His best work was almost all done between 1'143 and inimitable Comte de Monte ('risto; Les trois mousquetaires; Vinyl ans apres; La reine Margot; Les memoirrs (Fun medrcin Les qua ra I e-ci nq 1.e rieom te do Dragelonne ; and La noirr. After that We catch only an occa sional flash of genius, a- in hluneR el less Wens (186R). In one way or another Dumas is re sponsible for somewhat closely printed vol umes. For a he was the world's doilm more than all others to gether to give French fiction a cosmopolitan audi ence in the great middle class. ills work brought enormous returns, but he was a phenomenon of thriftlessness. He became involved in many law suits over contracts signed with thoughtless lev ity. lie built a palace, .Monte Cristo. for 300,000 Cranes, in 1847, then sold it in 1.R31, and tied front his creditors in 185:3. Then for nineteen years he became a pathetic wanderer in search of 'copy.' lie visited England (1857). Paissia and Caucasus (185S ) , and Italy (IRGO and 1866). Last came four of senile poverty. relieved by the son whose Imyhood he had neglect ed and whose youth he had misguided. By him he was taken from the excitements and dangers of Paris in war time to furs, near Dieppe, where he died on the day of its occupation by the Prus December 5, IR70. Ile was buried in 1'872 at his boyhood's Inane in Villers-Cotterets. A uniform and nearly complete translation of Du novels is published in Boston. Consult: Blaze the Bury. Alexandre D 1111111S. Sll ric, sun I cm ps. son I Paris, 1 ; Wells, .1 Cen tury of French Fiction (New York, Pari got, Le drame 41c.ra«dre Dumas (Park, 1SO:=, t ; id.. Alexandre Dumas pCre •ib., 1902) : Spurr, The Life and Writings of Alexandre Dumas (New York. 1902), DUMAS, called Dtmi.ts Ftl.s (1524-95). One of the most distinguished of modern French dramatists. Ile was born in Paris. July 27. 1524. the son of the great ro mantic novelist of like name, but of a genius strangely contrasted. In him the father's rich but riotous fancy yielded to close observation and realistic earnestness that made of him an unbending and almost a Puritan moralist. Like his grandfather. an illegitimate child. he has drawn. in L'a ffairc Clemenerau (novel, 1S67; dramatized. 1SS71. a moving picture of the tor caused his origin during his school life. Later he became the companion and associate of his bohemian father, and after a brief carnival found himself, in 1R4R, with 50.000 francs of debt and a pen for his assets. It proved more than sntlicient. He left old asso•iations forever be hind, sold his experience to the world in a novel, La (lame aux ramelias (1 S IR : dramatized, . and became a serious. hard-working author and soon an independent and wealthy one. His other early novels and a first dramatic essay ( 1R-15) are romantic commonplace, and have no signifi cance. lint the dramatization of La dame aux ratoWlias marls, rt date (February 2. 1`.1521 in
the history of the French stage, and inaugurates the realistic study of social problems that has changed the face of the modern drama. Dumas joined Balzac's insight into •hara•tor to Seribe's technical aptitude. and to an instinct that truth, to lie dramatioally effeetive, must be logical and onrmtiodal its exhibition. in so fan Mina; is not a `naturalist.' though he is eminently a dramatic realist. His other plays, in their order. are: dr Lys ( q5:11 Lc dem La question d'argrnt I.r fits pat ur,1 (1S5';') : pe•e prodigne (1R59); L'ami des f,mmes (Pdit 1: Les ith'es de Umlaute t«bray (N1171: rtie visite de noces ( Iti71 1 : I.a princess(' Georges (18711: La femme de Claude (1873); Monsieur Alphonse (1573); L'e(rangire (1S7(;); La princess( (le Bagdad (1851); Denise Francillon ). All these deal re alistically with one phase or another of social ethics. Their perennial theme is the baneful in fluence of romantic love, false sentiment. and chivalrous passion. La dame aux eamelias had shown him disposed to an open-armed charity toward ladies of easy virtue who aspired to a virginity of the heart after the manner of Pro vost's Mallon Leseaut and Hugo's Marion de Lorene and Famine ntim'rablcs). But Diane shows sterner stuff, and all the dramas that fol low are social sermons, each provided With a frank and forceful preface to enforce its lesson of warning against "those charming, terrible little kreaturcs for whom we ruin. dishonor, and kill cm-selves. aml whose sole occupation in the midst of this universal carnage is to dress now like umbrellas and now like bells." In general, the dramas are rather pie torus of relations that. as one of his heroines re marks. "hewn because 1 was bored and ended because he bored me." They are very witty, but the wit is not kindly. The style is a marvel of conciseness and clearness. "all muscles, nerves, and action:" the language was at first incorrect, and to the last full of new'-eoined phrases: the charactels are apt to be abstractions, types re peated over and over. Clemeneeau's wife. Iza, for instance, is the Countess of Terremonde in La princess(' Georges, and the Valentine of Le demi monde and the incarnate Beast of La femme dc ('laude. But after all reserves have been made, the son of the author of Monte Cristo was the most purposeful, forceful. and serious of the French dramatists of the nineteenth century. He died at Marly-le•Roi. November 27, 1895.
Dumas's dramas are collected in seven volumes ils90-93), with two volumes of plays revised and adapted by him, Le theatre des autres. Four volumes of essays, chiefly on social sub jeCtS, appear as Entr'actes (1575-901. Consult: Lacour, Trois the'dtres (Paris, 1SS0); Zola. Nos autea•s dramatiques 15511: Bourf:et• Es sais de psychologie eontemporaine ( ih.. 1853) ; Domnic. Portraits elVerirains (ib., 1592) ; and Matthews, French Dramatists (New York, 1901).