The Reinvention of Love Read Free Page B

story that must be told.
    The beginning of it went like this:
    In my early days at the
Globe
, when I was only twenty-two, I was given a book of poetry to review,
Odes et ballades
by a Victor Hugo. There was much in it to admire, but also much that irked. The poet was heavy-handed, leaving nothing to subtlety. He revelled in the grotesque and then, strangely enough, put too much emphasis on the trivial. The balance was off. Sometimes he reverted to laziness, using ellipses instead of furthering a thought. But when he freed himself from his own tricks, the poetry soared. I was temperate in my review, but I did use the word “genius”. And I meant it.
    At this time I was living on the Rive Gauche at number 94 rue de Vaugirard. The day after the review was published, I came home to find a calling card with an invitation from Monsieur Hugo in my letterbox. Coincidentally, Victor Hugo turned out to live just two doors away from me, at 90 rue de Vaugirard.
    The next day I called on him in the evening. The Hugos resided in a small second-floor apartment above a joiner’s shop. There was the smell of sawdust in the stairwell. Also, the smell of dinner.
    “My wife and I are just sitting down,” said Victor, when he met me at the door. “Won’t you come in and dine with us?”
    I had already eaten, had called at the Hugos purposefully late so that I would be certain not to interrupt their meal. But it seemed rude to decline the invitation.
    “I’d be delighted,” I said, and allowed him to lead me upstairs.
    The apartment was crowded but cozy. A fire burned in the grate and there were pleasing paintings and tapestries on the walls. Victor had married his childhood sweetheart and this was their first real home together.
    Madame Hugo rose when I entered the apartment. She was dark and tall, almost Spanish looking. I must confess that, apart from bowing to her in greeting, I didn’t pay her much attention during the evening. This is partly because she didn’t say anything at all during the meal, or afterwards, when the dishes were cleared and the Hugos and I sat by the fire. During dinner her attention seemed entirely taken up with her own thoughts, and after dinner she worked at her sewing, her head bent over her task, ignoring the spirited conversation between her husband and me.
    But the larger truth is that it wasn’t Adèle’s silence that kept me from noticing her that first evening, it was my intoxication with the young poet. He was a few years older than I was but full of vitality and vigour, bounding up the stairs like a mountain goat, as I puffed up after him, my forehead damp with perspiration.
    His dedication to poetry was absolute, and his gratitude to me was touching.
    “Until your review,” he said, “I suffered such doubts.”
    “But there will always be doubts, will there not?” I do not know of any gifted writer who does not suffer from a constant lack of confidence.
    “Yes,” said Victor, reaching over and clasping my hand.
    “But now there will always be your wonderful review to buoy me up when my spirits are low.”

    Victor Hugo c. 1829

    Even though I had eaten two dinners and felt a little queasy by the time I bid farewell to the Hugos just after midnight, I walked the short distance between our two houses in a state of elation. I had a new friend and it seemed a perfect friendship. We were bound by common interests, lived a breath apart, and each could help the other to advance. I would publish reviewsof Victor’s work, and he could assist me with my own tentative steps towards poetry.
    What could be better?
    Victor soon introduced me to his circle, a group known as the Cénacle. There were the poets Lamartine and Vigny, the painters Delacroix and Deveria, the young writers, Mérimée, Dumas, and Alfred de Musset. And there was another critic, Gustave Planche. The group used to meet fairly regularly in the library of the Arsenal.
    I must confess that I did not talk as much to the painters as