Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870 - full name Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie), born on 24 July 1802 at Villers-Cotterets (Aisne), was the grandson of Count Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie and Marie-Cessette Dumas, a Haitian, and the son of General Alexandre Davy-Dumas and Marie Labouret, daughter of a tavern-keeper and small landowner at Villers-Cotterets. After an idle, irregular youth, he went to Paris in 1823; obtained a clerkship in the bureau of the Duc d’Orleans; but, bent on literature, spent some years in reading and in learning to write. A volume of short stories and a couple of farces, however, were his only productions when, at 27 he became famous by his Henri Trois et sa Cour (1829), performed at the Théâtre Français. He had operated that revolution in historical drama which the Hugolater ascribes to the poet of Hernani (1830). In 1831 he did the same for domestic tragedy Antony, failed in verse with Charles VII chez ses Grand Vassaux and scored a tremendous success (in collaboration with Goubaux and Dinant) with Richard Darlington; in 1832 he carried the romantic ‘history’ to its culmination in La Tours de Nesle (in collaboration with Gaillardet). In that same year he fell ill with cholera, went to Switzerland to recuperate and wrote for the Revue des Deux Mondes the first of his famous and delightful Impressions de Voyages. A prodigious worker, he was wont, after months of production, to renew himself with a round of travel, and he always published his experiences. Thus, En Suisse (1832) was followed by Le Midi de La France (1840), Les Bords du Rhin and Une Année à Florence (1841), Le Spéronare and Le Capitaine Arena (1842), Le Corricolo (1843), De Paris à Cadiz and Le VÂ�&egraveloce (1845), and finally Le Caucase (1859), De Paris à Astrakhan (1860), and En Russie (1865). But it was as a story-teller that Dumas was destined to gain enduring success. As to his own share in his own work, he exhausted, it appears, some ninety collaborators, and his debates with some of them by no means redounded to his credit. But, apart from him his assistants were mostly unreadable; in conjunction with him they were Alexandre Dumas, that is, the greatest master of the art of narrative. He took whatever he could get from whomsoever he could get it, and minting it in his own die, gave it his own immense radiant personality. Still, it is undeniable that his thefts were many and flagrant. Trelawny’s Adventures of a Younger Son, for instance, appears in his collected works; and it is said that he was with difficulty restrained from signing a book of the Iliad which someone else had run into prose. From the first it was his purpose to put the history of France into novels and his earliest essay was the Isabelle de Bavière (1836). It was followed by Pauline, Le Capitaine Paul, and Pascal Bruno (1838), Actè (1839), and Othon l’Archer, Le Capitaine Pamphile, and Maître Adam le Calabrais (1840) – all on other lines; then the historical vein cropped up anew in Le Chevalier d’Harmenthaland Ascunio (1843). For the amazing decade that followed there is no parallel in literature except the first ten years of the author of Waverley. In 1844, with a number of digressions into new provinces – as Cécile, Fernande, Amaury, Monte Cristo – appeared Les Trois Mousquetaires; in 1845, Vingt Ans Après, La Fille du Ré gent, and La Reine Margot; in 1846, La Guerre des Femmes, Maison Rouges, Le Bâ tard de Mauléon, La Dame de Monsoreau, and Les Mémoires d’un Mè decin; in 1848, Les Quarante-Cinq and the beginnings of Bragelonne – finished in 1850; and in 1849, Le Collier de la Reine. The next two years witnessed productions so varied as La Tulipe Noire and Le Trou de l’Enfer (1850), and La Femme au Collier de Velours (1851); in 1852 the historical masterpiece Olympe de Clèves was produced. Between that year and 1854 were produced the ten delightful volumes of Mes Mémoires, with Ange Pitou and La Comptesse du Charny. Other achievements in the romance of French history were Ingénue (1854), Les Compagnons de Jé hu (1857), Les Louves de Machecoul (1859), and Les Blancs et Les Bleus (1867–68), with which last the sequence ended. The list is nothing like complete and we can only refer in passing to the cloud of drama (the great historical novels were dramatised – the Mousquetaires cycle supplied at least three plays – as also were Monte Cristo and others), history, causerie, journalism etc., in whose midst this enormous production went on. Dumas took a conspicuous part in the Days in July; in 1837 he received the red ribbon; in 1842 he married Mlle. Ida Ferrier, from whom he promptly separated; in 1855 he went for two years into exile in Brussels; from 1860–1864 he was helping Garibaldi in Italy, and conducting and writing a journal; and in 1868 he produced the last but one of his plays. By this time the end was near; he sank under his work. He had got rid of a series of fortunes and he quitted Paris for the last time with only a couple of napoleons in his pocket. He went to his son’s villa at Dieppe and there, on 5 December 1870 he died. --Naxos Audiobooks

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