A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z
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Life and Works: Alexandre Dumas is usually designated père to distinguish him from his father and son of the same name. One of the most famous french writers of the 19th century. Dumas is best known for historical the novels The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, both written within the space of two years, 1844-45, and which belong to the foundation works of popular culture. He was among the first, along with Honoré de Balzac and Eugène Sue, who fully used the possibilities of roman feuilleton, the serial novel. Dumas is credited with revitalizing the historical novel in France, although his abilities as a writer were under dispute from the beginning. Dumas' works are fast-paced adventure tales that blend history and fiction, but on the other hand, the are entangled, melodramatic, and actually not faithful to the historical facts. Alexandre Dumas Pére, was born in the village of Villers-Cotterêts on July 24, 1802 to Thomas–Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie (son of the Marquis de la Pailleterie) and a black woman from Santo Domingo named Marie Cessette Dumas in Villers – cotterêts, Aisne, France. Alexandre had a sister named Marie-Alexandrine Aimee who was nine years old when he was born. Alexandre's father was an impoverished, disillusioned general in Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. His prowess and exploits were models for the character Porthos and for many incidents in Dumas’ works. Alexandre had a life that was well provided for, that is, until his father was alive. After his death in 1806, miserable times came upon the family. The general’s widow was not entitled to a pension because the general had not been killed fighting; furthermore, the general had been in disgrace for being a rebel. The emperor would, under no circumstances, would grant a widow of a rebel an audience. His mother’s parents, the Labourets, who ran the Hôtel de l’Épée took in the widow and the grandchildren. They all lived together in a poor but affectionate household. His boyhood was spent there and in neighboring villages (Soissons and Crépy, for example). Dumas’ early learning was limited to reading and penmanship, later enhanced only slightly by attendance at Abbé Grégoire’s village day school. An intelligent child, Alexandre was autorbusght by his mother and sister to write. He developed beautiful handwriting but could never go beyond multiplication in arithmetic. He learnt to dance, to fence, and also to shoot and was extremely good at these, but did not have an ear for music, which his mother wanted him to learn. He was a child of the forest. He would rise early to catch birds with Hanniquet or Boudoux, his poacher friends. He liked nothing better than spending a day in the forest or at the Chateau Villers–Helon with M Collard. Literary influences were a production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and reading the works of Friedrich Schiller, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sir Walter Scott, and Lord Byron. When he was 10, a cousin, Father Consiel died and left him a scholarship to a seminary. But this was on condition that he took the orders. His mother, whose only livelihood was her tobacco-shop and who did not know what to do with him decided to send him hoping that he would learn a thing or two that would help him for facing life. He was given 12 sous (French currency) to buy his inkstand. With this money, he bought some food to last for three-four days and went and hid in the forest, under the protection of his friend Boudox. When he returned home, the question of the seminary was not brought up again. He was then sent to a private school in Villers–Cotterêts run by a priest called Father Grègoire. He did not learn much in school except a little Latin and a little grammar. At the age of fifteen, he was a clerk in a solicitor’s office. At the age of eighteen, at one of the Sunday festivities that he met Adolphe de Leuven, the son of an exiled Swedish Count. At this time he became a clerk to M. Lefèvre at Crépy. A company of actors playing Shakespeare came to Villeres-Cotterêts. Watching the performances, he had no doubt that he wanted to become a playwright. He then collaborated with Adolphe de Leuven and prepared an outline for a one-act Vaudeville in couplets called The Major of Strasborg. Adolphe then returned to Paris, but he left Alexandre with a growing desire to see the city of Paris and also the beautiful ladies that he had talked so much about. In late 1822, Dumas and a fellow clerk went to Paris alternating walking and riding the clerk’s horse, poaching game en route to barter for lodgings. At Paris, Dumas saw the Théâtre Française, met the famous actor François-Joseph Talma, attended a play, and received a touch on the forehead for luck; Leuven had been instrumental in arranging the meeting. Returning home, Dumas quit his job, pooled his assets, and re-embarked for Paris, this time in a coach. After a series of successes and failures, Dumas became a major writer in several genres. His literary reputation rests primarily on his novels, his plays, his memoirs, and his many travel books, in which he recorded his experiences in as well as his impressions of Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Russia, Germany, the south of France, and Egypt. On returning home, he told his mother of his decision to settle in Paris. At the age of 20, with no experience and little education, the move to Paris was only motivated by a strong force within urging him to strive to achieve the greatness he always imagined acquiring. He arrived in Paris with little more than the determination he had brought along with him. He had with him letters of recommendation to his father’s old colleagues, but most of the letters proved to be useless, that is, all but one letter. The letter that helped him was addressed to General Foy, a major figure in the army during the Napoleonic wars, who had retired after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. He helped Dumas to obtain service with the Duc d’Orleans. But the actual factor that helped him secur his job was his wonderful skill for elegant handwriting. From 1823 to 1844, although he published some fiction and other works, Dumas was primarily a playwright. In 1825, Dumas collobarated with Adolphe de Leuven in writing a light comedy, finding this successful, he again collobarated on a similar endeavour, with the writers Lassagne and Gustave in writing another comedy, which was another brilliant success. He continued writing and going to the theatre. His early success resulted partly from the acquaintances he made and partly from good luck. His first job at Paris was as a copyist for the Duke of Orléans, the future King Louis-Philippe, in whose palace was housed an important theater, the Comédie-Française. On attending the Théâtre Française, Dumas met the famous writer-theater critic Charles Nodier. Leading actresses often found Dumas attractive, and some were among his mistresses; Talma and other leading actors became his life-long friends. Political figures, including the Marquess de Lafayette and Giuseppe Garibaldi, were his close associates and his commanders in two wars. He found his dramatic calling with Christine (1830). Seeing a bas-relief depicting an assassination ordered by Queen Christina of Sweden, he studied the incident in a borrowed book. Collaborating with Leuven (the first of many collaborators for Dumas), he wrote the five-act verse drama in 1829. Through Nodier’s influence, the play was accepted for staging, though such was delayed until the following year. Another historical drama, Henri III et sa cour (1829; Catherine of Cleves, 1831) was produced first. This work is historically significant because Dumas for the first time applied the methods of Sir Walter Scott to drama. A third important serious drama, Antony, was to appear in 1831. Dumas lived as adventurously as the heroes of his books. He took part in the revolution of July 1830, caught cholera during the epidemic of 1832, and traveled in Italy to recuperate. He married his mistress Ida Ferrier, an actress, in 1840, but he soon separated after having spent her entire dowry. With the money earned from his writings, he built a fantastic château Montecristo on the outskirts of Paris. In 1841, he turned to comedy, staging two of his three best that year, Mademoiselle de Belle-lsle (1839; Gabrielle de Belle Isle, 1842) and Un Mariage sous Louis XV (1841; A Marriage of Convenience, 1899). The third was staged in 1843; later, in 1855, it was selected as a command performance by Queen Victoria upon hers and Prince Albert’s visit to Paris. Though Dumas had published fiction earlier and drama later, the real shift to fiction came in 1842, with the publication of his first great historical novel, Le Chevalier d’Harmental (1843; The Chevalier d'Harmental, 1856). The following years saw the publication of his most popular, though not regarded as his best, novels, Les Trois Mousquetaires (1844; The Three Musketeers, 1846), Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (1844-1845; The Count of Monte-Cristo, 1846), and La Tulipe Noire (1850; The Black Tulip, 1851). Historical novels brought Dumas enormous fortune, but he could spend money faster than he made it. He produced some 250 books with his 73 assistants, especially with the history teacher Auguste Maquet, whom he wisely allowed to work quite independently. Dumas earned roughly 200,000 francs yearly and received an annual sum of 63,000 francs for 220,000 lines from the newspapers Presse and the Constitutionel. Maquet often proposed subjects and wrote first drafts for some of Dumas' most famous serial novels. As a master dialogist, Dumas developed character traits, and kept the action moving, and composed the all-important chapter endings - teaser scenes that maintained suspense and readers interest to read more. Alexandre Dumas prospered and was soon considered one of the richest writers in France. On July 25, 1845 he invited 600 friends for dinner, for the housewarming of his Chateau between Bougival and Saint-Germain, which the people of the surrounding countryside soon dubbed Chateau of Monte Cristo. Dumas’ recognized best novels are not always as well-known. Le Vicomte de Bragelonne (1848-1850; The Vicomte Bragelonne, 1857), perhaps the most popular of these, is the sequel to Vingt Ans après (1845; Twenty Years After, 1846) and The Three Musketeers, forming with them a trilogy. As noted in the publishing dates, Dumas, like Charles Dickens, often issued his novels in serial form in journals. The following are also among his best works in this genre of historical fiction, Les Quarante-cinq (1848; The Forty-five Guardsmen, 1847), Ange Pitou (1853; Taking the Bastille, 1847), Black (1860; Black: The Story of a Dog, 1895), and l’Innocent Conscience (1852; Conscience, 1905). The adventures of The three musketeers has inspired many film versions, although the story itself was problematic for American film directors for some decades due to Hollywood's Production Code: d'Artagnan is in love with a married woman, Constance, and has a relationship with Milady de Winter, who actually is Athos' wife, and he feels attraction to Milady's maid, Kitty, whose passionate glances he doesn't first notice. His play, Le vampire (1851), was a Byronic vampire tale. Dumas' story The Man in the Iron Mask was based on the legend of Louis XIV's twin brother. The legend also had inspired Voltaire and Victor Hugo 's play Les Jumeaux (1839). In 1853, the Historical theatre and Monte Cristo were both liquidated. Dark and miserable times were once again upon Alexandre Dumas. Soon, he came to live in Paris. There he founded an evening newspaper called The Musketeer. He managed to bring it out every evening until he had to close it down in 1857 because all his best writers had left him. To console himself, he started visiting people again and going to evening parties. He traveled to Russia and on returning, wrote Travel Impressions, a book in seven volumes. In January of 1860, Dumas met Garibaldi and traveled with a letter from him. Eventually, he joined Garibaldi’s campaign with the same spectacular success he and his father had previously enjoyed in Egypt and France. In Palermo, Dumas was popular as a writer and a hero until the political climate changed: Garibaldi, like Napoleon and Lafayette before him, swerved from complete dedication to republicanism. After supporting and later criticizing Garibaldi publicly, Dumas returned to Paris. In 1867, he met the last great love of his life. A bareback rider from Louisiana, her name was Adah Isaacs Menken and she was just like a heroine straight out of Dumas' stories. She died suddenly in August 1865, and Dumas went through a time of acute grief. His financial status in a very bad condition, his life became extremely difficult. He would not accept financial assistance from his son who was well off. He began a number of projects but all failed. Nevertheless, he continued to work. He wrote Story of My Animals which was just as good as his other works but the public did not accept it. When he could not work at all because his thoughts were not any more organized, he shut himself up and read his old works. As said before in this manuscript, after leading a life much similar to a character out of his stories, Alexandre Dumas Pere died on December 5, 1870 at Puys, near Dieppe in France. |
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