The Life and Writings of Alexandre Dumas/Character
His Character.
"The great eater, worker, earner and waster, the man of much and witty laughter, the man of great heart and, alas, of the doubtful honesty, is a figure not yet clearly set before the world," wrote R. L. Stevenson. "He still awaits a sober and yet genial portrait, but with whatever art that may be touched, and whatever indulgence, it will not be the portrait of a precisian." That is quite true, but in trying to sketch Dumas's character according to the ideal Stevenson has given us, we hope to show the "ventripotent mulatto" (as that author wrongly calls him) less black, both outwardly and inwardly, than even the admiring essayist deemed him,—for we seem to see the slimy traces of that ubiquitous snake-in-the-grass "M. de Mirecourt" in this passage from "Memories and Portraits."
Happily we cannot mistake our starting-point, for it is obviously best to commence one's journey round a character with that which is the subject's most characteristic quality, and which first strikes those who read about him or come into his literary presence. A score of Dumas's contemporaries have left us their impressions of the great impressionist, and they have one and all laid emphasis on his gaiety—a naïve heartiness and healthiness of temperament, springing from a semi-tropical nature, a magnificent constitution, an unclouded self-confidence, a kind, generous heart, and brilliant social, dramatic, and literary successes. "Hercules bon enfant," Maxime Du Camp called him, adding:—
"Like a giant who knows his strength and fears to take advantage of it, he was gentle. I have never seen in him—I will not say a sign of anger—but not even a movement of impatience. If ever a man was lovable, in the original sense of the word, that is 'made to be loved,' Dumas was that man.... He had so much wit himself that every one who was with him believed they had it too."
He seems to have created, as it were, an atmosphere of esprit which was breathed by all who came within its influence.
Roger de Beauvoir, the author of "L'Ecolier de Cluny," one day visited the great man's rooms in his absence, and was shown into the kitchen instead of the study. Wishing to "leave his card," he picked up his friend's account-book, and wrote this quatrain on one of the pages:—
"Sur ce carnet, Dumas écrit,
Jour par jour, tout ce qu'il dépense,
Il n'y pourrait mettre, je pense
Tout ce qu'il dépense d'esprit!"[1]
Many of the best stories told of Dumas naturally relate to the theatre, of which he was such an habitué, and the drama, of which he was such a master. "Before telling one of the best of these," (says Mr W. H. Pollock), "it is necessary to remember that Pierre Corneille, the great dramatist, had a younger brother named Thomas, who had a considerable talent which was completely overshadowed by the greater genius of his brother. There was also in the height of Dumas's success another playwright—no relation of his—who bore the name of Dumas. This writer produced a play which is forgotten now, but which on the night of its production had enough success to intoxicate the author with joy. After the curtain had fallen, the obscure Dumas came into the box of the great Dumas and said:
"'Ah! after to-night people will talk of the two Dumas as they talk of the two Corneilles!'
"'H'm!' said the great man, looking at him from head to foot—'adieu, Thomas!'"
The phrase "the French Sheridan occurs irresistibly to the mind, when one remembers the Master's wit and improvidence. There is something very like the author of the "School for Scandal" about the hero of the following story.
One evening at the Théâtre Français Dumas saw one of the audience asleep in his stall during the representation of a play by Soumet.
"See," said the dramatist to his confrère, "that's the effect that your plays produce!"
The next day a comedy of Dumas's was played, and the author was present. Suddenly Soumet tapped his friend's shoulder, and pointed out a gentleman asleep in the orchestra, saying in bittersweet accents:
"You see, my dear friend, that one falls asleep just the same when listening to your prose."
"That? Why that is the gentleman who went to sleep yesterday, and hasn't woke up yet!" retorted the other.
In spite of his social rank Dumas was just as much at home in the boulevards, with the gamins, and the populace, who loved him and whom he loved, as with the wits and peers. He was walking one day with his secretary Pifteau, and looking for a cab, when a post-office mail-omnibus rolled by.
"Stop!" he cried to the driver, "give us a lift. We're men of letters, too!"
The postman grinned as he whipped up his horses.
The mots uttered by Dumas or attributed to him were numberless. The saying "tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse," is said to have been originated by him. The witty utterances in his books have all the flavour, and unexpectedness of spoken jests. "Heaven has made but one drama for man—the world," he wrote, "and during these three thousand years mankind has been hissing it." "A young man," he wrote to Béranger, "always makes his entry into public life with an old woman on his arm, and into the world of literature with an old thought in his head. One needs to have much experience before young ideas will come."
There was human truth, too, in this: "When the prodigal son returned to his father's house after three years they killed a calf; if he had not returned for six years they would have killed an ox." Again, take this passage from his "Mémoires" as a sample of the style of their contents: "I have been confessing the ridiculous weaknesses of my childhood; I shall be equally frank about those of my youth. I shall be more courageous than Rousseau: Rousseau confessed only his vices."
There is no room here for a volume of jeux d'esprit, spoken or written, and we must be merciful, too; in the matter of the stories told by Dumas; for he was a famous raconteur, and his autobiographical writings are enriched with capital anecdotes, neatly told. There are two, however, which we cannot bring ourselves to omit. One is of M. de Sesmaisons, "the fattest man in politics," who was so stout that he found it necessary when he travelled to reserve two places in the diligence for himself. On one occasion when he took this precaution, he discovered that his man had booked for him one seat in the coupé and the other inside!
The other story may be entitled the episode of Colonel Bro's macaw. Dumas called at that officer's house one day, went into the drawing-room to wait, and seeing a yellow red and blue macaw on its perch, he went up to it familiarly and commenced to scratch its head. The bird, it appeared, was in a vile temper that morning, and gave the unwelcome visitor a murderous peck. Dumas withdrew his finger, staunched the blood, and then, returning to the bird, wrung its neck, and quietly put the body out of sight under some of the furniture. Later on he left without anything having been noticed.
Some weeks afterwards Dumas dined with Colonel Bro, and the conversation turned on natural history. Reference was made to the habits of elephants, who kneel to say their prayers, and get out of sight to die secretly.
"As for that last trait," said the Colonel's wife, "it must be common to all animals." Then turning to Dumas she added, "You remember my beautiful blue yellow and red macaw?"
"Perfectly. Has some misfortune happened to it?"
"Alas! the poor thing is dead,—and would you believe it, Monsieur Dumas, we found it in a corner of the drawing-room, under the couch? That proves that this modesty before death is an instinct common to all animals in creation, and that our domestic parrots have it, just as strongly as the kings of the forest."
Dumas was duly impressed.
Take, with his gaiety and wit, Dumas's vanity. Here is Mr Lang's opinion of the worth of the reproach:—
"They call Dumas vain: he had reason to be vain, and no candid or generous reader will be shocked by his pleasant, frank, and artless enjoyment of himself and of his adventures. Oddly enough, they are small-minded and small-hearted people who are most shocked by what they call 'vanity' in the great. Dumas's delight in himself and his doings is only the flower of his vigorous existence, and in his 'Mémoires,' at least, it is as happy and encouraging as his laugh, or the laugh of Porthos; it is a kind of radiance, in which others, too, may bask and enjoy themselves. And yet it is resented by tiny scribblers, frozen in their own chill self-conceit."
There is an amusing story told of how this vanity was very neatly snubbed on one occasion. Dumas was giving evidence in a trial, at Rouen, and was asked his profession.
"I should say 'dramatic author, if I were not in the city of Corneille," he answered.
"Oh, M'sieu," replied the judge, "there are degrees."...
We cannot resist quoting here how Dumas took his revenge on the Rouen folk, who it appears had also hissed his plays. "One day," he says, "a Neapolitan boasted to me of having hissed Rossini and Malibran, the 'Barbiere' and 'Desdemona.'
"'That must be true,' I answered, because Rossini and Malibran boast, on their part, of having been hissed by the Neapolitans. So I boast of being hissed by the Rouenese. The Rouen people, he added, 'hiss me because they object to me. Why shouldn't they? They objected to Joan of Arc!'"
"Vanity," says Villemessant, "was a part of his talent; just as a balloon cannot rise, until it is filled with air." "The public," adds Du Camp, "are too exacting: they expect a man to have every talent in the world, and not to know it." Dumas's artless self-admiration was made the moral of a hundred malicious stories. It is said that his son remarked of him: "he is so vain that he would like to get up behind his own coach to make people think he owned a black footman." We have not traced this speech to its source, but we shall not believe that Dumas fils said it, without the strongest proof. There is, however, a story told by Mr W. H. Pollock, which is more probably authentic, being in better taste and more spirituel.
Dumas père is supposed to have written to his son, as to a stranger, proposing that they should collaborate. (He had more than once urged his son to do this, adding, "it would bring you in 40,000 or 50,000 francs a year,—you would only have to make objections, to contradict me in the subjects I proposed, and to give me the germs of ideas which I would develop without your help.") On this occasion Dumas fils replied that he disliked collaboration, but added, "I am the more sorry to refuse what you ask me because my sympathies are naturally enlisted by the great admiration which you have always expressed for my father's works."
"He believed in himself, it is true," writes Du Camp, "and it was quite legitimate for him to do so; but he believed in others, too." "People who complain of Dumas's vanity," adds Mr Lang, "may be requested to observe that he seems just as 'vain' of Hugo's successes, or of Scribe's, as of his own, and just as much delighted by them. Dumas had no jealousy," Mr Lang goes on, "no more than Scott. As he believed in no success without talent, so he disbelieved in genius which wins no success. 'Je ne crois pas au talent ignoré, au genie inconnu, moi'. Genius he saluted wherever he met it, but was incredulous about invisible and inaudible genius." So little gall had Dumas in his disposition that he found ability everywhere—he praised heartily, gladly. His good-nature often led him to fancy that there was talent in people who possessed none.
"I can't make out what Mallefille lacks, in order to be a man of talent," he said one day.
"Perhaps he lacks the talent," some one suggested.
"By Jove! That's it! I never thought of that!" answered Dumas ingenuously.
With all his failings—and we will admit them in due time—Dumas had one splendid quality which might well outweigh a host of sins heavier than his. He was charity itself. His was indeed "a voice of comfort and an open hand of help." "He was like a cornucopia, shedding bounty perpetually from his outstretched hands," says Du Camp. "Half, if not more, of the money he earned he gave away." Another great writer has told us how Dumas would take his work and sit by the dying, would tend them and help them in their need. His heart was open to the suffering, his purse to the needy, his house to the homeless. "I was sick and ye visited me." We can fancy the Preacher of Galilee would have found something in Alexandre Dumas which the world never saw.
One day, when Dumas and du Chaffault were talking together, a poor Italian was shown in, begging for help. The author was, as usual, at the end of his resources, but that did not check his charitable desire.
"My friend," he said, "I am no richer than you are; I have nothing, but I can never send away with empty hands a man who is in want. Take down one of those pistols from the mantelpiece; go and sell it, and leave me the other for the next poor devil that the good God may send to me for relief."
Theodore de Banville tells us in his "Souvenirs " how a poor starving devil, Montjoye by name, was ready to take his life in despair, when the thought of Dumas came to him like an inspiration from heaven. He found the great man deserted—all the servants had gone a-holidaying—but the host hurried into the kitchen, and prepared with his own hands a feast for the gods, for this stranger. It is a pleasant picture that the poet sets before us—the penniless beggar eating, and making witty remarks on the dishes as he attacked them, and Dumas beaming with delight and roaring with laughter, as he heaped the strange guest's plate with good things.
But the charity which gives money only is not complete in the great apostle's sense, and happily Dumas had his full share of that other and greater generosity. Of such was his surprise for Maquet, on the first night of the "Trois Mousquetaires." Maquet was the artisan and Dumas the artist of that collaboration, and the henchman had no thought of any public acknowledgment of his share of the work. But at the fall of the curtain Mélingue, the famous "D'Artagnan" came forward and named "Messieurs Alexandre Dumas and August Maquet." Maquet gave a cry of joy and pride, and fell sobbing on his master's neck.
The young and ambitious author always found a kind, genial, helpful friend in Dumas. One day a novice came to ask the great man a favour. Would he listen to a play in verse? Dumas, whose time was golden, nevertheless good-naturedly agreed. After the first act the great man remarked thoughtlessly:
"My boy, your verses are not very rich in poetry."[2]
"Not rich..." the young man exclaimed in dismay, letting the manuscript fall from his hands.
Dumas, regretting that he had given such pain to a beginner, picked up the play and handed it back to the youth, saying hurriedly:
"Don't be discouraged by such a little thing, my boy. Your lines are not rich in thought, it is true—but—but—they're fairly well off!"
Asseline, one of the staff of the ill-fated Mousquetaire, wrote in the Independance Belge, at the time that his old master was dying, a loving appreciation of him, in which he recalled a characteristic incident in their journalistic relations. Asseline was writing a feuilleton in the journal and was at a loss to know how to tell the story of a duel which was necessary to his plot. He took his cares to the famous editor, who, turning from his own work, cross-questioned the writer on his plot, characters, motives, and the rest, and then, having rapidly grasped the situation, sat down and wrote the chapter himself. Asseline received general congratulations on his masterly handling of the duel scene, but Dumas never made known the service which he had rendered his pupil.
There was a truly noble generosity, too, in his "confession," after he had written adverse critiques on plays by three of his confrères. He discovered, by self-analysis, that it was personal pique which had provoked his judgments on others, and not a lofty desire to defend his art. He cried shame on himself, published his self-condemnation to the world, and wrote no more criticisms. "What I had done," he says, was perhaps good from the point of view of literature, but truly it was by no means good from the point of view of humanity, and the brotherhood of art."
His delicacy was equal to his kindness. One day he found an old friend who was in needy circumstances, and bore him off to dinner. As they parted the host said casually:
"Thou knowest, old comrade—I expect thee here again to-morrow."
The friend came again—and for ten or twelve years dined with Dumas. At last, overcome with remorse at eating the bread he did not earn, the guest declared that he must make some return for his dinners, or he would not come again. Dumas thought a moment.
"You can do me a great service," he said at length. "Go to the Pont Neuf every day at noon, and note the temperature of the Chevalier thermometer for me. That is very important, in connection with the receipts at the theatre. Will you oblige me?" The friend agreed delightedly, and situation was saved." Both men were happy once more.
On another occasion a man entered the "master's" room, begging. Dumas, without waiting to hear of his particular need, drew fifteen francs from a drawer. It appeared that the caller was collecting to raise funds to bury a huissier (or sheriff's officer.)
"To bury a huissier!" cried Dumas, who knew those gentry only too well. "Here—here are another fifteen francs—go and bury another!"
The many stories which are told of Dumas's shifts to get money, and of his prodigality, are some of them amusing, but most of them untrustworthy. He himself was conscious of his failing, but was never able to cure himself of it. "When my hand closes on anything it can grip," he said laughing, "anything but money. Ah! money is so smooth, it slips through my fingers!"
One evening Dumas promised his theatrical company a bal masqué, followed by a supper.
"Ah!" cried a young and pert actress, "and who will pay?"
"Parbleu, I shall," answered Dumas, "shan't I be disguised?"
In later years, when the struggle to keep his revenue up to his expenditure became very keen, Dumas was almost as great at borrowing as at giving, and showed the same magnificent carelessness as to the sequel. Frequently he brought his wit to the service of his needs, as, for instance, when Porcher, who had advanced Dumas money on the prospects of his first play, and always been of service to the dramatist on similar occasions, begged the great man to "tutoyer" him. This form of the second-person singular implies, with the French, familiarity in friendliness.
"Very good," answered Dumas, amused at Porcher's naïve request. "Wilt thou lend me fifty louis, Porcher?"
"Nothing," says Villemessant, "was more odious to him than avarice, which was entirely repugnant to his own nature." Leaving a soirée one evening Dumas found himself side by side in the cloakroom with an archi-millionaire who, in exchange for his paletot gave fifty centimes (fivepence) to the servant.
The writer, blushing with shame for the financier, drew out his purse and threw down a hundred-franc note.
"Pardon, sir, you have made a mistake, I think?" said the lackey, offering to return the note.
"No, no, friend," answered Dumas, casting a disdainful glance at the millionaire; "it is the other gentleman who has made the mistake."
But Dumas's extravagance, so far as his own pleasure and glorification were concerned, has been much exaggerated. We have seen, ourselves, that the palace of "Monte Cristo" was neither so big, so gaudy, nor so costly as has been represented. Again, Maxime du Camp refutes the charge that Dumas lived in luxury at Naples, declaring that the great man worked there in modest rooms, poorly furnished. "People," he adds, "spread false reports because slander is the first need of fools."
"Though for forty years," says Vandam, "Alexandre Dumas could not have earned less than £8,000 per annum; though he neither smoked, drank, nor gambled; though in spite of his mania for cooking, he himself was the most frugal eater—the beef from the soup of the previous day, grilled, was his favourite dish—it rained writs and summonses around him, while he himself was frequently without a penny."
No wonder, when the veriest stranger could farm himself upon the indulgent host, and then send the cabman, who took him to the station, back to the house to ask for the fare! Truly Dumas had a right to say, "If I have been a spendthrift I haven't made all the holes in my purse!"
This leads us to a delicate topic, with which Blaze de Bury, who knew Dumas intimately, deals in this fashion: —
"There are no parasites worse than rapacious women, and to these Dumas gave way as long as he lived. As one left another entered. The place was never empty, and the disgraced favourite, leaving one evening, would locate herself somewhere else the next day, carrying all sorts of things away with her, even to furniture.
"Take all," cried the master, looking on at the dismantling; "take all, but for heaven's sake leave me at least my genius!'"
In the matter of morals it is impossible to judge Dumas on general principles and by ordinary standards, and still more unfair to let British prejudice distort our judgment. His lax code of virtue in this respect must be considered simply in connection with his own nature and training. Except for a brief period, love of women never played the important and disastrous part in Dumas's life which it did in the case of so many of his contemporaries, like De Musset, for example. He was too sane-minded for that. But his ardent, semi-tropical temperament felt the overwhelming need of feminine society and the sensuous charms which fair women possess. His gallantry, good nature, and artless vanity rendered him a prey to the siren type of womanhood; although we have ample proof that he could appreciate the higher qualities of the other sex, as witness his honest, friendly admiration for Madame de Girardin and George Sand, and the chivalric way in which (as we see in "Une Aventure d'Amour"), he could treat a young and charming woman who trusted him completely and put herself under the protection of his honour.
We have spoken of the love of Dumas father for Dumas son. They were, indeed, the complement of each other—"not like in like, but like in difference."
"I know of no two characters more opposite than Alexandre's and mine," said the father one "and yet they go together excellently. We certainly have some very good times when we are far away from each other, but I fancy we are never happier than when we are together."
They loved each other madly, and yet lived such different lives that sometimes they entirely lost sight of each other. At these periods, if the old Dumas saw a friend, he would stop his carriage and hold out his hand, asking for news of his son:
"What has become of Alexandre? Do you ever see him? For my part I never come across him, except to say 'good-day' when I meet him at funerals." On another occasion he added half-bitterly, half-jestingly, "Perhaps I shan't meet him again until my own!"
The passionate love between Dumas père and Dumas fils began with the birth of the one and did not end with the death of the other. Blaze de Bury tells a pretty anecdote, showing how deeply-rooted was this feeling, even in early childhood:—
"One day the young Alexandre fell from the top of the staircase. The accident seemed to be very serious: the child fainted, and the mother, thinking him dead, was quite overcome. She sent at once for Dumas, who was out on guard, and also for the doctor, who arrived first. The child, however, had regained consciousness, but he was very pale and faint, and when the father saw him in this state he fainted too!
"The doctor ordered leeches, but the child resisted strongly. The father implored and besought the boy to obey, vowing before God that it should not hurt him, to which the child replied, 'Oh, very well then, put them on yourself, and then I will let them put them on me afterwards.' Dumas consented, and put the leeches in the hollow of his left hand."
After the first natural pang of jealousy the elder playwright not only recognised, but acclaimed his son's dramatic powers.[3] At the "first night" of one of the successful plays of Dumas fils the proud father wept with joy and happiness. "He took my hand," writes Villemessant, "saying, 'He is my best work!'" Even wittier was Dumas's reply, on a similar occasion, to a friend who remarked that the play was so good, it was surprising the father had no share in it. "Oh, but I had," said the veteran dramatist, "the author is by me!"
The light-hearted gaiety of the father and the sardonic gravity of the son, offered a contrast too marked to be missed by the wits. Alexandre is Dumas fils, but you—you are not Dumas père—you never will be!" said "the Lady of the Camélias" to the great man. "He is a big child of mine, born when I was quite young," said the son. Each seemed to provoke wit in the other. The elder was one day dining with his son, who had taken a house where the trees in the garden quite blocked up the light. "Open your windows," said old Dumas, "and let your garden have a little fresh air!"
By kindness of Madam Dumas fils we are enabled to add two "documents" in connection with this love between father and son. The first is Dumas père's formal, yet indignant, protest when the censor prohibited his son's most famous play:—=
"I declare, on my honour, and on my literary experience, that 'La Dame aux Camélias' forbidden by that stupid institution called the Censorship, is an essentially moral play, and I have a right to an opinion on morality, seeing that I have written 700 volumes which might safely be included in a school library, or be read in a convent, by the young girls.—Paris, 4th October 1851.
The other is a little gem, which we do not dare to translate. It is written by the father to the son, on New Year's day:—
"Mon Cher Enfant,—Encore un an de plus que je t'aime, encore un an de moins à t'aimer.
"Voilà le côté triste.
"Mais en attendant, sans calculer ce qui nous en reste, aimons nous tant que nous pourrons.—1er Janvier.—À toi,
We have been led away by seductive paths into a tardy recognition of one of the great facts about our author—his energy. Henley tells us that at times he wrote for sixteen or eighteen hours a day; and it is quite credible in the case of a physique so magnificently healthy, and a brain so greedy of work. Yet, until his final decline, the great writer never suffered from this abnormal devotion to the desk, except one way.
"Dumas," says Blaze de Bury, "would never rest except when fatigued; consequently a curious phenomenon came upon him. Almost every year a fever seized him for two or three days; he was not simply ill, he was vanquished. Knowing this, he went to bed, and dozed there; from time to time he opened his eyes, and hastily taking up the glass of lemonade which the occasion required, he drank it, and then lay back with his face to the wall, and gave himself up to his fever. This was his violent manner of taking rest. The crisis lasted about three days, at the end of which Dumas arose and returned to work. The overtaxed organs had insisted upon a halt."
M. Edmond About gives an interesting account which describes Dumas's method of working. "I can still see on our hotel table," he says, "the first draft of the 'Compagnons de Jehu.' It was a thick pile of school-paper, cut in four, and covered with a neat little writing—an excellent rough sketch drawn up by a skilled assistant according to the master's original design. Dumas worked at it in his own manner—scattering wit broadcast through the pages as he wrote, each little slip of white (? pasted) on a great sheet of blue."
If it can be truly said of Dumas that "panting Time toiled after him in vain," it is just as true that he was ever toiling in the arrears of his own work—ever striving to keep pace with the demand for copy. "To be continued in our next"—it was the slave's warning cry at the classic feast. In his amusing preface to Grisier's "Arms and the Duel," Dumas confesses that there were certain extraordinary pledges which he could not fulfil unless forcibly detached from his regular work. This pressure on his time, coupled with a dislike of ridicule, made him, like Balzac, shun his days in uniform, on duty as a National guard, and accordingly the hours of "guard-room" imprisonment due from him mounted up enormously. Monpeou the composer, struggling vainly to get from the busy writer an opera-comique libretto which our good-natured author had undertaken to do, heard of the facts of the case. He learnt, moreover, that Dumas was dodging his military pursuers by sleeping in different houses, entering by side-doors, and departing by windows, "as if he wanted to be a fairy, and was rehearsing the part." Monpeou, for his own base ends, "gave information which led to the capture of the criminal." (It appeared that Dumas had aggravated his offence by an answer which he gave to a superior officer—one of his own tradesmen!—who, with more feeling than culture, declared that it was very "painible and terrible" for him to be obliged to arrest Dumas; to which that gentleman promptly replied, "Do you think it wouldn't be painful and terriful to me to go?") Monpeou begged that Dumas should have a private room to work in, and a piano, and when the prisoner arrived to undergo his punishment he found the traitorous musician busy composing the overture to the comic opera! The result was "Piquillo."
One last touch to complete the picture of "Dumas at work," not forgetting the invariable companion of his labours—the tea of which he drank such inordinate quantities. Mr Albert Vandam, in his "Englishman in Paris," describes a call which he made on his friend Dumas.
"'Is Monsieur at home?' I said to the servant.
"'He is in his study, Monsieur,' was the answer; 'Monsieur can go in.'
"At that moment I heard a loud burst of laughter from the inner apartment, so I said:
"'I would rather wait until Monsieur's visitors are gone.'
"'Monsieur has no visitors; he is working,' remarked the servant with a smile. 'Monsieur Dumas often laughs like that, at his work.'
"It was true enough; the novelist was alone, or rather in company with one of his characters, at whose sallies he was simply roaring."
That Dumas lived to work rather than worked to live, is obvious to all who read of his astonishing fertility, and devotion to his desk. M. de Bury quotes a passage from our author, in which he showed himself doubly indebted to his books—for the pleasure they brought in the writing and the memories they evoked, in the re-reading.
"'I am never alone as long as one of my books is near me,' he says, in a passage full of a deep and delightful emotion, which was not always usual with him. 'Every line recalls to me a day that has passed away, and this day is once more with me, filled from dawn to dusk with all the old atmosphere and all the same people who were there, in the days gone by. Alas! already the best part of my life is in my memories; I am like one of those trees, crowned with bushy foliage, which at noon is full of silent birds, that wake up towards the close of the day. Then, when evening has come, they will fill my old age with the beating of wings and with songs; with their joy, their loves, and their clamour they will enliven it until death, in its turn, lays its hand upon their hospitable home; and the tree, in falling, frightens away all these merry singers, of which each is simply an hour of my life.'"
It is this man whom most of his critics denounced as an idler! In his boyhood, the peasants, with more reason and less malice, said the same of him. He tells us as much, and overhears in imagination the neighbours shaking their heads over him, muttering:—
"See the idler; he prefers rambling along the high-roads to going to college. He will never do anything!"
"I don't know that I have done much," comments our author, "but I know that I have worked deuced hard since then!"
"Truly, this work has had no brilliant result; I should have done better, I believe, instead of piling up volume on volume, if I had bought a corner of land, and put pebble upon pebble, there. At any rate I should have had a house of my own, to-day."
"Bah! Have I not the house of the good God— the fields, the air, the wide world and nature—which are denied to those who do not possess the power of seeing what I see?"
The most striking, most intuitive intellectual quality which Dumas possessed was what is known as the "dramatic instinct." He seems from the first to have seen life from the vivid, picturesque point of view. As a lad, ignorant of the stage, and collaborating with much more experienced men, his "cockney sportsman" was the successful feature of "La Chasse et l'Amour," the first piece performed in which he had any share.
His method of preparing his plays was interesting and characteristic.
"When I am engaged upon a work which occupies all my thoughts," he says, "I feel the need of narrating it aloud; in reciting thus I invent; and at the end of one or other of these narrations I find some fine morning that the play is completed. But it often happens that this method of working—that is to say, not beginning a piece until I have finished the plot—is a very slow one. In this way I kept 'Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle' in my head for nearly five years."
We may add that finally the piece was not read, but described to the committee of the Comédie Française, and at the end of Dumas's vivid recital, was accepted by acclamation! The fact was, it was already composed; it only required to be set on paper.
An anecdote told in connection with the dramatised version of the "Trois Mousquetaires" shows how thoroughly Dumas knew his public, and trusted his natural critics.
"Behind one of the scenes," says Dumas fils, "we had seen the helmet of a fireman, who listened to the play very attentively during the first six tableaux. In the middle of the seventh, however, the helmet disappeared."
"'Do you see that fireman's helmet?' asked my father.
"'No, it's not there now.' After the act the author went in search of the fireman (who did not know him) and said:
"'Why are you no longer listening to the piece?'
"'Because that act didn't interest me as much as the others.' This reply was enough for my father; he went straight to the office of Director Beraud; he took off his frockcoat, his tie, his waistcoat, his braces, opened the collar of his shirt, just as he did when he sat down to work at home, and asked for the copy of the seventh tableau. It was given to him, and he tore it up and threw it into the fire."
"'What on earth are you doing?' cried Beraud.
"'It didn't amuse the fircman: I have destroyed it. But I see exactly what it wants.'
"And he rewrote it, there and then."
The day before the production of his comedy "Halifax," at the dress-rehearsal, Dumas decided that the piece needed a prologue. He told the actors that if they would learn the parts straightway, he would write it. They were willing the prologue was written, learnt, and acted in twenty-four hours. "Read it," says Blaze de Bury, "it is a gem!"
Dumas and Rossini were present at the first night of a play called "La Jeune Vieillesse." The piece was a shocking failure, and as it proceeded dolorously, to the tune of laughter and hisses, Dumas muttered "What a fool the man is! He has gone right past a splendid subject! I'll make a note of it." And from this germ grew "Le Comte Hermann," one of the most notable of its author's later plays.
Whenever he felt his dramatic energies flagging, he tells us, he opened Schiller or Shakespeare at random, to refresh and revive his powers by reading. But the slightest opportunity or impulse was sufficient to arouse the creative faculty and set it in action.
One day Dumas had been out shooting since six in the morning, and had killed twenty-nine birds.
"I'll just make it thirty," he said, "then I'll go away and have a good sleep; I'm tired, I've done enough."
"He brought down his thirtieth partridge," says Blaze de Bury, "and we saw him making his way towards the farm. When we returned at five o'clock, he was sitting before the fire in the kitchen, gazing at the flames and twirling his thumbs.
"'Whatever are you doing there?' asked his son.
"'As you see, I am resting,'
"'Have you had any sleep?"
"'No, impossible! There is such an abominable uproar in this farm,—sheep, cows, labourers,—it's impossible to close one's eyes.'
"'Then all this time you've been twirling your thumbs?'
"'No, I have written a play in one act.'
"As a matter of fact he had just written 'Romulus,' which he amused himself by getting Regnier to read at the Comédie Française as being by 'a young, unknown writer.' It was accepted with unanimity." (The version which Dumas himself gives in "Bric-à-brac" of the origin of this play differs only in unimportant details from his friend's account.)
The father's analysis of the son's play "La Dame aux Camélias" shows his knowledge of stagecraft in a striking light. The elder Dumas added to his criticism his opinion that the courtesan on whose career the play and book were based, was immoral by heredity. Subsequent research proved the soundness of this deduction.
Dumas's talent was not confined to exertions on his own behalf. "How often," says Blaze de Bury, "has he served as the anonymous collaborator of his confrères![4] I have seen him thus deny himself any credit for a score of plays which have been signed with other names, but of which he had written two-thirds." In one case a friend brought Dumas a play which had been sent back from a theatre to be cut down, as they considered it too long. The great man read the piece, which was a short one, and told his friend that far from being too long, it was not long enough. He pointed out how the theme should be developed and extended, and made into a full-sized play. The author followed the advice he had received; and the piece thus remodelled was duly accepted and performed.
But "the dramatic instinct" is not without its disadvantages, as Dumas has amusingly shown.
"At a first night," he mourns, "I am the worst spectator in the world. If it is an imaginative piece that is being played, the characters have scarcely appeared before they are no longer the author's, but mine. In the first entr'acte I take them; I appropriate them. Instead of their unknown future of the next four acts, I introduce them into four of my own composition; I enter into their characters, I utilise their originality. If the interval lasts only ten minutes, it is more than I require to build for them the house of cards in which I instal them, and my own particular paste-board house is scarcely ever the same as the author's. With historical pieces it is much worse. I bring my play, of course, built upon the title, and as it is written with all my natural defects—that is to say, with abundance of details, absolute rigidity of characters, and double, triple, quadruple intrigue —it is very seldom that my play resembles in the least the one which is being played. This is a real trouble to me, although to other people it is a source of amusement."
The great romancer's frank confession as to his lack of education as a youth has prompted his detractors to pronounce him ignorant. They pretend that the author of "Antony" wished to destroy the fame of Corneille and Racine; because Dumas's sentiments towards the two national poets was a discriminating admiration rather than blind worship. In reality he admired the highest in literature; and as a rule instinctively recognised it, and judiciously proclaimed it. We know him as yielding to no Frenchman, not even Hugo, in his veneration for Shakespeare; Andrew Lang, no mean authority, testifies to Dumas's sound appreciation of the greatness of Homer; and this passage in the "Mémoires" gives the lie to many jeers directed against the "great low-comedian" as his foes called him:
"Bad Latin scholar as I am, I have always adored Virgil; his compassion for the wandering exiles, his solemn pictures of death, his intuition of an unknown God, touched my heart supremely from the first; the melody of his verses ... had an especial charm for me, and I knew by heart whole passages of the 'Æneid.'" Unlike most scholars Dumas studied with enthusiasm, and he never forgot.
"Partly by diligence, partly by divination, Dumas had great knowledge," says M. de Bury. "Having received no early education, he set himself deliberately to repair the misfortune, filling in the gap by the thousand ideas which he gathered daily from conversation, from travel and from reading. History, travels, natural history, foreign literature—he read all, from the "Ramayana" to Shakespeare, Goëthe, Schiller, Thackeray, Dickens, Cooper, Scott, his admiration of literature ever increasing. Hugo delighted without influencing him, but Balzac had little attraction for Dumas, who didn't see human nature from that point of view."
As will readily be understood, the great realist and the great romanticist were at opposite poles of the literary sphere. On one occasion these extremes did meet, being invited by a well-meaning friend, but the result was not happy. Balzac had spoken contemptuously of his rival in popularity as "a nigger," and Dumas was not disposed to forget it. It was a Quaker's meeting, for neither guest spoke until they were both leaving. Then Balzac said:
"When I am written out, I'll take to writing dramas."
And Dumas replied—
"You'd better begin at once, then."
And they parted. Yet Balzac saw that Dumas, like George Sand, had none of the low jealousy and littlenesses which obscured so many contemporary talents, and Dumas, who always wrote with appreciation of Balzac's talents, followed his coffin to the grave when the author of "Père Goriot" died in 1850.
A still greater bête-noire of Dumas's was Buloz, the editor of the Revue des Deux Mondes, for which periodical the "Isabel de Bavière" chroniques were written. The pair had quarrelled over the production of "Caligula" at the Comédie Frauçaise, for at that time Buloz was commissary of the national theatre. For some months afterward Dumas, who was witty even in his dislikes, "embroidered" his correspondence with varying but consistently uncomplimentary references to Buloz. For instance, he would address a letter
"To
"M———
"Havre,
"Sixty kilomètres from that idiot of a Buloz."
Or again, would begin a letter:—
"My dear Porcher,—You, who are in every respect superior to that idiot, Buloz."...
There was a third exception to Dumas's general "friendly relations with all the other powers." This was M. Jules Lecomte, and the circumstances of the case are worth recording, as being "significant of many things." Lecomte, when a young man, was recommended to Dumas by a mutual friend, and the author of course opened his house to the poor and friendless fugitive. In return for this kindness Lecomte ordered costly clothes, and left his host to pay the bill, sponged on the generous author in various ways, and finally disgusted him altogether by masquerading as Alfred de Musset, also at his benefactor's expense. Further, Lecomte, under a pseudonym, sent to Paris by way of Brussels articles containing references to Dumas and Ida Ferrier which were not in the best of taste.
When the great man was staying in Florence, Lecomte had the impudence to call once more on his old host. The authorities had required some particulars concerning Lecomte, and he had given them Dumas's name as a reference. The novelist duly furnished the officials with such facts about the gentleman in question that he was ordered to leave the city at once. Then the other, foreseeing a public disturbance, armed himself with a stout cane.
The precaution was a wise one. As the romancer was standing by the door of a carriage, chatting with a lady friend, in a public avenue one day, Lecomte, accompanied by a "backer," strode up, and without a word of warning struck at his old patron. Dumas parried the blow, and cut the rogue across the face with his cane. Then, turning to his assailant's "second," one Prince Korsakoff, he declared that he would not cross swords with a creature like Lecomte, but would willingly meet the Prince, if he chose to take up his companion's quarrel.
Korsakoff at once accepted, but before the duel came about he wrote to Dumas stating that he had heard certain truths about M. Lecomte, and now refused either to fight for him or to continue his acquaintance.
There are several morals to this incident, which have their bearing on Dumas's success—and failure—in life.
As a rule, however, the great writer was not a good hater, and bore little malice. Meeting one day a critic who had abused him, he stepped up to him, saying, "Hein! What a splendid article I have provided you with!" It is true that the persistent shout of "Collaborators! collaborators!" annoyed him. Once, after keeping a company of friends roaring at his witty sayings, Dumas added, "You find the jest a good one? Well, to-morrow one of my collaborators will swear it's his!"
Our author has expressed his opinion of collaboration in general, in his "Souvenirs dramatiques." The passage is written in his most vivacious style. But for Fiorentino, one of the many young men he befriended, and one of his best "'prentices," Dumas had a very real affection.
One day the master begged his secretary to take a letter to Fiorentino and wait for a reply. An hour after, the secretary returned with a letter from the ex-'prentice, then critic of the Constitutionnel and the Moniteur. Dumas opened it:
"Here is a man whom I have rescued from misery," he cried, "and whom I have taught his trade. Well—would anyone believe it?—when at odd times I ask him to do me a service... he never refuses me!"
It is a proof of the many-sided nature of Dumas's genius that he was at once the rival of Balzac, Scribe, and Hugo. Towards Scribe his attitude was one of admiration, mingled with a little good-natured tolerance—the smile of the gay grasshopper, as he watched the industrious ant toiling through a hot summer's day to get in his winter stock. The one had talent and amassed a fortune; the other had genius, made half a dozen fortunes, and died poor.
With the bulk of his fellow-writers Dumas was on excellent terms, and numbered amongst his friends Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Lafayette, George Sand, Rossini, Hugo, De Musset, Heine, Soulié, Béranger, Merimée, and Nodier. With Janin, it is true, he engaged in a wordy duel over "Les Demoiselles de St Cyr."[5] Mr Swinburne thinks that one of the poems in "Toute la Lyre" was addressed by Hugo to his two friends, suggesting reconciliation. We have seen that Dumas and Janin were on good terms again in 1849, and at the former's death the latter wrote a little "appreciation" of him, full of sincere affection and admiration.
We have mentioned Victor Hugo, and the friend. ship between these two men, so strangely unlike in character, played an important part in Dumas's life, although the genius of each was quite unaffected by his admiration and affection for his confrère. It is true that the plays of one suggested ideas to the other, but the influence went no deeper. Dumas first met Hugo about the time of the production of "Henri Trois,"—in a show on the Boulevard du Temple, he tells us!—and Hugo invited his new acquaintance to attend the private reading of "Marion Delorme." The two young "Romantics" became instant friends, and Dumas never wearied of singing the praises of the poet, who on his part, although of a less demonstrative nature, seems to have remained a loyal friend throughout.
We have referred to Dumas's eulogy of "Marion Delorme," and Hugo's noble championship of his comrade, on the occasion when the Legion of Honour was conferred on him and then withdrawn. Unfortunately, a bitter attack on Dumas, written by Granier de Cassagnac, appeared in 1833, against Hugo's wishes, in a journal with which the poet was known to be connected. An attempt was made by ill-advised partisans to set the rival dramatists in opposition to each other. It may have been this which caused the coolness to exist between the two friends in 1837-8, but in the latter year Madame Dumas died, and her sorrowing son forgot the old enmity and invited Hugo to the funeral. This was the poet's reply:
"I could have wished a less mournful reason for clasping your hand once more. You will see me to-morrow, and with the first glance which we exchange, you will know that you did wrong ever to doubt me.
"You were right in counting on me. It is a return to a state of noble trust worthy of you, and of me."
It is a matter of history that after the coup d'état Hugo went into exile. The other soon followed his friend to Brussels, and we have already spoken of their intimacy during this period. On his return to Paris, Dumas proclaimed his admiration for Hugo in the very first number of his Mousquetaire—a bold thing to do, when one remembers that the author of "The History of a Crime" was anathema to the soul of "Napoleon the Little." The following year our author dedicated his play of "La Conscience" to Hugo as "a proof of a friendship which has survived exile, and which will, I hope, outlive even death." The compliment is acknowledged in the fifth book of the poet's "Contemplations," in which Hugo recalls their parting on the quay at Antwerp, and adds:
"Tu rentras dans ton ceuvre, éclatante, innombrable,
Multiple éblouissante, heureuse où le jour luit,
Et moi dans l'unité sinistre de la nuit."
When Mademoiselle Augustine Brohan attacked the exiled poet in the press, Dumas wrote to the Comédie Française to demand that the actress who had insulted his friend should not be allowed to play in his comedies in the future. Hugo in writing to thank his comrade for his loyalty, added, "I feel I must write to tell you that I love you more every day, not only because you are one of the wonders of the century, but because you are one of its consolations." The letter ended with an urgent invitation to visit the poet at Guernsey. Dumas duly journeyed to see the exile (in 1857), an act on which Charles Hugo comments admiringly. It was not only brave of him (he says), it was thoughtful. The bond between the two great men remained unbroken till the end, and Hugo wrote to the younger Dumas on the occasion of his father's death one of his characteristically noble and tender letters.
With all his defects of training and his semi-plebeian birth, Dumas was a man of taste. Pictures, music, bric-à-brac, ancient art in sculpture and design, all that was best in the artistic sense, appealed to him. His admiration for architecture was real and ardent, and when during his travels in La Vendée he visited the cathedral at Angers, and found an architect busy—"restoring" the church—by scraping it!—his comment was severe in spite of its wit. "Alas, it takes twenty-five years to make a man: a Swiss mercenary in the royalist pay shoots him, and he dies. It takes six or eight centuries to 'colour' a cathedral: an architect with 'taste' comes on the scene, and scrapes it! Oh, why doesn't the Swiss shoot the architect, or the architect scrape the Swiss?"
If his enemies had not insisted on the contrary, one would hardly have thought it necessary to claim courage for a man who was in the streets of Paris during the days of July 1830, who chose to be "out" with Garibaldi, and who fought two or three duels and sent goodness knows how many challenges. As a fact, Dumas's courage was of the best quality.
"In manhood his earliest impulse," Mr Lang tells us, "was to rush at danger; if he had to wait he felt his courage oozing out at the tips of his fingers, like Bob Acres, but in the moment of peril he was himself again." His bravery greatly resembled that of Henri Quatre in "Les Quarante Cinq": it was a fear of fear, which overmastered any fear of the event that menaced him.
Once, when serving in the National guard, Dumas was summoned to help to arrest the Chamber of Deputies! He and another comrade met at the doors: they waited, but no one joined them. The "false alarm" appears to have been in the nature of a test, which the author passed successfully.
The great man's disdain of danger was partly due to his superb health and strength. He was truly the son of the general who choked a horse with his knees; it was veritably the father of Porthos who tackled the leader of a crowd which threatened to mob him. "He turned round," says M. Du Chaffault, "seized on the biggest, carried him to the parapet of the bridge as if he'd been a bundle of straw, and cried, 'Beg my pardon, or I'll throw you into the water!'" His confidence rested also on his perfect familiarity with all kinds of weapons. He fenced admirably, and was an excellent shot, as became an ardent sportsman, for in all the pleasures of Dumas's life sport took a commanding place. As a boy we have seen him companion of keepers and poachers; as a man he loved the chase from the spearing of trout by midnight to the hunting of wolves. His travels contain the stories of his own exploits his "Causeries" tell of the triumphs of others; everywhere in his books you may read of some form of la chasse; in one it is Charles IX. chasing the boar, in another Ferdinand of Naples breaking up a Council at the call of his piqueurs.
When wearied of desk-work, or intent on thinking out a new romance or play, Dumas would disappear from Paris for a few days. His old friends at Villers-Cotterets would be rejoiced to see their young friend (he was always "young" to them) walk in unexpectedly one fine day, looking gay and hearty, and ordering his dinner even as he shouted a greeting! Then would follow the jolliest of dinner-parties, everyone crowding round the table to exchange banter and chaff with the "King of Paris," who was happy and content to be hail-fellow-well-met with the poorest peasant in Villers-Cotterets.
It has been made a subject of reproach against Dumas—and which of his qualities has not been made use of in that way?—that he knew how to "cook his hare" after he had caught it. This prejudice is especially strong in England, where the word gourmet is confused with gourmand, and popularly translated to mean "glutton." Ordinarily, the writer lived simply, and if he knew how food could best be cooked, if he liked it cooked well instead of badly, and if he had the skill to cook it himself, there is surely no need to think any the worse of him. He was not (pace Stevenson) a "great eater" in the sense of eating much; he boasted of his appetite, is true, but there is no reason to believe that it was out of proportion to his giant frame and the enormous amount of work he got through. So much of a "glutton," in short, was our Dumas, that when engrossed in his writing he refused to stop to take food; whatever his servant chose to prepare for him was placed at his elbow, and he ate mechanically as he wrote on and on!
To those who have so far followed the progress of this sketch of Dumas's life and character it will be a matter of no surprise to learn that he was a humanitarian. His father had earned the nickname of "Mr Humanity" from the fierce sansculottes of the Revolution, because he drew down the blinds of his room rather than witness the execution of some poor wretches whom the fanaticism of the time had doomed to the guillotine. And as the love of one's kind is only a grander form of charity, Dumas the charitable was never found wanting. Sometimes he used his influence to save a coiner from the gallows; sometimes he racked his wits to prevent a duel which was likely to end fatally; sometimes he would write autographs and aphorisms by the hundred, that some wretch in poverty might benefit by the sale. When "Notre Dame des Arts" was founded, Fitzgerald tells us, Dumas took the translation of a little German play, shaped it, disposed of it for £800, and presented the money to the charity. A poor monk journeying from Palestine, to obtain funds for the rebuilding of his monastery at Carmel, appealed to the writer, who laid the good man's petition before the public through the columns of a friendly journal. No less a sum than 300,000 francs was raised, and the monk went home joyfully, his quest accomplished.
Brunswick, who provided the base-idea on which "Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle" was founded, sold his share—a third of the profits—for 300 francs, to a friend, who re-sold it to Dumas. When the play was written and produced, and proved a success, Brunswick hinted to the author that the sum was not adequate. The other replied:—
"I heartily thank you, my dear friend, for wishing to have your share in the good fortune that has just befallen me. I fancy I am more skilful in putting dialogue together than figures. I left out an 'ought' in the sum we agreed upon for 'your' piece. It is worth, my dear Brunswick, not 300, but 3,000 francs."
The description given by Dumas of the last days and the last moments of Marie Dorval is full of pathos, and most feelingly, unaffectedly told. The dying actress begged her old friend to see that she was not laid in a pauper's grave, and he promised. He had only 200 francs of his own; Hugo and M. Falloux between them supplied another 300; and the "vain farceur" pawned a cherished decoration to make up the necessary balance. He struggled vainly to obtain pardon for Marie Capelle (Madame Lafarge), niece of his playmate Collard, whose crime was one of the tragic mysteries of the day. He had better fortune in the case of a hussar named Bruyant, a native of Villers-Cotterets, who was condemned to death for killing a superior officer, in an attempt to desert. By energetically attacking first his young patron the Duke de Chartres, and then M. Guizot, Dumas obtained a commutation of the sentence, for, as he had foreseen, the man proved to be mad, and was finally taken care of.
In his epilogue to "Comte Hermann" the author pleaded, with much earnestness and good sense, that executions should not be held semi-publicly, a way which summons false pride to the heart of the condemned and hardens him to die unrepentant. He asked that the sentence should be carried out in the prison cell itself, and should be accomplished, more swiftly and painlessly, by electricity. Since the words were written the French have advanced somewhat towards Dumas's ideal; the Americans have realised it to the full. As in private life our author was a friend of the poor, the sorrowing and the suffering, so in the world's history he invariably championed the cause of the fallen. "In his stories," says Ferry, "he never lost an opportunity of re-crowning the vanquished, of raising up fallen causes, and of asking the pity of posterity for those men who had sacrificed themselves for it."
Dumas passed through that evolution of the soul so frequent with thinkers,—dogmatism,—doubt—and a new faith, based on reason, and the divine intuition within man. As a boy he passed through a period of religious ecstacy; yet in his youth when he was in the depths of Byronic gloom, he prefaced his play of "Antony," as we have seen, with what was intended to be a very wicked invocation to the Spirit of Evil, in which he declared he would give up to it his life, and his soul too,—"if he believed in it!" Twenty-four years later, he wrote to Victor Hugo, "I believe in the immortality of the soul." In the verses which he composed on his mother's death, he shows a passionate piety. All these conflicting sentiments were uttered with perfect sincerity—they were really felt at the time they were expressed. But his true confession of faith, the conclusions of his maturer years, is given in the "Mémoires." Here, after protesting "a great respect for holy things, a great faith in Providence and a great love for God," he continues:
"Never in the course of a somewhat long life have I felt, in the most wretched hours of that life, one moment of doubt, one instant's despair. I will not dare to say that I am sure of the immortality of my soul; I will simply say, I hope for it."
At a certain dinner-party given by an opulent banker, the company discussed the existence of God, "over the walnuts and wine," and a certain general was very scornful on the subject, wondering how people could trouble to discuss such trifles.
"For my part," he added, "I can't conceive of the existence of this mysterious being whom they call 'the good God.'"
"General," replied Dumas, "I have two hunting-dogs, two monkeys and a parrot at home, who are of your opinion exactly."
Dumas fils has examined his father's religious sentiments and analysed them, in the introduction to the "Mousquetaires" before quoted. He finds that his father was too sane, too busy in good work, to dwell much on the hereafter; but believes that the kind, charitable soul need not be blamed very severely for living for this life, without considering its own precious self too closely—and most of us will agree with him.
Even in the last darkening hours of his mind Dumas was capable, at brief intervals, of something like his old wit. We quote his last mot from M. Ferry's "Dernières Années d'A. Dumas":
"When they took him away from Paris he had twenty francs on him. That louis was the total fortune of this man, who had earned millions.
"On arriving at Puys, Dumas placed the coin on his bedroom chimney-piece, and there it remained all through his illness.
"One day he was seated in his chair near the window, chatting with his son, when his eye fell on the gold piece.
"A recollection of the past crossed his mind.
"'Fifty years ago, when I went to Paris,' he said, 'I had a louis. Why have people accused me of prodigality? I have always kept that louis. See—there it is!'"
"And he showed his son the coin, smiling feebly as he did so."
. . .
We may add, by way of appendices, three character-sketches which will supplement the impression given by our own. They present by way of contrast, a view of Dumas's character, which is, as it were, focussed and compact.
The first is a phrenological description given by Dr Castle, a professor of that "pseudo-science," which purports to be a cold-blooded estimate of its subject's virtues and vices:
"Frank in the expression of all that he feels and thinks, he is loath by nature to take any roundabout way of attaining his end: his is the very opposite of the intriguing instinct.
"He is expansive, affectionate, and caressing in manner; and his affection is of that kind which extends itself in all directions, being in fact, the confession of his need for comradeship. This tendency to make friends of all whom he meets means practically an absence of exclusiveness in affection.
"He has a natural love for the weak, the suffering, and the young, and by a logical antithesis, a love, too, for the aged.
"He possesses confidence in himself, and yet needs the approbation of others; he has a desire to please, coupled with a respect for others.
"As one may see, such a character is subject to a great number of opposing impulses. These contradictory instincts will have an effect on our writer, a subtle inward effect, which is more apparent to Dumas himself than to any of his friends, however well they know him.
"He feels the need of love, of loving and being loved: this need is elemental in him, and is felt perhaps the more strongly by the sensuous than by the spiritual side of his nature.
"He is subject to irritable, rather than to irascible moments, and capable, on rare occasions, of violent and blind passion. Also he is liable to show himself vindictive, or, more often, stubborn, in controversy or quarrel. This obstinacy is prone to seem like vindictiveness, because our subject will probably be infuriated by resistance to his desires, although he feels no hatred towards the cause of his anger.
"There is a tendency towards covetousness, very slightly indicated, but present. He is generally inclined to see the best side of everything, and view all things through couleur de rose spectacles. He is pious by instinct and religious by intelligence, more brave than courageous, and more resolute than brave."
The second is a portrait of Dumas in his thirties, by a confrère and a contemporary, M. Hippolyte Romand, who looks upon the author from a more human point of view:
"Passionate by temperament, subtle by instinct, and courageous by vanity, he has a good heart and bad judgment, and is a spendthrift by nature. He is a veritable 'Antony' for love, almost a 'Darlington' for ambition: he never will be a 'Sentinelli' [6] for vengeance. Superstitious [7] when he thinks, religious when he writes, sceptical when he speaks, light even in his most fiery passions, his blood is a lava, his thought a spark. His personality is as illogical as it is possible to conceive, and the most unmusical that we know; he is a liar in his capacity as poet; generous, because he is an artist and a poet; too liberal in friendship, too despotic in love; vain as a woman, resolute as a man, and egoistical as a God. He is sincere to imprudence, kind without discernment, forgetful even to thoughtlessness, a wanderer body and soul, cosmopolitan by taste, patriotic in opinion, rich in illusions and caprices, poor in prudence and experience; light in spirit, cutting in speech, witty in season, a Don Juan by night, an Alcibiades by day, a veritable Proteus, escaping from everybody and from himself; as lovable for his defects as for his good qualities; more seductive for his vices than for his virtues that is M. Dumas as we love him, as he is!"
We make no apology for adding, as the third "opinion," that of one whose partiality inspired a frank eulogy. It is Dumas fils who is speaking, a man of critical insight, who may at least be relied upon to praise the praiseworthy qualities of his father, and not to extol the bad ones. He speaks in apostrophe:
"In this century, which seems created, above all, to devour all things, you were in truth the one man it needed, for you in turn were born to produce perpetually. What precautions nature took, what provision she made in thee, for the formidable appetites, for which she was forced to prepare! It was beneath the American sun, and with African blood, that she moulded him of whom you were born, and who, soldier and general of the Republic, strangled a horse between his legs, broke a helmet with his teeth, and, alone, defended the bridge of Brixen against a vanguard of twenty men! Rome would have bestowed the honours of a triumph upon him and made him consul: France, calmer and more economical, shut the doors of the college upon his son. That son, growing to manhood in the wide forests—in the open air and under the blue heavens—urged on by want and by his genius, flung himself, one fine day, into the great city, and marched into literature by the breach he made, as his father marched into the camp of the enemy.
"Then commenced that cyclopean work which lasted for forty years. Tragedy, dramas, history, romance, comedy, travel, you cast all of them in the furnace and the mould of your brain, and you peopled the world of fiction with new creations. The newspaper, the book, the theatre, burst asunder, too narrow for your puissant shoulders; you fed France, Europe, America, with your works; you made the wealth of publishers, translators, plagiarists; printers and copyists toiled after you in vain. In the fever of production you did not always try to prove the metal you employed, and sometimes you tossed into the furnace whatever came to your hand. The fire made the selection: what was your own is bronze, what was not yours vanished in smoke. You have turned out some bad work thus; but on the other hand, how many amongst those who would have remained obscure have been lightened and warmed at the forge of your genius; and if the hour of restoration sounded, how immensely would you gain, simply by taking back what you have given, and what has been taken from you!
"Sometimes you placed your heavy hammer upon your great anvil, and rested on the threshold of the glittering grotto, your sleeves turned back, your chest open to the air. With smiling face, you wiped your forehead; you gazed at the calm stars, breathing the freshness of the night, or perhaps you rushed off upon the first path you met, hailing your freedom as a prisoner would; you crossed the ocean, you climbed the Caucasians, you scaled Etna—it was always something colossal! Then, your lungs filled anew, you returned to your cave. Seeing your big shadow outlined in black against the glowing hearth, the mob clapped their hands; for at heart they love fertility in work, elegance in strength, simplicity in genius, and you have fertility, simplicity, elegance—and generosity, which I had forgotten, but which has made you a millionaire for others and poor for yourself.
"Then one day there came change—indifference, ingratitude, seized the crowd, whom till now you had swayed and dominated. They went elsewhere, wishing to see something fresh; you had given them too much. You even heard it whispered, 'I declare the son has far more talent.' You well might laugh at that, but you did not; you were merely proud of me, like some ordinary father, and perhaps you thought that they were right. You would have given me all your glory, just as you used to give me all your money when I was an idle boy. Let others of my time claim to be your equals: as they do not bear your name, that is their own affair; but I wish those who come after me to know, when they shall see our two names one above the other on the scroll of this century, that whatever people may say, I have never felt you other than my father, my friend, and my teacher; and that, thanks to you, I have never become conceited, always considering myself a mere pigmy by the side of you."
Reading this filial tribute, in which the regret for the father's lost popularity seems to be sincerely greater than the writer's own pleasure in his success, one may well agree with Hugo, when he wrote to the younger Dumas on the death of his father:—
"That soul was capable of all the miracles, even that of bequeathing itself, even of surviving itself. Your father lives in you."
- ↑ "In this book Dumas has writ
All that he spends from day to day;
'Twould never hold, I dare to say,
His great expenditure of wit!" - ↑ The word "riche" here implies a certain form of line-ending in French verse, but for the purposes of the story our use of it is as appropriate, and more comprehensible.
- ↑ The latter has left a very charming account of his father's attitude towards "La Dame aux Camélias." He did not think it would dramatise, but catching the guilty youth with the MS. under his arm, he insisted on hearing it. The elder dramatist became interested, absorbed, moved, delighted, enraptured!
- ↑ See the "Théâtre Inconnu d'A. Dumas, père" by Glinel.
- ↑ The pair even met on the "field of honour." Janin would not fight with swords (so the story went) because he knew an infallible thrust; Dumas refused pistols because he could kill a fly at forty paces. So the foes embraced!
- ↑ The character in "Christine" who, impelled by private hate, kills Monaldeschi, by Queen Christine's order.
- ↑ Pifteau tells us that Dumas had a belief in the "evil eye," and a rooted distrust of monks as harbingers of evil. Vandam tells us that "although far from being superstitious," the romancer prophesied that the notorious Lola Montès would bring ill-luck to all who joined their destinies to hers, and the after career of that courtesan proved him to be right.