Alexandre Dumas is a writer, and his life is a topic, of which his
devotees never weary. Indeed, one lifetime is not long enough wherein to
tire of them. The long days and years of Hilpa and Shalum, in
Addison--the antediluvian age, when a picnic lasted for half a century
and a courtship for two hundred years, might have sufficed for an
exhaustive study of Dumas. No such study have I to offer, in the brief
seasons of our perishable days. I own that I have not read, and do not,
in the circumstances, expect to read, all of Dumas, nor even the greater
part of his thousand volumes. We only dip a cup in that sparkling
spring, and drink, and go on,--we cannot hope to exhaust the fountain,
nor to carry away with us the well itself. It is but a word of gratitude
and delight that we can say to the heroic and indomitable master, only an
_ave_ of friendship that we can call across the bourne to the shade of
the Porthos of fiction. That his works (his best works) should be even
still more widely circulated than they are; that the young should read
them, and learn frankness, kindness, generosity--should esteem the tender
heart, and the gay, invincible wit; that the old should read them again,
and find forgetfulness of trouble, and taste the anodyne of dreams, that
is what we desire.
Dumas said of himself ("Memoires," v. 13) that when he was young he tried
several times to read forbidden books--books that are sold _sous le
manteau_. But he never got farther than the tenth page, in the
"scrofulous French novel
On gray paper with blunt type;"
he never made his way so far as
"the woful sixteenth print."
"I had, thank God, a natural sentiment of delicacy; and thus, out of my
six hundred volumes (in 1852) there are not four which the most
scrupulous mother may not give to her daughter." Much later, in 1864,
when the _Censure_ threatened one of his plays, he wrote to the Emperor:
"Of my twelve hundred volumes there is not one which a girl in our most
modest quarter, the Faubourg Saint-Germain, may not be allowed to read."
The mothers of the Faubourg, and mothers in general, may not take Dumas
exactly at his word. There is a passage, for example, in the story of
Miladi ("Les Trois Mousquetaires") which a parent or guardian may well
think undesirable reading for youth. But compare it with the original
passage in the "Memoires" of D'Artagnan! It has passed through a medium,
as Dumas himself declared, of natural delicacy and good taste. 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.
Two anecdotes are told of Dumas' books, one by M. Edmond About, the other
by his own son, which show, in brief space, why this novelist is so
beloved, and why he deserves our affection and esteem. M. Villaud, a
railway engineer who had lived much in Italy, Russia, and Spain, was the
person whose enthusiasm finally secured a statue for Dumas. He felt so
much gratitude to the unknown friend of lonely nights in long exiles,
that he could not be happy till his gratitude found a permanent
expression. On returning to France he went to consult M. Victor Borie,
who told him this tale about George Sand. M. Borie chanced to visit the
famous novelist just before her death, and found Dumas' novel, "Les
Quarante Cinq" (one of the cycle about the Valois kings) lying on her
table. He expressed his wonder that she was reading it for the first
time.
"For the first time!--why, this is the fifth or sixth time I have read
'Les Quarante Cinq,' and the others. When I am ill, anxious, melancholy,
tired, discouraged, nothing helps me against moral or physical troubles
like a book of Dumas." Again, M. About says that M. Sarcey was in the
same class at school with a little Spanish boy. The child was homesick;
he could not eat, he could not sleep; he was almost in a decline.
"You want to see your mother?" said young Sarcey.
"No: she is dead."
"Your father, then?"
"No: he used to beat me."
"Your brothers and sisters?"
"I have none."
"Then why are you so eager to be back in Spain?"
"To finish a book I began in the holidays."
"And what was its name?"
"'Los Tres Mosqueteros'!"
He was homesick for "The Three Musketeers," and they cured him easily.
That is what Dumas does. He gives courage and life to old age, he charms
away the half-conscious _nostalgie_, the _Heimweh_, of childhood. We are
all homesick, in the dark days and black towns, for the land of blue
skies and brave adventures in forests, and in lonely inns, on the battle-
field, in the prison, on the desert isle. And then Dumas comes, and,
like Argive Helen, in Homer, he casts a drug into the wine, the drug
nepenthe, "that puts all evil out of mind." Does any one suppose that
when George Sand was old and tired, and near her death, she would have
found this anodyne, and this stimulant, in the novels of M. Tolstoi, M.
Dostoiefsky, M. Zola, or any of the "scientific" observers whom we are
actually requested to hail as the masters of a new art, the art of the
future? Would they make her laugh, as Chicot does? make her forget, as
Porthos, Athos, and Aramis do? take her away from the heavy, familiar
time, as the enchanter Dumas takes us? No; let it be enough for these
new authors to be industrious, keen, accurate, _precieux_, pitiful,
charitable, veracious; but give us high spirits now and then, a light
heart, a sharp sword, a fair wench, a good horse, or even that old Gascon
rouncy of D'Artagnan's. Like the good Lord James Douglas, we had liefer
hear the lark sing over moor and down, with Chicot, than listen to the
starved-mouse squeak in the _bouge_ of Therese Raquin, with M. Zola. Not
that there is not a place and an hour for him, and others like him; but
they are not, if you please, to have the whole world to themselves, and
all the time, and all the praise; they are not to turn the world into a
dissecting-room, time into tedium, and the laurels of Scott and Dumas
into crowns of nettles.
There is no complete life of Alexandre Dumas. The age has not produced
the intellectual athlete who can gird himself up for that labour. One of
the worst books that ever was written, if it can be said to be written,
is, I think, the English attempt at a biography of Dumas. Style,
grammar, taste, feeling, are all bad. The author does not so much write
a life as draw up an indictment. The spirit of his work is grudging,
sneering, contemptuous, and pitifully peddling. The great charge is that
Dumas was a humbug, that he was not the author of his own books, that his
books were written by "collaborators"--above all, by M. Maquet. There is
no doubt that Dumas had a regular system of collaboration, which he never
concealed. But whereas Dumas could turn out books that _live_, whoever
his assistants were, 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. He once asked his son to help him;
the younger Alexandre declined. "It is worth a thousand a year, and you
have only to make objections," the sire urged; but the son was not to be
tempted. Some excellent novelists of to-day would be much better if they
employed a friend to make objections. But, as a rule, the collaborator
did much more. Dumas' method, 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'etincelle_); and the story lived and moved.
It is true that he "took his own where he found it," like Molere and that
he took a good deal. In the gallery of an old country-house, on a wet
day, I came once on the "Memoires" of D'Artagnan, where they had lain
since the family bought them in Queen Anne's time. There were our old
friends the Musketeers, and there were many of their adventures, told at
great length and breadth. But how much more vivacious they are in Dumas!
M. About repeats a story of Dumas and his ways of work. He met the great
man at Marseilles, where, indeed, Alexandre chanced to be "on with the
new love" before being completely "off with the old." Dumas picked up M.
About, literally lifted him in his embrace, and carried him off to see a
play which he had written in three days. The play was a success; the
supper was prolonged till three in the morning; M. About was almost
asleep as he walked home, but Dumas was as fresh as if he had just got
out of bed. "Go to sleep, old man," he said: "I, who am only fifty-five,
have three _feuilletons_ to write, which must be posted to-morrow. If I
have time I shall knock up a little piece for Montigny--the idea is
running in my head." So next morning M. About saw the three
_feuilletons_ made up for the post, and another packet addressed to M.
Montigny: it was the play _L'Invitation a la Valse_, a chef-d'oeuvre!
Well, the material had been prepared for Dumas. M. About saw one of his
novels at Marseilles in the chrysalis. It was a stout copy-book full of
paper, composed by a practised hand, on the master's design. Dumas
copied out each little leaf on a big leaf of paper, _en y semant l'esprit
a pleines mains_. This was his method. As a rule, in collaboration, one
man does the work while the other looks on. Is it likely that Dumas
looked on? That was not the manner of Dumas. "Mirecourt and others," M.
About says, "have wept crocodile tears for the collaborators, the victims
of his glory and his talent. But it is difficult to lament over the
survivors (1884). The master neither took their money--for they are
rich, nor their fame--for they are celebrated, nor their merit--for they
had and still have plenty. And they never bewailed their fate: the
reverse! The proudest congratulate themselves on having been at so good
a school; and M. Auguste Maquet, the chief of them, speaks with real
reverence and affection of his great friend." And M. About writes "as
one who had taken the master red-handed, and in the act of
collaboration." Dumas has a curious note on collaboration in his
"Souvenirs Dramatiques." Of the two men at work together, "one is always
the dupe, and _he_ is the man of talent."
There is no biography of Dumas, but the small change of a biography
exists in abundance. There are the many volumes of his "Memoires," there
are all the tomes he wrote on his travels and adventures in Africa,
Spain, Italy, Russia; the book he wrote on his beasts; the romance of
_Ange Pitou_, partly autobiographical; and there are plenty of little
studies by people who knew him. As to his "Memoires," as to all he wrote
about himself, of course his imagination entered into the narrative. Like
Scott, when he had a good story he liked to dress it up with a cocked hat
and a sword. Did he perform all those astonishing and innumerable feats
of strength, skill, courage, address, in revolutions, in voyages, in
love, in war, in cookery? The narrative need not be taken "at the foot
of the letter"; great as was his force and his courage, his fancy was
greater still. There is no room for a biography of him here. His
descent was noble on one side, with or without the bend sinister, which
he said he would never have disclaimed, had it been his, but which he did
not happen to inherit. On the other side he _may_ have descended from
kings; but, as in the case of "The Fair Cuban," he must have added,
"African, unfortunately." Did his father perform these mythical feats of
strength? did he lift up a horse between his legs while clutching a
rafter with his hands? did he throw his regiment before him over a wall,
as Guy Heavistone threw the mare which refused the leap ("Memoires," i.
122)? No doubt Dumas believed what he heard about this ancestor--in
whom, perhaps, one may see a hint of the giant Porthos. In the
Revolution and in the wars his father won the name of Monsieur de
l'Humanite, because he made a bonfire of a guillotine; and of Horatius
Cocles, because he held a pass as bravely as the Roman "in the brave days
of old."
This was a father to be proud of; and pluck, tenderness, generosity,
strength, remained the favourite virtues of Dumas. These he preached and
practised. They say he was generous before he was just; it is to be
feared this was true, but he gave even more freely than he received. A
regiment of seedy people sponged on him always; he could not listen to a
tale of misery but he gave what he had, and sometimes left himself short
of a dinner. He could not even turn a dog out of doors. At his
Abbotsford, "Monte Cristo," the gates were open to everybody but
bailiffs. His dog asked other dogs to come and stay: twelve came, making
thirteen in all. The old butler wanted to turn them adrift, and Dumas
consented, and repented.
"Michel," he said, "there are some expenses which a man's social position
and the character which he has had the ill-luck to receive from heaven
force upon him. I don't believe these dogs ruin me. Let them bide! But,
in the interests of their own good luck, see they are not thirteen, an
unfortunate number!"
"Monsieur, I'll drive one of them away."
"No, no, Michel; let a fourteenth come. These dogs cost me some three
pounds a month," said Dumas. "A dinner to five or six friends would cost
thrice as much, and, when they went home, they would say my wine was
good, but certainly that my books were bad." In this fashion Dumas fared
royally "to the dogs," and his Abbotsford ruined him as certainly as that
other unhappy palace ruined Sir Walter. He, too, had his miscellaneous
kennel; he, too, gave while he had anything to give, and, when he had
nothing else, gave the work of his pen. Dumas tells how his big dog,
Mouton once flew at him and bit one of his hands, while the other held
the throat of the brute. "Luckily my hand, though small, is powerful;
what it once holds it holds long--money excepted." He could not "haud a
guid grip o' the gear." Neither Scott nor Dumas could shut his ears to a
prayer or his pockets to a beggar, or his doors on whoever knocked at
them.
"I might at least have asked him to dinner," Scott was heard murmuring,
when some insufferable bore at last left Abbotsford, after wasting his
time and nearly wearing out his patience. Neither man _preached_
socialism; both practised it on the Aristotelian principle: the goods of
friends are common, and men are our friends.
* * * * *
The death of Dumas' father, while the son was a child, left Madame Dumas
in great poverty at Villers Cotterets. Dumas' education was sadly to
seek. Like most children destined to be bookish, he taught himself to
read very young: in Buffon, the Bible, and books of mythology. He knew
all about Jupiter--like David Copperfield's Tom Jones, "a child's
Jupiter, an innocent creature"--all about every god, goddess, fawn,
dryad, nymph--and he never forgot this useful information. Dear
Lempriere, thou art superseded; but how much more delightful thou art
than the fastidious Smith or the learned Preller! Dumas had one volume
of the "Arabian Nights," with Aladdin's lamp therein, the sacred lamp
which he was to keep burning with a flame so brilliant and so steady. It
is pleasant to know that, in his boyhood, this great romancer loved
Virgil. "Little as is my Latin, I have ever adored Virgil: his
tenderness for exiles, his melancholy vision of death, his foreboding of
an unknown God, have always moved me; the melody of his verses charmed me
most, and they lull me still between asleep and awake." School days did
not last long: Madame Dumas got a little post--a licence to sell
tobacco--and at fifteen Dumas entered a notary's office, like his great
Scotch forerunner. He was ignorant of his vocation for the stage--Racine
and Corneille fatigued him prodigiously--till he saw _Hamlet_: _Hamlet_
diluted by Ducis. He had never heard of Shakespeare, but here was
something he could appreciate. Here was "a profound impression, full of
inexplicable emotion, vague desires, fleeting lights, that, so far, lit
up only a chaos."
Oddly enough, his earliest literary essay was the translation of Burger's
"Lenore." Here, again, he encounters Scott; but Scott translated the
ballad, and Dumas failed. _Les mortes vont vite_! the same refrain woke
poetry in both the Frenchman and the Scotchman.
"Ha! ha! the Dead can ride with speed:
Dost fear to ride with me?"
So Dumas' literary career began with a defeat, but it was always a
beginning. He had just failed with "Lenore," when Leuven asked him to
collaborate in a play. He was utterly ignorant, he says; he had not
succeeded in gallant efforts to read through "Gil Blas" and "Don
Quixote." "To my shame," he writes, "the man has not been more fortunate
with those masterpieces than the boy." He had not yet heard of Scott,
Cooper, Goethe; he had heard of Shakespeare only as a barbarian. Other
plays the boy wrote--failures, of course--and then Dumas poached his way
to Paris, shooting partridges on the road, and paying the hotel expenses
by his success in the chase. He was introduced to the great Talma: what
a moment for Talma, had he known it! He saw the theatres. He went home,
but returned to Paris, drew a small prize in a lottery, and sat next a
gentleman at the play, a gentleman who read the rarest of Elzevirs, "Le
Pastissier Francais," and gave him a little lecture on Elzevirs in
general. Soon this gentleman began to hiss the piece, and was turned
out. He was Charles Nodier, and one of the anonymous authors of the play
he was hissing! I own that this amusing chapter lacks verisimilitude. It
reads as if Dumas had chanced to "get up" the subject of Elzevirs, and
had fashioned his new knowledge into a little story. He could make a
story out of anything--he "turned all to favour and to prettiness." Could
I translate the whole passage, and print it here, it would be longer than
this article; but, ah, how much more entertaining! For whatever Dumas
did he did with such life, spirit, wit, he told it with such vivacity,
that his whole career is one long romance of the highest quality.
Lassagne told him he must read--must read Goethe, Scott, Cooper,
Froissart, Joinville, Brantome. He read them to some purpose. He
entered the service of the Duc d'Orleans as a clerk, for he wrote a clear
hand, and, happily, wrote at astonishing speed. He is said to have
written a short play in a cottage where he went to rest for an hour or
two after shooting all the morning. The practice in a notary's office
stood him, as it stood Scott, in good stead. When a dog bit his hand he
managed to write a volume without using his thumb. I have tried it, but
forbear--in mercy to the printers. He performed wild feats of rapid
caligraphy when a clerk under the Duc d'Orleans, and he wrote his plays
in one "hand," his novels in another. The "hand" used in his dramas he
acquired when, in days of poverty, he used to write in bed. To this
habit he also attributed the _brutalite_ of his earlier pieces, but there
seems to be no good reason why a man should write like a brute because it
is in bed that he writes.
In those days of small things he fought his first duel, and made a study
of Fear and Courage. His earliest impulse 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. In
dreams he was a coward, because, as he argues, the natural man _is_ a
poltroon, and conscience, honour, all the spiritual and commanding part
of our nature, goes to sleep in dreams. The animal terror asserts itself
unchecked. It is a theory not without exceptions. In dreams one has
plenty of conscience (at least that is my experience), though it usually
takes the form of remorse. And in dreams one often affronts dangers
which, in waking hours, one might probably avoid if one could.
* * * * *
Dumas' first play, an unimportant vaudeville, was acted in 1825. His
first novels were also published then; he took part of the risk, and only
four copies were sold. He afterward used the ideas in more mature works,
as Mr. Sheridan Le Fanu employed three or four times (with perfect
candour and fairness) the most curious incident in "Uncle Silas." Like
Mr. Arthur Pendennis, Dumas at this time wrote poetry "up to" pictures
and illustrations. It is easy, but seldom lucrative work. He translated
a play of Schiller's into French verse, chiefly to gain command of that
vehicle, for his heart was fixed on dramatic success. Then came the
visit of Kean and other English actors to Paris. He saw the true
_Hamlet_, and, for the first time on any stage, "the play of real
passions." Emulation woke in him: a casual work of art led him to the
story of Christina of Sweden, he wrote his play _Christine_ (afterward
reconstructed); he read it to Baron Taylor, who applauded; the Comedie
Francaise accepted it, but a series of intrigues disappointed him, after
all. His energy at this moment was extraordinary, for he was very poor,
his mother had a stroke of paralysis, his bureau was always bullying and
interfering with him. But nothing could snub this "force of nature," and
he immediately produced his _Henri Trois_, the first romantic drama of
France. This had an instant and noisy success, and the first night of
the play he spent at the theatre, and at the bedside of his unconscious
mother. The poor lady could not even understand whence the flowers came
that he laid on her couch, the flowers thrown to the young man--yesterday
unknown, and to-day the most famous of contemporary names. All this tale
of triumph, checkered by enmities and diversified by duels, Dumas tells
with the vigour and wit of his novels. He is his own hero, and loses
nothing in the process; but the other characters--Taylor, Nodier, the Duc
d'Orleans, the spiteful press-men, the crabbed old officials--all live
like the best of the persons in his tales. 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'
delight in himself and his doings is only the flower of his vigorous
existence, and in his "Memoires," 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 nothing incredible (if modern researches are accurate) in the
stories he tells of his own success in Hypnotism, as it is called now,
Mesmerism or Magnetism as it was called then. Who was likely to possess
these powers, if not this good-humoured natural force? "I believe that,
by aid of magnetism, a bad man might do much mischief. I doubt whether,
by help of magnetism, a good man can do the slightest good," he says,
probably with perfect justice. His dramatic success fired Victor Hugo,
and very pleasant it is to read Dumas' warm-hearted praise of that great
poet. Dumas had no jealousy--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 ignore, au genie inconnu, moi."
Genius he saluted wherever he met it, but was incredulous about invisible
and inaudible genius; and I own to sharing his scepticism. People who
complain of Dumas' vanity 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.
He was now struck, as he walked on the boulevard one day, by the first
idea of _Antony_--an idea which, to be fair, seems rather absurd than
tragic, to some tastes. "A lover, caught with a married woman, kills her
to save her character, and dies on the scaffold." Here is indeed a part
to tear a cat in!
* * * * *
The performances of M. Dumas during the Revolution of 1830, are they not
written in the Book of the Chronicles of Alexandre the Great? But they
were not literary excellences which he then displayed, and we may leave
this king-maker to hover, "like an eagle, above the storms of anarchy."
Even to sketch his later biography is beyond our province. In 1830 he
had forty years to run, and he filled the cup of the Hours to the brim
with activity and adventure. His career was one of unparalleled
production, punctuated by revolutions, voyages, exiles, and other
intervals of repose. The tales he tells of his prowess in 1830, and with
Garibaldi, seem credible to me, and are borne out, so far, by the
narrative of M. Maxime Ducamp, who met him at Naples, in the Garibaldian
camp. Like Mr. Jingle, in "Pickwick," he "banged the field-piece,
twanged the lyre," and was potting at the foes of the republic with a
double-barrelled gun, when he was not composing plays, romances, memoirs,
criticisms. He has told the tale of his adventures with the Comedie
Francaise, where the actors laughed at his _Antony_, and where Madame
Mars and he quarrelled and made it up again. His plays often won an
extravagant success; his novels--his great novels, that is--made all
Europe his friend. He gained large sums of money, which flowed out of
his fingers, though it is said by some that his Abbotsford, Monte Cristo,
was no more a palace than the villa which a retired tradesman builds to
shelter his old age. But the money disappeared as fast as if Monte
Cristo had really been palatial, and worthy of the fantasy of a Nero. He
got into debt, fled to Belgium, returned, founded the _Mousquetaire_, a
literary paper of the strangest and most shiftless kind. In "Alexandre
Dumas a la Maison d'Or," M. Philibert Audebrand tells the tale of this
Micawber of newspapers. Everything went into it, good or bad, and the
name of Dumas was expected to make all current coin. For Dumas,
unluckily, was as prodigal of his name as of his gold, and no reputation
could bear the drafts he made on his celebrity. His son says, in the
preface to _Le Fils Naturel_: "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 and prove the metal which 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."
The simile is noble and worthy of the Cyclopean craftsman, Dumas. His
great works endured; the plays which renewed the youth of the French
stage, the novels which Thackeray loved to praise, these remain, and we
trust they may always remain, to the delight of mankind and for the
sorrow of prigs.
* * * * *
So much has been written of Dumas' novels that criticism can hardly hope
to say more that is both new and true about them. It is acknowledged
that, in such a character as Henri III., Dumas made history live, as
magically as Scott revived the past in his Louis XI., or Balfour of
Burley. It is admitted that Dumas' good tales are told with a vigour and
life which rejoice the heart; that his narrative is never dull, never
stands still, but moves with a freedom of adventure which perhaps has no
parallel. He may fall short of the humour, the kindly wisdom, the genial
greatness of Sir Walter at his best, and he has not that supernatural
touch, that tragic grandeur, which Scott inherits from Homer and from
Shakespeare. In another Homeric quality, [Greek text], as Homer himself
calls it, in the "delight of battle" and the spirit of the fray, Scott
and Dumas are alike masters. Their fights and the fights in the
Icelandic sagas are the best that have ever been drawn by mortal man.
When swords are aloft, in siege or on the greensward, or in the midnight
chamber where an ambush is laid, Scott and Dumas are indeed themselves.
The steel rings, the bucklers clash, the parry and lunge pass and answer
too swift for the sight. If Dumas has not, as he certainly has not, the
noble philosophy and kindly knowledge of the heart which are Scott's, he
is far more swift, more witty, more diverting. He is not prolix, his
style is not involved, his dialogue is as rapid and keen as an assault at
arms. His favourite virtues and graces, we repeat it, are loyalty,
friendship, gaiety, generosity, courage, beauty, and strength. He is
himself the friend of the big, stupid, excellent Porthos; of Athos, the
noble and melancholy swordsman of sorrow; of D'Artagnan, the indomitable,
the trusty, the inexhaustible in resource; but his heart is never on the
side of the shifty Aramis, with all his beauty, dexterity, bravery, and
brilliance. The brave Bussy, and the chivalrous, the doomed La Mole, are
more dear to him; and if he embellishes their characters, giving them
charms and virtues that never were theirs, history loses nothing, and
romance and we are the gainers. In all he does, at his best, as in the
"Chevalier d'Harmenthal," he has movement, kindness, courage, and gaiety.
His philosophy of life is that old philosophy of the sagas and of Homer.
Let us enjoy the movement of the fray, the faces of fair women, the taste
of good wine; let us welcome life like a mistress, let us welcome death
like a friend, and with a jest--if death comes with honour.
Dumas is no pessimist. "Heaven has made but one drama for man--the
world," he writes, "and during these three thousand years mankind has
been hissing it." It is certain that, if a moral censorship could have
prevented it, this great drama of mortal passions would never have been
licensed, at all, never performed. But Dumas, for one, will not hiss it,
but applauds with all his might--a charmed spectator, a fortunate actor
in the eternal piece, where all the men and women are only players. You
hear his manly laughter, you hear his mighty hands approving, you see the
tears he sheds when he had "slain Porthos"--great tears like those of
Pantagruel.
* * * * *
His may not be the best, nor the ultimate philosophy, but it _is_ a
philosophy, and one of which we may some day feel the want. I read the
stilted criticisms, the pedantic carpings of some modern men who cannot
write their own language, and I gather that Dumas is out of date. There
is a new philosophy of doubts and delicacies, of dallyings and
refinements, of half-hearted lookers-on, desiring and fearing some new
order of the world. Dumas does not dally nor doubt: he takes his side,
he rushes into the smoke, he strikes his foe; but there is never an
unkind word on his lip, nor a grudging thought in his heart.
It may be said that Dumas is not a master of words and phrases, that he
is not a _raffine_ of expression, nor a jeweller of style. When I read
the maunderings, the stilted and staggering sentences, the hesitating
phrases, the far-sought 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, as in the reflections of his Chicot, as in all his dialogues. 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 before. 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. Speed, directness, lucidity are the
characteristics of Dumas' style, and they are exactly the characteristics
which his novels required. Scott often failed, his most loyal admirers
may admit, in these essentials; but it is rarely that Dumas fails, when
he is himself and at his best.
* * * * *
In spite of his heedless education, Dumas had true critical qualities,
and most admired the best things. We have already seen how he writes
about Shakespeare, Virgil, Goethe, Scott. But it may be less familiarly
known that this burly man-of-all-work, ignorant as he was of Greek, had a
true and keen appreciation of Homer. Dumas declares that he only thrice
criticised his contemporaries in an unfavourable sense, and as one
wishful to find fault. The victims were Casimir Delavigne, Scribe, and
Ponsard. On each occasion Dumas declares that, after reflecting, he saw
that he was moved by a little personal pique, not by a disinterested love
of art. He makes his confession with a rare nobility of candour; and yet
his review of Ponsard is worthy of him. M. Ponsard, who, like Dumas, was
no scholar, wrote a play styled _Ulysse_, and borrowed from the Odyssey.
Dumas follows Ponsard, Odyssey in hand, and while he proves that the
dramatist failed to understand Homer, proves that he himself was, in
essentials, a capable Homeric critic. Dumas understands that far-off
heroic age. He lives in its life and sympathises with its temper. Homer
and he are congenial; across the great gulf of time they exchange smiles
and a salute.
"Oh! ancient Homer, dear and good and noble, I am minded now and again to
leave all and translate thee--I, who have never a word of Greek--so empty
and so dismal are the versions men make of thee, in verse or in prose."
How Dumas came to divine Homer, as it were, through a language he knew
not, who shall say? He _did_ divine him by a natural sympathy of
excellence, and his chapters on the "Ulysse" of Ponsard are worth a
wilderness of notes by learned and most un-Homeric men. For, indeed, who
can be less like the heroic minstrel than the academic philologist?
This universality deserves note. The Homeric student who takes up a
volume of Dumas at random finds that he is not only Homeric naturally,
but that he really knows his Homer. What did he nor know? His rapidity
in reading must have been as remarkable as his pace with the pen. As M.
Blaze de Bury says: "Instinct, experience, memory were all his; he sees
at a glance, he compares in a flash, he understands without conscious
effort, he forgets nothing that he has read." The past and present are
photographed imperishably on his brain, he knows the manners of all ages
and all countries, the names of all the arms that men have used, all the
garments they have worn, all the dishes they have tasted, all the terms
of all professions, from swordsmanship to coach-building. Other authors
have to wait, and hunt for facts; nothing stops Dumas: he knows and
remembers everything. Hence his rapidity, his facility, his positive
delight in labour: hence it came that he might be heard, like Dickens,
laughing while he worked.
* * * * *
This is rather a eulogy than a criticism of Dumas. His faults are on the
surface, visible to all men. He was not only rapid, he was hasty, he was
inconsistent; his need of money as well as his love of work made him put
his hand to dozens of perishable things. A beginner, entering the forest
of Dumas' books, may fail to see the trees for the wood. He may be
counselled to select first the cycle of d'Artagnan--the "Musketeers,"
"Twenty Years After," and the "Vicomte de Bragelonne." Mr. Stevenson's
delightful essay on the last may have sent many readers to it; I confess
to preferring the youth of the "Musketeers" to their old age. Then there
is the cycle of the Valois, whereof the "Dame de Monsereau" is the
best--perhaps the best thing Dumas ever wrote. The "Tulipe Noire" is a
novel girls may read, as Thackeray said, with confidence. The "Chevalier
d'Harmenthal" is nearly (not quite) as good as "Quentin Durward." "Monte
Cristo" has the best beginning--and loses itself in the sands. The
novels on the Revolution are not among the most alluring: the famed
device "L. P. D." (_lilia pedibus destrue_) has the bad luck to suggest
"London Parcels Delivery." That is an accident, but the Revolution is in
itself too terrible and pitiful, and too near us (on both sides!) for
fiction.
On Dumas' faults it has been no pleasure to dwell. In a recent work I
find the Jesuit Le Moyne quoted, saying about Charles V.: "What need that
future ages should be made acquainted so religious an Emperor was not
always chaste!" The same reticence allures one in regard to so
delightful an author as Dumas. He who had enriched so many died poor; he
who had told of conquering France, died during the Terrible Year. But he
could forgive, could appreciate, the valour of an enemy. Of the Scotch
at Waterloo he writes: "It was not enough to kill them: we had to push
them down." Dead, they still stood "shoulder to shoulder." In the same
generous temper an English cavalry officer wrote home, after Waterloo,
that he would gladly have given the rest of his life to have served, on
that day, in our infantry or in the French cavalry. These are the
spirits that warm the heart, that make us all friends; and to the great,
the brave, the generous Dumas we cry, across the years and across the
tomb, our _Ave atque vale_!