Dumas' Paris Part 4

Again, this time in company with the Duc de Montpensier, he journeyed to the Mediterranean, "did" Spain, and crossed over to Algiers. When he returned he brought back the celebrated vulture, "Jugurtha," whose fame was afterward perpetuated in "Mes Betes."

That there was a deal of reality in the characterization and the locale of Dumas' romances will not be denied by any who have acquaintance therewith. Dumas unquestionably took his material where he found it, and his wonderfully retentive memory, his vast capacity for work, and his wide experience and extensive acquaintance provided him material that many another would have lacked.

M. de Chaffault tells of his having accompanied Dumas by road from Sens to Joigny, Dumas being about to appeal to the republican const.i.tuency of that place for their support of him as a candidate for the parliamentary elections.

"In a short time we were on the road," said the narrator, "and the first stage of three hours seemed to me only as many minutes. Whenever we pa.s.sed a country-seat, out came a lot of anecdotes and legends connected with its owners, interlarded with quaint fancies and epigrams."

Aside from the descriptions of the country around about Crepy, Compiegne, and Villers-Cotterets which he wove into the Valois tales, "The Taking of the Bastille," and "The Wolf-Leader," there is a strong note of personality in "Georges;" some have called it autobiography.

The tale opens in the far-distant Isle of France, called since the English occupation Mauritius, and in the narrative of the half-caste Georges Munier are supposed to be reflected many of the personal incidents of the life of the author.

This story may or may not be a mere repet.i.tion of certain of the incidents of the struggle of the mulatto against the barrier of the white aristocracy, and may have been an echo in Dumas' own life. It is repeated it may have been this, or it may have been much more. Certain it is, there is an underlying motive which could only have been realized to the full extent expressed therein by one who knew and felt the pangs of the encounter with a world which only could come to one of genius who was by reason of race or creed outcla.s.sed by his contemporaries; and therein is given the most vivid expression of the rise of one who had everything against him at the start.

This was not wholly true of Dumas himself, to be sure, as he was endowed with certain influential friends. Still it was mainly through his own efforts that he was able to prevail upon the old a.s.sociates and friends of the das.h.i.+ng General Dumas, his father, to give him his first lift along the rough and stony literary pathway.

In this book there is a curious interweaving of the life and colour which may have had not a little to do with the actual life which obtained with respect to his ancestors, and as such, and the various descriptions of negro and Creole life, the story becomes at once a doc.u.ment of prime interest and importance.

Since Dumas himself has explained and justified the circ.u.mstance out of which grew the conception of the D'Artagnan romances, it is perhaps advisable that some account should be given of the original D'Artagnan.

Primarily, the interest in Dumas' romance of "Les Trois Mousquetaires" is as great, if not greater, with respect to the characters as it is with the scenes in which they lived and acted their strenuous parts. In addition, there is the profound satisfaction of knowing that the rollicking and gallant swashbuckler has come down to us from the pages of real life, as Dumas himself recounts in the preface to the Colman Levy edition of the book. The statement of Dumas is explicit enough; there is no mistaking his words which open the preface:

"Dans laquelle Il est etabli que, malgre leurs noms en _os_ et en _is_, Les heros de l'histoire Que nous allons avoir l'honneur de raconter a nos lecteurs N'ont rien de mythologique."

The contemporary facts which connect the real Comte d'Artagnan with romances are as follows:

Charles de Batz de Castlemore, Comte d'Artagnan, received his t.i.tle from the little village of Artagnan, near the Gascon town of Orthez in the present department of the Hautes-Pyrenees. He was born in 1623. Dumas, with an author's license, made his chief figure a dozen years older, for the real D'Artagnan was but five years old at the time of the siege of La Roch.e.l.le of which Dumas makes mention. On the whole, the romance is near enough to reality to form an ample endors.e.m.e.nt of the author's verity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: D'ARTAGNAN]

The real D'Artagnan made his way to Paris, as did he of the romance. Here he met his fellow Bearnais, one M. de Treville, captain of the king's musketeers, and the ill.u.s.trious individuals, _Armand de Sillegue d'Athos_, a Bearnais n.o.bleman who died in 1645, and whose direct descendant, Colonel de Sillegue, commanded, according to the French army lists of a recent date, a regiment of French cavalry; _Henry d'Aramitz_, lay abbe of Oloron; and _Jean de Portu_, all of them probably neighbours in D'Artagnan's old home.

D'Artagnan could not then have been at the siege of La Roch.e.l.le, but from the "Memoires de M. d'Artagnan," of which Dumas writes in his preface, we learn of his feats at arms at Arras, Valenciennes, Douai, and Lille, all places where once and again Dumas placed the action of the novels.

The real D'Artagnan died, sword in hand, "in the imminent deadly breach"

at Maestricht, in 1673. He served, too, under Prince Rupert in the Civil War, and frequently visited England, where he had an _affaire_ with a certain Milady, which is again reminiscent of the pages of Dumas.

This D'Artagnan in the flesh married Charlotte Anne de Chanlecy, and the last of his direct descendants died in Paris in the latter years of the eighteenth century, but collateral branches of the family appear still to exist in Gascony, and there was a certain Baron de Batz, a Bearnais, who made a daring attempt to save Marie Antoinette in 1793.

The inception of the whole work in Dumas' mind, as he says, came to him while he was making research in the "Bibliotheque Royale" for his history of Louis XIV.

Thus from these beginnings grew up that series of romances which gave undying fame to Alexandre Dumas, and to the world of readers a series of characters and scenes a.s.sociated with the mediaeval history of France, which, before or since, have not been equalled.

Alexandre Dumas has been described as something of the soldier, the cook, and the traveller, more of the journalist, diplomatist, and poet, and, more than all else, the dramatist, romancer, and _raconteur_. He himself has said that he was a "veritable Wandering Jew of literature."

His versatility in no way comprised his abilities, and, while conceit and egoism played a not unimportant share in his make-up, his affability--when he so chose--caused him to be ranked highly in the estimation of his equals and contemporaries. By the cur-dogs, which always snap at the heels of a more splendid animal, he was not ranked so high.

Certain of these were for ever twitting him publicly of his creed, race, and foibles. It is recorded by Theodore de Bauville, in his "Odes," that one Jacquot hailed Dumas in the open street with a ribald jeer, when, calmly turning to his detractor, Dumas said, simply: "Hast thou dined to-day, Jacquot?" Then it was that this said Jacquot published the slanderous brochure, "_La Maison Dumas et Cie_," which has gone down as something considerable of a sensation in the annals of literary history; so much so, indeed, that most writers who have had occasion to refer to Dumas' literary career have apparently half-believed its accusations, which, truth to tell, may have had some bearing on "things as they were,"

had they but been put forward as a bit of temperate criticism rather than as a sweeping condemnation.

To give the reader an idea of the Dumas of 1840, one can scarcely do better than present his portrait as sketched by De Villemessant, the founder and brilliant editor of the _Figaro_, when Dumas was at the height of his glory, and a grasp of his hand was better than a touch of genius to those receiving it:

"At no time and among no people had it till then been granted to a writer to achieve fame in every direction; in serious drama and in comedy, and novels of adventure and of domestic interest, in humourous stories and in pathetic tales, Alexandre Dumas had been alike successful. The frequenters of the Theatre Francais owed him evenings of delight, but so did the general public as well. Dumas alone had had the power to touch, interest, or amuse, not only Paris or France, but the whole world. If all other novelists had been swallowed up in an earthquake, this one would have been able to supply the leading libraries of Europe. If all other dramatists had died, Alexandre Dumas could have occupied every stage; his magic name on a playbill or affixed to a newspaper _feuilleton_ ensured the sale of that issue or a full house at the theatre. He was king of the stage, prince of _feuilletonists_, _the_ literary man _par excellence_, in that Paris then so full of intellect. When he opened his lips the most eloquent held their breath to listen; when he entered a room the wit of man, the beauty of woman, the pride of life, grew dim in the radiance of his glory; he reigned over Paris in right of his sovereign intellect, the only monarch who for an entire century had understood how to draw to himself the adoration of all cla.s.ses of society, from the Faubourg St.

Germain to the Batignolles.

"Just as he united in himself capabilities of many kinds, so he displayed in his person the perfection of many races. From the negro he had derived the frizzled hair and those thick lips on which Europe had laid a delicate smile of ever-varying meaning; from the southern races he derived his vivacity of gesture and speech, from the northern his solid frame and broad shoulders and a figure which, while it showed no lack of French elegance, was powerful enough to have made green with envy the gentlemen of the Russian Life-Guards."

Dumas' energy and output were tremendous, as all know. It is recorded that on one occasion,--in the later years of his life, when, as was but natural, he had tired somewhat,--after a day at _la cha.s.se_, he withdrew to a cottage near by to rest until the others should rejoin him, after having finished their sport. This they did within a reasonably short time,--whether one hour or two is not stated with definiteness,--when they found him sitting before the fire "twirling his thumbs." On being interrogated, he replied that he had not been sitting there long; _in fact, he had just written the first act of a new play_.

The French journal, _La Revue_, tells the following incident, which sounds new. Some years before his death, Dumas had written a somewhat quaint letter to Napoleon III., apropos of a play which had been condemned by the French censor. In this epistle he commenced:

"SIRE:--In 1830, and, indeed, even to-day, there are three men at the head of French literature. These three men are Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and myself. Although I am the least of the three, the five continents have made me the most popular, probably because the one was a thinker, the other a dreamer, while I am merely a writer of commonplace tales."

This letter goes on to plead the cause of his play, and from this circ.u.mstance the censors.h.i.+p was afterward removed.

A story is told of an incident which occurred at a rehearsal of "Les Trois Mousquetaires" at the "Ambigu." This story is strangely reminiscent of another incident which happened at a rehearsal of Halevy's "Guido et Genevra," but it is still worth recounting here, if only to emphasize the indomitable energy and perspicacity of Dumas.

It appears that a _pompier_--that gaudy, glistening fireman who is always present at functions of all sorts on the continent of Europe--who was watching the rehearsal, was observed by Dumas to suddenly leave his point of vantage and retire. Dumas followed him and inquired his reason for withdrawing. "What made you go away?" Dumas asked of him. "Because that last act did not interest me so much as the others," was the answer.

Whereupon Dumas sent for the prompt-book and threw that portion relating to that particular tableau into the fire, and forthwith set about to rewrite it on the spot. "It does not amuse the _pompier_," said Dumas, "but I know what it wants." An hour and a half later, at the finish of the rehearsal, the actors were given their new words for the seventh tableau.

In spite of the varied success with which his plays met, Dumas was, we may say, first of all a dramatist, if construction of plot and the moving about of das.h.i.+ng and splendid figures counts for anything; and it most a.s.suredly does.

This very same qualification is what makes the romances so vivid and thrilling; and they do not falter either in accessory or fact.

The cloaks of his swashbucklering heroes are always the correct shade of scarlet; their rapiers, their swords, or their pistols are always rightly tuned, and their entrances and their exits correctly and most appropriately timed.

When his characters represent the poverty of a tatterdemalion, they do it with a sincerity that is inimitable, and the l.u.s.ty throatings of a D'Artagnan are never a hollow mockery of something they are not.

Dumas drew his characters of the stage and his personages of the romances with the brilliance and a.s.surance of a Velasquez, rather than with the finesse of a Praxiteles, and for that reason they live and introduce themselves as cosmopolitans, and are to be appreciated only as one studies or acquires something of the spirit from which they have been evolved.

Of Dumas' own uproarious good nature many have written. Albert Vandam tells of a certain occasion when he went to call upon the novelist at St.

Germain,--and he reckoned Dumas the most lovable and genial among all of his host of acquaintances in the great world of Paris,--that he overheard, as he was entering the study, "a loud burst of laughter." "I had sooner wait until monsieur's visitors are gone," said he. "Monsieur has no visitors," said the servant. "Monsieur often laughs like that at his work."

Dumas as a man of affairs or as a politician was not the success that he was in the world of letters. His activities were great, and his enthusiasm for any turn of affairs with which he allied himself remarkable; but, whether he was _en voyage_ on a whilom political mission, at work as "Director of Excavations" at Pompeii, or founding or conducting a new journal or a new playhouse, his talents were manifestly at a discount. In other words, he was singularly unfit for public life; he was not an organizer, nor had he executive ability, though he had not a little of the skill of prophecy and foresight as to many turns of fortune's wheel with respect to world power and the comity of nations.

Commenting upon the political state of Europe, he said: "Geographically, Prussia has the form of a serpent, and, like it, she appears to be asleep, in order to gain strength to swallow everything around her." All of his prophecy was not fulfilled, to be sure, but a huge slice was fed into her maw from out of the body of France, and, looking at things at a time fifty years ahead of that of which Dumas wrote,--that is, before the Franco-Prussian War,--it would seem as though the serpent's appet.i.te was still unsatisfied.

In 1847, when Dumas took upon himself to wish for a seat in the government, he besought the support of the const.i.tuency of the borough in which he had lived--St. Germain. But St. Germain denied it him--"on moral grounds." In the following year, when Louis-Philippe had abdicated, he made the attempt once again.

The republican const.i.tuency of Joigny challenged him with respect to his t.i.tle of Marquis de la Pailleterie, and his having been a secretary in the Orleans Bureau. The following is his reply--verbatim--as publicly delivered at a meeting of electors, and is given here as ill.u.s.trating well the earnestness and devotion to a code which many Puritan and prudish moralists have themselves often ignored:

"I was formerly called the Marquis de la Pailleterie, no doubt. It was my father's name, and one of which I was very proud, being then unable to claim a glorious one of my own make. But at present, when I am somebody, I call myself Alexandre Dumas, and nothing more; and every one knows me, yourselves among the rest--you, you absolute n.o.bodies, who have come here merely to boast, to-morrow, after having given me insult to-night, that you have known the great Dumas. If such were your avowed ambition, you could have satisfied it without having failed in the common courtesies of gentlemen. There is no doubt, either, about my having been a secretary to the Duc d'Orleans, and that I have received many favours from his family.

If you are ignorant of the meaning of the phrase, 'The memories of the heart,' allow me, at least, to proclaim loudly that I am not, and that I entertain toward this family of royal blood all the devotion of an honourable man."

That Dumas was ever accused of making use of the work of others, of borrowing ideas wherever he found them, and, indeed, of plagiarism itself,--which is the worst of all,--has been mentioned before, and the argument for or against is not intended to be continued here.