Happy birthday Victor Hugo!

Happy birthday to the Amateur Historian's favorite author, Victor Hugo. Though André Gide once replied, "Victor Hugo, hélas" to the question, "Who is the best French writer?" other Hugo fans have been less reserved in their praise. In the international Vietnamese religion known as Cao Dai Victor Hugo is actually one of the most important saints in their pantheon. Somehow, given Hugo's self-conceit, the Amateur Historian doubts that Hugo would be upset about this fact.

Hauteville House: An Introduction

The Amateur Historian begs the pardon of her Gentle Readers, as she has been on vacation/various geeky trips, i.e. to see Hauteville House on Guernsey. Hauteville House is, as Hugo and his family describe it, a poem in several rooms.

Unfortunately, that poem is one of Hugo's, so the floor plan has been inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy and is full of somber slogans about the transience of mortal existence, punctuated by skulls, Flemish paintings of peasants beating up the aristocracy, the clergy and the army, Orientalist touches like walls lined with unused crockery and Hugo's favorite interior design choice, carpeted ceilings.

According to the Divine Comedy floorplan, the ground floor is hell, full of somber colors, dark wood paneling and very little light. The second floor is purgatory, which is sumptuously and rather ironically decorated in Napoleon III style, full of silk brocades and metallic tapestries (several of which are, in fact, on the ceiling). The third floor and attic are paradise, with enormous windows dominating each room.

It is unclear, at this time, if there is a link between where Hugo placed people's bedrooms and the floors of his house. For example, Hugo's room is up in the attic, where the light streams in, his sons have rooms on the second floor, his wife and daughter have rooms in Purgatory and his poor, belagured secretary's room was on the first. It is quite possible that Hugo was very gently suggesting to M. Vacquerie to find another job; after all, when one's employer kindly reserves one a room in hell, it is rather a lowering experience.

An Uncommonly Fun Funeral

If there was one thing that Victor Hugo loved more than himself, it was women. Though a great champion of social justice he was the patron of a number of Parisian brothels. Therefore, during his funeral, the policemen that the French government had brought in to keep the funeral from getting violent were upset that said government wished to shut down all the bars/ billiard rooms/ brothels in honor of Victor Hugo. The government then seemed to realize that Hugo would have wished for the brothels to remain open (some brothels even offered their services for free, in honor of the loss of so great a patron), or, rather, that the riot they wished to avoid would have started if said brothels closed and allowed them to remain open.

They did however, respectfully request all the prostitutes to wear mourning.

FUN FACT: The Place des Vosages, where Hugo spent a significant portion of his adult life used to be called the Place Royale. After the 1848 revolution, the department of Vosages was the first to send their taxes into the republican government, so the government changed the Place Royale to the Place des Vosages. See, good things come out of paying your taxes in a timely fashion!

The Most Unusual Medal Awarded for Conduct During the Battle of Waterloo

Les Miserables has, as yesterday's post proved, a strange and powerful effect on people. When the novel first came out, for example, there was a great and powerful backlash against the digression Hugo included on the battle of Waterloo. Hugo had the audacity to include what he considered "perhaps the finest word ever spoken by a Frenchman," the defiant cry of "Merde!" by General Cambronne to the English during the battle.

This was not only excluded from several early translations of Les Miserables (most notably, the English one) but also caused a debate over General Cambronne's exclamation so virrulent that a sergeant (Deleau) who insisted that no such vulgarity had passed from General Cambronne's lips, despite the temptation to do so, won a medal.

Hugo was incredibly flattered: "To get a man the croix d'honneur, all I have to do is say merde."

Les Misérables: Letting the Disenfranchised Hit Back. In Green Minis, Apparently.

The Amateur Historian makes no secret of the fact that her favorite novel is Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, an epically long novel that at once presents the serious social problems of 19th century France and mythologizes them. Les Misérables has many interpretations (i.e. the musical, the multiple films and TV series) but the Amateur Historian finds that the Japanese have created by far the most absurd.

The Japanese company Takase has created a free downloadable 2D fighting game based on Les Miserables called ArmJoe, after the novel's Japanese title, Aa Mujou (ああ無情). The game features most of Victor Hugo's major characters, such as Jean Valjean, Enjolras (spelled Enjorlas, for whatever reason), Marius, Cosette, Éponine, Thénardier, and Javert, but also adds the characters Hugo was so negligent as to forget to include in his manuscript. These new additions consist of a policeman, a robotic clone of Valjean called RoboJean, an embodiment of Judgement, and, the Amateur Historian's personal favorite, a tea-drinking rabbit named Ponpon.

Enjoy, Gentle Readers. Everyone should have the experience of letting a tea-drinking rabbit run over Inspector Javert in a green Mini.

It is always difficult to smuggle a banned book into a country in which it is banned, particularly when said banned book is Victor Hugo's Napoleon-le-Petit, which was obviously critical of Napoleon III, who exiled the author, and that country is France, ruled by said Napoleon III. Hugo's work reached Paris:

-tucked in barrels of hay
-wrapped around tobacco leaves
-stuffed in carriage clocks
-sandwhiched between two sheets of metal, i.e. as a sardine
-in bundles of pages strapped to the legs of tourists in baggy trousers
-hidden in the bindings of prayer books
-in women's garters

Perhaps the most outlandish method of dissemination reads like something out of Dumas novel, though it comes straight from the French Foreign Office:

"The latest mode of clandestine transmission consists of small balloons fashioned from sheets of printed paper which will be launched whenever the wind stands fair for France."

Happy Birthday VH!

Gentle Readers, you might have realized that, as of late, there have been a spate of posts about Victor Hugo. Now, why is this you might ask? To build up to Victor Hugo's birthday today, of course!

The Amateur Historian, it must be admitted, feels herself unworthy of snarking just one moment of Hugo's life on his birthday, of all days, and so will let Graham Robb, who is quite possible The Literary Biographer of 19th century French authors, do the talking for her:

"[During the Paris Commune, the] whole city had paid tribute [to Victor Hugo], from the actress who called herself to 'Cosette' to the schoolteacher who called herself 'Enjolras'... 'Enjolras' was Louise Michel, soon to be adored and detested as one of the fiercest anarchists of the Commune, the so-called 'Red Virgin'. The thought of this martyr of socialism baring herself in front of her childhood hero has caused some discomfort to her admirers. A broad-minded socialist regime might have made it the subject of a commemorative postage-stamp."

The Amateur Historian would never use any other postage-stamp ever.

Lost in translation

Even the most profound of literary geniuses have their little slip-ups. As the Gentle Reader may have noticed, the Amateur Historian possesses a certain fondness for Victor Hugo, whose life might as well have been the subject of one of his novels (and, to a certain extent they were; though some literary critics have floated the theory that all writing is, to a certain extent, autobiographical, Hugo drew inspiration for all of his works from his own life).

The Amateur Historian believes that Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was the first to point out that it took an odd sort of genius for a man exiled for about fifteen years to English-speaking islands in the Channel to never learn a word of English. It would have been useful for Hugo to learn at least one as, in his novel Les Travailleurs de la Mer, set on and dedicated to the island of Guernsey, Hugo lovingly devoted an entire chapter to his character's 'bug-pipe'.

How Very... Romantic

Happy Valentine's Day, Gentle Readers! The Amateur Historian will admit to preferring February 15th over February 14th, as, on the 15th, one can purchase pink-wrappered candy for 50% off. It is a very pleasant way to boost one's endorphin levels (and one's cholesterol, but no matter).

In honor of a very romantic holiday, the Amateur Historian would like to offer up quite possibly one of the most Romantic (in the sense of the literary and philosophic movement where one's demise was considered a perfectly reasonable subject of conversation, as long as one did not adhere to classical meter while doing so) gestures ever made by The French Romantic himself, Victor Hugo. The portrait of Hugo, to the left, was drawn by his then wife-to-be, Adèle Foucher, whom the young Hugo adored beyond reason. When his mother died and Hugo began spending his days standing across the street from the Foucher household, waiting to see Adéle come to the window, Adéle's parents became understandably alarmed. They whisked Adéle off to Dreux, ostensibly to visit a relative, but really to put a 25 franc coach ride between her and her poetic stalker.

A week later, Hugo arrived in Dreux, having marched on foot for fifty miles from Paris. After bathing in a river, he went to the Hôtel du Paradis, where the Fouchers were staying, and wrote a note to them about the remarkable coincidence that they should also be in Dreux, since he just happened to be there "in search of Druidic monuments".

M. Foucher was, to his credit, extremely impressed and invited Hugo to stay with them and write Gothic odes, provided they were about their rented holiday home instead of Adéle. Hugo and Adéle were married a year later.

How Eloquent, M. Hugo

Victor Hugo was never one for staying silent when he could make speeches, and the mini-rebellion against Napoleon III's coup d'etat in 1851 was no exception. Upon hearing that several representatives had been arrested, troops had invaded the National Assembly, posters had been put up declaring a state of siege against the machination of liberal deputies and socialists, the bell-towers had been guarded, and all municipal drums (used to call people to arms, like the bell towers) had been punctured, Victor Hugo knew what to do. He grabbed his representative's sash and started agitating for rebellion.

Sure enough, Victor Hugo's quartier erected barricades (and was one of the few quartiers to do so). Victor Hugo dashed off wordy counter proclaimations, printed on an early form of carbon paper by illegal printing presses and attempted to harangue other quartiers into open rebellion. He was not very successful, as he admits in his memoirs:

Hugo: Follow my sash to the barricades.
A Worker: That's not going to put another forty sous in my pocket, is it?
Hugo: You are a cur.

Sometimes, the Amateur Historian admits, one ought to let history speak for itself.

Mangers may have been alright for Jesus, but certainly not for Victor Hugo

Happy holidays to the Gentle Readers that celebrate them, and the very best of luck with travel plans. Even today travel is somewhat dicey and one may always find oneself stranded in such insalubrious places as the middle of the Chunnel.

However, one must give thanks that one will never be stranded in 19th century Brittany. Victor Hugo once was (he had gone there to make up with his mistress, Juliette Drouet, who had fled Paris after a very violent row). He was in no very good humor upon his arrival, as Juliette Drouet was more-or-less the love of his life and he was uncertain if even he, Victor Hugo, the French Shakespeare and pretty much The Author of the 19th century, could say anything to win her back. Add that to the fact that Brittany was extremely poor, very uncultured (and therefore did not recognize Victor Hugo Himself, even after he explained who he was, because they all spoke the local patois instead of Parisian French), extremely dirty and full of superstitious peasants that neither spoke French nor bathed regularly.

Hugo was appalled by the very low standard of living and later wrote, very vitriolically, that the peasants and the pigs slept together in the same one-room hovels which, "as you can imagine, makes the pigs very dirty."

Is the worse punishment living under Napoleon III or having to live with his textile choices?

On the subject of Napoleon III's questionable taste, the Amateur Historian cannot help but mention one Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables, Notre Dame de Paris and more Romantic poetry than Coleridge, Shelley and Keats combined could have produced. Granted, of the three mentioned here, two died young and one was addicted to opium and probably spent days on end watching his hand move, but the point remains: Hugo was a prolific Romantic. Why say, "The cannon broke free of its restraints" when you can stretch out such an action for an entire chapter?

Therefore, when Hugo believed Napoleon III had questionable taste, he did not merely say, "I hate you and everything you stand for, Napoleon III", he:

a. single-handedly forced a revolution (it did not work)
b. got exiled
c. wrote a 300 page volume of poetry called Les Chatiments, which can be translated either as The Punishments or Dear Napoleon III I Hate You and Everything You Stand For, And You Exiled Me to Jersey, Where There Is Nothing To Do Besides Nurture My Deep Hatred For You In Alexandrine Rhyming Couplets Filled With Classical Allusions No One Else Will Understand.

In Les Chatiments, Hugo takes a gleeful delight in calling Napoleon III Napoleon le petit (as opposed to Napoleon Bonaparte, who gets the better moniker of Napoleon le grand), a hypocritical murderer with the blood of mothers and children on his hands, the Judas Iscariot of French political theory and a mustachioed Caesar. He also points out the the style Napoleon III looks as if it is a melange of all styles that came before it- or rather, a melange of all the worst parts of the styles that came before, much in the same way that Napoleon III's regime was a melange of all the worst parts of all the governments that came before.

However, it is best not to take Hugo's criticisms at face value as, if one goes to the Maison Hugo in Paris, one can see that Hugo's idea of style was to carpet his ceilings.

Hernani: The Play Where the Audience is SUPPOSED to Be More Interesting Than the Actors

The Romantic movement came to France much later than it did to England in Germany, and the backlash was correspondingly more severe. The elements of French culture that proved resistant to Romanticism, i.e. the Academie Francaise, and the wide-spread use and popularity of classical form, also proved extremely reactionary, as could be seen on Feb. 25, 1830, when a young Victor Hugo decided to stage a play.

Victor Hugo, who is pretty much The Romantic of the French Romantic movement, broke with tradition when he wrote Hernani, a play that can be summed up as, "Oops, I am in love with someone who is in love with/engaged to someone else and now I have killed myself for no easily discernable reason." Though the main cast was dead in the end, as happens with most French tragedy, Hugo made the great mistake of using forbidden words such as "handkerchief" and forcing the actors to express grand sweeps of Romantic passion while in period costume. One actress was so appalled by her period costume she refused to go onstage without wearing her contemporary but hideous 1830s hat. Since the Comedie Francaise, i.e. the Maison de Moliere, i.e. the oldest theatre company in Europe, i.e. The Be All and End All of French Drama, was deigning to stage a (gasp) Romantic piece, Hugo was understandably nervous about its reception. He therefore passed out red tickets (normally given to the author of any staged drama, like a courtesy copy of a book) to his friends, who formed a Romantic Army and invaded the Comedie Francaise on the opening night.

To make sure the production would begin on time and sans interference from the classicists, the Romantic Army got to the building at three-o-clock and locked themselves in for the next four hours with provisions and their cosplay get-up (Seriously, Hugo himself describes the Romantic Army as full of "wild whimsical characters, bearded, long-haired, dressed in every fashion except the reigning one, in pea-jackets, Spanish cloaks, in waistcoats a la Robespierre, in Henry III bonnets...and this in the middle of Paris in broad daylight"). Sometime before seven-o-clock, they realized that they had no bathrooms, as they had locked themselves into the auditorium, and just did their business in the boxes of the classicists.

The classicists were understandably pissy (in all senses of the word, thanks to the lack of bathrooms) and began having fistfights in the pit. The actors, already unhappy with having to go Romantic and forsake their 1830s habberdashery, were made further unhappy by the fact that they could not get through a single performance without someone in the audience :
a. challenging someone else to a duel,
b. starting a fistfight,
c. hissing at the stage loud enough to drown out the actors,
d. arguing over classical vs. Romantic forms and politics very, very loudly, or
e. getting up onstage in a red waistcoat and lime green pants before the curtain to sing praises of the Romantic, bohemian lifestyle. (Not like that, though. More the songs of angry men.)

Hernani ran for a hundred full-house performances. The Amateur Historian is willing to bet that the actors of the Comedie Francaise hated every one of them.

Les Egots de Paris

The Parisian sewers are, in their way, one of the enduring legacies of Napoleon III, who is Josephine's direct descendant and not Napoleon Bonaparte's. (Bref, Josephine's daughter, Hortense, married one of Napoleon's numerous brothers. Hortense's son became Napoleon III when Napoleon's son with his second wife, Marie Louise, the niece of Marie-Antoinette, died very young.)

Still, like his uncle, Napoleon III loved Paris and saw its glory as a reflection of his own. Therefore, there came Haussmann, widening the streets so that no one could pry the paving stones loose and build barricades again, the gilded Baroque-Era-ate-a-bit-of-romanticism-and-then-vomited-forth-a-building Opera Garnier and the sewer septic system that so fascinated Victor Hugo. It is, in fact, extremely important to have seperate pipes for drinking water and waste products. This became extremely clear after the 1832 influx of cholera, the (hated) government's powerlessness against it, and the resultant revolts. Ergo, Napoleon III decided that, though Napoleon I had introduced covered sewers (then a very innovative idea), it was probably a pretty bad idea for said covered sewers to dump everything in the Seine, and the complex warren of today's Parisian sewers had its birth.

It was such a technological marvel that visitors to Paris would flock below the newly enlarged streets to take a boat ride through the sewers.

Though one can no longer catch a very Romantic skin disease while making the Grand Tour, one can now visit the Paris Sewer Museum and discover that the Parisian sewer rats have only one natural predator, the pet turtles regular Parisians flush down their toilets. Apparently, there used to be an alligator in the sewers to eat the rats as well, but the alligator has since been captured and put into an aquarium in England. The Amateur Historian is not entirely sure why, but supposes it was because the turtles simply couldn't keep up with the competition.

However, the Musée des égouts de Paris has a sign nearby that reads, "Je bois de l'eau de Paris!", which is "I drink the waters of Paris!"

The Amateur Historian now knows that the drinking water of Paris is piped in directly from a mountain stream to the north, albeit in pipes first laid down in the latter half of the nineteenth century, but is still tempted to rip of Descartes: "Je bois de l'eau de Paris, donc, j'ai de choléra!", or, "I drink the waters of Paris, therefore, I have cholera."