Alexandre Dumas His Life and Works

f, t ''m^t •1:1^1 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNDERGRADUATE LIBRARY tu U X'^S>^V ^ ^>tL^^ IfO' The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924014256972 ALEXANDRE DUMAS HIS LIFE AND WORKS ALEXANDRE DUMAS (pere) HIS LIFE AND WORKS By ARTHUR F. DAVIDSON, M.A (Formerly Scholar of Keble College, Oxford) "Vastus animus immoderata, incredibilia, Nimis alta semper cupiebat." (Sallust, Catilina V) PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY Ltd Westminster : ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO 1902 Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London. ^l&'il^li — Preface IT may be—to be exact, it is—a somewhat presumptuous thing to write a book and call it Alexandre Dumas. There is no question here of introducing an unknown man or discovering an unrecognized genius. Dumas is, and has been for the better part of a century, the property of all the world : there can be little new to say about one of whom so much has already been said. Remembering also, as I do, a dictum by one of our best known men of letters to the effect that the adequate biographer of Dumas neither is nor is likely to be, I accept the saying at this moment with all the imfeigned humility which experience entitles me to claim. My own behef on this point is that, if we could conceive a writer who combined in himself the anecdotal facility of Suetonius or Saint Simon, with the loaded brevity of Tacitus and the judicial irony of Gibbon, such an one might essay the task with a reasonable prospect of success—though, after all, the probability is that he would be quite out of S5nnpathy with Dumas. However that be, I console myself by reflecting that—to adapt a familiar Dumas story il y a des degres, and by hoping that, in the scale of degrees, this book may not be at the very lowest. Then, there is—or there was, on the 24th of July in this year—the centenary of Dumas' birth. Centenaries threaten to become a nuisance, nor is there any particular reason why vii I PREFACE a man should be more worthy of notice at a hundred years from his birth than at ninety-nine or a hundred and one. Still the excuse will serve for a reason : a century is, no doubt, a good number, and demands—^like Sydney Smith's Equator—to be treated with all possible respect. And so, after a fairly extensive study, during the last fifteen years, of Dumas and whatever has been written about him, it seemed to me that there was room for a co-ordination of facts which might represent, in justly balanced proportion, and with some pretence of accuracy, both the life of the man and the work of the author. Considering the number and variety of opinions, my object might be expressed— use the words with all reverence—as " Xva iinyv^^ irepl &v tcanj'xdrj'i Xoywv Tr)v aatpaXeiav." In attempting this I make no apology for the amount of space which I have given to literature—dramas, novels, and the rest/ Dimias lived writing, and writing lived : that was his incessant occupation, to a degree perhaps unparal- leled. It would be ridiculous to relegate aU this to a secondary place, simply to make room for a larger collection of the curiosities of private life—though no one will find that ancedotes have been neglected. To his dramatic work, though it may not be of such general interest, I have as- signed a prominent position for reasons which I have made clear in the book ; and I have not hesitated, even at the cost of re-teUing ah old tale, to try and give a reasoned resume of all the familiar romances. Without for a moment wishing these pages to be considered as an " appreciation " —that word of harsh and arrogant import—I should be proud to think that they possessed some of the qualities of a history. To theorize has not been a primary intention —that has been amply done already. Some views or con- clusions are, however, inevitably linked with facts ; and in viii PREFACE choosing these I have been guided partly by the authority of others, partly by my own judgment. But, while recognizing that the life of Dumas must be before all things the life of a literary man, I have been care- ful to attach to this string all the principal events of a career redundant with every kind of interest ; so that, on the whole, if a separate computation should be made, it would probably be found that the doings and the writings—the life and the work—divide this book pretty evenly between them. In such a case—with a vast mass of material and the ne- cessity of reducing from a larger to a smaller scale—the question is one of method and proportion, if one seeks some- thing complete within its own limits. I say " its limits," because none but a simpleton or an impostor would think to measure the length and breadth of Alexandre Dumas within the compass of one moderate volume. Any one, out of half a dozen aspects of the man, suppUes material for a book as large as this. And, in fact, the various French works concerning Dumas have all confined themselves to some particular side of his talent or some particular period of his life : there does not exist in his own country any comprehensive and continuous work—biographical and literary—such as this is intended approximately to be. I have been bound, therefore, in the process of selection, to leave out things which some would wish inserted, and to insert what some would think might be omitted, guided only by my own very fallible judgment. I have—in view of the ground to be covered—divided the work into large sections or chapters (largeness seems appro- priate when dealing with Dumas), with commonplace titles, which roughly indicate the nature of their contents. The order followed is, as a rule, chronological, though in one or two instances it has been slightly varied, for the sake of ix — PREFACE grouping. In such cases—and passim—an abundant supply of dates will, I hope, prevent any confusion. In describing the life of Dumas, it goes without saying that I have not scrupled, whenever the occasion required, to call a spade by its simple name rather than by any out-worn euphemism. I have employed notes partly to save the text, partly for other reasons, which will appear to those who read them. I have arranged a bibliography—^based as to certain details on the recognized authorities—Querard, Parran, d'HeiUy, and especially M. Charles Glinel, for the benefit of all whom such things interest ; and the number of Dimias' collabora- tors may be reckoned up by any one with a turn for ele- mentary arithmetic. I have added also an index, which, without being strictly scientific, may be of some general utility. Of the French authorities enumerated in Appendix II —the majority of whom I have consulted at first hand none is more valuable than M. Glinel's book, to which, for its bibliographical research and its chronological data, every student of Dumas must be infinitely indebted. The works of Blaze de Bury, Philibert Audebrand, Gabriel Ferry, and M. Parigot's two books are all very useful on special points. Dumas himself—duly checked by reference to other authorities —is and remains the chief source of information about Dumas, in details which are scattered broadcast through the midtitude of his writings. And here I may observe, in passing, that whenever the narrative comes from him I have tried—amid all the pressure of condensation—to preserve the spirit and style of the original, feeling that to do aught else would be at once a treachery to the best of raconteurs and an insult to one's readers. As to other documents on the subject, we all of us know people who met Dumas in the flesh and have somewhat to X — PREFACE say about him—though it would seem a fatuous thing to parade private sources of information in the case of a man about whom everything worth knowing has been known, or knowable, for a good many years past. Of secondary authorities—for I consider, of course, the French as primary —I have not attempted to compile a list of those who have written about Dumas in our language, but I am conscious of having read, at one time or other, any number of articles in English and American magazines. There is also Mr. Percy Fitzgerald's book. The Life and Adventures of Alex- andre Dumas. Several English writers have been quoted or referred to in the course of the following pages. Thackeray, Abraham Ha5nvard, R. L. Stevenson, in the past ; in the present, Mr. W. E. Henley (Views and Reviews), Mr. Andrew Lang (Essays in Little and elsewhere), Mr. W. H. Pollock, Professor Saintsbury are names which occur at random ; and if there be any other eminent men whom I ought to mention, I crave pardon for the momentary forgetfulness and express my gratitude for any good things I may have unconsciously absorbed from them.^ Such names are suffi- cient, at any rate, to show that appreciation of Dumas is not solely or necessarily the mark of the literary plebeian, as some would arrogantly have us believe.

Load more