The Osceola times., 1878-07-13
Victor Hugo as an Orator a Splendid
Pencil sketch OF Him.
lsmalley', Paris Letters to N. Y. Tribune. ]

/
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 crown of
snow white, thick hair is the luminous
center TO which all eyes are turned. He
has certainly grown old. The figure is
lees erect the step less sure the lines
are cut deeper in the face the muscles
OF the neck seem weaker the indefnsbe
impress of extreme age isupon 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 abrupt energy of movement once
30 characteristic of him, has grown
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 his waistcost, is scarcely whittier
than the full 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 M. Edmond About will
speak.
NJ. Edmond About is gray haired, high
co!ored. thick net, delicate. handed, with
one of the shrewdest pairs of twinkling
black eyes ever set in human face One
OF the cleverest brains in France Is slowed
away iehind them. NJ. Jules Simon re-
marked, little later, that you could
not say whether his wit was more re-
markab'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 40 uare.
The eyes which had been half masked
beneath dropping lids, began to dilate
and glow. The fires which you thought
extinguished blazed up; the Hugo who
stood before you was the Hugo Of "Her-
man," of lies Orientales," fresh, yigor-
Gus, alert, in all the imperishable youth.
fulness of genius. The first word he ut
tered rang through the vast amphithe~
ater, grave, s0norous and powerful.
There was not trace Of effort. FrO.n
beginning to end the note first struck
was maintained but never mon0tOnous.
called him an orator Just now, but Or
ator he is not, in the large sense of a
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 30 large
and free that you could almost
read it from the balcony fifty
feet of; full of corrections, of erasures
done as If with painters brush, or with
the pen of a giant, as he is. The cam
delabra, each of six lights, stood on either
side of him. He put them toge ther on
his right, added two large lamps from
the table in front, and final sent to
borrow third from the secretary, who
sat hard by, and thenceforward was in
darkness. He held his manuscript close
under this cluster of light. When he
wished to use I is right hand for gest-
ure, he dropped the paper on the table or
transferred it TO his left. lie never
parted company with IL for two sentences
in succession.
Orator or not, no speaker ever felt
more strongly what he was saying, or
made it felt more strongly by his audi.
ence He read slowly, with singular
distinctness and purity OF articu.
lation, and Victor Hugo's is h
style which gains rather than loses by
a spoken delivery. Read, the occurrences
of antithesis are too frequent, the orna,
ment sometimes overdene; the intense
sincerity of the man seems artificial be-
cause it is so intense. II is only when
you hear him, when he himself adjusts
and regulates the movement of his
pe,iOds, that the due effect OF each il
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 d
his audience; nor by sympathy, nor by
action and reaction, rather by the sheer
supremacy OF intellect, by force of will,
by force of his own unquestioning and
absolute conviction, and by The large-
hearted humanity Of the man. He took
posse s,ion Of you whether you wsuld or
no; no personality, no hostility was
strong enough TO stand up against the
torrent that swept down upon you. ]
sat next an English friend, nc sdmirer
OF Hugo, who heard him and saw him for
the first time in her lite, whose associations
lie mostly among royalists and priests,
who came TO see Hugo as a curIosity-to
adopt one of his own comparisons which
most shocked the classicists at the
tims-as lion frem the desert, Gagged II
not tanned. Before he had spoken five
minutes, she was appauding; s'!ore h.
mad finished she PRONOUNCED him msgnif.
cent.
1t hopeless thing TO translate Hugo
Louis Blanc once said he thought II
strange the English appreciated Hugo &C
impeTfectly when his genius was in som.
points more English than French. Louii
Blanc il consummate judge Of botf
| titeratures. but he hardly took into &C
count, perhaps, the immense difficulty o
70 rendering Hugo's French into Bngli-f
a. to preserve flavor Of the origina
without perpetually violating, II not til,
idioms at least the usages OF the borrow
ing tongue. ! must repeat, moreover
that the speech, even as printed from th,
suthor's manuscript, loses much Of il
effect. The spell OF the speaker Is NJ
longer upon you. You read In cold bloc,
what you heard amid the hurrahs an,
the many indescribable expressions b,
which a French audience manifests it
emotions, and imparts them.
HI |
Vienna AZ the New Jerusalem.
{ There Ia nrohahlx no citx in all En-