The Minneapolis journal., 1902-07-26
ALEXANDRA DUMAS THE ELDER

QaQlan lana. st4FsasTsa En, II
ALEXANDRA DUMAS THE ELDER
The prodigious amount Of work done by
the greatest OF all story tellers, Alexan-
Dire Dumas the elder, has been the won
der OF the literary world ever since his
death, as we'll as in his life. Forty-five
plays and 29S "divers works bear his
name. In one year he published sixty vol
umes. It was soon realized by his con-
temporaries that he was, putting out
books: at such rate that the mere labor
of putting the compositions on paper
would take all the available time and
more, too, to say nothing of the time and
effort required to work out the plot, cre-
ate the characters and keep the threads
of the story in hand; this aside from all
such work as correcting and editing copy
and revising proof sheets. Eugene de
Merecourt: once made a. calculation to
show that If Dumas were most expert
penman and would work, without losing q
second, at the highest possible speed for
twelve hours q day he could not write
more than thirty volumes year. -
In the current Critic Francis Gribble
presents an interesting character study
and partial biography Of this wonderful
man, who Is characterized as one of the
authors who are more interesting per-
sonally than their books, and Dumas
books are about the most interesting ever
iko air
kind, the best of them are not ephemeral.
Their exuberant life and action make
them perennially interesting. Ask your
news dealer and he will tell you that to
this day Dumas is prime seller Who
can forget his days with Monte 4Cristo'
or the Three Guardsmen''7 Who does
not long to know again the joy of leaping
Through thoseI Fascinating pages breath
lessly, vet with careful scrutiny OF each
line,s for fear something be lost? @'5:.+
= OF! courseEDumas did not actually write
himself all of the volumes that went
forth under his name, but most of them
received their breath Of life from him.
He hadshis collaborators-Macq Ralle-
file, Gerard de Nerval and some others
-.'but xthesextent of his Indebtedness to
hts collaborators," says Gribble, sis one
of the standing puzzles of literary his
tory" '-", 's =
Being accused of being contractor for
serial stories Dumas replied: "Thes man
Of genius does not STEAL he cenquers, =
and, 81 have. my eollaberatorsI as Ma
poleon had his lnarshals." ~. ,....f
!, Being reproached in conversation for
Dumas answered: 81 never read the
book. Let me see, who wrote it for me ?
tsWas'the little Auguste Macquet.6 must
90, and box shis ears. sa. O.
but Mr. Gribble: does not believe this
anecdote. He, says that it is incredible
that Dumas made his great name by hir-
ing young men to write books for him to
copy yout and sign. Besides Dumas liked
joke as we'll as anybody, and in the ad-
mitted collaboration there was founda-
tion for such a jest. Mr.. Gribble ad-
vances the; theory that Dumas was to his
associates something like the editor OF
a modern newspaper, who manages to
give. similarity of style to everything
that appears in the paper, no matter how
many or how diverse the writer's are.
Dumas suggested stories to his friends
and Hrewrote them after they had done
their best to initiate his style and meth
cd, or else HE would take an original
story. from one of them and rewrite it TO
suit himself, condensing it here9and ex-
panding it there. Thus almost all of the
vast volume Of matter to which his name
was appended was essentially his own.
bathed in his genius. AS Dumas cared
nothing :for. "high literature" but was
fmbued with the idea Of putting forth in
teresting felton,. and as much Of It as
possible, there was no personal inconsist-
ency In this course. A romance factory
Of this kind must, OF course, turn out very
unequal work. Some of the books that
bear Dumas name are worthless. Others
represent the climax OF literary skill
after the Dumas fashion. The latter are
probably those that are wholly Dumas
own or that received the greatest atten-
tion from him. The others were those
that received little revision by the master
in the grand rush of turning out volume
after volume and keeping four serials go
ing at the same time. 4,e
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