Essential Novelists - Alexandre Dumas. Alexandre Dumas
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Author
ALEXANDRE DUMAS WAS born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie on July 24, 1802, in Villers-Cotterêts, France, to Marie Louise Labouret and General Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie. The Dumas family name was adopted from Alexandre's grandmother, an enslaved Haitian woman named Marie-Césette Dumas. After her husband's death, Marie Louise Labouret worked hard to provide an education for her son. Dumas attended Abbé Grégoire's school before dropping out to take a job assisting a local notary.
In 1822, Dumas moved to Paris and immersed himself in literature. He worked as a scribe for the duc d'Orléans (later named King Louis Philippe) during the 1830 revolution. He began writing plays, both comedies and dramas. Dumas's Romantic style—often compared to that of his contemporary and rival, Victor Hugo—proved to be exceptionally popular.
Dumas was a prolific writer of essays, short stories and novels, as well as plays and travelogues. His interests also encompassed crime and scandals and wrote eight volumes of essays on infamous cases in history such as that of Lucrezia Borgia and Cesare Borgia, and names more contemporary to his time, like Karl Ludwig Sand. But he achieved widespread success with his novels The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, initially published as serials.
With the money he earned from publishing his novels, Dumas purchased land and built the Château de Monte Cristo in Port Marly, Yvelines, France. This home (which is now a museum) was intended to be a sanctuary for the author, and he spent much of his time writing and entertaining there before debt overtook him, forcing him to sell the property. He fled to Belgium in 1851, and later to Russia, to evade creditors. Dumas continued to publish books, including travel books on Russia, during his period of exile.
Dumas had a son, also named Alexandre, with Marie Laure Catherine Labay. His son followed in his literary footsteps. In 1840, Dumas married actress Ida Ferrier, but continued his affairs with other women. He had at least one daughter, Marie Alexandrine, out of wedlock, and dated much younger women in his old age.
Dumas died on December 5, 1870, at his son's home in Puys, France. He was buried in the cemetery of Villers-Cotterêts. In 2002, his body was moved to the Panthéon in Paris, where Dumas rests among such other French literary greats like his rival Victor Hugo, Émile Zola and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
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The Three Musketeers
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IN WHICH IT IS PROVED that, notwithstanding their names’ ending in OS and IS, the heroes of the story which we are about to have the honor to relate to our readers have nothing mythological about them.
A short time ago, while making researches in the Royal Library for my History of Louis XIV, I stumbled by chance upon the Memoirs of M. d’Artagnan, printed—as were most of the works of that period, in which authors could not tell the truth without the risk of a residence, more or less long, in the Bastille—at Amsterdam, by Pierre Rouge. The title attracted me; I took them home with me, with the permission of the guardian, and devoured them.
It is not my intention here to enter into an analysis of this curious work; and I shall satisfy myself with referring such of my readers as appreciate the pictures of the period to its pages. They will therein find portraits penciled by the hand of a master; and although these squibs may be, for the most part, traced upon the doors of barracks and the walls of cabarets, they will not find the likenesses of Louis XIII, Anne of Austria, Richelieu, Mazarin, and the courtiers of the period, less faithful than in the history of M. Anquetil.
But, it is well known, what strikes the capricious mind of the poet is not always what affects the mass of readers. Now, while admiring, as others doubtless will admire, the details we have to relate, our main preoccupation concerned a matter to which no one before ourselves had given a thought.
D’Artagnan relates that on his first visit to M. de Treville, captain of the king’s Musketeers, he met in the antechamber three young men, serving in the illustrious corps into which he was soliciting the honor of being received, bearing the names of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.
We must confess these three strange names struck us; and it immediately occurred to us that they were but pseudonyms, under which d’Artagnan had disguised names perhaps illustrious, or else that the bearers of these borrowed names had themselves chosen them on the day in which, from caprice, discontent, or want of fortune, they had donned the simple Musketeer’s uniform.
From that moment we had no rest till we could find some trace in contemporary works of these extraordinary names which had so strongly awakened our curiosity.
The catalogue alone of the books we read with this object would fill a whole chapter, which, although it might be very instructive, would certainly afford our readers but little amusement. It will suffice, then, to tell them that at the moment at which, discouraged by so many fruitless investigations, we were about to abandon our search, we at length found, guided by the counsels of our illustrious friend Paulin Paris, a manuscript in folio, endorsed 4772 or 4773, we do not recollect which, having for title, “Memoirs of the Comte de la Fere, Touching Some Events Which Passed in France Toward the End of the Reign of King Louis XIII and the Commencement of the Reign of King Louis XIV.”
It may be easily imagined how great was our joy when, in turning over this manuscript, our last hope, we found at the twentieth page the name of Athos, at the twenty-seventh the name of Porthos, and at the thirty-first the name of Aramis.
The discovery of a completely unknown manuscript at a period in which historical science is carried to such a high