A British archivist has uncovered papers that reveal that the tragic hero of French writer Victor Hugo’s novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, could be a French government sculptor hired to work on the 19th century restoration of the famous cathedral.
The link to the real-life identity of Quasimodo, the central character in the 1831 book, has been uncovered in a seven-volume hand-written autobiography of 19th century British sculptor Henry Sibson which was acquired by the Tate Archive in 1999.
Sibson had been employed at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris at around the time Hugo wrote the book and has described a hunchback stonemason working in the restoration project. The autobiography of Sibson (1795 -1870) was found in a house at Penzance, Cornwall.
Hugo is likely to have been inspired by the stonemason, who is not identified by Sibson, to make his main character a hunchback.
Notre Dame Cathedral had suffered during the radical phase of the French Revolution in the 1790s. Hugo is known to have taken a keen interest in its restoration.
Sibson, who got a job carving in Paris in the 1820s, notes in his autobiography: “The (French) government had given orders for the repairing of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris and it was now in progress... I applied at the government studios, where they were executing the large figures and here I met with a M. Trajan, a most worthy, fatherly and amiable man as ever existed he was the carver under the government sculptor whose name I forget as I had no intercourse with him, all that I know is that he was humpbacked and he did not like to mix with carvers.”
In another reference to the hunchbacked French sculptor, Sibson writes, “At length the time came to go to Dreux. M Le Bossu (the Hunchback), a nickname given to him and I scarcely ever heard any other and M. Trajan, the chief of the gang for there were a number of us. M. Le Bossu was pleased to tell M. Trajan that he must be sure to take the little Englishman.”
Hugo is known to have lived in the 6th arrondissement in the 1820s. Sibson in his memoirs describes sculptors and carvers, who would have been working in an atelier attached to L’École des Beaux Arts in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.
With his keen interest in the restoration of Notre Dame and his daily proximity to the ateliers and the cathedral, Hugo may have witnessed M. Trajan and his “humpbacked” boss, or even have known them.
The Sibson papers also have a connection to Les Miserables, another classic by Hugo whose main character was Jean Trajean, which was later altered to Jean Valjean. Tate archivist Adrian Glew told this newspaper he had first noticed the reference to a hunchbacked artisan in the Sibson papers in 2000, when he started cataloguing them. “I kept this aside, knowing I would have to delve further into it. It was not until about two years ago when a member of the family, which donated the papers to the archive, mentioned, it that I actively started researching the link to Hugo’s novel,” Glew said.
“I undertook some research in French archives and got the details,” Glew said, adding that the links are on display in the Tate Britain museum.
The Almanach de Paris from 1833 lists all professional inhabitants in the area and includes the carver Trajan, indicating that he continued to work there during the period Hugo would have been writing The Hunchback of Notre Dame.