en-Laye. This place, called Monte-Cristo, was governed by a crowd of hangers-on of both sexes, who absorbed Dumas’s large earnings and left him penniless. Dumas also founded the Théâtre Historique chiefly for the performance of his own works. The enterprise was under the patronage of the duc de Montpensier, and was under the management of Hippolyte Hostein, who had been the secretary of the Comédie Française. The theatre was opened in February 1847 with a dramatic version of La Reine Margot. Meanwhile Dumas had been the guest of the duc de Montpensier at Madrid, and made a quasi-official tour to Algeria and Tunis in a government vessel, which caused much comment in the press. Dumas had never changed his republican opinions. He greeted the revolution of 1848 with delight, and was even a candidate for electoral honours in the department of the Yonne. But the change was fatal to his theatrical enterprise, for the failure of which in 1850 he was made financially responsible. His son, Alexandre Dumas, was at that time living with his mother Mlle Labay, who was eventually reconciled with the elder Dumas. Father and son, though always on affectionate terms when they met, were too different in their ideas to see much of one another. After the coup d’état of 1851 Dumas crossed the frontier to Brussels, and two years of rapid production, and the economy of his secretary, Noël Parfait, restored something like order to his affairs. On his return to Paris in the end of 1853 he established a daily paper, Le Mousquetaire, for the criticism of art and letters. It was chiefly written by Dumas, whose Mémoires first appeared in it, and survived until 1857, when it was succeeded by a weekly paper, the Monte-Cristo (1857–1860). In 1858 Dumas travelled through Russia to the Caucasus, and in 1860 he joined Garibaldi in Sicily. After an expedition to Marseilles in search of arms for the insurgents, he returned to Naples, where Garibaldi nominated him keeper of the museums. After four years’ residence in Naples he returned to Paris, and after the war of ’66 he visited the battlefields and produced his story of La Terreur prussienne. But his powers were beginning to fail, and in spite of the 1200 volumes which he told Napoleon he had written, he was at the mercy of his creditors, and of the succession of theatrical ladies who tyrannized over him and feared nothing except the occasional visits of Dumas fils. He was finally rescued from these by his daughter, Mme Petel, who came to live with him in 1868; and two years later, on the 5th of December 1870, he died in his son’s house at Puys, near Dieppe.
Dumas was never an actual candidate for academic honours, but he had more than once taken steps to investigate his chances of success. A statue of him was erected on the Place Malesherbes, Paris, in 1883, and the figure of d’Artagnan finds a place on the pedestal.
Auguste Maquet was Dumas’s chief collaborator. Others were Paul Lacroix (the bibliophile “P. L. Jacob”), Paul Bocage, J. P. Mallefille and P. A. Fiorentino. The novels of Dumas may be conveniently arranged in a historical sequence. The Valois novels and the musqueteers series brought French history down to 1672. Contributions to later history are:—La Dame de volupté (2 vols., 1864), being the memoirs of Mme de Luynes, and its sequel Les Deux Reines (2 vols., 1864); La Tulipe noire (3 vols., 1850), giving the history of the brothers de Witt; Le Chevalier d’Harmental (4 vols., 1853), and Une Fille du régent (4 vols., 1845), the story of two plots against the regent, the duke of Orleans; two books on Mme du Deffand, Mémoires d’une aveugle (8 vols., 1856–1857) and Les Confessions de la marquise (8 vols., 1857), both of doubtful authorship; Olympe de Clèves (9 vols., 1852), the story of an actress and a young Jesuit novice in the reign of Louis XV., one of his most popular novels; five books on the beginning of the Revolution down to the execution of Marie Antoinette: the Mémoires d’un médecin, including Joseph Balsamo (19 pts., 1846–1848), in which J. J. Rousseau, Mme du Barry and the dauphiness Marie Antoinette figure, with its sequels; Le Collier de la reine (9 vols., 1849–1850), in which Balsamo appears under the alias of Cagliostro; Ange Pitou (8 vols., 1852), known in English as “The Taking of the Bastille”; La Comtesse de Charny (19 vols., 1853–1855), describing the attempts to save the monarchy and the flight to Varennes; and Le Chevalier de maison rouge (6 vols., 1846), which opens in 1793 with the hero’s attempt to save the queen. Among the numerous novels dealing with the later revolutionary period are:—Les Blancs et les bleus (3 vols., 1868) and Les Compagnons de Jéhu (7 vols., 1857). Les Louves de Machecoul (10 vols., 1859) deals with the rising in 1832 in La Vendée. Other famous stories are:—Les Frères corses (2 vols., 1845); La Femme au collier de velours (2 vols., 1851); Les Mohicans de Paris (19 vols., 1854–1855), detective stories with which may be classed the series of Crimes célèbres (8 vols., 1839–1841), which are, however, of doubtful authorship; La San Félice (9 vols., 1864–1865), in which Lady Hamilton played a prominent part, with its sequels Emma Lyonna and Souvenirs d’une favorite. Of his numerous historical works other than fiction the most important is his Louis XIV et son siècle (4 vols., 1845). Mes Mémoires (20 vols., 1852–1854; Eng. trans. of selections by A. F. Davidson, 2 vols., 1891) is an account of his father and of his own life down to 1832. There are collective editions of his plays (6 vols., 1834–1836, and 15 vols., 1863–1874), but of the 91 pieces for which he was wholly or partially responsible, 24 do not appear in these collections.
The complete works of Dumas were issued by Michel Lévy frères in 277 volumes (1860–1884). The more important novels have been frequently translated into English. There is a long list of writings on his life and his works both in English and French. The more important French authorities are: his own memoirs, already cited; C. Glinel, Alexandre Dumas et son œuvre (Reims, 1884); H. Parigot, Dumas père (Grands écrivains français series, 1902), and Le Drame d’Alexandre Dumas (1899); H. Blaze de Bury, Alexandre Dumas (1885); Philibert Andebrand, Alexandre Dumas à la maison d’or (1888); G. Ferry, Dernières Années d’Alexandre Dumas (1883); and L. H. Lecomte, Alexandre Dumas (1904). Of the English lives of Dumas perhaps the best is that by Arthur F. Davidson, Alexandre Dumas Père, his Life and Works (1902), which contains an extensive bibliography. See also lives by P. Fitzgerald (2 vols., 1873) and H. A. Spurr (1902), and essays by Andrew Lang (Letters to Dead Authors), Brander Matthews (French Dramatists), R. L. Stevenson (Memories and Portraits). (M. Br.)
DUMAS, ALEXANDRE [”Dumas Fils”] (1824–1895), French dramatist and novelist, was born in Paris on the 27th of July 1824, the natural son of Alexandre Dumas (see above) and the dressmaker Marie Labay. His father at that date was still a humble clerk and not much more than a boy. “Happily,” writes the son, “my mother was a good woman, and worked hard to bring me up”; while of his father he says, “by a most lucky chance he happened to be well-natured,” and “as soon as his first successes as a dramatist” enabled him to do so, “recognized me and gave me his name.” Nevertheless, the lad’s earlier school-life was made bitter by his illegitimacy. The cruel taunts and malevolence of his companions rankled through life (see preface to La Femme de Claude and L’Affaire Clémenceau), and left indelible marks on his character and thoughts. Nor was his paternity, however distinguished, without peril. Alexandre the younger and elder saw life together very thoroughly, and Paris can have had few mysteries for them. Suddenly the son, who had been led to regard his prodigal father’s resources as inexhaustible, was rudely undeceived. Coffers were empty, and he had accumulated debts to the amount of two thousand pounds.
Thereupon he pulled himself together. To a son of Dumas the use of the pen came naturally. Like most clever young writers—and report speaks of him as specially brilliant at that time—he opened with a book of verse, Péchés de jeunesse (1847). It was succeeded in 1848 by a novel, La Dame aux camélias, a sort of reflection of the world in which he had been living. The book had considerable success, and was followed, in fairly quick succession, by Le Roman d’une femme (1848) and Diane de Lys (1851). All this, however, did not deliver him from the load of debt, which, as he tells us, remained odious. In 1849 he dramatized La Dame aux camélias, but for various reasons, the rigour of the censorship being the most important, it was not till the 2nd of February 1852, and then only by the intervention of Napoleon’s all-powerful minister, Morny, that the play could be produced at the Vaudeville. It succeeded then, and has held the stage ever since, less perhaps from inherent superiority to
