I recently have seen a documentary about the exile of Victor Hugo in Belgium.
Belgium the "Liberal" country was in those years a country where "exilés" sought refuge...Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Karl Marx and many others...
https://www.rtbf.be/video/detail_sur-les-traces-de-victor-hugo?id=2019360
I have studied him during my French lessons and read about his work as the Quasimodo of the Notre-Dame...but I wasn't aware of his engagement for the people and banned by Napoléon III for his agitations against him. Among others the "Napoléon le Petit" (denigrating:the small Napoleon)...
And Anglo-Norman, he was also in exile at Jersey and some 15 years at Guernsey...
http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/photography/commentaire_id/victor-hugo-on-the-rock-of-the-exiles-10756.html?cHash=ec3ca001b9
http://www.visitguernsey.com/victor-hugo


About Victor Hugo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo

Kind regards, Paul.

Yes, interestingly on the accession of Napoléon III, Hugo, having been declared a traitor, fled first to Brussels (1852) and then Jersey (1853-55). But unfortunately he was expelled from Jersey for supporting a local anti-monachist newspaper by writing things (fairly mild things it has to be said) that were critical of Queen Victoria, ... and so he moved to Guernsey, which was of course a different "country" and with a different government to Jersey.

In Guernsey he and his family settled at Hautville House in Saint Peter Port, and he lived there in fairly contented and peaceful exile away from France, Britain, Belgium ... and Jersey, from October 1855 until 1870. In exile in Guernsey he churned out some of his most biting anti-monarchist writings and political pamphlets (which were smuggled into France)  ... but also 'Les Misérables' and three published books of poetry.

It was only when Napoléon III fell from power (in 1870) and the Third Republic was established that he went back to his native France .... just in time to get trapped in Paris by the besieging Prussians, during which time he famously recorded in his writings being reduced to eating cats, dogs, rats and other "unknown" animals from the Paris Zoo.

Along with Vietnamese poet Nguyen Binh Khiem and Chinese statesman Sun Yat-sen, Victor Hugo is also one of the Three Venerable Saints of the Cao Dai religion in Vietnam:



Not sure what the author of Quasimodo would have made of such pseudo-hagiography involving himself though. Quite amused one might imagine.

I know "The Toilers of the Sea" is set in Guernsey (nominally at least) but was that written there, or later?

According to the Supreme and Mighty Wiki, "Toilers" was first published in 1866, so it would have been written in Guernsey.

http://www.visitguernsey.com/victor-hugo

I remember there were some extracts from "Toilers of the Sea" and "Notre Dame de Paris" in one of the French textbooks I studied at school - for translation and for practice at reading French I guess.  I can't remember the name of the textbook after all this time.  Somebody told me rather a corny joke - Quasimodo's wife went to see the priest and said "Quasi can't come out tonight - he's got a bad back".I thought it was funny albeit in a groany sort of way - or would it be deemed politically incorrect these days?

Well at least he didn't have the hump!

Considering you thought that one up in the wee small hours of the morning you did well Mm.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Considering you thought that one up in the wee small hours of the morning you did well Mm.

... and had just tottered back from the village midsummer bonfire and party of the Feux de la St Jean knowing I had to get up at 7am to do breakfasts too!

Victor Hugo is reputed to be the sender and receiver of the shortest message in history.

Enquiring about the sales of Les Miserables, he sent a telegram to his publisher which simple said "?".

The reply came back "!"

PaulRyckier wrote:

And Anglo-Norman, he was also in exile at Jersey and some 15 years at Guernsey...

Indeed. He romantically if inaccurately called the Channel Islands "little pieces of France cast into the sea and gathered up by England".

I should have read your first post more carefully, Paul, and then I would have known the answer to the crossword question about which island Victor Hugo spent 15 years of exile at.  I knew it started with G but Gibraltar didn't fit and I didn't think as far as the Channel Islands - even today when the quiz question was which of the Channel Island didn't allow cars.  I did know that, though.

Which was the answer, Caro? Two of the main Islands don't (and they're both four letters!)

I said Sark.  But it was a multichoice and the other choices were Guernsey, Jersey and Aldersey.  And that's the limit of my knowledge of Channel Islands.  (And perhaps theirs. It's just a little daily online newspaper quiz.)

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Somebody told me rather a corny joke - Quasimodo's wife went to see the priest and said "Quasi can't come out tonight - he's got a bad back".

Victor Hugo was not averse to milking the hunchback trope himself. 10 years after the publication of Notre-Dame de Paris, he wrote a travelogue Le Rhin in 1842. In it, Hugo takes a trip from Paris to Frankfurt, stopping off at various locations and giving observations on their history and contemporary life. In the very first chapter he tells how his carriage broke down shortly after leaving Paris and how he was forced to take a public stagecoach finding himself seated between a hunchback and a gendarme ‘entre un bossu et un gendarme’. It’s a though being a ‘hunchback’ was some sort of job description – like a gendarme. Furthermore, the hunchback and the gendarme were philosophers - 'mon gendarme et mon bossu étaient des philosophes' – chatting together and putting the world to rights with their conversation. Later on, in Germany, Hugo goes one better and meets another hunchback who also happens to be a smiling bellringer - 'un sonneur bossu et souriant' – who then shows him around an old church for a fee.

Away from caricatured hunchbacks, however, the book is actually very interesting. For instance, on his way to join the river Rhine at Cologne, Hugo stops off at Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) to see the tomb of Charlemagne. He is particularly taken with the sight of Charlemagne’s throne:

'Je ne pouvais m'arracher d'auprès de ce fauteuil si simple et si grand.

En 1804, au moment où Bonaparte devenait Napoléon, il visita Aix-la-Chapelle. Joséphine, qui l'accompagnait, eut le caprice de s'asseoir sur le fauteuil de marbre. L'empereur, qui, par respect, avait revêtu son grand uniforme, laissa faire cette créole. Lui resta immobile, debout, silencieux, et découvert devant la chaise de Charlemagne.

Chose remarquable et qui me vient ici en passant, en 814 Charlemagne mourut. Mille ans après, en quelque sorte heure pour heure, en 1814, Napoléon tomba.'


'I couldn’t drag myself away from before this seat, so plain and yet so grand.

In 1804, just after Bonaparte had become Napoleon, he visited Aix-la-Chapelle. Josephine, who accompanied him, capriciously went and sat upon the marble throne. The emperor, who out of respect had donned his full-dress uniform, ignored her uncouth behaviour. For his part he remained still, standing, silent and bare-headed before the chair of Charlemagne.  

A remarkable thought came to me in passing, which was that Charlemagne had died in 814. A thousand years later, perhaps almost to the day, in 1814, Napoleon had fallen from power.'  

Victor Hugo’s guess was actually a bit out. Charlemagne died in January 814 while Napoleon abdicated on 6th April 1814 after the allies invaded France following the Battle of Leipzig.





(The throne of Charlemagne in Aachen cathedral)

I bet Napoleon would have loved to somehow get Charlemagne's throne transported to Notre Dame de Paris for his coronation, as the whole ceremony was an odd mix of styles incorporating supposed ceremonies of ancient Carolingian tradition, the Ancien Régime, Neo-classicism and the French Revolution. The old French Coronation Chair, the one where French kings had sat to get crowned (equivalent to St Edward's Chair in Westminster Abbey), was I think usually kept in the Basilica of Saint-Denis, but it was of course destroyed in the Revolution. Besides, Napoleon remained standing when he took the crown from Pope Pius VII and placed it onto his own head (it was a newly-made crown constructed in a quasi-medieval style but by decree was to be referred to as the 'Crown of Charlemagne') before he finally sat down on a plush, armchair-like throne made in the neo-classic style and decorated with supposed Merovingian royal motifs.

In basic design Charlemagne's throne at Aachen very much resembles St Augustine's Throne in Canterbury cathedral (or visa versa), as mentioned on the Chairs and Seating Arrangements thread. Unfortunately for Napoleon this sort of throne, constructed of massive marble slabs atop a flight of stone steps, is not very transportable.



Napoleon's coronation in Notre Dame was a masterpiece of theatrical propaganda, but the cathedral itself had suffered extensive damage and desecration during the Revolution and was in a pretty poor state. By the 1820s there were serious proposals to simply knock the whole place down. It was specifically to inspire interest in the neglected building with an aim to get it restored that Victor Hugo wrote 'Notre-Dame de Paris' in 1831. In that he was ultimately successful as the cathedral was fully restored between 1844 and 1864.

And now, five years after the disasterous fire of 15 April 2019, the restoration of Notre-Dame is again coming to completion, as is being widely reported in the French press:



I'm sure Victor Hugo would have been pleased that Notre-Dame is now seen as so emblematic of France as a whole, that the restoration has this time been accomplished within just a few years, with never any thought that it should just have been demolished as too expensive to repair.