BOOKS.
VICTOR HUGO'S " CHOSES VUES."1 THESE slight sketches of men whom Victor Hugo knew, and tf affairs in which he acted a part, are eminently characteristic ck the writer. A love of effect, a singular vividness of description, a style at once forcible and spasmodic, and an aptness fey relating the veriest trifles, so that in the poet's hand trifles assume significance,—these are the prominent indications of work that owes far less to the facts contained in it than to the personality of the writer. It is difficult adequately to notice volumes that consist, for the most part, of fragments. Ths attractions for a sympathetic ;reader are manifold, but it is matter of course that he will find also much that is little better than brilliant verbiage. Victor Hugo draws a portrait from the outside in clearly defined lines, and in Things Seen this is done frequently with admirable effect. Places as well as people, actions as well as actors, are brought vividly before the mind by a few bold strokes. This, in our judgment, is the chars of the work, and it matters not whether the artist is portraying a statesman or a criminal. In describing the funeral of Napoleon in 1840, he observes that the notes were taken on the spot, and
this may probably be said with equal truth of the larger number of the sketches.
Open the volumes where we may, the art of the writer is apparent. The first paper, upon Talleyrand, is eminently charac- teristic. Hugo loves contrasts, and after describing the vast power wielded by the statesman who "inspired all the men of his time, all the ideas of his time," he adds :- " Well, the day before yesterday (May 17th, 1838), this man died. Doctors came and embalmed the body. To do this, they, like the• Egyptians, removed the bowels from the stomach and the brain from. the skull. The work done, after having transformed the Prince de Talleyrand into a mammy, and nailed down this mummy in a coffin lined with white satin, they retired, leaving upon a table the brain— that brain which had thought so many things, inspired so many men, erected so many buildings, led two revolutions, duped twenty Kings, held the world. The doctors being gone, a servant entered ; he saw what they had left ! Hellos ! they have forgotten this. What was to be done with it ? It occurred to him that there was a sewer im the street; he went there and threw the brain into this sewer."
In the elaborate description of Napoleon's funeral, there is a similar attempt to produce effect by vividness of contrast. There is the grandeur of a stately procession, the roar of cannon, the beating of drums, the forest of flags, the immense car that holds the coffin, and the sixteen horses, "terrific creatures" (d'd'rayantes bites), covered with gold cloth, that draw it; and there are also, Hugo does not omit to add, the tawdry decorations,—the plaster statues fixed on cloth • Things Seen (Chose. Vim). By Victor Hugo. 2 vols. London Hontledio and Bono. 1887. pedestals made to resemble grey marble, the pasteboard painted to look like stone, the Roman column painted to re- semble granite, the shouts of hawkers, and the tomfoolery of the streets. The sadden and sad death of the Duke of Orleans caused, as some of us will remember, a profound impression in France, and, indeed, in England also. The account given of the fatal accident by the poet is more grotesque than solemn. With his love of detail, be records how the Duke lay dying on a bed propped up by two old wardrobes, with a battered stove at the back of his head, and pots and pans along the wall ; how the King wore black trousers and a brown coat, the Queen a violet silk gown, and M. Goizot a black coat; bow the roadway on which the Prince fell is twenty-one paving-stones wide; how he "smashed his forehead upon the third and fourth paving- stones on the left, near the edge;" and how the house in which he died is situated between a soap-manufactory and a low eating- house.
Frequently M. Hugo reminds us of that disagreeable product of the age, the interviewer. He records, for example, a conver- sation with Louis Philippe, or rather a confidential confession which, apart from the felicitous language, is exactly in the style of the gossip of a society paper. He caters to the public taste by recording that in the evening, when at home, the citizen-King wore a brown coat, black trousers, and a waistcoat of black satin or white piquo. And he adds :—" He has a white cravat, silk stockings with open work in front, and polished shoes. He wears a grey toupel only slightly concealed, and arranged in the style of the Restoration. No gloves. He is lively, good- natured, affable, and chatty." In the account of Lecomte, who attempted the life of the King in 1846, the same regard is paid to tailors' trimmings, and the reader is informed that at his trial the prisoner wore a black cravat, a white shirt, and an old black frock-coat, with a single row of buttons. Another would- be assassin of whom an elaborate account is given has his appearance and articles of clothing inventoried in the same manner :— " Joseph Henri is a little man who appears over fifty years of age. He is dressed in a black frock-coat, he has a black Bilk waist- coat and black cravat, whiskers, black hair, a long nose. He
wears eyeglasses The prisoner is so short that when he stands up he does not reach above the heads of the gendarmes sitting beside him. From time to time be blows his nose loudly in a white handkerchief with blue squares. He has the appearance of a country registrar."
Hugo's sketches of statesmen and men of letters are in a like fashion sketches of the outward man. Lammenais, with the face of a polecat and the eye of an eagle, is said to wear "a cravat of the colour of badly dressed cotton, a frock-coat of a saffron-brown, very large and very short, nankeen pantaloons, blue socks, and large shoes." Lord Normanby is "tall, fair, with a pronounced English look, elegant, graceful, high-bred, good-natured, and dandyish. He wears a blue ribbon over his white tie, and a diamond star upon his dress-coat." Ledru- Rollin figures as a fat man with good teeth, the ideal of Anne of Austria ; and Lord Palmerston is sketched with a face "full, round, broad, red, merry and shrewd, slightly vulgar."
It is only by frequent quotations that the character of these brief sketches can be understood. Doubtless they served their purpose well when they appeared in the newspapers of the day, but beyond the question of capital punishment, scarcely any subject of serious moment is touched upon. Incidentally, indeed, there is food for thought, and to English readers some of Victor Hugo's statements will probably be revelations ; but, as we have observed before, most of the incidents and opinions recorded belong to the day in which they were written, and are of little intrinsic value. Sometimes Hugo's realism is repulsive. When a distinguished man like Balza° dies, we do not want to bear the offensive acci- dents of dissolution, and to read an account of the appearance of the body after the spirit has left it. There are facts in con- nection with death that benefit no one, and can gratify only the moat morbid curiosity. Yet the poet—most unlike a poet in this respect—does not shun these particulars. A sketch entitled "After Nature," offends in another way. Hugo is at supper with a beautiful woman, the mistress of a painter, who is also present ; and the actions and language of the woman, described with warmth of colouring by this artist in words, show what a gulf exists between the greatest of modern French poets and the poets who, like Tennyson and Browning, have never uttered aught that is impure or base.
Great criminals have an attraction for Victor Hugo; and the murder of the Duchess of Praslin and the suicide of the Duke afford an opportunity for some vigorous and sensational description,—not always true to the life, however, if we may judge from the remark that the Duke was " pale, washed-out like an Englishman." Prisons and prisoners are themes that invariably excite Hugo's eloquence; and here, as elsewhere, his compassion for the criminal perverts his sense of justice. The horrors of penal servitude impress his imagination ; the claims of society, and the necessity of punishing the wrong-doer, may be acknowledged by Hugo, but it is evident that they are far less strongly felt. This characteristic of the poet is too well known to need illustration. Assuredly no modern writer has described the interior of prisons and the dreary life of prisoners with such vividness and force. Among the anecdotes contained in these prison records, one may be related of Sanson, the executioner :—
"M. Samson lived in the Rue da Marais-du-Temple, in an isolated house, of which the jalousies were always closed. He received many visite. Numbers of English people went to see him. When visitors presented themselves at M. Benson's, they were introduced into a.11 elegant reception-room on the ground floor, furnished entirely with mahogany, in the midst of which there was an excellent piano, always open, and provided with pieces of music. Shortly afterwards, M. Samoa arrived, and asked his visitors to be seated. The conversation turned upon one topic and another. Generally, the English people asked to see the guillotine. M. Sanson complied with this request, no doubt for some consideration, and conducted the ladies and gentlemen to the adjoining street to the house of the scaffold-manufacturer. There was a shed at this place, where the guillotine was permanently erected. The strangers grouped them- selves around it, and it was made to work. Trusses of hay were guillotined. One day, an English family, consisting of the father, the mother, and three pretty daughters, fair and with rosy cheeks, presented themselves at Benson's residence. It was in order to sea the guillotine. Samson took them to the carpenter's and net the instrument at work. The knife fell and rose again several times at the request of the young ladies. One of them, however, the youngest, was not satisfied with this. She made the executioner explain to her, in the minutest details, what is called the toilet of the condemned. Still she was not satisfied. At length, she turned hesitatingly towards the executioner := Monsieur Sanson !' she said.—' Mademoiselle,' said the executioner.—' What is done when the man is on the scaffold? How is he tied down ?'—The executioner explained the dreadful matter to her, and said We call that "putting him in the oven." ' —` Well, Monsieur Salmon,' said the young lady ; want you to put me in the oven..—The executioner started. He made an exclamation of surprise. The young lady insisted 'I fancy,' she said, ' that I should like to be able to say I have been tied down on it.'—Sanson spoke to the father and mother. They replied : ' As she has taken a fancy to have it done, do it.'—The executioner had to give in. He made the young miss sit down, tied her legs with a piece of string, and her arms behind her back with a rope, fastened her to the swing- ing plank, and strapped her on with the leather strap. Here he wanted to stop. ' No, no, that is not yet all,' she said. Sensor: then swung the plank down, placed the head of the young lady in the dreadful neck.piece, and closed it upon her neck. Then she declared she was satisfied. When he afterwards told the story, Season said
quite thought she was going to say at last : "Thal is not all; make the knife fall."'"
One of the most remarkable papers in the volume, written under the date 1853, when Hugo was in exile at Jersey, is entitled "Hubert the Spy." Even in the English translation it is a wonderful specimen of picturesque writing, and the exiles, with Hugo at their head, stand out on the artist's canvas as if we saw them in the flesh. Thoroughly to appreciate this paper, it must, of course, be read in Hugo's inimitable French ; but we may observe, in closing the volumes, that the translator's difficult task has been well accomplished. To translate Hugo without losing the flavour of the original is well-nigh as impossible as to translate Heine. Enough that this version of Moses Yeses, apart from a few expressions which retain the French idiom, is, as far as we have been able to judge, accurate and forcible.
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