Dumas as a man of affairs or as a politician was not the success that he was in the world of letters. His activities were great, and his enthusiasm for any turn of affairs with which he allied himself remarkable; but, whether he was en voyage on a whilom political mission, at work as “Director of Excavations” at Pompeii, or founding or conducting a new journal or a new playhouse, his talents were manifestly at a discount. In other words, he was singularly unfit for public life; he was not an organizer, nor had he executive ability, though he had not a little of the skill of prophecy and foresight as to many turns of fortune’s wheel with respect to world power and the comity of nations.
Commenting upon the political state of Europe, he said: “Geographically, Prussia has the form of a serpent, and, like it, she appears to be asleep, in order to gain strength to swallow everything around her.” All of his prophecy was not fulfilled, to be sure, but a huge slice was fed into her maw from out of the body of France, and, looking at things at a time fifty years ahead of that of which Dumas wrote,—that is, before the Franco-Prussian War,—it would seem as though the serpent’s appetite was still unsatisfied.
In 1847, when Dumas took upon himself to wish for a seat in the government, he besought the support of the constituency of the borough in which he had lived—St. Germain. But St. Germain denied it him—“on moral grounds.” In the following year, when Louis-Philippe had abdicated, he made the attempt once again.
The republican constituency of Joigny challenged him with respect to his title of Marquis de la Pailleterie, and his having been a secretary in the Orleans Bureau. The following is his reply—verbatim—as publicly delivered at a meeting of electors, and is given here as illustrating well the earnestness and devotion to a code which many Puritan and prudish moralists have themselves often ignored:
“I was formerly called the Marquis de la Pailleterie, no doubt. It was my father’s name, and one of which I was very proud, being then unable to claim a glorious one of my own make. But at present, when I am somebody, I call myself Alexandre Dumas, and nothing more; and every one knows me, yourselves among the rest—you, you absolute nobodies, who have come here merely to boast, to-morrow, after having given me insult to-night, that you have known the great Dumas. If such were your avowed ambition, you could have satisfied it without having failed in the common courtesies of gentlemen. There is no doubt, either, about my having been a secretary to the Duc d’Orleans, and that I have received many favours from his family. If you are ignorant of the meaning of the phrase, ‘The memories of the heart,’ allow me, at least, to proclaim loudly that I am not, and that I entertain toward this family of royal blood all the devotion of an honourable man.”
That Dumas was ever accused of making use of the work of others, of borrowing ideas wherever he found them, and, indeed, of plagiarism itself,—which is the worst of all,—has been mentioned before, and the argument for or against is not intended to be continued here.
Dumas himself has said much upon the subject in defence of his position, and the contemporary scribblers of the time have likewise had their say—and it was not brief; but of all that has been written and said, the following is pertinent and deliciously naïve, and, coming from Dumas himself, has value:
“One morning I had only just opened my eyes when my servant entered my bedroom and brought me a letter upon which was written the word urgent. He drew back the curtains; the weather—doubtless by some mistake—was fine, and the brilliant sunshine entered the room like a conqueror. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the letter to see who had sent it, astonished at the same time that there should be only one. The handwriting was quite unknown to me. Having turned it over and over for a minute or two, trying to guess whose the writing was, I opened it and this is what I found:
“‘Sir:—I have read your “Three Musketeers,” being well to do, and having plenty of spare time on my hands—’