The art of illusion

Hauteville House was the haven for Les Misérables writer Victor Hugo while living in exile in Guernsey. It’s laden with 18th- century tapestries, carved oak, mahogany tables and some interesting delftware

JANET GLEESON visits Hauteville House, the imaginatively decorated Guernsey home of the acclaimed Les Misérables writer, Victor Hugo

Externally,nothing marks Hauteville House as anything out of the ordinary. It’s an elegant but unremarkable late Georgian villa, tucked away on a steeply ascending back street of St Peter Port, Guernsey. Three storeys high, flat-fronted, sash windowed – no di erent, you might think, from any of the other houses that flank it.

So, stepping into the Entrance Hall, you are unprepared for what awaits. Dimly visible by sunshine filtering through bottle glass fanlights, you enter a mysterious, cathedrallike space, heavy with oak- carved columns and panels, a gothic Madonna and exotic wall coverings. ‘You have to understand the context and the creator’s psychology to understand this house,’ explains Cédric Bail, assistant curator at Hauteville House. ‘ Victor Hugo was a man in exile and he filled his

Scouring junk shops, he bought dozens of oak chests, sideboards, lacquerware, tapestries, carpets and ceramics

house with his ideas, his philosophy and his sense of drama.’

Victor bought Hauteville House soon after he arrived in Guernsey in 1855, desperately seeking political asylum. As a vociferous republican, he had fallen foul of Napoleon III and his Second Empire. Hauteville was the only house he ever owned and he lived in it for 14 years, writing some of his best known works and completing Les Misérables here. ‘No longer having a homeland, I want to have a roof,’ he told his friend Jules Janin in 1856.

He bought the house as an empty shell, and with a clear vision of what he wanted to create, Victor lavished his attention on its interiors. Scouring junk shops, he bought dozens of oak chests, sideboards, lacquerware, tapestries, carpets, mirrors, picture frames and ceramics. ‘Light and mirrors are very important. The mirrors take you on a journey from darkness to light,’ explains Bail.

Victor had no qualms about using antiques in unconventional ways. Touring Hauteville, you might see a chair back turned upside down and used as a window pelmet, a soup tureen lid inlaid as a ceiling decoration, or a picture frame used as a cupboard door. ‘ Victor Hugo was a leader of the Romantic movement, not a collector in the conventional sense. For him, it was more about the beauty of each object and about freedom,’ says Bail.

The Tapestry Room typifies his idiosyncratic approach. Flemish verdure and Aubusson tapestries were chopped up and used to line the ceiling, as well as the window recesses and walls, while seating beneath was upholstered with oriental carpets. One whole wall is taken up with a vast dark oak

confection made up of antique carvings and panels from deconstructed old chests and other items of furniture.

Contrast is also key in this home. The gloom of the Entrance Hall is lifted by the faience corridor leading from it: a passageway with ceiling and walls lined with plates and platters in a mosaic-like tunnel of colour. ‘Again, these ceramics were not functional, but purely there to create a decorative e ect,’ explains Bail.

Throughout the house, carved inscriptions drive home Hugo’s ideology. Above the Dining Room doorway is the deliberately ambiguous motto for the house Exilium vita est (‘Life is an exile’, or ‘Exile is life’). The walls here are covered with delftware tile panels. Over the fireplace the tiles are arranged in a huge double H motif (a reference to his name, Hauteville House and humanity) and topped by a faience figure of the Madonna and child, her halo made from a serving platter.

The sumptuous Red and Blue Drawing Rooms on the first floor highlight Victor’s love of exoticism, as well as his penchant for storytelling. ‘ Victor Hugo would sit here in his armchair with his grandchildren gathered around while he told them stories,’ says Bail. There is an element of mythology that surrounds many of the objects in these two rooms. Five huge beadwork embroidered panels are said to have come from the apartments of Queen Christina of Sweden at the Château de Fontainebleau, while the four heavily gilded 16th- century Venetian torchères were thought to have been used on the Doges’ Galley.

That their origins remain uncertain is partly due to Victor’s fondness for embellishment. ‘Not always remembering the original provenance of all these objects [he] didn’t hesitate to give them a grandiose, bizarre, terrifying or amusing history,’ wrote one 19th- century visitor.

Five huge beadwork embroidered panels are said to have come from the apartments of Queen Christina of Sweden

Here, as everywhere at Hauteville House, Victor is saying don’t believe what you see, believe what you feel

Victor worked and slept on the attic floor. He called his sparsely furnished study the Lookout and modelled its glass walls and roof on London’s then-recently built Crystal Palace. Unlike the heavy gloom and luxury of the lower rooms, here all is simplicity and bathed in light. He wrote at a hinged table, standing up looking out to sea, and slept in a room next door on a fold- out divan bed.

‘The imagery is one of a ship – Victor saw himself as the captain in his cabin, an idea that was an escape from reality,’ says Bail. ‘Here, as everywhere at Hauteville House, he is saying don’t believe what you see, believe what you feel.’

THIS PAGE FROM ABOVE The walls are lined with delftware tiles (learn more on page 99). The double H motif was designed by Hugo in reference to his initial, Hauteville House and the themes that recur in his writing – humanity, heroes, and mankind ( homme); the garden planting and layout have been restored to much as they would have been in Hugo’s time FACING PAGE Monumental panels of oak frame the doorway to the Dining Room PREVIOUS PAGE Furnished with a mahogany table and Chippendale- style chairs, the Tapestry Room was used as a place to hold soirées. It is lined with 17th and 18th- century Aubusson tapestries and contrasting carved oak panels upcycled from pieces of furniture

THIS PAGE FROM LEFTOne of a series of ! ve panels believed to have been bought from an antiques dealer in Paris, and to have originally come from the apartments of Queen Christina of Sweden at Fontainebleau. It’s embroidered with gold thread and depicts La Fontaine’s fable, The Jay Dressed in Peacock’sFeathers; light "oods through windows and illuminates the jewellike colours of the Red Drawing Room FACING PAGE Sumptuously decorated in silk fabric, the Blue Drawing Room is !lled with exotic objects re "ecting Victor Hugo’s love of chinoiserie. The bronze incense burner on the table was donated by French writer Alexandre Dumas for a charity sale and subsequently bought by Victor Hugo

ABOVE The doors that divide the Blue and Red Drawing Room are inset with 18th- century Chinese lacquer panels. A rich red damask wallcovering provides a striking backdrop to the beaded wall hangings. In summer, the doors were opened to unite the two rooms and create a gallery, 12 metres long

ABOVE The dark stairwell leads visitors up towards the second oor. Hung with Gobelins tapestries, it is dramatically lit from above by a circular skylight set in a gilded frame that was decorated by Victor Hugo with plant motifs, birds and butter ies

TOP On the third oor, a dark antechamber lined with books leads to the Lookout, a glazed and tiled room inspired by The Crystal Palace. Victor Hugo wrote here standing at a simple desk ABOVE The candelabra, known as the Tree of Fire, rises almost to the ceiling of the Oak Gallery FACING PAGE The tester bed, constructed from components reused from other pieces of furniture, was rarely used by Victor Hugo. He preferred to sleep and work in the simpler surroundings of the oor above