Why I’m no longer reading Alexandre Dumas

 

I admit it, I love page-turners: novels that you can’t put down. I remember being totally hooked on Bond books, Gone with the Wind, Dickens, even Agatha Christie, trying to find what happened next. I loved The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, when I read it some years ago. I followed that with The Three Musketeers, and it must have kept me interested, even if not as good as The Count, because I finished it. 

So why abandon Twenty Years After, the sequel to The Three Musketeers, when I’ve only read four chapters? Have my standards got higher? I think that’s unlikely. Because of a lack of historical accuracy? To be honest, I’m not bothered if it gives me a good story, even though the edition I am reading, by David Coward (World’s Classics, 2008), makes it clear Dumas has a very cavalier attitude to facts and events. No, the cause for my dislike was very specific: because the chapter I read, chapter VI, “D’Artagnan at Forty Years of Age”, which was the first to provide some detailed depiction of the main character, left me feeling unhappy with the author’s attitudes. What happened in this chapter to set me against the novel?  

A bit of background. D’Artagnan, one of the musketeers, is the hero of this novel. For the novelist to win us over, he has to begin the novel by getting us to like the main character. This chapter is the moment when he gains our sympathy for the hero. D’Artagnan has been lodging at a hotel in the Rue Tiquetonne, where he has been having an affair with the mistress of the house. Her “inconvenient husband” had run away after “d’Artagnan had made a pretence of running his sword through his body” (not surprising, perhaps, he ran away). Even though the husband has departed, d’Artagnan refuses to marry the (unnamed) woman, for fear of bigamy. 

As the action begins, D’Artagnan returns from a (wholly fictitious) military expedition of several months in the Franche Comte, only to discover that the mistress now has a new partner, a Swiss. She claims she is going to marry her Swiss partner; D’Artagnan states “you cannot marry Madame without my consent, and … I do not give it”. What follows is a fight between the Swiss and D’Artagnan, and even though the Swiss is a foot higher than our hero. “I am a lieutenant in the Musketeers of his Majesty, and consequently your superior in everything”. D’Artagnan wounds the Swiss twice.  

At that point, D’Artagnan, having regained the mistress, returns to the lodging, and immediately rejects her: 

‘Now, fair Madeleine,’ said he, ‘you know the distance between a Swiss and a gentleman! As to you, you have conducted yourself like a low tavern-keeper. So much the worse for you—for by this conduct you lose my esteem and my patronage. I drove out the Swiss to humiliate you; but I shall lodge here no longer. I do not take quarters where I despise people.”

Dumas Alexandre; (père). Twenty Years After (Oxford World's Classics) (p. 62).

What are we to make of this? The Swiss has done nothing, except get in D’Artagnan’s way; yet he is ejected by force, the second of two males to suffer this fate. This blatant misogyny is presented in Dumas’ cheerful style as  the conduct of a swashbuckling hero, resembling in many ways a kind of male behaviour celebrated in the Hollywood Western. The principles are: 

I admit it, I love page-turners: novels that you can’t put down. I remember being totally hooked on Bond books, Gone with the Wind, Dickens, even Agatha Christie, trying to find what happened next. I loved The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, when I read it some years ago. I followed that with The Three Musketeers, and it must have kept me interested, even if not as good as The Count, because I finished it. 

So why should I abandon Twenty Years After, the sequel to The Three Musketeers, when I’ve only read four chapters? Have my standards got higher? I think that’s unlikely. Because of a lack of historical accuracy? To be honest, I’m not bothered if it gives me a good story, even though the edition I am reading, by David Coward (World’s Classics, 2008), makes it clear Dumas has a very cavalier attitude to facts and events. No, the cause for my dislike was very specific: because the chapter I read, chapter VI, “D’Artagnan at Forty Years of Age”, which was the first to provide some detailed depiction of the main character, left me feeling unhappy with the author’s attitudes. What happened in this chapter to set me against the novel? 

A bit of background. D’Artagnan, one of the musketeers, is the hero of this novel. For the novelist to win us over, he has to begin the novel by getting us to like the main character. This chapter is the moment when he gains our sympathy for the hero. D’Artagnan has been lodging at a hotel in the Rue Tiquetonne, where he has been having an affair with the mistress of the house. Her “inconvenient husband” had run away after “d’Artagnan had made a pretence of running his sword through his body” (not surprising, perhaps, he ran away). Even though the husband has departed, d’Artagnan refuses to marry the (unnamed) woman, for fear of bigamy. 

As the action begins, D’Artagnan returns from a (wholly fictitious) military expedition of several months in the Franche Comte, only to discover that the mistress now has a new partner, a Swiss. She claims she is going to marry her Swiss partner; D’Artagnan states “you cannot marry Madame without my consent, and … I do not give it”. What follows is a fight between the Swiss and D’Artagnan, and even though the Swiss is a foot higher than our hero. “I am a lieutenant in the Musketeers of his Majesty, and consequently your superior in everything”. D’Artagnan wounds the Swiss twice. 

At that point, D’Artagnan, having regained the mistress, returns to the lodging, and immediately rejects her: 

‘Now, fair Madeleine,’ said he, ‘you know the distance between a Swiss and a gentleman! As to you, you have conducted yourself like a low tavern-keeper. So much the worse for you—for by this conduct you lose my esteem and my patronage. I drove out the Swiss to humiliate you; but I shall lodge here no longer. I do not take quarters where I despise people.” (page 62)

What are we to make of this? The Swiss has done nothing, except get in D’Artagnan’s way; yet he is ejected by force, the second of two males to suffer this fate. This blatant misogyny is presented in Dumas’ cheerful style as  the conduct of a swashbuckling hero, resembling in many ways a kind of male behaviour celebrated in the Hollywood Western. The principles are:

1. Get your way by your fighting. If you can beat a rival in a fight, then you deserve the woman
2. Once you have chosen a female sexual partner, she is your property, even when you are absent. She no longer has a right to independent action.

At this critical moment of the novel, instead of making me feel warm towards the principal character, I felt repulsed by D’Artagnan’s misogyny. The rest of the novel will no doubt display similar attitudes. Might is right, if you are skilled with a sword.

Who translated this edition of Twenty Years After? I noticed on the title page that the book is stated as “Edited with an Introduction and Notes by David Coward” – with no  mention of a translator. Did David Coward really translate Dumas afresh? It doesn’t look like it. Coward states in the Introduction to the World’s Classics edition: 

A version of the authorized French text, by William Robson, was issued in London by Routledge in 1856. Robson’s classic version served as the basis of most subsequent ‘new’ translations and survives substantially in the present edition.

In what way does it “survive substantially in the present edition”? In the errors in the French? Do the inverted commas around "new" make it clear this is nothing of the kind?

There are several schoolboy errors in the translation, for example: 

And he assumed an air of astonishment that Mondori or Bellerose,* the two best comedians of that day, would have envied him.

This is a translation from the French “les deux meilleurs comédiens de l'époque”.  But “comédien” does not mean “comedian”; it means actor. Here is Robson’s 1856 version of the same sentence:

 And he armed his features with a stupidity which Mondori and Bellerin might have envied him, and they were the two best comedians of the period. 

Quite apart from outright errors, much of the phrasing in this edition reads to me like 19th-century English. From page one: 

the light from a candelabra filled with candles illumined it in front. 

In Robson’s translation, this appears as: 

Whilst the front of his figure was illumined by the wax-lights of a candelabre [sic].

My guess is that Oxford have been using the Robson translation, updated and amended piecemeal, in all editions of the book since it was first issued. The imprint page of the Kindle edition I was reading shows simply “Editorial material <C> David Coward 1993” – no claim to copyright is made for the translation. I haven’t been able to find the date of first publication of this edition of Twenty Years After, but my guess is that it was first published quite early in the series, and has remained in print (and never retranslated) ever since. The World’s Classics series was founded in 1901, and the series was bought by Oxford in 1905, and Oxford claim “A continuous program of new titles and revised editions ensures that the series retains its breadth and reflects the latest scholarship.” Not in the case of this translation, clearly.

The unacceptable attitudes, and the poor translation, combined, as I read chapter six, and left a bad taste in my mouth. Rather than passively accepting an outdated translation by an author with objectionable views, I stopped at that point. I’m no longer reading Dumas, and in future I’m going to look very carefully at foreign literature in World’s Classics.