# The Life and Writings of Alexandre Dumas/Counterclaim

Counterclaim.
In the hope that we have extenuated or disproved the charges against Dumas, and shown him guilty of literary faults rather than vices, we shall modify our metaphor and treat the case more lightly. Believing it only just to look upon the matter rather as a question for the civil courts of literature, we close our defence and proceed to put in a counterclaim of as modest a nature as our convictions respecting the true worth of our client's cause will allow.
It is noteworthy that whereas we in England look ​upon Dumas simply as a writer of fiction, and are ignorant of his plays, the French regard him almost exclusively as a dramatist. "This," says Blaze de Bury shrewdly, "is because the imperturbable entomological public loves classification, and will only judge a man from one point of view."
Unable as we are to prove Dumas's merits as a playwright by instance and reminder, to readers unacquainted with his stage triumphs, we must again have recourse to "expert opinion," and show indirectly, and as concisely as possible, the high position which Dumas occupies in the ranks of the world's dramatists.
He possessed the "dramatic instinct" to the full. "He is not a dramatic author; he is the drama incarnate!" cried Fiorentino. Dumas has told us, with a pride which is justifiable, that all he needed was the bare apparatus of a stage, "two actors, and a passion." In this he is held to have been superior—as a craftsman—to his friend and rival, Victor Hugo. Whatever Heine was as a dramatic critic, he was a man of piercing insight where his prejudices did not obscure his view, and further, a keen student of the literature of his time; and this is what he says of the two authors, in his letters on the French stage:
"The best tragic poets in France are still Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo. I put the ​latter in the second place because his efficiency as regards the theatre is not so great or productive of result.... Dumas is not so great a poet as Hugo—far from it—but he has qualities which go much further, as regards the theatre. He has at command that prompt, straightforward expression of passion which the French call verve, and therein he is more French than Hugo; he sympathises with all vices and virtues, daily needs and restless fancies of his fellow-countrymen; he is by turns enthusiastic, comedian-like, noble, frivolous, swaggering, a real son of France, that Gascony of Europe. He speaks to heart with heart, and is understood and applauded.
"No one has such a talent for the dramatic as Dumas. The theatre is his true calling—he is a born stage poet, and all materials for the drama belong to him wherever he finds them, in nature or in Schiller, Shakespeare or Calderon. A very unjust criticism on art which appeared long ago under most deplorable circumstances in the Journal des Debats greatly injured our poor poet among the ignorant multitude. In it was shown that many scenes in his plays had the most striking resemblance to others in former dramas. But there is nothing so foolish as this reproach of plagiarism; the poet may grasp and grab boldly wherever he finds material for his works; he may even appropriate ​whole columns, carved capitals and all, so that the temple which they support be magnificent. Goëthe understood this very well, as did Shakespeare long before him."
Professor Brander Matthews in his consideration of our author as playwright cannot avoid the coupling of the two great names. "There is but one dramatist of Dumas's generation who will stand comparison with him," he says; "and even Victor Hugo, master as he is of many things, is less a master of the theatre than Dumas."
Dumas fils wrote of his father as one "who was and is the master of the modern stage, whose prodigious imagination touched the four cardinal points of our art,—tragedy, historic drama, the dramas of manners, and the comedy of anecdote,—whose only fault was to lack solemnity, and to have genius without pride, and fecundity without effort, as he had youth and health; and who (to conclude), Shakespeare being taken as the culminating point, by invention, power and variety, approached among us most closely to Shakespeare." And Professor Matthews adds, of the son's opinion: "Due allowance made, he is not so very far out."
"Dumas broke ground," writes Mr Henley, "with the ease, the assurance, the insight into essentials, and a technical accomplishment of a master, and he retained these qualities to the last.... He was the ​soundest influence in drama of the century." Sardou has similarly declared Dumas to have been "le premier homme de théâtre du siècle passé." Castelar has this passage on Dumas as a revolutionary leader, a pioneer of stage liberty:
"A lover of the drama, he proved himself able to reanimate the theatre. To accomplish this purpose he chose pieces of lively interest, characters of a strongly marked individuality, descriptions of unbridled passions, which, though without the artificial rules of poetic conventionality, followed the inspirations of fancy in its native purity, and were powerful enough to awaken artistic attention."
Did Dumas in his ardour go too far? Goëthe uttered a warning note when, two years before his death, he addressed the young poct after the success of "Christine":
"Friend," he wrote, "don't go further than your masters, Delavigne and Béranger, Schiller and Scott. Beware of forcing your activity; production without respite ends in bankruptcy of one's talent. Whatever frees the fancy, without retaining it within the control of reason, is pernicious. Art must be at the command of the imagination, if it is to have an outcome in poetry. Nothing is more terrible than imagination deprived of taste."
Whether or no Goëthe's advice was necessary, and applicable, we leave to be discussed by others, ​and elsewhere; but we are inclined to suspect, by the choice of masters here prescribed for Dumas, that the sage neither comprehended the nature of our author's talent, nor foresaw its tendencies.
Certainly the drama of passion and intrigue, of which Dumas's own plays are the first great examples, developed extremes for which the originator cannot fairly be blamed. George Sand saw this, when, in dedicating her play on Molière to her friend and confrère, she pleaded for psychology as well as movement and action, as an element in the drama. She protested against the idea that her play, illustrating this theory, was in any way a challenge levelled against the school of which Dumas was the chief.
"I love your works too well," she continued, "I read them, I listen to them with too much emotion and appreciation to wish to cast the slightest slur on your triumphs.... You have lifted dramatic action to the highest power, without any desire to sacrifice psychological interest to it, but your imitators have abandoned this second essential, for one must be of strong calibre to keep both ideals equally to the fore."
In his expositions of the hidden motives of his plays, in his skilful analysis of his son's great play ("La Dame aux Camélias"), and in various chapters of his Souvenirs Dramatiques," Dumas ​showed that he was something more than the teller of a stage story, something better than a clever manipulator of incident and intrigue, plot and passion. "A man?" cried Michelet, no, an element, like an inextinguishable volcano or a great American river.... He remains the most powerful craftsman, the most living dramatist since Shakespeare."
Of Dumas's influence on the modern French drama, M. Parigot has written fully and learnedly in his "Drame d'Alexandre Dumas," showing the effect produced in varying ways and degrees by the playwright on the later nineteenth century,—on his son, on Augier, Sandeau, Daudet, Lemaître, Meilhac and Halévy, Sardou, and others. He "exercised a continuous and profound influence on the drama of the nineteenth century," adds the writer, and we need only supplement his verdict by calling attention to the case of the "latest discovery" in French dramatic literature, Edmond Rostand, whose success with "Cyrano de Bergerac" so closely recalls the triumphs of the author of "Les Trois Mousquetaires" and "Henri Trois."
On our English drama the plays of Dumas have had only a subtly indirect effect. As the founder of the "society drama" he has much to answer for; but for our sterile "West-End" fashion plays, and the modern French school which has been evolved ​from "Antony" and his successors, the old playwright cannot fairly be held responsible. He was the first to vivify the melodrama in its higher form, and the history-drama, at present so popular with us, owes its true birth to the author of "La Tour de Nesle." His three comedies have each been "adapted" and produced in London within recent years, but without much success; and we may predict, without going into the grounds for our belief, that his books may be dramatised from time to time, but that his plays themselves will never take root with us.
It is with a very judicious fear of our "entomological public" that we claim for Dumas a supreme place as a master of the art of narrative. True, Swinburne goes further, and acclaims him "the king of story-tellers;" and a poet-critic in many respects akin in taste to the author of "Atalanta in Calydon" held a similar opinion. Oliver Madox Brown once wrote to his father in great perturbation:
"(D. G.) Rossetti ... has had several long discussions with me on the subject of novel-writing. Thackeray he will hardly hear the name of; George Eliot is vulgarity personified; Balzac is melodramatic in plot, conceited, wishy-washy, and dull. Dumas is the one great and supreme man, the sole descendant of Shakespeare."
In reply to a letter from ourselves, Mr W. M. ​Rossetti has kindly confirmed this record with his own testimony.
"It is perfectly truc," he writes, "that my brother took the greatest delight in reading Dumas, and I think it may be said that, if he had been asked 'whom do you regard as the greatest novelist that ever existed—in those qualities which are most essential for novel-writing?' he would have replied 'Dumas.' Of course he would at the same time have been conscious that Walter Scott, as a precursor of Dumas, had to some extent served him as a pattern."
Henley strikes the same note of praise. "Dumas is assuredly one of the greatest masters of the art of narrative in all literature," he says, and amplifies his assertion thus: "He was an artist at once original and exemplary, with an incomparable instinct of selection, a constructive faculty not equalled among the men of this century, an understanding of what is right and what is wrong in art, and a mastery of his materials which in their way are not to be paralleled in the work of Sir Walter himself."
The frequent references to Scott force us without ​further delay to face a comparison as inevitable in the case of Dumas the novelist, as was that with Hugo in the case of Dumas the playwright. The two names—in the field of romance—are linked together inseparably by talents, time, and circumstance; but until recent years the ordinary English critic would not admit of any degree of equality between the two. It is no doubt an act of daring on our part to presume to discuss the relative merits of the two men, as if the Frenchman could seriously challenge the Scotsman's supremacy. Yet we venture to submit that, generally speaking, the two writers, as masters of the historical romance, stand on a level, and that Sir Walter, superior as he is in some respects, has been excelled by his pupil in the art of story-telling.
In claiming this point for our client we own that we should have none of that client's sympathy. Scott, as we have said, was Dumas's teacher, and the junior never wearied of expressing his praise, his gratitude, and reverence for the older writer. "Scott," he wrote in his "Mémoires," "had a great influence on me in the early days of my literary life." In another book he analysed the causes of his master's success, thus: "To the natural qualities of his predecessors Scott added knowledge specially acquired; to his study of the hearts of men, he added that of the science of popular history; ​dowered with archeological zeal, a quick discerning eye, and the power to reanimate, his genius conjured into a new existence a past epoch, with all its manners, interests and emotions."
Dumas saw one of Scott's weak points, but dealt with it very pleasantly and tenderly.
"Scott," (he says in his "Histoire de mes Bêtes"), "had his own way of creating interest in his characters, which, though with a few exceptions always the same, and though at first a little disconcerting, succeeded none the less. This method was, to be wearisome, mortally wearisome, often for half a volume, sometimes for a whole volume. But during this volume he placed his characters, and gave such a minute description of their appearance, of their mental status, of the traits of their individuality; one knew so well how they walked, dressed, and spoke, that when at the beginning of the second volume one of these characters found himself in some danger, you exclaimed 'Ah, here's this poor limping chap in Lincoln green—how on earth is he going to get out of this?'"
And then our author goes on to set his own method of narrative by the side of Scott's, of course to the advantage of the latter, declaring that Sir Walter gives you the best dishes last and the worst ones first, so that one rises from ​the table delighted; but that he himself reverses the process, leaving the guests to go out on the house-tops and revile the stupid chef's bill of fare.
But it was another thing entirely, when Dumas thought of Scott as a possible pattern for himself, in the self-imposed task of writing the history of France in romance. In two important respects the genius of the younger man broke away from his teacher's style.
"The qualities of Walter Scott are not dramatic qualities," he declared. "Admirable in the portrayal of manners, costumes and characters, he was completely unable to paint passions. The only 'romance of passion' amongst his novels is 'Kenilworth.'... My analysis of Scott's books taught me to see the romance from another point of view to that familiar to us in those days. The same fidelity to manners, costumes, and characters, with a brighter, more natural dialogue, and with passions that were more life-like—these appeared to me to be what we needed."
In course of time Dumas applied these beliefs of his, enormously aided by the experience and discipline of fifteen years of play-writing. The result we know.
One of Sir Walter's most fervent admirers, Mr Lang, has underlined much that we have already implied, and though he probably ranks Scott higher ​than the Frenchman, both as a man and as a writer, he certainly seems to us to endorse all that we have claimed for our author. In "Essays in Little " he touches this point again and again:
"Speed, directness, lucidity, are the characteristics of Dumas's style, and they are exactly the characteristics which his novels required. Scott often failed, his most loyal admirers may admit, in these essentials; but it is rarely that Dumas fails, when he is himself and at his best." We venture to add that these are the qualities which the ideal story should possess. Further on we read: "It is admitted that Dumas's good tales are told with a vigour and life which rejoice the heart; that his narrative is never dull, never stands still, but moves with a freedom of adventure which perhaps has no parallel.... If Dumas has not, as he certainly has not, the noble philosophy and kindly knowledge of the heart which are Scott's, he is far more swift, more witty, more diverting. He is not prolix, his style is not involved, his dialogue is as rapid and keen as an assault-at-arms."
The qualities which have made Scott so great and so beloved are not part of his technical skill in narrative, and it is only with that particular quality that we are concerned here. Mr Saintsbury, in the "Short History of French Literature," ​although treating Dumas critically, as becomes one sitting on the judge's bench, does not hesitate to set the Frenchman, in his peculiar talent, above Scott and all others.
"His best work," the professor declares, "has remarkable and almost unique merits. The style is not more remarkable as such than that of the dramas; there is not often or always a well-defined plot, and the characters are drawn only in the broadest outline. But the peculiar admixture of incident and dialogue by which Dumas carries on the interest of his gigantic narrations without wearying the reader is a secret of his own, and has never been thoroughly mastered by anyone else."
An American critic, emancipated from any superstitious feeling concerning Scott, has put his opinion in blunt and unmistakable form. "What is it," asks Professor Carpenter, "that endears Dumas to us? The conventional answer would be, the exciting character of his plots. And his plots may well be called exciting. No other author—except Sienkiewicz, who learned the art from him—can match him there. He is better reading than Scott; for there are, as a rule, no elaborate essays, no dull dialogues, no stupid characters, satisfactory only to the antiquary. The characters act and talk; but they talk only to make the act more telling. The whole moves quietly, rapidly, but ​without unnecessary haste; every scene is to be enjoyed as it passes; and one is impressed throughout by the power that the author keeps in reserve for each of his climaxes."
In short, although Dumas found his inspiration in Scott, the style of the Frenchman's romances was essentially different. He wrote with a lighter, bolder touch. He got rid of all the impedimenta which baulked the Scotsman's speed. His books contain little or no background; he is not concerned with scenery; still-life has no attraction for him. Nor do his heroes indulge in the torments of mind which assail the old-fashioned English hero: they simply speak and act.
Nothing, however, can be so instructive as a test-comparison of novels by the two romancers—say "Waverley" and "Les Trois Mousquetaires." Take it as granted that it is a story's first duty to be readable, and that one's attention should be seized as quickly as possible; and with this common-sense fact in mind, dip first into the Scottish and then into the French romance.
"Waverley's" first nine chapters are devoted successively to an introduction, the hero's birth, his education, his day-dreams, his appointment to the army, and his departure from home, with a description of a Scottish "horse-quarter," a manor-house, and again, the manor-house. You have ​now reached page 40, and you have not yet begun the story. Turn then to the "Mousquetaires." You have a couple of pages of introduction, which go to paint the character of the hero; and on the third the story—the plot—begins, and with it the interest. Your sympathies are at once enlisted on the side of D'Artagnan by the Unknown's cruel behaviour toward him; your curiosity is aroused by the apparent mystery surrounding this same Unknown, by the theft of the letter, and by the vision of Miladi. The political intrigue has begun, also—and all in the first chapter.
Dumas saw clearly that dialogue was the life, the vitality of this style of story—the dramatic romance. It seems a truism now to say that the best insight into the characters of a book is gained by hearing them speak; but the old-fashioned novel relied upon description to convey these impressions to the reader's mind. Now we live in an era of "suggestion"; something is left to one's imagination, and the old "steel-plate-engraving" style is dying out in fiction as in art.
It would be foolish to carry the comparison any further. Scott possessed powers beyond the reach of Dumas, and each writer must be judged according to his aims and nature, and the materials at his command. Few can appreciate both writers, ​their styles are so opposite. To those who love the Scot Dumas is frivolous and outré; to those who are in sympathy with the French spirit, Scott is dull and sluggish. But there can surely be no reasonable doubt as to which is the master and pioneer of the story of adventure as we know it to-day.
The changes which have come over the historical novel within the last twenty or thirty years are striking indeed. The old school was perhaps founded by Scott, and certainly imitated by Lytton, G. P. R. James, Ainsworth, and a host of others. This style possessed several very marked features. Its pages abounded in description; it was not enough to be with our hero in his adventures; we were obliged to listen to the story of his birth, parentage and upbringing, with many other dreary details by way of introduction. We were regaled with lengthy accounts of scenery and buildings, costumes and customs. We found the heroine a very sensitive and sedate young lady, with supreme sensibility and a wonderful capacity for tears. We followed the course of the hero's thoughts, page after page, as he raved at fortune, or rhapsodised upon his love. As a consequence we cultivated a habit of "skipping," and no one to-day would blame us for so doing; for in truth there was a laborious heaviness about the old-fashioned, historical romance. ​Scott succeeded in spite of his style—or lack of it—but his successors, one and all, died of theirs.
There is no need, we think, to labour the point as to the Frenchman's influence on present-day romance, if our readers will apply a simple test, and keep one or two dates in mind. Read firstly one of Scott's imitators—some romance of the thirties or forties, and note the rare and stilted dialogue, the padding, the lack of fire, of human interest—the tawdry dreariness of it. Then, after half an hour at the "Mousquetaires," let the reader take up some modern romance, say one of Mr Weyman's, "The Refugees," by Dr Doyle, or Anthony Hope's "Simon Dale." This subject, we are aware, deserves a whole essay, but for all practical purposes the object lesson we have suggested will be sufficient to carry conviction with it.
We are told that the influence of Dumas can be traced back as far as "Esmond," the scene of "the breaking of the sword" being suggested by more than one like incident in the Frenchman's romances. Of the many authors who have benefited by a study of the great conteur, one has acknowledged his indebtedness. This is Bret Harte, whom one would scarcely have expected to experience such an influence. He testifies to having received "the sacred spark" whilst reading Dumas—the burial of Dantès in the sack, in particular, having power​fully affected him. "The grandeur of effect, the simplicity of the means, the absence of all apparent effort, caused me an unspeakable joy." In after years he gratefully took the opportunity of proclaiming how much he owed to Dumas. The spirit of our author lives to this day, if Mr A. E. W. Mason's recently published story, "Clementina," be any criterion; and a more recent and more striking example is that of Maxime Gorki, who, though a sombre realist in temperament, was led on to read Gogol and Dumas when all other literature was distasteful to him. Forthwith the Russian was seized with an ambition to write. The fact that the optimistic romancer could awaken emulation in a nature so widely different is a strong proof of the vital power of his talents.
But the modern writer whom Dumas most strongly impressed was Robert Louis Stevenson. This Sidney Colvin acknowledges, in his preface to his friend's "Letters."
"The debate, before his place in literature is settled, must rather turn on other points, as whether the genial essayist and egoist or the romantic inventor and narrator was the stronger in him—whether the Montaigne and Pepys elements prevailed in his literary composition, or the Scott and Dumas elements—a question, indeed, which among ​those who care for him most has always been at issue." Although Stevenson could not fail to make use of his great knowledge of Dumas for his own ends, being a man of originality in talent, we seem to find traces of the great Frenchman here, there, and everywhere in his admirer's stories—subtle effects, twists of the plot, picturesque situations, chivalric touches, gusts of breezy freshness—all Stevenson, and yet instinctively familiar to the lover of Dumas.
To our master of narrative, those literary adornments of which nowadays we are so disproportionately proud were not entirely lacking. He possessed in supreme degree a third quality—wit. It was this which rendered his dialogue "brilliant" and unapproachable"—dialogue "of which the quantity would be the most remarkable point, if its quality were not equally remarkable." Echoing Professor Saintsbury, Brander Matthews adds, "dialogue such as none but Dumas could write.... He was witty without effort and without end." This gift, as we have seen, made the quadroon the king of Paris and the most delightful companion, the causeur par excellence in print; it made comedy-writing easy to him, and the telling of short stories a delight to reader and writer.
But the companion quality of wit, which is yet so rarely found in conjunction with it, was Dumas's ​also, although most critics ignore it, and one in particular denies it. "He had little humour, as we understand the word," Professor Matthews declares, "and what he had was on the surface." To say the least of it, humour is not a quality which should be hidden very deeply from observation. Hayward, whose essay shows a close knowledge of our author's writings, remarks "he had an exquisite perception of the humorous"; and we regret we have no means of showing our readers how truly discerning the essayist's words proved him to be. The distinction between the two forms of mirth is a subtle one and difficult to define, we are aware. Dumas's wit is at least quotable, and mostly to be found in dialogue: his humour is more airy and tangible, and frequently is at its best in the telling of a story.
Unluckily many of these tales are not known to the English reader, and a sly style is apt to evaporate in the process of translation. Nevertheless we are convinced that when Dumas's own genuine and complete writings are edited, and Englished by translators of literary taste, this quality in them will be recognised with delight as still another vein of riches in the mine of wealth left us by this versatile genius.
It remains to be seen whether Dumas's works will last. His plays, with one or two exceptions, ​are almost forgotten, even in France. His travels, which "discovered Europe" to the million, have been imitated so often that they have paid the penalty of their success and become common-place. The literary pendulum swings from romance to realism and back from realism to romance; at present Zola and his school prevail in France, and to a great extent throughout Europe and America. Dumas heartily disliked "naturalism." The Goncourts tell us that when he read "Madame de Bovary" he cried, "If that is good, all that we've written since 1830 is worthless!" But the "novel" to-day is, on the whole, better written than the "romance," and even in fiction of adventure psychology plays an increasingly important part.
But with the mass of readers these changes, these fashions of the moment, have little weight. In the higher strata of society Dickens and Dumas are as dead as last year's novels; amongst the people, untroubled by ultra-intellectual qualms, those despised authors flourish shamelessly. As the stress of daily life grows more acute, as the great primitive instincts of our natures become more and more obscured in the complex duties of civilised society, the more likely shall we be to turn with relief and gratitude to the welcome optimism, the refreshing simplicity, the engrossing charm of the two great ​writers, and the books which they devised for our delight.
It is acknowledged that Dumas is one of the amusers of the world, even by his detractors, who appear to think that to amuse is easy work, requiring neither skill nor effort, deserving neither recognition nor praise. (If the amuser is born, not made, the rarity of the species is perhaps accounted for.) Is this power so small a thing? "They say that Dumas has amused three or four generations," said Jules Claretie; "he has done better; he has consoled them. If he has shown us humanity more generous than it is, do not reproach him for that: he has painted it in his own image." "Old folk blessed him," wrote Jules Janin, "for he made easy the path to the grave; the women called upon him to aid them against their sadness, and the young men swore by the romances of their poet." "All our hospital patients recover or die with one of your father's books under their pillow," said a surgeon to Alexandre Dumas fils. "When we wish to make them forget the terror of an approaching operation, the tediousness of convalescence, or the dread of death, we prescribe one of your father's novels, and they are able to forget."
One great poet and great sufferer has left his appreciative gratitude on record:
​"For six years," wrote Heine to his confrère, "I have been bed-ridden. During the worst part of the time, when I was suffering the greatest torment, my wife read your romances to me, and that was the only way in which I was enabled to forget my pains. Thus I have devoured them all, and sometimes during the reading I have exclaimed 'What an ingenious poet! What a grand fellow this Dumas is!' Certainly after Cervantes and Madame Schariaz, better known as the sultana Scheherazade, you are the most amusing storyteller I know. What fluency! what ease! and what a good chap you are! Truly, I can find but one fault in you: that is modesty. You are too modest. Good gracious! those who accuse you of boasting and swaggering have no notion of the greatness of your talent!"
Nor are these "amusing" books ephemeral in their charm; there is, despite of critics, something more than merely an hour's entertainment in Dumas's romances. Their particular qualities have been thus defined by Dr Garnett:
"Dumas stands out as the first among the truly eminent novelists of the world for exuberance of production. To class him thus is to assign him a high place.... Exuberance implies a vast fertility of invention; animated, impassioned style; and more particularly great facility in dialogue ​All these merits Dumas possesses in the highest degree; his invention moves within the limits of humanity, his characters are credible personages, neither monsters nor puppets."
"If his imagination was not of the highest quality," says Professor Bryce, "it was of almost unsurpassed fertility."
Mr Saintsbury, reflecting upon the charm which the romancer's books possess for him, is vaguely conscious of an abiding quality in what seems so slight, so fleeting in its nature:
"Dumas has the faculty, as no other novelist has, of presenting rapid and brilliant dioramas of the picturesque aspects of history, animating them with really human if not very intricately analysed passion, and connecting them with dialogue matchless of its kind. He cannot, as a rule, do much more than this, and to ask him for anything more is unreasonable, though in rare passages he rises to a much greater height. But he will absorb your attention and rest you from care and worry as hardly any other novelist will, and, unlike most novelists of his class, his pictures, at least the best of them, do not lose their virtue by rebeholding. I at least find 'The Three Musketeers' not less but more effectual for its purpose than I found it thirty, twenty, ten, even five years ago, and I think there must be something in work of such a virtue than ​mere scene-painting for a background and mere lay-figures for actors."
Professor Carpenter sees evidence of the "staying power" in these books, and does not hesitate to say so.
"I find one explanation of the deeper effect these volumes make on me," he writes, "in the fact that Dumas, recklessly as he apparently wrote, and in headlong haste, has somehow managed to build his characters out of genuinely human material. He seems to treat them like the veriest puppets; they wear their hearts on their sleeves; and yet neither the creations of Scott nor of Shakespeare are more truly alive. With women he was less successful; though Marguerite, the queen of folly, the gracious Diane de Monsoreau, and the proud Comtesse de Charny, are wonderful types of womanhood. But his men are men. D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis; Chicot, Henri IV., La Mole, Coconnas, Bussy d'Amboise; Balsamo, Philippe de Tavernay, and Gilbert—not to mention others—these are as solidly and finely imagined as any characters in literature. How the author could have produced them we may never cease to wonder; but they do exist. He lived a foolishi life; and he wrote in haste; but he wrote from his heart, and his heart was by nature clairvoyant."
And he adds in conclusion:
​"Such are the considerations, in my judgment, which raise Dumas above the horde of vulgar romancers. His fame, like his genius, is not academic, and the critics may praise him with only half a heart, but his great public will be none the worse. One who reads him will pass the word to another; and each who knows him will be a better man."
Finally, Mr Lang sees, beyond the mere power of amusement possessed by Dumas, a philosophy and an ethical influence.
"In all he does, at his best, as in the 'Chevalier d'Harmenthal,' he has movement, kindness, courage, and gaiety. His philosophy of life is that old philosophy of the sagas and of Homer. Let us enjoy the movement of the fray, the faces of fair women, the taste of good wine; let us welcome life like a mistress, let us welcome death like a friend, and with a jest if death comes with honour. That his works (his best works) should be even still more widely circulated than they are; that the young should read them, and learn frankness, kindness, generosity—should esteem the tender heart, and the gay, invincible wit; that the old should read them again, and find forgetfulness of trouble, and taste the anodyne of dreams, that is what we desire."
We have more than once dubbed Dumas "great," ​and possibly the reader has smiled to himself, or registered an inward protest at the time. And yet a threefold proof can be presented in support of the tremendous adjective.
To our thinking, the very reason advanced by many critics for refusing greatness to Dumas offers one of the strongest presumptions in favour of that claim. "There is perhaps hardly such another instance," says Dr Garnett, "of a man with so little moral or intellectual claim to rank among the élite of letters, taking so high a place upon the literary Olympus." (We have neither time nor space to do more than register a strong protest respecting the "immorality" of Dumas's claim to literary rank, and pass on.) "Inferior in intellectual power to his principal contemporaries, his instinct is often truer than their reason."
Roughly speaking, great writers may be divided into two classes—those whose work is based on reason and process of thought, and those whose utterances are prompted by instinct and inspiration. We refrain from suggesting instances of what we may call the "intellectual" writers and the "spiritual" writers; neither quality can claim to be higher in itself than the other, and some great men, like Shakespeare, possess both. The one type of mind tends to produce logicians, political economists, problem-novelists and playwrights, poli​ticians, theologians, and so forth; the other gives birth to the poets, seers and prophets in all forms of art. To this latter class Dumas belonged. He lacked the power of poetic expression in its highest form, it is true; but there existed behind that barrier a nature akin in essentials to a poet's. Not only do his writings show this, but those who knew him or have studied him have testified to this fact again and again. He was "clairvoyant"; he divined in a flash what reason must laboriously discover; his intuitive instinct, guided by his intelligence, served him in place of experience, memory and logical thought. We have given numerous instances of his political foresight. Such qualities are of the highest, even if Dumas did not possess them to the uttermost; the soul is at least the equal of the brain.
This power, mysterious and inexplicable, too often produces the visionary, the fanatic. It had a very earthly abode in Dumas, and in one sense this was an enormous advantage. On a subject which appealed to him he could reason well and clearly, and grasp both principle and detail. Blaze de Bury tells us that the novelist once casually ventured to dispute with Geoffroy St Hilaire on a point of natural history relating to the whale's anatomy. Dumas imperturbably maintained his hypothesis; the great savant smiled with good​natured scorn. Will it be believed? When the standard authorities were consulted on the question, they confirmed the romancer's view!
It would seem that, according to Dr Garnett, Dumas was "great" in some respect, and by virtue of some high power. We presume that if Dumas is "high on Olympus" he has some right to be there: and if his is not the greatness of intellect, what form does his genius take? It must surely be a quality equal in calibre to that of brainpower, and there we are content to leave the matter.
Another of Dumas's claims to the rank of "great" is pithily put by Hayward.
"A title to fame, like a chain of proofs, may be cumulative. It may rest on the multiplicity and universality of production and capacity. Dumas will thus take rank as one of the three or four most popular and gifted writers that the France of the nineteenth century produced." Brander Matthews takes the same view. "Even more remarkable than the range of Dumas's work is its general level of merit. He had at least one element of greatness—an inexhaustible fecundity." He adds regretfully: "With his great powers one feels that he ought to have done something higher and nobler: that he had great powers, admits of no cavil." All who love Dumas and appreciate his ​work will echo this sentiment. Dr Garnett makes the same point when attributing to the Frenchman "a fecundity rivalled by very few novelists, and a standard of merit equalled by none who have approached Dumas's productiveness."
We find a third "reason for the faith that is in us" in the fact that so many great writers have proclaimed Dumas great, if not in so many words, still, unmistakably. It is not simply the ordinary reader who is astounded at the romancer's charm and resource, wit and skill; "the front row of the stalls"—the principal men and women writers of his day—applauded him just as heartily. We could wish nothing better than that the reader should compare the respective calibre, and worth, of our author's eulogists and detractors. For in addition to the great names we have already quoted there were others as "loyal" in their acclamation as Charles Reade himself. "I have an opinion of human things," wrote Lamartine, poet and historian; "I have none on miracles: you are superhuman. My opinion of you—it is a note of exclamation! People have tried to discover perpetual motion—you have done better: you have created perpetual astonishment!"
"He was not France's, he was not Europe's, he was the world's!" cried Hugo; and he it was who wrote "Ce qu'il seme, c'est l'idée ​Française." He has indeed taught French and the French to the whole world. Swinburne writes of Dumas's "excellent heart and brilliant genius"; Stevenson "would not give a chapter of old Dumas for the whole boiling of Zolas." Blaze de Bury, a sober critic, well acquainted with the literature of his nation and the great writers of his time, declared that "if there can be said to have been a French Shakespeare, it was Dumas. Hugo, who imagined that he was descended from the Elizabethan poet in a direct line, had far less claim to such parentage than Dumas." The most illuminating tribute to our author's genius was without doubt that of Michelet the historian. "Monsieur," he wrote, "je vous aime et je vous admire, parce que vous êtes une des forces de la nature." This is strikingly true: there was something great, something primitive, elemental, about Dumas, which explains at once his strength and his weaknesses. "His virtues were colossal," says Dr Garnett, "and he had the defects of his qualities." The mixture of "white" and "black" blood produced a phenomenon of physical strength and energy in General Dumas; a combination of physical and mental energy and strength in Dumas père; and the "strain" survived to give us a remarkable instance of intellectual capacity in Dumas fils.
​Briefly, our author was great because, being a natural force, with the great instincts of primitive man, without subtlety, or fear, or a doubt of self, he strove greatly and achieved great things, or failed as thoroughly. Ridicule never soured him nor baulked him of his end and aim; in heart and valour and confidence he was a giant. Such men are rare in these days, and "to encourage" any possible "others," we have laughed at this one for his failures; and measuring his stature with our eye, through the wrong end of the telescope, have decided that he was, if anything, rather below the middle height. In saying this we feel that we have added another inch or two to our own tall selves.
We have reserved for final quotation three very different estimates of our hero, which cannot, on the whole, be said to err on the side of eulogistic platitude. The first is from Castelar's essay on our author, and we present it with only one comment—that whereas the eloquent Spanish scholar obtained his knowledge of Dumas's genius direct from the writer's books, he received his impression of the Frenchman's life and conduct through the medium of "De Mirecourt" and others, as his article plainly indicates.
"Probably but few men have been born with so many and such brilliant qualities as Alexandre Dumas. His dramas are somewhat deficient in ​finish, but they are highly interesting. His novels contain nothing ideal, but much that is enchanting. Had he taken time for reflection, he would have produced some perfect work. With such great rapidity this was impossible. His creations are meteors when they might have been stars. Here we find a poet of a wonderful imagination, of an extraordinary power, fallen in the mire of the Parisian streets; punished for not having considered life as a reality, art as a religion, genius as a ministry, the world as a tribunal, and history, that conscience of humanity, as a judge."
In an oration full of feeling and eloquence, M. Edmond About pronounced a formal eulogy on Dumas at the unveiling of the statue in Place Malesherbes in Paris, in 1883.
"This statue," said M. About, "is that of a great madman, who, into all his good humour and astonishing gaiety, put more true wisdom than there is to be found in the hearts of all of us here.... It is the likeness of a prodigal who, after having ​ The Dumas Monument by Doré, Place Malesherbes, Paris. ​squandered millions in a thousand generous ways, left, without knowing it, a king's treasure behind him—it is the portrait of a 'man of pleasure,' whose life might well serve as a model for all men who work; of an egoist who devoted his life to his mother, his children, his friends, and his country."
As a summary of Dumas's character, an epitome of his greatness, and his failings—human and full of charity, we have not bettered this of Mr Henley's, in all our reading, and our own searchings of heart and brain:
In life he was very much of a scapegrace and a madcap, and even more of a prodigal. His morals were loose, he was vain as only a man of colour can be, his literary conscience was (to say the least) imperfect, his veracity was that of the romantiques in general, he could—and did—commit astonishing offences in taste; but his humanity was boundless in degree and incorruptible in quality, he was generous to a fault, he is not known to have dealt a single foul blow... the fact is, that he was a prodigy of gaiety, kindliness, and charm, and a prodigy of temperament and power, and capacity of life and invention and achievement. He talked still better than he wrote; and he wrote without any affectations of style, and with an ease, a gusto, a sincerity of mind, a completeness of method that are irresist​ible. And the lesson of his greater books is one by which the world may well have profited. Love, honour, friendship, loyalty, valour, the old chivalric virtues—these were his darling themes; and he treated them with a combination of energy and insight, of good sense and good feeling, of manliness of mind and beauty of heart, that has ranked him with the greatest benefactors of the race."
Well may we add, with Villemessant, that "if during Dumas's long career there are some incidents which one ought to judge severely we should pass them by in silence, not only out of respect for the great name which he has left to French literature, but also out of sympathy with the excellent heart which did so little harm, and wrought such an enormous amount of good."
It has been our aim throughout, to leave the praise we fain would speak to come from the mouths of others, who would do the pleasant task more skilfully, and be listened to with the respect which their reputations can command. We are aware that as a result critics may dub us compiler," or "book-maker." Had we "stolen the thunder" of our authorities, omitting acknowledgment and quotation-marks, we might have passed for being very clever, very conceited—or very dishonest. We preferred to speak by the mouths of others, the better to establish Dumas's reputation, ​and to let the captious say what they choose. "What matters it to the artist, so that the work be done?"
Yet we, too, have a word to say. The great men have spoken their glowing periods by the grave-side, and turned away. Before it is too late we, who have lingered behind, crave the right to come forward, take a last leave of our old friend, and
"cast at his feet one flower that fades away."
Stevenson has said, half-stoically, half-bitterly, that an author must look to his pleasure in writing as the only reward for his work. If this be true, we have already received our best pay for our labours. Nothing that may happen to this book can give the author the pleasure which he has found in the preparation of it. With every day's research his wonder, respect and love grew and deepened. "What a man to love!" he thought; and then, "How this man was loved!"
That, we believe, was the secret of Dumas's success, of his lasting popularity, and of his greatness. He was, like Fielding and Goldsmith, a man who won affection without effort. "If any man could be loveable, in the true sense of the word,—that is, made to be loved,—he was that man," so wrote one who knew him well and intimately; and ​indeed all who knew him seem to speak of him with full hearts, almost with tears in their eyes, so fond and affectionate is their remembrance of the man. From the famous great ones who treated him as their equal, to the servants who strove to save him from his generosity, to the very dogs he rescued, Dumas earned love from all, by giving it, generously and without thought of return. A heart such as his will outlive many a cleverer brain.
"Je suis tout en dehors," he once declared, in laughing self-disparagement. True, most of his vices, and some of his virtues, were on the surface, easy to be seen. But it would be truer to say of him that his was so transparent a nature that the sun of life shone through it, and that like a precious stone, its rays were reflected in myriad sparkling flashes of joy, gaiety, kindliness and generosity. The flaws were there; but there is no doubt this was a genuine diamond.
"J'aime qui m'aime." It was his motto, that line from the Proverbs: "I love them that love me." Loving the world, cheering it in its wretchedness, brightening its hours of leisure, giving to it fully of his wealth of gaiety and wit, he failed at times to keep the respect of the more prosaic, and was delivered over to the mercy of the envious. But those who have loved the people, the people never ​forget. The dying Dumas feared he had written in vain, but he wrought better than he knew; and the rock of human nature on which he built will endure through ages of carking Time, and all the storms of change.
Oh, my father, thou the thinker, thou the poet—can it be
That naught will snap the chain of bondage round thy heart, and set thee free?
Must thou ever give thy best
To the others who grow wealthy with the riches from thy store,
Leaving you not e'en as solace, when the long weck's work is o'er,
One brief seventh day of rest?
Bow thy head, then to thy labours! Not for thee the fields, the flow'rs,
Laughing song of birds, that echo in the leafy mountain bow'rs,
Peaceful sleep of liberty,
Smiling valleys, in the glory of the setting summer sun,
And the sweet, faint breath of nature—Heaven's gift to ev'ry one— Free to all men, but to thee.
From thy study-window gleaming, one may watch and see, alway
When the twilight falls at even, when the dawn is dim and gray,
Light of lamps that shine for thee.
Galley-slave of thine own talent, thou must toil, and toil in vain;
Thou canst not, with all thy weary years of labour and of pain,
Buy a month of liberty!
Be it so, then—thou, the cornfield rich in flowing golden grain Still must see the gladdened reapers in the season come again, Reap the harvest thou hast grown; Be thou still, the bright, the wondrous star, whose light all men may share, Shining on, supreme, majestic in the studded heavens there, Distant—splendid—and unknown"
Work, then, for the coming ages, that shall hold thy days so dear; Strive, and testify, and suffer, like some ancient prophet-seer! Thou thy onward course shalt keep Calm and peaceful, like the Rhine, that grand old river. To thy brink Let all nations come, and, grateful, of thy flowing current drink, 'Twill be still as clear and deep!
Work, then, freely: work unceasing. I will watch beside the gate; What care I what others think me? For I know that, 'spite their hate, Soon or late, fame will be mine. But to day my place is here; for I the pious duty claim Here to stand, to guard from wrong a father's glory and fair name, As it were a sacred shrine!
(From the French of Alexandre Dumas fils.)
* ↑ Another passage in this letter is interesting, in connection with much that has been written above. "In my very early years—say 1846-7," adds Mr Rossetti, "my brother and I knew more of Dumas as a dramatist than novelist. 'Don Juan de Marana' was our favourite; next might come 'Antony' and 'Caligula.' 'Kean' we used to laugh over, for its amusing travestie of English manners and Customs."
* ↑ This monument owed its origin and completion to the loving admiration which the great romancer has so generally inspired. A. M. Villard, a traveller, had cheered so many of his hours of enforced idleness with the company of d'Artagnan and his innumerable comrades, that he set on foot a scheme to recognise publicly and perpetually the author's fame and worth. When the committee—a representative one, full of illustrious names—was still lacking the money for the sculptor's labour, Gustave Doré, the artist, offered to do the work, literally "for love."