#52 - All about Victor Hugo, including the odd stuff!

We look at the life of one of France’s most famous writers – Victor Hugo. He was a genius writer, a most unusual man who lived an extraordinary life.

His writing lives on, his books are still best sellers, his writing has inspired films, musicals and plays, one of his books saved the great Gothic Cathedral of Notre-Dame from being left to rot, and one of his hardly known characters inspired one of the most famous 20th century comic book legends.

Victor Hugo was a fascinating character with a lasting legacy – and he had some outright odd habits which we’ll find out about! 

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• 0:00 Intro
• 2:04 All about Victor Hugo, including the odd stuff
• 15:23 Where to find us

Transcript

TRANSCRIPT Podcast 52: All about Victor Hugo, including the odd stuff!

Janine: Bonjour and a great big welcome to the Good Life France podcast – everything you want to know about France and more. I’m Janine Marsh, your host and I’m an author and travel writer and maid to 52 animals! I’m British as you might be able to tell from my accent, but now I am a bit French too as I have had a home in Pas-de-Calais, in the far north of France, for more than 20 years. I travel all around France, all year round, researching for articles for my website and free magazine The Good Life France. And when I’m not doing those things, I love to chat to you on this podcast with my podcast partner Olivier.

Olivier: Bonjour everyone, and yes a big welcome to you wherever you are – with listeners in more than 150 countries now – I would like to say hello in all the languages, but we’d run out of time for the podcast! I’m French, and I live in Lyon though I lived in England for 20 years! And when I’m not chatting to you here, I’m a radio presenter – the drive time slot on a big radio station in Lyon, and I also have a radio station called Paris Chanson. 

So that’s me and Janine – your hosts who love to tell you all about France. And now, lets get straight into our topic today! Janine, what are we going to be talking about?

Janine: Today we’re going to look at the life of one of France’s most famous writers – Victor Hugo. He was a genius writer, a most unusual man who lived an extraordinary life. His writing lives on, his books are still best sellers, his writing has inspired films, musicals and plays, one of his books saved the great Gothic Cathedral of Notre-Dame from being left to rot, and one of his hardly known characters inspired one of the most famous 20th century comic book legends. Victor Hugo was a fascinating character with a lasting legacy – and he had some outright odd habits which we’ll find out about! 

Oli: I’m looking forward to this. He is a writer every French school child learns about, a household name, an icon of French literature, a key figure in the culture of France many years after his death. And as you say, at times somewhat odd! 

I’m sure most people will know of Les Miserables, one of Victor Hugo’s most famous novels which has been made into a blockbuster film and musical. But did you know it is one of the longest novels in history? But let’s first go back to Victor Hugo’s beginnings, and we are going to call him Victor from now on as Victor Hugo is a bit of a mouthful! He was born February 26 1802 in Besancon in the region of Lorraine northeast France. And we even know where he was conceived, which is proper weird. His dad wrote in a letter that his son was conceived on one of the highest peaks of Mount Donon in the Vosges mountains in Lorraine, and there’s even a plaque on the mountain to make the spot it reads: “In this place the V floréal year IX was conceived Victor Hugo” which was put there in the 1960s! The date and year refer to the republican calendar which was temporarily in place in France after the French Revolution – it didn’t last long, way too confusing. 

Janine: And another strange fact to get us going! I remember reading years ago that Victor liked to carve furniture with his teeth. Annoyingly I’ve never been able to verify this but it doesn’t matter because there are plenty of other weird things to discover about him. Like, he used to write in the nude. Apparently he found it helped when he had writer’s block, clothes were a distraction to him so he made his servants take his clothes away and only give them back if he wrote enough. If it was a cold day, he allowed himself a blanket. As a writer, I can’t really say I get this one completely, I am not convinced it helps, and I’m definitely not going to try it! We do share something in common though – Victor loved cats, and his favourite cat was called Gavroche. 

Oli: Anyway, back to Victor and his many talents because he didn’t just write books, he wrote poems, plays and he was an accomplished artist, with some 4000 drawings in his portfolio! His first big success was a book called in French Notre-Dame de Paris, though it was called The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in English. Victor would, I am sure, be very surprised to know, has been made into an animated Disney film. 

Janine: I love that story. When I was 18, I passed my exams at school and was awarded a book voucher and I chose that book as my prize, I still have it, with a lovely red leather cover. Anyway, at the prize-giving ceremony at school, with all the parents, school governors, all the kids, Prizes were given in alphabetical order and I was number 4 in the queue I was Janine Davis then.  The three girls before me were lined up and the first name read out followed by the name of the book they’d chosen and they went up in front of everyone on a stage to receive their prizes. It went like this

“Leah A…., Advanced Chess Strategies”

Deborah B …, New York Fashion Design

Amanda C…., Economic policies for the Third World Countries

And then it suddenly dawned on me … what was going to happen when I mounted those stairs in front of hundreds of people… but it was too late:

Janine D… Hunchback of Notre Dame

And yes everyone laughed and I could see my sister in the audience doing a Quasimodo impression. Thanks Victor Hugo, you ruined my prize giving day! 

Oli: Only you! Lol. That book was the reason that the Cathedral of Notre Dame is still here…  The story is set in 15th century Paris, and tells the haunting story of a deformed bell ringer called Quasimodo who falls in love with a beautiful gypsy girl Esmeralda. But, for Hugo Notre-Dame Cathedral where Quasimodo worked, was the most important character in the book. He was a bit peeved that that the title was translated to The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in English! He wrote the book in an attempt to save the cathedral, which was in a terrible state and falling apart. The beautiful stained-glass windows had been taken out and replaced by clear glass to let light in and everything was falling apart. The book was published in 1830 when he was 28 years old – it was a best seller, translated into several languages, and led to major renovations and restorations on the Notre-Dame Cathedral. 

Janine: As soon as Victor finished writing that book, he began writing another, Les Miserables. It took him 15 years to complete it. A whopping 365 chapters, 19000 pages, over 5 volumes. Les Misérables spans 17 years, beginning in 1815, and ending in 1837. And as you mentioned it is considered to be one of the longest novels in history and it also contains one of the longest sentences ever written – 800 words long! Les Misérables means the Unfortunate Ones, or The Wretched, and it’s a tale of love, loss and redemption, difficult to sum up in one line but – man makes mistakes in life, tried to make up for it, and eventually does, even though he dies in the end. The book was incredibly successful and made Victor a superstar. Copies sold out everywhere on day 1 and it was released simultaneously in several countries, the first time that had ever been done. There were long queues at bookstores for months and months. After that, Victor dominated the French literary scene for most of his adult life.

Oli: I wonder how Victor would feel about you summarising his 19000-page book being summarised in one sentence! 

Janine: I think he would probably tell me off. He was not a modest man by all accounts. At dinner parties he would explain to his guests why he was better than all the other writers.

Oli: His fans would collect pebbles he stepped on and keep them as souvenirs, I mean, he really was that famous after Les Miserables came out. 

Janine: Funny enough I live near a town called Montreuil-sur-Mer which was the inspiration for Les Miserables! Hugo visited with his mistress, Juliette Drouet, just for one afternoon – 4 september (my birthday!) but in 1837. Even though he was only there a few hours, the town made an impression, people he saw became characters in the book such as a woman crying as she left a church, incidents he witnessed made key scenes like a cart overturning. And Valjean, the main character in the book became Mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer.  Every year the townsfolk, hundreds of them, put on a big son et Lumiere show of Les Mis on the ramparts of the town. And in the local bakery, they make a loaf of bread called a Valjean! 

Oli: Although he travelled with his mistress, Victor was actually married. He married his childhood sweetheart Adele Foucher, literally the girl next door when the family lived in Paris. He never told his mum he was married because she didn’t like Adele. Victor’s brother was in love with Adele too, and had a nervous breakdown when the pair got married. But it has to be said, Victor liked the ladies. A lot. 

Janine: Juliette Drouet, his mistress, was with Victor for some 50 years, and she was quite a writer herself, she wrote him a letter every day, at least once a day – around 22,000 letters in total, of which some 16,000 are kept in the Biblliotheque Nationale, the National Library, in Paris. He had many mistresses and let’s say, lady friends, but Adele and Victor stayed married for 46 years. 

Oli: But back to his writing… Victor’s legacy is far reaching to this day - for instance did you know that the Joker, the mad supervillain in the Batman series is actually based on a Victor Hugo character? 

Janine: Yes it’s true – as unlikely as it seems! Victor wrote a book called L’Homme Qui Rit (The Man Who Laughs). It is not a happy story, and not one of Victor’s best stories.  It takes place at the end of seventeenth century in England tells the story of Gwynplaine, the son of an English lord, who was kidnapped as a child and mutilated, his face cut to form an ear to ear grin, and sold to a circus for the audience laugh at his frozen smile. He eventually finds his way back home and takes his place in high society - but everyone still laughs at him because of his disfigurement. Victor was inspired by another writer who wrote how facial disfigurement of young children in England was common, in order to exploit them. Not the good old days really. 

Oli: Well, as you said, not a book with a happy ending, but it was made into a film in 1928, a silent movie called The Man Who Laughs with Conrad Viedt in the lead role. Years later when the Batman creators at DC Comics were trying to come up with an evil adversary for Batman, one of them came up with a joker card and one of them shared a photo of Conrad Veidt in make up as The Man who Laughs – and that became the Joker!

Janine: On a more serious side, Victor was also a politician, a member of the National Assembly which ruled France. He fought for the abolition of the death penalty, he spoke out against poverty and social injustice and called for free education. He exiled himself from France for 15 years when Napoleon III seized power establishing anti-parliamentary constitution. He was respected and liked by the ordinary people, even though he was wealthy. He was never poor and earned a fortune from his writing, he earned 300,000 Francs, the French currency of the time for Les Miserables – about 4 million dollars in today’s money, for an 8-year licence, after which he could sell it again. 

Oli: When he reached the grand age of 80, 600,000 people squeezed into Avenue d’Eylau in Paris, to cheer him outside his house at no. 30. By now he was a national figure and the Government declared the day a holiday and cancelled all school punishment.

Janine: When he died in 1885 a couple of months after his 83rd birthday, his funeral was the biggest ever organised in France. A whopping 2 million people attended. Victor has asked for a pauper’s funeral but it was hardly that. Though the hearse, the horse drawn carriage that carried his coffin was a pauper’s hearse, he lay in state as it were beneath the Arc de Triomphe and was then carried to the pantheon building, a mausoleum for the heroes of France, which was covered in black. As his funeral procession passed, men removed their hats, and knelt down. It was silent except for the clip clop of the horses hooves. 

Oli: Pretty much every town in France honours Victor with a street name, buildings are named for him, squares and schools. Even further afield, there is a park in Cuba named after him, a town is Kansas is named Hugoton in his honour, where incidentally it’s believed Bonnie and Clyde lived under the pseudonyms Jewel and Blackie Underwood!

Janine: My neighbour Claudette is a huge fan of Victor Hugo, and she often quotes him, especially this saying which I think shows just how amazing a writer he was. 

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

Oli: We hope you enjoyed this episode about Victor Hugo, not just one of France’s greatest writers, but the world’s. 

We just want to say a huge thank you to all of you listening to our podcast and to everyone for sharing it too. We really love sharing the France we know and love with you, the authentic and real France with its wonderful history, culture, gastronomy, wine and more. It always amazes us that people are listening in about 150 countries around the world!

Janine: Yes thank you so much everyone, wherever you are, we really appreciate it. You’ve been listening to me Janine Marsh and Olivier Jauffrit. You can find Oli at parischanson.fr playing heaps of great music, and you can find me and a ton of information about France – where to visit, culture, history, recipes – everything France - at thegoodlifefrance.com where you can subscribe to the podcast, a weekly newsletter about France and my totally brilliant, completely free magazine which you can read at magazine.thegoodlifefrance.com.

But for now, it’s au revoir from me.

Olivier: And goodbye from me.

Janine: Speak to you soon!