The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1878-07-11
Victor Hugo as an OratOr-a Splendid
Pencil Sketch of Him.
LsmalIey's Paris Letters to N. Y. T1ibune.l

| sActOr 0uSO AS an OraI0r-a Splendid
Pencil Sketch Of Him.
I5malIey's Paris Letters to n. Y T1ibune.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
eheered him again and again. He stands
while the applause lasts, his hands rest
ing on the table, the shoulders stoopiug.
bending the noble head, whose crown Of
| snow-wbite, 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 indefnable
impress of extreme age is upon him. The
theater is lighted with gas, not very
brilliantly, but he looks five years
older than when [ saw him in public.
at the funeral of Theirs in September.
The abrupt energy of movement once
so 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 flIs all the
ing OF his Waistcoat, 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.
M. Edmond About is gray haired, high
colored, thick set, 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 behind them. NJ. Jules Simon re-
marked, little later, that you could
not say whether his wit was mere re-
msrksble 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. TIE fres which you thought
extinguished blazed up; the Hugo who
stood before you was the Hugo of "Her-
nan" of ''Les Orientales," fresh, vigor-
GUS, alert, in all the imperishabIe youth
fulness of genius. The 6rst word he ut
tered rang through the vast amphithe~
alter, grave, sonoTous and powerful.
There was not a trace of effort. From
beginning to end the note first struck
was maintained but never monotonous.
called him an orator just now, but or
ator ne is not, in the large sense of a
word too often and too carelessly used.
HIS speech was written, every word, and
| read from 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 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 together on
his right, added two large lamps from
| the table in front, and finally 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 his right hand for 8 gest-
ure, he dropped the paper on the table or
transferred it to his left. He never
parted company with it for two sentences
in succession.
Orator or not, no speaker ever felt
more strongly what he was saying, OF
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 8
style which gains rather than loses by
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 80 intense: 1t is only when
you hear him, when he himself adjusts
and regulates the movement of his
periods, that the due effect of each is
| 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 and
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
possession of you whether you would OF
no; no personality, no hostility was
strong enough to stand up against the
torrent that swept down upon you. ]
sat next an English friend, ne admireI
of Hugo, who heard him and saw him fol
the first time in her life, whose association
lie mostly among Toyalists and priests
who came to see Hugo as a curiosity-tC
adopt one of his own comparisons which
most shocked the classicists at the
time-as lion from the desert, Gagged i
not tanned Before he had spoken five
minutes, she was applauding; before ht
had finished she pronounced him magnif'
cent.
1t is hopeless thing to translate Hugo
Louis Blanc once said he thought il
strange the English appreciated Hugo sc
imperfectly when his genius was in some
points more English than French. Louis
Blanc is q consummate Judge of botf
literatures, but he hardly took into 40
count, perhaps, the immense difficulty O.
so rendering Hugo's French into English
as to preserve a flavor of the origina
without perpetually violating, if not the
idioms at least the usages of the borrow
ing tongue. l must repeat, moreover
that the speech, even as printed from tn,
authors manuscript, loses much of it
effect. The spell of the speaker is NJ
longer upon you. You read in cold blooC
what you heard amid the hurrahs anC
the many Undesirable expressions b,
which a French audience manifests IL
emotions, and imparts them.
The Late Queen OF Spain.
There are few who will not, in sym
pathy, join the circle of mourners II
Spain who are now bewailing the dealt
of the girl-queen, taken away in he
youth, and almost in the honeymNon @
her bridal happiness, in Madrid Wednes
day. Moria de las Mercedes, the wife o
| Alfonso XII and Oueen of Snain vpo