Dumas' Paris Part 2

"If Villers-Cotterets (Villerii ad Cotiam Retiae) had been, unfortunately, a town of sufficient importance in history to induce archaeologists to ascertain and follow up its successive changes from a village to a town and from a town to a city--the last, as we have said, being strongly contested, they would certainly have proved this fact, that the village had begun by being a row of houses on either side of the road from Paris to Soissons; then they would have added that its situation on the borders of a beautiful forest having, though by slow degrees, brought to it a great increase of inhabitants, other streets were added to the first, diverging like the rays of a star and leading toward other small villages with which it was important to keep up communication, and converging toward a point which naturally became the centre, that is to say, what in the provinces is called _Le Carrefour_,--and sometimes even the Square, whatever might be its shape,--and around which the handsomest buildings of the village, now become a burgh, were erected, and in the middle of which rises a fountain, now decorated with a quadruple dial; in short, they would have fixed the precise date when, near the modest village church, the first want of a people, arose the first turrets of the vast chateau, the last caprice of a king; a chateau which, after having been, as we have already said, by turns a royal and a princely residence, has in our days become a melancholy and hideous receptacle for mendicants under the direction of the Prefecture of the Seine, and to whom M. Marrast issues his mandates through delegates of whom he has not, nor probably will ever have, either the time or the care to ascertain the names."

The last sentence seems rather superfluous,--if it was justifiable,--but, after all, no harm probably was done, and Dumas as a rule was never vituperative.

Continuing, these first pages give us an account of the difficulties under which poor Louis Ange Pitou acquired his knowledge of Latin, which is remarkably like the account which Dumas gives in the "Memoires" of his early acquaintance with the cla.s.sics.

When Pitou leaves Haramont, his native village, and takes to the road, and visits Billot at "Bruyere aux Loups," knowing well the road, as he did that to Damploux, Compiegne, and Vivieres, he was but covering ground equally well known to Dumas' own youth.

Finally, as he is joined by Billot _en route_ for Paris, and takes the highroad from Villers-Cotterets, near Gondeville, pa.s.sing Nanteuil, Dammartin, and Ermenonville, arriving at Paris at La Villette, he follows almost the exact itinerary taken by the venturesome Dumas on his runaway journey from the notary's office at Crepy-en-Valois.

Crepy-en-Valois was the near neighbour of Villers-Cotterets, which jealously attempted to rival it, and does even to-day. In "The Taking of the Bastille" Dumas only mentions it in connection with Mother Sabot's _ane_, "which was shod,"--the only a.s.s which Pitou had ever known which wore shoes,--and performed the duty of carrying the mails between Crepy and Villers-Cotterets.

At Villers-Cotterets one may come into close contact with the chateau which is referred to in the later pages of the "Vicomte de Bragelonne."

"Situated in the middle of the forest, where we shall lead a most sentimental life, the very same where my grandfather," said Monseigneur the Prince, "Henri IV. did with 'La Belle Gabrielle.'"

So far as lion-hunting goes, Dumas himself at an early age appears to have fallen into it. He recalls in "Mes Memoires" the incident of Napoleon I.

pa.s.sing through Villers-Cotterets just previous to the battle of Waterloo.

"Nearly every one made a rush for the emperor's carriage," said he; "naturally I was one of the first.... Napoleon's pale, sickly face seemed a block of ivory.... He raised his head and asked, 'Where are we?' 'At Villers-Cotterets, Sire,' said a voice. 'Go on.'" Again, a few days later, as we learn from the "Memoires," "a horseman coated with mud rushes into the village; orders four horses for a carriage which is to follow, and departs.... A dull rumble draws near ... a carriage stops.... 'Is it he--the emperor?' Yes, it was the emperor, in the same position as I had seen him before, exactly the same, pale, sickly, impa.s.sive; only the head droops rather more.... 'Where are we?' he asked. 'At Villers-Cotterets, Sire.' 'Go on.'"

That evening Napoleon slept at the Elysee. It was but three months since he had returned from Elba, but in that time he came to an abyss which had engulfed his fortune. That abyss was Waterloo; only saved to the allies--who at four in the afternoon were practically defeated--by the coming up of the Germans at six.

Among the books of reference and contemporary works of a varying nature from which a writer in this generation must build up his facts anew, is found a wide difference in years as to the date of the birth of Dumas _pere_.

As might be expected, the weight of favour lies with the French authorities, though by no means do they, even, agree among themselves.

His friends have said that no unbia.s.sed, or even complete biography of the author exists, even in French; and possibly this is so. There is about most of them a certain indefiniteness and what Dumas himself called the "colour of sour grapes."

The exact date of his birth, however, is unquestionably 1802, if a photographic reproduction of his natal certificate, published in Charles Glinel's "Alex. Dumas et Son Oeuvre," is what it seems to be.

Dumas' aristocratic parentage--for such it truly was--has been the occasion of much scoffing and hard words. He pretended not to it himself, but it was founded on family history, as the records plainly tell, and whether Alexandre, the son of the brave General Dumas, the Marquis de la Pailleterie, was p.r.o.ne to acknowledge it or not does not matter in the least. The "feudal particle" existed plainly in his pedigree, and with no discredit to any concerned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FACSIMILE OF DUMAS' OWN STATEMENT OF HIS BIRTH]

General Dumas, his wife, and his son are buried in the cemetery of Villers-Cotterets, where the exciting days of the childhood of Dumas, the romancer, were spent, in a plot of ground "conceded in perpetuity to the family." The plot forms a rectangle six metres by five, surrounded by towering pines.

The three monuments contained therein are of the utmost simplicity, each consisting of an inclined slab of stone.

The inscriptions are as follows:

FAMILLE

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie general de division ne a Jeremie Ile et Cote de Saint Dominique le 25 mars 1762, decede a Villers-Cotterets le 27 fevrier 1806

ALEXANDRE

Marie-Louise-Elizabeth Labouret epouse du general de division Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie nee a Villers-Cotterets le 4 juillet 1769 decedee le 1er aout 1838

DUMAS

Alexandre Dumas ne a Villers-Cotterets le 24 juillet 1802 decede le 5 decembre 1870 a Puys transfere a Villers-Cotterets le 15 avril 1872

There would seem to be no good reason why a book treating of Dumas' Paris might not be composed entirely of quotations from Dumas' own works. For a fact, such a work would be no less valuable as a record than were it evolved by any other process. It would indeed be the best record that could possibly be made, for Dumas' topography was generally truthful if not always precise.

There are, however, various contemporary side-lights which are thrown upon any canvas, no matter how small its area, and in this instance they seem to engulf even the personality of Dumas himself, to say nothing of his observations.

Dumas was such a part and parcel of the literary life of the times in which he lived that mention can scarce be made of any contemporary event that has not some bearing on his life or work, or he with it, from the time when he first came to the metropolis (in 1822) at the impressionable age of twenty, until the end.

It will be difficult, even, to condense the relative incidents which entered into his life within the confines of a single volume, to say nothing of a single chapter. The most that can be done is to present an abridgment which shall follow along the lines of some preconceived chronological arrangement. This is best compiled from Dumas' own words, leaving it to the additional references of other chapters to throw a sort of reflected glory from a more distant view-point.

The reputation of Dumas with the merely casual reader rests upon his best-known romances, "Monte Cristo," 1841; "Les Trois Mousquetaires,"

1844; "Vingt Ans Apres," 1845; "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne," 1847; "La Dame de Monsoreau," 1847; and his dramas of "Henri III. et Sa Cour," 1829, "Antony," 1831, and "Kean," 1836.

His memoirs, "Mes Memoires," are practically closed books to the ma.s.s of English readers--the word books is used advisedly, for this remarkable work is composed of twenty stout volumes, and they only cover ten years of the author's life.

Therein is a ma.s.s of fact and fancy which may well be considered as fascinating as are the "romances" themselves, and, though autobiographic, one gets a far more satisfying judgment of the man than from the various warped and distorted accounts which have since been published, either in French or English.

Beginning with "Memories of My Childhood" (1802-06), Dumas launches into a few lines anent his first visit to Paris, in company with his father, though the auspicious--perhaps significant--event took place at a very tender age. It seems remarkable that he should have recalled it at all, but he was a remarkable man, and it seems not possible to ignore his words.

"We set out for Paris, ah, that journey! I recollect it perfectly.... It was August or September, 1805. We got down in the Rue Thiroux at the house of one Dolle.... I had been embraced by one of the most n.o.ble ladies who ever lived, Madame la Marquise de Montesson, widow of Louis-Philippe d'Orleans.... The next day, putting Brune's sword between my legs and Murat's hat upon my head, I galloped around the table; when my father said, '_Never forget this, my boy_.'... My father consulted Corvisart, and attempted to see the emperor, but Napoleon, the quondam general, had now become the emperor, and he refused to see my father.... To where did we return? I believe Villers-Cotterets."

Again on the 26th of March, 1813, Dumas entered Paris in company with his mother, now widowed. He says of this visit:

"I was delighted at the prospect of this my second visit.... I have but one recollection, full of light and poetry, when, with a flourish of trumpets, a waving of banners, and shouts of 'Long live the King of Rome,'

was lifted up above the heads of fifty thousand of the National Guard the rosy face and the fair, curly head of a child of three years--the infant son of the great Napoleon.... Behind him was his mother,--that woman so fatal to France, as have been all the daughters of the Caesars, Anne of Austria, Marie Antoinette, and Marie Louise,--an indistinct, insipid face.... The next day we started home again."

Through the influence of General Foy, an old friend of his father's, Dumas succeeded in obtaining employment in the Orleans Bureau at the Palais Royal.

His occupation there appears not to have been unduly arduous. The offices were in the right-hand corner of the second courtyard of the Palais Royal.

He remained here in this bureau for a matter of five years, and, as he said, "loved the hour when he came to the office," because his immediate superior, La.s.sagne,--a contributor to the _Drapeau Blanc_,--was the friend and intimate of Desaugiers, Theaulon, Armand Gouffe, Brozier, Rougemont, and all the vaudevillists of the time.

Dumas' meeting with the Duc d'Orleans--afterward Louis-Philippe--is described in his own words thus: "In two words I was introduced. 'My lord, this is M. Dumas, whom I mentioned to you, General Foy's protege.' 'You are the son of a brave man,' said the duc, 'whom Bonaparte, it seems, left to die of starvation.'... The duc gave Oudard a nod, which I took to mean, 'He will do, he's by no means bad for a provincial.'" And so it was that Dumas came immediately under the eye of the duc, engaged as he was at that time on some special clerical work in connection with the duc's provincial estates.

The affability of Dumas, so far as he himself was concerned, was a foregone conclusion. In the great world in which he moved he knew all sorts and conditions of men. He had his enemies, it is true, and many of them, but he himself was the enemy of no man. To English-speaking folk he was exceedingly agreeable, because,--quoting his own words,--said he, "It was a part of the debt which I owed to Shakespeare and Scott." Something of the egoist here, no doubt, but gracefully done nevertheless.

With his temperament it was perhaps but natural that Dumas should have become a romancer. This was of itself, maybe, a foreordained sequence of events, but no man thinks to-day that, leaving contributary conditions, events, and opportunities out of the question, he shapes his own fate; there are acc.u.mulated heritages of even distant ages to contend with. In Dumas' case there was his heritage of race and colour, refined, perhaps, by a long drawn out process, but, as he himself tells in "Mes Memoires,"

his mother's fear was that her child would be born black, and he _was_, or, at least, purple, as he himself afterward put it.

CHAPTER III.

DUMAS' LITERARY CAREER