Some fun information… but first, an aside.

Before I embark on a trip to anywhere, I try to keep up with current events there. And I have been doing that of late in regards to Europe in general and France in particular. I have a number of English speaking expat friends in Paris, and it helps when I can converse with them about things relevant to their “world.”

So, that’s why/how I came up with the follow tidbit of information… Real-life Quasimodo uncovered in Tate archives

With his hunched back and deformed face, Quasimodo, the tragic hero of Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunch Back of Notre Dame, has always been considered a mythical creation drawn from the depths of the author’s imagination.

But a new discovery appears to reveal the real-life inspiration behind the character from Hugo’s seminal novel, which tells the story of the deaf bell-ringer of Notre Dame and his unrequited love for the gipsy girl Esmeralda.

And a little more information from Wiki… Real-life Quasimodo

In August 2010 Adrian Glew, a Tate archivist, announced evidence for a real-life Quasimodo, a “humpbacked [stone] carver” who worked at Notre Dame during the 1820’s.[1] The evidence is contained in the memoirs of Henry Sibson, a 19th-century British sculptor who worked at Notre Dame at around the same time Hugo wrote the novel.[1] Sibson describes a humpbacked stonemason working there, “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.”[1] Because Victor Hugo had close links with the restoration of the cathedral it is likely he was aware of the “humpacked carver” known as “Trajin”.[1] Adrian Glew also uncovered that both the hunchback and Hugo were living in the same town of Saint Germain-des-Pres in 1833, and in early drafts of Les Misrables, Hugo named the main character “Jean Trajin” (the same name as the hunchback carver), but later changed it to “Jean Valjean”.[1]

In my opinion… fascinating.