Essays in Little | Page 6

Did he perform all those astonishing
and innumerable feats of strength, skill, courage, address, in
revolutions, in voyages, in love, in war, in cookery? The narrative need
not be taken "at the foot of the letter"; great as was his force and his
courage, his fancy was greater still. There is no room for a biography of
him here. His descent was noble on one side, with or without the bend
sinister, which he said he would never have disclaimed, had it been his,
but which he did not happen to inherit. On the other side he MAY have
descended from kings; but, as in the case of "The Fair Cuban," he must
have added, "African, unfortunately." Did his father perform these
mythical feats of strength? did he lift up a horse between his legs while
clutching a rafter with his hands? did he throw his regiment before him
over a wall, as Guy Heavistone threw the mare which refused the leap
("Memoires," i. 122)? No doubt Dumas believed what he heard about
this ancestor--in whom, perhaps, one may see a hint of the giant
Porthos. In the Revolution and in the wars his father won the name of
Monsieur de l'Humanite, because he made a bonfire of a guillotine; and
of Horatius Cocles, because he held a pass as bravely as the Roman "in
the brave days of old."
This was a father to be proud of; and pluck, tenderness, generosity,
strength, remained the favourite virtues of Dumas. These he preached
and practised. They say he was generous before he was just; it is to be
feared this was true, but he gave even more freely than he received. A
regiment of seedy people sponged on him always; he could not listen to
a tale of misery but he gave what he had, and sometimes left himself
short of a dinner. He could not even turn a dog out of doors. At his
Abbotsford, "Monte Cristo," the gates were open to everybody but
bailiffs. His dog asked other dogs to come and stay: twelve came,
making thirteen in all. The old butler wanted to turn them adrift, and
Dumas consented, and repented.
"Michel," he said, "there are some expenses which a man's social
position and the character which he has had the ill-luck to receive from
heaven force upon him. I don't believe these dogs ruin me. Let them
bide! But, in the interests of their own good luck, see they are not
thirteen, an unfortunate number!"

"Monsieur, I'll drive one of them away."
"No, no, Michel; let a fourteenth come. These dogs cost me some three
pounds a month," said Dumas. "A dinner to five or six friends would
cost thrice as much, and, when they went home, they would say my
wine was good, but certainly that my books were bad." In this fashion
Dumas fared royally "to the dogs," and his Abbotsford ruined him as
certainly as that other unhappy palace ruined Sir Walter. He, too, had
his miscellaneous kennel; he, too, gave while he had anything to give,
and, when he had nothing else, gave the work of his pen. Dumas tells
how his big dog, Mouton once flew at him and bit one of his hands,
while the other held the throat of the brute. "Luckily my hand, though
small, is powerful; what it once holds it holds long--money excepted."
He could not "haud a guid grip o' the gear." Neither Scott nor Dumas
could shut his ears to a prayer or his pockets to a beggar, or his doors
on whoever knocked at them.
"I might at least have asked him to dinner," Scott was heard murmuring,
when some insufferable bore at last left Abbotsford, after wasting his
time and nearly wearing out his patience. Neither man PREACHED
socialism; both practised it on the Aristotelian principle: the goods of
friends are common, and men are our friends.
The death of Dumas' father, while the son was a child, left Madame
Dumas in great poverty at Villers Cotterets. Dumas' education was
sadly to seek. Like most children destined to be bookish, he taught
himself to read very young: in Buffon, the Bible, and books of
mythology. He knew all about Jupiter--like David Copperfield's Tom
Jones, "a child's Jupiter, an innocent creature"--all about every god,
goddess, fawn, dryad, nymph--and he never forgot this useful
information. Dear Lempriere, thou art superseded; but how much more
delightful thou art than the fastidious Smith or the learned Preller!
Dumas had one volume of the "Arabian Nights," with Aladdin's lamp
therein, the sacred lamp which he was to keep burning with a flame so
brilliant and so steady. It is pleasant to know that, in his boyhood, this
great romancer loved Virgil. "Little as is my Latin, I have ever