The Life and Writings of Alexandre Dumas/Wanderings
Wanderings, Decline and Death (1848-1870).
Dumas had not given way without a struggle. He had produced "Monte Cristo" at his ill-fated theatre, and tried the extraordinary experiment of playing it, half one night and the other half the next; and he had mortgaged his "palace" heavily. In 1849, at the Historique, he brought out his play of "Comte Hermann," the tone of which is in striking contrast with that of "Antony" and "Richard Darlington;" and its preface contains a sincere disavowal of the "criminal-passionate" themes of "twenty years before." In the same year Dumas attended the wedding of the Prince of Orange at Amsterdam; and was also summoned to a council of state, composed of playwrights and others, seven in all, to consider the question of the censorship. Unhappily, nothing came of the discussion. It was probably owing to his increasing embarrassments that when poor Marie Dorval died, during this year, her old friend was able to do little more than struggle to collect from others the necessary funds to bury her decently.
In 1851, as we have already said, the Republic fell, and buried Dumas's future in the ruins. He fled to Brussels, whither Hugo had already gone, and there, from December 1851 to January 1853, the novelist lived and worked, quietly but pleasantly, at No. 73, Rue de Waterloo. Almost every evening he was visited by a few old friends, of whom, of course, Hugo was the chief, and some of them would stay until two or three in the morning, sitting round the tea-table, chatting and laughing, whilst the host worked on above-stairs, now and then descending to exchange a word or two with his company. Here he turned out fifty volumes, for which, as he remarks, his enemies would have a task to find him the "anonymous collaborators" of whom they made so much.
At times, however, the ex-proprietor of 'Monte Cristo' would indulge in an evening's gaiety. One such gorgeous supper-party is described by Emile Deschanel in his volume of travels, "A Pied et en Wagon." From eleven till dawn the guests revelled in a never-ceasing series of delights and surprises, plays acted on a lilliputian stage by celebrated performers, Spanish singers and dancers, the gayest and most brilliant conversation—all in beautifully decorated salons, hung with the armorial escutcheons of Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Hugo, Nodier and Dumas himself. Such experiences always proved precious memories to those favoured ones who enjoyed them.
Misfortunes indeed, did not come singly to Dumas. His faithful Maquet had left him in 1851. Charles Reade's account of this rupture is probably the most truthful, as it is the most charitable:—
"Dumas, if I understand rightly, used to treat with the publishers and managers, and settle with his collaborator. Dumas fell into arrears with him, arrears which, if his heart alone had been to be consulted, would have been paid to the centime; but unfortunately he had other creditors, who interposed with legal powers. In short, the situation was so desperate that Maquet had no course open to him but to withdraw from the connection; he did so, leaving 130,000 francs behind him—say £5,200."
In 1856-8 Maquet brought an action against Dumas, but although his share of the authorship of several of the most famous romances was declared, the court awarded him no further funds—a significant fact.
In 1853 the exile wearied to see his beloved Paris again, and as public affairs had quieted down, and as no doubt pressing invitations were issued by his friends, Dumas returned to Paris full of a new enthusiasm. At the establishment of the "Maison D'Or," in the Rue Lafitte, rooms were allotted to the great man, and a paper was issued under his editorship. This was the Mousquetaire, which started with the most brilliant prospects. The circulation throve exceedingly: the master slaved at his desk; and his name, and his kindly treatment of the young and aspiring, brought a group of clever young writers about him. But the paper was never managed on business principles, Dumas himself being the chief sinner in this respect; all was goodwill, confusion, gaiety and improvidence. The "staff" were innumerable; and the noise of the many journalists crowded into the little rooms of the "Maison D'Or" was alarming. Audebrand tells us that the neighbour on one side would cry to his valet, "They must be strangling some one next door!" and the neighbour on the other side would overhear the remark, and laughingly reply, "There must be a woman in labour in the house!"
In the same volume are some amusing stories of the great man's ménage—how he had a triple defence in the shape of three servants, who struggled to keep duns and beggars from their master's presence. A certain German, however, called one day, sat down on the step and would not leave; and Dumas was eventually aroused by the perpetual assaults on the door. It ended as it always did; the man was "starving" and would throw himself into the Seine if M. Dumas did not take pity on him. The great man pushed fifty francs into the beggar's hands and found himself with only two francs with which to buy eggs for the omelette for his dinner!
Whilst the journalist worked, the dramatist was not idle. No less than four pieces were produced in 1854,—"Romulus," a one-act play, at the Comédie Française; "La Jeunesse de Louis XIV.," a comedy, full of Molière and Louis's first love Marie de Mancini (played at Brussels); "Le Marbrier," a powerful play (at the Vaudeville), and "Conscience," at the Odéon. Of the two dramas, highly moral, not to say didactic, in tone, the latter was dedicated to Hugo. It was a daring act, but Dumas was as imprudent in this friendship as in all others.
To M. Blaze de Bury we are indebted for a vivid sketch of "Dumas chez lui," about this time, which he compares with the mournful home of Heine who was then also living in Paris:—
"You passed," he writes, "from the shades of death to the brilliant light of day; to loud voices and all the stir and bustle of a manufactory! The air was filled with voices in debate; you trampled upon bon mots, in the progress of your conversation. Then, in the brief intervals of silence, you heard a pen quietly, lightly, scratch the paper: it was Dumas, seated at his daily work. Without pausing in his writing, he held out his left hand to you with a smile. No tumult disturbed him; and a word thrown into the discourse here and there told you that he was taking part in it."
"Twenty times interrupted in one morning," adds Villemessant, "twenty times he took his work just where he had left it, to chat with a journalist, an actress or a director; he set aside a romance, to settle with a collaborator concerning the scenario of another book; but, as soon as the collaborator had gone, Dumas went back to his narrative, of which he had never for an instant lost the thread."
Abraham Hayward has quoted for us an account of Dumas's day's work, with less rhetoric but more detail. "He rises at six; before him are laid thirty-five sheets of paper of the largest size; he takes up his pen, and writes, in a hand that M. de Saint Omer would envy, till eleven. At eleven he breakfasts, always in company; and during this meal his spirits never flag. At twelve he resumes the pen, not to quit it again until six in the evening. The dinner-hour finds him as lively as at breakfast. If by any chance he has not filled the allotted number of sheets a momentary shade passes over his face: he steals away and returns two or three hours later, to enjoy the pleasures of the evening."
When the Queen visited Paris, in 1855, the actors of the Comédie Française gave a performance of the "Demoiselles de St. Cyr" at Her Majesty's request, for she had seen the piece in London, and had been so pleased with it that she wished to see it again.
"Two or three days after the performance at St Cloud," says Vandam, "I ran against Dumas in the Chaussée d'Antin.
"'Well, you ought to be pleased,' I said; 'it appears that not only has the Queen asked to see your piece, which she has already seen in London, but that she enjoyed it even better the second time than the first.'
"'Yes, it is like its author,' he replied; 'the more one knows him the more one loves him. But I know what would have amused her still more than seeing my play—to see me also! Honestly, it would have amused me too!'
"'Then why did you not ask for an audience? I am certain it would have been granted,' I remarked, because I felt convinced that Her Majesty would have been only too pleased to confer an honour upon such a man.
"'Well, I did think of it,' came the reply; 'a woman as remarkable as she is, who will probably remain the first woman of the century, ought to have met the greatest man in France! It is a pity, for she will go away without having seen the best sight in France—Alexandre, King of the world of Romance—Dumas the Ignorant!'[1] Then he roared with laughter, and went away."
The romancer was still full of energy, physical and mental. M. About, in his oration at the unveiling of the Dumas statue in 1883, told an anecdote illustrative of this, which we give in Mr Lang's words:
"He met the great man at Marseilles. 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 à la Valse,' a chef-d'œuvre!"[2]
The Mousquetaire died in 1857, but Dumas at once started another journal on the same lines, called Monte Cristo. This year he crossed the Channel with his son, and he has given us, in his "Causeries," an account of his brief visit chez nous.
The pair crossed from Calais to Dover one Monday night towards the close of May. On the Tuesday Dumas père visited Madame Tussaul's (he was curious to see the guillotine of Louis XVI. about which he had written so much), and spent an hour or so in Hyde Park. Then the party took a trip down the river to Blackwall, dined there, and returned to witness the illuminations in honour of the Queen's birthday, and to see that fascinating but saddening sight, the Haymarket at midnight. Next day the party drove down to Epsom to witness Blinkbonny's Derby. During Thursday and Friday Dumas attended Gordon-Cumming's panoramic lecture on his hunting adventures in South Africa, and had a chat with that explorer afterwards, visited the Crystal Palace, and witnessed that curious entertainment of "Lord Chief Justice Nicholson," the "poses plastiques" and mock-trial, at the Coal-hole. On Saturday he hurried back across the Channel to avoid the British Sunday, of which he had had a most satisfying experience during his previous visit in 1833.
The brief papers on these topics are full of gaiety and shrewd observation, and we can only regret that this prince of travellers did not "do" England on a larger scale, and make it the subject of "Impressions de Voyage" in several volumes.
When a writer of one nation attempts to reproduce the racial character of the people of another country, it is only just to be indulgent, and welcome any signs of accuracy and appreciation. Dumas was not a Chauvinist; his liberal principles and the breadth of mind which European travel gave him, guarded him against any of those hysterical outbursts to which the ordinary Frenchman is subject. True, we do not recognise social England of a century ago in "Kean" and "Richard Darlington;" and Catherine Howard" is, as Dumas frankly confesses, a violation of history, which he only justifics on the plea that it produced some offspring—that is, that it was done with a purpose. But he has given us the most vivid account of the last days of Charles I. that romance has yet achieved; he could see something to admire in each of the two great antagonists of the Civil War; and in "San Felice" his portrait of Nelson has much in it that is judicious and true. Dumas certainly attributes the victory at Waterloo to God, and not to Wellington, in which he is foolish; he condemns the British treatment of Napoleon at St Helena, in which he is undoubtedly right. The conception of the Englishman which Dumas formed is largely that which Jules Verne has rendered familiar to the British schoolboy, and there is this to be said for it—the type has many of the best qualities which we claim for ourselves as a race. Sir John Tanlay in the "Compagnons de Jehu" may or may not be a faithful reproduction of the "aristocrat " who travelled Europe, following in the track of Byron, during the first half of the last century; but certainly he is a gentleman, and could never have been drawn by a hater of our people.
It may further be pointed out, that Dumas received his inspiration as a dramatist from Shakespeare, and as a romancer, from Scott, both of whom he fully and gratefully admired. "Whenever he met an Englishman," says Vandam, "he considered it his particular duty to make himself agreeable to him as part of the debt he owed to Shakespeare and Walter Scott." If Dumas has made fun—may think legitimate fun—of some of our English characteristics and customs, he has at least known how to admire our beautiful women. The sight of a bevy of fair girls in Rotten Row, he tells us, caused him to realise in a flash that native quality in the heroines of Shakespeare, which until that moment he had never quite understood.
Some of the remarks in his chapters on England are worth quoting here. "The English, the least artistic and most industrial (I say 'industrial,' not 'industrious') of peoples, have almost achieved art by force of industry." ... "In Hyde Park you find the finest horses and the prettiest women in London, and therefore in the whole world. But to do the English men justice, their first glance is for the horse, and, one might almost add, their first desire." ... "The English think that the bigger a thing is, the greater it is." ... "England fully deserves the title of a great nation, if power implies greatness." ... "Everything is forbidden in England on a Sunday; after having worked six days one does not rest on the seventh, there, on s'ennuie! London on a Sunday gives one an idea of what the kingdom of the Sleeping Beauty was like before the Princess was awakened." ... "The Englishman generally has the spleen in November. You may fancy that that is because of the fog, which commences in November and doesn't go away until May. Not at all! They have the spleen because they have been deprived of the fog for four months. You may ask me what the English make their fogs of? Of coal, I suppose, but that is a detail. It was not the good God who made the fog, it was the English."
"Posterity commences at the frontier." So said Dumas, a little sadly. "The old order" had changed, and fickle Paris, Paris of the Second Empire, turned a contemptuous shoulder on its old favourite. France had cooled down after the Revolution; analytic fiction had superseded the romantic. Partly to rest from desk-work, partly to warm his genius in the admiration of those strange lands where his works were so well known and so welcome, Dumas took to travel more and more readily. In the winter of 1858 he started for a Russian tour; and the reason for this sudden abandonment of his journal, his contracts and his friends, as given by M. Ferry, is very curious—and characteristic.
Home, the spiritualist, who was then in Paris, and with whom Dumas was at that time very friendly, introduced the author to a Russian count and countess. Home was about to marry the lady's sister—the wedding was to take place in St Petersburg—and the count and his wife persuaded the impulsive Dumas to leave Paris with them in five days, to be "best man." Such a tour had been one of the dreams of his life, and was to prove one of his pleasantest memories. He hunted wolves; he visited the prisons and prisoners of the Russian government; he crossed Ladoga, and explored Finland; he encountered a burning forest, in which his train ran a winning race with death; he saw the world-famous fair of Nijni Novgorod; he was uproariously fêted by officers at Kaliasine, who broke their leave to see him on his journey; he became the guest of a Kalmuck prince in the Caucasus, and was royally entertained in true, though somewhat terrifying, Tartar fashion; he crossed savage south Russia in a tarantass, and returned via Tiflis, Trebizond and Constantinople, having thoroughly enjoyed himself. And no wonder, for his name was known, and excited flattery and hospitality everywhere. He was absent ten months, and yet spent only 12,000 francs, so generous had been the welcome of his hosts throughout the Empire.
But the social miseries which he saw in the life of Russia profoundly saddened Dumas. Although the emancipation of the serfs has taken place since his day, much of the following is still too true, and was written, be it remembered, before Russia was exploited by the politicians:—
"The Russian Empire is one gigantic surface, and no one seems to care what lies below it. And what is more curious still, is, that in this land of abuses, everyone, from the Emperor to the lowest serf, desires that they should cease. But as soon as one lays hands on an abuse in Russia, what is it makes the loudest protest? The abuse which is threatened? No, that would be too clumsy! it is the abuses which fear to be assailed in their turn, that make the great outcry!"
And this is his prophecy respecting Russia's future:—
There is a taint of the old Tartar, or Hun, in this race of modern conquerors, and one finds it hard to reconcile their appetite for territory, with the canons of civilisation and intelligence. One day Russia will take Constantinople: it is written in the book of fate. Fair races have always been the conquering nations: the dark nationalities have had only brief periods of reactionary success. Then Russia will break, not into two parts, but into four.... It is impossible that an empire which to-day covers a seventh part of the globe should remain under one hand. If it grips too hard, the hand itself will break; if it holds its prey too loosely, it will be forced to open its fingers and release its charge."
In 1859 Dumas made the acquaintance of "that charming woman," as Glinel calls her, Emilie Cordier, better known in those days as "L'Amiral," partly because she was accustomed to dress en garçon, and partly because she accompanied the romancer during his maritime adventures of the following year. The intimacy, indeed, lasted until 1864. If we may say so without being misunderstood, there was something paternal in the love of Dumas for the young girl, something filial in her affection for him; and yet a child was born of this liaison, at the close of 1860. The news of the event drew from Dumas two charming letters, which are worth quoting, not only because they are so characteristic of the man, but bccause very few letters from this "living pen" are extant. In his introduction to "Un Gil Blas en Californie" he laughingly proclaims himself the literary man who writes the most books and the fewest letters. On 
Alexandre Dumas fils. the other hand many of his books—notably the 'Causeries," and many of the "Impressions de Voyage"—are in the epistolary form and spirit.
The first letter is to the mother:—
"Joy and happiness to thee, my dear love of a child, for sending me the good news that my little Micaëlla has come into the world, and that her mother is going on well.
"You know, my dear little one, that I preferred a girl. I will tell you why. I love Alexandre better than Marie; I see Marie only once a year, whilst I can see Alexandre whenever I wish. So that all the love I might have had for Marie will now fall to the share of my little Micaëlla. I fancy I see her lying by the side of her little mother, whom I forbid to get up and go out before I come. I am arranging to be in Paris about the 12th—it will be impossible for me to be there sooner, in spite of my eagerness.
"If I tell thee one thing, my dear love, thou mayst well believe it true. In an hour my heart has grown bigger, to make room for this new love!
"If for the next few months thou dost not wish to be separated from thy child, we will take a little house at Ischia, in the best air and on the prettiest island in all Naples, and I will come and spend two or three days every week with you all the spring through: in short, rely on me me to cherish mother and child.
"Au revoir, ma petite cherie; embrace for me the Donna Mica—lla, who is no bigger than one's thumb, so Madame de C. writes. I will answer hers by the next mail, as well as your mother's, whom I embrace. A toi et à l'enfant.
"Alex. Dumas."
"To think that I have only got thy letter to-day (the 1st), and that thou wilt not get this, perhaps, before the 16th!
"Je t'aime!"
The second letter is to the baby:—
"Mon Cher Bébé,—As thy good grandmother—whom thou must love dearly, as well as thy little mother—writes me that you have need of money, I send thee 150 francs for thy new year's gift.
"I shall try to send thee also a little hamper of good things.
"There will be nothing to pay to the messenger who brings it.
"I embrace thee very tenderly.—Thy father who loves thee,
"Alex. Dumas."
(We make no apology for adding here three letters which have no strict historical value, so far as our subject is concerned, but are too characteristic of their author, with his large-heartedness, his irreverence (which it would be foolish to take au sérieux), and above all, his gaiety, to be omitted. The first is to Charles Nodier, and is dated September 2nd, 1836:—
"My Good Charles,—My great idler, my illustrious confrère, you who know the Past and the Present better than God himself—I don't speak of the future lest I humiliate Him too much—be good enough to tell me who originated this fatal mania of autograph-hunting of which you and I are victims. Someone has asked me this and I didn't know what to say; or rather I replied that I had my Charles, who knew everything, and that I would write to him.
"Ten lines, I beg, my good Nodier; I will come and thank you for them on Sunday next. You see that you do not get rid of me easily!
"Adieu! I reverence you as a master, I love you as a brother, and respect you as a son.
"Alex Dumas."
The second letter, dated 1849, is to the critic and influential journalist, Jules Janin:—
"My Dear Janin,—You know of the death of poor little Maillet? We have buried her this morning. She leaves a mother and a young child.
"The mother is 87. Help us to the best of your power—with subscriptions, theatrical benefits, etc.—to get her into a hospital for the aged.
"As for the child, if the father does not come forward I will take charge of it myself. It is only three years old, and it doesn't eat much yet. I will work an hour a day longer, and that will be all right.—À vous,
"Alex. Dumas."
The third, which is in our possession, is no more than an invitation to supper, but is interesting as giving a list of the novelist's intimate friends. It bears no date:—
"My dear Méry,—Come to-night (Monday) and sup with me, 46 Rue Ruticr, at 9.30 in the evening.
"I will take no excuse.—Yours,
"Al. Dumas."
| Hugo.[3] | Charles. | Brohan. |
| Lacroix. | Toto. | De Leuven. |
| Janin. | Les Mélingue. | Person. |
| Meurice. | Les Guyons. | Moi. |
| Vaquerie. |
On his return from Russia, the "wandering Jew of literature," as he called himself with sad significance, soon wearied of Paris and his declining popularity. Feeling the desire to travel come over him once more, Dumas determined on a tour in the Mediterranean which should surpass all his previous explorations. In a little boat of his own, he would visit Egypt, Sparta, Athens, Corinth, the site of ancient Troy, Abydos, Constantinople! Such an experience had been one of the dreams of his life. But no sooner was the little schooner Emma built, no sooner had the merry party left Marseilles in April 1860 for Nice, than the whole scheme was abandoned. Dumas's hopes of pleasure, his holiday, his money, his safety even, were sacrificed without a murmur or a thought, to—vanity, his critics say. The reader shall judge for himself.
Garibaldi had just landed in Sicily, to give force and vigour to the revolt of the Italians against the rule of Ferdinand. The two men were no strangers. In January of that year the author had met the soldier at Milan, and a warm friendship had sprung up between them. But Dumas tells us that ten years before that, he had recognised Garibaldi's ability, energy and integrity.[4]
Immediately he heard the news, Dumas set sail in his little craft for Sicily, joined Garibaldi and his band of "redshirts," marched across the island with them and shared their fortunes. After his conquering journey along the north of Sicily from west to east, Garibaldi prepared to cross Messina Straits and begin his campaign on the mainland at Reggio; but he needed arms for the recruits who flocked to join him. Dumas had 50,000 francs with him—the money which was to have bought him his year of pleasure in classic lands. He sailed from Marseilles, after "running the blockade of a Royalist ship, bought the guns with his money, and returned to Italy. At Naples he acted as Garibaldi's envoy, stimulating the agitation there, and was expelled by the king for his bold, seditious conduct. "Everywhere" (says Maxime du Camp, who was with Garibaldi's staff as a volunteer), "he gave the word of command, and worked to prepare for Italian unity."
When Garibaldi was at length master of Naples, he made Dumas the only return the author asked—gave him the appointment of "director of beaux-arts." This was an honorary post, involving the spending of much time and trouble; but the Freuchman had set his heart upon carrying out well and thoroughly the excavations at Pompeii, which had been neglected by the late government. He was now installed in a little plainly furnished palazzo, bent upon devoting all his energies to the service of archaeology and the discovery of priceless art-treasures; but the Neapolitans, learning that a stranger had been appointed to—some post or other—waxed indignant. This "job," as Mr Fitzgerald elegantly calls it, excited the rabble, and Dumas, in the midst of his gaiety and his unselfish labours, was hooted and mobbed by the people for whom he had worked so hard. For a time, the ingratitude of the populace stunned him, and he was undisguisedly pained; but by degrees his spirits returned. This experience was probably still fresh in Dumas's mind when, on the occasion of Victor Emmanuel's triumphal entry into Naples, he pointed out to Du Camp that there were no Garibaldians in the procession. (As a matter of fact we know how the king had insulted the Garibaldians, and caused them to absent themselves.) "Il faut faire le bien d'une façon abstraite, et ne jamais penser à la récompense," was our author's philosophic comment.
Nevertheless he stayed in Naples for four years, occasionally paying flying visits to Paris,—"to have a chat," as he laughingly tells us. But the Indipendant, the journal which Garibaldi had named and which Dumas conducted, so faithfully fulfilled its title, that the editor was continually in collision with Victor Emmanuel's officials, and in 1864 he returned to Paris, where the usual flattering chorus of welcome greeted him.
"He was just the same as ever," says Ferry, "big, powerful, robust, and yet so well-proportioned that he could not be accused of stoutness. His head, so firmly set upon that massive neck, was crowned with a forest of crisp, grey hair; the face, with its vivacious eyes, and mobile mouth, shone with almost perpetual gaiety. Never have good humour, cordiality, affability and contagious good spirits shown themselves in a human face with such expressive fidelity."
The summer of that year was spent at the Villa Catinat, a charming country house on the borders of lake Enghien, where our author had for neighbour his old friend Madame de Girardin. Unfortunately his parasites found him out once more, and his "Sundays" were the talk of Paris. On one occasion, when the servants, after a quarrel with Dumas's mistress, had all departed summarily, leaving the larder bare, the host, who was almost as famous a cook as a writer, discovered some rice and tomatoes, and prepared for his crowd of unsuspecting guests a regal and gigantic dish which entirely satisfied their appetites and palates.
"In 1864," the Martins tell us in their interesting book "The Stones of Paris," "the American Minister to France, Mr John Bigelow, breakfasted with Dumas at Saint-Gratien, near Paris, where the romancer was temporarily sojourning. It was towards the close of the American Civil War, and he had a notion of going to the United States as War Correspondent for French papers, and to make another book, of course." Unhappily Dumas did not go, and the book is lost to us.
It was about this time that the famous quadroon, whose sympathies were naturally with the North in the great struggle, sent to Lincoln a large sum of money for the widows of the slain abolitionists. When acknowledging the gift, the President suggested that Dumas should send out some "mottoes" with his autograph attached. The author duly forwarded a hundred slips of paper, each with a sententious line or two and the great man's autograph. These were sold in the United States at 600 francs each.
The great writer was now growing old. He could no longer work twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day; and his efforts were unequal to the task of paying his way. Yet neither his dramatic instinct, nor his quixotic sense of honour failed him. The directorate of the Porte St Martin became bankrupt, and the company was left stranded. Dumas had just announced in the press that he had a play—a dramatisation of "Madame de Chamblay"—ready for production; but not a manager in Paris deigned even to send for the manuscript of the author of "Antony." Some of the Porte St Martin company, however, being at their wits' end for employment, appealed to Dumas to give them the manuscript, as they had hired the Théâtre Ventadour, and wished to open with a new play. No sooner had he lent the drama to the poverty-stricken actors, than a representative of the Comédie Française itself, came to open negotiations with him. Dumas refused: he had given his word. The play was produced, but the hot weather and the cold critics killed it, although when revived later on, it proved a success in spite of the press.
Dumas's enemies were now gaining the upper hand of their old antagonist, and they did not spare him. He had occasion at this time to write to his old companion of the trip to Monte Cristo. One of our author's plays had been forbidden by the censor, and in France there is or was—no limit to the extent of the censor's power. He wrote a public letter to the Emperor, pointing out that this was the seventh of his plays or books which had been thus prohibited—and that on almost every occasion it was a revival of the play which was condemned, and not a new play at all! The order was revoked.
Still another rôle was reserved for this Protean man—that of lecturer. Dumas was persuaded into giving a chatty, vivid talk on the paintings of his old friend Delacroix. These lectures, which were given at the "Fantaisies-Parisiens," were packed, as they deserved to be. It was probably this success which aroused one of the lecturer's sleeping ambitions, for early in the next year he engaged the "Grand-Théâtre Parisiens" in the Rue de Lyon, and produced his version of "Catherine Blum" there. But the play was a failure; Dumas's secretary, who was nominally the lessee of the building, turned out to be a rogue and embezzled the money, and the scheme came to naught.[5]
In the following year, still clinging to his belief that the sons of his old patrons would inherit the tastes of their fathers, the dramatist appealed to his "unknown friends" the public, to subscribe to a species of co-operative play-house, a new "Théâtre Historique," with an eminent banker for treasurer and himself as the manager. The very slight and quite inadequate response to this invitation gave the dramatist another painful shock of self-revelation.
In 1866 the war between Austria and Prussia broke out, and Dumas, his love of history and of travel both urging him, set out for Frankfort, to study the crisis presented by the growing power of Prussia in mid- Europe, and to traverse the yet-warm battlefields of the campaign. The result was "La Terreur Prussienne," in which the author, filled with disquietude, sees in Prussian predominance a menace to other nations, and to France above all.
Forced to earn money as best he could, Dumas went down to the Havre Exhibition of 1868, and lectured there, and at Caen, Rouen and other towns, on his way back. Two or three of his plays were revived about this time, but the old spirit of hostility was again shown by the critics, who managed to wound the now enfeebled playwright. To the last he was ridiculed, abused and slandered. Lamartine, for whom the romancer had always felt a warm admiration, died in 1869, worn out with the struggle against his debts and his enemies; and the news saddened Dumas, for it gave him a foreboding of his own end. This brilliant and illustrious life was itself drawing very near to a close, amidst humiliating poverty, oblivion and suffering. Spongers and duns wrested from the failing giant every penny that was not jealously guarded for him; and care, which the gay heart had so long kept at bay, stole in and shared the old man's fireside. The father had always felt a certain timidity towards his son: the careless, improvident dupe had dreaded the reproaches of the other's more worldly wisdom. Not until the very bread was lacking, not until the pawnshop had been visited, did the older man send hint of his needs to his beloved "Alexandre." Again, when disease crept upon him, Dumas hid that fact from his son also, and it was not until the old man's daughter, taking alarm, sent physicians to see him, that the time came for Alexandre fils to realise the position, and assert himself.
From that moment the cares of money matters at least, were over. Dumas was taken to Finisterre, and lastly, to his son's house at Puys near Dieppe, where he remained until the last, watched over, cared for and comforted, in a manner which had long been strange to him.
But now another care haunted the great man; and day and night his clouding mind brooded upon it. Would his work live after him? One day when he could keep it to himself no longer, his anguish found voice.
"It seems to me," he said to his son, "that I am standing on the pedestal of a monument which trembles, as though it were based on shifting sands."
"Be at peace," answered his son; "the pillar is well built, and the base will stand firm."
The dying father drew his son toward him, and the two met in a silent embrace. It was the cry of the soul doubting its own genius; the agony of doubt which seized Keats when he bade them write as his epitaph, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
In his introduction to "Les Trois Mousquetaires," Dumas fils tells this anecdote, and adds, by way of supporting his prophecy, that from 1870 to 1893 no less than 2,840,000 volumes of his father's books had been sold in France alone, not counting 80,000,000 of illustrated parts.
The dying man doubted everything. The world, he fancied, had not advanced as it had promised to do in the days of the glorious revolutions, political and social, of the mid-century. Such an age of agitation, he prophesied, would end in an era of disillusionment. And truly for France the outlook was dark, for the Prussians had overthrown Napoleon and were invading France. In his early days Dumas had seen the Prussians at the gates of Paris; in his last days he would have witnessed a like spectacle had he stayed there. But all such news was mercifully kept from him.
"One day," wrote his son, "the pen dropped from his hands, and he began to sleep." Like his own Porthos, the child of his virile brain, Dumas was struggling with all a Titan's strength against the forces of nature which weighed upon him and which were slowly crushing and stifling the life from his giant frame and his great heart. All night, and almost all the day, he slept; and if, with his old desire for work, he took pen in hand, no responsive thought nerved the fingers; the weapon with which he had once wrought such wonders fell from his nerveless fingers. Excess of labour, far more than excess of pleasure, had made the brain mute at last.
In his brief moments of light Dumas would play with his son's children, or would sit where his nurses placed him on the beach, gazing, motionless, at the sea, thinking long, long thoughts.
On the morning of December 5th, 1870, a priest was sent for. He found son and daughter on their knees by the side of the dying man. The good curé called his penitent by name, and Dumas slowly opened his eyes. He could not speak. He died that afternoon.
Two years later, when the Prussians had departed, Alexandre Dumas was able to take his father home to Villers-Cotterets, where he had wished to lie. A host of distinguished authors and actors came to bid their old confrère farewell, but the simple reverence and affection shown by the dead man's old village friends was a far truer token of the love that he had won. When the train arrived with the coffin, the people were quietly waiting in the streets to greet it, and young and old pressed forward to contend with the bearers for the honour of carrying the body of their lost, dear friend. There, with the father of whom he was so proud, with the mother whom he so tenderly loved, he lies, in the little town from which he set out on the pilgrimage of life, and to which he so often looked wistfully back.
In the words of the man whom he reverenced most,
"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well."...
- ↑ Dumas the professor of chemistry was called "Dumas le savant," "Donc," laughed the novelist, "Je suis Dumas l'ignorant."—Note by A. V.
- ↑ Dumas himself states that he wrote this play in London in 1833 (see "Causeries").
- ↑ The guests include Méry, the invited, a Marseilles poet-author, and intimate friend of Dumas's; Victor Hugo; Paul Lacroix, the author; Jules Janin, the critic; Paul Meurice, Dumas's collaborator; Auguste Vaquerie, the author and dramatist; Charles Hugo; Dumas fils; Mélingue, the comedian, and his wife; Guyons and his wife; Augustine Brohan, the actress and Adolphe De Leuven, the friend of Dumas's youth.
- ↑ So loudly (says Blaze de Bury) had Dumas proclaimed the skill and valour of that other "force of nature" Garibaldi, that a certain consul in Italy thought it wise to report the existence of this unknown person to headquarters. But when he confessed the source of his information, the consul was curtly forbidden to trouble his superiors with the idle talk of a romancer!
- ↑ Dumas, owing his company arrears of salary, met the situation in a characteristic and ingenious way. He gave the members collectively the right to play the piece, and promised that whenever it was performed within reach of Paris, he would attend if duly notified. On one occasion the author missed his train, and did not reach the theatre till the second act. The audience, who before his arrival had been too uproarious and distracted to follow the play, insisted, as soon as their darling appeared and peace was restored, that the actors should begin all over again—which they were obliged to do!