The Toilers of the Sea

by Victor Hugo, James Hogarth (Translator), Graham Robb (Introduction)

Overview

In 1855, fleeing political persecution, Victor Hugo found sanctuary on the Isle of Guernsey, among the most historic and picturesque of the Channel Islands. The legends and lore of the islands sparked Hugo's imagination, resulting in one of his most unusual works. Setting mythical, romantic, and social themes against a backdrop of memorable descriptions, The Toilers of the Sea is a novel of epic proportions, brought to light in a new Signet Classic edition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375761324
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/10/2002
Series:	Modern Library Classics
Edition description:	MODERN LIB
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	247,119
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.99(h) x 1.01(d)

About the Author

James Hogarth was educated at Edinburgh University, and was later undersecretary in the Scottish Office.

Graham Robb’s many books include Victor Hugo: A Biography, which won the 1997 Whitbread Biography Award.

Date of Birth:

February 26, 1802

Date of Death:

May 22, 1885

Place of Birth:

Besançon, France

Place of Death:

Paris, France

Education:

Pension Cordier, Paris, 1815-18

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

I
Ancient Cataclysms

The Atlantic wears away our coasts. The pressure of the current from the Pole deforms our western cliffs. This wall that shields us from the sea is being undermined from Saint-Valery-sur-Somme to Ingouville; huge blocks of rock tumble down, the sea churns clouds of boulders, our harbors are silted up with sand and shingle, the mouths of our rivers are barred. Every day a stretch of Norman soil is torn away and disappears under the waves.

This tremendous activity, which has now slowed down, has had terrible consequences. It has been contained only by that immense spur of land we know as Finistère. The power of the flow of water from the Pole and the violence of the erosion it causes can be judged from the hollow it has carved out between Cherbourg and Brest. The formation of this gulf in the Channel at the expense of French soil goes back before historical times; but the last decisive act of aggression by the ocean against our coasts can be exactly dated. In 709, sixty years before Charlemagne came to the throne, a storm detached Jersey from France. The highest points of other territories submerged in earlier times are still, like Jersey, visible. These points emerging from the water are islands. They form what is called the Norman archipelago. This is now occupied by a laborious human anthill. The industry of the sea, which created ruin, has been succeeded by the industry of man, which has made a people.

II
Guernsey

Granite to the south, sand to the north; here sheer rock faces, there dunes. An inclined plane of meadowland with rolling hills and ridges of rock; as a fringe to this green carpet, wrinkled into folds, the foam of the ocean; along the coast, low-built fortifications; at intervals, towers pierced by loopholes; lining the low beaches, a massive breastwork intersected by battlements and staircases, invaded by sand and attacked by the waves, the only besiegers to be feared; windmills dismasted by storms, some of them-at the Vale, Ville-au-Roi, St. Peter Port, Torteval-still turning; in the cliffs, anchorages; in the dunes, sheep and cattle; the shepherds' and cattle herds' dogs questing and working; the little carts of the tradesmen of the town galloping along the hollow ways; often black houses, tarred on the west side for protection from the rain; cocks and hens, dung heaps; everywhere cyclopean walls; the walls of the old harbor, now unfortunately destroyed, were a fine sight, with their shapeless blocks of stone, their massive posts, and their heavy chains; farmhouses set amid trees; fields enclosed by waist-high drystone walls, forming a bizarre checkerboard pattern on the low-lying land; here and there a rampart built around a thistle, granite

cottages, huts looking like casemates, little houses capable of withstanding a cannonball; occasionally, in the wildest parts of the country, a small new building topped by a bell-a school; two or three streams flowing through the meadows; elms and oaks; a lily found only here, the Guernsey lily; in the main plowing season, plows drawn by eight horses; in front of the houses, large haystacks on circular stone bases; expanses of prickly furze; here and there gardens in the old French style with clipped yew trees, carefully shaped box hedges and stone vases, mingled with orchards and kitchen gardens; carefully cultivated flowers in countryfolk's gardens; rhododendrons among potatoes; everywhere seaweed laid out on the grass, primrose-colored; in the church yards no crosses, but slabs of stone standing erect, seeming in the moonlight like white ladies; ten Gothic bell towers on the horizon; old churches, new dogmas; Protestant worship housed in Catholic architecture; scattered about in the sand and on the promontories, the somber Celtic enigma in its various forms-menhirs, peulvens, long stones, fairy stones, rocking stones, sounding stones, galleries, cromlechs, dolmens, fairies' houses; remains of the past of all kinds; after the druids the priests; after the priests the rectors; memories of falls from heaven; on one point Lucifer, at the castle of the Archangel Michael; on another, Icart Point, Icarus; almost as many flowers in winter as in summer. This is Guernsey.

III
Guernsey (continued)

Fertile land, rich, strong. No better pasturage. The wheat is celebrated; the cows are illustrious. The heifers grazing the pastures of St. Peter-in-the-Wood are the equals of the famed sheep of the Confolens plateau. The masterpieces produced by the plow and pastureland of Guernsey win medals at agricultural shows in France and England.

Agriculture benefits from well-organized public services, and an excellent network of communications gives life to the whole island. The roads are very good. Lying on the ground at the junction of two roads is a slab of stone bearing a cross. The earliest known bailiff of Guernsey, recorded in 1284, the first on the list, Gaultier de la Salle, was hanged for various acts of iniquity, and this cross, known as the Bailiff's Cross, marks the spot where he knelt and prayed for the last time. In the island's bays and creeks the sea is enlivened by the multicolored, sugarloaf-shaped mooring buoys, checked red and white, half black and half yellow, variegated in green, blue, and orange in lozenge, mottled and marble patterns, which float just under the water. Here and there can be heard the monotonous chant of a team hauling some vessel, heaving on the towrope. Like the fishermen, the farmworkers look content with their lot; so, too, do the gardeners. The soil, saturated with rock dust, is powerful; the fertilizer, which consists of sand and wrack, adds salt to the granite. Hence the extraordinary vitality and richness of the vegetation-magnolias, myrtles, daphnes, rose laurels, blue hydrangeas; the fuchsias are overabundant; there are arcades of three-leaved verbenas; there are walls of geraniums; oranges and lemons flourish in the open; there are no grapes, which ripen only under glass but when grown in greenhouses are excellent; camellias grow into trees; aloe flowers can be seen in gardens, growing taller than a house. Nothing can be more opulent and prodigal than this vegetation that masks and ornaments the trim fronts of villas and cottages.

Attractive on one side, Guernsey is terrible on the other. The west coast of the island, exposed to winds from the open sea, has been devastated. This is a region of coastal reefs, squalls, careening coves, patched-up boats, fallow land, heath, poor hovels, a few low, shivering hamlets, lean sheep and cattle, short salty grass, and a general air of harsh poverty. Lihou is a small barren island just off the coast that is accessible at low tide. It is covered with scrub and rabbit burrows. The rabbits of Lihou know the time of day, emerging from their holes only at high tide and setting man at defiance. Their friend the ocean isolates them. Fraternal relations of this kind are found throughout nature.

If you dig down into the alluvial soil of Vazon Bay you come upon trees. Here, under a mysterious layer of sand, there was once a forest.

The fishermen so harshly treated by this wind-beaten west coast make skillful pilots. The sea around the Channel Islands is peculiar. Cancale Bay, not far away, is the spot in the world where the tides rise highest.

IV
The Grass

The grass of Guernsey is the same grass as anywhere else, though a little richer: a meadow on Guernsey is almost like a lawn in Cuges or Gémenos.2 You find fescues and tufted hair-grasses, as in any other grass, together with common star-grass and floating manna grass; mountain brome, with spindle-shaped spikelets; the phalaris of the Canaries; agrostis, which yields a green dye; rye grass; yellow lupin; Yorkshire fog, which has a woolly stem; fragrant vernal grass; quaking grass; the rain daisy; wild garlic, which has such a sweet flower but such an acrid smell; timothy grass; foxtail, with an ear in the shape of a club; needle grass, which is used for making baskets; and lyme grass, which is useful for stabilizing shifting sands. Is this all? By no means: there are also cocksfoot, whose flowers grow in clusters; panic millet; and even, according to local agricultural experts, bluestem grass. There are the bastard hawkweed, with leaves like the dandelion, which marks the time of day, and the sow thistle of Siberia, which foretells the weather. All these are grasses, but this mixture of grasses is not to be found everywhere: it is peculiar to the archipelago. It requires granite for its subsoil and the ocean to water it.

Now imagine a thousand insects crawling through the grass and flying above it, some hideous, others charming; under the grass longicorns, longinases, weevils, ants engaged in milking aphids, their milch cows, dribbling grasshoppers, ladybirds, click beetles; on the grass and in the air dragonflies, ichneumons, wasps, golden rose-beetles, bumblebees, lace-winged flies, red-bellied gold wasps, the noisy hoverflies-and you will have some idea of the reverie-inducing spectacle that the Jerbourg ridge or Fermain Bay, around midday in June, offers an entomologist who is something of a dreamer or a poet who is something of a naturalist.

Suddenly, under this sweet green grass, you will notice a small square slab of stone inscribed with the letters WD, which stand for War Department. This is fair and proper. It is right that civilization should show itself here: otherwise the place would be wild. Go to the banks of the Rhine and seek out the most isolated corners of the landscape. At some points it is so majestic that it seems pontifical: God, surely, must be more present here than elsewhere.

Penetrate into the remote fastnesses where the mountains offer the greatest solitude and the forests the greatest silence; choose, let us say, Andernach and its surroundings; visit the obscure and impassive Laacher See, so unknown that it is almost mysterious. No tranquillity can be found more august than this; universal life is here in all its religious serenity; no disturbances; everywhere the profound order of nature's great disorder; walk with a softened heart in this wilderness; it is as voluptuous as spring and as melancholy as autumn; wander about at random; leave behind you the ruined abbey, lose yourself in the moving peace of the ravines, amid the song of birds and the rustle of leaves; drink fresh spring water in your cupped hand; walk, meditate, forget. You come upon a cottage at the corner of a hamlet buried under the trees; it is green, fragrant, and charming, clad in ivy and flowers, full of children and laughter. You draw nearer, and on the corner of the cottage, which is bathed in a brilliant alternation of shadow and sunlight, on an old stone in the old wall, below the name of the hamlet, Niederbreisig, you read 22. landw. bataillon 2. comp.

You thought you were in a village: you find that you are in a regiment. Such is the nature of man.

Table of Contents

	Introduction
Part 1	Sieur Clubin
Book 1	What a Bad Reputation Is Composed Of
I	A Word Written on a Blank Page	1
II	The Bu de la Rue	3
III	"For Your Wife, When You Marry"	6
IV	Unpopularity	9
V	Other Suspicious Things About Gilliatt	16
VI	The Paunch	18
VII	For a Haunted House, a Visionary Inhabitant	22
VIII	The Chair Gild-Holm-'Ur	24
Book 2	Mess Lethierry
I	A Restless Life and a Quiet Conscience	27
II	A Taste Which He Had	29
III	The Ancient Dialect of the Sea	30
IV	One is Vulnerable Through What One Loves	32
Book 3	Durande and Deruchette
I	Chatter and Smoke	35
II	The Eternal Story of Utopia	37
III	Rantaine	39
IV	Continuation of the Story of Utopia	42
V	The Devil Boat	43
VI	Entrance of Lethierry into Glory	47
VII	The Same Godfather and the Same Protectress	49
VIII	"Bonny Dundee"	51
IX	The Man Who Had Seen Through Rantaine	53
X	Tales of Long Voyages	54
XI	A Glance at Possible Husbands	57
XII	An Exception in the Character of Lethierry	58
XIII	Heedlessness Adds New Grace to Beauty	61
Book 4	The Bagpipe
I	The First Red Gleams of Dawn, or a Conflagration	63
II	An Entrance, Step by Step, Into the Unknown	65
III	The Air "Bonny Dundee" Finds an Echo on the Hill	67
IV	Pour l'oncle et le tuteur, bonshommes taciturnes, Les serenades sont des tapages nocturnes	68
V	Well-Merited Success is Always Hated	70
VI	The Luck of a Shipwrecked Crew in Meeting a Sloop	71
VII	The Luck of an Idler in Being Seen by a Fisherman	73
Book 5	The Revolver
I	The Conversations at the Jean Tavern	77
II	Clubin Perceives Someone	82
III	Clubin Carries Away and Does Not Bring Back	85
IV	Plainmont	87
V	The Bird-Nesters	92
VI	La Jacressarde	101
VII	Nocturnal Purchases and a Shady Vendor	106
VIII	The Red Ball and the Black Ball Carom	109
IX	Information Useful to Persons Who Await or Who Fear Letters from Across the Sea	117
Book 6	The Drunken Helmsman and the Sober Captain
I	The Douvres Rocks	123
II	Unexpected Brandy	125
III	Interrupted Conversations	128
IV	In Which Captain Clubin Displays All His Qualities	135
V	Clubin Puts the Finishing Touch to Admiration	140
VI	The Interior of an Abyss Illuminated	144
VII	The Unexpected Intervenes	150
Book 7	The Imprudence of Asking Questions of a Book
I	The Pearl at the Bottom of the Precipice	155
II	Much Astonishment on the Western Coast	161
III	Tempt Not the Bible	165
Part 2	Gilliatt the Crafty
Book 1	The Reef
I	The Place Which Is Hard to Reach and Difficult to Leave	173
II	The Thoroughness of the Disaster	177
III	Sound, But Not Safe	180
IV	A Preliminary Examination	181
V	A Word as to the Secret Cooperations of the Elements	184
VI	A Stable for the Horse	187
VII	A Room for the Traveler	189
VIII	Importunaeque Volucres	196
IX	The Reef and How To Use It	198
X	The Forge	201
XI	A Discovery	204
XII	The Interior of a Submarine Edifice	207
XIII	What One Sees There, and What One Gets a Glimpse Of	209
Book 2	The Labor
I	The Resources of One Who Lacks Everything	215
II	How Shakespeare and Aeschylus Can Meet	217
III	Gilliatt's Masterpiece Comes to the Aid of Lethierry's Masterpiece	219
IV	Sub Re	222
V	Sub Umbra	227
VI	Gilliatt Brings the Paunch into Position	231
VII	A Danger at Once	234
VIII	Change Rather Than Conclusion	236
IX	Success Snatched Away as Soon as Granted	239
X	The Warnings of the Sea	241
XI	A Word to the Wise is Sufficient	244
Book 3	The Battle
I	Extremes Meet	247
II	Sea Breezes	248
III	Explanation of the Noise to Which Gilliatt Listened	251
IV	Turba, Turma	254
V	Gilliatt Has His Choice	256
VI	The Combat	257
Book 4	The False Bottoms
I	A Man Who is Hungry is Not the Only Hungry One	275
II	The Monster	279
III	Another Form of Combat in the Gulf	285
IV	Nothing is Hidden and Nothing is Lost	288
V	In the Interval That Separates Six Inches from Two Feet There is Room to Lodge Death	291
VI	De Profundis ad Altum	294
VII	There is an Ear in the Unknown	300
Part 3	Deruchette
Book 1	Night and Moon
I	The Bell of the Port	303
II	Again the Port Bell	315
Book 2	Gratitude in Full Despotism
I	Joy Surrounded by Anguish	323
II	The Leather Trunk	330
Book 3	Departure of the Cashmere
I	The Havelet Quite Close to the Church	333
II	Despairs in Presence of Each Other	335
III	The Foresight of Abnegation	342
IV	"For Your Wife, When You Marry"	346
V	The Great Tomb	349
	Afterword

Editorial Reviews

Here to help celebrate the great Romantic writer’s bicentennial year is a lively new translation of the least known of his massive, unruly masterpieces. Though it lacks the concentrated melodramatic power of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, this agreeably preposterous romance, originally published in 1866 in a carefully edited and partially censored text, displays most of Hugo’s enduring crowd-pleasing skills: a mastery of atmosphere (especially in the essay-like opening sequence, "The Channel Archipelago"), deep and credible empathy with working-class heroes and heroines, and a rare ability to create vivid and visceral action scenes (most notably evident in its hero’s climactic battle with the loathsome octopus known as the "pieuvre," or devilfish). The central story, in which its protagonist Gilliatt accepts the task of freeing a grounded ship (for which service he will be awarded the hand of a wealthy shipowner’s daughter), is energetically juxtaposed against richly detailed pictures of seamen’s occupations and marine life that recall (though in no way rival) Melville’s definitive mixture of narrative and fact in Moby-Dick. And, although Toilers is unmistakably more romance than realistic novel, the bracing bitterness of its ironic conclusion gives it a haunting staying power. Those of us who first "read" this novel in the Classic Comics version of half a century ago will be grateful to discover that Hugo’s impossibly grandiose and overblown yarn remains as perversely irresistible as ever.

Kirkus Reviews