He Also Wrote Novels

Victor Hugo's pen was never still, and not necessarily because he was writing a novel or a poem. He could be holding forth at a cafe, and however brilliantly or passionately he talked, his pen would begin doodling as if it had a brain of its own. "How many times," said his friend, Novelist Theophile Gautier, "have we not watched with astonished gaze the transformation of a blot of ink or coffee on the back of an envelope into a landscape, a castle, a seascape of amazing originality."

Had he not been the literary giant that he was, Hugo might now occupy a fairly conspicuous place in the history of 19th century French romantic art. But his most avid readers are usually unaware of his 450 drawings and watercolors, and even such biographers as Andre Maurois and Matthew Josephson scarcely mention this appealing side. Hugo's writings, his quarrel with Napoleon III, and his prodigious sex life have overshadowed his art. Yet last week, as the consequence of a show put up in his old Paris home (now a state museum) to mark the looth anniversary of the publication of Les Miserables, Parisians were belatedly discovering Hugo as an artist. And to many, his paintings and drawings seemed fresher than the chapters on chapters on chapters of that novel.

"Between Verses." According to Jean Sergent, director of the Victor Hugo House, the great man himself was partly to blame for his neglect as an artist. Being at the top of French letters, he could not bear to be of lesser rank in any other field, and so he gave the impression that his art was a mere bagatelle to occupy his spare time. The drawings, he said, were "pen scratchings" that he turned out "between verses, during moments of reverie, and almost unconsciously with what ink remained in my pen."

Yet the drawings are often too large and too well worked out to be tossed off in such a manner. Hugo signed them in big bold letters, parted with them only as gifts to cherished friends. Far from being casual, says Sergent, Hugo was merely being coy to avoid serious criticism.

Coffee to Brew a Storm. It is probably only legend that he used chocolate, milk, and soot in his work; but he did use coffee to portray a brewing storm, deliberately broke pen points to achieve a wider line, pecked his paintings with a knife or dirtied them with fingers to give the impression of mist. He could paint or draw a female nude with bold and simple strokes; he could also produce magnificent colored swirls or fascinating gloops that would seem at home in many modern galleries. In his drawing of a hanged man, inspired partly by the execution of John Brown, he was a master of shadow and light. But for the most part, his work was a superb combination: loyalty to detail--and a novelist's runaway imagination.

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