‘In his poem ‘Answer to an act of accusation’, in Les Contemplations of 1856, Victor Hugo refers to the democritisation of language – in the 18th century poets would use affected style, elaborate phrases to describe something quite ordinary, such as the description of the pear above. However, there is another message here: the pear was the symbol for King Louis-Philippe, a king whose reign, which began liberally and hopefully in 1830, was known as the July Monarchy. His popularity waned as he became more monarchical, however, and he was forced by the French Revolution of 1848 to abdicate. He went into exile in the UK and died in 1850. At the time Victor Hugo had tried to rationalise the king’s fall from grace. Later, a well-known episode in Les Misérables involves a graffiti artist drawing caricatures of Louis-Philippe as a pear and the good-natured king colluding with it. This was based in truth. In order to substantiate an argument in a court case concerning freedom of expression in the press, the artist Honoré Daumier had in 1834 published a caricature known as ‘Les Poires’, in which the king transforms into a pear. This proved so popular that the king became identified with the pear; this undermined his credibility to such an extent that it helped to bring about his abdication. The editor involved in the court case, who had been imprisoned and fined, exulted: ‘Pears were soon to be found all over all the walls in Paris and it spread throughout France.’
In another reference in Les Misérables, the pupils at the convent school, who live on a very spartan diet, secretly eat fallen fruit. Victor Hugo’s partner, Juliette Drouet, was partly the inspiration for the description of life at the convent; it is perhaps not so surprising, then, that she seems to relish her garden in Guernsey and the fruit trees that grew there. As well as a very productive cherry-tree, she grew pears, which were a speciality of the island:
Letter from Juliette Drouet to Victor Hugo, Guernsey 28 October 18[64], Thursday morning, 7 a.m.
‘Good morning! … What a St Martin’s Summer! It seems to me that all the tender moments, all the kisses, and all the ecstasies of our past love are regrowing, greening up and re-flowering in me under this autumn sun like the flowers on the pear trees in my garden.’