© John Springer Collection/CORBIS
The Hunchback of Notre Dame has been a cultural figure since Victor Hugo wrote the novel of the same name. But could he have existed in real life?
Memoirs uncovered by the Tate Archive in the U.K. may give clues to a real Quasimodo, the Telegraph reports. In his writings, sculptor Henry Sibson describes a stonemason working at Notre Dame who had a hunched back. Sibson worked at Notre Dame in the 19th century, around the same time Hugo wrote his novel. Researchers found records of men with similar names as those stated in Sibson’s accounts living in Paris at the time.
The writing mentions a man with a hump on his back:
“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 […] Mon Le Bossu (the Hunchback) a nickname given to him and I scarcely ever heard any other.”
Hugo had publicly opposed the way the cathedral was being designed, and the publishing of his book is said to have prompted its Gothic restoration in 1844. Whatever his inspiration, Hugo’s depiction of Quasimodo made him one of the most acclaimed authors in France.