Hugo, in a
state of nudity, reclines meditating on a pile of rocks. The likeness is
good, but you would not guess from the statue that for many years Hugo
travelled daily on the top of the Clichy-Odeon omnibus and was never
recognized by the public. Heaven knows what he is meditating about!
Perhaps about that gushing biography of himself which apparently he penned
with his own hand and published under another name! For he was a weird
admixture of qualities--like most of us. I could not help meditating,
myself, upon the really extraordinary differences between France and
England. Imagine a nude statue of Tennyson in St. James's Park! You
cannot! But, assuming that some creative wit had contrived to get a nude
statue of Tennyson into St. James's Park, imagine the enormous shindy that
would occur, the horror-stricken Press of London, the deep pain and
resentment of a mighty race! And can you conceive London officially
devoting a week to the recognition of the fact that fifty years had
elapsed since the publication of a work of poetic genius! Yet I think we
know quite as much about poetry in England as they do in France. Still
less conceivable is the participation of an English Government in such an
anniversary. In Paris last Thursday a French Minister stood in front of
the Hugo statue and thus began: "The Government of the Republic could not
allow the fiftieth anniversary of the 'Legend of the Centuries' to be
celebrated without associating itself with the events.
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