Victor Hugo, the author and hero of French Republican values, was obsessed with money, according to recently published secret police reports.

The revelation, which strikes at the heart of Hugo’s cult status in France, is contained in a book published by a civil servant who spent two years studying police files compiled between 1871 and 1940 on the country’s greatest literati.

The work, La Police des Ecrivains (The Writers’ Police), by Bruno Fuligni, offers an insight into France’s notoriously intrusive State, which maintained a careful watch over opinion-formers. Police knew who they met, what they said, who they slept with, what they ate and what they earned.

Hailed as a figurehead in the struggle for democracy, tolerance and human rights, Hugo was more concerned with his bank account and his reputation, according to the police.

When a group of supporters asked him for help, he “showed himself to be a poseur, he was off-hand, he delivered a pompous eulogy of his own person and that was all”.

When a young provincial poet wrote to him, he scribbled a note back on a brochure because this could be posted free and thus avoided paying the price of a 0.25 Franc stamp.

Read the full book review in the Times

[tags]France,Victor Hugo[/tags]