DUMAS, ALEXANDRE ("DUMAs FILs") French dramatist and novelist, was born in Paris on July 27, 1824, the natural son of Alexandre Dumas (see above) and the dress maker Marie Labay. "Happily," writes the son, "my mother was a good woman, and worked hard to bring me up"; while of his father he says, "by a most lucky chance he happened to be well natured," and "as soon as his first successes as a dramatist" enabled him to do so, "recognized me and gave me his name." Nevertheless, the lad's earlier school-life was made bitter by his illegitimacy. The cruel taunts and malevolence of his companions rankled through life (see preface to La Femme de Claude and L'Affaire Clemenceau), and left indelible marks on his character and thoughts. Nor was his paternity, however distinguished, with out peril. Alexandre the younger and elder saw life together very thoroughly, and Paris can have had few mysteries for them. Sud denly the son, who had been led to regard his prodigal father's resources as inexhaustible, was rudely undeceived. Coffers were empty, and he had accumulated debts to the amount of L2,000.
Thereupon he pulled himself together. To a son of Dumas the use of the pen came naturally. Like most clever young writers— and report speaks of him as specially brilliant at that time—he opened with a book of verse, Peches de jeunesse (1847). It was succeeded in 1848 by a novel, La Dame aux camelias, a sort of re flection of the world in which he had been living. The book was followed, in fairly quick succession, by Le Roman d'une femme (1848) and Diane de Lys (1851). All this, however, did not de liver him from the load of debt, which, as he tells us, remained odious. In 1849 he dramatized La Dame aux camelias, but the rigour of the censorship and other circumstances delayed its pro duction until Feb. 2, 1852, when Napoleon's all-powerful minister, Morny, intervened. The play succeeded then, and has held the stage ever since, less perhaps from inherent superiority to other plays which have foundered than to the great opportunities it affords to any actress of genius.
Thenceforward Dumas's career was that of a brilliant and pros perous dramatist. Diane de Lys (1853), Le Demi-Monde La Question d'argent (1857), Le Fils naturel (1858), Le Pere prodigue (1859) followed rapidly. Debts became a thing of the past, and Dumas a wealthy man. The didactic habit was always strong upon him. "Alexandre loves preaching overmuch," wrote his father; and in most of his plays he assumes the attitude of a rigid and uncompromising moralist commissioned to impart to a heedless world lessons of deep import. The lessons themselves are mostly concerned with the "eternal feminine," by which Dumas was haunted, and differ in ethical value. Thus in Les Idees de Madame Aubray (1867) he inculcates the duty of the seducer to marry the woman he has seduced ; but in La Femme de Claude (1873) he argues the right of the husband to take the law into his own hand and kill the wife who is unfaithful and worthless —a thesis again defended in his novel, L'A ff aire Clemenceau, and in his pamphlet, L'Homme- f emme ; while in Diane de Lys he had taught that the betrayed husband was entitled to kill—not in a duel, but summarily—the man who had taken his honour; and in L'Etrangere (1876) the bad husband is the victim. Nor did he preach only in his plays. He preached in voluminous introduc tions, and pamphlets not a few. And when, in 18 7o and 1872, France was going through bitter hours of humiliation, he called her to repentance and amendments in a Nouvelle Lettre de Junius and two Lettres sur les closes du jour.
As a moralist Dumas fils took himself very seriously indeed. As a dramatist, didacticism apart, he had great gifts. He knew his business thoroughly, possessed the art of situation, interest, crisis—could create characters that were real and alive. His dialogue also is admirable, the repartee rapierlike, the wit most keen. He was singularly happy, too, in his dramatic interpreters. The cast of L'Etrangere, for instance, comprised Sarah Bernhardt, Sophie Croizette, Madeleine Brohan, in the female characters; and Coquelin, Got, Mounet-Sully and Febvre in the male char acters; and Aimee Desclee, whom he discovered, gave her genius to the creation of the parts of the heroine in Une Visite de noces, the Princesse Georges and La Femme de Claude. He possessed wit in abundance, of a singularly trenchant kind. It shows itself less in his novels, which, however do not contain his best work; but in his introductions, whether to his own books or those of his friends, and what may be called his "occasional" writings, there is an admirable brightness. His style is that of the best French tradi tions. Towards his father Dumas acted a kind of brother's part, and while keeping free from his literary influence, both loved and admired him. The father never belonged to the French Academy. The son was elected on Jan. 3o, 1874. He died on Nov. 27, See J. Claretie, A. Dumas fils (1883) ; P. Bourget, Nouveaux Essais de psychologie contemporaine (1885) ; "La Comedie de moeurs," by Rene Doumic, in L. Petit de Julleville's Histoire de la langue et de la litterature francaise, viii. pp. 82 et seq. ; R. Doumic, Portraits d'ecri vains (1892), Emile Zola, Documents litteraires, etudes et portraits (1880. (F. T. M.)