HUGO Victor Besançon, 1802 - Paris, 1885, poète... Lot n° 319

Autograph letter, signed "Victor Hugo", addressed to Eugène Pelletan. "Hauteville house October 20" [1863]; 2 pages in-8°. "I was away, as you know, when your dear missionaries came. My daughter was getting married and becoming English. That there's been some metamorphosis there. When I came back I found your letter, sweet thing. I feel that you still love me a little, I thank you, I need to be loved, me that everything leaves. Nature the wind and the reason to be worthy, my life too, my group is unravelling, my life too. My branches are grafted elsewhere, my beloved children go to other duties, the great universal function does it and takes away what assured me, I remain alone, and that is good. I like the ones I love better. You are one of them, dear philosopher, dear poet, dear orator, horizons are closing for me and opening for you. Come on, walk, fly away, I'm safe. You have a big heart and you'll only ever go to the heights. I embrace you in poetry and in freedom. See you soon - forever. Your friend Victor Hugo." AUTOGRAPHIES Back in Jersey, Adèle Hugo met British lieutenant Albert Pinson in 1854, who frequented her family by taking part in turntables. She maintains an idyll with him and falls madly in love with him. That love is not paid back. Considering herself as his fiancée, she rejects the marriage proposals of her other suitors. She uses, in vain, several stratagems to convince him to marry her and goes as far as consulting a hypnotist to put the lieutenant in a state of confusion and force him to marry. In September 1863, she wrote to her parents that she had finally married Lieutenant Pinson, and her father announced the news in the Guernsey Gazette. A few weeks later, she is forced to reveal the deception. She stays in Canada and goes permanently insane, with her father still supporting her.