THE REAL D'ARTAGNAN

Evening Star, Issue 18808, 5 December 1924, Page 1

THE REAL D'ARTAGNAN

In tho old capital of Gascony there is 1-0 bti OlVCtOti il SttilUO to liiO ol all the Gascon.,, D'Arugnan. 'lhe chateau I rum wind) he rude tenth on that wonderful yellow horse .stood not far away. For there was a real D A rtagnan, even as there was a real Cyr.ina, though we never lunik <»1 cuuer, ana a is the real u-ie who n to have Ins m attic at Audi, s..ys the ‘ Daily 'lolograph.’ The creator «i our D’Artagnan, the delight ol our youth, would be very well cun rent that his original should be honored. Alexander the Great wa.s the most generous of mortals. But we cannot let p iss the contention, revived by tne pioject of the statue, that tho real” D’Ariagnan hud in him all that

was worth having ol the heio if Dumas. It is perlectly (rue that the real man left ins 1 Memoircs,’ whoever put them together, and they have been open to anybody’s quam mg tor 2UO yeais, and in i them are to in- loiind tile names, at least, of the immortal three and many ol their adventures. H is true that the real I I) A rtagnan was a Gascon, who began tho ■ world with not much money in Ins purse and died captain of the musketeers of - Louis Qnator/e. Ho did go on a secret ' mission to England when Cromwell was master; he did arrest Fouqnol. I Here, if anyone likes to say so, ia the stuff of which ‘ Les Trois Mousquo- | taires ’ and 1 Vmgt Ans Apres ’ and ‘ Lc ! Vicointe do Bragdonm- ’ are made. But some of us have read those ’ Memoircs ’ of the real man, which is no small task, i and we only found there hints for (he ma--1 elnnery Dumas used, nothing of the. vigor, j the gaiety, tho color, which are the very ; substance of the novels. The real D’Artaginm may have talked like Dumas's man, but lie did not mention it in his ‘ Memoires.’ There arc critics, indeed, who tell us that whatever is good on Dumas's page, il lie did not take it from history, lie look from his collaborators. The man was the managing director, or, perhaps, only the publicity expert of a factory of fiction. The work was done by Maqnet or Fioreniino, or anyone but him whose name wa.s on the title page. That lie, had collaborators has never been a secret, and we know how he used thorn. It was for them to draft, out the novel. Then came Dumas, who altered, expanded, adapted each page. it must have been what Dumas put in that made the hooks live, lor what his collaborators wrote without him is dead and dust—dead as the worthy D’Artagnau would be if Dumas had not built for him a monument more enduring than brass.