Читать книгу Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo - Louis Guimbaud - Страница 13

Not that Juliette herself ever cherished special veneration for kings, princes, peers, or Academicians. Democratic and republican by the accident of birth, as she herself wrote, she likewise detested, on principle, everything that seemed likely to attract or keep Victor Hugo away from the Rue St. Anastase. Her first inclination, therefore, was to criticise with acerbity Academies, drawing-rooms, politics, and Courts; but the poet’s determination was not of the quality that is easily weakened by remonstrances. Juliette knew this. As soon as she realised that the habit vert was really the object of her idol’s desire, and that he had set his whole heart upon obtaining it, she abandoned her opposition and only indulged in gentle mockery calculated to cover the retreat of the unsuccessful candidate, and deprive it as much as possible of bitterness.

For Victor Hugo was, above all, an unfortunate candidate, at any rate of the Académie. In February 1836 he was refused Lainé’s fauteuil, and it was given to a vaudevilliste of the period, called Dupaty. At the end of November of the same year, Mignet was preferred before him, for Raynouard’s vacancy. In December 1839, rather than select Hugo, nobody was appointed in the place of Michaud. In February 1840, precedence over him was given to the permanent secretary of the Académie des Sciences, Monsieur Flourens. It was not until January 7th, 1841, that he was elected to Lemercier’s fauteuil by seventeen votes, against fifteen given to a dramatist called Ancelot, whose name an ungrateful posterity no longer remembers.

In all the peregrinations required by these five successive candidatures, Victor Hugo was invariably accompanied by Juliette. On December 24th, 1835, she writes to him: “One point on which I will tolerate no nonsense, is your visits. I insist upon accompanying you, so that I may know how much time you spend with the wives and daughters of the Academicians. I shall, by the same means, be able to gather up a few crumbs of your society for myself, which is no small consideration.”

The visits were begun between Christmas and the New Year, in cold, dry, sunny weather. Clad in black according to prescribed custom, Victor Hugo fetched his friend every day from the Rue St. Anastase, got into a cab with her, and showed her the plan for the afternoon: at such and such a time they must lay siege to Monsieur de Lacretelle; after that, to Monsieur Royer-Collard; then to Monsieur Campenon. Monsieur de Lacretelle was too diplomatic not to give plenty of promises and assurances; Monsieur Royer-Collard too good a Jansenist to fail in a blunt refusal to the author of Hernani. As for Monsieur Campenon, he had the reputation of being an honest man and an excellent amateur gardener. His conversation bristled with graftings and buddings. How should he humour him about his favourite pursuit, Victor Hugo asked his friend. Should he select roses or pears, myrtle or cypress? As the good creature was getting on in years, and counted more summers than literary successes, Victor Hugo unkindly inclined towards the last.

Juliette laughed merrily, and the poet would climb up numerous stairs, and return with a stock of entertaining anecdotes, which filled the cab with fun and colour and life. Then followed calculations of his chances; if they seemed promising, Juliette congratulated her “immortal,” as she called him in anticipation; if not, she made fun of the Académie once more.

At the end of the year the whole performance began over again. As in 1835, Juliette pretended not to attach much importance to the election of her lover, but this did not prevent her from hotly abusing the Académie when, a month later, the society again closed its portals to the leader of the romantic school.

It is the privilege of the Académie Française to be most courted by those who have oftenest sneered at it. No institution has ever been the cause of so much recantation. Juliette herself was to eat her words. On Thursday, January 7th, 1841, when Victor Hugo had at last triumphed over his brother candidate, it was no longer a mistress who wrote to him, but a general addressing a panegyric of victory to a hero: “With your seventeen friendly votes, and in spite of the fifteen groans of your adversaries, you are an Academician! What happiness! You ought to bring your beautiful face to me to be kissed.”

Victor Hugo yielded to her gallant desire, as may be imagined, and forthwith began to prepare for his reception. The poet aimed at a magniloquent and comprehensive speech which should embrace all the great names and ideas of the past, present, and future; something as vast as the empire of Charlemagne, and as noble as the genius of Napoleon. Juliette, on her side, dreamed of a dress of white tarlatan mounted in broad pleats and decorated with a rose-coloured scarf, like the one she had once admired on the shoulders of Madame Volnys, a hated rival at the Comédie Française.

Although the speech was only to be delivered in June, Victor Hugo had it ready by April 10th; he read it to his admiring friend the same night. The white tarlatan dress, alas, was longer on the way. Several reasons conspired against its completion. First of all, Juliette declared that she would concede to nobody the honour of presenting the new member with his lace ruffles: this involved an expenditure of about 23 frs., a heavy toll on the exchequer of the lovers. Secondly, Victor Hugo’s reception was to fall upon nearly the same date as the first communion of Juliette’s daughter, Claire Pradier, which was yet another cause of expense. The young woman bravely sacrificed her frock, and, having consoled herself by making a fair copy of the master’s splendid speech, she awaited the great day. But at the very moment she hoped to see it dawn without further disappointment, malicious fate brought her, and consequently Victor Hugo and the Académie, face to face with a fresh dilemma of the gravest importance, namely, the question of the pulpit for the momentous occasion.

The time-honoured affair was a wooden erection of mean appearance, stained to represent mahogany. On ordinary days it was contemned and relegated to the lumber-room of the Bibliothèque de l’Institut; but, on the occasion of the reception of a new member, custom prescribed that it should be placed under the cupola, in front of the agitated neophyte. Étiquette demanded that the latter should place upon it his gloves and the notes of his address; but the rickety thing had already borne so much eloquence in the past, that it tottered under the weight of its responsibilities. It stood weakly upon a crooked pedestal, in imminent danger of subsidence. Instead of being a haughty pulpit, equal to any occasion, it seemed to offer humble apology for its absurd existence.

Such was the farcical object Victor Hugo had to interpose between himself and Juliette, on the day of the great ceremonial. She lost her sleep over it; for a time, even the lace ruffles, and the speech, and the white tarlatan dress and rose-coloured scarf, retired into the background: “I am in a state of inexpressible agitation and worry over this wretched pulpit,” she wrote. “I shall be just at the back of it. I am in perfect despair! Truly, since this apprehension has taken possession of me, I have become the most wretched of women. I think if I cannot see your handsome, radiant face that day, nothing will keep me from bursting into sobs of rage and misery. The very thought fills my eyes with tears.”[32]

In spite of himself, Victor Hugo shared one characteristic with Jean Racine: he could not bear to see a pretty woman cry. He therefore took decisive measures, and managed to assuage his friend’s grief. Juliette was assured that, whatever happened, she should contemplate her “dear little orator” at her ease—that is to say, from head to foot. Unfortunately, it was ordained that calmness should not inhabit this passionate soul for long together. The night preceding the reception, Juliette felt frightfully nervous, and, while Victor Hugo sat up correcting the proofs of his discourse at the Imprimerie Royale, she retired, saying irritably: “I am like the savages who take to their beds when their wives give birth to children.” At 4.30 a.m. she was already up, wrote several letters to her lover, dressed, and hurried to the Palais Nazarin, where she took up a position in the front row, before even the platoon of infantry detailed for guard had arrived.

According to the testimony of Victor Hugo’s enemies as well as of his friends, the reception surpassed in dignity and brilliancy anything the cupola had previously witnessed. The Court was represented by the Duc and Duchesse d’Orléans, the Duchesse de Nemours, and the Princesse Clémentine, in a tribune. Fashionable society and the world of letters jostled each other on the benches. There were women everywhere, even beside the most ancient and prim of Academicians. Old Monsieur Jay was partially concealed under billows of laces, gauzes, silks, and satins, worn by his neighbours, Madame Louise Colet and Mlle. Doze. Monsieur Étienne waggled his head between two monstrous hats so beflowered that, with one movement, he disturbed the fleurs du Pérou of Madame Thiers, and with the next, he ruffled the bunches of roses on Madame Anais Segalas’ head.

“LE CITOYEN VICTOR HUGO JOUANT AU CONGRÈS DE LA PAIX.” Political caricature, 1849.

Juliette saw nothing of all this; neither did she heed the irrelevant babble of her neighbour on the right, Monsieur Desmousseaux of the Comédie Française, or of her guest on the left, Madame Pierceau. She was in a state of painful, yet delicious turmoil, and when Victor Hugo made his entry, she nearly fainted. Fortunately, the poet gave her a smiling look before beginning his speech, which restored her to life; and she settled down to listen to his eloquent words, as if she had not already written them out until she knew them by heart. To-day they seemed invested with fresh beauties, and she gave herself up to the enjoyment of the moment. The magnificent imagery which decked Victor Hugo’s first address at the Académie, concealed calculation of the most worldly wise description. Victor Hugo aspired to the Chambre des Pairs as a stepping-stone to a power which would assist him to develop the moral and social mission he deemed to be the true function of a poet. To achieve this aim it was necessary that he should first belong to one of the societies from among which alone the King could legally select the members of that Assembly. The Académie was one of these, hence the successive candidatures of the poet, and the special tone of his discourse, in which all the political parties were blandished and caressed alike; hence, finally, the visits to Court, which increased in frequency after 1841.

Just as Juliette had practically burned in effigy almost all the Academicians of her time before she had the opportunity of becoming acquainted with them and finding them charming, so she began by criticising and censuring Louis Philippe and his children with the greatest severity. Were not these people going to wrest her poet from her? And for what? For the sake of empty honours and useless occupations! Therefore we find Juliette preaching to her lover the contempt of earthly greatness. She was fiercely jealous of the citizen-king.

In order to calm her apprehensions, Victor Hugo had only to reveal to her his secret plans; from the first moment that he mentioned the Pairie to her, she became complacent and Orléaniste. Whether the poet went to harangue the widow of the soldier-prince in the name of the Académie, after the accident of 1842, or whether he paid her a private visit, Juliette always insisted upon accompanying him to Neuilly, and there she would wait, sitting in a cab outside, whilst her lover coined honeyed phrases inside the palace.

The Duchesse was German, simple, a good mother, and deeply religious. Of Victor Hugo’s works, the only one she was familiar with was No. XXXIII. of the Chants du Crépuscule, Dans L’Église de....