was more to his taste than the French poetry of the eighteenth century. He tried to translate 'Lenore.' Scott finished it in a night; Dumas gave up in despair. But this, he says, was the beginning of his authorship. He had not yet opened a volume of Scott or Cooper, "ces deux grands romanciers." With a friend named Leuven he began to try to write plays (1820-1821). He now poached his way to Paris, defraying his expenses with the game he shot on the road. Shakespeare too was a poacher; let us excuse the eccentricities of genius. He made Talma's acquaintance; he went to the play; he resigned his clerkship: "Paris was my future." Thither he went; his father's name served him with General Foy, and he obtained a little post in the household of the Duc D'Orléans—a supernumerary secretaryship at £60 a year. At the play he met Charles Nodier, reading the rarest of Elzevirs, and at intervals (like Charles Lamb) hissing his own piece! This delightful scene, with its consequences, occupies one hundred and thirty pages!
Dumas now made the acquaintance of Frederic Soulié, and became a pillar of theatres. He began to read with a purpose: first he read Scott; "The clouds lifted, and I beheld new horizons." Then he turned to Cooper; then to Byron. One day he entered his office, crying aloud, "Byron is dead!" "Who is Byron?" said one of his chiefs. Here Dumas breaks off in his 'Memoirs' to give a life of Byron! He fought his first duel in the snow, and won an easy, almost a bloodless victory. For years he and Leuven wrote plays together,—plays which were never accepted.
At last he, Rousseau (not Jean Jacques!), and Leuven composed a piece together. Refused at one house, it was accepted at another: 'La Chasse et l'Amour' (The Chase and Love) was presented on September 22d, 1823. It succeeded. A volume of three short stories sold to the extent of four copies. Dumas saw that he must "make a name" before he could make a livelihood. "I do not believe in neglected talent and unappreciated genius," says he. Like Mr. Arthur Pendennis, he wrote verses "up to" pictures. Thackeray did the same. "Lady Blessington once sent him an album print of a boy and girl fishing, with a request that he would make some verses for it. 'And,' he said, 'I liked the idea, and set about it at once. I was two entire days at it,—was so occupied with it, so engrossed by it, that I did not shave during the whole time.'" So says Mr. Locker-Lampson.
We cannot all be Dumas or Thackeray. But if any literary beginner reads these lines, let him take Dumas's advice; let him disbelieve in neglected genius, and do the work that comes in his way, as best he can. Dumas had a little anonymous success in 1826, a vaudeville at the Porte-Saint-Martin. At last he achieved a serious tragedy, or melodrama, in verse, 'Christine.' He wrote to Nodier, reminding him of their meeting at the play. The author of 'Trilby' introduced him to Taylor; Taylor took him to the Théâtre Français; 'Christine' was read and accepted unanimously.
Dumas now struck the vein of his fortune. By chance he opened a volume of Anquetil, and read an anecdote of the court of Henri III. This led him to study the history of Saint Megrin, in the Memoirs of L'Estoile, where he met Quelus, and Maugiron, and Bussy d'Amboise, with the stirring tale of his last fight against twelve men. Out of these facts he made his play 'Henri III.,' and the same studies inspired that trilogy of romances 'La Reine Margot' (Queen Margot), 'La Dame de Monsoreau' (The Lady of Monsoreau), and 'Les Quarante-Cinq' (The Forty-Five). These are, with the trilogy of the 'Mousquetaires,' his central works as a romancer, and he was twenty-five when he began to deal with the romance of history. His habit was to narrate his play or novel, to his friends, to invent as he talked, and so to arrive at his general plan. The mere writing gave him no trouble. We shall later show his method in the composition of 'The Three Musketeers.'
'Christine' had been wrecked among the cross-currents of theatrical life. 'Henri III.' was more fortunate. Dumas was indeed obliged to choose between his little office and the stage; he abandoned his secretaryship. In 1829 occurred this "duel between his past and his future." Just before the first night of the drama, Dumas's mother, whom he tenderly loved, was stricken down by paralysis. He tended her, he watched over his piece, he almost dragged the Duc d'Orléans to the theatre. On that night he made the acquaintance of Hugo and Alfred de Vigny. Dumas passed the evening between the theatre and his mother's bedside. When the curtain fell, he was "called on"; the audience stood up uncovered, the Duc d'Orléans and all!
Next morning Dumas, like Byron, "woke to find himself famous." He had "made his name" in the only legitimate way,—by his work. Troubles followed, difficulties with the Censorship, duels and rumors of duels, and the whole romantic upheaval which accompanied the Revolution of 1830. Dumas was attached again to the Orléans household. He dabbled in animal magnetism, which had been called mesmerism, and now is known as hypnotism. The phenomena are the same; only the explanations vary. About 1830 there was a mania for animal magnetism in Paris; Lady Louisa Stuart recounted some of the marvels to Sir Walter Scott, who treated the reports with disdain. When writing his romance 'Joseph Balsamo' (a tale of the French Revolution), Dumas made studies of animal magnetism, and was, or believed himself to be, an adept. The orthodox party of modern hypnotists merely hold that by certain physical means, a state of somnambulism can be produced in certain people. Once in that state, the patients are subject, to "suggestion," and are obedient to the will of the hypnotizer. He for his part exerts no "magnetic current," no novel unexplained force or fluid. Some recent French and English experiments are not easily to be reconciled with this hypothesis. Dumas himself believed that he exerted a magnetic force, and without any "passes" or other mechanical means, could hypnotize persons who did not know what he was about, and so were not influenced by "suggestion." In a few cases he held that his patients became clairvoyant; one of them made many political prophecies,—all unfulfilled. Another, in trance, improved vastly as a singer; "her normal voice stopped at contre-si. I bade her rise to contre-re, which she did; though incapable of it when awake." So far, this justifies the plot of Mr. Du Maurier's novel 'Trilby.' Dumas offers no theory; he states facts, as he says, including "post-hypnotic suggestion."
These experiments were made by Dumas merely as part of his studies for 'Joseph Balsamo' (Cagliostro); his conclusion was that hypnotism is not yet reduced to a scientific formula. In fiction it is already overworked. Dumas got his 'Christine' acted at last. Then broke out the Revolution of 1830. Dumas's description of his activity is "as good as a novel," but too long and varied for condensation. It seems better to give this extract about his life of poverty before his mother died, before fame visited him. (I quote Miss Cheape's translation of the passage included in her 'Stories of Beasts,' published by Longmans, Green and Company.)
He had, in later years, named a cat Mysouff II.
"If you won't think me impertinent, sir," said Madame Lamarque, "I should so like to know what Mysouff means."