Alexandre Dumas (Radio Edit)

Greg Jenner is joined in 19th-century France by historian Professor Olivette Otele and comedian Celya AB to learn about acclaimed novelist Alexandre Dumas. Alexandre was born to an innkeeper’s daughter and a legendary Black general who fought for Napoleon. After his father’s death the family grew up in rural poverty, but after a visit to Paris as a teenager, Dumas fell in love with the city and its theatre. Using his father’s connections he found a job there and was soon a successful playwright, before turning his attention to novels. He was a prolific author, writing such blockbusters as The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Christo. But amidst the writing, Dumas also found plenty of time for romantic dalliances, political entanglements, and global travel. This episode explores his extraordinary life and the incredible works of literature he created, set against the turbulent background of French politics in the years after the Napoleonic wars. This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Emma Bentley Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:08Greg Jenner?

  Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are packing our book bags and travelling back to 19th century France to learn all about the acclaimed novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas. And to help complete our trio of Musketeers, we have two very special guests. In history corner, she's distinguished research professor of the legacies and memory of slavery at Soas, University of London. You may have read her wonderful book, African Europeans: An Untold History, and you will remember her from our episode on the Chevalier de Saint George. It's Professor Olivier Oteley. Welcome back, Olivier.

• 1:44Speaker 05

  Oh, hello, Greg. Lovely to be back.

• 1:47Greg Jenner?

  We're delighted to have you back. And in comedy corner, she's an award-winning rising star who won the Chortle Best Newcomer Award in 2022. Maybe you've seen one of her sold-out live runs at the Edinburgh Fringe or Soho Theatre, I certainly have, or watched her on TV on Live at the Apollo, or heard her on all kinds of podcasts, including Off Menu and The Guilty Feminist. It's Celia A B. Welcome to the show, Celia.

• 2:06Speaker 06

  Hello. Thank you for having me.

• 2:09Greg Jenner?

  Oh, it's lovely to have you in. Your first time on the show, which feels like a booking error. We should have had you on ages ago. I've been trying to get you on for ages.

• 2:15Speaker 06

  I will say, like, the difference between your intro and my intro is so funny. You're clearly like a genius. And then it's like, and Celia's a clown.

• 2:25Greg Jenner?

  But a very respected clown.

• 2:26Speaker 06

  Respected.

• 2:29Speaker 06

  Yes, it is I.

• 2:32Greg Jenner?

  So, Celia, you are French Algerian, you grew up in Paris. How do you feel about history, French history? Did you do it at school?

• 2:39Speaker 06

  I didn't really like history at school.

• 2:41Greg Jenner?

  Oh.

• 2:41Speaker 06

  I like it a bit more now, but my, I would say the bit of history I know the most about is the Algerian War.

• 2:48Greg Jenner?

  It's not the funniest.

• 2:50Speaker 06

  No, but it's, but I like it. I like history also when it's like more specific. So like day of the life of someone who lived in a period.

• 2:58Greg Jenner?

  Social history.

• 2:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's what I meant to.

• 3:00Greg Jenner?

  Good stuff. And Alexandre Dumas, did you do him at school? Is he kind of like the French Dickens? Do you have to read him?

• 3:05Speaker 06

  So the only thing I remember about Alexandre Dumas is that the first boy I was in love with lived on Dumas Street.

• 3:12Greg Jenner?

  That's a good anecdote. We'll take it.

• 3:15Speaker 06

  That's, um, I just found out he's a playwright just now.

• 3:18Greg Jenner?

  Just now.

• 3:19Speaker 06

  I thought he was a street.

• 3:22Greg Jenner?

  Yes, we wouldn't really do an episode on a street, but, um, but it's nice to know that there's a romantic link there for you because he was a romantic writer.

• 3:30Speaker 06

  I'm excited to find out about this guy.

• 3:31Greg Jenner?

  So what do you know?

• 3:38Greg Jenner?

  This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And I imagine some of you will know Dumas' work. Maybe you've read The Three Musketeers or The Count of Monte Cristo, or watched many of the film or TV adaptations of them. Perhaps you enjoyed a baby-faced Leo DiCaprio in The Man in the Iron Mask. Or you've seen the romantic and bloody La Renne Margaux, a French cinema classic. And if you've been to Paris, you may have gone to the street named after him or used the metro station named after Dumas. But who was the real man behind the stories? Was he as swashbuckling as his literary heroes? What life events inspired his epic novels? And just how many mistresses can one man have? Let's find out. Right, Celia, give us a guess on where you think the story starts.

• 4:21Speaker 06

  March 2020.

• 4:24Speaker 06

  No, I'm gonna say-

• 4:24Greg Jenner?

  The Covid pandemic, you think?

• 4:26Speaker 06

  The Covid pandemic, yeah.

• 4:27Greg Jenner?

  Right, okay.

• 4:28Speaker 06

  I think, okay, so I'm gonna say it's beginning of the eighteen hundreds. Does that sound good?

• 4:36Greg Jenner?

  That sounds great. Olivette, more specificity, please.

• 4:39Speaker 05

  Yes, of course, she wasn't far off.

• 4:41Greg Jenner?

  Oh, there we go.

• 4:41Speaker 05

  I mean, he was born Alexandre Dumas David de la Pailletrie on the twenty fourth of July, eighteen oh two, in Villers Cotteré.

• 4:49Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 4:50Speaker 05

  And he was the second son of General Thomas Alexandre Dumas David de la Pailletrie and Marie-Louise Elizabeth Laborret, an innkeeper's daughter.

• 5:00Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so the father has a fantastic name.

• 5:03Speaker 05

  Yes, he did.

• 5:04Greg Jenner?

  And mum is an innkeeper's daughter, perhaps slightly less fancy.

• 5:07Speaker 05

  Less fancy. Still, they made a baby, so.

• 5:11Greg Jenner?

  They managed, yeah.

• 5:13Speaker 05

  So Thomas Alexandre, the dad, was of dual heritage or mixed race, and he was born in Haiti to a minor nobleman and enslaved woman. But the Dumas decided to go by his mother's name, Dumas. Thomas Alexandre's father brought him to France, freed him because he was born an enslaved person, gave him a French education. The dad was involved in the revolution, but on the Napoleonite side.

• 5:38Greg Jenner?

  Ah, okay.

• 5:39Speaker 06

  Oh, exactly.

• 5:40Greg Jenner?

  Tell us about his military careers. This is the father of Alexandre Dumas, Thomas Alexandre.

• 5:45Speaker 05

  Well, he joined the Queen's Dragoons in seventeen eighty six, and quite quickly, by seventeen ninety three, he was general in chief of the Army of the Alps and commanded fifty thousand troops.

• 5:58Greg Jenner?

  Wow.

• 5:59Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 5:59Greg Jenner?

  So this is during the French Revolution?

• 6:01Speaker 05

  And even racist Prussian soldiers referred to him as the best soldier in the world. So he was admired by people who didn't like people like him.

• 6:10Greg Jenner?

  So I'm immediately getting a sense that the kind of Musketeers book is basically fanfiction for Alexandre's own dad.

• 6:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, it must be so hard to have a dad this impressive. I'm very lucky.

• 6:21Greg Jenner?

  But there's a tragic twist in the tale. This heroic father, this soldier in charge of a vast army, passes away when Alexandre is very young.

• 6:29Speaker 05

  Yes, absolutely. I mean, he died of stomach cancer in 1806 when Alexandre was just three years old. And that really plunged the family into poverty. The thing was that Alexandre actually worshipped his father.

• 6:44Greg Jenner?

  Hmm. How do you imagine his childhood going from that point? That's a pretty rough start to life, isn't it, Celia?

• 6:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, that would have been, like, also in terms of, like, romanticising your dad. Like, we all, growing up, think that our dads are like heroes, but his dad was actually very impressive.

• 6:58Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, literally a hero.

• 6:59Speaker 06

  And to try and cling on to the last memory you have of him, that would be really hard. And the mum as well. Oh, my god.

• 7:05Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, it's a really sad start. So, so that, you say they were plunged into poverty. Are we talking la misérable, sort of on the streets, begging for scraps type? You know, is he singing like Anne Hathaway? What kind of poverty are we talking?

• 7:17Speaker 05

  Not quite. He moved, he moved in with his maternal grandparents in their hotel, in Villa Coterre.

• 7:26Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 7:27Speaker 05

  So not quite that level of poverty.

• 7:29Greg Jenner?

  Does he get an education?

• 7:30Speaker 05

  He attended a parish school where he was taught by the very famous abolitionist, Abbe Grégoire. But he was not a very attentive student, so he learned little French, literature and history. But he did read the Bible, Le Baron Buffon, Arabian Nights, Robinson Crusoe and classical mythology.

• 7:49Greg Jenner?

  So he's taught by this famous abolitionist, Abbe Grégoire, who's this sort of great intellectual and campaigner against slavery, which is a hugely important thing happening at the time, because of course Napoleon reintroduced slavery. But we should talk about Napoleon, because this is peak Napoleon era, right? Napoleon makes himself, he crowns himself emperor in 1804, which is the most Napoleonic thing you can do. Presumably that influences Alexandre's childhood, Napoleonic wars, all the kind of drama. How does that affect him?

• 8:16Speaker 05

  Quite strongly, because the wars lasted throughout his childhood, 1803, 1813. Young Alexandre even saw Napoleon twice.

• 8:25Greg Jenner?

  Wow.

• 8:26Speaker 05

  And he described him as pale, sickly and impassive.

• 8:31Greg Jenner?

  Oh, that's a pretty brutal review, Celia.

• 8:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, and Napoleon is probably like, didn't say short, though.

• 8:38Greg Jenner?

  But after the Napoleonic Wars, Olivier, the Bourbon monarchs are trying to restore calm to France, which, you know, they're doing their best. Does that mean that Alexandre's sort of teenage years are a bit more chill? There's no more troops in the streets?

• 8:49Speaker 05

  Chilled, I'm not sure. I mean, he became-

• 8:53Greg Jenner?

  It's still France, as I know.

• 8:54Speaker 05

  Yeah. He still became an enanos clerk at 14 and worked for a solicitor in Crepi. So while he was working as an enanos clerk, he skipped work and went to Paris one day and fell in love with the city and the theatre. And he eventually moved to the city in 1823, when he was 20. He continued his career. Two generals his father knew recommended him for a secretariat.

• 9:20Greg Jenner?

  Oh, so daddy's friends?

• 9:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:21Speaker 06

  Nepo baby?

• 9:23Greg Jenner?

  Nepo baby, yeah, okay.

• 9:24Speaker 05

  Duc de Léon, you know, no less. The assistant director of the office, Lasagne, a man called Lasagne, advised him, though, to educate himself further and to read people like Roissa, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Byron, Hugo, La Martine. So he needed further his education.

• 9:43Greg Jenner?

  So he's reading the classics. But I'm going to have to stop you there because you said Monsieur Lasagne.

• 9:47Speaker 06

  Monsieur, yeah. There's a lot of layers to this guy.

• 9:49Greg Jenner?

  Hey, hello. I'd love to be called Monsieur Lasagne.

• 9:55Speaker 06

  Is there a Mrs. Lasagne? He sleeps under lots of them.

• 10:02Greg Jenner?

  Okay. So Monsieur Lasagne is telling him, read the classics, educate yourself. Does he start to write?

• 10:08Speaker 05

  Yes. I mean, he's fascinated by literature. He met somebody called Adolphe de Levene, a well-educated son of a count, as you do, who'd been exiled from Sweden for complicity in the king's murder.

• 10:20Greg Jenner?

  Oh, excellent. Good.

• 10:21Speaker 05

  So a bit of an edge there.

• 10:22Speaker 06

  Wow. Is he seeing anyone?

• 10:27Speaker 05

  So you have Levene and Dumas started to collaborate on act and plays and verse comedies. He was also writing solo, though, not very successfully. His first verse tragedy, Les Gragues, wasn't that good. I mean, according to himself, he said he gave it its due by burning it.

• 10:45Greg Jenner?

  Oh. Have you burned anything you've written? Have you ever gone that intense?

• 10:49Speaker 06

  I think everyone is like a bit embarrassed by the first thing that you write. Instead of burning it, I performed it every day at the Edinburgh Festival.

• 10:58Greg Jenner?

  So in 1830, France again thrown into, you know, we talk about the French Revolution. We get another French Revolution.

• 11:04Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 11:05Greg Jenner?

  The 1813 July Revolution. Do you know this one, Celia?

• 11:08Speaker 05

  The 14th of July. Oh no, that was a different one.

• 11:11Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:12Speaker 05

  I love revolutions in July.

• 11:13Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, well, it's sunny, you're out in the streets, you know, barbecue weather. You think, actually, I don't really like the king, you know.

• 11:20Speaker 05

  I don't know this revolution.

• 11:21Greg Jenner?

  This is the 1830, it's called the Three Day Revolution. It's basically the Glastonbury of revolutions.

• 11:27Greg Jenner?

  Don't tell us about it, Olivier.

• 11:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's not supposed to be funny, though.

• 11:33Greg Jenner?

  Sorry, sorry.

• 11:34Speaker 05

  Try and stop us.

• 11:35Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 11:36Speaker 05

  So you have Charles X, who was brother of Louis XV, deposed and replaced with the Duke d'Orléans. In a letter to Dumas, claimed that he was sent by Marquis de Lafayette and the Duke on a mission to acquire gunpowder. I mean, he probably exaggerated, but he did approach Lafayette about forming a National Guard in the Vendee region. But the king told Dumas to return to poetry.

• 12:01Greg Jenner?

  Oh, stick to poetry is quite the burn.

• 12:05Speaker 05

  It's so sassy.

• 12:06Greg Jenner?

  Isn't it?

• 12:07Speaker 05

  You know, the more I learn about the king.

• 12:10Greg Jenner?

  Okay, well, luckily for literature lovers, Dumas obeyed the royal decree of sticking to poetry. And he started banging out plays.

• 12:17Speaker 05

  Absolutely. I mean, between 1829 and 51, quite a long time. He started a new play on the Parisian stage every year, except one. He pioneered two new genres.

• 12:29Greg Jenner?

  Wow.

• 12:30Speaker 05

  Romantic historical drama and modern drama. And the plays often featured illegitimate or poor heroes struggling against societal obstacles and harriands who become victims to their lovers.

• 12:42Greg Jenner?

  There's one called Henry III and His Court, or Henri II. There's one called Antony. What's the general theme of his work?

• 12:49Speaker 05

  Antony, 1831, was about an illegitimate hero who's unable to marry his love because of social position.

• 12:56Greg Jenner?

  Right, okay.

• 12:57Speaker 05

  And in the end, she begs him to kill her.

• 13:00Greg Jenner?

  Oh.

• 13:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:01Greg Jenner?

  You said he was funny, Olivier. That doesn't sound very funny.

• 13:04Speaker 05

  Another one, La Tour de Nelle, 1832. That was his most successful romantic drama, and it was about Margaret of Burgundy.

• 13:12Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 13:12Speaker 05

  Who killed her lovers.

• 13:14Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 13:16Greg Jenner?

  I'm sensing a theme.

• 13:18Speaker 05

  Yes, I mean, he was very successful, though, because you have eight hundred consecutive performances. That's absolutely huge.

• 13:25Greg Jenner?

  Okay, that is amazing. That's extraordinary. That's like mousetrap level, isn't it? Having a play that just runs and runs and runs. In eighteen thirty-two, Céline, we get another French Revolution. This one's more famous. This one's the Anne Hathaway Revolution. This is Les Misérables.

• 13:38Speaker 06

  I like to call that Dance Dance Revolution.

• 13:43Greg Jenner?

  So we have the barricades in the streets.

• 13:44Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 13:45Greg Jenner?

  This time, Dumas, he has to leave France. He's in trouble.

• 13:49Speaker 06

  This, how old is he around this time?

• 13:51Greg Jenner?

  He's about twenty-nine. He's late twenties.

• 13:54Speaker 06

  So he's written, he's done all of this before twenty-nine?

• 13:57Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 13:58Speaker 05

  Very prolific.

• 14:00Speaker 06

  Well, nepotism will get you anything. No, that's really, there was no phones back there.

• 14:05Greg Jenner?

  That's it, right. He's just not on Instagram. The rest of us are just scrolling.

• 14:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, I could have an eight hundred day run of my beautiful play. But I'm too busy watching recipes. So he has to run away.

• 14:18Greg Jenner?

  He has to flee. He gets in trouble with the king.

• 14:21Speaker 06

  What happened?

• 14:22Greg Jenner?

  Olivier.

• 14:22Speaker 05

  For some reason, he decided to officiate the funeral of a bonapartist general. Something you shouldn't just do. We don't know why. Anyway, the king considered his arrest.

• 14:32Speaker 06

  We've all done corporates, all right?

• 14:38Speaker 06

  Tax bills in January. Do you know what I mean? Check the date. But that was November, December.

• 14:45Speaker 05

  The problem is that he had to leave, though. He had to leave Paris. And so he went to the south of France and then to Switzerland.

• 14:52Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, sure.

• 14:53Speaker 05

  So it wasn't too bad. And winter time, eighteen thirty-two, thirty-three, he published the accounts of his Swiss travels, so monetizing the thing.

• 15:01Greg Jenner?

  Oh, okay. So he's a travel writer now.

• 15:03Speaker 06

  First person in the world to publish their Swiss accounts.

• 15:07Greg Jenner?

  Let's break from politics and plays. Let's talk about the other big P. Let's talk about his big P.

• 15:13Speaker 06

  His passion?

• 15:14Greg Jenner?

  His passion. His passion for the ladies. Alexandre Dumas was a player. Alexandre's love life. Was it as saucy as Monsieur Lasagna's reading list?

• 15:26Speaker 05

  Even more.

• 15:27Greg Jenner?

  Even more saucy?

• 15:28Speaker 06

  The sauce was bechamel. That was so stupid.

• 15:32Greg Jenner?

  Okay, he married, right? Alexandre, he found a wife, he settled down, he married her, and that was the love of his life, yes?

• 15:38Speaker 05

  Hmm, no, not quite. Eighteen forty, he married his mistress, Ida Ferrier, who was an actress. They soon separated, she moved to Florence in eighteen forty-four. They never saw each other again.

• 15:50Greg Jenner?

  Great.

• 15:51Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 15:51Speaker 06

  Wow, okay.

• 15:52Speaker 05

  But he didn't stop there, though. He had, oh well, allegedly, he had forty mistresses throughout his life.

• 15:58Greg Jenner?

  Four zero.

• 15:59Speaker 05

  Four zero, and claimed.

• 16:01Greg Jenner?

  Forty mistresses.

• 16:02Speaker 05

  But that's not it. Dumas himself said, I don't want to exaggerate, but I really believe that up and down the world, I have more than five hundred children.

• 16:13Greg Jenner?

  How do you even?

• 16:14Speaker 06

  But you can, you can say anything, can't you?

• 16:16Greg Jenner?

  I mean, sure.

• 16:17Speaker 06

  No one's gonna be like, all right, bring them.

• 16:20Greg Jenner?

  From a legal point of view, in terms of inheritance law, how many of those five hundred kids does he actually recognise legally and say, this is my son, this is my daughter?

• 16:29Speaker 05

  Well, he recognised five of them.

• 16:34Greg Jenner?

  Oh my god. So ninety-nine percent of his kids, he's like, you're dead to me.

• 16:39Speaker 05

  Or maybe four, four or five.

• 16:41Greg Jenner?

  Wow. Okay, who are the, who are the kids he recognises? Do we have a kind of roll call of like official Dumas heirs?

• 16:46Speaker 05

  Yes, we do. I mean, we have Alexandre Dumas fils.

• 16:49Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 16:50Speaker 05

  With the dressmaker Catherine or Catherine Labbe.

• 16:53Greg Jenner?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:53Speaker 05

  Dumas fils went on to become famous because he wrote the, the novel La Dame aux Camelias.

• 16:58Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, The Ladies and the Camelias, yeah, it's a wonderful one.

• 17:00Speaker 05

  And then you have Marie-Alexandre Dumas with Belle Crell-Sameur. Henry Bauer with Anna Bauer, who was the wife of an Austrian merchant in Paris.

• 17:09Greg Jenner?

  Great, so he's, his wives, his mistresses are cheating on their husbands, great, that's also lovely.

• 17:14Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 17:14Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 17:15Speaker 05

  Michaela, Clairel, Josephine, Elisabeth Cordier, with Emily Cordier, who was nineteen at the time, when Dumas was fifty-seven.

• 17:23Greg Jenner?

  Hmm.

• 17:24Speaker 06

  What did they talk about?

• 17:28Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, you pulled a face there, Selia, that could best be described as smell the fart.

• 17:33Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 17:34Greg Jenner?

  It was an absolute.

• 17:35Speaker 06

  She was nineteen, he was fifty seven.

• 17:37Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 17:38Speaker 05

  They probably didn't talk, right?

• 17:39Greg Jenner?

  No, okay. Whatever did they get up to, I think we know.

• 17:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:42Greg Jenner?

  At the start of the episode, Olivier, I listed some of the novels that have been turned into movies and TV shows. We haven't talked about novels yet, so we've talked about plays so far. Because he writes lots of novels, and we will know some of the big ones.

• 17:54Speaker 05

  What he does is writing things that can be serialized.

• 17:57Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 17:58Speaker 05

  And that can be put into magazines. Just to give you an example, Le Capitaine Paul earned the magazine siècle five thousand subscribers in just three weeks. He's doing amazingly, so he carries on. He writes a novel called Georges about a biracial dual heritage son of a planter, possibly drawing on his own life. But his greatest success is, of course, with the D'Artagnan romances.

• 18:21Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 18:21Speaker 05

  Including The Three Musketeers serialized for six years and The Count of Monte Cristo serialized for two years in eighteen forty four, forty six.

• 18:31Greg Jenner?

  A lot of his stories are based on real historical events, aren't they? D'Artagnan was a real guy.

• 18:34Speaker 06

  Was he?

• 18:35Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, and the Musketeers were real, and D'Artagnan was real.

• 18:38Speaker 06

  That's so cool.

• 18:38Greg Jenner?

  We should mention, however, the ghostwriter.

• 18:43Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 18:43Greg Jenner?

  Auguste Maquet, who no one, but we're not doing a podcast about this guy.

• 18:48Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 18:48Greg Jenner?

  He had a kind of secret co-writer.

• 18:51Speaker 05

  He did. He was really criticized about that. Maquet helped him with development and ideas, but Dumas wrote the novels. He was accused.

• 19:03Greg Jenner?

  That's interesting. So as a stand-up, you have, you write your own shows, but you have a director who?

• 19:09Speaker 06

  Sometimes, yeah, you can, I think some stand-up will have directors. Like, but directors take on different roles, so like, the way I've used them is more like architectural, just because I'm too much of a silly billy for structure.

• 19:23Greg Jenner?

  Haha.

• 19:24Speaker 06

  And that's medical.

• 19:25Greg Jenner?

  You win.

• 19:28Speaker 05

  It seems to me that it was a collaboration between the two development ideas. It's a bit like they're brainstorming.

• 19:34Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 19:34Speaker 05

  And then Dumas won writing the novel. The problem is that not everyone liked that. For example, in eighteen forty five, there's a journalist who accused him of running a, quote, a novel factory. The journalist also used the term, he's using a negre, which has a double meaning. It means a black enslaved person from the colonies and a ghostwriter in mainland France.

• 19:57Greg Jenner?

  Oh, really?

• 19:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:57Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 19:58Greg Jenner?

  Right, so there's a sort of allusion there to his mixed race heritage, do you think?

• 20:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, definitely. And the fact that he's not doing the work himself. But Dumas answered quite rightly by saying that he had research assistants in the same way Napoleon had generals.

• 20:14Speaker 06

  Oh, that's sick.

• 20:15Speaker 05

  And he sued the journalist and he won.

• 20:17Greg Jenner?

  That's quite a comeback, isn't it?

• 20:18Speaker 06

  Yeah. The more popular he got, it probably had more and more people trying to be contrarian as well. I imagine journalists wanting to.

• 20:27Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, taking, take sort of shots at him.

• 20:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, which is often the thing with like mixed race people. Like, there's often accusations of like.

• 20:33Speaker 05

  You can't do it yourself.

• 20:34Speaker 06

  You can't do it yourself. Who's really doing this?

• 20:36Greg Jenner?

  Right, yeah. So Dumas is an incredible superstar of writing and, you know, saying he's doing a play every year for those thirty years. He's writing these vast novels, you know, co-creating them with MacKay. And of course, he's incredibly rich now. He's laughing all the way to La Bonne. And he built himself a fancy little chateau. Célia, what do you think he calls it? What would you call it?

• 20:58Speaker 06

  Where is the chateau, please?

• 21:00Greg Jenner?

  Where is the chateau? It's in northern France, isn't it?

• 21:03Speaker 05

  Yes, it's in the outskirts.

• 21:04Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, so outside Paris.

• 21:06Speaker 06

  D town.

• 21:07Greg Jenner?

  D town. Bring all the ladies to D town. Okay. For his five hundred kids. He calls it the Chateau de Monte Cristo. But he didn't relax for long, Olivier. He was off travelling again, you know, he's already toured Europe or whatever. But off he went again in eighteen forty six.

• 21:24Speaker 05

  He did. He was offered ten thousand francs to, by the Minister for Public Information, to travel to Algeria.

• 21:31Greg Jenner?

  Ah.

• 21:32Speaker 05

  Represent.

• 21:34Greg Jenner?

  But the following year, Celia, uh-oh, the creditors came in and turned out Alexandre Dumas did not have as much money as he thought he had. And he had to pay an awful lot of money to his ex-wife. So he's in trouble financially. He has to sell his chateau, doesn't he, for a pittance of what he'd spent building it?

• 21:52Speaker 05

  That's a shame.

• 21:53Greg Jenner?

  That's a real shame.

• 21:54Speaker 05

  Yeah. It's also, yeah, the name would feel so sad. It's like if you had a house called Chateau de Greg Génin. So he has to sell his house.

• 22:03Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, and then there's a coup in France, another revolution, the coup of Louis Napoleon, 1851.

• 22:08Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 22:08Greg Jenner?

  Where the president of France says, actually, I'm basically emperor now.

• 22:11Speaker 05

  Yes, yes. Obey me from now on.

• 22:14Greg Jenner?

  French history's fun, isn't it?

• 22:16Speaker 05

  But, you know, he used that as an excuse to kind of evade his creditors.

• 22:21Greg Jenner?

  Oh, good. So he's on the run, okay.

• 22:24Speaker 05

  He's on the run.

• 22:24Greg Jenner?

  Where does he go?

• 22:25Speaker 05

  He went to Belgium.

• 22:26Greg Jenner?

  Excellent.

• 22:27Speaker 05

  Stayed there for two years, but he didn't stop his lifestyle because he was living in luxurious, luxurious lifestyle on credit over there, yes.

• 22:37Greg Jenner?

  Good, so he's got his credit card, yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 05

  Amazing.

• 22:40Greg Jenner?

  1858, he travels to Russia.

• 22:42Speaker 05

  He did. He even, he travelled to Russia. He made another investment. He bought a small boat that he called Emma. He landed in Genoa. He learned that Garibaldi was trying to unite Italy, so he's involved in politics again.

• 22:58Greg Jenner?

  So this is Ressort d'Imento, this is the unification of Italy.

• 23:01Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 23:01Greg Jenner?

  He's getting involved in other people's politics.

• 23:03Speaker 05

  He's getting involved. He's saying, well, let me help. Let me stay and help.

• 23:07Speaker 06

  Because he's like on the run, but he can't stay away from the action. I, I'm fascinated by this guy.

• 23:15Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 23:15Speaker 06

  I don't know if I like him. I can't figure it out. And that's like what's interesting.

• 23:20Greg Jenner?

  I mean, we could do so many podcasts on his writing career. But the end of his life, ill health caught up with him, didn't it?

• 23:26Speaker 05

  Yes, I mean, he had an illness, possibly dropsy. He had, he ran into financial difficulties and eventually he died on the 5th of December, 1870, in his son's home. It would take the French state over a hundred years to recognise him as a literary figure, but almost as a state person because his remains were transferred to the Pantheon in 2002.

• 23:54Greg Jenner?

  So it's quite the life, Celia.

• 23:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, how old was he when he died?

• 23:57Greg Jenner?

  He died in 1870, so he'd have been about 67, give or take.

• 24:00Speaker 06

  That's quite a long life.

• 24:02Greg Jenner?

  Yes, yeah, he saw some stuff.

• 24:04Speaker 06

  From the street of the Bois, I fancy.

• 24:05Greg Jenner?

  There we go.

• 24:06Speaker 06

  To an entire man.

• 24:07Greg Jenner?

  The Nuance Window!

• 24:15Greg Jenner?

  It's time now for the Nuance Window. This is where Celia and I sit quietly for two minutes and make a start on reading The Count of Monte Cristo, while Professor Olivette steps into the literary salon to tell us something we need to know about Alexandre Dumas. So my stopwatch is ready, Olivette. Take it away.

• 24:30Speaker 05

  I like to talk about Dumas and prejudice against people of African descent in the 19th century, and in particular how life was like for Dumas. He was the son of a minor aristocrat and the descendant of an enslaved person. The first point is that it wasn't unusual at all throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, where you have a number of people of African descent from aristocratic families across Europe. However, the way they were treated depended on whether they were wealthy and protected by the country's leaders or not. Alexandre was attacked because of his ethnic background, but in many ways, he was also protected by his class and his father's reputation as a respected general. He was not wealthy enough to just be a man of leisure, as we have seen, but he made

• 25:13Speaker 05

  a very decent life with his writings and could afford to live in very bourgeois houses in and outside Paris. However, racism against him was evident in many ways. His popularity with readers and theatre goers made him very well-known as a literary figure. In other words, he was a celeb in the 19th century. He was the symbol of what white, middle and upper-class France dreaded: a racially ambiguous man whose identity crossed several boundaries, especially at a time when so-called racial purity was advocated by the fathers of eugenics and race science. It was also the time when French Parliament voted for an act abolishing slavery, and that was in 1848.

• 25:55Speaker 05

  We have the government expecting and demanding, actually, former enslaved people forget about centuries of discrimination. As they had officially been granted citizenship, and that was very important. They were expected to get on with the order of things, for example, the white men on top of the social and cultural ladder, and them at the bottom. In other words, accept to be officially, accept to be second-class citizens and forget about the past almost overnight. So behind the prolific author and love interest, we should also bear in mind that Alexandre Dumas was a dual heritage man who had to navigate a cruel and profoundly racist society. He did it with panache and charm.

• 26:36Greg Jenner?

  Amazing, Olivier. Thank you so much.

• 26:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was thinking about, sorry to interrupt you, is the report to class. Because in my experience in France, obviously, there's quite a lot of racism in France, but you can, we'll talk about racism but not classism in France, that's my experience. And like, I think that the position that he was in, where he could be in with the higher society is because of his dad, but like, still be a biracial man and suffering from that. Do you know what I mean? Like, the, it must have been quite a confusing place to be in for him, and quite heartbreaking at times to kind of like be sitting at the top with all of these generals, but still being made to feel small because of the rampant racism, if that makes sense. That must have been really difficult.

• 27:18Speaker 05

  You know, you said that you don't know if you like him, you see? There's something there.

• 27:22Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, you're coming around to it. Amazing. Thank you so much, Olivier. Thank you so much, Celia. And if you want more Professor Olivier listener, check out episode on the Chevalier de Saint George. We've also got episodes on the Haitian Revolution, Napoleon, Catherine de Molièche, and of course, episodes on Josephine Baker, who is also buried in the Pantheon. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with friends, subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In history corner, we have the outstanding Professor Olivier Odile from Soas, University of London. Thank you, Olivier.

• 27:53Speaker 05

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 27:54Greg Jenner?

  It's been a pleasure. And in comedy corner, we have the superb Celia A. B. Thank you, Celia.

• 27:59Speaker 06

  Thank you so much for having me. That was so fun.

• 28:01Greg Jenner?

  It was fun. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we turn the pages of another forgotten historical epic. But for now, I'm off to go and rename my daughter Greg Jenner Fee and encourage her to write history books for kids so I get to be rich and build a castle called the Chateau de Greg Jenner. Bye.

• 28:20Greg Jenner?

  Your Dead to Me is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4.

• 28:32Speaker 07

  From BBC Radio 4. The Russians will be launching a satellite sometime in the next three weeks.

• 28:38Speaker 08

  I'm Kim Cattrall, back with a new series of Central Intelligence.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  This is a CIA covert op, top secret.

• 28:44Speaker 08

  The drama podcast that tells the history of the CIA from the inside out. Starring Ed Harris, Johnny Flynn and me, Kim Cattrall.

• 28:53Speaker 09

  Ms Page, such a pleasure to meet a real American.

• 28:58Speaker 07

  Listen to Central Intelligence, series two, first, on BBC Sounds.

• 29:10Speaker 10

  Welcome to The Haunted Library. Join me, Colin Morgan, as I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. A story of science and ambition, loneliness and longing, and what it truly means to be human. Listen to The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts, or find us on YouTube.