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Feb. 4th, 2014 08:40 amThe Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo is a biography of Alexandre Dumas the first, which is to say the father of the guy who wrote The Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo and all those other swashbuckling French books about extremely dashing assholes.
The book is really good and really interesting for a number of reasons! Alex Dumas grand-pere was born in Saint-Domingue, which is now Haiti, the son of an aristocratic French count and planter-turned-convict and an enslaved woman named Marie-Cessette Dumas. He eventually became a general-in-chief in France's army -- according to Wikipedia, still the highest rank ever held by a person of color in a continental European army -- and the story of his career and success is one hundred percent tied up in the story of France's treatment of race and slavery around the time of the Revolution, and those, like, FIVE YEARS before Napoleon came in when slavery was illegal and people of any race had full rights in France. All this history is incredibly fascinating, although there came a point halfway through where I was like "I don't want to read anymore, everything seems pretty good right now and I know in fifty pages it's all going to go to hell again!"
However, the most amazing thing about Dumas grand-pere was that it really, honestly seems like he wasn't ... an asshole ... at all?
Like, look, okay, I love Alexandre Dumas novels as much as anybody, but we can ALL AGREE that there are no characters in his novels who are not assholes. EVERYBODY'S A JERK. Callous disregard for bystanders, noncombatants and human life in general is the rule of the day!
And even aside from the principles of assholery set by Dumas, if you read biographies of historical famous people -- ESPECIALLY people who were famous for military performance during bloody and controversial periods such as the French Revolution -- you generally sort of expect that there's going to come a moment when the standards of acceptable behavior during the day jar sharply against modern standards, and you're going to think, "wow, what an asshole."
NOT SO WITH ALEX DUMAS. Alex Dumas made a point of protecting noncombatants and preventing his soldiers from looting and pillaging! During the revolution, people made fun of him for refusing to watch executions, and called him "Mr. Humanity!" He appears to have been adorably in love with his wife, and vice versa! When Napoleon asked him to expel the women from a local region he was occupying, he wrote back to be like, "dude, come on, where are they supposed to go!" For a while he was in charge of a region that had just undergone a massive crackdown against anti-Revolution insurgents in which EVERYBODY had been EXTREME, MASSACRING ASSHOLES, and appears to have been the only person involved to receive later praise from both sides for being generally fair-minded, equitable, and not a dick!
Which of course begs the question of where the heck Alexandre Dumas the writer got his ideas of acceptable standards of behavior from. Like, this book makes the argument that a lot of the stuff in Count of Monte Cristo is inspired by some of Alex Dumas' later experiences, which I'm willing to buy, but one gets the general impression that Alex Dumas would have HATED Edmond Dantes. What do you mean, your revenge scheme involves ruining twenty unrelated lives? NOT COOL.
...and he would have said it loudly, too, because while Alex Dumas was not a dick, he was also not ... discreet ...
Here is everybody's favorite Dumas letter, reproduced in full:
GENERAL,
I have learned that the jack ass whose business it is to report to you upon the battle of the 27th stated that I stayed in observation throughout that battle. I don’t wish any such observation on him, since he would have shit in his pants.
Salute and Brotherhood!
ALEX. DUMAS.
ADMIRABLY SUCCINCT.
Basically though the end result is that I am now going to have way more of a problem excusing assholish behavior in historical figures. My standards have been raised! What do you mean, no one at the time would have seen anything wrong with that? ALEX DUMAS WOULD NEVER HAVE LET THAT SLIDE.
The book is really good and really interesting for a number of reasons! Alex Dumas grand-pere was born in Saint-Domingue, which is now Haiti, the son of an aristocratic French count and planter-turned-convict and an enslaved woman named Marie-Cessette Dumas. He eventually became a general-in-chief in France's army -- according to Wikipedia, still the highest rank ever held by a person of color in a continental European army -- and the story of his career and success is one hundred percent tied up in the story of France's treatment of race and slavery around the time of the Revolution, and those, like, FIVE YEARS before Napoleon came in when slavery was illegal and people of any race had full rights in France. All this history is incredibly fascinating, although there came a point halfway through where I was like "I don't want to read anymore, everything seems pretty good right now and I know in fifty pages it's all going to go to hell again!"
However, the most amazing thing about Dumas grand-pere was that it really, honestly seems like he wasn't ... an asshole ... at all?
Like, look, okay, I love Alexandre Dumas novels as much as anybody, but we can ALL AGREE that there are no characters in his novels who are not assholes. EVERYBODY'S A JERK. Callous disregard for bystanders, noncombatants and human life in general is the rule of the day!
And even aside from the principles of assholery set by Dumas, if you read biographies of historical famous people -- ESPECIALLY people who were famous for military performance during bloody and controversial periods such as the French Revolution -- you generally sort of expect that there's going to come a moment when the standards of acceptable behavior during the day jar sharply against modern standards, and you're going to think, "wow, what an asshole."
NOT SO WITH ALEX DUMAS. Alex Dumas made a point of protecting noncombatants and preventing his soldiers from looting and pillaging! During the revolution, people made fun of him for refusing to watch executions, and called him "Mr. Humanity!" He appears to have been adorably in love with his wife, and vice versa! When Napoleon asked him to expel the women from a local region he was occupying, he wrote back to be like, "dude, come on, where are they supposed to go!" For a while he was in charge of a region that had just undergone a massive crackdown against anti-Revolution insurgents in which EVERYBODY had been EXTREME, MASSACRING ASSHOLES, and appears to have been the only person involved to receive later praise from both sides for being generally fair-minded, equitable, and not a dick!
Which of course begs the question of where the heck Alexandre Dumas the writer got his ideas of acceptable standards of behavior from. Like, this book makes the argument that a lot of the stuff in Count of Monte Cristo is inspired by some of Alex Dumas' later experiences, which I'm willing to buy, but one gets the general impression that Alex Dumas would have HATED Edmond Dantes. What do you mean, your revenge scheme involves ruining twenty unrelated lives? NOT COOL.
...and he would have said it loudly, too, because while Alex Dumas was not a dick, he was also not ... discreet ...
Here is everybody's favorite Dumas letter, reproduced in full:
GENERAL,
I have learned that the jack ass whose business it is to report to you upon the battle of the 27th stated that I stayed in observation throughout that battle. I don’t wish any such observation on him, since he would have shit in his pants.
Salute and Brotherhood!
ALEX. DUMAS.
ADMIRABLY SUCCINCT.
Basically though the end result is that I am now going to have way more of a problem excusing assholish behavior in historical figures. My standards have been raised! What do you mean, no one at the time would have seen anything wrong with that? ALEX DUMAS WOULD NEVER HAVE LET THAT SLIDE.
