The Life and Writings of Alexandre Dumas/Defence
His Genius: A Defence.
Dumas was once asked for a subscription towards a monument to a man whom everyone had reviled in the beginning of his career.
"You had better be content," he replied, "with the stones that people threw at him during his lifetime. No monument you can raise will be so eloquent of their imbecility, and his genius." There was a savour of bitterness in this speech which was only too natural.
"There never was a popular writer," declared Hayward thirty years ago, "who had better reason than Alexandre Dumas to protest against the contemporary judgment of his countrymen, or to appeal, like Bacon, to the foreign nations and the next ages." Charles Reade, writing in the French novelist's lifetime, implies the existence of the same attitude towards our author's genius in this forcible comment: "Poor Dumas! He has not only produced immortal stories and immortal plays, each by the dozen, but also a son who has shown himself master of the story and the drama. But what avails that treble fertility? If five generations of Dumas, novelist and dramatist, were now on earth together, instead of two, our puppy-dogs, drunk with moonshine, would manage to look at them all and not see any of them!"
It was the fashion to treat our author as the chief of a school of second-rate writers of popular stories, which were "turned out" hastily, and which therefore possessed no claim to criticism. "Dumas," adds Dr Garnett, "exceptionally passed for long as an example of this inferior grade of authorship. At one time it would have been thought absurd to parallel him with deep thinkers like Balzac, or exquisite artists like George Sand. 'Monte Cristo' and the 'Three Musketeers' were ranged along with 'The Mysteries of Paris' and 'The Wandering Jew,' and the circumstances of their reproduction in England showed that they were expected to appeal to readers of the same class. Yet as time passed, and mere clever melodrama gave place to other clever melodrama but Dumas retained his power and popularity, it became clear that his work really belonged to the domain of literature. In adjusting the relations between Dumas and his critics, it must be remembered that he did not, like some of the literary heroes of his age, take the world by storm with his earliest writings.... But Dumas had acquired a good sound reputation as a second-rate romancer before writing 'Monte Cristo,' and criticism was naturally slow to accept him as a genius."
We come down to 1880, and find Mr W. H. Pollock asserting in the "Nineteenth Century" that "Dumas has perhaps been more persistently underrated, in England at least, than any modern writer of his calibre;" and five years later Blaze de Bury, in his study of our subject, refers to public opinion in France, when he writes:—"Dumas is popular; he is not known. His method of life and his occasional worthless books greatly damaged his literary position. He is usually looked upon simply as an 'amuser,' and yet, like others, and more than many others, he had his moments of lofty thought and philosophy." "Even to be 'amusing," as Parigot drily remarks, "is not, when one looks round the world of literature, so commonplace and contemptible a merit, after all."
Nevertheless, in one province of literary opinion there has been a striking change during the past twenty or thirty years. The English literary critics and essayists of the romantic school, as we shall see, have more and more loudly proclaimed their admiration of Dumas. Still the public at large remains ignorant and unconverted. Its attitude towards the romance-writer is thirty years behind the times, and dates from the days when "Chambers's Encyclopædia" treated our author in this summary fashion:
"It may be said that the appearance in literature of a writer like Dumas is a portentous phenomenon, and the avidity with which his invariably immoral and generally licentious fictions are devoured is the most severe condemnation of modern, and especially of French society, that could well be pronounced."
That is pretty well, and one is rather relieved, for Dumas's sake, to find that the biographer has previously declared that the novelist did not write his own books at all. We read further of "the savage voluptuousness" of his books (the "savage voluptuousness" of the "Tulipe Noire" is good), of his "astounding quackery," and of his "sweating system" of production. Need we add that the "brief biography" refers us to "De Mirecourt"?
Happily the "Encyclopædia" has retrieved itself, and its latest edition contains a sketch of Dumas's life, from the pen of Mr W. E. Henley, which, in the old-fashioned language of our fathers, "does equal honour to that writer's head and heart." We learn from R. L. Stevenson's "Letters" that his collaborator in "Beau Austin" was contemplating a book on Dumas some years ago. There is, indeed, a passage in "Memories and Portraits" which was written al Henley—"something about Dumas still waiting his biographer." It is truly a pity that the author of "Views and Reviews" never wrote this book, and did not obviate the necessity for the present work by giving the public an estimation of the great Frenchman which would say what should be said, with all the literary power and critical authority which that writer can command.
Unfortunately the other ordinary books of reference still repeat the old story of prejudice and spite. We have already mentioned that there is only one book in English dealing with Dumas's life and writings, a work which the critics have heartily condemned. We need only add, by way of summing up their views, that it ought fitly to be entitled "Dumas According to his Enemies: by One of Them." In France no adequate biography exists: on the one hand there are the "studies" of MM. B. de Bury and Parigot; on the other we have the bibliographical and biographical notes of Dumas's fellow-provincial, Glinel; but as yet the book which shall combine the two points of view is wanting.
The lover of Dumas could afford to laugh at the old-fashioned utterances of a cyclopædia in the sixties; he could forget a third-rate biography already forgotten by the public. But these are not the only obstacles in the way of a reconsideration of Dumas's literary merits. It is only a few years since a "Quarterly Reviewer" dismissed the claims of our author as a novelist in a few contemptuous words. True, nobody reads the Quarterly Review, but even straws show how the wind is blowing in certain quarters. In a recent work[1] M. G. Pellissier complacently remarks that Dumas "sacrificed his literary conscience to the vulgar taste of the public, and the necessities of the purse prevailed more and more over his work.... he was only the most popular of amusers." We are not surprised that this book was "crowned by the Académie." G. Brandès has repeated the same statement, which Parigot, who certainly possesses some knowledge of the subject, flatly denies:
"G. Brandès has declared that Dumas wrote firstly en romantique, and then en industriel—a doubly false estimate. 'Industriel' Dumas never ceased to be; 'romantic' he was also, if by the word we imply revolutionary; but dramatic he remained always, con amore, and by right of conquest."
M. Lanson, in his voluminous and comprehensive history of French literature, acknowledges Dumas to be a skilled stage craftsman, but no more; he ignores Dumas the novelist altogether!
These criticisms could only exercise a very distant influence on the ordinary English reader, and we need not concern ourselves with them further. But unhappily they seem to have furnished the sole sources of reference for Professor Dowden in his book on French literature. This famous scholar confesses in his preface that "an adequate history of a great literature can be written only by collaboration. In this small volume I too have had my collaborators ... who have written each a part of my book." The list of authorities which the professor quotes includes the three critics we have mentioned, and contains no record of any direct study of Dumas himself. Hence we are not surprised to find that he "admits" our author's history to be untrue, his characters superficial, his action incredible. Dumas's work "ceased to be literature and became mere 'commerce'... his money was 'recklessly squandered.'... Half genius, half charlatan, his genius decayed and his charlatanry grew to enormous proportions."[2] Half-knowledge, at second hand, gives currency to those half-truths concerning which Tennyson held strong opinions. It is to be regretted that a great scholar meaning to deal fairly and even kindly with a personality should be misled into a flagrant under-estimate which is certain to be accepted by the public at large, who have a natural confidence in the professor's ability and honesty of purpose. It is a relief to turn to Professor Saintsbury's "Short History of French Literature" and find our author dealt with more justly and sympathetically by one who has a fuller and more direct knowledge of his subject.
The attitude of the orthodox French critic towards Dumas is even more severe and contemptuous, and this is easily explained. A man of such irregular origin, who led such an irregular life, who produced his works in such an irregular way, was bound to shock the critics of the nation which takes pride in that triumph of literary convention and snobbery, the Académie Française. If Dumas had been content to live a quiet, "respectable" life, to stick to one class of writing, and conform to tradition in that branch of literature; if in addition he had refrained from disrespectful witticisms respecting the Institut, and maintained a non-aggressive attitude towards the world, a fauteuil might have been his. He would have gained the praise of the conventional and won, if not Immortality, at least an Academic fame. But he remained—Dumas—himself, and an eccentric individuality; and so we find Sainte-Beuve writing of him: "All that he has written is fairly bright, engrossing and amusing, à moitié, but spoilt by incompleteness, negligence and vulgarity." Still, elsewhere the same writer condescends to say: "Quant à M. Dumas, tout le monde sait sa verve prodigieuse, son entrain facile, son bonheur de misc-en-scène, son dialogue spirituel, et toujours en mouvement, ce récit léger qui court sans cesse et qui sait enlever l'obstacle et l'espace sans jamais faiblir. Il couvre d'immense toiles sans fatiguer jamais ni son pinceau ni son lecteur."
Similarly, Desiré Nisard sneered at Dumas, in his attack on what he called the "easy" literature. It is characteristic of the French critic, this inability to see that for certain kinds of composition rapidity of thought and writing are essential to success. In short, the austere devotion to "form" and "style" which his countrymen profess and demand in others have always prevented Dumas, who cared little for either quality, from achieving honour in his own country except, of course, from the ignorant public, who read him and enjoyed him.
The weight of official authority being cast against us, it is obvious that our own attempt to estimate the extent and value of Dumas's genius must firstly take more or less the form of a defence, in which we must pass in review the charges brought against our client, and produce evidence in support.
It is not at all our desire to deny all the accusations brought against Dumas; we hope, however, that we shall be allowed to extenuate some things, and be pardoned for setting down naught in malice. We have admitted the many faults to be found in Dumas as a man and a writer; we have recorded, and shall continue to record, hard things said of him by expert and impartial critics. We do this not only for honesty's sake, but because we believe that the shoulders of his talent are broad enough to bear the burden. Mr Henley is by no means a mealy-mouthed witness, and this is how he faces the point:
"He is one of the heroes of modern art. Envy and scandal have done their worst now. The libeller has said his say; the detectives who make a speciality of literary forgeries have proved their cases one and all; the judges of matter have spoken, and so have the critics of style; the distinguished author of 'Nana' has taken us into his confidence on the subject; we have heard from the lamented Granier (de Cassagnac) and others as much as was to be heard on the question of plagiarism in general and the plagiarisms of Dumas in particular; and Mr Percy Fitzgerald has done what he is pleased to designate the nightman's work of analysing 'Antony' and 'Kean,' and of collecting everything that spite has said about their author's life, their author's habits, their author's manners and customs and character of whose vanity, mendacity, immorality, and a score of improper qualities besides, enough has been written to furnish a good-sized library. And the result of it all is that Dumas is recognised for a force in modern art and for one of the greatest inventors and amusers the century has produced."
Before proceeding to the counts in our defence it may be as well to "put into court" Dumas's own opinion of his place in and value to literature. From the "vain farçeur" something pompous and ridiculously big will be anticipated.
"Lamartine," he writes, "is a dreamer; Hugo is a thinker; as for myself, I am a populariser. I take possession of both: I give substance to the dream of one, I throw light upon the thought of the other, and I serve up to the public this excellent dish, which, from the hand of the first would have lacked nourishment, being too light, and from the second, would have caused indigestion, being too heavy; but which when seasoned and introduced by me, will agree with almost any stomach, the weakest as well as the strongest."
This passage, of course, refers to Dumas's position in the ranks of the Romantics, but it may fairly be taken as representing his general opinion of his own worth. The reader will be able to judge for himself as we proceed, whether our author is correct in this self-estimation, or whether he falls below it or rises above it.
The first attack which was made upon Dumas, and the first therefore which we have to meet, that his plays were "horrible," and immoral. The chief plays to be pilloried were "Henri Trois," Antony," "Don Juan de Marana," "Caligula," and "La Tour de Nesle." Each of these received its due share of ridicule from the wits of the rival school, the classicists. The first, in which the intrigues of the Valois court were exposed, was the subject of an epigram which made fun of the "handkerchief" incident, (which no doubt was borrowed from "Othello"):
"Messieurs et mesdames, cette pièce est morale;
Elle prouve aujourd'hui, sans faire de scandale,
Que chez un amant, lorsqu'on va le soir
On peut oublier tout... excepté son mouchoir!"[3]
Similarly, "Antony," the society drama which set the fashion in "foundling" or illegitimate heroes, and heroines fair and frail, inspired the couplet—
À croire ces MM. on ne voit dans nos rues
Que les enfants trouvés, et les femmes perdues."[4]
The author's classic tragedy-drama gave rise to the slangy word "caligulate," meaning to bore; and Dumas was represented as being haunted, à la Richard III., by the ghosts of the authors from whose "Don Juans" he had borrowed.
"Henri Trois" is now by general consent beyond the reach of this injurious criticism. Of "Antony" Dumas himself in his Mémoires has submitted his own defence to the judgment of posterity. He certainly makes two palpable hits, firstly, in pointing out that the sinners Antony and Adèle do not prosper by their sin, for they live in stress and anguish and die violent and miserable deaths; and secondly, that in "exploiting" adultery as a subject for the stage he treats it in a far more worthy fashion than did Molière, and we may add, than the Restoration and eighteenth century dramatists. With them cuckoldry was a suitable theme for comedy; as the fashionable and amusing pastime of le monde où l'on s'ennuie. In fact, Dumas faithfully follows Shakespeare in "Othello," and "Much Ado about Nothing."
It should never be forgotten, especially by Englishmen, that many of the "horrors" with which Dumas's early plays are filled, are due to an ardent but indiscriminate admiration for Shakespeare. Schiller no doubt is also to blame, but we are obviously more concerned with the Elizabethan playwright. Do those who condemn the murder of Monaldeschi, the unholy love of Queen Marguerite in "La Tour de Nesle," and the profanity of "Don Juan" forget not only the "horrors" of the old classic tragedies, which Dumas duly studied, but also the passages in "Titus Andronicus," in "Macbeth," in "Richard III.," and other plays, which no stage-manager would dare to present to the public to-day? For in more than one respect the Romantic movement in France, in the early part of last century, corresponds with the Elizabethan era in our literature. We have neither the desire nor the ability to present an elaborate comparison here: it is sufficient to note that political and social conditions favoured a reaction towards passion and action in poetry, drama, and romance, and this has been well shown by Dumas himself in his preface to "Cointe Hermann," in which our author explains and defends the outcomes of his first dramatic period. He had taken part, as Castelar truly says, "in that war of giants, the struggle for the poetry of nature against the poetry of the Académie, breaking the chains of all literary codes, and loudly proclaiming liberty; ardent and daring even to folly, like a hero in the war of his age against past ages."
286 Why, we may fairly ask, should critics take eager note of the excesses of the young dramatist and ignore his second and last periods, when experience had taught a nature instinctively sane the folly of that Byronic mood, in which it had copied perhaps not the best qualities of Shakespeare? Dumas's three famous comedies are all "on the side of the angels"; and "Conscience," "Le Marbrier," and "Comte Hermann" are almost sermons in their didactic presentment of moral truths.
We may leave this point in our case, then, quoting in support the words of Brander Matthews, the American critic:
"The horrible is not necessarily immoral ... morality is an affair, not of subject but of treatment, and Dumas's ... is not insidious or vicious."
No sooner had the orthodox French classicists found Dumas's plays startlingly successful than they set themselves to discover the sources of his plots, and to their great delight, ascertained that he had "stolen " right and left, from English, German and other writers. In reply to this cry of "Thief! thief!" the author, in boldly characteristic fashion, stated his theory of defence in respect of plagiarism:
"It is men who invent, and not the individual. Each in his turn and in his time lays hands on something accomplished by his fore-runners, makes use of it in a new way, and then dies, after having added some small share to the sum of human knowledge. This he bequeaths to his successors, a new star in the Milky Way. As for the creative completion of a thing, I believe that to be impossible."
After having quoted Shakespeare and Molière in support of his practice, Dumas adds:
"The man of genius does not steal, he conquers; he makes the province which he annexes a part of his own empire, peoples it with his own subjects, and imposes his own laws upon it. He extends his golden sceptre over it, and no one dares to say, as they look upon his fair kingdom, 'That piece of ground was not part of his patrimony.'"
One delightful sample of the knowledge and spirit with which Dumas was attacked by his detractors is recorded in the "Mémoires." "Isabel de Bavière" was, as we know, published serially in the first numbers of Revue des deux Mondes, which was at that time little known and read by few. Bourgeois and Lockroy joined some of the most striking scenes of the chronique together and made them into a play called "Perrinet Leclerc," which was very successful. At that time Dumas had collaborated with Bourgeois in a drama "Le Fils Emigré," which our author confesses to have been "execrable" play. One of the leading critics of the day reviled Dumas as if he were the sole author of the latter drama, but praised the other to the skies; and not content with this, the journalist emphasised his own fatuity by calling attention to an the rare literary and historical merits of the story of "Perrinet Leclerc," and comparing it, greatly to its advantage, with "Le Fils Emigré," for which Dumas was only partly responsible! But the best was yet to come; for when Dumas re-issued "Isabel de Bavière" in book-form the critics fell foul of him for stealing from MM. Bourgeois and Lockroy!
It is best to recognise that the charge of "plagiarism" has been brought against almost every dramatist of weight since plays first were written; and one of Dumas's defenders has made a full and instructive list of the "thefts" attributed to Shakespeare, Molière, Sheridan, and even the classical writers themselves. It is in our view simply a question whether the "borrower" does or does not add to the value of the material he uses; whether he imprints the personality of his own talent upon it. Surely Dumas did that. "All his plagiarisms, and they were not a few," says Brander Matthews, "are the veriest trifles when compared with his indisputable and extraordinary powers ... It irks one to see Dumas pilloried as a mere vulgar appropriator of the works of other men."
The cry "plagiarist!" was not raised so loudly or generally against Dumas's romances, and such charges as were brought we have already dealt with. It was now that the cry of "collaborators!" was heard in the land; and this time the plays, with the exception of "La Tour de Nesle," of which we have spoken, were let off lightly, partly because Dumas's earliest plays were incontestibly his own, partly because he did not dispute the share of Maquet, Bourgeois and the rest, in the later productions. A new charge, therefore, was levelled at the romancer, whose second fame infuriated his enemies. He was represented as a rich, prosperous (!) spider who lured the starving flies into his web, and sucked their brains, "swelling wisibly" thus, whilst they dwelt in darkness, enduring an obscure, not to say empty, existence.
Dumas's reply to this terrible indictment was a challenge, which we need hardly say was never accepted. He informed these unknown but talented authors that he was supplying the feuilleton to one Paris journal only, and that therefore the rest of the press was open to them. This was their opportunity: now they could vindicate themselves, and win a reputation that was their own undisputedly. "Write a 'Monte Cristo' or a 'Trois Mousquetaires,'" he pleaded; "don't wait until I am dead—let me in turn have the pleasure of reading your books!" The answer was—silence.
Dumas was always the man of genius, whoever his co-worker may have been, and this is asserted by all critics of any standing. "That he was the moving spirit still, and the actual author of what is best and most peculiar in the works which go by his name," says Mr Saintsbury, "is sufficiently proved by the fact that none of his assistants, whose names are in many cases known, and who in not a few instances subsequently attained eminence on their own account, has equalled or even resembled his peculiar style." "Whereas Dumas could turn out books that live, whoever his assistants were," adds Mr Lang, "could any of his assistants write books that live without Dumas? One might as well call any barrister in good practice a thief and an impostor because he has juniors to devil for him, as make charges of this kind against Dumas." Theophile Gautier employs the same argument, in his "Histoire de l'Art Dramatique." "He has been reproached with having had collaborators," writes Castelar. "I declare that all these collaborators lost their brilliancy when they separated from Dumas; and I must add, that all of them united do not weigh in the literary balances of Europe half as much as Dumas weighed alone."
The implied accusation that Dumas injured and debauched his "assistants" has been ruthlessly spoilt by M. Edmond About. "The master," he declared, "took from them neither their money, for they are rich, nor their reputation, for they are celebrated, nor their merit, for they have it still, and in plenty. For the rest, they have never pitied themselves: on the contrary, the proudest of them have congratulated themselves on having been to such a good school, and it is with a true veneration that the greatest of them, M. Maquet, speaks of his old friend."
The great romancer frequently protested against the word "collaborators," and he was right, for it implies an equality in quantity and quality of the work done which was not justified. "Dumas's method," says Mr Lang, "apparently was first to talk the subject over with his aide-de-camp. This is an excellent practice, as ideas are knocked out, like sparks (an elderly illustration), by the contact of minds. Then the young man probably made researches, put a rough sketch on paper, and supplied Dumas, as it were, with his 'brief.' Then Dumas took the 'brief' and wrote the novel. He gave it life—he gave it the spark (l'étincelle), and the story lived and moved."
The testimony of one of the great man's best collaborators is valuable evidence on this point. Fiorentino, in his "Comédies et Comédiens," writes: "How many believed themselves his collaborators who were only his confidants!... In his books, but above all, in his plays, his collaborators had only the smallest share. He remodelled the scenarios, changed the characters, added or cut down entire acts, and wrote all in his own hand."
Thackeray, with a camaraderie and candour, both of which do him infinite credit, has stoutly defended this system in one of his "Roundabout Papers." The support it gives to our author is none the less valuable for having been written in a half-jesting manner. "They say," adds the English novelist, after a eulogy of Dumas, "that all the works bearing his name are not written by him. Well? Does not the chief cook have aides under him? Did not Rubens's pupils paint on his canvasses? Had not Lawrence assistants for his backgrounds? For myself, being also du métier, I confess I would often like to have a competent, respectable, and rapid clerk for the business part of my novels.... Sir Christopher is the architect of St Paul's. He has not laid the stones or carried up the mortar. There is a great deal of carpenter's and joiner's work in novels which surely a smart professional hand might supply."
We may venture to add to these "testimonials" from writers more or less expert or learned in fiction, our own strong belief that the ideal romance of fact or history in particular requires two workers at it—the one to prepare the material, and the other to make use of it. The case of Scott, of course, will be brought forward as evidence to the contrary; but surely those who recognise the existence of such a study as the Art of Narrative will admit that Scott the poetic novelist was often terribly hampered by Scott the antiquarian and archaeologist. In searching out details, in verifying references, and the other work of preparation the imagination is naturally restrained, the fancy is deadened, the mental energies turn in the direction of the trivial, the precise, the formal. Charles Reade, a master of narrative, too frequently gives us a glimpse of Reade the compiler of cuttings-books. Dumas himself offers a still more glaring example; for when preparing "La San Felice" he made his own researches into the original documents, and, seeing the historical and picturesque importance of each, he wrote a story full of detail and long parentheses, which only his great skill saved from being dull and drawn-out. If the facts had been brought to him already ferreted out, he would have seen and seized on the salient points, and have written a romance half the length, but with ten times the brilliance and engrossing charm.
It frequently proclaimed, by people imperfectly acquainted with Dumas's novels, that they are immoral in nature and tendency. It must be confessed that this is true—if books dealing with pitch must of necessity be themselves defiled. He attempted to teach his fellow-Frenchmen the history of their nation, and the history of France, social and political, is full of improperly-behaved personages. We can quite understand the attitude of those people who wish to ignore great facts, such as the sensual as well as the ethereal side of love between the sexes, the passionate love which laughs at priests and lawyers, and other objectionable traits of human nature. We advise these readers to avoid Dumas,—and all the other great writers. "If," says Mr. W. H. Pollock, "his writing is not intended for boys and maidens, that is one quality which he has in common with such playwriters as for instance, Shakespeare, Racine, and Molière, and such novelists as Goethe, Fielding, and Le Sage. His method was at any rate 'an honest method'; he did not palter, as the modern French school of playwriting does, with vice and virtue, keeping one foot in the domain of each, and casting a false glamour of splendour around corruption."
But hear the defendant in his own cause.
"I had, thank God, a natural sentiment of delicacy (as a boy), and thus, out of my six hundred volumes[5] there are not four which the most scrupulous mother may not give to her daughter." Dumas repeated this assertion in a letter to Napoleon III in 1864, twelve years later, adding, "I am as fatherly as Sir Walter Scott." We are afraid that Dumas gave mothers credit for too much breadth and independence of mind. When Stevenson, in defence of our romancer, wrote that "the world is wide and so are morals," he did not hope to win Mrs. Grundy's approval of the sentiment. Mr. Lang, dealing more directly with Dumas's reply, adds: "his enormous popularity, the widest in the world of letters, owes absolutely nothing to prurience or curiosity. The air which he breathes is a healthy air, is the open air, and that by his own choice, for he had every temptation to seek another kind of vogue, and every opportunity." Hayward, again, notices the difference between Dumas and so many other of the French writers with whom he is ignorantly and indiscriminately classed. "His best romances," says the author of "Biographical Essays," rarely trangress propriety, and are entirely free from that hard, cold, sceptical, materialist, illusion-destroying tone which is so repelling in Balzac and many others of the most popular French novelists."
Professor Carpenter lifts the subject to a higher plane of thought.
"I find it impossible," he writes, "to admit that Dumas's ideals were low, unfit for common use. It is of honour that he tells most willingly—of man's honour and the constancy of men to men; of man's striving against the powders of the world by force and guile; of man's love of woman and the curb it puts on cowardice and sloth and selfishness; of man's strength and weakness; of a nation's slow progress onward and upward toward order and justice. Dumas was not an austere moralist, and his life was prodigal; but the reader will find on reflection that the ethical system revealed by his books is one which, the more we consider, the more we shall approve."
We may add that we made one or two experiments to test Dumas's books from this point of view. We have asked repeatedly at shops where French novels of the pornographic type have been displayed in large quantities, and have failed to obtain a copy of one of the master's novels. We have found that at free libraries (and at the committee meetings connected with such institutions Mrs. Grundy is always present in spirit) that Dumas's works are admitted fully and freely, where Fielding, Defoe, Zola, Boccaccio and others are forbidden. Lastly, we have followed Ruskin's advice and left our bookshelves open to the use of the Young Person, who has frequently chosen one of our author's stories, and returned it in due course with warm and ingenuous acknowledgment of the pleasure the book has given her.
We have already dealt to some extent with the charge that Dumas, in writing amusing stories of the past, has distorted or ignored history. In support of this indictment the critics have quoted the passages in "Vingt Ans Après" relating to our Civil War and the execution of Charles—together with the "General Monk" episode, in "Bragelonne," and the plot of the plays "Catherine Howard" and "Kean." As he has expressed it in a well-known sentence, Dumas deliberately violated history, when he had some set purpose to achieve which rendered it necessary. The word "fiction" implies something, even in historical romance, and the writer who has not the nerve to make a little history for his own purposes, and to take liberties with great personages, may contrive very accurate history, but we are afraid he will write a very dull romance. On the other hand, when Dumas set himself to reproduce a certain period in the past centuries, he was full of precise detail and historic fact. And he was supreme in what, after all, was the essential: he caught and revivified the atmosphere of those by-gone days with a fidelity, a power of conviction, a charm, and a subtle skill which no one before or since has excelled.
The warfare between the classicists and romantics in French literature was waged fiercely throughout Dumas's prime. Nisard, of whom we have spoken, fastened on Dumas the stigma of "easy composition." To this our author replied with his customary good-humoured banter, behind which lurked a good deal of sense and power:
"When one is a real romancer, you know, it is as easy to produce a romance as for an apple-tree to produce apples. This is how it is done.
"One gets one's paper, pen and ink; one sits down, as comfortably as possible, at a table not too high, not to low; one reflects for half an hour, one writes a little. After the title, comes Chapter I; then one writes thirty-five lines to a page, fifty letters to a line—for two hundred pages, if it is to be a romance in two volumes—for four hundred pages if in four volumes—for eight hundred pages, if in eight volumes, and so on. And after ten or twenty or forty days, supposing that one writes twenty pages between morning and evening, which means seven hundred lines, or 38,500 letters daily, the romance is finished.
"That is the way I work, say most of the critics who are good enough to concern themselves about me; and these gentlemen only forget one thing.
"It is this that before preparing the ink, the pens and the paper which must serve for the material in the development of a new romance, before drawing my arm-chair up to the table, before writing the title and those two very simple words 'Chapter I.,' I have sometimes thought for six months, a year, ten years, about the subject on which I am going to write. I owe to this way of working the clearness of my intrigue, the simplicity of my methods, the naturalness of my effects. As a rule I do not begin a book until it is finished."
300 A women of talent, Madame de Girardin, who knew and admired Dumas, put the case for her friend even more forcibly:
"This rapidity of composition, is like the swiftness of a railway train: both work on the same principles, from the same causes—an extreme facility obtained by difficulties overcome. You cover sixty leagues in three hours: it is nothing—you laugh at the swiftness of your travelling. But to what do you owe this marvel of transportation? To years of daunting toil, to money spent like water, all along your way, and to thousands of pairs of arms which have prepared the way for you, day after weary day. You flash past so swiftly that one can scarcely see you; but to gain that freedom of speed for you, how men have slaved, and grown old, bending over the pick and shovel! What plans have been made, and baulked; what cares, what struggles has it not cost, to whirl you from this spot to that, so smoothly and easefully, and without a care or a fear!"
Blaze de Bury further explains Dumas's facility of working, doing justice to his friend's marvellous memory, and that power of intuition and divination which was almost second-sight.
"When other authors write," he says, "they are stopped every other minute—there is a detail to discover, or a reference to verify—a lapse of memory, or some other obstacle. Dumas was never stopped by anything. The practice of writing for the stage gave him great fluency in composition; add to these gifts sparkling wit, and inexhaustible gaiety, and you will understand how, with such resources, a man may achieve an incredible rapidity of production without sacrificing skill in construction or injuring the quality or solidity of his work."
The same writer adds shrewdly "the public were very ready to despise as 'shop-made goods' books written in such quantity, being unwilling to believe that there are certain favoured individualities like those blest places of the earth where the grain shoots into green and ripens in a few weeks. It is no sin to own these precious gifts: it is only wrong to abuse them."
It is difficult for most people to comprehend that a book quickly written can be well written; and the obvious course of trying the work on its merits does not seem to occur to them. As the old prejudices of fifty years ago are still held to-day, we shall do well to quote Maxime Du Camp's protest on behalf of his old friend, which has been excellently paraphrased and elaborated by Mr Lang.
"A writer so fertile, so rapid, so masterly in the ease with which he worked, could not escape the reproaches of barren envy. Because you overflowed with wit, you could not be 'serious'; because you created with a word, you were said to scamp your work; because you were never dull, never pedantic, incapable of greed, you were to be censured as desultory, inaccurate, and prodigal."
Having assured themselves that Dumas wrote rapidly and therefore badly, the critics proceeded quite confidently to dower that author with another literary vice.
In theology there is a sin so terrible as to be unmentionable; in literature there is a sin so awful as to be indefinable. Therefore, it was decided, in order to dispose once and for all of the French romancer's claims on the tender-hearted public, that he should be declared to have no "style." There is only one thing certain about this mysterious quality—that those who do not possess it cannot belong to the elect.
Far be it from us to dare to attempt to indicate the nature and habits of this mythical creation: we can only attempt to win a place for Dumas among the "stylists" (for we must "conform" to this creed in the literary religion) by putting forward the testimony of such as are "within the pale." If a sufficient number of these haloed great can be persuaded to gather round our sinner, perhaps it may never be noticed that he himself wears no such symbol of intellectual sanctity.
Our first witness (we grieve to betray his identity, but we must give chapter and verse), is R. L. Stevenson, whose manner of composition was the very opposite of Dumas's. He is allowed to possess "style," and truly he laboured hard and nobly to win it—the quality itself, not the acknowledgment of it.
"There is no style so untranslatable" (as Dumas's), he wrote; "light as a whipped trifle; strong as silk; wordy like a village tale; pat like a general's despatch; with every fault, yet never tedious, with no merit, yet inimitably right."
Next we have Mr Lang. In addition to his fame as scholar and critic, was he not the prize "stylist" of an "Academy" competition? That is as good as a degree at a University, it is an unofficial election to a fauteuil and Immortality (with a capital I). Then note with respect this evidence:
"When I read the maunderings, the stilted and staggering, sentences, the hesitating phrases, the farsought and dear-bought and worthless word-juggles; the sham scientific verbiage, the native pedantries of many modern so-called 'stylists,' I rejoice that Dumas was not one of these. He told a plain tale, in the language suited to a plain tale, with abundance of wit and gaiety.... but he did not gnaw the end of his pen in search of some word that nobody had ever used in this or that connection beforce. The right word came to him, the simple straightforward phrase. Epithet-hunting may be a pretty sport, and the bag of the epithet-hunter may contain some agreeable epigrams and rare specimens of style; but a plain tale of adventure, of love and war, needs none of this industry, and is even spoiled by inopportune diligence."
This misguided critic involves himself more deeply still. He praises Dumas's dialogue for its unsurpassed excellence, and dares to claim for some of Dumas's phrases that they are unconsciously Homeric!
"In your works we hear the Homeric Muse again, rejoicing in the clash of steel; and even, at times, your very phrases are unconsciously Homeric. Look at these men of murder, on the Eve of St Bartholomew, who flee in terror from the Queen's chamber, and 'find the door too narrow for their flight': the very words were anticipated in a line of the 'Odyssey' concerning the massacre of the Wooers. And the picture of Catherine de Medicis, prowling 'like a wolf among the bodies and the blood,' in a passage of the Louvre—the picture is taken unwittingly from the 'Iliad.'"
We are not, we confess, aware whether or no Balzac is admitted to be a "stylist," but at least two critics prefer Dumas's language to that of his great rival; for Brander Matthews favourably compares the running sentences of the romancer with the tortured "style" of the realist; and Nisard, in spite of his prejudices, acknowledges that Dumas "tells his story with more vivacity (than Balzac), in dialogue more witty and natural, and clothed in better words." Parigot admits that Dumas takes no heed of the literary merit of his writing, but claims that nevertheless he shows taste and care, and a choice of clear and sane language. Edmond About prophesied that Dumas would become a classic, "thanks to the limpidity of his style." Dumas a classic! Yet the history of literature tells us that more unlikely things have happened. We shall be laughed at when we point out that passages from the romancer's books are constantly being chosen and edited for use in schools and colleges, and yet the fact is not so puerile as its connection would seem to imply. Those who are responsible for such productions are men of culture, with a professional knowledge of French literature and with reputations to maintain. If they find in Dumas's books qualities which make them fit to be put before scholars as models of French composition, we may rest assured that there is some suspicion of "style" about our author's writing, after all.
We may return to the point touched upon by Mr Lang, that Dumas's style—we use the word in its uncanonical sense—was fitted to its author's purpose. "Of art, of careful choice, of laborious adaptation of words and phrases and paragraphs there is none," says Professor Saintsbury. "It is even capable of being argued whether, consistently with his peculiar plan and object, there could, or ought to be, any. A novel of incident, if it be good, must be read as rapidly the seventh time as it is the first." Quite so; the romancer's desire was to tell you a story in a way that would enthral you from beginning to end; if you stopped to admire the exquisiteness of a phrase, or to ponder over the possibilities which a thought suggested, you would lose the thread of the story, the charm that its narrator had wove about you would be broken, and his aim would be defeated.
Even when Dumas seems wordy there is, as another great story-teller saw clearly, an artistic reason for it. Stevenson, writing to one of his friends, touched on this point, and declared "if there is anywhere a thing said in two scntences that could have been as clearly and as engagingly and as forcibly said in one, then it's amateur work." But he added: "Then you will bring me up with old Dumas. Nay, the object of a story is to be long, to fill up hours; the story-teller's art of writing is to water out by continual invention, historical and technical, and yet not seem to water; seem, on the other hand, to practise that same wit of conspicuous and declaratory condensation which is the proper art of writing."
One last word on this point. We have taken a solemn vow not to blaspheme by attempting to define the occult word, but if style can be said to imply distinction and individuality in a writer, and that in a praiseworthy sense, then we claim it for Dumas. Once the reader is acquainted with his style (in the French) he can hardly mistake it. And if it is justified in narrative by its artistic subservience to the story, it justifies itself in the lighter writings of its author. Unfortunately these are practically unknown to the general British reading public. "In the slightest and loosest work of his vainest mood or his idlest moment Dumas is at least unaffected and unpretentious," says Swinburne; and we may add that in the best of his "occasional writings" he exhibits qualities of wit, humour, and neatness of expression in a high degree.
The last count in this lengthy indictment is perhaps the most serious. It is asserted that Dumas, at least in the latter part of his life, "wrote for money."
This is a loose phrase, and we must distinguish. Most authors write for money. "Intimate" biographies show that in private life all writers not born to affluence have valued the work of their brains in filthy lucre; that they have demanded—and quite rightly—the market price for their work. The questions which really touch the quick of the subject are: Did Dumas pander to the public for gain? Did he consciously lower and debase his abilities for money? Was money the prime object of his labours? We deny all these possible charges. Granted, that Dumas, like many another artist, turned out bad work at times; that he spoke of his books on occasion in commercial terms; that he was generally pressed for money, and obliged to turn to his desk to satisfy a dun, or fulfil a contract, and that in the last few years he resorted to shifts unbecoming in a man of genius. He never parted company with his literary conscience. A score of examples of this could be given: how he destroyed bad work; how he delayed or refused to commence work for which he had not found in his brain the plan of adequate treatment; and how he deplored the bad stuff which he had been coerced or persuaded into doing. He never wrote unworthily, or below his own level. The greed of money, for money's sake, for anything that money could give him, was foreign to the man's generous, insouciant nature. Before and after the writing of a story, the man of business was keenly alive in Dumas, as in all shrewd authors; once plunged into the story the man became the artist; he had no thought but for the story and the best way of telling it. If he had been miserly, if his work had not been the great enjoyment of his life, the whole story of Dumas's career would have left him open to base suspicion; but the more one learns of the man's nature and life-story, the more clearly one sees in him the artist, not the artisan.
- ↑ "La Mouvement Littéraire au XIXe Siècle."
- ↑ We regret to find that Dr Garnett (in the introduction to the latest edition of the "Black Tulip"), repeats this charge in almost the same words. The epithet "charlatan," as applied to a writer, can surely only be taken to imply that he wrote without conscience and lowered his standard of literary production to catch the public taste. This implied charge we believe an impartial reading of Dumas's works at any period will disprove.
- ↑ "Ladies and gentlemen, this play is moral: it proves that nowadays, when meeting one's lover by night one may without scandal forget one's self,... but not one's handkerchief!" (Alluding to the fact that the Duchesse de Guise's handkerchief, left in Ruggieri's rooms where she has met St Megrin, her lover,—is found by the Duc, and, by arousing his jealousy, leads on to the tragedy.)
- ↑ "If we can believe these gentlemen (Dumas and others of the Romantics) one meets everywhere only women who are "lost" and children who are "found."
- ↑ See note. p 225.