is painful, although it is also comical, to read of her domestic battles and defeats. She put infinite wit and talent into her descriptions of them in her letters to her friends, and the whole world has read them with smiles and tears; but they were not light troubles to her, as they would have been to many commonplace women. Probably upon a majority of wives, even if they have not men of genius for husbands, fall nearly as great a part of the domestic duties and cares as upon Mrs. Carlyle; yet few consider this a great hards.h.i.+p, and the sympathies of the world are not invoked in their behalf. It was not this so much in Mrs. Carlyle's case as it was the moodiness and fault-finding and general irascibility of the husband which aggravated everything, and made little things seem great.

That her spirits were entirely gone and her whole vivacious nature changed at the end of the Craigenputtoch period is proved by sentences from her letters, To his mother she writes:--

"It is my husband's worst fault with me that I will not or cannot speak. Often when he has talked to me for an hour without answer, he will beg for some sign of life on my part, and all that I can give him is a little kiss."

And she was a woman who loved to talk, and he the best and most brilliant talker of his day. Surely, this is pitiful. But after they went up to London this aspect of things was improved for her, and had it not been that thereafter she suffered from constant ill-health she would doubtless have been quite comfortable. But her health was bad, and in the ignorance of the day the dosing was bad; and when we read of the medicine which she took as she took her daily bread, we only wonder that she lived to tell the tale. It speaks a great deal for her Scotch const.i.tution that she survived her remedies.

Carlyle was soon in the zenith of his fame, and the great men of the day sat at his feet, figuratively speaking, and would literally have done so had not his growl been so fierce that it kept them at bay. Of those who did "beard the lion in his den, the Douglas in his hall," many were immolated in his diary; and we see them, now that it has been published, like so many flies with pins stuck through them, fastened to the paper.

Poor Charles Lamb stands there, bloodless, fleshless; but we think scarcely the less of gentle Elia as we look upon him, but far less of the cruel perpetrator of the atrocity. Leigh Hunt, too, has a pin quite through his warm heart; and Stuart Mill, and many others. One wonders sometimes if Froude himself escaped, or if he were there too, like a giant bluebottle, desiccated as the rest; and was that the reason why he did not suppress all the damaging letters and recollections, but maliciously gave them to the world?

Mrs. Carlyle's pen could be dipped in acid also, as has been proved in her comments upon the men and women of her time. These, to be sure, are very brief and fragmentary, and it has been a source of much wonder that, knowing intimately as she did many of the notable persons of her time, she has not left behind in any single letter a valuable portrait or even sketch of any of these great people. What priceless words of Darwin she might have gathered up, which all the world would have eagerly read; what characteristic anecdotes she could have told of Tennyson,--what an insight she might have given into the man behind the poet; what n.o.ble things she must have known of Stuart Mill; what inimitable _facetiae_ concerning the Hunts; what spirited stories she could have told of Jeffrey; what a light she could have cast over dark places in the life of Edward Irving! Why did she not do this, we wonder.

Did the dread of a.s.sa.s.sination hover over her? For Charles Buller, Carlyle's friend, had just made his plea for the man who killed his wife for keeping a diary: "What else could a poor fellow do with a wife who kept a diary, but murder her?"

We cannot but regret that the sketches were not written. They would have been immortal; for her power in this line has been unequalled by any one who has written in these later days. As it is, she has, unconsciously to herself, left a picture of the greatest of all the men she knew--Carlyle himself--which can never be blotted out. The portrait is full-length, full of Rembrandt-like light and shadow, and remorselessly faithful.

Painted not for the public eye, but sketched in a thousand little parts, in matter-of-fact every-day letters to humble friends, with no remotest thought that other eyes would ever see them,--it is this by which Carlyle as a man will be known to all coming time. Not a hero, not a monster, as some have claimed, but a faulty man, with the defects of his qualities, described by a woman faulty like himself. A const.i.tutional growler, with a warm heart withal, and infinite capacities for tenderness; selfish it may be, but inexorably just; cold to all the outside world, but warm-hearted and generous and magnificently loyal to his family, throughout all his distinguished career. No trace of sn.o.bbery or false shame in him. Not liking the reformers of his own day, but almost deifying the reformers of the past, and himself making it his mission, from earliest youth to h.o.a.ry age, to reform the world in his own particular Carlylean way; fiercely a.s.sailing much that pa.s.sed for religion, but being always deeply and truly religious at heart. What a vast contradictory t.i.tan he seems in it all! If a lovely wind-flower, fresh and fragrant as the breath of morning, was crushed in the arms of this G.o.d of thunder, what shall we say? Shall we reject the G.o.d of thunder, who gave us the "Heroes," and the "Cromwell," and the "Frederick," and wish that he might have been a gentle poet singing to a lute; or shall we thank G.o.d for him, even as he was, though we give a tear to the wind-flower?

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

VICTOR HUGO.

The times of Napoleon and the First Empire seem to be more than a lifetime away from us; and yet it was in that day that Victor Hugo lived as a child in the old convent of the Feuillantines so graphically described in "Les Miserables." Here he and his two brothers lived with their mother in the strictest seclusion, while the father, General Hugo, a soldier of the Empire, was off with the Grand Army at some distant point, either in garrison or in the field. The child, who was afterwards to hold Napoleon the Little up to the execration of the world, felt his earliest emotions of patriotism stirred by the glorious conquests of Napoleon the Great. General Hugo was one of the most gallant soldiers of the day, and placed in many positions of trust and of responsibility, as well as of danger, by Napoleon. He it was who conducted the terrible retreat from Spain just before the fall of Napoleon. His soldiers were the only protection to the lives of twenty thousand French fugitives, who were fleeing from Madrid wild with terror; for the pursuing Spaniards would not have hesitated to ma.s.sacre the helpless mult.i.tude, had they found it in their power to do so. From every bush projected the muzzle of a gun, charged with the death of an invader; every pa.s.s concealed an ambush; every height bristled with guns in the hands of the patriots. But General Hugo conducted the fugitives through in safety, and proceeded to take command of the fortress at Thionville, soon to be besieged.

He defended this outpost of the Empire with great gallantry, and it was the last citadel over which the tri-color waved. But at last General Hugo was forced to surrender it to the Allies, and the star of Napoleon had set forever. Madame Hugo had been a royalist always, although she had not been allowed to influence the minds of the children in that direction; but after the fall of the Emperor she openly proclaimed her sympathy with the Bourbons, and was so demonstrative in her enthusiasm that it led to a complete estrangement between herself and her husband.

Victor as a boy sided with his mother, and was royalist to the core; but as soon as he became a man he gravitated at once to his father's side.

The years which he pa.s.sed with his mother and brothers, and the priest who was their tutor, in the old garden of the Feuillantines, were as peaceful and happy as the years of childhood should always be. It was in an almost deserted quarter of Paris, and the grounds were s.p.a.cious, being the remains of a park once attached to the convent. They were, however, neglected; and everything had run wild here, until it seemed to the city children almost like a forest. A ruined chapel was in this wood, which always excited the imagination of the boys, who were thoughtful and fanciful beyond their years. Beautiful horse-chestnut trees cast their shadows round this ruin, and were the home of innumerable birds who nested there. Upon the walls among the cankered and unnailed espaliers were niches for Madonnas and fragments of crucifixes; and vines hung there in ragged festoons to the ground.

Through these dismantled cloisters and s.p.a.cious abbey-chambers the imagination of the boys ran riot, and it cast a sort of poetic glamour over their young and solitary lives.

To this secluded place came, at one period of Victor's childhood, General Lahorie, his G.o.dfather, hiding from the authorities, who had set a price upon his head; and here he was securely hidden by Madame Hugo for two years, as Victor Hugo afterwards pictured Jean Valjean as being concealed there by the old gardener. Lahorie was implicated in Moreau's plot against Napoleon, and was being diligently sought after by the police all the time he occupied the ruined chapel in the old convent-garden. His camp bed was under the shelter of the altar; in a corner were his pistols; and although the rain and snow came in through the dilapidated windows, he bivouacked here in winter as well as summer.

The children never knew who he was; he was called simply "the General,"

and was much loved by the boys, to whom he talked much of their country and of liberty. After a time, under the promise of pardon if he came forward to receive it, he was betrayed into giving himself up; was arrested at once, cast into prison, and afterward shot,--one of the most infamous of the acts of Napoleon, noted throughout his whole career for treachery and insatiable bloodthirstiness.

This devilish betrayal of his early friend did not fail to impress the mind of such a boy as Victor Hugo, and to add to his natural hatred of tyrants and their deeds. It was perhaps the most lasting and impressive lesson that he ever learned, and the world has seen its results in his life. Throughout all the varied years of a long and eventful career, it was ever at the shrine of liberty that he paid his devotions, ever her praises that he sung in his loftiest verse, ever for her that he struck the strongest blows of which his arm was capable.

Almost solitary as were the lives of the children under Madame Hugo's watchful eyes, the one visitor who was admitted to their companions.h.i.+p was welcomed with more than the accustomed warmth of children. This was a little girl named Adele Foucher (about thirteen or fourteen years old when she first visited them), who used occasionally to spend the day with the boys in the garden. Victor soon felt for her the most tender and chivalric regard. He has himself described it once and again, the first time in the story of Pepita, in "Le Dernier Jour d'un Cond.a.m.ne,"

where "he sees her in all her charms, just fourteen years of age, with large l.u.s.trous eyes and luxuriant hair, with rich golden-brown skin and crimson lips; he dwells on the proud emotion which he felt as she leaned upon his arm; he recounts how they wandered, talking softly, along the shaded walks; he tells how he picked up for her the handkerchief she had dropped, and was conscious of her hands trembling as they touched his own. And he recollects how they talked about the birds, the stars, and the golden sunset,--sometimes, too, about her school-fellows, her dresses, and her ribbons; they blushed together over the most innocent of thoughts." Again, in "Les Miserables," Victor Hugo reverts to the scenes of his youth, and to his child-love.

"Marius" is but a free variation of himself; the circ.u.mstances are changed, but the character is the same, and the garden scenes between Marius and Cosette are but faint reproductions of pa.s.sages in the courts.h.i.+p of the poet and Mlle. Foucher. Victor had begun to write poetry by this time, and some of his earlier efforts had attracted considerable attention. His whole ambition lay in this direction. We are told by his biographer that--

"his greatest pleasure was to accompany his mother to M. Foucher's house, and there spend long evenings in unspoken admiration of the maiden to whom his whole heart was devoted. It was not long before these admiring glances were noticed by the parents, to whom the danger of encouraging such a pa.s.sion was apparent, as both the young people were of an age when marriage was out of the question.

By mutual consent the two families broke off their intimacy for a time. Victor Hugo found expression for his grief at the separation, in a poem that is full of sad and gentle dignity. . . . In spite of apparent resignation, the obstacles placed in the way of his pa.s.sion only increased its intensity, and absence, instead of extinguis.h.i.+ng his love, served only to increase it. His fevered imagination devised a thousand means by which he might catch a glimpse of one without whom he felt it impossible to exist.

Numberless are the stratagems he contrived, and incredible the ingenuity with which they were executed; the freshness of his romance was itself an exquisite idyl. . . . Victor never despaired; but in the midst of his antic.i.p.ations he was overwhelmed by a terrible blow."

Madame Hugo died very suddenly in the summer of 1821, and the grief of her son was deep and lasting. He could no longer remain away from the one being he felt could afford him comfort, and he went boldly to the house of M. Foucher and declared his love for Mlle. Adele, asking of her parents her hand in marriage. Although both were so young, and they had as yet no means of living, the parents did not deny the suit, only stipulating that there should be no present thought of marriage. Victor was very poor at this time, his allowance from his father having been withdrawn, and he having no settled employment; so the lovers were unwillingly forced to accept these terms. They were very happy at this time, despite his privations, which were very real, and hard for one brought up in comfort, as he had been, to endure. For a whole year he lived on seven hundred francs, which he earned by his pen, cooking his own meals in his humble lodgings, and finding them sometimes scanty and unsatisfactory. He tells us he had but three s.h.i.+rts at this time, and sometimes found it difficult to be as neat as he desired. It was not long, however, before the verses of the young poet attracted the attention of the king, who bestowed a pension upon him of one thousand francs, from his private purse. This enabled the poet to consummate his marriage with Mlle. Foucher, which was done in October, 1822. The bridegroom, whose fortune consisted of eight hundred francs, presented his bride with a wedding dress of French cashmere. The brightness of the occasion was destroyed by a sudden attack of insanity which overtook Victor's brother Eugene,--an attack from which he never recovered.

Victor now began in earnest his literary work, and soon published his first novel, "Han d'Islande," which is said to bear a marked resemblance to the works of Walter Scott. He soon followed this with his plays, "Marion Delorme" and "Hernani," the former of which was soon prohibited by the Government.

The first representation of "Hernani" was an event long remembered in Paris. It was supposed that the cla.s.sical school would receive the new drama with little favor, and would perhaps drive it from the stage; so the friends of the new movement in literature determined to organize for its defence; and as Victor Hugo had decided against having the usual paid _claquers_, they determined to form themselves into such a body and carry the play through at all hazards. Fired with zeal, all the young _litterateurs_ of the day organized in companies, each under a captain of its own, and at an early hour in the afternoon of the day set for the performance, appeared before the theatre. Among those selected as captains was Theophile Gautier, then but nineteen years old. He determined to appear in a dress worthy of the occasion, and demanded such a costume of his tailor as that worthy man had never before prepared for a human being,--not even a poet. The waistcoat was of scarlet satin, and, according to Gautier's directions, it was made to open behind. The trousers were of a pale-green tint, with a stripe of black velvet down the seams, a black coat with broad velvet facings, and a voluminous gray overcoat turned up with green satin. A piece of watered ribbon did duty both for collar and neck-tie. With his long hair streaming down his back, and in this remarkable costume, Gautier must certainly have presented a picturesque appearance. Many other of the "Hernani" partisans appeared in costumes quite as eccentric. The pa.s.sers-by stopped and stared at them in astonishment. Some of them wore soft felt hats, some appeared in coats of velvet or satin, frogged, broidered, or trimmed with fur; others were enveloped in Spanish cloaks, and the array of caps was quite miraculous. Most of them wore prodigious beards and long hair, at a time when every well-regulated citizen was closely cropped and shaven. They waited more than six hours in the street, and the moment the doors were opened rushed in and took possession of the theatre. They had brought their lunches; and eggs, sausages, and bottles of wine were consumed in the seats of the theatre where the fine ladies usually sat. The evening was tumultuous in the extreme; but whenever the cla.s.sics hissed, the disciples of Romanticism not only cheered, but rose to their feet and howled. When the groans of the Philistines became unbearable, the enthusiasts of the pit would drown them by shouting "To the guillotine with the sycophants." But though the evening was a continual uproar, no doubt was entertained at its close that the victory was with the Romanticists; and at the conclusion of the performance the name of the author was proclaimed as that of a victorious general, and the shouts of acclamation overwhelmed the storm of hisses. Victor Hugo was the great star of the French capital from that day.

Meanwhile, all was happiness in the poet's household. The wife of his youthful dreams presided with tact and grace over his home and her dark Spanish beauty was much admired by the crowds of youthful friends who now began to frequent the house. This type of beauty appears almost as constantly in Victor Hugo's books as the head of La Fornarina did in the pictures of Raphael. He seems constantly to seek to immortalize her whom he had chosen for his own. Madame Hugo's picture was painted for the _Salon_ by their friend M. Louis Boulanger, and was thus described at the time:--

"A full, well-developed bust, white arms of perfect form; a pair of plump, delicate hands that a queen might envy; the hips high, and setting off a figure that was faultless in its contour and flexibility."

She performed her duties as hostess with infinite grace, and her _salon_ was filled with celebrities like Lamartine, who would write verses in her alb.u.m, and with women like Madame de Girardin. The house was always filled with visitors, attracted by the fascinations of the hostess as much as by the joyousness of the poet. As Victor Hugo's fame increased, we are told that--

"the calm serenity of his early years of married life was somewhat disturbed by the cares and anxieties that glory brings; but at the time of his residence in the Place Royale, of which we have been speaking, there was great happiness in the household, with the young and beautiful children."

The beautiful Madame Drouet, then an actress upon the Parisian stage, was said to have come between the poet and his wife at a later day; and it is certain that she shared his banishment, a.s.sisting him much in his literary labor, and finally, after the death of the poet's wife, came to preside over his home in the last days, cheris.h.i.+ng her love for him to the very close of his life. She is said to have been very beautiful, even in old age, when her hair, Alphonse Daudet tells us, was as white as swan's-down.

It is not our purpose to deal with the public life of Victor Hugo, and we pa.s.s over all that occurred up to the time of the exile, after the _coup d'etat_ of Louis Napoleon. The historian tells us that--

"Victor Hugo had asked the a.s.sembly whether, having had a Napoleon the Great, they were now to have a Napoleon the Little; he had inquired of the Royalists how it was that they entered into such strange fellows.h.i.+p with the Empire, pointing out significantly how the Imperialists who had murdered the Duc D'Enghien, and the Legitimatists who had shot Murat, were now grasping each other's blood-stained hands. From the tribune he had proclaimed that the Republic is invincible, and that in France it would prove itself indestructible, as being identical on the one hand with the age, on the other with the people. In lofty language, alike prophetic of the future and condemnatory of the present, he had poured out his indignation in the ears of the nation. The result of all this was that Bonaparte wrote his name at the head of the list of the proscribed."

Feeling that if he remained in Paris his life would be sacrificed to no purpose, he endeavored to get away from the city. This was no easy matter to accomplish, and had it not been for the active and skilful a.s.sistance of Madame Drouet, he would doubtless have been imprisoned, with his many friends, who crowded all the jails of Paris. A price was set upon his head; twenty-five thousand francs was offered to any one who would either kill or arrest him, and there were many a.s.sa.s.sins lurking about in waiting for him. Madame Drouet took him in a _fiacre_, and secretly started out to seek for him a refuge. She thought she had friends who would shelter him, as Madame Hugo had sheltered Lahorie during the troublous times of the first Empire. She applied to friend after friend in vain. She wept, she implored, she tried to bribe,--in vain. The citizens were too much intimidated to dare shelter one of the proscribed,--even Victor Hugo, perhaps the most honored man in the nation. Madame Drouet, however, would not yield to despair, but pursued her way with undaunted determination. The drive was terrible,--past ruined barricades and pointed cannon, through b.l.o.o.d.y patrols, and among the police so thoroughly accustomed to the hunting of men. They pa.s.sed more than one Javert in that fearful ride; and when Victor Hugo afterwards described the sensations of a man pursued like Jean Valjean, he did not have to draw very strongly upon his imagination. The horrible feeling of doubt and distrust, and the cold thrills of dread at every change of circ.u.mstance, were well known to his own soul. Madame Drouet's perseverance was at last rewarded by finding a temporary retreat for her charge under the roof of a distant relative of the poet, where he remained five days, filled with the most harrowing anxiety for the friends whom he was endangering, as well as for himself. His two sons were already in prison, and fears for their safety were added to his other burdens. But he escaped at last, in disguise, and fled to Brussels, now filled with French exiles. He managed to communicate with his wife, but his sons in their prison-cells could only conjecture as to his fate. But they heard the roar of cannon and the rattle of musketry outside the walls, and knew that the prison was overflowing with victims; and they feared the worst. Madame Hugo soon joined her husband in Brussels, and he immediately set to work to write "L'Histoire d'un Crime," and completed it in five months. With the power of a Tacitus he describes the scenes of the great historical drama he has taken part in, and with the pen of a Juvenal lashes the betrayers of the Republic. The book was not published till 1877, but it will tell the story of a shameful epoch in French history to the remotest time. He was not allowed to enjoy his refuge in Brussels long; almost as soon as he had printed his "Napoleon the Little," which book he wrote after completing the "History of a Crime," he was requested by the Belgian government to leave the country.

He repaired to the Island of Jersey, where he was joined by his sons upon their release, and by quite a party of friends. He took a small house known as Marine Terrace, on the sea-sh.o.r.e, and there set up his household G.o.ds once more. The house was only one story high, but it had a balcony, a terrace, and a garden; and it overlooked the sea, which seemed more than all to Victor Hugo. His income was now but seven thousand francs, and he had nine persons to provide for. No more money could be expected from France, and probably no more from literature, at present. But his busy pen kept at its work, trusting to the future; and the time pa.s.sed not altogether unpleasantly to the little body of exiles. Jersey is of itself delightful, and the poet found great pleasure in its climate, its scenery, and its luxuriant vegetation. But Napoleon did not at all enjoy the proximity of his great enemy, and soon took measures to drive him from his retreat. Hearing of the new move against him, Victor Hugo took occasion to defy Napoleon, and to "warn him that whether it be from France, from Belgium, from England, or from America, my voice shall never cease to declare that sooner or later he will have to expiate the crime of the 2d of December. What is said is true: there is a _personal quarrel_ between him and me; there is the old quarrel of the judge upon the bench and the prisoner at the bar." They were ordered to quit the Island of Jersey, and were treated to some scenes of violence before departing, which they did with considerable regret, having found life in that favored region comfortable, if not inspiring. They received a warm welcome at Guernsey, whither they retreated, and soon made a new home on that hospitable sh.o.r.e. A large and convenient residence, known as Hauteville House, situated on the top of a cliff, was rented and repaired, and served as a home for the poet and his friends during all the remaining years of his exile, which were destined to be many. Victor Hugo changed and beautified the house according to his own ideas, doing much of the work with his own hands; and the result is something eminently characteristic of the man.

On the third story is the study, a kind of belvedere, with its sides and roof composed of gla.s.s. In this study, which overlooked the little town of St. Sampson and its picturesque promontory, the poet did his work.

Here he finished "Les Miserables," which had been begun in the Place Royale; here was produced the magnificent essay on Shakspeare; and here he worked almost literally from morning until night. The house became a refuge for exiles from many lands, and a chamber, still known as "Garibaldi's room," was fitted up expressly for that hero, under the expectation that he would accept the invitation of Victor Hugo to share his home, at a time when his fortunes were at their lowest ebb. Many literary men were here at different times, generously cared for by the host, who called the retreat "the raft of Medusa." There were many pets also, especially dogs, as Victor Hugo almost shared the sentiment of Madame de Stael concerning these animals, "The more I know men, the better I love dogs."

The wonderful success of "Les Miserables," when it was published in 1862, called the attention of the whole world to the ill.u.s.trious exile on the sea-girt isle, and after that time he was overwhelmed with visitors from all parts of the earth, anxious to see one who had come to be looked upon as the greatest man of his time. The success of the book was unprecedented, the sales were enormous, and the enthusiasm of readers and critics almost without a parallel.