Pod Insights You're Dead to Me Alexandre Dumas (Radio Edit) About this episode 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
Transcript 5,189 words · 11 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:08 Greg 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.
1:44 Speaker 05 Oh, hello, Greg. Lovely to be back.
1:47 Greg 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.
2:06 Speaker 06 Hello. Thank you for having me.
2:09 Greg 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.
2:15 Speaker 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.
2:25 Greg Jenner? But a very respected clown.
2:26 Speaker 06 Respected.
2:29 Speaker 06 Yes, it is I.
2:32 Greg 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?
2:39 Speaker 06 I didn't really like history at school.
2:41 Greg Jenner? Oh.
2:41 Speaker 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.
2:48 Greg Jenner? It's not the funniest.
2:50 Speaker 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.
2:58 Greg Jenner? Social history.
2:58 Speaker 06 Yeah, that's what I meant to.
3:00 Greg 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?
3:05 Speaker 06 So the only thing I remember about Alexandre Dumas is that the first boy I was in love with lived on Dumas Street.
3:12 Greg Jenner? That's a good anecdote. We'll take it.
3:15 Speaker 06 That's, um, I just found out he's a playwright just now.
3:18 Greg Jenner? Just now.
3:19 Speaker 06 I thought he was a street.
3:22 Greg 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.
3:30 Speaker 06 I'm excited to find out about this guy.
3:31 Greg Jenner? So what do you know?
3:38 Greg 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.
4:21 Speaker 06 March 2020.
4:24 Speaker 06 No, I'm gonna say-
4:24 Greg Jenner? The Covid pandemic, you think?
4:26 Speaker 06 The Covid pandemic, yeah.
4:27 Greg Jenner? Right, okay.
4:28 Speaker 06 I think, okay, so I'm gonna say it's beginning of the eighteen hundreds. Does that sound good?
4:36 Greg Jenner? That sounds great. Olivette, more specificity, please.
4:39 Speaker 05 Yes, of course, she wasn't far off.
4:41 Greg Jenner? Oh, there we go.
4:41 Speaker 05 I mean, he was born Alexandre Dumas David de la Pailletrie on the twenty fourth of July, eighteen oh two, in Villers Cotteré.
4:49 Greg Jenner? Okay.
4:50 Speaker 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.
5:00 Greg Jenner? Okay, so the father has a fantastic name.
5:03 Speaker 05 Yes, he did.
5:04 Greg Jenner? And mum is an innkeeper's daughter, perhaps slightly less fancy.
5:07 Speaker 05 Less fancy. Still, they made a baby, so.
5:11 Greg Jenner? They managed, yeah.
5:13 Speaker 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.
5:38 Greg Jenner? Ah, okay.
5:39 Speaker 06 Oh, exactly.
5:40 Greg Jenner? Tell us about his military careers. This is the father of Alexandre Dumas, Thomas Alexandre.
5:45 Speaker 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.
5:58 Greg Jenner? Wow.
5:59 Speaker 06 Wow.
5:59 Greg Jenner? So this is during the French Revolution?
6:01 Speaker 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.
6:10 Greg Jenner? So I'm immediately getting a sense that the kind of Musketeers book is basically fanfiction for Alexandre's own dad.
6:16 Speaker 06 Yeah, it must be so hard to have a dad this impressive. I'm very lucky.
6:21 Greg 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.
6:29 Speaker 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.
6:44 Greg Jenner? Hmm. How do you imagine his childhood going from that point? That's a pretty rough start to life, isn't it, Celia?
6:48 Speaker 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.
6:58 Greg Jenner? Yeah, literally a hero.
6:59 Speaker 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.
7:05 Greg 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?
7:17 Speaker 05 Not quite. He moved, he moved in with his maternal grandparents in their hotel, in Villa Coterre.
7:26 Greg Jenner? Okay.
7:27 Speaker 05 So not quite that level of poverty.
7:29 Greg Jenner? Does he get an education?
7:30 Speaker 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.
7:49 Greg 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?
8:16 Speaker 05 Quite strongly, because the wars lasted throughout his childhood, 1803, 1813. Young Alexandre even saw Napoleon twice.
8:25 Greg Jenner? Wow.
8:26 Speaker 05 And he described him as pale, sickly and impassive.
8:31 Greg Jenner? Oh, that's a pretty brutal review, Celia.
8:34 Speaker 06 Yeah, and Napoleon is probably like, didn't say short, though.
8:38 Greg 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?
8:49 Speaker 05 Chilled, I'm not sure. I mean, he became-
8:53 Greg Jenner? It's still France, as I know.
8:54 Speaker 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.
9:20 Greg Jenner? Oh, so daddy's friends?
9:21 Speaker 05 Yeah.
9:21 Speaker 06 Nepo baby?
9:23 Greg Jenner? Nepo baby, yeah, okay.
9:24 Speaker 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.
9:43 Greg Jenner? So he's reading the classics. But I'm going to have to stop you there because you said Monsieur Lasagne.
9:47 Speaker 06 Monsieur, yeah. There's a lot of layers to this guy.
9:49 Greg Jenner? Hey, hello. I'd love to be called Monsieur Lasagne.
9:55 Speaker 06 Is there a Mrs. Lasagne? He sleeps under lots of them.
10:02 Greg Jenner? Okay. So Monsieur Lasagne is telling him, read the classics, educate yourself. Does he start to write?
10:08 Speaker 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.
10:20 Greg Jenner? Oh, excellent. Good.
10:21 Speaker 05 So a bit of an edge there.
10:22 Speaker 06 Wow. Is he seeing anyone?
10:27 Speaker 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.
10:45 Greg Jenner? Oh. Have you burned anything you've written? Have you ever gone that intense?
10:49 Speaker 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.
10:58 Greg Jenner? So in 1830, France again thrown into, you know, we talk about the French Revolution. We get another French Revolution.
11:04 Speaker 05 Yes.
11:05 Greg Jenner? The 1813 July Revolution. Do you know this one, Celia?
11:08 Speaker 05 The 14th of July. Oh no, that was a different one.
11:11 Greg Jenner? Yeah, yeah.
11:12 Speaker 05 I love revolutions in July.
11:13 Greg 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.
11:20 Speaker 05 I don't know this revolution.
11:21 Greg Jenner? This is the 1830, it's called the Three Day Revolution. It's basically the Glastonbury of revolutions.
11:27 Greg Jenner? Don't tell us about it, Olivier.
11:28 Speaker 05 Yeah, I mean, it's not supposed to be funny, though.
11:33 Greg Jenner? Sorry, sorry.
11:34 Speaker 05 Try and stop us.
11:35 Greg Jenner? Yes.
11:36 Speaker 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.
12:01 Greg Jenner? Oh, stick to poetry is quite the burn.
12:05 Speaker 05 It's so sassy.
12:06 Greg Jenner? Isn't it?
12:07 Speaker 05 You know, the more I learn about the king.
12:10 Greg Jenner? Okay, well, luckily for literature lovers, Dumas obeyed the royal decree of sticking to poetry. And he started banging out plays.
12:17 Speaker 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.
12:29 Greg Jenner? Wow.
12:30 Speaker 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.
12:42 Greg 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?
12:49 Speaker 05 Antony, 1831, was about an illegitimate hero who's unable to marry his love because of social position.
12:56 Greg Jenner? Right, okay.
12:57 Speaker 05 And in the end, she begs him to kill her.
13:00 Greg Jenner? Oh.
13:00 Speaker 05 Yeah.
13:01 Greg Jenner? You said he was funny, Olivier. That doesn't sound very funny.
13:04 Speaker 05 Another one, La Tour de Nelle, 1832. That was his most successful romantic drama, and it was about Margaret of Burgundy.
13:12 Greg Jenner? Yes.
13:12 Speaker 05 Who killed her lovers.
13:14 Greg Jenner? Okay.
13:16 Greg Jenner? I'm sensing a theme.
13:18 Speaker 05 Yes, I mean, he was very successful, though, because you have eight hundred consecutive performances. That's absolutely huge.
13:25 Greg 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.
13:38 Speaker 06 I like to call that Dance Dance Revolution.
13:43 Greg Jenner? So we have the barricades in the streets.
13:44 Speaker 06 Yes.
13:45 Greg Jenner? This time, Dumas, he has to leave France. He's in trouble.
13:49 Speaker 06 This, how old is he around this time?
13:51 Greg Jenner? He's about twenty-nine. He's late twenties.
13:54 Speaker 06 So he's written, he's done all of this before twenty-nine?
13:57 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
13:58 Speaker 05 Very prolific.
14:00 Speaker 06 Well, nepotism will get you anything. No, that's really, there was no phones back there.
14:05 Greg Jenner? That's it, right. He's just not on Instagram. The rest of us are just scrolling.
14:09 Speaker 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.
14:18 Greg Jenner? He has to flee. He gets in trouble with the king.
14:21 Speaker 06 What happened?
14:22 Greg Jenner? Olivier.
14:22 Speaker 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.
14:32 Speaker 06 We've all done corporates, all right?
14:38 Speaker 06 Tax bills in January. Do you know what I mean? Check the date. But that was November, December.
14:45 Speaker 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.
14:52 Greg Jenner? Yeah, sure.
14:53 Speaker 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.
15:01 Greg Jenner? Oh, okay. So he's a travel writer now.
15:03 Speaker 06 First person in the world to publish their Swiss accounts.
15:07 Greg Jenner? Let's break from politics and plays. Let's talk about the other big P. Let's talk about his big P.
15:13 Speaker 06 His passion?
15:14 Greg 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?
15:26 Speaker 05 Even more.
15:27 Greg Jenner? Even more saucy?
15:28 Speaker 06 The sauce was bechamel. That was so stupid.
15:32 Greg 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?
15:38 Speaker 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.
15:50 Greg Jenner? Great.
15:51 Speaker 05 Okay.
15:51 Speaker 06 Wow, okay.
15:52 Speaker 05 But he didn't stop there, though. He had, oh well, allegedly, he had forty mistresses throughout his life.
15:58 Greg Jenner? Four zero.
15:59 Speaker 05 Four zero, and claimed.
16:01 Greg Jenner? Forty mistresses.
16:02 Speaker 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.
16:13 Greg Jenner? How do you even?
16:14 Speaker 06 But you can, you can say anything, can't you?
16:16 Greg Jenner? I mean, sure.
16:17 Speaker 06 No one's gonna be like, all right, bring them.
16:20 Greg 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?
16:29 Speaker 05 Well, he recognised five of them.
16:34 Greg Jenner? Oh my god. So ninety-nine percent of his kids, he's like, you're dead to me.
16:39 Speaker 05 Or maybe four, four or five.
16:41 Greg 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?
16:46 Speaker 05 Yes, we do. I mean, we have Alexandre Dumas fils.
16:49 Greg Jenner? Yes.
16:50 Speaker 05 With the dressmaker Catherine or Catherine Labbe.
16:53 Greg Jenner? Mm-hmm.
16:53 Speaker 05 Dumas fils went on to become famous because he wrote the, the novel La Dame aux Camelias.
16:58 Greg Jenner? Yeah, The Ladies and the Camelias, yeah, it's a wonderful one.
17:00 Speaker 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.
17:09 Greg Jenner? Great, so he's, his wives, his mistresses are cheating on their husbands, great, that's also lovely.
17:14 Speaker 05 Hmm.
17:14 Greg Jenner? Okay.
17:15 Speaker 05 Michaela, Clairel, Josephine, Elisabeth Cordier, with Emily Cordier, who was nineteen at the time, when Dumas was fifty-seven.
17:23 Greg Jenner? Hmm.
17:24 Speaker 06 What did they talk about?
17:28 Greg Jenner? Yeah, you pulled a face there, Selia, that could best be described as smell the fart.
17:33 Speaker 06 Yes.
17:34 Greg Jenner? It was an absolute.
17:35 Speaker 06 She was nineteen, he was fifty seven.
17:37 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
17:38 Speaker 05 They probably didn't talk, right?
17:39 Greg Jenner? No, okay. Whatever did they get up to, I think we know.
17:42 Speaker 06 Yeah.
17:42 Greg 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.
17:54 Speaker 05 What he does is writing things that can be serialized.
17:57 Greg Jenner? Okay.
17:58 Speaker 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.
18:21 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
18:21 Speaker 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.
18:31 Greg Jenner? A lot of his stories are based on real historical events, aren't they? D'Artagnan was a real guy.
18:34 Speaker 06 Was he?
18:35 Greg Jenner? Yeah, and the Musketeers were real, and D'Artagnan was real.
18:38 Speaker 06 That's so cool.
18:38 Greg Jenner? We should mention, however, the ghostwriter.
18:43 Speaker 05 Uh huh.
18:43 Greg Jenner? Auguste Maquet, who no one, but we're not doing a podcast about this guy.
18:48 Speaker 05 Yes.
18:48 Greg Jenner? He had a kind of secret co-writer.
18:51 Speaker 05 He did. He was really criticized about that. Maquet helped him with development and ideas, but Dumas wrote the novels. He was accused.
19:03 Greg Jenner? That's interesting. So as a stand-up, you have, you write your own shows, but you have a director who?
19:09 Speaker 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.
19:23 Greg Jenner? Haha.
19:24 Speaker 06 And that's medical.
19:25 Greg Jenner? You win.
19:28 Speaker 05 It seems to me that it was a collaboration between the two development ideas. It's a bit like they're brainstorming.
19:34 Greg Jenner? Okay.
19:34 Speaker 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.
19:57 Greg Jenner? Oh, really?
19:57 Speaker 05 Yeah.
19:57 Speaker 06 Wow.
19:58 Greg Jenner? Right, so there's a sort of allusion there to his mixed race heritage, do you think?
20:02 Speaker 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.
20:14 Speaker 06 Oh, that's sick.
20:15 Speaker 05 And he sued the journalist and he won.
20:17 Greg Jenner? That's quite a comeback, isn't it?
20:18 Speaker 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.
20:27 Greg Jenner? Yeah, taking, take sort of shots at him.
20:28 Speaker 06 Yeah, which is often the thing with like mixed race people. Like, there's often accusations of like.
20:33 Speaker 05 You can't do it yourself.
20:34 Speaker 06 You can't do it yourself. Who's really doing this?
20:36 Greg 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?
20:58 Speaker 06 Where is the chateau, please?
21:00 Greg Jenner? Where is the chateau? It's in northern France, isn't it?
21:03 Speaker 05 Yes, it's in the outskirts.
21:04 Greg Jenner? Yeah, so outside Paris.
21:06 Speaker 06 D town.
21:07 Greg 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.
21:24 Speaker 05 He did. He was offered ten thousand francs to, by the Minister for Public Information, to travel to Algeria.
21:31 Greg Jenner? Ah.
21:32 Speaker 05 Represent.
21:34 Greg 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?
21:52 Speaker 05 That's a shame.
21:53 Greg Jenner? That's a real shame.
21:54 Speaker 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.
22:03 Greg Jenner? Yeah, and then there's a coup in France, another revolution, the coup of Louis Napoleon, 1851.
22:08 Speaker 05 Absolutely.
22:08 Greg Jenner? Where the president of France says, actually, I'm basically emperor now.
22:11 Speaker 05 Yes, yes. Obey me from now on.
22:14 Greg Jenner? French history's fun, isn't it?
22:16 Speaker 05 But, you know, he used that as an excuse to kind of evade his creditors.
22:21 Greg Jenner? Oh, good. So he's on the run, okay.
22:24 Speaker 05 He's on the run.
22:24 Greg Jenner? Where does he go?
22:25 Speaker 05 He went to Belgium.
22:26 Greg Jenner? Excellent.
22:27 Speaker 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.
22:37 Greg Jenner? Good, so he's got his credit card, yeah.
22:38 Speaker 05 Amazing.
22:40 Greg Jenner? 1858, he travels to Russia.
22:42 Speaker 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.
22:58 Greg Jenner? So this is Ressort d'Imento, this is the unification of Italy.
23:01 Speaker 05 Absolutely.
23:01 Greg Jenner? He's getting involved in other people's politics.
23:03 Speaker 05 He's getting involved. He's saying, well, let me help. Let me stay and help.
23:07 Speaker 06 Because he's like on the run, but he can't stay away from the action. I, I'm fascinated by this guy.
23:15 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
23:15 Speaker 06 I don't know if I like him. I can't figure it out. And that's like what's interesting.
23:20 Greg 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?
23:26 Speaker 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.
23:54 Greg Jenner? So it's quite the life, Celia.
23:55 Speaker 06 Yeah, how old was he when he died?
23:57 Greg Jenner? He died in 1870, so he'd have been about 67, give or take.
24:00 Speaker 06 That's quite a long life.
24:02 Greg Jenner? Yes, yeah, he saw some stuff.
24:04 Speaker 06 From the street of the Bois, I fancy.
24:05 Greg Jenner? There we go.
24:06 Speaker 06 To an entire man.
24:07 Greg Jenner? The Nuance Window!
24:15 Greg 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.
24:30 Speaker 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
25:13 Speaker 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.
25:55 Speaker 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.
26:36 Greg Jenner? Amazing, Olivier. Thank you so much.
26:37 Speaker 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.
27:18 Speaker 05 You know, you said that you don't know if you like him, you see? There's something there.
27:22 Greg 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.
27:53 Speaker 05 Thank you so much for having me.
27:54 Greg Jenner? It's been a pleasure. And in comedy corner, we have the superb Celia A. B. Thank you, Celia.
27:59 Speaker 06 Thank you so much for having me. That was so fun.
28:01 Greg 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.
28:20 Greg Jenner? Your Dead to Me is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4.
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