Letter From America: Dumas
...Although a prolific writer, Dumas could not count. His inability to do the most simple of sums was his downfall. He could spend all that he earned, and more. Once, he married an actress, blew her dowry and then blew town leaving her blue...
Ronnie Bray brings a new understanding of the prolific author of The Three Musketeers, and many another novel.
For more of Ronnie's effervescent prose please click on Letter From America in the menu on this page.
Although I speak only enough French to get me into serious trouble, I have no difficulty in understanding Alexander Dumas. A screen adaptation of his stirring tale, "The Three Musketeers," is showing right now. It has all the elements of an adventure story where stout-hearted men who are right-hearted men face overwhelming odds, public disfavour, and condign punishment yet they triumph over the combined forces of notorious power graspers, and, in addition, they get all the pretty girls while the wicked – identified by pencil-line moustaches, pinched faces, and conspicuous lack of laughing gear – are hauled off to spend the remainder of their lives in the cellar of the notorious Bastille, or in some other dungeon deep and dank with only rats for companions. It makes one feel sorry the poor rodents.
Dumas’ problems forced him into a life of writing novels and plays, tasks at which he was extraordinarily successful. However, he suffered from an overarching incapacity that dogged him throughout his life and shaped his pursuits whether he would or not. That writing was not the career he chose for himself is evident by his early entrance into commercial life as a clerk to a notary. His handwriting was exquisite, but his disability became his misfortune. The disability of which I speak is not the fact that the Musketeers never hold muskets in their hands, but something more fundamental that I shall reveal in due course.
Although a prolific writer, Dumas could not count. His inability to do the most simple of sums was his downfall. He could spend all that he earned, and more. Once, he married an actress, blew her dowry and then blew town leaving her blue. Had he been capable of simple accounting, he could have amassed a fortune and lived out his days in ease luxury, but he spent every penny he earned as if he had a thousand times more in the bank.
His literary output of more than 250 books made fortune after fortune for the man who became known as "The King of Paris." But because he could not count, he was unable to tell when his money was getting low, and so, like the mythical suicidal lemmings, he hurled himself headlong from the towering cliffs of high fortune onto the ragged rocks of penury in a never-ending cycle of fiscal destruction.
It was during the initial bout of Musketeer swordplay with Richelieu’s men that I noted the great man’s shortcoming. I am more than surprised that no one else has noticed it, but not surprised that the flashing pen and dramatic but innumerate mind of the fabled Alexander let it slip by him, because it came under the heading of – sums!
Yes, the great writer was a non-summer! The master literator was innumerate! His nib was quick but his nibs could not add up for toffee. That is why his story about a mysterious accountant, provisionally titled, "The Accountant of Monte Cristo," was re-written and the employment of eponymous hero was changed from his being a captain of industry to being the captain of a seagoing vessel.
Oddly enough, le Comte, he is framed by three enemies as being in league with Bonaparte and preparing to welcome to exile’s return. For this he is imprisoned in a chateau, an early French version of a chat room where the conversation is as abysmally mundane as those in modern chateaux are. He escapes, by hitting ‘ctrl,’ ‘alt,’ and ‘delete’ simultaneously, and stumbles upon fabulous treasure, wears his title with pride, destroys his enemies, triumphs over his foes, confounds his captors, and exposes the dissipation of the bourgeoisie.
Note that he identified three enemies, just as he identified three musketeers. Dumas was never quite sure how many of anything there was, and three is a safe number for a few, just as a score, or two-score is a nice number for a few more. This is why the number three keeps popping up in the work of Dumas: not because there were exactly three of anyone or anything, but because it was one of his stock properties.
So, when you read or watch ‘The Three Musketeers,’ take especial notice of the heroic characters who are threaded through the novel like bacon larding through a side of beef. Note their names: Porthos, Aramis, Athos, and D'Artagnan. Now count them and check the title again. It just doesn’t add up!
As le French have it, touché! N'est-il pas?
Copyright © Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
