other plays which have foundered than to the great opportunities it affords to any actress of genius.
Thenceforward Dumas’s career was that of a brilliant and prosperous dramatist. Diane de Lys (1853), Le Demi-Monde (1855), La Question d’argent (1857), Le Fils naturel (1858), Le Père prodigue (1859) followed rapidly. Debts became a thing of the past, and Dumas a wealthy man. The didactic habit was always strong upon him. “Alexandre loves preaching overmuch,” wrote his father; and in most of his plays he assumes the attitude of a rigid and uncompromising moralist commissioned to impart to a heedless world lessons of deep import. The lessons themselves are mostly concerned with the “eternal feminine,” by which Dumas was haunted, and differ in ethical value. Thus in Les Idées de Madame Aubray (1867) he inculcates the duty of the seducer to marry the woman he has seduced; but in La Femme de Claude (1873) he argues the right of the husband to take the law into his own hand and kill the wife who is unfaithful and worthless—a thesis again defended in his novel, L’Affaire Clémenceau, and in his pamphlet, L’Homme-femme; while in Diane de Lys he had taught that the betrayed husband was entitled to kill—not in a duel, but summarily—the man who had taken his honour; and in L’Étrangère (1876) the bad husband is the victim. Nor did he preach only in his plays. He preached in voluminous introductions, and pamphlets not a few. And when, in 1870 and 1872, France was going through bitter hours of humiliation, he called her to repentance and amendment in a Nouvelle Lettre de Junius and two Lettres sur les choses du jour.
As a moralist Dumas fils took himself very seriously indeed. As a dramatist, didacticism apart, he had great gifts. He knew his business thoroughly, possessed the art of situation, interest, crisis—could create characters that were real and alive. His dialogue also is admirable, the repartee rapier-like, the wit most keen. He was singularly happy, too, in his dramatic interpreters. The cast of L’Étrangère, for instance, comprised Sarah Bernhardt, Sophie Croizette, Madeleine Brohan, in the female characters; and Coquelin, Got, Mounet-Sully and Fébvre in the male characters; and Aimée Desclée, whom he discovered, gave her genius to the creation of the parts of the heroine in Une Visite de noces, the Princesse Georges and La Femme de Claude. His wit has been mentioned. He possessed it in abundance, of a singularly trenchant kind. It shows itself less in his novels, which, however, do not contain his best work; but in his introductions, whether to his own books or those of his friends, and what may be called his “occasional” writings, there is an admirable brightness. At work of this kind he showed the highest literary skill. His style is that of the best French traditions. Towards his father Dumas acted a kind of brother’s part, and while keeping strangely free from his literary influence, both loved and admired him. The father never belonged to the French Academy. The son was elected into that august assembly on the 30th of January 1874. He died on the 27th of November 1895.
See also Jules Claretie, A. Dumas fils (1883); Paul Bourget, Nouveaux Essais de psychologie contemporaine (1885); “La Comédie de mœurs,” by René Doumic, in L. Petit de Julleville’s Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française, viii. pp. 82 et seq.; R. Doumic, Portraits d’écrivains (1892), Émile Zola, Documents littéraires, études et portraits (1881). (F. T. M.)
DUMAS, GUILLAUME MATHIEU, Count (1753–1837), French general, was born at Montpellier, of a noble family, on the 23rd of November 1753. He joined the army in 1773, and entered upon active service in 1780, as aide-de-camp to Rochambeau in the American War. He had a share in all the principal engagements that occurred during a period of nearly two years. On the conclusion of peace in 1783 he returned to France as a major. He was engaged from 1784 to 1786 in exploring the archipelago and the coasts of Turkey. He was present at the siege of Amsterdam in 1787, where he co-operated with the Dutch against the Prussians. At the Revolution he acted with Lafayette and the constitutional liberal party. He was entrusted by the Assembly with the command of the escort which conducted Louis XVI. to Paris from Varennes. In 1791 as a maréchal de camp he was appointed to a command at Metz, where he rendered important service in improving the discipline of the troops. Chosen a member of the Legislative Assembly in the same year by the department of Seine-et-Oise, he was in the following year elected president of the Assembly. When the extreme republicans gained the ascendancy, however, he judged it prudent to make his escape to England. Returning after a brief interval, under the apprehension that his father-in-law would be held responsible for his absence, he arrived in Paris in the midst of the Reign of Terror, and had to flee to Switzerland. Soon after his return to France he was elected a member of the Council of Ancients. After the 18th Fructidor (1797) Dumas, being proscribed as a monarchist, made his escape to Holstein, where he wrote the first part of his Précis des événements militaires (published anonymously at Hamburg, 1800).
Recalled to his native country when Bonaparte became First Consul, he was entrusted with the organization of the “Army of Reserve” at Dijon. In 1801 he was nominated a councillor of state. He did good service at Austerlitz, and went in 1806 to Naples, where he became minister of war to Joseph Bonaparte. On the transfer of Joseph to the throne of Spain, Dumas rejoined the French army, with which he served in Spain during the campaign of 1808, and in Germany during that of 1809. After the battle of Wagram, Dumas was employed in negotiating the armistice. In 1810 he became grand officer of the Legion of Honour and a count of the empire. In the Russian campaign of 1812 he held the post of intendant-general of the army, which involved the charge of the administrative department. The privations he suffered in the retreat from Moscow brought on a dangerous illness. Resuming, on his recovery, his duties as intendant-general, he took part in the battles of 1813, and was made prisoner after the capitulation of Dresden. On the accession of Louis XVIII., Dumas rendered his new sovereign important services in connexion with the administration of the army. When Napoleon returned from Elba, Dumas at first kept himself in retirement, but he was persuaded by Joseph Bonaparte to present himself to the emperor, who employed him in organizing the National Guard. Obliged to retire when Louis XVIII. was restored, he devoted his leisure to the continuation of his Précis des événements militaires, of which nineteen volumes, embracing the history of the war from 1798 to the peace of 1807, appeared between 1817 and 1826. A growing weakness of sight, ending in blindness, prevented him from carrying the work further, but he translated Napier’s Peninsular War as a sort of continuation to it. In 1818 Dumas was restored to favour and admitted a member of the council of state, from which, however, he was excluded in 1822. After the revolution of 1830, in which he took an active part, Dumas was created a peer of France, and re-entered the council of state. He died at Paris on the 16th of October 1837.
Besides the Précis des événements militaires, which forms a valuable source for the history of the period, Dumas wrote Souvenirs du lieut.-général Comte Mathieu Dumas (published posthumously by his son, Paris, 1839).
DUMAS, JEAN BAPTISTE ANDRÉ (1800–1884), French chemist, was born at Alais (Gard) on the 15th of July 1800. Disappointed in his early hope of entering the navy, he became apprentice to an apothecary in his native town; but seeing little prospect of advancement in that calling, he soon moved to Geneva (in 1816). There he attended the lectures of such men as M. A. Pictet in physics, C. G. de la Rive in chemistry, and A. P. de Candolle in botany, and before he had reached his majority he was engaged with Pierre Prévost in original work on problems of physiological chemistry, and even of embryology. In 1823, acting on the advice of A. von Humboldt, he left Geneva for Paris, which he made his home for the rest of his life. There he gained the acquaintance of many of the foremost scientific men of the day, and quickly made a name for himself both as a teacher and an investigator, attaining within ten years the honour of membership of the Academy of Sciences. When approaching his fiftieth year he entered political life, and became a member of the National Legislative Assembly. He acted as minister
