A deep dive into Alexandre Dumas reveals a generous friend, a saavy writer, and French lover. Plus, a classic sonnet from the Bard.
The date is July 24th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland Oregon.
Today is the birthday of French writer Alexandre Dumas. Notable titles include The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Prince of Thieves (a Robin Hood Tale), and a version of the Nutcracker. It was Dumas’s version of the classic tale that would be adapted into the Tchaikovsky opera of the same name in 1892. Scholars estimate that Dumas’s writing, in total, amounts to about 100,000 pages.
But Dumas’s ancestors had a rocky start. His father was the child of a Haitian slave and her French master. Luckily, Dumas’s father was brought to France as a teen to attend a military training academy and enjoyed a prestigious career. Despite Dumas’s father’s complexion, he mixed in French high society, so that by Alexandre Dumas’s birth in 1802, the Dumas family was surrounded by fellow aristocrats, scholars, and artists.
Dumas’s connections gave him a headstart in his education. He then had the good fortunate to see his first plays as instant hits, and his articles well-received. He began venturing out into novels in 1838, republishing a successful play as a novel in serial form.
Dumas also did a fair bit of traveling through Europe, particularly as power struggles commenced in France. He was able to turn his traveling into profit, publishing travel guides and articles. In addition, his tales of adventure include characters who are well-versed in Mediterranean geography.
As Dumas’s reputation spread, his novels were translated into multiple languages. He started a production company of sorts, hiring staff to help with his writing. He came up with story lines and oversaw all final drafts, but it’s safe to assume Dumas’s staff helped write some of those 100,000 pages. Dumas was financially successful and he was known to enjoy the luxurious comforts of life. He tended to spend a bit too generously, particularly on his friends, guests, and lovers.
Despite success, Dumas still experienced discrimination due to his ethnic background. He was quite light-skinned in comparison with his father’s complexion, but nevertheless, haters hated. The only work that alluded to Dumas’s own personal struggle with identity and race was his novel, Georges.
The prejudice he experienced did not affect his love life. Although he was married, Dumas enjoyed numerous affairs and fathered as many as 7 children out of wedlock, some he knew of and financially supported. Additional progeny were uncovered more recently by scholars. His behavior may sound rascally, but having amorous affairs was practically expected of the French aristocracy at the time.
At his death in 1870 at the age of 68, his fame had declined as literary tastes shifted. However, his works regained popularity. It is hard to resist a classic good-versus-evil, swashbuckling adventure. In 2002 on what would have been Dumas’s 200th Birthday, his ashes were moved to the Panthéon of Paris with much pomp and circumstance.
According to an account of Dumas from a friend of his and fellow playwright, Dumas was “the most generous, large-hearted being in the world. He also was the most delightfully amusing and egotistical creature on the face of the earth.”
Sounds like Dumas would have been tickled to know the fuss made over him, 130 years after his death.
Sonnet 116 [Let me not to the marriage of true minds]
William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.