DUMAGUETE, the capital town of the province of Negros Oriental, island of Negros, Philippine Islands, on Tañón Strait. Pop. (1903) 14,894. The town of Sibulan (pop. in 1903, 8413) was annexed to Dumaguete in 1903, after the census had been taken. Dumaguete lies in the midst of a fertile agricultural district. The inhabitants are chiefly natives, but the shops are kept by Chinese merchants. The public buildings, which include an interesting watch-tower and belfry, are large, substantial and well cared for.
DUMANJUG, a town of the province of Cebú, island of Cebú, Philippine Islands, on the W. coast, at the mouth of the Dumanjug river, about 40 m. S.W. of the town of Cebú. Pop. (1903) 22,203. In 1903, after the census had been taken, the adjacent town of Ronda (pop. 9662) was annexed to Dumanjug. Dumanjug is in communication with the town of Sibonga, on the opposite shore of one of the few passes through the mountains of the interior. Indian corn and sugar-cane are grown successfully in the neighbouring country, and the town has an important coast trade.
DU MARSAIS, CÉSAR CHESNEAU, Sieur (1676-1756), French philologist, was born at Marseilles on the 17th of July 1676. He was educated in his native town by the Fathers of the Oratory, into whose congregation he entered; but he left it at the age of twenty-five and went to Paris, where he married and was admitted an advocate (1704). He was tutor to the sons successively of the président de Maisons, of John Law, the projector, and of the marquis de Bauffremont. He then opened a boarding school in the faubourg St Victor, which scarcely afforded him the means of subsistence. He made contributions of great value on philological and philosophical subjects to the Encyclopédie, and after vain attempts to secure a competence from the court he was insured against want by the generosity of a private patron. He died in Paris on the 11th of June 1756. The researches of Du Marsais are distinguished by considerable individuality. He held sensible views on education and elaborated a system of teaching Latin, which, although open to grave criticism, was a useful protest against current methods of teaching. His best works are his Principes de grammaire and his Des tropes, ou des différents sens dans lesquels on peut prendre un mot (1730).
An edition of his works (7 vols.) was collected by Duchosal and Millon, and was published with an éloge on Du Marsais by D’Alembert at Paris in 1797.
DUMAS, ALEXANDRE [Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie] (1802-1870), French novelist and dramatist, was born at Villers-Cotterets (Aisne) on the 24th of July 1802. His father, the French general, Thomas Alexandre Dumas (1762-1806)—also known as Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie—was born in Saint Domingo, the natural son of Antoine Alexandre Davy, marquis de la Pailleterie, by a negress, Marie Cessette Dumas, who died in 1772. In 1780 he accompanied the marquis to France, and there the father made a mésalliance which drove the son into enlisting in a dragoon regiment. Thomas Alexandre Dumas was still a private at the outbreak of the revolution, but he rose rapidly and became general of division in 1793. He was general-in-chief of the army of the western Pyrenees, and was transferred later to commands in the Alps and in La Vendée. Among his many exploits was the defeat of the Austrians at the bridge of Clausen on the 22nd of April 1797, where he commanded Joubert’s cavalry. He lost Napoleon’s favour by plain speaking in the Egyptian campaign, and presently returned to France to spend the rest of his days in retirement at Villers Cotterets, where he had married in 1792 Marie Élisabeth Labouret.
The novelist, who was the offspring of this union, was not four years old when General Dumas died, leaving his family with no further resource than 30 acres of land. Mme Dumas tried to obtain help from Napoleon, but in vain, and lived with her parents in narrow circumstances. Alexandre received the rudiments of education from a priest, and entered the office of a local solicitor. His chief friend was Adolphe de Leuven, the son of an exiled Swedish nobleman implicated in the assassination of Gustavus III. of Sweden, and the two collaborated in various vaudevilles and other pieces which never saw the footlights. Leuven returned to Paris, and Dumas was sent to the office of a solicitor at Crépy. When in 1823 Dumas contrived to visit his friend in Paris, he was received to his great delight by Talma. He returned home only to break with his employer, and to arrange to seek his fortune in Paris, where he sought help without success from his father’s old friends. An introduction to the deputy of his department, General Foy, procured for him, however, a place as clerk in the service of the duke of Orleans at a salary of 1200 francs. He set to work to rectify his lack of education and to collaborate with Leuven in the production of vaudevilles and melodramas. Madame Dumas presently joined her son in Paris, where she died in 1838.
Soon after his arrival in Paris Dumas had entered on a liaison with a dressmaker, Marie Catherine Labay, and their son, the famous Alexandre Dumas fils (see below), was born in 1824. Dumas acknowledged his son in 1831, and obtained the custody of him after a lawsuit with the mother.