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Victor Hugo's House in Paris
by Lisa Sanderson
“Adversity makes men and prosperity
makes monsters”, according to Victor Hugo. This did not apply,
however, to the famous French writer himself.
Victor Hugo’s house in Paris is located on Place des Vosges (the Vosges Square — see other article here), in the quaint 3rd district of the French capital.
After climbing up the many and rather steep
stairs, visitors will discover a beautifully decorated and sumptuous
house. Originally built in the 16th century, it retains in
many ways the atmosphere of that era, with its wooden antique
furniture, chandeliers and heavy curtains. It is also rather dark
compared to our modern way of decorating which favors light.
Victor Hugo, as well as being a wonderful
writer, was an excellent interior decorator and the whole house exudes
good taste. The rooms which are especially interesting are the Chinese
room which is filled with Oriental art and exquisitely painted plates
and the bedroom/study where Victor Hugo wrote. The high ceilings, some
with beautiful chandeliers, give a feeling of extra spaciousness. The
artist himself decorated these rooms and fabricated many fine pieces of
furniture. Victor Hugo’s life is explained in detail so that
visitors can follow it by wandering through the house.
The four-storey, red-brick house overlooks
the open space of the Place des Vosges. This square, green park is one
of the prettiest places in Paris, surrounded by historic buildings and
expensive art galleries.
Although this is a hugely expensive area to
live in today, in Victor Hugo’s day it was almost a slum area,
close to the Bastille Prison. A champion of the poor, Hugo wanted to be
surrounded by the people he wrote about. But he lived in style!
Born in 1802, Hugo was the son of a General
who served under Napoleon I, but he was raised in Paris by his mother
who had strong royalist sympathies.
At the young age of 20 he married Adele
Foucher, his childhood sweetheart, against his mother’s wishes.
She thought that Adele was not good enough for him. Hugo became a
famous lyric poet and novelist and well-loved by the people. But in the
1840’s tragedy struck. His verse drams Les Burgraves failed, and one of his two daughters, Leopoldine, died in a drowning accident.
Hugo became a member of the constitutional
government of King Louis Philippe, but when Louis Napoleon III
reinstated the Empire in 1851 Hugo was horrified. He went into exile
first in Brussels, then in the Channel Islands where he wrote his
wonderful novel about the poor of Paris, Les Miserables, and
several volumes of poetry. There he lived with his beautiful mistress,
Juliette Drouet, with whom he fell in love after his wife had an affair
with his good friend.
After the fall of Napoleon III in 1870, Victor Hugo returned to France
to great acclaim. He became a member of the National Assembly and a
senator of the Third French Republic.
Lisa Sanderson is a talented contributor to
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