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Circumstances caused Lafayette to remain in Europe, and his visit to America was deferred more than a quarter of a century, when he came as the Nation's Guest. Dumas's pamphlet, to which we have just alluded, and the author's accompanying letter, awakened pleasant emotions in the bosom of Washington, for intelligence of an old companion-in-arms was conveyed.
"It was bold to take Richelieu and his time as a subject and thus to challenge comparison with Dumas's immortal musketeers; but the result justifies the boldness.... The plot is admirably clear and strong, the diction singularly concise and telling, and the stirring events are so managed as not to degenerate into sensationalism. Few better novels of adventure than this have ever been written."
There indeed was another humiliation, but by my weakness of position much more than of nature: whatever doing of "everything" might have been revealed to me as a means to the end, I would certainly have done it for a sight of Madame Doche and Fechter in Dumas's triumphant idyll now enjoying the fullest honours of innocuous classicism; with which, as with the merits of its interpreters, Honorine's happy charges had become perfectly and if not quite serenely, at least ever so responsively and feelingly, familiar.
Unfortunately, M. Dumas's character has not the moral authority which is desirable in such serious matters. His taking part in public business, far from increasing his credit, has lessened it; even his scientific standing has suffered; people doubt his sincerity; and his interested flattery of the Empire does not show that greatness and purity of soul which inspire confidence.
Dumas's Marguerite Gauthier was changed from a courtesan of the time of Louis Philippe to one of the period of Louis XIV. It is an amusing illustration of how the whirligig of time brings its revenges that the spirit of verismo, masquerading as a desire for historical accuracy, has restored the period of the Dumas book, that is, restored it in name, but not in fact, with the result, in New York and London at least, of making the dress of the opera more absurd than ever.
Lastly, I want to manage a horse and handle a sword as well as ever I can. The result of it all was that Montcalm became a good Latin scholar, a very well read man, an excellent horseman and swordsman, and to dominie Dumas's eternal confusion such a master of French that he might have been as great an author as he was a soldier.
It is not sufficient, however, that a first act should fulfil Dumas's requirement by placing the situation clearly before us: it ought also to carry us some way towards the heart of the drama, or, at the very least, to point distinctly towards that quarter of the horizon where the clouds are gathering up.
You might as well offer a bunch of celery to an oyster. The mind goes to sleep: the senses and the instincts wake up. The best I can do when it rains, or the trout won't bite, is to read Dumas's novels. Their ingenuity will almost keep a man awake after supper, by the camp-fire. And there is a kind of unity about them that I like; the history is as good as the morality.
Both She Stoops to Conquer and The Rivals are good examples of the rapid working-out of an intrigue, engendered, developed, and resolved all within the frame of the picture. Single-adventure plays of a more modern type are the elder Dumas's Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle, the younger Dumas's Francillon, Sardou's Divorçons, Sir Arthur Pinero's Gay Lord Quex, Mr.
The story itself is almost too repulsive for stage representation; but in beauty, freshness, originality, and dramatic expression the music of "Rigoletto" is Verdi's best; and in all this music the quartet is the masterpiece. "La Traviata," an opera in three acts, words by Piave, is founded upon Dumas's "Dame aux Camelias," familiar to the English stage as "Camille."
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