Léopoldine Cécile Marie-Pierre Catherine Hugo (28 August 1824 – 4 September 1843) was the eldest daughter of

Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...

and Adèle Foucher.

Early life

Léopoldine was born in Paris, the second of five children and eldest daughter of

and Adèle Foucher. She was named after her paternal grandfather, Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo, as was her late brother, Léopold, who died in infancy. Despite her father's growing

anti-clerical Anti-clericalism is opposition to religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historical anti-clericalism has mainly been opposed to the influence of Roman Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secularism, which seeks to ...

views, Léopoldine grew up as a devout Catholic. Her first communion, which took place in September 1836, was a grand affair.

Auguste de Châtillon Auguste de Châtillon (29 January 1808 – 26 March 1881) was a French painter, sculptor and poet. He was born and died in Paris. He, Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval and Arsène Houssaye formed the "bohème du Doyenné". Life He first exhib ...

painted a portrait of her for the day, and the

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different eleme ...

was attended by

Théophile Gautier Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier ( , ; 30 August 1811 – 23 October 1872) was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic. While an ardent defender of Romanticism, Gautier's work is difficult to classify and rema ...

, Alexandre Dumas, and members of the Hugo family. A banquet was held at her family's Paris residence afterward. Léopoldine had many suitors for marriage including her future husband, Charles Vacquerie, whom she met while on holiday in 1839.

Later life and death

She married Charles Vacquerie at

Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis The Église Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis is a church on rue Saint-Antoine in the Marais quarter of Paris. The present building was constructed from 1627 to 1641 by the Jesuit architects Étienne Martellange and François Derand, on the orders of Lou ...

on 15 February 1843, but they both drowned together only a few months later, when their boat overturned on the Seine in

Villequier Villequier () is a former commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region in northern France. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Rives-en-Seine.Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...

. He dedicated numerous poems to the memory of his daughter, notably '' Demain dès l'aube'' and ''À Villequier'' in ''Pauca Meae'', the fourth book of '' Les Contemplations''. Victor Hugo did not write for several years afterwards owing to the clinical depression he developed following Léopoldine's death.

Notes

External links

* Complete text o
''Contemplations'', on Wikisource
* The Maison Vacquerie, in Villequier, houses th
departemental Museum of Victor Hugo

Hear "Demain, des l'aube" * Léopoldine –

Série Noire ''Série noire'' is a French publishing imprint, founded in 1945 by Marcel Duhamel. It has released a collection of crime fiction of the hardboiled detective thrillers variety published by Gallimard. Anglo-American literature forms the bulk o ...

(Swiss popband) , musical version of the poem " Demain, dès l'aube," written by Léopoldine's father

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hugo, Leopoldine 1824 births 1843 deaths 19th-century French women Boating accident deaths Deaths by drowning in France French Roman Catholics French socialites Hugo family People from Paris People of the July Monarchy