Memoirs

Alexandre Dumas pere, the great French novelist and dramatist, who here tells the story of his youth, was born on July 24, 1802, and died on December 5, 1870. He was a man of prodigious vitality, virility, and invention; abounding in enjoyment, gaiety, vanity, and kindness; the richness, force, and celerity of his nature was amazing. In regard to this peculiar vivacity of his, it is interesting to remember that one of his grandparents was a full-blooded negress. Dumas’ literary work is essentially romantic; his themes are courage, loyalty, honour, love, pageantry, and adventure; he belongs to the tradition of Scott and Schiller, but as a story-teller excels every other. His plays and novels are both very numerous; the “OEuvres Completes,” published between 1860 and 1884, fill 277 volumes. Probably “Monte Cristo” and “The Three Musketeers” are the most famous of his stories. He was an untiring and exceedingly rapid worker, a great collaborator employing many assistants, and was also a shameless plagiarist; but he succeeded in impressing his own quality on all that he published. Besides plays and novels there are several books of travel. His son, Alexandre, was born in 1824. The “Memoirs,” published in 1852, which are here followed through their author’s struggles to his triumph, may be the work of the novelist as well as of the chronicler, but they give a most convincing impression of his courageous and brilliant youth, fired equally by art and by ambition.

I.-Memories of Boyhood

I was born on July 24, 1802, at Villers-Cotterets, a little town of the Department of Aisne, on the road from Laon to Paris, so that, writing now in 1847, I am forty-five years old. My father was the republican general, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie, and I still use this patronymic in signing official documents. It came from my grandfather, marquis of that name, who sold his properties in France, and settled down in 1760 on vast estates in San Domingo. There, in 1762, my father was born; his mother, Louise-Cessette Dumas, died in 1772; and in 1780, when my father was eighteen, the West Indian estates were leased, and the marquis returned to his native country.

My father spent the next years among the youth of the great families of that period. His handsome features-all the more striking for the dark complexion of a mulatto-his prodigious physical strength, his elegant créole figure, with hands and feet as small as a woman’s, his unrivalled skill in bodily exercises, and especially in fencing and horsemanship, all marked him out as one born for adventures. The spirit of adventure was there, too. Assuming the name of Dumas because his father objected to the family name being dragged through the ranks, he enlisted as a private in a regiment of dragoons in 1786, at the age of twenty-four. Quartered at Villers-Cotterets in 1790, he met my mother, Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Labouret, whom he married two years later. Their children were one daughter, and then myself. The marquis had died in 1786.

My memory goes back to 1805, when I was three, and to the little country house, Les Fossés, we lived in. I remember a journey to Paris in the same year, and the death of my father in 1806. Then my mother, sister, and I, left in poverty, went to live with grandfather and grandmother Labouret. Here, in gardens full of shady trees and gorgeous blossoms, I spent those happy days when hope extends hardly further than to-morrow, and memory hardly further than yesterday; storing my mind with classical mythology and Bible stories, the “Arabian Nights,” the natural history of Buffon, and the geography of “Robinson Crusoe.”

Then came my tenth year and the age for school. It was decided that I should go to the seminary and be educated for a priest; but I settled that matter by running away and living for three days in the hut of a friendly bird-catcher in the woods. So I passed instead into our little school of the Abbe Gregoire-a just and good man, of whom I learned little but to love him; and from another parish priest, an uncle of mine, a few miles away, I gained a passion for shooting the hares and partridges with which our country swarmed.

But while I was living in twelve-year-old joys and sorrows, the enemy was marching on French soil, and all confidence in Napoleon’s star had vanished. God had forsaken him. A retreating wave of our army swept over the countryside, followed by alien forces. We lived in the midst of fighting and alarms, and my mother and her friends worked like sisters of charity. There followed Bonaparte’s exile in Elba, and then the astonishing report that he had landed near Cannes, and was marching on Paris. He reached the Tuileries on March 20, 1815; in May, his troops were marching through our town on their way to Waterloo, glory, and the grave. I saw him passing in his carriage, his face, pale and sickly, leaning forward, chin on breast. He raised his head, and glanced around.

“Where are we?”

“At Villers-Cotterets, sire.”

“Forward! Faster!” he cried, and fell back into his lethargy. Whips cracked, and the gigantic vision had passed. That was June 11-Waterloo was the 18th. On the 20th, three or four hours after the first doubtful rumour had reached us, a carriage drew up to change horses. There was the same inert figure, and the same question and answer. The team broke into a gallop, and the fallen Napoleon was gone. Soon all went on in the ordinary way, and in our little town, isolated in the midst of its forest, one might have thought no changes had taken place; people had had an evil dream-that was all.

My memories of this period are chiefly memories of the woods-shooting parties, now and then a wolf or boar hunt, often a poaching adventure with a friend. But at fifteen years of age I was placed in a notary’s office; at sixteen I learned to love, and shortly afterwards I saw “Hamlet” played by a touring company. It made a profound impression on me, awakening vast, aimless desires, strange gleams of mystery. A friend of mine, Adolphe de Leuven, himself an ardent versifier, guided me to a first sense of my vocation, and together we set to work as playwrights.

Adolphe and his father went up to live in Paris, and our plays were submitted everywhere in vain. My ardour for the great city grew daily until it became irresistible; and at length, in the temporary absence of my notary, I made a three days’ escape with a friend, saw Talma act, and was even introduced to him by Adolphe. His playing opened a new world to me, and the great man playfully foretold my destiny.

As one enchanted, I returned to the office, accepted my employers’ rebuke as a dismissal, and went home. I was without a penny, but was immediately visited by a wonderful run of fortune. Among other strokes of luck, I sold my rascal dog for $25 to an infatuated Englishman, and won six hundred glasses of absinthe at a single game of billiards from the proprietor of the Paris coach, commuting them for a dozen free passages. I said good-bye to the dear mother and the saintly abbe, and found myself early on a May morning at Adolphe’s door. I had come to try my fortune with my father’s brothers-at-arms.

Of course, there were bitter disappointments, and when I called on General Foy he was my last hope. Alas! did I know this subject, or that, or that? My answer was always “No.” But the general would at least keep my address; and no sooner had I written it down than he cried aloud that we were saved! It appeared that I had a good writing, and the Duke of Orleans needed another copyist in his office. The next morning I was engaged at a salary of twelve hundred francs. I came home for three days with my mother, and on the advice of the bird-catcher took a ticket at the lottery, which brought me 146 francs. And so, with a few bits of furniture from home, I took up my lodging in a Parisian garret.

II.-Launched in Paris

Now began a life of daily work at the office, with agreeable companions, and of evenings spent at the theatre or in study. On the first night I went to the Porte-Sainte-Martin Theatre, where a melodrama, “The Vampire,” was presented, and fell into conversation with my neighbour, a man of about forty, of fascinating discourse, who was inordinately impatient with the piece, and was at last turned out of the theatre for his expressions of disapproval. His talk, far more interesting than the play, turned on rare editions of old books, on the sylphs, gnomes, Undines of the invisible world, on microscopic creatures he had himself discovered, and on vampires he had seen in Illyria. I learned next day that this was the celebrated author and bibliophile, Charles Nodier, himself one of the anonymous authors of the play he so vilified.

Lassagne, a genial colleague in the office, not only put me in the way of doing my work, which I quickly picked up, but was good enough also to guide my reading, for I was deplorably ignorant. In those days Scribe was the great dramatist, producing innumerable clever plots of intrigue, modelled on no natural society, but on a society all his own, composed almost exclusively of colonels, young widows, old soldiers, and faithful servants. No one had ever seen such widows and colonels, never soldiers spoke as these did, never were servants so devoted; yet this society of Scribe’s was all the fashion.

The men most highly placed in literature at the time when I came to Paris were MM. de Chateaubriand, Jouy, Lemercier, Arnault, Etienne, Baour-Lormian, Beranger, Charles Nodier, Viennet Scribe, Theaulon, Soumet, Casimir Delavigne, Lucien Arnault, Ancelot, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Desaugiers, and Alfred de Vigny. After them came names half literary, half political, such as MM. Cousin, Salvandy, Yillemain, Thiers, Augustin Thierry, Michelet, Mignet, Vitet, Cave, Merimee, and Guizot. Others, who were not yet known, but were coming forward, were Balzac, Soulie, De Musset, Sainte-Beuve, Auguste Barbier, Alphonse Karr, Théophile Gautier. Madame Sand was not known until her “Indiana,” in 1828. I knew all this constellation, some of them as friends and supporters, others as enemies.

In December, 1823, Talma made perhaps the greatest success of his life in Delavigne’s “L’Ecole des Vieillards,” in which his power of modulating his voice to the various emotions of old age was superbly shown. But Talma was never content with his triumphs; he awaited eagerly the rise of a new drama; and when I confided to him my ambitions, he would urge me to be quick and succeed within his day. Art was all that he lived for. How wonderful a thing is art, more faithful than a friend or lover!

On the first day of 1824 I rose to be a regular clerk at 1,500 francs, and determined to bring up my mother from the country. It was now nine months since I had seen her. So she sold her tobacco shop and came up to Paris with a little furniture and a hundred louis. We were both very glad to be united, though she was anxious about my future.

I had by this time learned my ignorance of much that was necessary to my success as a dramatist, and began to devote every hour of my leisure to study, attending the theatre as often as I could get a pass. A young medical man named Thibaut helped me much in my education; he took me to the hospital, where I picked up a knowledge of medicine and surgery which has repeatedly done service in my novels, and I learned from him the actions of poisons, such as I have used in “Monte Cristo.”

I read also under the guidance of Lassagne, beginning with “Ivanhoe,” in which the pictures of mediaeval life cleared the clouds from my vision and gave me a far wider horizon. Next the vast forests, prairies, and oceans of Cooper held me; and then I came to Byron, who died in Greece at the very time when I was entering on my apprenticeship to poetry. The romantic movement in France was beginning to invade literature and the drama, but its expression was still most evident in the younger painters.

My mother’s little capital only lasted eighteen months, and I found myself forced to supplement my salary by other work. I had until now collaborated with Adolphe, but all in vain, and we now determined to associate Ph. Rousseau with our efforts. The three of us together quickly produced a vaudeville in twenty-one scenes, “La Chasse et l’Amour,” of which I wrote the first seven scenes, Adolphe the second seven, and Rousseau the conclusion. The piece was rejected at the Gymnase, but accepted at the Ambigu; and my share of the profits came to six francs a night.

A.M. Porcher, who always had a pleasant welcome and an open purse for a literary man, lent me 300 francs on the security of my receipts, and with that money I printed a volume of three stories under the title of “Nouvelles Contemporaines,” of which, however, only four copies were sold. But the next adventure was more profitable. A play, by Lassagne and myself, “La Noce et l’Enterrement,” was presented at the Porte-Sainte-Martin in November 1826, and brought me eight francs a night for forty nights.

III.-Under Shakespeare’s Spell

As recently as 1822 an English theatrical company, which had opened at the Porte-Sainte-Martin Theatre, had been hissed and pelted off the stage for offering the dramas of the barbaric Shakespeare. But when, in September 1827, another English company brought Shakespeare’s plays to the Odéon, this contempt for English literature had changed to ardent admiration-so quickly had the mind of Paris broadened. Shakespeare had been translated by Guizot, and everyone had read Scott, Cooper, and Byron.

The English season was opened by Sheridan’s “Rivals,” followed by Allingham’s “Fortune’s Freak.” Then came “Hamlet,” which infinitely surpassed all my expectations. Kemble’s Hamlet was amazing, and Miss Smithson’s Ophelia adorable. From that very night, but not before, I knew what the theatre was. I had seen for the first time real men and women, of flesh and blood, moved by real passions. I understood Talma’s continual lament, his incessant desire for plays which should show him, not as a hero only, but also as a man. “Romeo and Juliet,” “Othello,” and all the other masterpieces followed. Then, in their turn, Macready and Kean appeared in Paris.

I knew now that everything in the world of drama derives from Shakespeare, as everything in the natural world depends on the sun; I knew that, after God, Shakespeare was the great creator. And from the night when I had first seen, in these English players, men on the stage forgetful of the stage, and revealing themselves, by natural eloquence and manner, as God’s creatures, with all their good and evil, their passions and weaknesses, from that night my vocation was irrevocable. A new confidence was given me, and I boldly adventured on the future. Besides observing mankind, I entered with redoubled zest upon the dissection and study of the words of the great dramatists.

My attention had been turned to the story of Christine and the murder of Monaldeschi by an exquisite little bas-relief in the Salon; and reading up the history in the biographical dictionary, I saw that it held the possibility of a tremendous drama. The subject haunted my mind continually, and soon my “Christine” came into life and was written. But Talma was dead; I had now no friend at the theatre; and I cast about me in vain for the means of getting my play produced.

Baron Taylor was at this time the official charged with the acceptance or rejection of plays, and Charles Nodier, so Lassagne informed me, was on intimate terms with him. Lassagne suggested that I should write to Nodier, reminding him of our chat on the night of “The Vampire,” and asking for an introduction to the Baron. I did so, and the reply came from Baron Taylor himself, offering me an interview at seven in the morning.

At the appointed time, my heart beating fast, I rang the bell of his flat, and as I waited for someone to come, I wondered at a strange noise that was going on within-a deep, monotonous recitation, interrupted by occasional explosions of rage in a higher voice. I rang for the third time, and as a door opened within, the mysterious sounds doubled in volume. Then the outer door opened, and the Baron’s old servant hurried me in. “Come in, sir,” she said, “come in; the Baron is longing for you to come!” I found Baron Taylor in his bath, and beside him a playwright reading a tragedy. The fellow had insisted on entering, had caught the examiner of plays in his bath, and was inflicting on him a play of over two thousand lines! Undaunted by the Baron’s rage, and unmoved by my arrival, he proceeded with his reading, while I waited in the bedroom.

When Baron Taylor at last came in and got into bed, he was shivering with cold, and I proposed to put off my reading; but he would not hear of it, and trembling, I began my play. At the end of each act the Baron himself asked for the next, and when it was finished he leapt from bed and called for his clothes that he might go and arrange for an immediate hearing before the committee at the Francais.

And so a special meeting was called, and I read “Christine” to a gathering of the greatest actors and actresses of the time, all fully dressed as if for a dance. I have rarely seen a play meet with so great a success at this ordeal; I was off my head with pleasure; the play was accepted by acclamation. I ran home to our rooms to tell my mother the great news of this great day, April 30, 1828, and then back to the office to copy out a heap of papers.

“Christine” was not, however, produced at this time. Another play on the same subject, written by a M. Brault, had also been accepted by the committee, and its author was suffering from an illness from which it was impossible that he should recover. Under these circumstances it was felt right to present the dying man’s play while he was able to see it, and I willingly acceded to the requests, made by his son and friends, that my work should stand aside.

IV.-Dumas Arrives

But now, by a happy chance, in a book that lay open on a table in the office, I came across the suggestions for my “Henry III.”; and as soon as the plot had grown clear in my mind, I wrote the play in a couple of months. I was only twenty-five, and this was only my second play; yet it is as well constructed as any of the fifty which I have since written.

Beranger, the great poet of democracy, and a man at that time of unrivalled influence, was present at a private reading of “Henry III.,” and foretold its great success. The official reading was on September 17, 1828, when the play was accepted by acclamation, and the parts were cast. But my good fortune had not got into the papers, and this, as well as my frequent absences at the theatre, had done me no good at the office. So I was sent for one morning by M. de Broval, the director-general, and was given, in set terms, my choice between my situation as a clerk and my literary career. Only one choice was now possible, and from that very day my salary ceased.

The year 1829 was that in which my position was made and my future assured. But it opened with a great sorrow. I was one day at the theatre when a messenger ran in to tell me that my mother had fallen ill. I sent for a doctor, hurried to her side, and found that she was unable to speak, and that one side of her body was totally paralysed. My sister was soon with us, having come up to town for the first night of the play. My state of mind during the following days may be imagined, under the dreadful affliction of seeing my mother dying, and under the enormous burden of producing my first play.

On the day before the presentation of “Henry III.,” I went to the palace, sent in my name to the Duke of Orleans, and boldly asked him the favour, or, rather, the act of justice, that he would be present at the theatre on the first night. I pointed out to him that he had given ear to those who had charged me with vanity and willfulness, and begged him to come and hear the verdict of the public. When his Highness told me that he could not come, because he had over a score of princes and princesses dining with him on that night, I suggested that he should bring them too. And so it was arranged.

February 11, so long awaited, dawned at last, and I spent the whole day until evening with my mother. I had given an order for the play to every one of my old colleagues at the office; I had a tiny stage-box; my sister had a box in which she entertained Boulanger, De Vigny, and Victor Hugo; every other place in the theatre was sold. The circle was gorgeous with princes decorated with their orders, and the boxes with the nobility, the ladies all glittering with diamonds.

The curtain went up. I have never felt anything to compare with the cool breath of air from the stage, which fanned my heated brow. The first act was received sympathetically, and was followed by applause, and I seized the interval to run and see my mother. The second act passed without disapproval. The third, I knew, would mean success or disaster. It called forth cries of fear, but also thunders of applause; never before had they seen a dramatic situation so realistically, I had almost said so brutally, presented. Again I visited my mother; how I wished she could have been there! Then came the fourth and fifth acts, which were received by a tumultuous frenzy of delight; and when the author’s name was called, the Duke of Orleans himself stood up to honour it.

The days of struggle were over, the triumph had come. Utterly unknown that evening, I was next morning the talk of Paris. They little knew that I had spent the night on the floor, by the bed of my dying mother.