Read Ebook: My Memoirs Vol. I 1802 to 1821 by Dumas Alexandre Lang Andrew Author Of Introduction Etc Waller E M Emily Mary Translator

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The true collaborators of Dumas were human nature and history. Men are eternally interesting to men, but in historical writing, before Scott, the men were left much in the vague. They and their deeds and characters lay hidden in memoirs and unprinted letters. Such a man as the Cavalier, Edward Wogan, "a very beautiful person," says Clarendon, was briefly and inaccurately touched on by that noble author. More justice is done to him by his kinsman, the adventurous Sir Charles Wogan, in a letter to Swift. He did not escape Scott, who wrote a poem to his memory. Now, such a character as Wogan, brave, beautiful, resourceful as d'Artagnan, landing in England with the gallows before his eyes, and carrying a troop of cavalry through the hostile Cromwellian country, "wherever might lead him the shade of Montrose," to join the Clans and strike a blow for King Charles, was precisely the character for Dumas. Such men as Wogan, such women as Jane Lane and Lady Ogilvy, Dumas rediscovered, and they were his inspiration. The past was not really dull, though dull might be the books of academic historians. They omitted the human element, the life, the colour, and, we are told, "scientific history" ought to be thus impartially jejune. The great public turns away from scientific history to Dumas and to modern imitators, good and bad, and how inordinately bad some of his followers can be! An American critic half despairs of his country because some silly novels, pretending to be historical, are popular. The symptom is good rather than bad. Untrained and undirected, falling on the stupid and ignorant new novels most loudly trumpeted, the young Americans do emancipate themselves from the tyranny of to-day, and their own fancy lends a glamour to some inept romance of the past. They dwell with tragedy and with Mary Stuart, though she be the Mary Stuart of a dull, incompetent scribbler. They may hear of Scott and Dumas, and follow them.

Dumas was at the opposite pole from a Galahad or a Joseph. His life, as regards women, was much like that of Burns or Byron. His morality on this point is that of the camp or of the theatre in which he lived so much. This must be granted as an undeniable fact. But there are other departments of conduct, and in the virtues of courage, devotion, fortitude, friendship, and loyalty, the Musketeers are rich enough. Their vices, happily, are not those of our age but of one much less sensitive on certain points of honour, as Dumas remarks, and as history proves. But the virtues of the Musketeers are, in any age, no bad example.

ANDREW LANG.

THE MEMOIRS OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS

BOOK I

My birth--My name is disputed--Extracts from the official registers of Villers-Cotterets--Corbeil Club--My father's marriage certificate--My mother--My maternal grandfather--Louis-Philippe d'Orl?ans, father of Philippe-?galit?--Madame de Montesson--M. de Noailles and the Academy--A morganatic marriage.

I was born at Villers-Cotterets, a small town in the department of Aisne, situated on the road between Paris and Laon, about two hundred paces from the rue de la Noue, where Demoustier died; two leagues from La Fert?-Milon, where Racine was born; and seven leagues from Ch?teau-Thierry, the birthplace of La Fontaine.

I was born on the 24th of July 1802, in the rue de Lormet, in the house now belonging to my friend Cartier. He will certainly have to sell it me some day, so that I may die in the same room in which I was born. I will step forward into the darkness of the other world in the place that received me when I stepped into this world from the darkness of the past.

I was born July 24th, 1802, at half-past five in the morning; which fact makes me out to be forty-five years and three months old at the date I begin these Memoirs--namely, on Monday, October the 18th, 1847.

I therefore ask permission to transcribe my birth certificate, to allay any further discussion upon the subject.

"On the fifth day of the month of Thermidor, year X of the French Republic.

"The sex of the child is notified to be male.

"First witness: Claude Labouret, maternal grandfather of the child.

"Second witness: Jean-Michel Deviolaine, inspector of forests in the fourth communal arrondissement of the department of Aisne, twenty-sixth jurisdiction, dwelling at the above mentioned Villers-Cotterets. This statement has been made to us by the father of the child, and is signed by

"Al. Dumas, Labouret, and Deviolaine.

Now, had I been illegitimate I should quietly have accepted the bar as more celebrated bastards than I have done, and, like them, I should have laboured arduously with mind or body until I had succeeded in giving a personal value to my name. But what is to be done, gentlemen? I am not illegitimate, and it is high time the public followed my lead--and resigned itself to my legitimacy.

They next fell back upon my father. In a club at Corbeil--it was in 1848--there lived an extremely well-dressed gentleman, forsooth, whom I was informed belonged to the magistracy; a fact which I should never have believed had I not been assured of it by trustworthy people; well, this gentleman had read, in I know not what biography, that it was not I but my father who was a bastard, and he told me the reason why I never signed myself by my name of Davy de la Pailleterie was because my father was never really called by that name, since he was not the son of the marquis de la Pailleterie.

I began by calling this gentleman by the name usually applied to people who tell you such things; but, as he seemed quite as insensible to it as though it had been his family name, I wrote to Villers-Cotterets for a second birth certificate referring to my father, similar to the one they had already sent me about myself.

I now ask the reader's permission to lay this second certificate before him; if he have the bad taste to prefer our prose to that of the secretary to the mayoralty of Villers-Cotterets, let him thrash the matter out with this gentleman of Corbeil.

"Jean-Jacques-?tienne de B?ze, lieutenant in the same regiment of hussars, native of Clamercy, department of la Ni?vre;

"Jean-Michel Deviolaine, registrar of the corporation and a leading citizen of this town, all three friends of the husband;

"Present, the father and mother of the bride, all of age, who, together with the contracting parties, have signed their hands to this deed in our presence:

"MARIE LOUISE ?LISABETH LABOURET; THOMAS-ALEXANDRE DUMAS-DAVY DE LA PAILLETERIE; widow of LA PAILLETERIE; LABOURET; MARIE-JOSEPH PR?VOT; L. A. ESPAGNE; JEAN-JACQUES-?TIENNE DE B?ZE; JEAN--MICHEL DEVIOLAINE, and LONGPR?, Public Officer."

Having settled that neither my father nor I were bastards, and reserving to myself to prove at the close of this chapter that my grandfather was no more illegitimate than we, I will continue.

Louis-Philippe died of an attack of gout, at the castle of Sainte-Assise, November the 18th, 1785. The Abb? Maury, who quarrelled so violently in 1791 with the son, had in 1786 pronounced the funeral oration over the father at N?tre-Dame.

I recollect having often heard my grandfather speak of that prince as an excellent and on the whole a charitable man, though inclined to avarice. But far before all others my grandfather worshipped Madame de Montesson to the verge of idolatry.

We feel sure these details are not unwelcome now that manners have become so different from what they then were.

Let us first impress upon our readers that Madame de Montesson was supposed by Court and town to hold the extraordinary notion of not wishing to become the wife of M. le duc d'Orl?ans until after he had married her.

Behold on what slight causes depends the homogeneity of incorporated associations! If the widow Scarron had not been a maid at the time of her second marriage, which was quite possible, M. de Noailles would not have written his book, and the Academy, which felt the need of M. de Noailles' presence, would have remained incomplete, and in consequence imperfect.

That would not have mattered to M. de Noailles, who would always have remained M. de Noailles.

But what would have become of the Academy?

But let us return to M. le duc d'Orl?ans, to his marriage with Madame de Montesson, and to Soulavie's anecdote, which we will reproduce in his own words.

"The Court and capital were aware of the tortures endured by the duc d'Orl?ans and of Madame de Montesson's strictness.

"The love-lorn prince scarcely ever encountered the king or the duc de Choiseul without renewing his request to be allowed to marry Madame de Montesson.

"But the king had made it a matter of state policy not to allow either his natural children or those of the princes to be legitimatised, and this rule was adhered to throughout his reign.

"For the same reasons he refused the nobility of the realm permission to contract marriages with princes of the blood.

"Madame de Montesson had no ambition to play the part of first princess of the blood against the king's wishes, nor yet to keep up hostilities over matters of etiquette with the princesses: it was not in her nature to do so.

"The Archbishop of Paris was informed of the king's consent, and allowed the pair exemption from the threefold publication of their banns.

"The chevalier de Durfort, first gentleman of the chamber to the prince, by reversion from the comte de Pons, and P?rigny, the prince's friend, were witnesses to the marriage, which was blessed by the Abb? Poupart, cur? de Saint-Eustache, in the presence of M. de Beaumont, archbishop of Paris.

"On his wedding-day the duc d'Orl?ans held a very large Court at Villers-Cotterets.

"The previous evening, and again on the morning of the ceremony, he told M. de Valen?ay and his most intimate friends that he had reached at last an epoch in his life, and that his present happiness had but the single drawback that it could not be made public.

"On the morning of the day when he received the nuptial benediction at Paris he said:

"'I leave society, but I shall return to it again later; I shall not return alone, but accompanied by a lady to whom you will show that attachment you now bear towards myself and my interests.'

"At night they saw him re-enter the crowded reception chamber, leading by the hand Madame de Montesson, upon whom all looks were fixed.

"Modesty was the most attractive of her charms; all the company were touched by her momentary embarrassment.

"The marquis de Valen?ay advanced to her and, treating her with the deference and submission due to a princess of the blood, did the honours of the house as one initiated in the mysteries of the morning.

"The hour for retiring arrived.

"It was the custom with the king and in the establishments of the princes for the highest nobleman to receive the night robe from the hands of the valet-de-chambre and to present it to the prince when he went to bed: at Court, the prerogative of giving it to the king belonged to the first prince of the blood; in his own palace he received it from the first chamberlain.

"Madame de S?vign? says in a letter dated 17th of January 1680 that:

"At M. le duc d'Orl?ans' wedding the ceremony of the night robe took place after this fashion. There was some embarrassment just at first, the duc d'Orl?ans and the marquis de Valen?ay temporising for a few moments, the former before asking for it, the latter before receiving it.

"M. d'Orl?ans bore himself as a man who prided himself upon his moderation in the most lawful of pleasures.

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