His Components.
The life of Dumas is not only a monument of endeavour and success, it is
a sort of labyrinth as well. It abounds in pseudonyms and disguises, in
sudden and unexpected appearances and retreats as unexpected and sudden,
in scandals and in rumours, in mysteries and traps and ambuscades of
every kind. It pleased the great man to consider himself of more
importance than any and all of the crowd of collaborators whose ideas he
developed, whose raw material he wrought up into the achievement we know;
and he was given to take credit to himself not only for the success and
value of a particular work but for the whole thing--the work in its
quiddity, so to speak, and resolved into its original elements. On the
other hand, it pleased such painful creatures as MM. Querard and 'Eugene
de Mirecourt,' as it has since pleased Messrs. Hitchman and Fitzgerald to
consider the second- and third-rate literary persons whom Dumas
assimilated in such numbers as of greater interest and higher merit than
Dumas. To them the jackals were far nobler than the lion, and they
worked their hardest in the interest of the pack. It was their mission
to decompose and disintegrate the magnificent entity which M. Blaze de
Bury very happily nicknames 'Dumas-Legion,' and in the process not to
render his own unto Caesar but to take from him all that was Caesar's,
and divide it among the mannikins he had absorbed. And their work was in
its way well done; for have we not seen M. Brunetiere exulting in
agreement and talking of Dumas as one less than Eugene Sue and not much
bigger than Gaillardet? Of course the ultimate issue of the debate is
not doubtful. Dumas remains to the end a prodigy of force and industry,
a miracle of cleverness and accomplishment and ease, a type of generous
and abundant humanity, a great artist in many varieties of form, a prince
of talkers and story-tellers, one of the kings of the stage, a benefactor
of his epoch and his kind; while of those who assisted him in the
production of his immense achievement the most exist but as fractions of
the larger sum, and the others have utterly disappeared. 'Combien,' says
his son in that excellent page which serves to preface _le Fils
Naturel_--'combien parmi ceux qui devaient rester obscurs se sont
eclaires et chauffes a ta forge, et si l'heure des restitutions sonnait,
quel gain pour toi, rien qu'a reprendre ce que tu as donne et ce qu'on
t'a pris!' That is the true verdict of posterity, and he does well who
abides by it.
Himself.
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
specialty 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 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, 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. Whole crowds of men were named as the
real authors of his books and plays; but they were only readable when he
signed for them. His ideas were traced to a hundred originals; but they
had all seemed worthless till he took them in hand and developed them
according to their innate capacity. The French he wrote was popular, and
the style at his command was none of the loftiest, as his critics have
often been at pains to show; but he was for all that an artist at once
original and exemplary, with an incomparable instinct of selection, a
constructive faculty not equalled among the men of this century, an
understanding of what is right and what is wrong in art and a mastery of
his materials which in their way are not to be paralleled in the work of
Sir Walter himself. Like Napoleon, he was 'a natural force let loose';
and if he had done no more than achieve universal renown as the prince of
_raconteurs_ and a commanding position as a novelist wherever novels are
read he would still have done much. But he did a vast deal more. A
natural force, he wrought in the right direction, as natural forces must
and do. He amused the world for forty years and more; but he also
contributed something to the general sum of the world's artistic
experience and capacity, and his contribution is of permanent worth and
charm. He has left us stories which are models of the enchanting art of
narrative; and, with a definition good and comprehensive enough to
include all the best work which has been produced for the theatre from
AEschylus down to Augier, from the _Choephorae_ on to _le Gendre de M.
Poirier_, he has given us types of the romantic and the domestic drama,
which, new when he produced them, are even now not old, and which as
regards essentials have yet to be improved upon. The form and aim of the
modern drama, as we know it, have been often enough ascribed to the
ingenious author of _une Chaine_ and the _Verre d'Eau_; but they might
with much greater truth be ascribed to the author of _Antony_ and _la
Tour de Nesle_. Scribe invents and eludes where Dumas invents and dares.
The theory of Scribe is one of mere dexterity: his drama is a perpetual
_chasse-croise_ at the edge of a precipice, a dance of puppets among
swords that might but will not cut and eggs that might but will not
break; to him a situation is a kind of tight-rope to be crossed with ever
so much agility and an endless affectation of peril by all his characters
in turn: in fact, as M. Dumas _fils_ has said of him, he is 'le
Shakespeare des ombres chinoises.' The theory of Dumas is the very
antipodes of this. 'All I want,' he said in a memorable comparison
between himself and Victor Hugo, 'is four trestles, four boards, two
actors, and a passion'; and his good plays are a proof that in this he
spoke no more than the truth. Drama to him was so much emotion in
action. If he invented a situation he accepted its issues in their
entirety, and did his utmost to express from it all the passion it
contained. That he fails to reach the highest peaks of emotional effect
is no fault of his: to do that something more is needed than a perfect
method, something other than a great ambition and an absolute certainty
of touch; and Dumas was neither a Shakespeare nor an AEschylus--he was
not even an Augier. All the same, he has produced in _la Tour de Nesle_
a romantic play which M. Zola himself pronounces the ideal of the _genre_
and in _Antony_ an achievement in drawing-room tragedy which is out of
all questioning the first, and in the opinion of a critic so competent
and so keen as the master's son is probably the strongest, thing of its
kind in modern literature. On this latter play it were difficult, I
think, to bestow too much attention. It is touched, even tainted, with
the manner and the affectation of its epoch. But it is admirably
imagined and contrived; it is very daring, and it is very new; it deals
with the men and women of 1830, and--with due allowance for differences
of manners, ideal, and personal genius--it is in its essentials a play in
the same sense as _Othello_ and the _Trachiniae_ are plays in theirs. It
is the beginning, as I believe, not only of _les Lionnes Pauvres_ but of
_Therese Raquin_ and _la Glu_ as well: just as _la Tour de Nesle_ is the
beginning of _Patrie_ and _la Haine_.
At Least.
And if these greater and loftier pretensions be still contested; if the
theory of the gifted creature who wrote that the works of the master
wizard are 'like summer fruits brought forth abundantly in the full blaze
of sunshine, which do not keep'--if this preposterous fantasy be
generally accepted, there will yet be much in Dumas to venerate and love.
If _Antony_ were of no more account than an ephemeral burlesque; if _la
Reine Margot_ and the immortal trilogy of the Musketeers--that 'epic of
friendship'--were dead as morality and as literature alike; if it were
nothing to have re-cast the novel of adventure, formulated the modern
drama, and perfected the drama of incident; if to have sent all France to
the theatre to see in three dimensions those stories of Chicot, Edmond
Dantes, d'Artagnan, which it knew by heart from books were an achievement
within the reach of every scribbler who dabbles in letters; if all this
were true, and Dumas were merely a piece of human journalism, produced to-
day and gone to-morrow, there would still be enough of him to make his a
memorable name. He was a prodigy--of amiability, cleverness, energy,
daring, charm, industry--if he was nothing else. Gronow tells that he
has sat at table with Dumas and Brougham, and that Brougham, out-faced
and out-talked, was forced to quit the field. 'J'ai conserve,' says M.
Maxime du Camp, in his admirable _Souvenirs litteraires_, 'd'Alexandre
Dumas un souvenir ineffacable; malgre un certain laisser-aller qui tenait
a l'exuberance de sa nature, c'etait un homme _dont tous les sentiments
etaient eleves_. On a ete injuste pour lui; comme il avait enormement
d'esprit, on l'a accuse d'etre leger; comme il produisait avec une
facilite incroyable, on l'a accuse de gacher la besogne, et, comme il
etait prodigue, on l'a accuse de manquer de tenue. Ces reproches m'ont
toujours paru miserables.' This is much; but it is not nearly all. He
had, this independent witness goes on to note, 'une generosite naturelle
qui ne comptait jamais; il ressemblait a une corne d'abondance qui se
vide sans cesse dans les mains tendues; _la moitie_, _sinon plus_, _de
l'argent gagne par lui a ete donnee_.' That is true; and it is also true
that he gave at least as largely of himself--his prodigious temperament,
his generous gaiety, his big, manly heart, his turn for chivalry, his
gallant and delightful genius--as of his money. He was reputed a violent
and luxurious debauchee; and he mostly lived in an attic--(the worst room
in the house and therefore the only one he could call his own)--with a
camp-bed and the deal table at which he wrote. He passed for a
loud-mouthed idler; and during many years his daily average of work was
fourteen hours for months on end. 'Ivre de puissance,' says George Sand
of him, but 'foncierement bon.' They used to hear him laughing as he
wrote, and when he killed Porthos he did no more that day. It would have
been worth while to figure as one of the crowd of friends and parasites
who lived at rack and manger in his house, for the mere pleasure of
seeing him descend upon them from his toil of moving mountains and
sharing in that pleasing half-hour of talk which was his common
refreshment. After that he would return to the attic and the deal table,
and move more mountains. With intervals of travel, sport, adventure, and
what in France is called 'l'amour'--(it is strange, by the way, that he
was never a hero of Carlyle's)--he lived in this way more or less for
forty years or so; and when he left Paris for the last time he had but
two napoleons in his pocket. 'I had only one when I came here first,'
quoth he, 'and yet they call me a spendthrift.' That was his way; and
while the result is not for Dr. Smiles to chronicle, I for one persist in
regarding the spirit in which it was accepted as not less exemplary than
delightful.
His Monument.
On M. du Camp's authority there is a charming touch to add to his son's
description of him. 'Il me semble,' said the royal old prodigal in his
last illness, 'que je suis au sommet d'un monument qui tremble comme si
les fondations etaient assises sur le sable.' 'Sois en paix,' replied
the author of the _Demi-Monde_: 'le monument est bien bati, et la base
est solide.' He was right, as we know. It is good and fitting that
Dumas should have a monument in the Paris he amazed and delighted and
amused so long. But he could have done without one. In what language is
he not read? and where that he is read is he not loved? '_Exegi
monumentum_,' he might have said: 'and wherever romance is a necessary of
life, there shall you look for it, and not in vain.'