HUGO, Victor (1802-1885)

HUGO, Victor (1802-1885)

Autograph letter signed “Victor H” [to Joséphine Trébuchet]
Brussels, 19th December [1851], 1 page in-8°
Fold marks

A vibrant letter in the form of a plea against tyranny, written in the early hours of his exile, seventeen days after Napoleon III’s Coup

“Brussels – 19 Xbre
My wife tells me all your lovely gratitude, dear cousin, how to thank you. Alas! I no longer have a long arm, otherwise I would kiss you from Brussels to Paris.
Tell my dear and good cousin that my heart is full of him. I have fought for the right, for the truth, for the righteous, for the people, for France, against crime in all its forms, from treason to atrocity. We have succumbed, but valiantly and proudly, and the future is ours. Praise God always!
I kiss your hands, my cousin.
Victor H.
Kiss my dear daughter for me.”

From the time of the coup d’état of 2 December 1851 by Napoleon III, Victor Hugo was wanted for his opposition to the emperor and for having tried, in vain, to organise the resistance by stirring up the Parisian masses. A 25,000F reward is promised to whoever catches him. On 11 December, Hugo, armed with a false passport, left Paris alone for Brussels by the 8 p.m. train under the name of Jacques-Firmin Lanvin. Also on 19 December, Hugo wrote to Paul Meurice: “If we could colonise a little corner of free land! Exile would no longer be exile. I’m having this dream.”
This little “corner of free land” was first the Channel Island of Jersey, then that of Guernsey, where he settled in 1855. His exile lasted nearly twenty years.

After the capitulation of Napoleon III following the crushing defeat of the French army at Sedan, on September 1, 1870, Victor Hugo returned to France on the 5th of the same month and pronounced these words:
“Citizen, I said, ‘The day the Republic returns, I will return.’ Here I am. […] Defend Paris, keep Paris. Saving Paris is more than saving France, it’s saving the world. Paris is the very center of humanity. Paris is the sacred city. Whoever attacks Paris is attacking the whole human race en masse. […] Let us all rally around the Republic in the face of the invasion and be brothers. We will overcome. It is through fraternity that freedom is saved. »