Jeanne Hugo

Léopoldine Clémence Adèle Lucie Jeanne Hugo (29 September 1869 – 30 November 1941) was a Belgian-born French heiress and socialite during La Belle Époque. She was a granddaughter of French novelist, poet, and politician Victor Hugo. As an adult, Hugo was often written about in the press due to her status in Parisian high society and her connections to other members of the French elite. Early life and family Jeanne Hugo was born in Brussels on 29 September 1869, the third child of the journalist Charles Hugo and his wife Alice Le Haene. Her eldest brother died as an infant prior to her birth. Her surviving older brother was the artist Georges Victor-Hugo. Her paternal grandparents were the writer and politician Victor Hugo and Adèle Foucher. She was a great-granddaughter of Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo and Sophie Trébuchet. A member of a prominent literary and political family, her paternal grandfather had been ennobled as a Pairie de France by Louis Philippe I in 1845. Born in the last year of the Second French Empire, Hugo was raised in a staunch Republican household. Her family, former loyalists to the Bourbon monarchy, opposed the Bonapartes. She was the niece of Léopoldine Hugo, François-Victor Hugo, and Adèle Hugo. In 1871 Hugo's father died from a stroke. Her mother later remarried the actor Édouard Lockroy. Hugo's grandfather did not approve of the new marriage, and took custody of Hugo and her brother, Georges. In 1877 she and her brother were the focus of her grandfather's book of poetry titled L'Art d'être grand-père. When she was eleven years old, she was gifted a walrus-tusk paper cutter by the Finno-Swedish explorer Baron Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld from his voyage in the Arctic Ocean aboard the . Her grandfather died in 1885, leaving her with a vast inheritance. As a young adult, Hugo became a key figure of Parisian high society during the Belle Époque of the French Third Republic and was frequently written about in newspapers. She was the aunt of the artist Jean Hugo.