Dumas Pere

The father of Alexandre Dumas was a man of legendary strength, courage, and energy, and his life is now the subject of a biography, The Black Count by Tom Reiss. The engaging TLS review sums up the influence that Dumas pere had on his famous son:

“Dumas’s novels are deeply marked by his hero father. Georges (1843) re-enacts episodes of his life. D’Artagnan (who also fights three duels in a day) is a provincial outsider who has to overcome caste prejudice just as the General had done. Edmond Dantès, the superman-hero of The Count of Monte Cristo, is also wrongfully imprisoned but lives on to take the revenge that was denied to the prisoner of Taranto.”

The reviewer argues that the father’s effect on the son ran deeper: “it survives in Dumas’s taste for freedom, his hatred of oppressive authority, and his preference for dashing cavaliers over dreary roundheads. But while Napoleon was as roundheaded as Cardinal Richelieu, Dumas bore no grudges for his treatment of his parents. He did as much to fuel the Napoleonic mystique as anyone and was clear about his role in history: ‘Napoleon was the herald of liberty,’ he wrote in his Mémoires. For all his faults and errors, Napoleon toppled thrones and cleared the way for ‘the age of constitutions.’”