The World's Greatest Books - Volume 9 Part 19

All this, and much more than I can say or have time to say, the reader must enter into before he can comprehend the unimaginable horror which these dreams of Oriental imagery and mythological tortures impressed upon me. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlight, I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and a.s.sembled them together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings I soon brought Egypt and all her G.o.ds under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paroqueats, by c.o.c.katoos. I ran into paG.o.das, and was fixed for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the priest; I was wors.h.i.+pped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brahma through all the forests of Asia; Vishnu hated me; Siva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris; I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.

Over every form and threat and punishment brooded a sense of eternity and infinity that drove me into an oppression as of madness. Into these dreams only it was, with one or two slight exceptions, that any circ.u.mstances of physical horror entered. But here the main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles; especially the last. The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him, and--as was almost always the case in my dreams--for centuries. And so often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very same way. I heard gentle voices speaking to me--I hear everything when I am sleeping--and instantly I awoke. It was broad noon, and my children were standing, hand in hand, at my bedside--come to show me their coloured shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for going out. I protest that so awful was the transition from the detestable crocodile, and the other unutterable monsters and abortions of my dreams, to the sight of innocent human natures and of infancy that in the mighty and sudden revulsion of mind I wept, and could not forbear it, as I kissed their faces.

_VI.--The Agonies of Sleep_

As a final specimen, I cite a dream of a different character, from 1820.

The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams--a music of preparation and of awakening suspense, a music like the opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like that, gave the feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day--a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where--somehow, I knew not how--by some beings, I knew not whom--a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting, was evolving like a great drama or piece of music, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and possible issue.

I, as is usual in dreams--where, of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement--had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it, and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. "Deeper than ever plummet sounded,"

I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the pa.s.sion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake, some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms, hurryings to and fro, trepidations of innumerable fugitives--I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad--darkness and lights, tempest and human faces, and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed--and clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then--everlasting farewells! And with a sigh such as the caves of h.e.l.l sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated--everlasting farewells! And again and yet again reverberated--everlasting farewells! And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, "I will sleep no more."

It now remains that I should say something of the way in which this conflict of horrors was finally brought to a crisis. I saw that I must die if I continued the opium. I determined, therefore, if that should be required, to die in throwing it off. I triumphed. But, reader, think of me as one, even when four months had pa.s.sed, still agitated, writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered. During the whole period of diminis.h.i.+ng the opium I had the torments of a man pa.s.sing out of one mode of existence into another. The issue was not death, but a sort of physical regeneration.

One memorial of my former condition still remains--my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still--in Milton's tremendous line--"With dreadful faces throng'd and fiery arms."

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

Memoirs

Alexandre Dumas _pere_, the great French novelist and dramatist, who here tells the story of his youth, was born on July 24, 1802, and died on December 5, 1870. He was a man of prodigious vitality, virility, and invention; abounding in enjoyment, gaiety, vanity, and kindness; the richness, force, and celerity of his nature was amazing. In regard to this peculiar vivacity of his, it is interesting to remember that one of his grandparents was a full-blooded negress. Dumas'

literary work is essentially romantic; his themes are courage, loyalty, honour, love, pageantry, and adventure; he belongs to the tradition of Scott and Schiller, but as a story-teller excels every other. His plays and novels are both very numerous; the "OEuvres Completes," published between 1860 and 1884, fill 277 volumes. Probably "Monte Cristo" and "The Three Musketeers" are the most famous of his stories. He was an untiring and exceedingly rapid worker, a great collaborator employing many a.s.sistants, and was also a shameless plagiarist; but he succeeded in impressing his own quality on all that he published. Besides plays and novels there are several books of travel. His son, Alexandre, was born in 1824.

The "Memoirs," published in 1852, which are here followed through their author's struggles to his triumph, may be the work of the novelist as well as of the chronicler, but they give a most convincing impression of his courageous and brilliant youth, fired equally by art and by ambition.

_I.--Memories of Boyhood_

I was born on July 24, 1802, at Villers-Cotterets, a little town of the Department of Aisne, on the road from Laon to Paris, so that, writing now in 1847, I am forty-five years old. My father was the republican general, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie, and I still use this patronymic in signing official doc.u.ments. It came from my grandfather, marquis of that name, who sold his properties in France, and settled down in 1760 on vast estates in San Domingo. There, in 1762, my father was born; his mother, Louise-Cessette Dumas, died in 1772; and in 1780, when my father was eighteen, the West Indian estates were leased, and the marquis returned to his native country.

My father spent the next years among the youth of the great families of that period. His handsome features--all the more striking for the dark complexion of a mulatto--his prodigious physical strength, his elegant creole figure, with hands and feet as small as a woman's, his unrivalled skill in bodily exercises, and especially in fencing and horsemans.h.i.+p, all marked him out as one born for adventures. The spirit of adventure was there, too. a.s.suming the name of Dumas because his father objected to the family name being dragged through the ranks, he enlisted as a private in a regiment of dragoons in 1786, at the age of twenty-four.

Quartered at Villers-Cotterets in 1790, he met my mother, Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Labouret, whom he married two years later. Their children were one daughter, and then myself. The marquis had died in 1786.

My memory goes back to 1805, when I was three, and to the little country house, Les Fosses, we lived in. I remember a journey to Paris in the same year, and the death of my father in 1806. Then my mother, sister, and I, left in poverty, went to live with grandfather and grandmother Labouret. Here, in gardens full of shady trees and gorgeous blossoms, I spent those happy days when hope extends hardly further than to-morrow, and memory hardly further than yesterday; storing my mind with cla.s.sical mythology and Bible stories, the "Arabian Nights," the natural history of Buffon, and the geography of "Robinson Crusoe."

Then came my tenth year and the age for school. It was decided that I should go to the seminary and be educated for a priest; but I settled that matter by running away and living for three days in the hut of a friendly bird-catcher in the woods. So I pa.s.sed instead into our little school of the Abbe Gregoire--a just and good man, of whom I learned little but to love him; and from another parish priest, an uncle of mine, a few miles away, I gained a pa.s.sion for shooting the hares and partridges with which our country swarmed.

But while I was living in twelve-year-old joys and sorrows, the enemy was marching on French soil, and all confidence in Napoleon's star had vanished. G.o.d had forsaken him. A retreating wave of our army swept over the countryside, followed by alien forces. We lived in the midst of fighting and alarms, and my mother and her friends worked like sisters of charity. There followed Bonaparte's exile in Elba, and then the astonis.h.i.+ng report that he had landed near Cannes, and was marching on Paris. He reached the Tuileries on March 20, 1815; in May, his troops were marching through our town on their way to Waterloo, glory, and the grave. I saw him pa.s.sing in his carriage, his face, pale and sickly, leaning forward, chin on breast. He raised his head, and glanced around.

"Where are we?"

"At Villers-Cotterets, sire."

"Forward! Faster!" he cried, and fell back into his lethargy. Whips cracked, and the gigantic vision had pa.s.sed. That was June 11--Waterloo was the 18th. On the 20th, three or four hours after the first doubtful rumour had reached us, a carriage drew up to change horses. There was the same inert figure, and the same question and answer. The team broke into a gallop, and the fallen Napoleon was gone. Soon all went on in the ordinary way, and in our little town, isolated in the midst of its forest, one might have thought no changes had taken place; people had had an evil dream--that was all.

My memories of this period are chiefly memories of the woods--shooting parties, now and then a wolf or boar hunt, often a poaching adventure with a friend. But at fifteen years of age I was placed in a notary's office; at sixteen I learned to love, and shortly afterwards I saw "Hamlet" played by a touring company. It made a profound impression on me, awakening vast, aimless desires, strange gleams of mystery. A friend of mine, Adolphe de Leuven, himself an ardent versifier, guided me to a first sense of my vocation, and together we set to work as playwrights.

Adolphe and his father went up to live in Paris, and our plays were submitted everywhere in vain. My ardour for the great city grew daily until it became irresistible; and at length, in the temporary absence of my notary, I made a three days' escape with a friend, saw Talma act, and was even introduced to him by Adolphe. His playing opened a new world to me, and the great man playfully foretold my destiny.

As one enchanted, I returned to the office, accepted my employers'

rebuke as a dismissal, and went home. I was without a penny, but was immediately visited by a wonderful run of fortune. Among other strokes of luck, I sold my rascal dog for $25 to an infatuated Englishman, and won six hundred gla.s.ses of absinthe at a single game of billiards from the proprietor of the Paris coach, commuting them for a dozen free pa.s.sages. I said good-bye to the dear mother and the saintly _abbe_, and found myself early on a May morning at Adolphe's door. I had come to try my fortune with my father's brothers-at-arms.

Of course, there were bitter disappointments, and when I called on General Foy he was my last hope. Alas! did I know this subject, or that, or that? My answer was always "No." But the general would at least keep my address; and no sooner had I written it down than he cried aloud that we were saved! It appeared that I had a good writing, and the Duke of Orleans needed another copyist in his office. The next morning I was engaged at a salary of twelve hundred francs. I came home for three days with my mother, and on the advice of the bird-catcher took a ticket at the lottery, which brought me 146 francs. And so, with a few bits of furniture from home, I took up my lodging in a Parisian garret.

_II.--Launched in Paris_

Now began a life of daily work at the office, with agreeable companions, and of evenings spent at the theatre or in study. On the first night I went to the Porte-Sainte-Martin Theatre, where a melodrama, "The Vampire," was presented, and fell into conversation with my neighbour, a man of about forty, of fascinating discourse, who was inordinately impatient with the piece, and was at last turned out of the theatre for his expressions of disapproval. His talk, far more interesting than the play, turned on rare editions of old books, on the sylphs, gnomes, Undines of the invisible world, on microscopic creatures he had himself discovered, and on vampires he had seen in Illyria. I learned next day that this was the celebrated author and bibliophile, Charles Nodier, himself one of the anonymous authors of the play he so vilified.

La.s.sagne, a genial colleague in the office, not only put me in the way of doing my work, which I quickly picked up, but was good enough also to guide my reading, for I was deplorably ignorant. In those days Scribe was the great dramatist, producing innumerable clever plots of intrigue, modelled on no natural society, but on a society all his own, composed almost exclusively of colonels, young widows, old soldiers, and faithful servants. No one had ever seen such widows and colonels, never soldiers spoke as these did, never were servants so devoted; yet this society of Scribe's was all the fas.h.i.+on.

The men most highly placed in literature at the time when I came to Paris were MM. de Chateaubriand, Jouy, Lemercier, Arnault, Etienne, Baour-Lormian, Beranger, Charles Nodier, Viennet Scribe, Theaulon, Soumet, Casimir Delavigne, Lucien Arnault, Ancelot, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Desaugiers, and Alfred de Vigny. After them came names half literary, half political, such as MM. Cousin, Salvandy, Yillemain, Thiers, Augustin Thierry, Michelet, Mignet, Vitet, Cave, Merimee, and Guizot. Others, who were not yet known, but were coming forward, were Balzac, Soulie, De Musset, Sainte-Beuve, Auguste Barbier, Alphonse Karr, Theophile Gautier. Madame Sand was not known until her "Indiana," in 1828. I knew all this constellation, some of them as friends and supporters, others as enemies.

In December, 1823, Talma made perhaps the greatest success of his life in Delavigne's "L'Ecole des Vieillards," in which his power of modulating his voice to the various emotions of old age was superbly shown. But Talma was never content with his triumphs; he awaited eagerly the rise of a new drama; and when I confided to him my ambitions, he would urge me to be quick and succeed within his day. Art was all that he lived for. How wonderful a thing is art, more faithful than a friend or lover!

On the first day of 1824 I rose to be a regular clerk at 1,500 francs, and determined to bring up my mother from the country. It was now nine months since I had seen her. So she sold her tobacco shop and came up to Paris with a little furniture and a hundred louis. We were both very glad to be united, though she was anxious about my future.

I had by this time learned my ignorance of much that was necessary to my success as a dramatist, and began to devote every hour of my leisure to study, attending the theatre as often as I could get a pa.s.s. A young medical man named Thibaut helped me much in my education; he took me to the hospital, where I picked up a knowledge of medicine and surgery which has repeatedly done service in my novels, and I learned from him the actions of poisons, such as I have used in "Monte Cristo."

I read also under the guidance of La.s.sagne, beginning with "Ivanhoe," in which the pictures of mediaeval life cleared the clouds from my vision and gave me a far wider horizon. Next the vast forests, prairies, and oceans of Cooper held me; and then I came to Byron, who died in Greece at the very time when I was entering on my apprentices.h.i.+p to poetry. The romantic movement in France was beginning to invade literature and the drama, but its expression was still most evident in the younger painters.

My mother's little capital only lasted eighteen months, and I found myself forced to supplement my salary by other work. I had until now collaborated with Adolphe, but all in vain, and we now determined to a.s.sociate Ph. Rousseau with our efforts. The three of us together quickly produced a vaudeville in twenty-one scenes, "La Cha.s.se et l'Amour," of which I wrote the first seven scenes, Adolphe the second seven, and Rousseau the conclusion. The piece was rejected at the Gymnase, but accepted at the Ambigu; and my share of the profits came to six francs a night.

A.M. Porcher, who always had a pleasant welcome and an open purse for a literary man, lent me 300 francs on the security of my receipts, and with that money I printed a volume of three stories under the t.i.tle of "Nouvelles Contemporaines," of which, however, only four copies were sold. But the next adventure was more profitable. A play, by La.s.sagne and myself, "La Noce et l'Enterrement," was presented at the Porte-Sainte-Martin in November 1826, and brought me eight francs a night for forty nights.

_III.--Under Shakespeare's Spell_

As recently as 1822 an English theatrical company, which had opened at the Porte-Sainte-Martin Theatre, had been hissed and pelted off the stage for offering the dramas of the barbaric Shakespeare. But when, in September 1827, another English company brought Shakespeare's plays to the Odeon, this contempt for English literature had changed to ardent admiration--so quickly had the mind of Paris broadened. Shakespeare had been translated by Guizot, and everyone had read Scott, Cooper, and Byron.

The English season was opened by Sheridan's "Rivals," followed by Allingham's "Fortune's Freak." Then came "Hamlet," which infinitely surpa.s.sed all my expectations. Kemble's Hamlet was amazing, and Miss Smithson's Ophelia adorable. From that very night, but not before, I knew what the theatre was. I had seen for the first time real men and women, of flesh and blood, moved by real pa.s.sions. I understood Talma's continual lament, his incessant desire for plays which should show him, not as a hero only, but also as a man. "Romeo and Juliet," "Oth.e.l.lo,"

and all the other masterpieces followed. Then, in their turn, Macready and Kean appeared in Paris.

I knew now that everything in the world of drama derives from Shakespeare, as everything in the natural world depends on the sun; I knew that, after G.o.d, Shakespeare was the great creator. And from the night when I had first seen, in these English players, men on the stage forgetful of the stage, and revealing themselves, by natural eloquence and manner, as G.o.d's creatures, with all their good and evil, their pa.s.sions and weaknesses, from that night my vocation was irrevocable. A new confidence was given me, and I boldly adventured on the future.

Besides observing mankind, I entered with redoubled zest upon the dissection and study of the words of the great dramatists.