"Écrit sur le tombeau d'un petit enfant au bord de la mer"

Autograph poem by Victor Hugo signed “V. H.”, four stanzas written black ink on a leaf.
Blind stamp of the city of Bath in the lower left-hand corner. Some folds, small traces of foxing along the folds, a few pale stains to the lower right mar­gin, not affecting the text. A few very small dark spots in the lower right mar­gin, one affecting a single letter of the word “retombe”.
Original manuscript and ear­lier version of Victor Hugo's poem, published as “Écrit sur le tombeau d'un petit enfant au bord de la mer” [Baby's sea­side grave] in Les Rayons et les Ombres, XXXVIII (Paris, Delloye, 1840).
Hugo wrote this magnificent eulogy in memory of his great friend Auguste Vacquerie's young nephew, who died at the age of four years and ten months.
The poet had promised a poet­ic epitaph and personally ad­dressed this manuscript to Vac­querie: “Take these verses, if you still want them for the tomb of this dear little one” (Letter to Vacque­rie, January 21, 1840).

As Joseph Petrus Christiaan de Boer pointed out, “There is no sorrow Hugo understood and ex­pressed more delicately than the im­mense grief that fills the hearts of par­ents upon the death of a child” (Victor Hugo et l'enfant, 1933, p. 48-49). This poem is the first of a sublime, maca­bre series composed on the occasion of the numerous tragedies suffered by the families of both Victor Hugo and his friend Auguste Vacquerie. The most famous will be “Demain dès l'aube...”, written after the untimely death of Hu­go's beloved daughter Léopoldine who drowned alongside Auguste Vacque­rie's brother Charles on September 4, 1843, shortly after their marriage.
Hugo wrote these verses for Charles-Emile Lefèvre, the young child of Vac­querie's sister who had succumbed to sudden illness on November 6, 1839. On January 21, 1840, Hugo sent this man­uscript to Vacquerie which includes a variation from the final version pub­lished by Delloye on May 16 of the same year:

Hugo sent the manuscript with a touch­ing letter: “Here at last, my poet, is what I have kept you waiting for so stupidly long. [...] Take these verses, if you still want them for the tomb of this dear little one [...] For my part, I do not feel that I have repaid my debt to this angel with so little. I have begun something longer for him that I will one day lay at the feet of his poor mother” (OEuvres complètes de Victor Hugo, Correspondance I, Al­bin Michel, 1947, vol. 41, p. 141). It is not known which “longer” poem made its way to Marie Arsène Lefèvre, the “poor mother” who would lose her husband and two sons in less than four years. Hugo also wrote two poems in memory of Paul-Léon Lefèvre, Charles-Emile's twin brother who followed him into the grave three years later at the age of sev­en (Contemplations, Liv. III, XIV and XV).
The immense grief of Hugo and Vac­querie would only bring their “hearts bound to the dreary pedestal” closer together (Contemplations, Liv. V, I , “A Aug. V.”). From August 1848, Vacquerie contributed to L'Événe­ment, the newspaper founded by Meurice and Hugo's sons. He fre­quently visited Hugo during his years of exile and shot a number of photographs of the writer and his family. Hugo also maintained close ties with Ernest, the surviving son of Marie Lefèvre and nephew of Auguste Vacquerie, whom he named as one of his testamentary executors alongside Vacquerie and Paul Meurice.
We know of another manuscript of the poem sent by Hugo to Juliette Drouet, now at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (NAF 13390, fol. 197). It is one of 11 out of the 42 poems in the collection he chose to offer to the love of his life.
A sublime epitaph by Victor Hugo still engraved – with the manu­script variation – on the tombstone of little Charles Émile Lefèvre, “by the sea”, in the romantic cemetery of Graville, Normandy.

Provenance: Auguste Vacquerie; Mme André Gaveau (by descent).