In Paris Dumas secured a job as a junior clerk in the office of
the Duc d'Orléans. His fellow clerks laughed at his unfashionable
frock coat and mocked his kinky hair which stood out all over his
head like a mane. He couldn't afford another coat, but he had a
haircut. He was now working harder than he had in Villers-Cotterêts,
and he still had no entry to the world of fashion and the arts.
But his situation improved when he moved in with Catherine Lebay
- who was separated from her husband, owned a linen shop, and had
two rooms on the same landing. At the same time Dumas began educating
himself, reading widely and taking lessons in physics, chemistry
and biology at a nearby hospital. Soon his first son, Alexandre,
was born, and his mother arrived from Villers-Cotterêts. Now
he had two households to support, but the Duc didn't pay enough
and Dumas determined to write his way out trouble. He wrote a vaudeville
sketch with two others, which was performed with mild success, but
it was his first play, Christine, which he wrote in the
evenings after work, that won him a commission from the Théâtre
Français.
In the event the play was abandoned during rehearsals, but Dumas
had begun to write another, Henri III et sa coeur, which
turned out to be a huge success. After the performance a tumult
of applause broke out, the audience standing up "as if seized by
madness". Classical critics attacked the play, but its popularity
was unassailable. Dumas had arrived.
Guest-curated for the British Library by Mike Phillips
Next - 'Dumas the dramatist - "glass beads and corals'
Home > 
