Alexandre Dumas _père_, the great French novelist and
dramatist, who here tells the story of his youth, was born on
July 24, 1802, and died on December 5, 1870. He was a man of
prodigious vitality, virility, and invention; abounding in
enjoyment, gaiety, vanity, and kindness; the richness, force,
and celerity of his nature was amazing. In regard to this
peculiar vivacity of his, it is interesting to remember that
one of his grandparents was a full-blooded negress. Dumas'
literary work is essentially romantic; his themes are courage,
loyalty, honour, love, pageantry, and adventure; he belongs to
the tradition of Scott and Schiller, but as a story-teller
excels every other. His plays and novels are both very
numerous; the "OEuvres Complètes," published between 1860 and
1884, fill 277 volumes. Probably "Monte Cristo" and "The Three
Musketeers" are the most famous of his stories. He was an
untiring and exceedingly rapid worker, a great collaborator
employing many assistants, and was also a shameless
plagiarist; but he succeeded in impressing his own quality on
all that he published. Besides plays and novels there are
several books of travel. His son, Alexandre, was born in 1824.
The "Memoirs," published in 1852, which are here followed
through their author's struggles to his triumph, may be the
work of the novelist as well as of the chronicler, but they
give a most convincing impression of his courageous and
brilliant youth, fired equally by art and by ambition.
_I.--Memories of Boyhood_
I was born on July 24, 1802, at Villers-Cotterets, a little town of the
Department of Aisne, on the road from Laon to Paris, so that, writing
now in 1847, I am forty-five years old. My father was the republican
general, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie, and I still use
this patronymic in signing official documents. It came from my
grandfather, marquis of that name, who sold his properties in France,
and settled down in 1760 on vast estates in San Domingo. There, in 1762,
my father was born; his mother, Louise-Cessette Dumas, died in 1772; and
in 1780, when my father was eighteen, the West Indian estates were
leased, and the marquis returned to his native country.
My father spent the next years among the youth of the great families of
that period. His handsome features--all the more striking for the dark
complexion of a mulatto--his prodigious physical strength, his elegant
creole figure, with hands and feet as small as a woman's, his unrivalled
skill in bodily exercises, and especially in fencing and horsemanship,
all marked him out as one born for adventures. The spirit of adventure
was there, too. Assuming the name of Dumas because his father objected
to the family name being dragged through the ranks, he enlisted as a
private in a regiment of dragoons in 1786, at the age of twenty-four.
Quartered at Villers-Cotterets in 1790, he met my mother,
Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Labouret, whom he married two years later. Their
children were one daughter, and then myself. The marquis had died in
1786.
My memory goes back to 1805, when I was three, and to the little country
house, Les Fosses, we lived in. I remember a journey to Paris in the
same year, and the death of my father in 1806. Then my mother, sister,
and I, left in poverty, went to live with grandfather and grandmother
Labouret. Here, in gardens full of shady trees and gorgeous blossoms, I
spent those happy days when hope extends hardly further than to-morrow,
and memory hardly further than yesterday; storing my mind with classical
mythology and Bible stories, the "Arabian Nights," the natural history
of Buffon, and the geography of "Robinson Crusoe."
Then came my tenth year and the age for school. It was decided that I
should go to the seminary and be educated for a priest; but I settled
that matter by running away and living for three days in the hut of a
friendly bird-catcher in the woods. So I passed instead into our little
school of the Abbé Grégoire--a just and good man, of whom I learned
little but to love him; and from another parish priest, an uncle of
mine, a few miles away, I gained a passion for shooting the hares and
partridges with which our country swarmed.
But while I was living in twelve-year-old joys and sorrows, the enemy
was marching on French soil, and all confidence in Napoleon's star had
vanished. God had forsaken him. A retreating wave of our army swept over
the countryside, followed by alien forces. We lived in the midst of
fighting and alarms, and my mother and her friends worked like sisters
of charity. There followed Bonaparte's exile in Elba, and then the
astonishing report that he had landed near Cannes, and was marching on
Paris. He reached the Tuileries on March 20, 1815; in May, his troops
were marching through our town on their way to Waterloo, glory, and the
grave. I saw him passing in his carriage, his face, pale and sickly,
leaning forward, chin on breast. He raised his head, and glanced around.
"Where are we?"
"At Villers-Cotterets, sire."
"Forward! Faster!" he cried, and fell back into his lethargy. Whips
cracked, and the gigantic vision had passed. That was June 11--Waterloo
was the 18th. On the 20th, three or four hours after the first doubtful
rumour had reached us, a carriage drew up to change horses. There was
the same inert figure, and the same question and answer. The team broke
into a gallop, and the fallen Napoleon was gone. Soon all went on in the
ordinary way, and in our little town, isolated in the midst of its
forest, one might have thought no changes had taken place; people had
had an evil dream--that was all.
My memories of this period are chiefly memories of the woods--shooting
parties, now and then a wolf or boar hunt, often a poaching adventure
with a friend. But at fifteen years of age I was placed in a notary's
office; at sixteen I learned to love, and shortly afterwards I saw
"Hamlet" played by a touring company. It made a profound impression on
me, awakening vast, aimless desires, strange gleams of mystery. A friend
of mine, Adolphe de Leuven, himself an ardent versifier, guided me to a
first sense of my vocation, and together we set to work as playwrights.
Adolphe and his father went up to live in Paris, and our plays were
submitted everywhere in vain. My ardour for the great city grew daily
until it became irresistible; and at length, in the temporary absence of
my notary, I made a three days' escape with a friend, saw Talma act, and
was even introduced to him by Adolphe. His playing opened a new world to
me, and the great man playfully foretold my destiny.
As one enchanted, I returned to the office, accepted my employers'
rebuke as a dismissal, and went home. I was without a penny, but was
immediately visited by a wonderful run of fortune. Among other strokes
of luck, I sold my rascal dog for $25 to an infatuated Englishman, and
won six hundred glasses of absinthe at a single game of billiards from
the proprietor of the Paris coach, commuting them for a dozen free
passages. I said good-bye to the dear mother and the saintly _abbé_, and
found myself early on a May morning at Adolphe's door. I had come to try
my fortune with my father's brothers-at-arms.
Of course, there were bitter disappointments, and when I called on
General Foy he was my last hope. Alas! did I know this subject, or that,
or that? My answer was always "No." But the general would at least keep
my address; and no sooner had I written it down than he cried aloud that
we were saved! It appeared that I had a good writing, and the Duke of
Orleans needed another copyist in his office. The next morning I was
engaged at a salary of twelve hundred francs. I came home for three days
with my mother, and on the advice of the bird-catcher took a ticket at
the lottery, which brought me 146 francs. And so, with a few bits of
furniture from home, I took up my lodging in a Parisian garret.
_II.--Launched in Paris_
Now began a life of daily work at the office, with agreeable companions,
and of evenings spent at the theatre or in study. On the first night I
went to the Porte-Sainte-Martin Theatre, where a melodrama, "The
Vampire," was presented, and fell into conversation with my neighbour, a
man of about forty, of fascinating discourse, who was inordinately
impatient with the piece, and was at last turned out of the theatre for
his expressions of disapproval. His talk, far more interesting than the
play, turned on rare editions of old books, on the sylphs, gnomes,
Undines of the invisible world, on microscopic creatures he had himself
discovered, and on vampires he had seen in Illyria. I learned next day
that this was the celebrated author and bibliophile, Charles Nodier,
himself one of the anonymous authors of the play he so vilified.
Lassagne, a genial colleague in the office, not only put me in the way
of doing my work, which I quickly picked up, but was good enough also to
guide my reading, for I was deplorably ignorant. In those days Scribe
was the great dramatist, producing innumerable clever plots of intrigue,
modelled on no natural society, but on a society all his own, composed
almost exclusively of colonels, young widows, old soldiers, and faithful
servants. No one had ever seen such widows and colonels, never soldiers
spoke as these did, never were servants so devoted; yet this society of
Scribe's was all the fashion.
The men most highly placed in literature at the time when I came to
Paris were MM. de Chateaubriand, Jouy, Lemercier, Arnault, Etienne,
Baour-Lormian, Béranger, Charles Nodier, Viennet Scribe, Théaulon,
Soumet, Casimir Delavigne, Lucien Arnault, Ancelot, Lamartine, Victor
Hugo, Désaugiers, and Alfred de Vigny. After them came names half
literary, half political, such as MM. Cousin, Salvandy, Yillemain,
Thiers, Augustin Thierry, Michelet, Mignet, Vitet, Cavé, Mérimée, and
Guizot. Others, who were not yet known, but were coming forward, were
Balzac, Soulié, De Musset, Sainte-Beuve, Auguste Barbier, Alphonse Karr,
Théophile Gautier. Madame Sand was not known until her "Indiana," in
1828. I knew all this constellation, some of them as friends and
supporters, others as enemies.
In December, 1823, Talma made perhaps the greatest success of his life
in Delavigne's "L'Ecole des Vieillards," in which his power of
modulating his voice to the various emotions of old age was superbly
shown. But Talma was never content with his triumphs; he awaited eagerly
the rise of a new drama; and when I confided to him my ambitions, he
would urge me to be quick and succeed within his day. Art was all that
he lived for. How wonderful a thing is art, more faithful than a friend
or lover!
On the first day of 1824 I rose to be a regular clerk at 1,500 francs,
and determined to bring up my mother from the country. It was now nine
months since I had seen her. So she sold her tobacco shop and came up to
Paris with a little furniture and a hundred louis. We were both very
glad to be united, though she was anxious about my future.
I had by this time learned my ignorance of much that was necessary to my
success as a dramatist, and began to devote every hour of my leisure to
study, attending the theatre as often as I could get a pass. A young
medical man named Thibaut helped me much in my education; he took me to
the hospital, where I picked up a knowledge of medicine and surgery
which has repeatedly done service in my novels, and I learned from him
the actions of poisons, such as I have used in "Monte Cristo."
I read also under the guidance of Lassagne, beginning with "Ivanhoe," in
which the pictures of mediæval life cleared the clouds from my vision
and gave me a far wider horizon. Next the vast forests, prairies, and
oceans of Cooper held me; and then I came to Byron, who died in Greece
at the very time when I was entering on my apprenticeship to poetry. The
romantic movement in France was beginning to invade literature and the
drama, but its expression was still most evident in the younger
painters.
My mother's little capital only lasted eighteen months, and I found
myself forced to supplement my salary by other work. I had until now
collaborated with Adolphe, but all in vain, and we now determined to
associate Ph. Rousseau with our efforts. The three of us together
quickly produced a vaudeville in twenty-one scenes, "La Chasse et
l'Amour," of which I wrote the first seven scenes, Adolphe the second
seven, and Rousseau the conclusion. The piece was rejected at the
Gymnase, but accepted at the Ambigu; and my share of the profits came to
six francs a night.
A.M. Porcher, who always had a pleasant welcome and an open purse for a
literary man, lent me 300 francs on the security of my receipts, and
with that money I printed a volume of three stories under the title of
"Nouvelles Contemporaines," of which, however, only four copies were
sold. But the next adventure was more profitable. A play, by Lassagne
and myself, "La Noce et l'Enterrement," was presented at the
Porte-Sainte-Martin in November 1826, and brought me eight francs a
night for forty nights.
_III.--Under Shakespeare's Spell_
As recently as 1822 an English theatrical company, which had opened at
the Porte-Sainte-Martin Theatre, had been hissed and pelted off the
stage for offering the dramas of the barbaric Shakespeare. But when, in
September 1827, another English company brought Shakespeare's plays to
the Odéon, this contempt for English literature had changed to ardent
admiration--so quickly had the mind of Paris broadened. Shakespeare had
been translated by Guizot, and everyone had read Scott, Cooper, and
Byron.
The English season was opened by Sheridan's "Rivals," followed by
Allingham's "Fortune's Freak." Then came "Hamlet," which infinitely
surpassed all my expectations. Kemble's Hamlet was amazing, and Miss
Smithson's Ophelia adorable. From that very night, but not before, I
knew what the theatre was. I had seen for the first time real men and
women, of flesh and blood, moved by real passions. I understood Talma's
continual lament, his incessant desire for plays which should show him,
not as a hero only, but also as a man. "Romeo and Juliet," "Othello,"
and all the other masterpieces followed. Then, in their turn, Macready
and Kean appeared in Paris.
I knew now that everything in the world of drama derives from
Shakespeare, as everything in the natural world depends on the sun; I
knew that, after God, Shakespeare was the great creator. And from the
night when I had first seen, in these English players, men on the stage
forgetful of the stage, and revealing themselves, by natural eloquence
and manner, as God's creatures, with all their good and evil, their
passions and weaknesses, from that night my vocation was irrevocable. A
new confidence was given me, and I boldly adventured on the future.
Besides observing mankind, I entered with redoubled zest upon the
dissection and study of the words of the great dramatists.
My attention had been turned to the story of Christine and the murder of
Monaldeschi by an exquisite little bas-relief in the Salon; and reading
up the history in the biographical dictionary, I saw that it held the
possibility of a tremendous drama. The subject haunted my mind
continually, and soon my "Christine" came into life and was written. But
Talma was dead; I had now no friend at the theatre; and I cast about me
in vain for the means of getting my play produced.
Baron Taylor was at this time the official charged with the acceptance
or rejection of plays, and Charles Nodier, so Lassagne informed me, was
on intimate terms with him. Lassagne suggested that I should write to
Nodier, reminding him of our chat on the night of "The Vampire," and
asking for an introduction to the Baron. I did so, and the reply came
from Baron Taylor himself, offering me an interview at seven in the
morning.
At the appointed time, my heart beating fast, I rang the bell of his
flat, and as I waited for someone to come, I wondered at a strange noise
that was going on within--a deep, monotonous recitation, interrupted by
occasional explosions of rage in a higher voice. I rang for the third
time, and as a door opened within, the mysterious sounds doubled in
volume. Then the outer door opened, and the Baron's old servant hurried
me in. "Come in, sir," she said, "come in; the Baron is longing for you
to come!" I found Baron Taylor in his bath, and beside him a playwright
reading a tragedy. The fellow had insisted on entering, had caught the
examiner of plays in his bath, and was inflicting on him a play of over
two thousand lines! Undaunted by the Baron's rage, and unmoved by my
arrival, he proceeded with his reading, while I waited in the bedroom.
When Baron Taylor at last came in and got into bed, he was shivering
with cold, and I proposed to put off my reading; but he would not hear
of it, and trembling, I began my play. At the end of each act the Baron
himself asked for the next, and when it was finished he leapt from bed
and called for his clothes that he might go and arrange for an immediate
hearing before the committee at the Français.
And so a special meeting was called, and I read "Christine" to a
gathering of the greatest actors and actresses of the time, all fully
dressed as if for a dance. I have rarely seen a play meet with so great
a success at this ordeal; I was off my head with pleasure; the play was
accepted by acclamation. I ran home to our rooms to tell my mother the
great news of this great day, April 30, 1828, and then back to the
office to copy out a heap of papers.
"Christine" was not, however, produced at this time. Another play on the
same subject, written by a M. Brault, had also been accepted by the
committee, and its author was suffering from an illness from which it
was impossible that he should recover. Under these circumstances it was
felt right to present the dying man's play while he was able to see it,
and I willingly acceded to the requests, made by his son and friends,
that my work should stand aside.
_IV.--Dumas Arrives_
But now, by a happy chance, in a book that lay open on a table in the
office, I came across the suggestions for my "Henry III."; and as soon
as the plot had grown clear in my mind, I wrote the play in a couple of
months. I was only twenty-five, and this was only my second play; yet it
is as well constructed as any of the fifty which I have since written.
Béranger, the great poet of democracy, and a man at that time of
unrivalled influence, was present at a private reading of "Henry III.,"
and foretold its great success. The official reading was on September
17, 1828, when the play was accepted by acclamation, and the parts were
cast. But my good fortune had not got into the papers, and this, as well
as my frequent absences at the theatre, had done me no good at the
office. So I was sent for one morning by M. de Broval, the
director-general, and was given, in set terms, my choice between my
situation as a clerk and my literary career. Only one choice was now
possible, and from that very day my salary ceased.
The year 1829 was that in which my position was made and my future
assured. But it opened with a great sorrow. I was one day at the theatre
when a messenger ran in to tell me that my mother had fallen ill. I sent
for a doctor, hurried to her side, and found that she was unable to
speak, and that one side of her body was totally paralysed. My sister
was soon with us, having come up to town for the first night of the
play. My state of mind during the following days may be imagined, under
the dreadful affliction of seeing my mother dying, and under the
enormous burden of producing my first play.
On the day before the presentation of "Henry III.," I went to the
palace, sent in my name to the Duke of Orleans, and boldly asked him the
favour, or, rather, the act of justice, that he would be present at the
theatre on the first night. I pointed out to him that he had given ear
to those who had charged me with vanity and willfulness, and begged him
to come and hear the verdict of the public. When his Highness told me
that he could not come, because he had over a score of princes and
princesses dining with him on that night, I suggested that he should
bring them too. And so it was arranged.
February 11, so long awaited, dawned at last, and I spent the whole day
until evening with my mother. I had given an order for the play to every
one of my old colleagues at the office; I had a tiny stage-box; my
sister had a box in which she entertained Boulanger, De Vigny, and
Victor Hugo; every other place in the theatre was sold. The circle was
gorgeous with princes decorated with their orders, and the boxes with
the nobility, the ladies all glittering with diamonds.
The curtain went up. I have never felt anything to compare with the cool
breath of air from the stage, which fanned my heated brow. The first act
was received sympathetically, and was followed by applause, and I seized
the interval to run and see my mother. The second act passed without
disapproval. The third, I knew, would mean success or disaster. It
called forth cries of fear, but also thunders of applause; never before
had they seen a dramatic situation so realistically, I had almost said
so brutally, presented. Again I visited my mother; how I wished she
could have been there! Then came the fourth and fifth acts, which were
received by a tumultuous frenzy of delight; and when the author's name
was called, the Duke of Orleans himself stood up to honour it.
The days of struggle were over, the triumph had come. Utterly unknown
that evening, I was next morning the talk of Paris. They little knew
that I had spent the night on the floor, by the bed of my dying mother.
* * * * *