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Who Was Victor Hugo?
by Floria Thames
Probably Jean Cocteau defined him best: “Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo“. We all know that famous list from the “Dossiers Secrets”, published by Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh, back in 1982. But, to avoid getting biased by the “da Vinci codes” industry, let’s go further back, to the 1959 Classiques Garnier edition of “Notre Dame de Paris” and, there, in the preface, we’re told that Victor Hugo had spent four days with Charles Nodier in Reims, in 1825. And that these four days of tête-à-tête proved to be of great importance in the prehistory of the novel (Raymond Escholier said this, cited by J-B Barrere). Charles Nodier was (allegedly, of course) the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion until 1844, when Victor Marie Hugo will take over the helm, followed in 1885 (after his death) by Claude Debussy, only for the list to (“officially”) close with Jean Cocteau in 1963.
Victor Hugo had an incredible personal life, full of drama, tragedy and passion. His brother, Eugène, with latent schizophrenic tendencies, had fallen (as well) in love with Victor’s fiancée , Adèle, and, according to some records, “went mad on the day of the wedding and ultimately had to be committed to an asylum where he died in 1837” (John Chambers). It must be added here (for those in the knowing) that Victor’s wedding with Adèle Foucher took place in Église Saint-Sulpice de Paris, in 1822. After so much romantic waiting, love poems and exaltation, double betrayal was to follow: Adèle started a tumultuous affair with her husband’s close friend, literary critic and fellow writer and poet, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve:
