6th March 2019
Jean-Baptiste Charcot, ‘the Polar Gentleman.’ Doctor, sportsman, Olympic medallist, polar explorer, friend of Captain Scott, and husband of Victor Hugo's grand-daughter Jeanne, this admirable French hero reserved a special place for Guernsey. [By Dinah Bott]
11th January 2019
Transcribed by De Guérin in one of his black-bound notebooks (Staff): 'Various MSS 1500-1606.'
7th January 2019
From John Baskett's The Acts of Tonnage and Poundage, and Rates of Merchandize &c, London, 1731.
13th November 2018
From Ferdinand Brock Tupper's History of Guernsey, printed by Stephen Barbet, New Street, Guernsey, 1854, p. 434. 'From the MS of a Guernsey jurat, now deceased, written in 1839 or 1840, we extract the following:'
7th November 2018
Once a magnificent farm house with 15 bedrooms, made of the best blue granite, said to be haunted, the old house of the [de] La Marche family in St Martin's saw highs and lows. Its story ended with demolition by the Occupying Forces in 1944, and the memory of the house itself and a reputed connection with Victor Hugo became shrouded in mystery. It is quite possible that Victor Hugo admired the house - he certainly would have admired its wonderful situation, and is quoted as saying (in the advertisement above from a 1915 tourist brochure), 'Live at Icart, live forever!,' but there is no evidence he ever set foot in it. His family, however, were indeed intimately connected with it. [By Dinah Bott]
2nd November 2018
List of photographs in Vols. XI-XIII of this invaluable journal,which can be consulted at the Library. As listed in the original publication. The Library has original photographic prints by one of the main contributors of photographs at this period, S M Henry.
31st October 2018
This invaluable publication is available for consultation at the Library. A list of its photographic illustrations from vols. III-IV 1947-1949. Please ask for further information. The items may no longer be with the same owners or guardians.
24th October 2018
Opinions on the building of the Castle Emplacement from Victor Hugo and his son Charles. Charles took the accompanying photograph, The Castle Emplacement under construction, c 1856; he also took a fine study of St Catherine's Breakwater in Jersey some years earlier. (Hugo family friend Auguste Vacquerie was also an excellent photographer, and may possibly be responsible for this photograph, but Charles shared his father's appreciation of the effort and skill required to build these types of structures, and of the progress and growth they embodied, and is likely to have found this and the Jersey breakwater an appealing subject). The photograph is in the collection of Paris Musées: Construction de la digue reliant le château Cornet au port, attribuée à Charles Hugo, 1855-6. [By Dinah Bott]
22nd October 2018
The loss of the paddle-steamer Normandy, 17 March 1870
15th October 2018
The exiled Victor Hugo was forced to leave Jersey very quickly. Here he describes his arrival in Guernsey in a letter to his wife, Adèle Foucher, who had remained for the time in Jersey. The image is from a set of engravings of drawings by Hugo in the Priaulx Library collection.
24th August 2018
Biography of Mrs Curtin, from the Gazette de Guernesey, May 1914
9th July 2018
'A slightly coloured sketch.'An oaken chest, half eaten by the worm, But richly carved by Anthony of Trent, With Scripture stories from the life of Christ; A chest that came from Venice, and had held The ducal robes of some old ancestor. That by the way—it may be true or false.[From] Rogers’ Italy.By Samuel Elliott Hoskins. Victor Hugo was not, it would seem, the first to transform the carved wooden chests of Guernsey into some other form of decorative furniture. De Beauvoir De Lisle got there before him!
