248 



DUMAS, ALEXANDPvE D. 



absurd incident, was probably undeserved ; 

 but Dumas had all the natural aptitude of a 

 Frenchman for "accepting the situation." Ac- 

 cordingly we find him establishing a news- 

 paper, La Liberte, and making a signal failure 

 as a political journalist, on the Conservative 

 side ; then another periodical, Le Mois, which 

 lived two years, but never had any influence; 

 and finally presenting himself as a candidate 

 for the National Assembly, in which character 

 he also failed. In 1852 he was so far reduced 

 in purse that he removed to Belgium to get 

 rid of his creditors; but his exile was of 

 short duration. He had begun his career as a 

 novelist as early as 1835, when he published 

 "Isabelle de Baviere" as the first of a series 

 of romances on the history of France, con- 

 structed after the model of Walter Scott, from 

 whom, we may say in passing, he used to steal 

 a great deal, under the comfortable excuse 

 that men of genius like William Shakespeare 

 and Alexandre Dumas " do not rob, they con- 

 quer." It was with the appearance, however, 

 of his famous " Three Guardsmen " in 18-14, 

 and the inimitable " Count of Monte Cristo " 

 in the same year, that his glory as a novelist 

 burst upon the world. The story-feuilleton, 

 as an indispensable adjunct of the daily news- 

 paper, received from these works its extreme 

 development. The Parisian could no more 

 dispense with his regular morning allowance 

 of highly-seasoned romance than the New- 

 York merchant can exist without his daily re- 

 port of the stock-market. The most extrava- 

 gant sums were offered M. Dumas by the con- 

 ductors of rival journals, and he seemed equal 

 to any amount of work that might be demanded 

 of him. Sometimes he carried on three or 

 four different romances at the same time in as 

 many different periodicals. He wrote on an 

 average thirty-two printed octavo pages a day. 

 In 1846 he made a contract with two news- 

 papers to furnish them an amount of manu- 

 script equal to sixty volumes a year, apart from 

 his continued labors for the stage. Of course 

 such fecundity raised the question of the au- 

 thenticity of the wares which he sent forth 

 under his name. A lawsuit with the directors 

 of the Presse and Constitutionnel was one of 

 the results of this scandal, and though Dumas 

 succeeded in proving to the satisfaction of the 

 court that he had enough to do with the com- 

 position and plan of his own works to be justi- 

 fied in styling himself their author, many 

 curious particulars were divulged respecting 

 his method of working and liberal employ- 

 ment of assistants. Eugene de Mirecourt had 

 published before this trial an account of the 

 Dumas process, under the very happy title of 

 "Fabrique de romans, maison A. Dumas et 

 Cie.," and M. Querard had also made known 

 some interesting details of the same business. 

 He had no fewer than seventy-four collabora- 

 tors or assistants, and among those who were 

 justly entitled to the paternity of plays or nov- 

 els which passed under the magic name of Du- 



mas, were Anicet-Bourgeois, Hippolyte Auger, 

 Paul Bocage, Brunswick, Louis Couailhac, 

 Durrien, Florentine, G6rard de Nerval, Ma- 

 quet, Meurice, and Souvestre. The labors of 

 these gentlemen were materially reenforced 

 by enormous plagiarisms from authors both 

 living and dead. Dumas's favorite quarries 

 were the works of Scott, Schiller, Chateau- 

 briand, Augustin Thierry, and Victor Hugo. 

 When he lived at Marly he used to say that 

 "it took a man, two horses, and a locomotive, 

 to transport his manuscripts every day to 

 Paris." Notwithstanding the developments 

 of his famous lawsuit, there was no decline in 

 the popularity of his novels. " The Three 

 Guardsmen " were compelled to continue their 

 adventures through several additional works ; 

 and several subsequent romances, whose titles 

 we shall not take the space to enumerate, 

 fascinated the public hardly less than those 

 most successful of modern novels. The best 

 of them have been turned into almost all the 

 European languages, and their author was 

 decorated by various sovereigns and societies 

 until his broad person hardly afforded room 

 enough to display his orders. At various 

 times Dumas travelled through nearly all parts 

 of the Continent, and recorded his impressions 

 in a series of sketchy volumes which contain 

 a good deal of wit and a very little truth, and, 

 though thoroughly worthless, are marked with 

 such an engaging egotism that possibly it will 

 repay one even now to read them. What was 

 there, indeed, which Dumas did not touch with 

 his pen? He has written history, and he has 

 recorded his impressions of "Fifteen Days on 

 Mount Sinai" and, after those two exhibi- 

 tions of temerity, what should appall him ? 

 It was announced some time ago that he had 

 written a cookery-book ; but he was well 

 qualified to do that. 



We have shown how he lost one fortune by 

 his theatre. He lost another by a fanciful 

 country-seat called the Chateau de Monte 

 Cristo which he built near St. Germain. It 

 was surrounded by an artificial pond, crossed 

 by a drawbridge which the owner, as he sat 

 by his table in a little cabinet de travail, could 

 raise or lower by touching a golden knob. The 

 extravagance of his wild fancy had full play in 

 the furnishing of this fantastic abode, upon 

 which he had spent 450,000 francs, when the 

 Revolution of 1848 cut short his means. It 

 was sold at auction in 1854 for less than a 

 tenth of its original cost. Some of the later 

 literary extravagances of the prince of roman- 

 cers were no doubt prompted by the amusing 

 vanity and devouring appetite for notoriety 

 which were always among his chief character- 

 istics. It was something of this kind which 

 prompted him to join Garibaldi, in 1860, to 

 share his campaigns, and write a "Memoir" 

 of the Capreran hero ; it was something of this 

 kind which dictated his Autobiography, which, 

 as long ago as 1856, had reached the disheart- 

 ening magnitude of twenty-seven volumes; and 



