DUMAS, ALEXANDRE, called Dumas PfnuE ( 1 . The greatest French romantic novel ist and the most universally read story-teller of the world, born at Villers-Cotterets, July 24, 1802. As a writer he is remarkable for great creative rather than for artistic genius. Dumas's father was a gallant general, Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie Dumas, who served Napoleon with distinction. but died in neglect in This general's father was a rich colonist of llaiti, Marquis Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie: his mother was a negress of Haiti, from whom the general took the name Dumas. His legitimacy is not clear. The novelist, Alexandre, inherited inueli from his negress grandmother, in both appearance and nature: ranch. too. from his mar quis grandfather. The contrast and combination can be constantly noted in his novels. His boy hood was passed in Villers-Cotterets. llis awk ward age and calf-love are painted ingenuously' in his Memoins and in :Inge-Piton. It was in tended to train him for the Church: hut he in clined at first to law and was apprenticed to a notary of Soissons, where he saw, in 1819, a play of Ducis ( q.v.) that determined hint to seek his fortune on the stage. He reached Paris in IS23. with 20 francs and hope for all his patrimony. lle found a temporary livelihood as secretary in the household of the future Philippe, and in 1S29 was among the first to IYegin the romantic revolt on the stage in his Henri ///. el .sa cow•. A stream of dramas fol lowed that brought him notoriety and wealth, spent as soon as won, lie appear, to have been actkr in the Ilevolution of Mu; nit proved a too ebullient republican to find favor in the royal household, and resigned his post. lle now turned to fiction. and contributed to the newly founded and since famous WI' Ile des Della' the first of his historical novels, Isabelle de Bari, re. out of which there grew in his fer tile brain a scheme for turning the whole history of Frame into a sort of human comedy that should "exalt history to the height of fietion." and let a romantic fancy play- around the evi dence- of the past. The chronivrcs de France that resulted from this idea are Dumas's hest work. They have. indeed, no historic insight
and no grasp of character: bitt they have a won derful than instinct to fuse and recast his toric material!, into chaplets of episodes that are by turns frolicsome and wild, extravagant, breathless. and impetuous, subordinating descrip tion to dialogue and everything to action, never failing to absorb the reader and to excite an in tense curiosity. In their historical order these chronicles are Le Initard de Mauleon; Dugues clin: Isabelle do Bariere; La reine .Margot; La dame le Mqnlsoreuu: Les qoa•antmcinq; Les trois mousquctaire.s (the best) : Vinyl ans apr•s: Lc ricomte de Bragclonne: Le rhevalier d'ller manta! Utie fine do regent ; Joseph Balsamo: 1,e collier de In reine; .1 ngr-Pitou ; La comtesse de charily; Le chcralier de Maison-Rouge: Les blanrs et les Urns; Les compagnons de Jail ; and La rose rouge—the whole forming a series of well-nigh a hundred volumes.
Like the writers of the sixteenth century. Pu mas took his material where he found it, having barbaric ideas of literary property. Already in IS32 a well-founded accusation of plagiarism had forced him to travels, of which he has left a lively series of Impressions (consult Wormeley. Journeys with Dumas, Boston, 11102). It did not lead him to mend his ways, however. Volumes have been written about his 'novel factory,' of his purchase of work by unknown authors or trans and of publishing, under his name what he had not so much as read (consult Quilrard's Les superche•ies lit teraires. 1S591. He was always ready to buy ideas; he was willing to buy novels and rewrite them; he also supplied ideas and let others do the mechanical work of composi tion: and in later life he may have been even less scrupulous: but none who claimed to share his honor as well as his profits ever did under their own names work like that which they claimed to have done for him. and we know that Dumas was as rapid and industrious a penman as he was a facile composer. No doubt he squandered his genius under the urgent demands of the press.