Birmingham state herald., 1895-11-30
DUMAS. THE YouNaEE.

Dumas was no less celebrated and distin- guished than his illustrious father. These men had no valuable relatives or ante cedents to help them on the road to suc- cess. The father was a West Indian half-breed. His mother was a negress. The son was a bastard Such circum- stances did not prevent their steady march to the pinnacle of literary fame. The son who has just died became an academiean and president of the Legion of Honor. Tn the preface to volume of his plays published in 1877 is found this fragment of autobiography, which is a charming picture of the generosity of nature. the moral courage, the high mlndedness of the average French school boy:
 My mother was a good, courageous woman, who worked to rear me; my father. a government employe. with salary of 1900 francs a year ($240), having his mother to support By lucky chance it so happened that my father, though impulsive, was kind-hearted When, after his first successes as a dramatist, he thought he could rely upon the future, he recognized me and gave me his name. That was much; the law did not force him to do so, and I have been so grate- ful that I have borne that name as well lu. was not enough in the eyes Of the children whose position was per fectly regular before the law and in the midst of whom l was placed very early in a great boarding school kept by one of the best of men, M. Pros ger Goubaux. These children insulted me from morning til night, delighted, prob ably, to abuse in me the celebrated name of my father because my mother had the misfortune not to bear 1t. There was not a day that did not have fight with one or another of my comrades, ana some times with several together, for their cowardice was not solely moral. Those who were not thus said nothing and look ed on My suffering, which l have de- scribed in 'L'Affaire Clemenceau,' ana or which I never spoke to my mother so as not to distress her, lasted five or SIX years"
 The New York Tribune gives the foi- lowing interesting sketch of his life:
 "At an early age the young Dumas was placed in the Goubaux institution, where (and also at the Bourbon college) he made brilliant progress. Accustomed from ms earliest youth to literary surroundings, he soon evinced strong and positive likes and dislikes upon the subjects that were discussed before him by his father and his friends At the age of IT he wrote a number of poems, which were published in a volume in 1S47, entitled Les Peches de JenneSse.' This work has almost been lost sight of, and possesses little literary merit although there are some pleasing lines, and the motif is evidently sincere in it's naivete; it is of youth youthful After having accompanied his father on journey to Spain and Africa he wrote a fantastic book called Adventures de Ouatre Femmes ct dun Perroquet.' In 1S48 he wrote and published La Dame aux Camelias.' His fame was instanta- neous. The almost youth of "A years be- came at once one of the most tamouS lterateurs in Europe. This novel, ana the play taken from it, have been trans lated into every civilized language. It's dramatic representation has become fla miliar to Americans, portrayed through the mediums of at least three languages the French, the Italian and the English which at once suggested the names or 'Bernhardt Duse and Clara Morris.
 "Alexander Dumas, fills, was, above all, an analyzer in observation, if not in eX- pression; he studied from without, ln- ward, but when he came to give literary form to his ideas the action was re- versed; reality then became the medium and not the end the end was dramatic and artistic effect. He applied himself to the study of society. and sought by yerisimitude and artistic delineation to make good the deficiency of actual and practical fact. His works treat mostly of the relations between vice and morals, but always viewed from his position in that peculiar phase of society, le demi- monde. From his point of view he was supreme; when he tried to regard hu- manity from another, as he did in some of his last plays he signally failed. From his view point, then, he saw that behind the complete abandonment to vice which characterizes that certain phase of Pa risian life the human heart was still beating it's natural throb, smarting un- der all the misery to which vice Is fa- ther He saw that vice was often the natural and necessary consequence Of the narrow and bigoted morals of soci- ety, and he made those truths heard. But later he failed utterly to appreciate the homely virtue found in the homes of the middle classes, and when he would have used this atmosphere as clothing for his stories or his plays he only Suc- ceeded in making honesty commonplace. even absurd. Then he almost satirized virtue. Some of his most interesting ef- forts, at least from a literary point of view, are to be found in the prefaces that it has pleased him to place with each new edition of his stories or plays. But there is something aphoristic, obscure and even self-contradictory in his philos- ophy, just as there Is something forced and patched up in his art. He makes looking out for a way toward sensation, rather than that of a creating genius distributing it's generous gifts.
 Tn 1852 Alexander Dumas. fills. began to write for the stage. La Dame aux Camelias" was his first work, dramatized from the novel by that name. Its suc- cess was even more pronounced than that of the book. It was played at the Vau- deville, with Leon Faucher in the lead ing role. It is said that when the elder Dumas saw the performance. he said, while tears of joy, not unmngled with wounded pride ran down his cheeks:
 Ut seems that my son at "A was bet ter dramatist than I am now at 49."
 Between the years 1855 and 1870 more than fifty curtain raisers and plays from the young Dumas pen were produced in the Paris theaters. After the first disas- ter of 1870, NJ. Dumas retired to his estate in Puys. near Dieppe. The day after the Commune he sent to a newspaper in Rouen La Lettre sur les Choses du Jour-" full of patriotism and invectives against the revolutionists Returning to Paris in 1872, he had series of plays produced at the Gymnase The first two pieces were "Une Visite de Noces" and ''La Princesses Georges" The great suc- cess of the plays was in measure due to Mile. Aimee Desclee. who played the principal roles. Besides La Dame aux