Morning journal and courier., 1891-12-03
DUMAS AND ssCAmILLE..
How This Comedy Was Written an
 Rend To the Elder nuu,as

| How This Comedy Was Written and Read 10 the Elder Dumas. | Paris Correspondence of the Boston Herald l l M. Dumas once told me several interest | ing incidents about Camille" It was written in the suburb of Neuilly in the summer of 1S49, in barely eight days, on 1 scraps of paper which the author found lying on his table. The second act was l written entirely between twelve and five o'clock of one afternoon. The piece was to have been, according to the idea of An | thony Berand, who saw a good thing in it, melodrama for the Ambigu. NJ. Dumas | preferred to extract only vaudeville, so, I when the piece was written, it was impos- ! sible to get it played. The Gymnase and I the Vaudeville theaters refused it. and Mile. Page, to whom Dumas took it, would | not even receive the author. Deiazet found the piece touching, but she said that she could only play it in the costumes | of the time of Louis XV. Rachel, who made an appointment with Dumas to hear him read his work, left word for him that she WAS not at home, but had gone to a friends house to play loto.
 Then with sort of retrospective sad l ness Dumas told me how. on New Years | day of 1850, he paid a solitary visit to the I tomb of Marie Duplessis, as though to re- | late to her his griefs, and on returning | from the cemetery of Montmartre he took | up his manuscript, reread it all, and in the | fifth act all that relates to the ironic ioys ot the first of January dates from that day
 Dumas fills had written his play withou: having said anything about it to his fath- CT. He certainly would never have dared | to show this manuscript to the author of | Antony" and of 'Mademoiselle de Belle Isle," but chance willed it that, having taken his work to a copyist, who should come in but Dumas, pere.
 T was caught" said Dumas fills. "and l confessed laughingly to father that I had rewritten piece after my novel.
 ''My father then said: Well. let us sec what it is like. Read us the first act
 "We went into his study and I began reading, prey to the most powerful emo, tions have had in my life, for I was in the presence, to me, of & supreme judge After the first act he said in a friendly and grave manner: It is very good. Con. tinue.'
 "Emboldened by this debut, read the second act, and read it as we'll as I could My listener had tears in his eyes: the scene between Armand and Marguerite had touched him. Go on,' he said to me I read the third act There he could not contain his emotion, and the last two thirds of this act made him weep like fs ohild.
 | "'Go on, read me the rest, and when h. said that he looked at me as he had never looked at me before. There was in tha long, open look still the tenderness ts which was accustomed, but there was as tonishment mingled with it, delicate joy that was still kept back by the fear ths the end of my reading would not be equs to its beginning.
 "It was three o'clock; I had 8 rendez vous which it was impossible for me tt miss. I mnst go to my rendezvous,' said to father. Tn an hour I will b, back, and will read you the rest of it.
 Go and come back quickly. I an anxious to know the end,' he replied.
 ''The affair that called me away wa quickly dispatched, and I returned to th Avenue Frochot on the run. When opened the door of his study father 20 up, clasped me in his arms and said: was not able to wait; I wanted to know i you had done well to the end. I hay, read the last two acts; it is original; it ii touching; 1t is audacious; it is new! I will be an immense success if the censor will allow it to be played; but he vii never allow it-it is too true to life. IT the meanwhile you must read it in tn, Theatsr Historique. am curious to Sc, the effect of the reading on the actors.'
 ''We again hugged each other, bott weeping, and the great success of tn, piece certainly never caused me one-fourtt of the happiness that I experienced or that day."