"Spirit, are you there"?
In an issue of "Historically yours" devoted to famous characters keen on spiritualism, Stéphane Bern tells the story of the life of Victor Hugo, and more particularly of his famous attraction for the thing.
Invited from Europe 1, the forensic pathologist and anthropologist, Philippe Charlier, helps him shed light on this occult passion of the man of letters.
We are in September 1854 on the island of Jersey, off Normandy.
In the distance, the wind blows and large waves crash onto the desert sand beaches.
In an isolated house, facing the sea, Victor Hugo and a small group of relatives are gathered around a table.
Very focused, they wait for a spirit from beyond to manifest.
The seconds pass, slowly.
Suddenly they smell something.
Or maybe someone.
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Noises, a few knocks.
A strange dialogue.
It is death that speaks to them.
"The lovely couple who have flown in the river think of you. They love you, they see you, they wait for you and keep your place in the immense kiss."
"Death" speaks there of the daughter of Victor Hugo and her husband who had disappeared a few years earlier.
The session is interrupted by an impromptu visit, but one can easily imagine the dismay, undoubtedly the terror, of the small group after this dialogue with death itself.
However, Victor Hugo is used to these occult practices.
Since his arrival on the island of Jersey, he has developed the habit of communicating with the afterlife.
Back to the beginning of the story
But back to the origins.
From an early age, Victor Hugo showed a great interest in writing.
At 14, he wrote in his diary: "I want to be Chateaubriand or nothing".
Victor Hugo wrote poetry, theater but above all, in 1831, at only 30 years old, he published his first historical novel,
Notre-Dame de Paris,
which made him one of the most famous authors in France.
On the heart, on October 12, 1822, Victor Hugo married Adèle Foucher, a childhood friend.
They will have five children in all.
However, we can not say that the couple is happily married.
Victor Hugo begins a romantic relationship with Juliette Drouet, an actress who becomes his muse, his companion in the shadows.
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For her, Victor Hugo composed poignant poems.
He also writes plays.
Cromwell
and
Hernani
make Victor Hugo one of the leaders of Romanticism, an artistic current which advocates sensitivity and the expression of feelings in literature.
The time of exile to Jersey
In 1841, after having presented himself several times without success, Victor Hugo was finally elected to the French Academy.
Alas, his joy is short-lived.
Her adored daughter Léopoldine, aged only 19, drowned with her husband in a boat accident.
Victor Hugo is traveling when the accident occurs and he learns the news while reading the newspapers.
He will never recover from this terrible loss.
Is it moreover to reestablish contact with his daughter who died too soon that Victor Hugo turned to the mysteries of the beyond?
Yes, but probably also out of boredom.
In 1851, President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte organized a coup d'état to become Emperor Napoleon III.
Victor Hugo, who is his fiercest political opponent, goes into exile with his family.
Direction the independent island of Jersey, located between France and England.
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There is not much to be entertained on site except for some strange ghost stories.
"Jersey is a place where there really wasn't a lot of activities, apart from a few walks", explains forensic pathologist and anthropologist Philippe Charlier at the microphone of "Historically yours".
"It is still a place where one bothered dry. Spiritualism could be a way to deceive one's boredom," he continues.
It is therefore said that the house where Victor Hugo resides is haunted.
On the beach, on full moon nights, a beheaded person would wander tirelessly in search of eternal rest.
The White Lady, a young woman infanticide would also appear from time to time on the rocks.
There is something there to ignite the imagination of the man of letters.
The specter of his daughter Léopoldine
At the start of her exile, a visiting friend, the poet Delphine de Girardin, spoke to her about a new science that would make the dead speak.
Victor Hugo, a little perplexed but pushed by his daughter Adèle, agrees to play the game. Victor Hugo, his wife, his children, and a few friends take their places around a round table on which is placed a pedestal table with a tripod.
Delphine de Girardin asks two participants to put their hands flat on the table.
"Ask your questions, the table responds by hitting one blow for yes, two shots for no," explains Delphine de Girardin.
Nothing happens, yet Delphine de Girardin perseveres.
"The Spirits are not cab-horses which patiently await the bourgeois, but free and voluntary beings who come only at their time," she declares.
"When he discovers this technique of dialogue with the dead, Victor Hugo thinks only of making contact with his daughter Léopoldine", deciphers the specialist Philippe Charlier, for whom there was therefore a real expectation on the part of the letter man.
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Under the leadership of Delphine de Girardin, the assembly repeated the experience over the following days.
This time a spirit manifests.
It is about Léopoldine.
Victor Hugo's daughter, who drowned ten years earlier, tries to communicate with her parents.
In shock, his mother remains speechless.
Everyone is crying.
Victor Hugo is now convinced that spirits exist.
He writes: "That is amazing! There is nothing to answer to that. I declare myself convinced."
Over the next two years, the Hugo family questioned the dead at length and almost daily.
They invite friends or acquaintances to participate, but a number of them remain skeptical.
On September 14, 1853, Juliette Drouet, Victor Hugo's mistress, wrote to him these words: "As for your devilments, I see in the future more inconvenience than pleasure [...] there is something of this pastime. dangerous for reason, if he is serious […] and ungodly, as long as there is the slightest trickery involved. "
5-star spirits
But Victor Hugo believes it hard as iron.
He becomes a fan of these spiritualism sessions which allow him to speak with famous visitors from beyond.
The casting is a dream.
Jesus Christ manifests himself, as do Molière, Dante, Mozart or even Machiavelli.
"We can add Mahomet and the Iron Mask", specifies Philippe Charlier.
"They are only famous characters, because you have to put yourself at the level of Victor Hugo. To speak to him, you cannot be just anyone."
The great playwright William Shakespeare dictates to Victor Hugo a play directly in French because "the English language is inferior to the French language".
The poet André Chénier, guillotined during the Revolution, returns to finish several unfinished works.
"In the style is Victor Hugo. But spiritualism has boosted his creativity", analyzes Philippe Charlier.
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During some sessions it happens that the pedestal table, guided by a ghost, draws.
One of these drawings has been preserved, and it is particularly impressive.
We see the head of a corpse, with empty eyes, wearing a hat, the grinning and oversized smile.
At each spiritualism session, Victor Hugo records his conversations with the spirits in notebooks.
The result is startling.
Metaphysical questions are raised: Does retribution await the wicked in the Hereafter?
"Victor Hugo ends up getting bored"
The skeptics will not fail to raise that the spirits are often in agreement with the apprentice mediums: they do not seem to appreciate the policy of Napoleon III, sworn enemy of Victor Hugo, but sing the glory of the latter. .
They also ask him to resume writing his famous novel
Les Misérables
or to write a poem.
This will be
what the shadowy mouth says
, of which here is a line: "The specter was waiting for me; the dark and quiet being. Took me by the hair in his growing hand".
During a meeting, Jules Allix, one of the participants, becomes almost mad, victim of a crisis of dementia.
The spiritualism sessions are spaced out.
No doubt Victor Hugo is also getting tired of exploring the world beyond.
When he left the island of Jersey in 1855, he hardly ever summoned the spirits to his home.
"After two years of exercise, and seeing the side effects, Victor Hugo ends up getting tired of the exercise, he goes around it", summarizes Philippe Charlier.
Accounts of the sessions which have partly disappeared
Victor Hugo returned to France after the fall of Napoleon III in 1870. He was greeted triumphantly as a hero of the Republic.
Successively elected to the National Assembly and then to the Senate, he finally died on May 22, 1885, at the age of 83.
It was then that Victor Hugo's passion for the afterlife resurfaced.
In his will, the writer bequeaths the report of his spiritualism sessions to the National Library of France so that it may be published under the name of the
Book of Tables
.
But the unique copy, handwritten by Victor Hugo, disappears.
Since then, only part of the book has reappeared and been published.
"It reads almost like a novel", according to Philippe Charlier.
As for the missing pages, they are not ready to share their secrets with us.