Alexandre Dumas, père
Alexandre Dumas redirects here. See also Alexandre Dumas, fils, his son.Alexandre Dumas, père, born
Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (
July 24,
1802 –
December 5,
1870) was a
French writer, best known for his numerous
historical novels of high adventure which have made him the most widely read
French author in the world. Many of his novels, including
The Count of Monte Cristo and the
D'Artagnan Romances, were
serialized, and he also wrote
plays, magazine
articles, and was a prolific
correspondent. His paternal grandmother was a black
slave.
While his grandfather,
Marquis Antoine-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, served the government of France as
Général commissaire in the Artillery in the colony of Saint Domingue (now
Haiti), he married
Marie-Césette Dumas, a black slave. In
1762, she gave birth to his father, Thomas-Alexandre, and died soon thereafter.
When the Marquis and his young
mulatto son returned to
Normandy,
slavery still existed, and the boy suffered as a result of being a half black. In
1786, Thomas-Alexandre joined the
French army, but to protect the
aristocratic family's reputation, he enlisted using his mother's maiden name. Following the
French Revolution, the Marquis lost his estates, but Thomas-Alexandre Dumas distinguished himself as a capable and daring soldier in the revolutionary army, rising through the ranks to become a
General by the age of 31.
Thomas-Alexandre married Marie-Louise Elisabeth Labouret and on
July 24,
1802, in
Villers-Cotterêts,
Aisne, near
Paris,
France, she gave birth to their son, Alexandre Dumas.
General Dumas died in
1806 when Alexandre was only four years old, leaving a nearly
impoverished mother to raise him under difficult conditions. Although Marie-Louise was unable to provide her son with much in the way of education, it did not hinder young Alexandre's love of books, and he read everything he could get his hands on.
Growing up, his mother's stories of his father's brave military deeds during the glory years of
Napoleon I of France spawned Alexandre's vivid imagination for adventure and heroes. Although poor, the family still had the father's distinguished reputation and aristocratic connections and after the
restoration of the monarchy, twenty-year-old Alexandre Dumas moved to
Paris where he obtained employment at the
Palais Royal in the office of the powerful
duc d'Orléans.
While working in Paris, Dumas began to write articles for magazines as well as plays for the theatre. In
1829 his first solo play,
Henry III and his Court, was produced, meeting with great public acclaim. The following year his second play,
Christine, proved equally popular and as a result, he was financially able to work full time at writing. However, in
1830, he participated in the revolution that ousted
King Charles X and replaced him on the throne with Dumas' former employer, the duc d'Orléans, who would rule as
Louis-Philippe, the
Citizen King.
Until the mid
1830s, life in France remained unsettled with sporadic riots by disgruntled Republicans and impoverished urban workers seeking change. As life slowly returned to normal, the nation began to industrialize and with an improving economy combined with the end of
press censorship, the times turned out to be very rewarding for the skills of Alexandre Dumas.
After writing more successful plays, he turned his efforts to novels. Although attracted to an extravagant lifestyle, and always spending more than he earned, Dumas proved to be a very astute business marketer. With high demand from newspapers for serial novels, in
1838, he simply rewrote one of his plays to create his first serial novel. Titled
"Le Capitaine Paul," it led to his forming a production studio that turned out hundreds of stories, all subject to his personal input and direction.
From 1839 to 1841 Dumas, with the assistance of several friends, compiled an eight-volume collection of essays on famous criminals and crimes from European history, including essays on
Beatrice Cenci and
Cesare and
Lucrezia Borgia and more recent incidents including the cases of executed alleged murderers
Karl Ludwig Sand and
Antoine François Desrues.
Dumas also collaborated with his fencing master
Augustin Grisier in his
1840 novel
The Fencing Master. The story is written to be Grisier's narrated account of how he came to be witness to events in the
Decemberist revolt in Russia. This novel was eventually banned in Russia by Czar
Nicholas I of Russia, causing Dumas to be forbidden to visit Russia until the Czar's death. Grisier is also mentioned with great respect in both
The Count of Monte Cristo and
The Corsican Brothers as well as Dumas's memoirs.
In
1840, he married an actress, Ida Ferrier, but continued with his numerous liaisons with other women, fathering at least three illegitimate children. One of those children, a son named after him, would follow in his footsteps, also becoming a successful novelist and playwright. Because of their same name and occupation, to distinguish them, one is referred to as Alexandre Dumas
père, (French for
father) the other as
Alexandre Dumas, fils (French for
son).
Alexandre Dumas père wrote stories and historical chronicles of high adventure that captured the imagination of the French public who eagerly waited to purchase the continuing sagas. A few of these works are:
Charles VII at the Homes of His Great Vassals (
Charles VII chez ses grands vassaux), drama, adapted for the opera
The Saracen by Russian composer
César Cui*the
D'Artagnan Romances:
*
The Three Musketeers (
Les Trois Mousquetaires,
1844)
*
Twenty Years After (
Vingt Ans Après,
1845)
*
The Vicomte de Bragelonne (
Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, ou Dix ans plus tard,
1847): when published in English it was usually split into three parts "The Vicomte de Bragelonne", "Louise de la Valliere" and "The Man in the Iron Mask" , of which the last part is the most known.
The Count of Monte Cristo (
1845–
1846)
The Fencing Master (
Le maître d'armes,
1840)
The Regent's Daughter (
1845)
The Two Dianas (
1846)
*the
Valois romances*
Queen Margot (
1845)
*
La Dame de Monsoreau (
1846)
*
The Forty-Five Guardsmen (
1847)
*the
Marie Antoinette romances:
*
Joseph Balsamo (
1846–
1848) (aka "Memoirs of a Physician", "
Cagliostro", "Madame Dubarry", "The Countess Dubarry", or "The Elixir of Life")
*
The Queen's Necklace (
1849–
1850)
*
Ange Pitou (
1853) (aka "Storming the Bastille", or "Six Years Later")
*
The Countess de Charny (
1853–
1855) (aka "Andrée de Taverney", or "The Mesmerist's Victim")
*
The Knight of the Red House (
1845)
The Black Tulip (
1850)
The Nutcracker (
1844): a revision of
Hoffmann's story, later adapted by
Tchaikovsky as a ballet
The Gold Thieves (after
1857): a play that was lost, and rediscovered by the Canadian Reginald Hamel researcher in the
Bibliothèque nationale de France in 2004
*
The Knight of Sainte-Hermine (
Le Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine,
1869): the novel was his last major work and was lost until its rediscovery by Claude Schopp was announced in
2005Dumas made extensive use of the aid of numerous
ghostwriters of which
Auguste Maquet was the best known. It was Maquet who outlined the plot of
The Count of Monte Cristo and made substantial contributions to
The Three Musketeers and its sequels, as well as several of Dumas' other novels. When working together, Maquet proposed plots and wrote drafts, while Dumas added the details, dialogues, and the final chapters.
|
Alexandre Dumas, photo by Nadar. |
His writing earned him a great deal of money, but Dumas was frequently broke or in debt as a result of spending lavishly on women and high living. The large and costly Château de Monte Cristo that he built was often filled with strangers and acquaintances who took advantage of his generosity.
When King Louis-Philippe was ousted in a revolt, Dumas was not looked upon as favorably by the newly elected President,
Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. In
1851 Dumas fled to
Brussels, Belgium to escape his creditors, and from there he traveled to
Russia where French was the second language and his writings were enormously popular. Dumas spent two years in Russia before moving on to seek adventure and fodder for more stories. In March of
1861, the kingdom of
Italy was proclaimed, with
Victor Emmanuel II as its king. For the next three years, Alexandre Dumas would be involved in the fight for a united Italy, returning to Paris in
1864.
Despite Alexandre Dumas' success and aristocratic connections, his being of mixed-blood would affect him all his life. In
1843, he wrote a short novel,
Georges, that addressed some of the issues of race and the effects of colonialism. Nevertheless, racist attitudes impacted his rightful position in France's history long after his death on
December 5,
1870.
In June 2005, Dumas' recently-discovered last novel
The Knight of Sainte-Hermine went on sale in France. Within the story, Dumas describes the
Battle of Trafalgar in which the death of
Lord Nelson is explained. The novel was being published serially and was almost complete by the time of his death. A final two-and-a-half chapters were written by modern-day Dumas scholar
Claude Schopp.
Buried in the place where he had been born, Alexandre Dumas remained in the cemetery at Villers-Cotterêts until
November 30,
2002. Under orders of the
French President,
Jacques Chirac, his body was exhumed and in a televised ceremony, his new coffin, draped in a blue-velvet cloth and flanked by four Republican Guards costumed as the Musketeers -
Athos,
Porthos,
Aramis and
D'Artagnan - was transported in a solemn procession to the
Panthéon of Paris, the great mausoleum where French luminaries are interred.
In his speech, President Chirac said:
"With you, we were D'Artagnan, Monte Cristo or Balsamo, riding along the roads of France, touring battlefields, visiting palaces and castles—with you, we dream." In an interview following the ceremony, President Chirac acknowledged the
racism that had existed, saying that a wrong had now been righted with Alexandre Dumas enshrined alongside fellow authors
Victor Hugo and
Voltaire.
The honor recognized that although France has produced many great writers, none have been as widely read as Alexandre Dumas. His stories have been translated into almost a hundred languages, and have inspired more than 200
motion pictures.
Alexandre Dumas' home outside of Paris, the Château Monte Cristo, has been restored and is open to the public.
*
Free ebook of Alexandre Dumas, père at
Project Gutenberg*
Herald Sun: Lost Dumas play discovered*
Lost Dumas novel hits bookshelves*
Dumas' Works: text, concordances and frequency lists
