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