Hemerocallis ‘Night Beacon’ flowers from June until September. It recalls a common theme in Victor Hugo’s writing and his life, that of the lighthouse. Victor Hugo’s Lookout was said to be a guiding light for sailors coming home to St Peter Port Harbour, and Hugo, who could see the lighthouse of Flamanville on the Normandy coast from his window, uses the motif of a lighthouse to represent Hauteville House and the light that Hugo was shining from there on the corrupt regime in France. Hugo was also deeply moved by the danger ships and sailors faced daily in the name of progress. His friend, Henry Tupper of Guernsey, was instrumental in campaigning for the building of the Hanois lighthouse. A lecture had been given in Guernsey during Hugo’s time about the Eddystone Lighthouse, which Hugo went on to draw (see above) and which features, along with the Casquets lighthouse off Alderney, in a terrifying episode of a shipwreck in The Man who Laughs, written in Guernsey and published in 1869:
‘To a full-rigged ship in good trim, the Casquets light is useful, it cries ‘Look out’, it warns her of the shoal. To a disabled ship it is simply terrible … The lighthouse shows the end – points out the spot where it is doomed to disappear – throws light upon the burial. It is the torch of the sepulchre.‘