DUMAS, ALEX ANDRE D. 





was, to prepare his patients for the operation 

 ro T tln-i-o weeks, or longer if necessary, 



cful attention to their general health, 

 .ind to operate only when they were 

 it condition for it. On reaching his 



ii-th your, Dr. Dudley, though still in the 

 full vigor nnd maturity of his powers, retired 

 from active practice, but was often called in 



: ration. In private life, Dr. Dudley was 

 L'iv.itly esteemed and beloved. His genial 

 ti-mper, his strict temperance, his remarkable 



rsational powers, and his refined and 

 polished manners and address, all contributed 

 to make him one of the most agreeable of com- 

 panions. 



Dl r MAS, ALEXANDKK DAVY, Sen., the most 

 prolific of novelists and dramatists, born in 

 YilliTS Ootterets, Department of the Aisno, 

 France, July 24, 1808; died in Dieppe, France, 



uber 9, 1870. He was the son of tho 

 republican general, Alexandra Davy Dumas, 

 a mulatto, born in St. Domingo, but distin- 

 guished for his strength and military prowess 

 in the wars of the French Revolution. His 

 father died, poor, in 1806, and he was brought 

 up by his mother and received a scanty edu- 

 cation, knowing little, at the ago of eighteen, 

 except how to ride and fence well, to play bil- 

 li:!r<N, and to write a good hand. Tho little 

 pittance left by his father was exhausted, and 

 he came to Paris to find employment. After 

 numerous rebuffs ho obtained a situation as 

 copying-clerk to the secretary of the Duke of 

 Orleans (afterward Louis Philippe), through 

 the influence of General Foy, an old friend of 

 his father. His only qualification was his pen- 

 manship. His salary was a hundred francs 

 (twenty dollars) a month. On this salary he 

 contrived to support his mother and himself, 

 and devoted every moment of leisure to re- 

 pairing the defects of his early education and 

 to composition. His dramas of this period were 

 mere rubbish, which he could not persuade the 

 theatrical managers to accept. At length, in 

 1827, he produced a classical tragedy, of some- 

 what greater merit than the plays which had 

 preceded it, nnder the title of " Christine, ou 

 Stockholm, Fontaiuebleau, et Rome," which 

 was accepted, though not immediately put 

 upon the stage. He spent so much time in tho 

 composition of this, and in running about after 

 the managers, that the Duke of Orloans's sec- 

 retary reduced his already small salary. Noth- 

 ing daunted by this, he immediately produced 

 the historical play of " Henri III.," which dis- 

 plays a profound ignorance of history (a defect 

 which he never succeeded in remedying), and 

 was constructed with utter disregard, if not in 

 defiance, of all the canons of dramatic art. It 

 had nevertheless many taking points, and as 

 its author had the address to procure the at- 

 tendance of the Duke of Orleans, and a num- 

 ber of princes and princesses who wore visit- 

 ing him, at its first performance, it was a tri- 

 umphant success. From this time onward his 

 dramas wore the rage for twenty years, though 



not at first without a severe straggle between 

 his adherents* and the disciples of the old school 

 of tin- <lr:mi:i, which had made Racine its idol. 

 He recast " Christine " to please a pretty actress, 

 and this like a hundred other of hb plays was 

 very popular, and tho now fashionable author, 

 to whom a low months before twenty dollars 

 a month was a fortune, found money c<> 

 in more rapidly than he, with his spendthrift 

 habits, could get rid of it. Tot he soon became 

 an adopt in the arts of extravagance. The 

 brilliancy of Dumns's costume and the delights 

 of his luxurious banquets became tho talk of 

 the city. He was not only a second Shake- 

 speare, but he was one of the greatest cooks in 

 Europe ; perhaps the mixture of French and 

 negro blood ought to make an unparalleled 

 cook. He lavished gold on women and horses, 

 and meanwhile he kept steadily at work, writ- 

 ing by night and rollicking by day, stocking 

 the stage with successful plays, and making 

 himself the idol of an immense circle of wor- 

 shippers. Tho Revolution of July, 1880, came 

 in the first flush of his glory. According to 

 his own story, ho had an important share in 

 overthrowing the Bourbon dynasty, and pla- 

 cing tho citizen-king upon the throne. It may 

 be permitted to doubt the value of his political 

 services ; but Louis Philippe gave him a decora- 

 tion, and the princes of the house of Orleans 

 took him into high favor. The Duke of Mont- 

 pensier carried him to Spain as historiographer 

 of his marriage. Perhaps Dumas was not just 

 the man to write an epithalamium ; but ho 

 performed his part apparently to the satisfac- 

 tion of his princely friend, and till the Revolu- 

 tion of 1848 tho familiar intercourse between 

 the Duke and the dramatist remained, we be- 

 lieve, unbroken. The marriage contract be- 

 tween the Duke and the sister of Isabella bore 

 the signature of Dumas, followed by a long 

 string of titles. From Spain the French Gov- 

 vernment gave him a man-of-war to take him 

 on a visit to Africa, and a terrible time was 

 made about it afterward by the opposition in 

 the Assembly. Coming home from this tour, 

 he resolved (like Shakespeare) to have his own 

 theatre, and so built a play-house, full of 

 architectural eccentricities, to which he gave 

 tho name of the Theatre Montpensier, after- 

 ward changed to Theatre Uistorique. Probably 

 in a venture like this it was inevitable that he 

 should lose money ; but if there was any ques- 

 tion about that, the Revolution of 1848 soon 

 settled it: Dumas and tho Theatre Ilistorique 

 came to ruin. A chorus of Girondists in his 

 drama of " La Chevalier du Maison Rouge," 

 then acting at the house, was taken up by the 

 insurgents as a sort of Marseillaise ; and when, 

 in the midst of the fighting, the author, covered 

 all over with decorations, set out for the Tuil- 

 erios to pay his respects to the royal family, 

 the mob, mistaking his sentiments, raised him 

 upon their shoulders and bore him in triumph 

 to the barricades. The charge of ingratitude 

 to the Orleans family, which grow out of this 



