Speaker 1: I had a dream last night. I won't go into
Speaker 1: all the details because the whole thing in the dream
Speaker 1: as I'm in there, I don't know it's a dream,
Speaker 1: but I am thinking to myself, this is so boring
Speaker 1: and I don't want to be going through this event
Speaker 1: right now. I really want to move past this, but
Speaker 1: I'm just stuck in it. And I woke up and
Speaker 1: I was like, what a bring dream? And I mean
Speaker 1: there was like a motorcycle gang and like a gas
Speaker 1: station getting robbed and all this stuff. But in it,
Speaker 1: I'm just like, I just can I just skip this game?
Speaker 1: Do you ever get that in life where you're just like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be sitting through this right It'll
Speaker 1: be like a really intense experience for someone else, and
Speaker 1: you're just like, I don't I want this episode to
Speaker 1: be over. I just did not enjoying it. Can we
Speaker 1: move past? Oh my god? Constantly? Yeah? Well, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: You're dream writers were off their game. Man. They they
Speaker 1: eleven fifty pm. They were like, oh, ship, we don't
Speaker 1: have tomorrow's episode. Quick, just give some throw them some
Speaker 1: trash terrible, pull the drafts out of the trash. Can
Speaker 1: I woke up not remembering my dream at all, but
Speaker 1: I know it had something to do with the French Revolution.
Speaker 1: And I know why because I've been researching Victor Hugo
Speaker 1: and I had like, I don't know, pitchforks and stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it was about, but I know
Speaker 1: it was about the Revolution. Well, I can't think of
Speaker 1: a better segue to today's episode. That's right, because we're
Speaker 1: talking about Victor Hugo. All all my dreams are coming
Speaker 1: true today. So yeah, when we last left Victor Hugo,
Speaker 1: we had learned about his early childhood being swept up
Speaker 1: in his parents acrimonious divorce, and that, against his mother's wishes,
Speaker 1: Victor had become secretly engaged to his childhood friend A
Speaker 1: del Fuchare now Jenny A, who is at the Perky
Speaker 1: goth on Instagram. And Cassandracarta both suggested Victor Hugo to
Speaker 1: us at different times, and they were very right to
Speaker 1: do it, because this is some rich, ridiculous, romantic, soil
Speaker 1: incredible stuff. Thank you both for sending in Victor Hugo,
Speaker 1: because we got two episodes out of it for real,
Speaker 1: and our boy Victor had an enormous sex drive to
Speaker 1: match his prodigious writing talent, and it simply could not
Speaker 1: be confined to a single woman. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: Victor Hugo and his wife, his mistress, his other mistress,
Speaker 1: and all the prostitutes in parents of my favorite people. Yes,
Speaker 1: let's go. Hey their French condition. Well, Elia and Diana
Speaker 1: got some stories to tell. There's no match making a
Speaker 1: romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships. A lover might
Speaker 1: be any type of person at all, and abstract cons
Speaker 1: adro a concrete wall. But if there's a story where
Speaker 1: the second clanch ridiculous roles a production of I Heart Radio. Now,
Speaker 1: thanks to our exploration into his parents love life, we
Speaker 1: know that when Victor Hugo was born, he was small
Speaker 1: and sickly. According to a history blog ed heard dot com,
Speaker 1: Victor was also kind of deformed. He had like an
Speaker 1: enormous head and a small body, and this apparently made
Speaker 1: his mother flinch to look at him and made his
Speaker 1: father compare him to the gargoyles of Notre Dame Cathedral,
Speaker 1: which helped actually inspire Victor to write The Hunchback of
Speaker 1: Notre Dame. But as our friend, Victor Hugo biographer Graham
Speaker 1: rob points out while he might not have been much
Speaker 1: to look at, Victor actually had the perfect Romantic body
Speaker 1: because it was like a weak physical corporation struggling to
Speaker 1: support a massive intellect, you know, like the Romantics as
Speaker 1: a group, not like romantic body like fabio. Oh no, no,
Speaker 1: it's not like the perfect body for the Romantic period.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't be on the cover of a regency rovel um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, for the Romantic period, the head and the
Speaker 1: heart were more important than the body, right, So it
Speaker 1: was something cool that you were like, Oh, my brain,
Speaker 1: it's just so enormous. Um. Later in his life, Victor
Speaker 1: would be very proud of his big old head. He's
Speaker 1: often pictured resting his head in his hands, as though
Speaker 1: his brain and it's just too heavy for his neck
Speaker 1: to hold up. Pretty awesome. There's nothing wrong with having
Speaker 1: a giant head. I know you, I knew you would appreciate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: big head. Oh I'm sorry you think I have a
Speaker 1: big head. Um. Yeah, and metaphorically I have to special
Speaker 1: order hats. It's tough. It's tough to find. One time,
Speaker 1: my grandma gave you a hat that my grandfather wore. Well,
Speaker 1: and your grandfather has a notoriously tiny head. He did,
Speaker 1: he did, which is funny because he was a big man,
Speaker 1: but he did have kind of a smaller head. And
Speaker 1: I remember you trying to wear it and it just
Speaker 1: looks very ridiculous. I'm sorry, Grandma that I cannot preserve
Speaker 1: this hat for you. It looked like I was wearing
Speaker 1: like a British fastener. Yeah, was like a false fascinator, Dora.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Now Victor's giant head certainly didn't deter
Speaker 1: his childhood friend Adele Foucher from falling in love with him,
Speaker 1: and they became secretly engaged when they were just teenagers,
Speaker 1: which I mean, come on, well, I had teenage friends
Speaker 1: that we were like, you know, oh if neither of
Speaker 1: us is married by thirty Uh? Yeah, did any of
Speaker 1: them ever do it? No? One of my friends. Uh
Speaker 1: we were already married. And she got married at twenty nine,
Speaker 1: And I was like, who almost you? And I almost
Speaker 1: had to have a conversation like Diana before I ever
Speaker 1: met you. I promised myself, you should have mentioned this
Speaker 1: before we went developed her. But okay, so Adele and
Speaker 1: Victor did not, of course get married right away as teenagers.
Speaker 1: Victor wanted to finish law school first. He confined his
Speaker 1: passion for her to around two hundred love letters that
Speaker 1: he wrote during their courtship, and he also entered a
Speaker 1: poetry contest when he was only fifteen. His poetry was
Speaker 1: so advanced and well written that the academy absolutely refused
Speaker 1: to believe that these weren't written by an adult until
Speaker 1: his mom showed up with his birth certificate. He had
Speaker 1: to produce a long form no way, this isn't just
Speaker 1: some diny man with a giant head. Yeah, he's got
Speaker 1: an adult size head. He's clearly an adult. But despite
Speaker 1: his incredible talent that fooled even the French academy, his
Speaker 1: father wasn't interested in his writing. Leopold, you remember from
Speaker 1: our previous episode, said that Victor's literary career was quote
Speaker 1: like pouring good wine down an open sewer. Wow, and
Speaker 1: he refused to help pay for any of Victor's education.
Speaker 1: He wrote, quote, if you were to elect a career
Speaker 1: as a lawyer or a physician, I would gladly make
Speaker 1: sacrifices to see you through university. Caleb, Seriously, I myself,
Speaker 1: I don't know that this was the case, but it
Speaker 1: had been implied to me that my grandfather, who was
Speaker 1: a lawyer, might have paid for my school if I
Speaker 1: had chosen to go to law school. Oh wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: see this is just I mean, we're at the French
Speaker 1: Revolution and parents still be like, you should be a doctor,
Speaker 1: a lawyer. Think of this art ship, even in France,
Speaker 1: even in France. Well that, of course, like many artists,
Speaker 1: made Victor all the more determined to make it as
Speaker 1: a writer, so that, of course he could prove to
Speaker 1: his dad that writing could pay more than an army salary.
Speaker 1: He published his first volume of poetry in eighteen twenty two,
Speaker 1: and only twenty years old, and it was so good
Speaker 1: that it earned him a royal pension from King Louis,
Speaker 1: so he was able to marry Adele Foucher at last.
Speaker 1: But Adele Foucher also did not care about Victor's writing. Um.
Speaker 1: She ignored all the passionate love poems that he wrote
Speaker 1: for her. She told him quote, it is the fault
Speaker 1: of passionate men to set the women they love upon
Speaker 1: the pedestal. To be placed so high produces dizziness, and
Speaker 1: dizziness leads to a fall. Okay, all right, that's fair,
Speaker 1: that is fair. I had a girlfriend who absolutely hated
Speaker 1: the notion of anyone like singing a song for her,
Speaker 1: like writing a song for her. She was just like,
Speaker 1: it makes me so uncomfortable. I don't even want to hear.
Speaker 1: To the point where I was like learning guitar and
Speaker 1: she was like, you're gonna have to do that. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I don't want to. I don't want to hear it.
Speaker 1: I think she had previously dated a songwriter. Wow, that'll
Speaker 1: sour anybody on a song because you know they're going
Speaker 1: to go sing it to some other bit. Probably. But
Speaker 1: once Victor and Adele Fischer got married, Victor could show
Speaker 1: her his desire and his devotion in a more physical way,
Speaker 1: and boy didn't he. On their wedding night, he bragged
Speaker 1: that they had sex nine times before Adele finally was like, no, Victor,
Speaker 1: get off me. I need to get some sleep. And
Speaker 1: the guy just could not get enough, and one biographer,
Speaker 1: Edward Bahar, wrote that Adele's feelings for him were never
Speaker 1: the same after that night. He described it as a
Speaker 1: brutal night, which I can kind of believe if nine
Speaker 1: times is kind of hot. Well, and had they not
Speaker 1: had sex before they got okay, so he was like
Speaker 1: off to the races and she was like, okay, that's
Speaker 1: a little sore, and like, ah, this is not what
Speaker 1: I expected. I mean, for real, you gotta wait for
Speaker 1: nine times, let's be honest. But that was not the
Speaker 1: only drama that accompanied his marriage, because Victor's older brother, Ugeen,
Speaker 1: was also secretly in love with Adele and he had
Speaker 1: a bit of a competitive streak with Victor. He was
Speaker 1: also a poet and Victor's already showing him up as
Speaker 1: a writer. So when his lady love chose Victor over him,
Speaker 1: Ujon suffered from a mental breakdown at the wedding, and
Speaker 1: it was so severe that he had to be placed
Speaker 1: in an asylum. Tragically, jon never recovered his reason and
Speaker 1: he died by suicide at only thirty seven years old.
Speaker 1: It's quite a few little tragedies like that throughout Victor's life. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: over the next eight years, a del Fucher ended up
Speaker 1: pregnant five times. Their first child a son named Leopold,
Speaker 1: He died in infancy, and then they had their daughter,
Speaker 1: Leopoldine in eighteen twenty four, and then Charles in eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty six. Francois Victor in twenty eight and finally their
Speaker 1: daughter Adele in eighteen thirty. Adele Jr. I guess um
Speaker 1: after that, his wife, adel Foucher completely ceased having sex
Speaker 1: with her husband. I mean, maybe she was just totally
Speaker 1: exhausted by his you know, absolute insatiability. Maybe she just
Speaker 1: really didn't want to get pregnant again. Maybe a combo
Speaker 1: of both, but it sounds like I mean she basically
Speaker 1: like nailed boards to her bedroom door, like we do
Speaker 1: not enter, no victors, no victors allowed. But not long
Speaker 1: after Adele Hugo Adele Jr. Was born, Adele Foucher started
Speaker 1: having an affair with Victor's friend, and that brings us
Speaker 1: to our first side peace. I'm a bad boy. Yes,
Speaker 1: Adele got with Victor's friend, a literary critic named Charles
Speaker 1: Augustan send Bov. So we're kind of getting shades of
Speaker 1: Sophie Trebische here, right, Victor's mother, of course, who got
Speaker 1: with her husband's best friend other Victor Lahari. Yes. Right,
Speaker 1: But according to Victor Hugo scholar Marva Barnett, Charles quote
Speaker 1: may have been the perfect lover, as he was apparently
Speaker 1: physically incapable of sexual intercourse. That's how sick Adele was
Speaker 1: of having sex after eight years of being married. I'm
Speaker 1: going to have an affair with someone who doesn't do
Speaker 1: it like this is a non sexual affair. I guess
Speaker 1: this is locked in. So they had this emotional affair,
Speaker 1: but it included secret letters and clandestine meetings, and it
Speaker 1: really bothered Victor. He wrote to his wife's lover and
Speaker 1: his friend Charles sent boove quote, I am convinced that
Speaker 1: it might be that what has all my love might
Speaker 1: have ceased to love me, and that it may have
Speaker 1: had a little bit to do with you. It's no
Speaker 1: good going over everything you have said and telling myself
Speaker 1: the very idea is folly. It's still a drop of
Speaker 1: poison sufficient to poison my entire life. Sure, go ahead,
Speaker 1: pity me. I am genuinely unhappy. I don't know where
Speaker 1: I stand with the two beings I love most in
Speaker 1: the world. You are one of the two. It's kind
Speaker 1: of clunky. She actually says that the clunky writing may
Speaker 1: have been indicative of Victor's emotional state when he wrote it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's usually it's a little more eloquent. He's kind of
Speaker 1: a writer sort of thing. So this very cluttered sentence
Speaker 1: like he's really writing and disgress. Yes, he did not
Speaker 1: do a second draft of this. Victor became estranged from
Speaker 1: his friends sent after that. But when Charles was made
Speaker 1: a member of the French Academy in eighty five, Victor
Speaker 1: Hugo had to give his reception speech very awkward. Oh lord,
Speaker 1: what was it? He was up there like distinguished friends
Speaker 1: of the Academy. It is with great pleasure that we
Speaker 1: bring on to our membership Charles Augustine's tempo. He has
Speaker 1: a great talent for critiquing and also for sleeping with
Speaker 1: other men's wives. But when Adele Foucher stopped sleeping with Victor,
Speaker 1: he was already a famous writer. He had published several
Speaker 1: volumes of poetry, a few plays, and a few fictional novels,
Speaker 1: including the famous Hunchback of Note for Dame, which was
Speaker 1: published in eighteen thirty, So it's not like he had
Speaker 1: any trouble finding a lady to replace Adele in his
Speaker 1: bed or anything. Um. It may be that Victor did
Speaker 1: not start sleeping with other women until Adele cut him
Speaker 1: off and started having her own affair, But he was
Speaker 1: much less picky than she was. In the book The
Speaker 1: intimate sex lives of famous people by Irving Wallace. He writes, quote,
Speaker 1: Victor craved affairs with women who were passionate, witty, and challenging,
Speaker 1: but he often settled for sheer numbers, so unlike a
Speaker 1: del through share. It was like, I need to find
Speaker 1: the perfect lover who doesn't actually want to have physical
Speaker 1: sex with me. Victor was like, I need to find
Speaker 1: the perfect lover, which is anyone who will have sex
Speaker 1: with I love love, I'm interested in all of you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did not care if they were prostitutes, courtisance actresses, servants,
Speaker 1: married single. He was into it, but he did like
Speaker 1: him young. Wallace writes quote, In fact, as he grew older,
Speaker 1: they were often young enough to be his granddaughters. Any
Speaker 1: woman or girl who was young, attractive, and amenable was
Speaker 1: fair game. I like the word amenable. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: forcing his attendance on anyone who didn't want them. Um
Speaker 1: And according to Graham Rob he would pick up women
Speaker 1: on Paris buses, and he would also hire prostitutes to
Speaker 1: put on strip shows for him. One of the young,
Speaker 1: attractive and amenable women that he romped with was a
Speaker 1: woman who would become the true love of Victor's life,
Speaker 1: and that brings us to our second side piece, I
Speaker 1: Love You. The actress Juliet Drue was a beautiful, intelligent, impulsive,
Speaker 1: and hot tempered woman with bright eyes and raven black hair.
Speaker 1: She'd been a precocious child and later became the mistress
Speaker 1: of a sculptor named James Pardier. And this guy and
Speaker 1: her had a daughter together named Claire. On Partier's advice,
Speaker 1: Juliette became an actress in eighteen thirty three. She was
Speaker 1: playing Princess Nagroni in one of Victor Hugo's plays, Lucrezia Borgia. Now,
Speaker 1: Victor was just smitten with this young actress in his show,
Speaker 1: and he swept her off her feet and they consummated
Speaker 1: their love on February six, which they marked every year
Speaker 1: as their own little anniversary. And also interesting side note,
Speaker 1: this is the date of Marius and Cosette's wedding. In
Speaker 1: lame Is, Victor writes a lot of his own life
Speaker 1: into especially lame Is. Seems yeah, well, so long, so
Speaker 1: many opportunities. He's just like, think of a date, what
Speaker 1: is a good what is a good number for this
Speaker 1: guy's prison number? Oh what what did my dad, give
Speaker 1: me that numb. Oh was the date I was conceived,
Speaker 1: I'll just use that the day my dad was definitely
Speaker 1: sleeping with my mom on the mountain. They didn't have
Speaker 1: random number of generators back then, so they said to
Speaker 1: use what they had in the in their mind now.
Speaker 1: Later that year, Juliette also starred in another one of
Speaker 1: Hugo's plays, Mary Tudor, as Lady Jane Gray. But according
Speaker 1: to Carol A. Setle in her article The Lonely and
Speaker 1: Devoted Life of Juliet Rue, Victor was afraid that Juliet's
Speaker 1: uti would attract other men, so he insisted that she
Speaker 1: just stay home unless he could escort her. God knows,
Speaker 1: you don't have a will of your own, so if
Speaker 1: some man sees you and thinks you're pretty, you would
Speaker 1: immediately sleep with him. You know, Like, what is this nonsense? Victor? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Absolutely so. Consequently, Juliet did spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: at home, and unfortunately that made her career totally dry up. Plus,
Speaker 1: apparently it was serious enough between them that Victor's wife,
Speaker 1: Adele Foucher, got super jealous, and she slowly stopped her
Speaker 1: own affair with Charles sent Bov and even wrote to
Speaker 1: theater managers saying that if they cast Juliette it would
Speaker 1: be descrimental. Did their ticket sales damn after her career?
Speaker 1: I know that's that's very harsh out, but it must
Speaker 1: be said that Juliette was also described as a lackluster actress,
Speaker 1: so I'm not sure how much health the theater managers
Speaker 1: needed to not cast her in things. You do you
Speaker 1: think they responded to it. I'm like, oh, do not
Speaker 1: fear she has no chance? Or they just used that later. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry we cannot cast you. Someone told us
Speaker 1: you're a bad tickets, ticket sales. Sorry, it's not you,
Speaker 1: it's you, it's not your talent. It's just that people
Speaker 1: don't like Your manager is great at making actresses feel bad.
Speaker 1: I'm like, four young actors. You can't say nothing to
Speaker 1: her that she wants to hear, except your cast. Carol
Speaker 1: Setle says in that article that in eighteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: Victor and juliet celebrated a secret kind of marriage where
Speaker 1: Victor swore never to leave Juliette and she renounced the
Speaker 1: stage altogether to become his secretary and his traveling companion.
Speaker 1: But even though Victor was totally in love with Juliet
Speaker 1: and she was totally in love with him, it didn't
Speaker 1: stop him from enjoying a true Parisian sex smorg is bored. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we will get to those dirty details right after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back everyone to Victor Hugo's crazy sex romp. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Irving Wallace writes in The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous
Speaker 1: People quote, it was not unusual for Victor to make
Speaker 1: love to a young prostitute in the morning, an appreciative
Speaker 1: actress before lunch, a compliant courtesan as an aperative, and
Speaker 1: then joined the also indefatigable Juliet for a night of sex.
Speaker 1: I got tired just reading that young prostitute in the morning,
Speaker 1: appreciative actress before lunch. Okay, now, alright, A lot of
Speaker 1: actresses out there having sex are very good at seeming appreciative,
Speaker 1: especially with a famed play right. Okay, there's like thank
Speaker 1: you for writing apart for me or something right or
Speaker 1: helping me get cast or whatever. I hope, so that's
Speaker 1: how we hope he followed through with it. But it
Speaker 1: sounds like you slept with too many actresses, I know,
Speaker 1: how could hear of that, he wrote a play called
Speaker 1: and at least once another character into this show. He
Speaker 1: even had a little sex code that he used in
Speaker 1: his diaries, including like Latin and Spanish words homophones, which
Speaker 1: are you know, words that sound alike. So, for example,
Speaker 1: the word sang means breasts in French, so he would
Speaker 1: write sat or satan, Oh I squeezed some saints last night,
Speaker 1: some good saints last night, right, Or like the French
Speaker 1: word for stove p o E l or twill, he
Speaker 1: would write that to refer to p O I L
Speaker 1: s quell, which means pubic hair. So I'm like trying
Speaker 1: to read his diary in my head, like, oh, last
Speaker 1: night I pressed my face to her saints in their
Speaker 1: soft You're writing at like, what what is he talking about?
Speaker 1: Soft as a stove? Although I can't imagine it took
Speaker 1: like some brilliant literary genius to decode his prominence. Okay,
Speaker 1: so he's talking about pubic hair or hugo. Also, analogies
Speaker 1: were applied a women's seas or Swiss are her breasts
Speaker 1: because Switzerland is renowned for its milk. Childish. That's all
Speaker 1: I had to say about that one. And then we
Speaker 1: had to lift the rest of this actually off his
Speaker 1: Wikipedia page because it's the most complete version that I
Speaker 1: could find. But they write quote after a rendezvous with
Speaker 1: a young woman named Letitia, he would write jois or
Speaker 1: happiness in his diary. If he added t N to
Speaker 1: new he meant that she stripped naked in front of him.
Speaker 1: So he seduced his servants. He often paid for sex.
Speaker 1: He slept with married women, but only if they weren't
Speaker 1: living with their husbands. Gotta have standards. And he had
Speaker 1: an affair with a famous revolution snary, Louise Michelle, who
Speaker 1: was actually at Victor Noir's funeral. Remember our episode about
Speaker 1: the bulge that everybody he was rubbing up on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the journalist who stood up who didn't really
Speaker 1: want to. He just kind of became a symbol for liberty, right,
Speaker 1: and Louise Michelle said that she was sorry his funeral
Speaker 1: had not sparked the revolution. That very day in eighty seven,
Speaker 1: he even seduced the lover of his own son, Charles,
Speaker 1: Alice Ozy Damn. The story goes that Charles thought that
Speaker 1: Alice was seeing other people, so Victor wrote her erotic
Speaker 1: letters trying to prove that she was cheating, but she
Speaker 1: responded to those letters. One thing led to another, and
Speaker 1: Alice and Victor ended up banging, which, on the plus,
Speaker 1: I did prove her infidelity. It was like, I did
Speaker 1: it so awkward? Hey, hey, Dad, I think my wife
Speaker 1: was cheating on me. Would you try and pretend seduce
Speaker 1: hers to see if she falls for it? And then
Speaker 1: like two weeks later he's like, son, I got some
Speaker 1: good those and some bad. Moose. Charles, for his part,
Speaker 1: apparently understood. According to Victor Hugo's biographer, Graham rob he
Speaker 1: wrote to Alice, quote, you chose the father and the glory.
Speaker 1: I cannot blame you any woman would. It was my bad.
Speaker 1: I sent my dad to try and suduce you. And
Speaker 1: the man that's got a flawless record, he just never misses.
Speaker 1: He's hundreds for zero. Now. Alice Ozy herself would actually
Speaker 1: later become Napoleon the Third's mistress, so did alright. She
Speaker 1: stayed high in the rank for a while. Victor Hugo
Speaker 1: also had a bit of a foot fetish, and he
Speaker 1: was turned on by intrigue. Wallace writes an Intimate Sex
Speaker 1: Lives quote, he often admitted his mistresses through secret staircases
Speaker 1: and entertained them in hidden rooms, even when this was
Speaker 1: not really necessary. During much of his life, he held
Speaker 1: dinner parties every night with up to thirty guests and
Speaker 1: would entertain them with his party trick, whereas the Guardian describes,
Speaker 1: he'd quote shove an entire orange in his mouth, then
Speaker 1: fill his cheeks with as many lumps of sugar as possible.
Speaker 1: He'd then churn it all up in his mouth and
Speaker 1: glugged down two glasses of kirsh which is a brandy
Speaker 1: maid from cherries before swallowing the lot meat. So he
Speaker 1: just mixed his own drink in his mouth with a
Speaker 1: full orange. Victor, my man, use a glass. It sounds delicious.
Speaker 1: You can afford one. I know. That cracked article by
Speaker 1: Cedric Bowits says that many guests were encouraged to stay
Speaker 1: the night after these parties in Victor's vast mansion. Quote
Speaker 1: but what people didn't figure out until his house was
Speaker 1: put up for auction after his death was that all
Speaker 1: the guest bedrooms had peep holes drilled into them. That's
Speaker 1: very uncomfortable, bikes. Victor was like, I hope you'll get
Speaker 1: it on becausin I can watch what I mean. Honestly,
Speaker 1: that's not any different from like having secret cameras installed bedroom.
Speaker 1: I guess it requires a little more effort on your
Speaker 1: party go from room to room, but the result is
Speaker 1: the same. I wonder if you know somebody had one
Speaker 1: of those paintings and the eyes and then his little
Speaker 1: bug eyes are poking through, it would have to be
Speaker 1: a big head painting painting. Victor also liked to write naked.
Speaker 1: He would lock himself naked in his room to work
Speaker 1: and instruct his servants not to give his clothes back
Speaker 1: until he had finished a chapter, according to The Guardian.
Speaker 1: In her memoirs, at del Fucher wrote that while he
Speaker 1: was writing Hunchback, Victor bought quote a huge gray knitted
Speaker 1: shawl which swathed him from head to foot, locked his
Speaker 1: formal clothes away so that he would not be tempted
Speaker 1: to go out, and entered his novel as if it
Speaker 1: were a prison. He was very sad. I mean, writers,
Speaker 1: you know, writing, the discipline of writing is incredibly difficult.
Speaker 1: I've heard things just like this, I mean, where people
Speaker 1: are like, I have to come up with some method
Speaker 1: of tricking myself for or punishing myself into finishing my work,
Speaker 1: otherwise it just won't get done. I kind of like
Speaker 1: the relatability to that. Victor Hugo, one of the greatest
Speaker 1: authors of all time, was also like, lock me in
Speaker 1: my room and don't let me out until I finish
Speaker 1: a chapter. Otherwise I'm gonna spend all day just having
Speaker 1: sex and swallowing the whole oranges. The minute I get bored,
Speaker 1: I'm out there to finding a brothel. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: see why he rewarded himself too that at the end
Speaker 1: of the night, I've been naked in my room all day,
Speaker 1: in this drafty room, writing incredible literature. I'm gonna I
Speaker 1: earned it. I'm gonna go get laid to serve an actress.
Speaker 1: But between all of these prostitutes and servant girls and
Speaker 1: actresses and son's girl friends and even Juliet herself in
Speaker 1: my be assumed that Victor was busy enough, you know
Speaker 1: who has the time. But this guy was insatiable. He
Speaker 1: was always hungry for more. And that brings us to
Speaker 1: our third and final side piece. Putting it on Author
Speaker 1: and Arctic explorer Leoni don Bard was living with the
Speaker 1: painter Francois Augusta Biard in eighteen thirty eight and they
Speaker 1: later married in eighteen forty when she heard about a
Speaker 1: scientific expedition to the Arctic, and she convinced Francois to
Speaker 1: get a gig as the official painter and bring her along,
Speaker 1: and this made her the first woman to participate in
Speaker 1: a scientific expedition to the North. Can't blame her. She's
Speaker 1: living that um, she's living at Dorothy Putnam life. She's like,
Speaker 1: put me on that boat. I want to get out there.
Speaker 1: Whatever it takes. Yeah, let me check it out. I
Speaker 1: love the idea of an official painter, but it makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense you could take photo and a photographer, right,
Speaker 1: So I love that. There he was like, we really
Speaker 1: need a good painter anyone when your volunteers. How fast
Speaker 1: can you paint? How much white paint do you have?
Speaker 1: La And he went on this expedition and she published
Speaker 1: her letters from the time in serial form. When she
Speaker 1: returned to Paris, and she would go to those literary
Speaker 1: salons that we all wish we could go to. And
Speaker 1: there she met Victor Hugo in the autumn of eighteen
Speaker 1: forty three, and he said about forty old, Victor's emotional
Speaker 1: state was pretty bad in the autumn of eighteen forty
Speaker 1: three because his favorite child, his eldest Leopoldine, had been
Speaker 1: married in February of that year, and she was nineteen
Speaker 1: years old and pregnant when she and her husband Charles
Speaker 1: got on a boat in the Scent for a trip
Speaker 1: like a few months later in September, and the boat capsized.
Speaker 1: Leopoldine's heavy skirts dragged her down in the current, and
Speaker 1: Charles dove in to save her, but tragically they both drowned.
Speaker 1: It like the saddest story I've ever heard, young like
Speaker 1: in love newlywed, so sad, and Victor Hugo found out
Speaker 1: when he picked up a newspaper in a cafe, also
Speaker 1: an extra tragedy in my opinion. I know no one did.
Speaker 1: No one could get the news to him before they
Speaker 1: got it to the to the I know. So he's
Speaker 1: not a hard guy to find, not really. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he was never really the same after that. Um. He
Speaker 1: became clinically depressed. He had trouble writing much for a
Speaker 1: few years after her death. He was suffering from really
Speaker 1: serious writer's block, although he did write several poems dedicated
Speaker 1: to Leopoldine, and in one of his most famous. He
Speaker 1: describes visiting her grave. So let's go down to poetry
Speaker 1: corner and hear Domaine de lobe or tomorrow at dawn, Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: at dawn, at the moment when the land whitens, I
Speaker 1: will leave you. See, I know that you are waiting
Speaker 1: for me. I will go through the forest, I will
Speaker 1: go across mountains. I cannot stay away for you any longer.
Speaker 1: I will walk eyes fixed on my thoughts, without seeing
Speaker 1: anything outside, without hearing a noise, alone, unknown, back hunched,
Speaker 1: hands crossed, sorrowed, and the day for me will be
Speaker 1: as the night. I will watch neither the evening setting
Speaker 1: sun nor the faraway sailboats descending upon our floor. And
Speaker 1: when I arrive, I will put on your grave a
Speaker 1: bouquet of green holly and heather in bloom Ah. I
Speaker 1: just can't even devastating. So when Victor met Leoni Biard,
Speaker 1: he was maybe feeling even more open than usual for
Speaker 1: something fresh and fun and gave him like a honeymoon feeling,
Speaker 1: and it really devastated at this time in his life.
Speaker 1: So they fell hard for each other. Um they started
Speaker 1: a serious affair that became public knowledge in July, after
Speaker 1: Leonie's husband from Swabillard got suspicious about what his wife
Speaker 1: was up to with this old randy dog Hugo, and
Speaker 1: he got the police to tail her. They followed her
Speaker 1: to a hotel and burst in on her naked and
Speaker 1: in criminal conversation with Victor Hugo. Do you remember our
Speaker 1: lady Seymour Worsley episode? Criminal conversation is what they called adultery,
Speaker 1: basically in the crowd and in the courts. But by
Speaker 1: this time Victor had been nominated by King Louis Philippe
Speaker 1: to the Upper chamber of Parliament. He had just been
Speaker 1: inducted that April, so he was able to invoke his
Speaker 1: parliamentary privilege. I guess not to be arrested for embarrassing things.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know what his privilege was.
Speaker 1: And he's just like, I'm a peer, you can't take
Speaker 1: me in, so he was let go. Meanwhile, Leone was
Speaker 1: arrested and spent two months in prison. Then she was
Speaker 1: transferred to a convent for another six months, so she
Speaker 1: got all the blame. Not usual, and but King Louis
Speaker 1: Philippe apparently awarded Francois Billard a commission to appease him,
Speaker 1: so that he wouldn't drag everybody through like a big
Speaker 1: divorce trial because like I let to paint me, you
Speaker 1: just leave it me. I think it's interesting of Victor
Speaker 1: Hugo as a senator. If you look up, if you
Speaker 1: just google Victor Hugo, it says Victor Hugo French Senator,
Speaker 1: and then like down the way it's like, and he
Speaker 1: was an author. I'm like, y'all, and nobody remembers Victor
Speaker 1: Hugo for his political position. I mean maybe in France
Speaker 1: they do, but I doubt it. He's like one of
Speaker 1: the most renowned authors of all times, seriously, and he
Speaker 1: also is really great at drawing. They said if he
Speaker 1: was if he had chosen to be a painter, he
Speaker 1: would have been one of the greatest painters. He was
Speaker 1: good at music, and the guy was good a lot
Speaker 1: of things. But yeah, senator, way down the list for me.
Speaker 1: Nobody's like the number one thing I know Arnold Schwarzenegger
Speaker 1: for is being a governor covernor of California. Come on.
Speaker 1: But even with all this legal hullabaloo, Leoni and Victor
Speaker 1: carried on their affair for another six years. He also
Speaker 1: gave her money to support her kids for the rest
Speaker 1: of her life. And this wasn't really out of the
Speaker 1: ordinary for Victor. He was apparently pretty extravagant with all
Speaker 1: of his lovers, and he would give them lavish gifts
Speaker 1: or you know, settled houses on them and kind of
Speaker 1: see why a lot of them were like, oh, you
Speaker 1: want to sleep with me, that's pretty great. Might be
Speaker 1: I maybe the fourteenth girl you slept with today, but
Speaker 1: at least I might get a car, I get a
Speaker 1: piece of property from now his wife if you remember
Speaker 1: that Victor Hugo has a wife. Chair. She was so
Speaker 1: happy to see a competitor for the actress Juliette Toway
Speaker 1: that she visited Leoni in the convent and when she
Speaker 1: got out, she helped her launch her literary career. So
Speaker 1: she was like, better you than that actress. I don't
Speaker 1: know why, I guess you just was like, I want
Speaker 1: to dislodge anyone who's been here for a long time, right,
Speaker 1: But Lany did her best to depose juliet two. So
Speaker 1: those two ladies are working together against this actress. She
Speaker 1: begged Victor to dump her, and when that didn't work,
Speaker 1: Leony gathered up all the love letters that Victor had
Speaker 1: written for her and she had them delivered to Juliette.
Speaker 1: So of course Juliette gets all these love letters to
Speaker 1: another woman, and she's piste off and she's heartbroken at
Speaker 1: Victor's and fidelity. How dare you cheat on me the
Speaker 1: women you're cheating on your wife with with another woman?
Speaker 1: So I mean, you know, well, she just felt like
Speaker 1: little flings with actresses and prostitutes for one thing, but
Speaker 1: a committed affair that lasted seven years was another, Like
Speaker 1: you you aw me something? But okay. Then Napoleon the
Speaker 1: Third came along and everything was different. Of course, if
Speaker 1: you all remember Maximilian and Carlotta and a number of
Speaker 1: other European episodes, Napoleon the Third love thrown wrenches and gears.
Speaker 1: He did, he made his market, and we're going to
Speaker 1: find out more about all of that right after this break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone. So Victor Hugo was a republican, right,
Speaker 1: he wasn't into kings and queens. He wasn't it. He
Speaker 1: wanted there to be a Republic of France. He was
Speaker 1: really into that. And in his political life he argued
Speaker 1: against the death penalty, against slavery, for freedom of the press.
Speaker 1: He wanted an end to misery and poverty, which sounds
Speaker 1: really easy to say. I was like what he was like,
Speaker 1: I'm doing my part by supporting all the sex workers
Speaker 1: in France. I've enriched so many ladies. He also argued
Speaker 1: for universal suffrage and free education for children, so he
Speaker 1: was he was really active politically. He really wanted to
Speaker 1: kind of form a new France. He wanted to be
Speaker 1: a big part of forming new France. So if you
Speaker 1: weren't directly married to him, he treated women pretty well.
Speaker 1: He loved it. He was like, you deserve the world, girl.
Speaker 1: But in eighteen fifty one, then president of France under
Speaker 1: the Second Republic, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte the Third staged Akuta
Speaker 1: Top and seized complete power of France. Victor Hugo immediately
Speaker 1: declared him a traitor, and that meant he had to
Speaker 1: get the hell out of France very quickly, because they
Speaker 1: want to come kill him for sand shit about Napoleon
Speaker 1: the Third. And it was Juliette drew A who risked
Speaker 1: her life to save Victor Hugo. Carol Setl says that
Speaker 1: she arranged his false identity papers a disguise and coordinated
Speaker 1: a series of safe houses for him to hide in
Speaker 1: as he made his way to Brussels, which could not
Speaker 1: have been easy because Victor Hugo was already so famous
Speaker 1: by then that people would steal pebbles from cobble stones
Speaker 1: he walked on as souvenirs. Imagine that. I don't even
Speaker 1: think Beyonce gets that kind of dream. I would steal
Speaker 1: a pebble from Wow. But you got to imagine. The
Speaker 1: sky must have been tough because Napoleon the Third could
Speaker 1: just tell his men look for a man with a
Speaker 1: giant head and the biggest head in friends. I saw,
Speaker 1: I saw, I read somewhere there was just a fake
Speaker 1: beard and a top hat. It's got to be more
Speaker 1: than that, all right, just a very recognizable guy, no
Speaker 1: top hat, Hugo's head. This guy let us raised the
Speaker 1: Clark Kent's situation. It's like quick glasses on and everyone's like,
Speaker 1: who's this guy. Juliette Drue joined him in Brussels with
Speaker 1: trunks full of Victor's works in progress that she had
Speaker 1: saved from angry mobs, including two thirds of lame As
Speaker 1: Rob which he had been working on since eighteen thirty,
Speaker 1: and she was real into it. There's some of her
Speaker 1: letters are like, if you don't make these guys suffer
Speaker 1: for the things they're doing. Like, she's such a fan
Speaker 1: of the book, so she was really careful with his work.
Speaker 1: And I gotta say it reminds me of a number
Speaker 1: of other stories we've told where these these famous men's
Speaker 1: lovers and wives were often the ones who preserved there
Speaker 1: were exactly. I was thinking a lot about Anna Douglas,
Speaker 1: who she smuggled Frederick Douglas out of very right. If
Speaker 1: it weren't for her, he would never have been himself
Speaker 1: right now. So it's just really cool. Victor went from
Speaker 1: Brussels to Jersey and then he finally settled on the
Speaker 1: island of Guernsey and his family joined him there in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five. And if you're a romance movie fan
Speaker 1: like myself, go on Netflix and watch the Guernsey Literary
Speaker 1: Potato Peel Pie Society is so good and cute. I
Speaker 1: love it. I lay on the Byard wanted to come
Speaker 1: to Guernsey too, but Victor's wife, a del Foucher, actually
Speaker 1: discouraged her. Remember they were even kind of getting along
Speaker 1: because they both hated Juliette the second woman so much.
Speaker 1: That's I wonder if Adele was like, well, Juliet's already here,
Speaker 1: that's enough lady around. But Leoni still wrote to Victor.
Speaker 1: At this point, though, Juliette proved how smart she was
Speaker 1: because she was living near Victor and his entire family
Speaker 1: in her own separate residence. Although Victor visited her every day,
Speaker 1: they had meals together, they took walks. Carol Setel writes
Speaker 1: that she was so much happier during this period of
Speaker 1: time because Victor was less distracted with his plays and politics,
Speaker 1: and so he could spend more time with her. Adele
Speaker 1: and the kids would come and go, returning to France
Speaker 1: for long periods, but Juliette never left his side. Juliette
Speaker 1: was also allowed to leave her home by herself and
Speaker 1: make a few friends, and even became close to Victor's children,
Speaker 1: But she was always deferential to Adele the wife, and
Speaker 1: she never set foot in the family home. She never
Speaker 1: done any petty ship to try and come between them,
Speaker 1: and little by little, over the years spent on Guernsey,
Speaker 1: Juliette actually won Adele over. They become friendly and even
Speaker 1: sent each other gifts on occasion, and in her will,
Speaker 1: Adele told her kids that they should look after Juliette
Speaker 1: if Victor should die before her. Wow, I think that's nice.
Speaker 1: She was like, all right, you're just part of There's
Speaker 1: even like a family photo with Juliette in it, all
Speaker 1: the kids and Adele like she was just like, you're
Speaker 1: part of the family now. I guess I gotta wonder
Speaker 1: if Leoni felt a little betrayed by Adele, Like I
Speaker 1: thought you and me were working against this this actress together,
Speaker 1: and now you're friends with her. Sorry, Leonie, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's too bad. There was no going back to Leoni
Speaker 1: at this point. But don't worry about her. She got
Speaker 1: legally separated from her husband, the painter franch Sois, in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five, and Leoni became a distinguished author in
Speaker 1: her own right. So she did, Okay, the go girl,
Speaker 1: handle it handle It probably would have been hard to
Speaker 1: be a distinguished author as Victor Hugo's mistress, you know,
Speaker 1: like they're in a shadow there a little bit very true,
Speaker 1: very true, or they would like immediately be like, oh,
Speaker 1: he must have helped you write this, so he probably
Speaker 1: even like wrote it and you put your name on it,
Speaker 1: like I could see all kinds of did that happen
Speaker 1: with that? Collette? Collette? Yeah, yeah, Willie got all the
Speaker 1: credit for Claudine novels. I know later in her life
Speaker 1: she she got all her credit, but originally, yeah, they
Speaker 1: were published under his name. You're telling me that a
Speaker 1: man got credit for a woman's hard work at some
Speaker 1: point in history. I don't. I don't buy it. So
Speaker 1: hard to believe, so hard to believe. But these things happen,
Speaker 1: you know, these things happen. To see the receipts. Oh,
Speaker 1: there are plentiful receipts here they are. I'm drowning in receipts.
Speaker 1: Excuse me. It's like the Harry Potter again, his letter right.
Speaker 1: The whole time Victor is living in exile and Guernsey
Speaker 1: he was writing. He wrote three collections of poetry, pamphlets
Speaker 1: against Napoleon. The third he convinced Geneva, Portugal, and Columbia
Speaker 1: to remove the death penalty from their constitution. And you'll
Speaker 1: be happy to know, Eli that he did plead in
Speaker 1: Vain with Wuarez to spare Maximilian the first of Mexico. God.
Speaker 1: And we were all we were all trying to get
Speaker 1: Warez to get off that ship. Everyone I know wrote
Speaker 1: a letter in the Wuarez all my friends, please let
Speaker 1: that guy. But Warez he just couldn't, I mean politically
Speaker 1: it didn't anyway, Go lessla episode. If you haven't heard it,
Speaker 1: it's my favorite story. Victor Hugo also finally finished Lame
Speaker 1: as a Rob after seventeen years. It's one of the
Speaker 1: longest novels ever written, at nineteen hundred pages in the
Speaker 1: original French and fourteen hundred in English, which just goes
Speaker 1: to show you how much more concise we can be
Speaker 1: over here. If he ever described with the time that
Speaker 1: was a whole page. It's also still considered one of
Speaker 1: the greatest books ever written. But even though Victor was
Speaker 1: a political exile in danger of having his book heavily
Speaker 1: censored by the French, he was determined to be paid
Speaker 1: the most anyone has ever been paid for a book.
Speaker 1: He had to show Debt that's right. He was like,
Speaker 1: take this, Leopold, and he got it. Of Seltzer fans
Speaker 1: will enjoy this one because it was Belgian publisher Albert
Speaker 1: la Croix who won the deal. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: like to think so he went from publishing to bubbly water,
Speaker 1: from publishing sparkling the Albert Lacroise story. Lacrosse story. Uh,
Speaker 1: he had just launched his own publishing company and he
Speaker 1: had very little money, kind of like Laquise have very
Speaker 1: little flavor. And as soon as he heard that Victor
Speaker 1: Hugo had a new book, he hot footed it to
Speaker 1: Guernsey to negotiate because he knew. He's like, this is
Speaker 1: gonna sell if I get this book, my company is set.
Speaker 1: Hugo was paid three hundred thousand francs for an eight
Speaker 1: year license, not not even a lifelong copyright. Eight years.
Speaker 1: This guy got this book and let me pull out
Speaker 1: the conversion calculator transferred we that's around three point eight
Speaker 1: million dollars in today's money. According to biographer David Bellows,
Speaker 1: it still stands as the highest figure ever paid for
Speaker 1: a work of literature, and it's also likely the first
Speaker 1: time a bank ever made a loan to finance a
Speaker 1: book because Albert didn't had the money. So he was like, hey,
Speaker 1: just one of these situations where it takes a Victor
Speaker 1: Hugo for a bunch of people look around and say,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I think the arts might have value.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's also the first book to be published
Speaker 1: under embargo, which means that no advanced copies were given
Speaker 1: out to like get reviews and stuff. Um. Instead, they
Speaker 1: released the first part Fantine by itself. It sold six
Speaker 1: thousand copies on the first day. Hugo had insisted that
Speaker 1: cheap copies be made available, not just like fancy hardback copies.
Speaker 1: This was a really smart move because Lama's rob was
Speaker 1: brutally panned by critics, including Hugo's friend and fellow novelist
Speaker 1: Alexandre Duma, but the people who loved it, which makes sense.
Speaker 1: People's story, and when subsequent chapters were published, shoppers showed
Speaker 1: up to bookstores with wheel barrows so they could buy
Speaker 1: as many copies as possible, mostly to sell them on
Speaker 1: the black. And I've already read that one. I need
Speaker 1: a fresh coffee. I don't think Albert Lacroix was really
Speaker 1: into that idea, but common scheme, I imagine. And it
Speaker 1: just did so well that it only took a few
Speaker 1: months for Laquais to pay off his huge bank loan.
Speaker 1: But he did all right, and he took that money
Speaker 1: and he put bubbles in water bubbles in water and
Speaker 1: let let a line pass over it. Just that, speculations station.
Speaker 1: I have no idea he was involved, totally speculations station.
Speaker 1: We don't know how to pubbly water now adele fouchere.
Speaker 1: Victor's wife passed away in eighteen sixty eight, and just
Speaker 1: two years later. Victor returned to Paris in eighteen seventy,
Speaker 1: and he was there when the Prussian army laid siege
Speaker 1: to the city. Victor was so starved for food at
Speaker 1: this point that he was eating animals that had been
Speaker 1: gifted to him by the Paris Zoo, which is upsetting.
Speaker 1: I mean, I assume it was like marmots or uh sloths.
Speaker 1: Did he have a giraffe? He just wrote that he
Speaker 1: was reduced to eating the unknown, the unknown, so I
Speaker 1: don't I wonder if they even the animals were killed
Speaker 1: or died because there was no food, right, and it
Speaker 1: turned into meat before it ever reached him. So he
Speaker 1: didn't even know what it was. You know, it could
Speaker 1: be a giraffe. It wasn't like he had like a
Speaker 1: rhinoceros in his backyard and was like, well, I do
Speaker 1: not know what it is, but I know I can
Speaker 1: eat it. Fire up the grill. At one point, Victor
Speaker 1: feared the worst for himself, and he wrote to his family, quote,
Speaker 1: juliet she saved my life in December of eighteen fifty one.
Speaker 1: For me, she underwent exile. Never has her soul forsaken mind.
Speaker 1: Let those who have loved me love her. Let those
Speaker 1: who have loved me respect her. She is my widow.
Speaker 1: Which is funny because even after Adele died, he didn't
Speaker 1: marry Juliette, but he was definitely like, this is my lady. Yeah,
Speaker 1: look look at everything she did for me, and like
Speaker 1: you said that, she risked so much to preserve his
Speaker 1: work and his name. In eighteen seventy three, Juliette came
Speaker 1: back to Paris and she and Victor were finally able
Speaker 1: to live in the same house for the first time.
Speaker 1: I mean that's like fifty years they were together. But
Speaker 1: he was still hound dogging it just like always, I mean,
Speaker 1: in Spector Hugo. He's like, I'm not gotta turn this off, baby,
Speaker 1: I am who I am, even though he was seventy
Speaker 1: one years old by the time, Juliette found a love
Speaker 1: letter to him from one of their servants, a young
Speaker 1: woman named blunch, and Juliette wrote Victor a letter of
Speaker 1: her own, saying quote, I won't long withstand this incessant
Speaker 1: conflict rising from my poor, aging love, fighting against the
Speaker 1: young temptations that are offered to you when perhaps you
Speaker 1: are not seeking them right now. I forgive you because
Speaker 1: I want God to also forgive you. He who a
Speaker 1: loan has the right to punish and the power to
Speaker 1: deliver me as soon as possible from this hell on
Speaker 1: earth where my pitiful heart has been placed on the
Speaker 1: rack since the first minute that I gave myself to you. Damn,
Speaker 1: that's a lot. She's literally like, Okay, maybe you weren't trying,
Speaker 1: okay to have sex with your servant girl. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna assume you weren't, and I'm going to go ahead
Speaker 1: and forgive you. But you're making me feel absolutely insane,
Speaker 1: and I can't wait for God to get me out
Speaker 1: of this hell, deliver me to to Heaven the piece
Speaker 1: of death. I mean, but that says something. She was
Speaker 1: really obsessed with him. It's like a lot of her
Speaker 1: letters are just like gushing about his genius and how
Speaker 1: she just like barely deserves to be around him and
Speaker 1: all this stuff. So he probably liked that a lot,
Speaker 1: and I feel sorry for her that she couldn't. I
Speaker 1: almost feel sorry for her that she couldn't really shake
Speaker 1: it off, even though I can't be sorry that she
Speaker 1: preserved La miss and stuff. Her obsession really lead to
Speaker 1: us getting to read a lot of his work. I
Speaker 1: got to imagine. I don't know, maybe you read this somewhere,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like the impression I got is that
Speaker 1: when Victor was with someone, he probably made them feel incredible,
Speaker 1: like the center of the world, right, And then of
Speaker 1: course the next morning he's onto someone else. But Juliette,
Speaker 1: he keeps coming back to. She's She clearly had a
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I don't know what kind of choices
Speaker 1: she had available to her, but she was, as far
Speaker 1: as we can tell, willing to give up everything else
Speaker 1: she ever wanted to pursue to devote herself entirely to him,
Speaker 1: even to the point where when he was exiled, she
Speaker 1: could have just been like, oh good, he's gone, but didn't,
Speaker 1: but did not exactly. Carol Steedel was saying that she
Speaker 1: mainly seems to console herself with like knowing that she
Speaker 1: has this privileged position in this great artist life, that
Speaker 1: she's like reading his drafts, she gets to hear his
Speaker 1: work before anyone else and stuff like that. That seems
Speaker 1: to be kind of and maybe that's true for a
Speaker 1: lot of these women, that they're just like this amazing
Speaker 1: artist of insane celebrity of like, you know, a beloved figure.
Speaker 1: That's that's enough for me to be I I want
Speaker 1: a piece of that, you know, I just want to
Speaker 1: be a part of that person's life in some way.
Speaker 1: So that really meant something to her. And clearly he
Speaker 1: maybe he had a I don't know. I'm very interested
Speaker 1: in how he thought about sex and love because when
Speaker 1: he was with Adele, it seems like he was pretty
Speaker 1: he was trying to stay faithful to her, but he
Speaker 1: they did stay married, you know, they didn't want to separate.
Speaker 1: And then when he was like, I'm in love with Juliet,
Speaker 1: he he stayed with her for a long time and
Speaker 1: he was just like, but I'm going to go out
Speaker 1: and like, my my appetites are so voracious. Maybe he
Speaker 1: was really afraid to concentrate that on one woman. I
Speaker 1: would imagine that part of him probably learned too. Maybe
Speaker 1: he and his wife Adele learned this together after she
Speaker 1: stopped wanting to have sex with him, like, hey, you
Speaker 1: know what, we can have a marriage with that sex.
Speaker 1: Sex doesn't have to be tied to monogamy, right, Like
Speaker 1: sex is just a thing that you're doing for pleasure,
Speaker 1: for fun, whatever, and I don't want to so if
Speaker 1: you do go for it, um, just you know, be
Speaker 1: careful with this, the emotional side of things and if
Speaker 1: you're falling in love with someone else instead of me,
Speaker 1: And that almost seemed to lead them into this kind
Speaker 1: of proto uh polyamory right where he's like, actually, I
Speaker 1: don't love you any less when I love her, um,
Speaker 1: you know how one side of that was obviously, it seemed,
Speaker 1: but but there did seem to be that kind of
Speaker 1: balance they were all trying to figure out in their
Speaker 1: own way at that time of like, well what does
Speaker 1: it mean if I just want to go have sex
Speaker 1: with someone but I still care intensely about you and
Speaker 1: you're all I think about. And and interesting that he
Speaker 1: found her emotional affair to be as devastating as a
Speaker 1: physical affair have been for him, like you're the part
Speaker 1: of you that matters you're sharing with some else, you know.
Speaker 1: He really did feel like that was kind of a betrayal, UM,
Speaker 1: and I do wonder maybe there's some trauma there where.
Speaker 1: He's like, I, you know, I was concentrating all of
Speaker 1: this on my wife, and now she eight years in,
Speaker 1: she's like, I'm done with sex for always, like no
Speaker 1: one's going to fund me ever again. And he's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to, you know, do that to someone else.
Speaker 1: And maybe he felt like it was actually a kindness
Speaker 1: to spread it around, so he didn't I don't know,
Speaker 1: exhaust want one lady over anyone else. I don't know
Speaker 1: that's speculation station, but yeah, even though Juliette wrote him
Speaker 1: that angry letter about how she wished she was dead,
Speaker 1: she was always certain so much from him, Randy and around. Um.
Speaker 1: She didn't know who he was. She was very, very
Speaker 1: familiar with Victor Hugo and in intimate sex lives of
Speaker 1: famous people. Irving Wallace writes quote, she herself estimated that
Speaker 1: he had sex with at least two hundred women between
Speaker 1: eighteen forty eight and eighteen fifty Within two years. Even
Speaker 1: at age seventy, he managed to seduce the twenty two
Speaker 1: year old daughter of writer tail Field Gautier, and it
Speaker 1: is possible that he was carrying on an affair with
Speaker 1: the actress Sarah Bernhardt simultaneously. God her name. He's popping
Speaker 1: up in some of these stories to do because she
Speaker 1: had many lovers, it's insane. Her personal life on her
Speaker 1: Wikipedia page goes on forever and all big names, a
Speaker 1: lot of big names. Yeah. And I'll say, like, the
Speaker 1: reason they think that is because the initials SB were
Speaker 1: found in his diary, um, and he was known to
Speaker 1: be a friend of hers. But I'll say that on
Speaker 1: her Wikipedia page there's no mention of them having an affair,
Speaker 1: So I don't know how how clear confirmed that is.
Speaker 1: It's just one of those situations where you're like, well,
Speaker 1: each one of them had sex with everyone else, so
Speaker 1: they probably did each other. I could totally at least
Speaker 1: one night, being like, I mean, why not, let's give
Speaker 1: it a word. Everyone's gonna think we did anyway. But
Speaker 1: like we said, there's really no denying the place that
Speaker 1: Juliette held in Victor's heart. In eight three, after years
Speaker 1: battling stomach cancer, Juliette died in Victor's arms at age
Speaker 1: seventy seven. Wallace writes quote, although his sex drive continued
Speaker 1: during the remaining two years of his life. Her death
Speaker 1: seemed to break his spirit at last. It's also becoming
Speaker 1: more clear exactly how big a part Juliette played and
Speaker 1: some of Victor's writing, because she wrote him twenty thousand
Speaker 1: letters throughout her lifetime. Apparently, he he asked her to
Speaker 1: write to him every single day when and so she
Speaker 1: would see. Some of her letters are like, please don't
Speaker 1: make me do this anymore. I really have nothing to
Speaker 1: tell you because I don't get to go out and stuff,
Speaker 1: so I have nothing to say. But yeah, she wrote
Speaker 1: twenty thousand letters to him. It's been a huge project
Speaker 1: to transcribe them and put them online. There's like twelve
Speaker 1: thousand are available now, but they're still working on them
Speaker 1: and as more of them are being transcribed. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of clear that she did influence his writing a
Speaker 1: little bit. Carol Steed makes a strong point about this
Speaker 1: because she places a letter from Juliette side by side
Speaker 1: with one of Victor's later poems. So let's go down
Speaker 1: to Poetry Corner one more time to hear Victor Hugo's
Speaker 1: words in the shadow Doubtless I have you, Doubtless I
Speaker 1: see you thought is a wine which makes its dreamers drunk.
Speaker 1: I know it. Nevertheless, I wish you'd dream of me
Speaker 1: when you are thus through an evening with your books,
Speaker 1: without lifting your head and without saying a word to me.
Speaker 1: A shadow rests at the bottom of my heart that
Speaker 1: loves you. And for me to see you entirely, you
Speaker 1: must look at me a little from time to time yourself.
Speaker 1: And now let's hear Juliette's letter to Victor. Consider that
Speaker 1: I barely saw you, after all, since you worked all
Speaker 1: of the time without once lifting your eyes to me
Speaker 1: and without addressing a single word to me. I well
Speaker 1: know that I could look at you and did not
Speaker 1: deny myself that. But I don't see you as well
Speaker 1: when you don't look at me a little yourself from
Speaker 1: time to time. Pretty compelling. Yeah, that at least he
Speaker 1: got some of that from her. Oh yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: a cover. Yeah, He's like, oh, I got this letter,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to do my own little poetry version
Speaker 1: of yeah yeah, which I mean, you know, he definitely
Speaker 1: has his own beautiful writing and spin on it and everything.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if he's like, oh, this unrequited you know, emotion,
Speaker 1: what does he really know about unrequited emotion? You know
Speaker 1: what I mean? So he's like, oh, I can use
Speaker 1: that to like write a poem about something a lot
Speaker 1: of people can relate to. Yeah, He's like, I don't
Speaker 1: everyone requited me. Victor Hugo spent his last few years
Speaker 1: living on Avenue Victor Hugo, which apparently is one of
Speaker 1: the only times that an avenue was renamed for a
Speaker 1: person who was still alive. This guy really had a
Speaker 1: lot of pull. He only did, and that really really
Speaker 1: hugely appealed to his ego because he had his letters
Speaker 1: addressed to him as to Mr Victor in his avenue
Speaker 1: Perry where to go? Everyone knew where, just like just
Speaker 1: look for where there's a line of ladies up the doors.
Speaker 1: There's no cobblestones left. Historian Andrew Martin says that Hugo's
Speaker 1: journals detail eight different sexual encounters he had in the
Speaker 1: final four months of his life before he passed away
Speaker 1: in five at the age of eighties three. He's eighty three,
Speaker 1: still dogging it up now. Since he was a man
Speaker 1: of the people, you know, for all his wealth and fame,
Speaker 1: Hugo requested a popper's funeral if he wanted to be
Speaker 1: down there streets, you know, but keep it quiet, that's right, yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty pretty much. But Paris just could not do that. Okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: you were too beloved and importance. And the famous story
Speaker 1: is that every brothel in Paris closed down for the
Speaker 1: day so all the prostitutes could go hey, their respect
Speaker 1: to their best customers. But a historian on Reddit thread
Speaker 1: points out that one to two million people are estimated
Speaker 1: to have lined the streets for Hugo's funeral procession, and
Speaker 1: the population of Paris at the time was only around
Speaker 1: two point three million people, so half or more of
Speaker 1: Paris was outside. So if the brothels were closed is
Speaker 1: because the prostitutes were on the streets finding they weren't
Speaker 1: going inside, right, or they just had to be like,
Speaker 1: there's no business today, so let me go out in party,
Speaker 1: which I think it is pretty amazing. They're all like
Speaker 1: hanging out at the windows, like, you knowing, nobody coming
Speaker 1: in here. Let's just go out and we can give
Speaker 1: some alle blow jobs or something. Amazing. Wow. So regardless,
Speaker 1: Victor Hugo's death had a serious impact on the French
Speaker 1: economy that day, so true, however, it was apparently confirmed
Speaker 1: by the Paris police that the ladies of the night
Speaker 1: did drape their genitals in black cloth as a sign
Speaker 1: of respect, like a funeral merchant vaginning. You don't understand
Speaker 1: how much money it made me. And also Paris must
Speaker 1: have celebrated Victor Hugo just exactly as he would have liked,
Speaker 1: because urban legend says that the city experienced a mini
Speaker 1: baby boom nine months later, So they were out here
Speaker 1: just enjoying sexual congress, and people, through tears are like, well,
Speaker 1: what should we do to honor him? I know, I
Speaker 1: think I know what he would have wanted. What what
Speaker 1: would he be doing right now? What would Victor Hugo do?
Speaker 1: This is for you, Victor amazing. So that is Victor
Speaker 1: Hugo's Randy Randy Randy lar What a life. I think
Speaker 1: I mentioned this before, but I'm so mad at the
Speaker 1: image I used to have of what authors and writers
Speaker 1: and stuff were like, because you just, I think, when
Speaker 1: you're a kid, they're just portrayed as these like shy
Speaker 1: nerds who didn't do anything but sit in their rooms
Speaker 1: with their notebooks, you know, go down to the local
Speaker 1: Starbucks and just type type type. Seriously, ferious people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were out here living the craziest goddamn lives of anyone,
Speaker 1: like adventure and sex and like just you know, their
Speaker 1: own little version of rock and roll going on. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just also goes to show you that the idea
Speaker 1: of celebrity hasn't changed that much, at least in Western
Speaker 1: culture over the last few hundred years, because they were
Speaker 1: all kind of doing the same thing. That's true, and
Speaker 1: it kind of makes sense for for writers, I mean,
Speaker 1: especially in the Romantic period. They you know, they were like,
Speaker 1: the point is that I go out and experience life,
Speaker 1: you know, and I bottle it up for you, the
Speaker 1: too timid, you know, to enjoy in your living room
Speaker 1: because you're not like me. You can't go out there,
Speaker 1: you don't have all these feelings erupting, you know that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. Do you think that Victor really showed
Speaker 1: his dad. I wonder, like, I you wanted me to
Speaker 1: go like see the world and join the army and
Speaker 1: fighting stuff, and He's like, but basically I made millions
Speaker 1: of dollars, I got laid constantly, and nobody ever shot
Speaker 1: a bullet towards my head. So I think I would
Speaker 1: I think I win Dad, I know, I do wonder
Speaker 1: that because they did reconcile later in his life, and
Speaker 1: we know that he wrote him the letter about conceiving
Speaker 1: him on a mountaintop and how he that meant, That
Speaker 1: meant he had a little something to do. Okay, so
Speaker 1: maybe you didn't make it as a writer, but it's
Speaker 1: partly because a mitch quite frankly, I mean right, so
Speaker 1: you know, I maybe he was proud in his own way.
Speaker 1: He couldn't say it because he had been so he
Speaker 1: gone too hard on the lawyers or something. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I do wonder if he was out, especially after getting
Speaker 1: all that money for laim is, if he was like,
Speaker 1: look at this check, mab. No one's ever been paid
Speaker 1: as much. Because Leopold himself was kind of a horn dog.
Speaker 1: But but not he was, well, son, I have slept
Speaker 1: with seven women in my life, can you believe it?
Speaker 1: And victors like, oh, Dad, I slept with seven women
Speaker 1: this morning, but all right, not even at the same time,
Speaker 1: one after another. I went from house to house, you
Speaker 1: know another. You know French history, it's just the gift
Speaker 1: that keeps on given. Sure is, sure is yeah, But
Speaker 1: we'll get out of France for our next episode. We'll
Speaker 1: hear some more ridiculous stories coming up soon. Yeah, we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you and what you thought about
Speaker 1: Victor's story about your own experiences with his work, your
Speaker 1: own experiences with the brothels, multiple sex partners one day,
Speaker 1: I mean, whatever you got. Yeah, well we'll hear it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Please shoot us an email if you'd like a ridict
Speaker 1: Romance at gmail dot com right or we're on Instagram
Speaker 1: and Twitter. I'm at Dyanamite Boom and I'm at Oh Great,
Speaker 1: it's Eli and the show is at ridict Romance. So
Speaker 1: reach out in whatever way you see fit. Drop us
Speaker 1: a review on Apple podcasts. We love those, We love
Speaker 1: positive reviews there, and we can't wait to see all
Speaker 1: the next episode. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you
Speaker 1: next time. Ye So long, friends, it's time to go.
Speaker 1: Thanks so listening to our show. Tell your friends name's
Speaker 1: uncle sandece to listen to a show Ridiculous Romance