Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1878-07-13
Victor Hugo as an OratOr--a Splendid
Pencil Sketch Of Him.


Victor Hugo as an OratOr-H Splendid
Pencil Sketch Of Him.
tsmalley's Paris Letters to N, Y, Tribune.l
Victor Hugo came on the stage, enter
ing from the left wing, and walking
slowly to the table in the center behind
the fOotlights. The house rose and
cheered him again and again. He stands
while the applause lasts, his hands rest.
ing on the table, the shoulders STOPPING,
bending the noble head, whose crow OF
snow white, thick hair is the luminous
center TO which all eyes are turned, He
has certainly grown old. The figure is
less erect the step less sure; the lines
are cut deeper in the face the muscles
of the neck seem weaker the %lndetinable
impress of extreme age isupOu him. The
theater is lighted with gas, not very
brilliantly, but he looks five years
older than when I saw him in public,
at the funeral of Theirs in September.
The sbrupt energy of movement once
so characteristic of him, has grown
a little languid. When the applause
died away, he sat down almost sleep
lily His figure is short and bulky,
though compact, and you can't see much
of him behind the table. He is dressed
in BLACK; the white tie, which fills all the
space between collar and the narrow open
ing of hii waistcoat, is scarcely whittier
than the iull white beard that rests on it
A few people come up and shake hands
with him; when that is over, he announ
ces, without rising, that the meeting is
open and that NJ. Edmond About will
speak.
NJ, Edmond About is gray haired, high
colored thick set, delicate handed, with
one of the shrewdest pairs of twinkling
black eyes ever set in q human face. One
of the cleyerest brains in France il slowed
away tehind them. NJ. jules SIMON re-
marked, a little later, that you could
not say whether his wit was more re.
marksb,e than his good sense or his good
sense than his wit,
When Victor Hugo rose to speak the
five years OF added age fell easily off his
shoulders. He stood straight and square.
The eyes which had been half masked
beneath dropping lids, began to dilate
and glow. The fires which you thought
extinguished blszed up; the Hugo vino
stood before you was the Hugo Of Her
man," Of Lies Orientales," fresh, vigOr-
Gus, alert, in all the imperishable youth.
tulness of genius. The first word he ut
tered rang through the vast amphithe~
alter, grave, sonorOus and powerful.
There was not a trace of effort. Ffo.n
beginning to end the note first struck
was maintained but never ~monotOnOus.
| called him an orator Just now, but or
ator he is not, in the large sense of q
word TOO often and too carelessly used.
His speech was written, every word, and
read from a manuscript and what a
manuscript! Sheets of paper two feet
square, covered with writing so large
and free that you could almost
read it from the balcony fifty
feet off; full Of corrections, of erasures
done as if with a painters brush, or with
the pen of a giant, as he is. The can
delabra, each of six lights, stood on either
side of him. He put them together on
his right, added two large lamps from
the table in front, and final y sent to
borrow a third from the secretary, who
sat hard by, and thence!orward was il
darkness. He held his manuscript close
under this cluster of light. When be
wished to use is right hand for a gest.
ure, he dropped the paper on the table OF
parted company W1cRis left, lie never
; in succession, - two sentence,
/, Orator or not, no speaker ever fell
more strongly what he was saying, Of
made it felt more strongly BY his audi
ence He read. slowly. with oi~."lal
Il7Uihcthess n purity OF artiCu.
: %lation, and Victor Hugo's is .
, style which gains rather than loses by
! a spoken delivery. Read, the recurrence,
OF antithesis are too frequent, the orna
ment sometimes overd0ne the intense
sincerity Of the man seems artificial be-
cause it is so intense. 1t is only wher
you hear him, when he himself adjust,
and regulates the movement of hi,
petiOds, that the due effect OF each i,
given in due succession, He did what he
liked with his hearers, but it was not by
the magnetic current which the true
orator establishes between himself a L
his audience; nor by sympathy, nor by
action and reaction, rather by the sheei
supremacy OF intellect, by force of will
, by force of his own unquestioning anC
absolute conviction, and by The large
r hearted humanity of the man. He tool
posse ssion of you whether you would o
no; no personality, no hostility wa.
strong enough to stand up against tn,
torrent that swept down upon you.
, sat next an English friend, no admire
Of Hugo, who heard him and saw him 70
the first time in her lie, whose association
t lie mostly among royalists and priest,
who came to see Hugo as a curiosity-t,
adopt one Of his own comparisons whic'
r most shocked the classicists at tn
f times a lion from the desert, Gagged
L. not tanned. Before he had spoken fv
; minutes, she was applaudiug before h
5 mad finished she pronounced him magnif
!. cent.
J.. 1t is a hopeless thing to translate Hugo
Louis Blanc once said he thought
] strange the English appreciated Hugo S
/ impertectly when his genius was in som
points more English than French. Lou
r Blanc is a consummate Judge of bot
a I%itcratures, but he hardly took into az
count, perhaps, the immense difficulty {
20 rendering Hugo's French into Eugii,
as to preserve a flavor of the origins
e without perpetualIy violating, if not tn
idioms at least the usages OF the borrow
2 ing tongue. | must repeat, moreover
that the speech, even as printed from tn
> authors manuscript, loses much of il
effect. The spell of the speaker is II
longer upon you. You read in cold bloc
what you heard amid the hurrahs an
the many indescribable expressions b
q which a French audience manifests il
emotions, and imparts them.
t The Late Queen Of Spain.
There are few who will not, in syn
q pathy, Join the circle of mourners i
/ Spain who are now bewailing the deaf
nf the Oirl-nupen takan ouoz;n h.