A force of nature
 The description
"une des forces de la nature" was applied by Jules Michelet, the French
historian, to his compatriot Alexandre Dumas, often titled Dumas père
to distinguish him from his son Dumas fils. Alexandre was born
just two centuries ago, on 24 July 1802, in the village of Villers-Cotterets,
at 5.30 in the morning, as he tells us in 'Mes mémoires', a massive work
of 10 volumes, which he wrote between 1852 and 1855.
Like his close acquaintance Victor Hugo, born in the same year, Dumas
was the son of a general, and owed many of his opportunities, as well
as some of his disappointments, to that fact. His family on his father's
side belonged to the lesser nobility, the family name being Davy de la
Pailleterie, but his grandmother was a Creole from Haiti. This mixed ancestry
was responsible for some of the strange quirks from which Alexandre suffered,
and sometimes brought him ridicule from critics.
In Villers-Cotterets, in the centre of an enormous royal forest, the
young Dumas, living after 1806 with his widowed mother, was allowed to
run wild, hunting and shooting, aided and abetted by the forest superintendent,
a close relative of the family. He spent some time at the village school,
under the Abbé Grégoire, and tells us that his favourite reading was Buffon's
natural history, Robinson Crusoe, the Arabian Nights and the Bible.
An attempt to apprentice him to Maitre Mennesson, the local solicitor,
and later to another lawyer, Monsieur Lefèvre, failed, and with one of
his fellow clerks Dumas made a surreptitious trip to Paris. There he came
under the influence of an exiled Swede, Adolphe de Leuven, a young man
whose influence was crucial to Alexandre's future development. That was
the beginning of his unbridled literary ambition.
However, the need for pocket money led Dumas to make contact with his
father's former military associates. One of them was so impressed with
his handwriting that he used his influence to get the lad a clerking post
for the Duc d'Orléans. Although those at the Palais Royal, including the
Duke, treated him with sympathy, Alexandre's leisure compositions gradually
took over his entire life. He mixed with other litterateurs in
Paris, and at first wrote several successful plays. Then, in collaboration
with August Maquet, an indefatigable searcher-out of historical minutiae,
his attention turned to novels based on historical situations.
The great turning point came with 'Les trois mousquetaires' in 1844,
followed by 'Le Conte de Monte-Cristo' the following year. On these and
their sequels, 'Cinq ans après' and 'Le Viconte de Bragelonne', Dumas's
popularity with the reading public was assured, but he also left a vast
legacy of other quasi-historical works, and he laboured incessantly and
at all hours of the day and night.
He took great interest in the use of poisons in history and studied
the records of the Borgias and other poison adepts. This interest stemmed
from his early years in Paris, when he accompanied his young doctor friend
Thibaut to the Charité Hospital's dissecting rooms, and with him studied
physics and chemistry in the evenings.
Dumas contrasted himself with his namesake J. B. Dumas the chemist,
remarking that the chemist was known as "Dumas the savant", whereas he
was "Dumas the ignorant".
Dumas records a strange incident during an 1832 cholera epidemic, when
he contracted the infection and collapsed. By sheer accident he came across
half a bottle of ether on a table, consumed it, and was restored overnight
after massage with a warming pan by his servants.
Alexandre was a great adventurer, whose contacts with politicians brought
him trouble. He travelled all over Europe and had to seek refuge for two
years in Brussels. He gave active assistance to Garibaldi in Italy.
He was a great bon-viveur, wrapped up in the social scandals of the
Paris theatre world. He was a celebrated cook, and was preyed upon all
his life by parasites who flocked about his establishments.
His lavish spending kept him constantly in debt, despite his large revenue,
and when he died on 28 November 1870, taking refuge from the Prussian
invaders in the house of his son in Puys near Dieppe, he was penniless.
But he will always enjoy his reputation as "une des forces de la nature".
Back to Top
|
