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The great French writer Victor Hugo arrived in Guernsey as a political refugee in 1855 and the island was his home for the next fifteen years. He produced much of his best known work in the rooftop study of his house in Hauteville, with its panoramic views of St Peter Port and the neighbouring islands; in the distance on a clear day he could see the coastline of his beloved France.
In 1859 he published a verse masterpiece ”Lagende des Sicles” and went on to finish his historical novel “Les Misrables” which appeared in 1862, to great critical acclaim.

Appropriately for his year’s Europe theme, Tales and Legends, Hugo was fascinated by the legends and stories of Guernsey. While taking a short holiday on the nearby Island of Sark in 1859 he heard fishermen telling dramatic stories about marine monsters, and he visited a cave frequented by a giant octopus. This gave him the germ of an idea for a novel which would eventually become “Les Travailleurs de la Mer” (The Toilers of the Sea), set in Guernsey and published in 1866.

For this, Hugo invented some mythology to weave in with the traditional material, including the King of the Auxcriniers, a deaf dwarf who was the greatest danger to the coast of the Channel Islands.
Hugo’s drawings of this fearsome character (possible) based on an Egyptian figurine in the Louvre (museum) appears on the selvedge of one of this sheets of this stamp issues. Our artist’s interpretation is featured as part of the presentation pack design.
The novel’s hero, Gilliatt, falls deeply in love with Druchette, niece of the owner of the steamship DURANDE. When the ship is wrecked on a dangerous reef south of Guernsey, Gilliatt undertakes to salvage the vessel single-handed. After weeks of toil he succeeds, having endured a life-or-death struggle with a giant octopus in the process.

Despite Gilliatt’s heroism in bringing the DURANDE back to Guernsey he fails to win the hand of Druchette. She marries a clergyman and as they set sail for England, Gilliatt watches from a rock out at sea. As the ship disappears over the horizon, Gilliatt ignores the rising tide and is drowned.
Our stamps show Gilliatt in his heroic fight and later, disconsolate on a rock as his love and her husband sail past. On the former, the artist, Mark Wilkinson, has ingeniously incorporated Hugo’s face into the crest of a breaking wave, while the latter Druchette appears in the clouds. The sheetlets include text translated into French, and on the First Day Cover we see, up close, Gillliatt’s struggle with the octopus.

Our thanks are due to Gregory Stevens-Cox, M.A. (Oxen), Ph. D. author of Victor Hugo in the Channel Islands, for his help with the issue.

Guernsey 1997 26/31p sg735/36 scott591/92.

Source: Guernsey Post information leaflet.

Toilers of the Sea (A Novel by Victor Hugo) 1866

Toilers of the Sea (French: Les Travailleurs de la mer) is a novel by Victor Hugo published in 1866. The book is dedicated to the island of Guernsey, where Hugo spent 19 years in exile. Like The Book of Ebenezer Le Page (1981) by G. B. Edwards, Hugo uses the setting of a small island community to transmute seemingly mundane events into drama of the highest calibre. “Les Travailleurs de la Mer” is set just after the Napoleonic Wars and deals with the impact of the Industrial Revolution upon the island.

The story concerns a Guernseyman named Gilliatt, a social outcast who falls in love with Deruchette, the niece of a local shipowner, Mess Lethierry. When Lethierry's ship is wrecked on the Roches Douvres, a perilous reef, Deruchette promises to marry whoever can salvage the ship's steam engine. Gilliatt eagerly volunteers, and the story follows his physical trials and tribulations (which include a battle with an octopus), as well as the undeserved opprobrium of his neighbours.

A woman arrives in Guernsey, with her son Gilliat, and buys a house said to be haunted. The boy grows up, the woman dies. Gilliat becomes a good fisherman and sailor. People believe him to be a wizard.

In Guernsey also lives Mess Lethierry – a former sailor and owner of the first steamship of the island, the Durande – with his niece Deruchette. One day, near Christmas, when going to church, she sees Gilliat on the road behind her and writes his name in the snow. He sees this and becomes obsessed with her gesture. In time he falls in love with her and goes to play the bagpipes near her house.

Sieur Clubin, the trusted captain of Durande, sets up a plan to sink the ship in the Hanois cliffs and flee with a ship of Spanish smugglers,Tamaulipas. He gets in touch with Rantaine, a swindler who had stolen a large sum of money from Mess Lethierry many years ago. Clubin takes the money from Rantaine at gunpoint.

In thick fog, Clubin sails for the Hanois cliffs from where he can easily swim to the shore, meet the smugglers, and disappear, giving the appearance of having drowned. Instead, he loses his way and sails to the Douvres cliffs which are much further from the shore. Left alone on the ship, he is terrified, but he sees a cutter and leaps into the water to catch it. In that moment he feels grabbed by the leg and is pulled down to the bottom.

Everybody in Guernsey finds out about the shipwreck. Mess Lethierry is desperate to get the Durande 's engine back. His niece declares she will marry the rescuer of the engine, and Mess Lethierry swears she will marry no other. Gilliat immediately takes up the mission, enduring hunger, thirst, and cold trying to free the engine from the wreck. In a battle with an octopus, he finds the skeleton of Clubin (Captain of Durande) and the stolen money on the bottom of the sea.

Eventually he succeeds in returning the engine to Lethierry, who is very pleased and ready to honour his promise. Gilliat appears in front of the people as the rescuer but he declines to marry Deruchette because he had seen her accepting a marriage proposal made by Ebenezer Caudry, the young priest recently arrived on the island. He arranges their hurried wedding and helps them run away on the sailing ship Cashmere. In the end, with all his dreams shattered, Gilliat decides to wait for the tide sitting on the Gild Holm'Ur chair (a rock in the sea) and drowns as he watches the Cashmere disappear on the horizon.

Guernsey 1997, S.G.?, Scott: 591.

Source: Wikipedia.