SYMHC Classics: Alexandre Dumas Pere

Summary

Podcast Summary: SYMHC Classics: Alexandre Dumas Père

Podcast: Stuff You Missed in History Class
Hosts: Tracy V. Wilson & Holly Frey
Episode Date: November 8, 2025 (originally aired Feb 27, 2019)
Main Theme: The remarkable, dramatic life and literary legacy of Alexandre Dumas Père, author of "The Three Musketeers" and "The Count of Monte Cristo," and pioneer of French historical fiction and serial literature.

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Overview

In this classic episode, Tracy and Holly delve into the life and prolific career of Alexandre Dumas Père. From his difficult childhood marked by poverty and racial prejudice, through his ascendancy as one of France’s greatest novelists, to his personal scandals and posthumous rehabilitation, the episode paints a vivid portrait of a literary giant whose influence endures across genres and generations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Early Life & Family Background

• Distinguished yet challenging heritage:
  • Dumas was the son of General Thomas Alexandre Dumas—a prominent man of color in the French army—and Marie Louise Elisabeth Labouret, daughter of an innkeeper ([03:03]).
  • He grew up in poverty due to his father’s fall from grace, illness, and inability to collect a pension ([04:59]).
• Close, mythic relationship with father:
  • Influenced by his father’s legendary exploits and presence:

    “I adored my father...In every detail of his body, in every feature of his face, and is as present to me as if I had lost him yesterday.”
    — Alexandre Dumas, via Tracy ([05:59])

  • His father died when Dumas was nearly four; this event left a profound emotional scar ([06:30]).

Education & Intellectual Formation

• Patchy, informal schooling due to poverty; often taught by his sister during her breaks ([07:34]).
• Loved reading and storytelling but had little formal instruction and, by his own admission, was vain and popular with women ([10:06]).
• Key formative experience:
  • Saw Napoleon in person as a child, which left a deep impression ([08:05]).
  • Early exposure to Parisian theater, particularly an adaptation of "Hamlet," fueled his ambition to become a playwright ([09:39]).

Move to Paris & Career Beginnings

• Resourceful ascent:
  • Scrabbled together funds for Paris trips (including hunting and gambling adventures, [16:18]-[17:48]).
  • Gained a minor clerkship due to his ornate handwriting—a point of pride and frustration ([18:43]).
  • Lucked into a position with the Duke d'Orléans (future King Louis Philippe), but despaired at his lack of useful skills aside from "beautiful handwriting":

    “I would rather cut off my right arm.”
    — Dumas, via Holly ([18:43]).

• Encouraged to self-educate in French history and focus his writing ambitions there ([19:53]-[20:21]).

Literary & Theatrical Breakthrough

• Became embedded in Parisian literary circles; began relationships and fathered children with several women ([21:26]).
• First major play, "Henri III and His Court" (1829), helped shift French theater from classical to romantic—stirring critical controversy and debate over censorship ([21:50]-[23:44]).

Revolutionary Tendencies & Political Involvement

• Dumas followed his father's footsteps as a revolutionary during the July Revolution of 1830, actively joining barricades and helping plan a powder raid ([29:17]-[30:22]).
• Later confronted King Louis Philippe, arguing for the prophetic nature of a poet’s point of view ([30:22]).
• Participated in the 1848 revolution and attempted (unsuccessfully) to run for parliament ([30:55]).

Literary Innovations: Serialization & Mass Appeal

• Pioneered the serialized novel:
  • The rise of individual newspaper issues in 1836 led to serialized literary works. Dumas leveraged this, using cliffhangers to dramatically increase newspaper sales ([31:31]-[32:12]).
• Most prolific period (1844-54):
  • Authored major works ("The Three Musketeers," "The Count of Monte Cristo"), often collaborating with researchers and outlines provided by others ([32:45]-[33:51]).

Scandal, Criticism & Personal Life

• Dumas’ lavish spending and complicated personal life (multiple children by different women, public scandals, dueling) attracted satire and public derision ([34:39]-[36:46]).
• His financial imprudence led to bankruptcies, flight from debts, and periodic exile ([34:39]).

Race, Reputation & Critique

• The role of racism in Dumas’ career:
  • Honore de Balzac referred to him disparagingly as “that Negro”; caricatures often mocked his appearance ([36:46]).
  • Famous anecdote (possibly apocryphal):

    “My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a negro and my great grandfather a monkey. You see, sir, my family starts where yours ends.”
    — Dumas, as recounted by Tracy ([37:26]).

• Few of Dumas’ stories focus specifically on Black identity, but many address broader themes of injustice ([37:26]).

Later Years & Legacy

• Later life marked by melancholy, ill health, and continued productivity:

  The younger Alexandre asked, “What about when it gets too painful to read?”
  Dumas replied, “I work.” ([39:10]).

• Died penniless in 1870, in the house of his now-successful son Alexandre Dumas fils ([39:10]).
• Despite having written at least 300 works, Dumas père was dismissed by the literary elite as "too lowbrow;" his son, however, was admitted to the Académie Française ([39:27]).

Posthumous Recognition

• Today, Dumas is celebrated as a classic author whose works have been translated into over 100 languages and adapted widely ([40:02]).
• In 2002, Dumas was reinterred at the Panthéon in Paris amidst an elaborate, symbolic ceremony:

  President Jacques Chirac: “Repaying an injustice which marked Dumas from childhood, just as it marked the skin of his slave ancestors.” ([40:17])

• Notably, his hometown objected to the exhumation, wishing to preserve his original burial site ([41:14]).
• The Château de Monte Cristo, his grand but ill-fated home, has since been restored as a museum ([41:38]).
• A forgotten manuscript, "Le Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine," was rediscovered and published in 2005 ([41:45]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On his father’s memory:

  "I adored my father...the memory of my father...is as present to me as if I had lost him yesterday."
  — Dumas (via Tracy) ([05:59])

• On his place in French society:

  “I confess I had an intense desire to see this man [Napoleon], who, in making his heavy hand felt throughout France, had, in a peculiarly hard fashion, ground down a poor Adam like myself...”
  — Dumas (via Tracy) ([08:05])

• On the futility of his early abilities:

  “My shame was insupportable. The only thing I possessed was good handwriting... I would rather cut off my right arm.”
  — Dumas (via Holly) ([18:43])

• On racial prejudice:

  “My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a negro and my great grandfather a monkey. You see, sir, my family starts where yours ends.”
  — Alleged Dumas retort ([37:26])

• On dealing with physical and emotional pain:

  “I work.”
  — Dumas, in conversation with his son ([39:10])

• On the Pantheon reburial:

  “Repaying an injustice which marked Dumas from childhood, just as it marked the skin of his slave ancestors.”
  — Pres. Jacques Chirac ([40:17])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro & Background: [03:03] – [05:24]
• Family Hardship & Father’s Legacy: [05:24] – [07:07]
• Childhood Education & Early Readings: [07:07] – [10:06]
• Encountering Napoleon & Literary Ambition: [08:05] – [09:39]
• First Trips to Paris; Early Jobs: [16:18] – [19:53]
• Influential Advice & First Works: [19:53] – [23:44]
• Revolutionary Activity: [29:17] – [30:55]
• Serialized Fiction & Major Novels: [31:31] – [33:51]
• Personal Scandal & Finances: [33:51] – [36:46]
• Race, Reputation, and Criticism: [36:46] – [37:53]
• Late Life & Death: [39:10] – [40:17]
• Modern Recognition & Reburial: [40:17] – [41:45]

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Tone & Style

The episode mixes admiration and gentle humor with clear-eyed assessment, capturing Dumas’s charisma, flaws, and creative energy. Tracy and Holly balance rigorous historical context with lively anecdote and approachable storytelling, making the episode accessible and engaging for anyone interested in literary history or the colorful personalities who shaped it.

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Conclusion

This episode chronicles Alexandre Dumas Père’s journey from hardship to international acclaim, highlighting his innovations in historical and serial fiction, as well as the turbulence of his personal life and posthumous redemption. It offers both entertainment and insight, showing why Dumas remains a beloved giant in literary history today.

Transcript

[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Robert (Old Gays Podcast Host)]

Happy Saturday. Today's Saturday classic is our episode on Alexandre Dumas Pere who got a name.

[Holly Fry]

Drop in our episode on the Loudun.

[Robert (Old Gays Podcast Host)]

Possessions back in October. Tracy has been meaning to bring out this classic since then, but listen. Time makes fools of us all, but it's here it is now.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This originally came out on February 27, 2019. So enjoy.

[Holly Fry]

Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Earlier, we talked about General Thomas Alexandre Dumas, who was the son of an aristocrat and an enslaved woman from the French colony of Saint Domingue, which is now Haiti. One of his children was Alexandre Dumas, known today as Alexandre Dumas Pere to distinguish him from his own son, who also had the same name. Because we wanted to be really confusing with this trio of men in this family. Alexandre Dumas Pere, of course, wrote such classics as the Three Musketeers and the Count of Monte Cristo and both of those works, sequels and eight Marie Antoinette romances and a bunch of other novels and plays and essays and travel books and memoirs and A Dictionary of Cuisine. Hundreds and hundreds of works. The man was prolific. He did so much and so much happened in his life that it's really impossible to do justice to every single aspect of it in one episode of the show. And having multiple episodes seemed like it was getting super excessive in terms of the Dumas family. So today we're gonna talk about the upbringing that led Alexandre Dumas to become the writer that he was, along with some of the highlights and themes of his later life and work.

[Holly Fry]

In my head, I'm now, like, we should start a podcast just called Dumas. And it's just their family and all of its high drama and fascinating twists and turns. So. Alexandre Dumas was born on July 24, 1802, in the town of Vieille Courtrai in. In Northern France. His father, as we just said, was General Alex Dumas. His mother was Marie Louise Elisabeth Labouret, daughter of an innkeeper, and the two of them met when Alex was billeted at that inn during the French Revolution. Alexandre had one surviving older sister and another who died before he was born. According to his father, he weighed 10 and a half pounds and was 18 inches long at birth.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Dumas childhood was quite difficult. Although his father had been in command of huge parts of the French military, which we talked about in that previous episode, he had fallen out of favor with Napoleon long before being captured and imprisoned in a dungeon in Naples for nearly two years. Once he was released, he was injured and ill, and he still couldn't collect a pension or back pay. So the family fell into poverty.

[Holly Fry]

Alexandre spent his early childhood in the company of his father, who regained some of his former health, but not enough to return to active duty. He heard all kinds of stories about his father's dramatic exploits in the army. Alex Dumas had also been fond of performing various feats of strength, some of which he could still manage. And young Alexandre was fascinated by them. His father had been a war hero. And one of the most prominent men of color in the French military. But Alexandre's perception of him went even beyond that. Into someone who was larger than life and almost mythic.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Dumas described it this way. Quote, I adored my father. Perhaps at so early an age. The feeling which today I call love. Was only a naive astonishment at that Herculean stature. And that gigantic strength I'd seen him display on so many occasions. Perhaps it was nothing more than a childish pride and admiration. But in spite of all that, even today, the memory of my father. In every detail of his body, in every feature of his face, and is as present to me as if I had lost him yesterday.

[Holly Fry]

Alex Dumas died on February 26, 1806, probably from stomach cancer. Alexandre was approaching his fourth birthday, and as his father's condition worsened, his mother sent him to spend the night with cousins who lived nearby. So that he would not be traumatized if his father died during the night. On the night of his father's death, Alexandre woke his cousins. And told them he was going to go open the door for his father, who had come to say goodbye. In the morning, when he was told that God had taken his father to heaven, Alexandra answered that he was going to go to heaven himself for revenge.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

With his mother a widow without much to live on, Alexandra had very little structure to his childhood. Marie Louise tried to secure a widow's pension. And was so persistent about it that Napoleon Bonaparte finally told the general. Who had been bringing it up with him on her, their behalf. Quote, I forbid you to ever mention that fellow to me again. So Alexandre's mother spent her time working. To try to make ends meet. And to pay for his older sister's education.

[Holly Fry]

Alexandre briefly spent some time enrolled at a private school. And his sister would teach him while she was home on school breaks. But beyond that, in his early years, Alexandre didn't have much formal education. He loved to read, and he loved to talk about what he read. And he took a few years of violin lessons that he said left him not even able to tune the instrument. Occasionally, his mother tried to enroll him in a school or seminary. But this never lasted very long. With Alexandre running away or refusing to go back more often than not.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In 1814, when Alexandre was 12, his mother finally got access to a widow's pension. And used it to open a tobacco shop. A year later, he managed to catch a glimpse of Napoleon Bonaparte in person. Dumas described seeing him pass through town. Both before and after the battle of Waterloo in 1815. Which was, of course, pivotal. He wrote, quote, I confess I had an intense desire to see this man. Who, in making his heavy hand felt throughout France. Had, in a peculiarly hard fashion, ground down a poor Adam like myself. Lost among 32 millions of human beings. Whom he continued to crush. While forgetting my very existence.

[Holly Fry]

In 1816, Alexandre met two other young men. Who would start him on the path to becoming a writer. One was Adolf Ribbing de Leuven, the son of a Swedish nobleman. Who moved into the area around Villiers Coterie. The other was Amedel de la Ponce, who was an officer. And Adolphe wanted to be a playwright. And had connections to the theater scene in Paris. Amedei knew German and Italian. And offered to teach Dumas these languages in his spare time.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Although Alexandre didn't have a lot of schooling. He did have very neat and almost flowery handwriting. Which let him get an apprenticeship with a notary in 1818. He did a lot of errands. He copied documents by hand. It was a job that he described as intolerable. If he had had to pay attention to what he was copying. But since he could copy without thinking about the words themselves. He was free to just let his mind wander.

[Holly Fry]

This job was what allowed Dumas to take his first trip to a Paris theater. A client gave him and his fellow clerks a gratuity. And they decided to go in together. And catch a very early stagecoach to Paris. There they saw an adaptation of Hamlet by Jean Francois Dussy. This was a formative experience in Dumas life. He came home in a state of amazement. And he wrote to the theater to send a copy of the play. So he could study it over and over.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

For the next few years, Dumas life was very much the same. He did some studying, he hung out with his friends. He worked for the notary. And he started trying his hand at writing his own poems and plays. He also pursued various young women along vieille cotrare. His father had always been described as exceptionally handsome. And the same was true of the young Alexandre. Who had blue eyes, relatively fair skin and hair. That he called mon feuille tropical. Or my tropical tangle. He was also, by his own admission, very vain. And by everyone else's admission, he was extremely popular with women. The biggest detriment to all of this in his youth. Was that the family had so little money that his clothing tended to be too small and in pretty poor repair, and that made him the target for mockery among the more mean spirited of them.

[Holly Fry]

During these years, Napoleon, who had been at the root of so many problems for the Dumas family, was forced off the imperial throne of France, exiled, returned from exile, and exiled again before dying in British custody on the island of St. Helena on May 5, 1821. But apart from that one sighting of Napoleon in 1815, Dumas felt fairly removed from what was happening on the national stage.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Eventually, Dumas started trying to make his way to Paris on a more regular basis. He thought if he could just get to the city, he might be able to earn enough money to support himself and his mother, and we will talk about how he got there after a sponsor break.

[Announcer/Advertiser]

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This week on the podcast I am sitting down with Jenny Garth, host of the iHeart podcast. I choose me to discuss the new Audible adaptation of the timeless Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice. This is not a trick question. There's no wrong answer. What role would I play?

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You know what?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I can see you as Mr. Darcy.

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You got a little Colin Firth.

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Okay, that's really sweet, I appreciate that, but are you sure I'm not the dad? I'm not Mr. Bennett here. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Holly Fry]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

As I noted before the break, in the early 1820s, Alexander Dumas made up his mind to start visiting Paris as often as he could with the mind to eventually moving there. But he really had to scrounge for money to make these trips. On one occasion, he and a friend went together hunting rabbits and partridges along the way so that they could sell them once they got to Paris and pay for their food and lodging.

[Holly Fry]

This required the two of them to outsmart the gamekeepers who were in charge of the land that they were illegally hunting on. They only had one horse between them, so one had the gun and the other stayed on the horse to take the quarry and ride off with it before the game's keeper could follow the sound of the shot and find them. They did make it to Paris and back, but Dumas got fired from a new notary job that he'd gotten just a few months before. He had taken this trip while his boss was away, planning to go and return without him knowing. But instead, his boss got back a few hours before he did. I feel like that's a classic sitcom scenario, yet playing out in the early 1800s in France.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, this is one of the many things, like so many things come up that just sound like this could be a little scene from one of his books. After his mother sold some property to settle the family's debts, Dumas convinced her to let him sell some engravings that his father had brought home while serving in the military. And then, according to his memoir, he tried to build on the 50 francs that he had gotten for these engravings. He took his money to the local coffee house and started playing billiards against a family friend named Monsieur Cartier, with the loser buying the winner two glasses of absinthe. They weren't drinking the absinthe, they were just using this to basically keep score. They kept doubling their bets over the course of five hours until, according to Dumas, he had won 600 glasses of absinthe that was worth about 90 francs, which he took in lieu of all that alcohol.

[Holly Fry]

I don't know, there's something, you know, you could have done, a split payment that would save. That was enough to pay for about a dozen round trip tickets to Paris. And Dumas made frequent trips back and forth before moving there in 1823. He had few resources when he got there, though. His biggest asset was a collection of letters of introduction that his mother had written to various old friends and military buddies of his late father. And one of these was General Maximilian Sebastian Foy.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Foy wanted to help, but he very quickly figured out that Dumas really did not know how to do anything. His haphazard schooling and his self study, which he wasn't all that dedicated with, had left him without a working knowledge of almost any subject. And his ample slacking off at the notary jobs he'd had had left him without any practical skills there either. His one strong point was that very attractive, ornate handwriting.

[Holly Fry]

This really brought it home for Dumas that he had been wasting his youth. After seeing Foy's reaction to finally figuring out one thing he could do, that thing being right neatly he Said, quote, my head fell on my breast. My shame was insupportable. The only thing I possessed was good handwriting. This diploma of incapacity well became me a beautiful handwriting. So someday I might become a copying clerk. This was my future. I would rather cut off my right arm.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Fortunately, though, the general did know somebody in a very high position who needed a clerk. That was the Duke d', Orleans, who would later become King Louis Philippe. But in a way, this really added insult to injury, because not only was Dumas only job skill, this good handwriting, but the people back home were astonished that he had managed to find a position with a duke, of all people, after spending all those years not particularly applying himself to anything. So not only did he have a job he didn't want, people were shocked that he had gotten it. He consoled himself with the fact that now, at least, he had a salary of 1200 francs.

[Holly Fry]

Of course, his ambition was not to be a copyist, even if it was the copyist for a duke. Fortunately, though, one of his supervisors was sympathetic to his ambitions of becoming a playwright and advised him on a course of self study and a focus for his creative work. His supervisor's advice? Study the history of France, which in his opinion wasn't getting nearly enough attention in the world of French literature and theater, and then write about that.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Through this advice and this recommended course of self study, Dumas came up with a goal for himself. He wanted to do for France what Sir Walter Scott had done for Scotland. He was particularly inspired by Scott's Waverly novels, which include Ivanhoe and Rob Roy, along with 20 others. Those books were a major milestone in the development of historical fiction as a genre in European literature. And so that's what Dumas set his mind on doing, writing historical fiction set in France and making that popular with the French public. At first, though, his focus was really on writing this historical fiction through plays and not novels.

[Holly Fry]

Dumas went to the theater as often as he could and embarked on a study of classic works of literature, including during downtime at work. He started making friends with notable people in the literary, theatrical and artistic circles of Paris, including people like Charles Nodier, who was connected to numerous writers in the French Romantic movement, and Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And Dumas started a relationship with a young woman named Marie Catherine Le Bay, with whom he had a son who was also named Alexandre. On July 27, 1824. The two of them never married, but Dumas paid for their lodging and visited them often, as after Their romantic relationship ended. Dumas also started selling short comic sketches to theaters to earn some extra money to try to keep them all afloat.

[Holly Fry]

His first serious attempt at a play was called Christine and was about previous podcast subject Christina of Sweden. He submitted it to a theater company which accepted it, but even after a long series of revisions, they didn't ultimately perform it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Instead, Dumas first full length play to be staged was Henri III and His Court, which debuted on February 11, 1829 at the Comedie Francaise, which was one of France's state theaters. Just a few days before the play's debut, Dumas mother had a stroke. So he had to divide his time between the theater and her bedside, including stepping out of the theater to go check on her during that first performance.

[Holly Fry]

Just before the play opened. He also invited the Duke d', Orleans, who politely declined, saying that he had another engagement. Dumas convinced the Duke to come and to bring his whole retinue with him. A lot of Dumas friends were also there, including Victor Hugo, possibly helped by.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Having so many people who he knew and liked in the audience. The reception was overall extremely positive. There was a lot of loud applause in the theater and generally pretty favorable reviews afterward. And this performance has been cited as the start of a shift in French theater away from the classical and toward the romantic, with the play itself a drama rather than a classic tragedy.

[Holly Fry]

But of course, the acclaim was not universal. A number of more classically minded established playwrights objected to its more romantic sensibilities and staging and the fact that it was melodramatic instead of tragic. Some of these playwrights circulated a petition denouncing the theater's management for allowing such a play to be staged and advocating that France not allow such work to be performed at any of its national theaters. Henri III was also criticized for being against the monarchy and it spawned a huge debate about censorship.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This was the first of many, many plays in a career that was truly prolific and did involve a staging of Christine. Not long after, but almost immediately, Dumas output slowed down just a little as he became a revolutionary. We will talk about that after a quick sponsor break.

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[Ed Helms]

Hey everyone, Ed Helms here.

[Kal Penn]

And hi, I'm Kalpen and we're the hosts of Irsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.

[Ed Helms]

This week on the podcast I am sitting down with Jenny Garth, host of the I Heart Podcast. I choose me to discuss the new Audible adaptation of the timeless Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice. This is not a trick question. There's no wrong answer. What role would I play?

[Announcer/Advertiser]

You know what?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I can see you as Mr. Darcy.

[Announcer/Advertiser]

You got a little Colin Firth.

[Ed Helms]

Okay, that's really sweet. I appreciate that. But are you sure I'm not the dad? I'm not Mr. Bennett here. Listen to Earsay the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert (Old Gays Podcast Host)]

Listen to your elders, honey. You might know them from their viral videos, but now the Old Gays pull back the curtain on their podcast Silver Linings with the Old Gays, brought to you in partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Veeve Healthcare. For a very special bonus episode. Hosts Robert, Mick, Bill and Jahsay talk about how pride has evolved over the years and their favorite memories, all in celebration of Palm Springs Pride because pride should be celebrated all year round. Listen to these fabulous friends swap stories exploring how queer life has evolved over the decades and the silver linings they've collected along the way. Each episode dives into hot topics, from safe sex and online dating to untangling Gen Z lingo, as well as insights on how music, art and fashion show up in queer culture. So check out Silver Linings, a show about how pride ages like fine wine. Available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by pbs, home of Ken Burns. Ken Burns films aren't just documentaries, they're national events. And the American Revolution is the one you've been waiting for. When you hear American Revolution, you probably picture the familiar scenes. Tea crates dumped into the Boston harbor harbor famous founders signing documents in Philadelphia, redcoats marching into battle in neat lines. But here Ken Burns and co directors Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt take us so much deeper. They bring us into a revolution that was bloody, difficult and unbelievably consequential. People whose names you know and people you've never heard of put their lives on the line and changed the course of human history. America's fight for independence lit a spark. It became a driving force for liberty around the world that still burns today. The founding generation understood the weight of what they were creating. George Washington called his fight the cause of mankind, and they knew how much they risked, how much they gave to win the war. John Adams captured that in a letter to his wife Abigail, writing, quote, posterity, you will never know what it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. The revolutionary generation was thinking about the future, about us, and now you can think about them in an entirely new light. With the American Revolution. Ken Burns and his team give us the vast, complicated, transcendent origin story of the United States in a way only they can. And we are left with a deeply human, deeply relevant story about our nation's founding. A story that belongs to us all. Stream the American Revolution on the PBS app.

[Holly Fry]

Don't miss it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In addition to writing and co writing a massive amount of work during his lifetime, Alexandre Dumas was, like his father, a revolutionary, although not on the exact same scale as his father, Thomas. Alexandre Dumas had been firmly on the liberty, equality, fraternity side of the French Revolution and was a staunch defender of the French Republic. Dumas had many of these same leanings which came to the fore in 1830.

[Holly Fry]

The July Revolution, or the Revolution of 1830, was one of a series of revolutions that swept through Europe between 1830 and 1818 32. In France, it was in response to a series of ordinances issued by King Charles X. In these ordinances, the King dissolved the Chamber of Deputies and called for new elections to be held in September. But he also changed the laws so that most of the electorate lost their right to vote. And he suspended the freedom of the press.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

People were, of course, very upset by this. Dumas had been on the verge of leaving for a trip to Algiers, which France had just annexed, when these four ordinances were issued. So instead of going on his trip, he sent his servant to retrieve his gun from the gunsmiths and to buy him some ammunition. And then, as the revolution grew more violent, he joined the demonstrators at the barricades after hearing the Marquis de Lafayette, who has been name dropped in so many podcasts at this point, I can't even keep up. After hearing him say that they did not have enough ammunition. Dumas also planned and helped carry out a successful powder raid at the magazine at Soissons.

[Holly Fry]

The fighting went on from July 27th to the 29th, after which Charles abdicated and his successor was King Louis Philippe, former Duke d', Orleans, described as the King of the French rather than the King of France. But Dumas prior relationship with the king did not serve him well. The king told him to stick to poetry, not politics, and Dumas rebutted that a poet's point of view could be prophetic. Louis Philippe abruptly dismissed him and Dumas resigned his position at the library of the Palais Royal, where Louis Philippe had appointed him while still a duke.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

A similar series of revolutions took place in 1848 which overthrew Louis Philippe. Dumas was part of this uprising too. And then afterward he tried unsuccessfully to run for parliament to return to the.

[Holly Fry]

1830S, though on March 5, 1831, Dumas and Bellecreur same had a daughter together who they named Marie Alexandrine. The next year he took a trip to Switzerland and he published a travelogue from his time there in 1833. This was the first of many travels, sometimes for pleasure, but often to escape criticism, political disputes, the ire of the monarch or debt.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, one of the articles that I read leading up to this was basically like when the going got tough. Dumas Left in the 1830s, he started experimenting with writing stories and novels rather than just plays. And in 1836, a new development in the world of publishing really shifted what he was doing. Until that point, newspapers in France had sold annual subscriptions. But that year a paper called La Presse started selling individual issues. And with individual issue sales came the opportunity for serialized novels that were published one bit at a time, from one issue to the next. Something we're familiar with today that at the time was truly groundbreaking.

[Holly Fry]

This was hugely successful both for Dumas and for the newspaper. He started writing novels that would be published serially with installments ending with cliffhangers to encourage people to buy the next issue. Other publications and writers started following the same model. Serialized writing drove a dramatic increase in newspaper sales, and that increase lasted for decades.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In 1840, Dumas married Ida Ferrier. They would be together for about the next four years and they spent most of that time living in Florence because it was cheaper than Paris.

[Holly Fry]

Many of Dumas most famous works were written between 1844 and 1854, including the Three Musketeers and the Count of Monte Cristo. This was his most prolific decade as A writer with most of the work featuring exciting stories full of heroic characters that play out against a backdrop of French history.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

His massive output during this time was not solely his own work, though he had researchers and collaborators who were part of it as well. They would often sketch out the book's outline while Dumas filled in all the details in the dialogue, or they would provide background research. The most well known of these was Auguste Marquette, who took Dumas to court in 1856 and 1858, claiming that his contributions to 18 of Dumas novels was significant enough that he should be listed as the co author. While the court did order Dumas to pay Maquette some of the money that he was owed, they left the attribution of the books as it was. There is still a lack of consensus of like how much actual work these various assistants were doing.

[Holly Fry]

Alexandre Dumas success led to ongoing problems with money. He was making an enormous income for the time. The average worker's pay when he was living was about three francs a day. But some years Dumas was making more than 80,000 francs. But he spent lavishly and often without any kind of workable plan. He launched two different newspapers, both of which later folded. He started construction on Chateau de Monte Cristo in 1846 and when he ran out of money that was sold at auction in 1847, he opened the Theatre Historique in Paris, which was bankrupt within three years, leading him to be prosecuted for his debts. He fled to Belgium and then Russia and then Sicily and then back to Paris to finally settle his bankruptcy.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

His travels and his spending habits did not stop there though. In the late 1850s he went to England, Germany, Russia and Italy. And then in 1860 he bought a yacht called the Emma and he used that yacht to follow Giuseppe Garibaldi's expedition of the 1000 in 1860. It wasn't just that he was following this expedition in a yacht. The yacht itself was full of champagne and fine food as well. And this made it a huge and kind of weird disparity between Dumas on the yacht and the expedition, which had almost no money, almost no training and rusty rifles, but still at the same time managed to take down the Bourbon kingdom of the Two Sicilies in southern Italy. That is a lot to try to sum up. There is an episode on that in the archive. I thought about replaying it as a Saturday classic, but it is pretty short and I haven't found anything to pair it with. So you can go find that on our website if you're interested in learning More about that sort of information dump I just had.

[Holly Fry]

Also aboard the Emma was a woman named Emily Cordier, with whom Dumas had a daughter, Michaela, Cleli, Josepha, Elisabet in 1860.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So all this together, the spending lots of money, the having a number of children with a variety of different women, his general behavior, all of that made Dumas a frequent target of satire and derision, especially as he got older. Newspaper cartoonists depicted him as this rotund, inept and very vain person with an increasingly astonishing tangle of hair. Like his father, he was fond of dueling and his critics made fun of him for that too.

[Holly Fry]

As with the episode on his father. There's part of me that's like, what.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Is wrong with you?

[Holly Fry]

Get your act together. But also he produced a lot of delightful things, so it's not my place sometimes. These criticisms were totally warranted. After the expedition of the 1000, Giuseppe Garibaldi named Dumas the director of excavations and museums. Dumas took that as an opportunity to try to insert himself as an influencer in Naples. And he was so relentlessly mocked for it that Garibaldi rescinded his appointment after merely a few days.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Historians diverge on the role that racism may have played in all of this and in Dumas life. Obviously racism existed. Honore de Balzac, for example, called Dumas that Negro. And these caricatures, as I mentioned earlier, often really played up things like Dumas hair, which was very distinctive and sometimes large. There's also a widely reported anecdote in which somebody was disparagingly talking about Dumas race. And he walked over to them and said, quote, my father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a negro and my great grandfather a monkey. You see, sir, my family starts where yours ends.

[Holly Fry]

But it wasn't something that Dumas really talked about in his own memoirs. And comparatively few of his works focus on black characters. Most notable is Gourges, which we talked about in our prior episode, in which the titular character is described as mulatto and leads a slave uprising. Ingenue, which is set in the French Revolution, calls for the abolition of slavery. There's a lot more along the lines of general injustice than racism.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Specifically, earlier in his life, Dumas had described himself and his process this way. Quote, My dramatic work and my efforts at historical writing had developed two principal qualities, those of dialogue and of narrative. And these are qualities which, speaking with my usual frankness about myself, I may say that I possess in a superior degree. But at this time I had not yet discovered the existence of Two other qualities no less important, light heartedness and a lively, amusing style. As a rule, people are cheerful and light hearted because their digestion is in good order and they have nothing to bother them. But in my case, this condition is a persistent one, not indeed making me insensible to sorrow, which, whether affecting my friends or myself, moves me deeply, but rendering me proof against all the worries, cares and conflicts of daily life.

[Holly Fry]

But toward the end of his life, Dumas was no longer free from cares and worries. He became increasingly wistful and anxious. In 1857, he had a conversation with his son Alexandre, who found him awake at night. The elder Alexandre said that his stomach hurt and that when that happened, he walked. He said when it got worse, he read. The younger Alexandre asked, and what about when it gets too painful to read? And his father answered, I work.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In 1870, at the age of 68, Dumas was broke and he moved in with his son, who was now a respected writer in his own right, and told him, quote, I have come to die in your home. He did die, on December 5th of 1870, and was buried in his hometown of Ville Coutre.

[Holly Fry]

By the time of his death, Dumas had not been forgotten, but he wasn't exactly honored either. During his lifetime, he had written at least 300 works, including Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, which was published three years after he died. And his novels and plays were often adored by the public. They were popular and commercially successful, but in the eyes of the academic establishment, they weren't all that worthwhile. His son, for example, was admitted to the Academie Francaise, or French Academy. While Alexandre Dumas pere never was, his work was considered too low brow.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Today, though, several of Dumas works are considered among the classics of French literature, and they've been translated into more than 100 languages and adapted over and over and over and over for the stage, TV, radio and film.

[Holly Fry]

In 2002, Dumas body was exhumed and he was reinterred at the Pantheon in Paris, alongside people like Emile Zola and Jean Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Victor Hugo and other notable figures like Louis Braille and Marie Curie. At the reburial, there was a parade of people in costume, and the casket was carried by four musketeers and covered in a drape that said in French, all for one and one for all. French President Jacques Chirac described it as, quote, repaying an injustice which marked Dumas from childhood, just as it marked the skin of his slave ancestors.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I watched some footage of this on the Internet yesterday. I was surprisingly affected by it. I don't like, I don't feel the most gigantic emotional attachment to the Three Musketeers or anything like that, but I was just watching this funeral procession with Alexandre Dumas casket just bawling at my desk.

[Holly Fry]

I totally get that.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, it choked me up a lot. This also did happen over the extremely strong objections of Vauxtre. They were not happy about exhuming him. They called it an insult to his memory. The mayor was kind of like, well, after I approve this, I realized that I really regret it. It was very upsetting for the place that he had grown up and was originally buried.

[Holly Fry]

And the Chateau de Monte Cristo that we talked about him working on and not quite finishing was eventually restored. It is now a museum.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In the late 1980s, a copy of Le Chevalier de Saint Armin, which is the Last Cavalier, was unearthed at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and that was published in 2005. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is historypodcastheartradio.com and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Hari Kundabolu]

On the podcast. Health Stuff. We are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night.

[Holly Fry]

I'm Dr. Priyanka Wali, a double board certified physician.

[Hari Kundabolu]

And I'm Hari Kundabolu, a comedian and someone who once googled do I have scurvy at 3am and on our show we're talking about health in a different way. Like our episode where we look at.

[Holly Fry]

Diabetes in the United states. I mean 50% of Americans are pre diabetic.

[Hari Kundabolu]

How preventable is type 2?

[Holly Fry]

Extremely. Listen to Health Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kal Penn]

To beat the champ, you gotta knock em out. The Dodgers stand tall and win back to back titles.

[Hari Kundabolu]

I'm Richard Parks iii. My show Dodger Blue Dream captures all the drama, tension and ecstasy of the best World Series win of all time in our new episode, Game seven.

[Announcer/Advertiser]

No Way out.

[Hari Kundabolu]

Now listen to Dodger Blue dream on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

She said Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night.

[Ed Helms]

Along the Central Texas plains, teens are dying. Suicides that don't make sense. Strange accidents and brutal murders in what seems to be a plot ripped straight out of Breaking Bad. Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people.

[Announcer/Advertiser]

There are people out there that absolutely know what happened.

[Ed Helms]

Listen to Paper Ghosts, the Texas Teen murders on the iHeartRadio Apple app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kal Penn]

On an all new episode of iHeartRadio's Las Culturistas, Jennifer Lawrence is dishing Jennifer Lawrence from her hilariously awkward run ins with A Listers.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I don't know what I was expecting, but he was just like nice to meet you.

[Kal Penn]

To her unfiltered take on beauty treatments.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I'm so upset I didn't get Botox before that.

[Kal Penn]

And a jaw dropping reveal you won't see coming.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I don't know if I can announce this, but I'm just gonna open your.

[Kal Penn]

Free iHeartRadio app, search Las Culturistas and listen to the full podcast. Now.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This is an I Heart podcast.