wait pic
Alexandre Dumas a few years before his death with
“la artiste” Adah Menken, his equestrian lover.
Readers of my generation, born in the twenties or thirties when people still
read books, will remember the fascinating literary works of the French author
Alexandre Dumas. He was actually referred to as Alexandre Dumas “père”, to
distinguish him from his son, Dumas “fils” who was also a writer of name.
Alexandre “père”, claimed to have written about 500 works of literature, and
although this may have been an exaggeration, his output was truly amazing. He
wrote, among others, books I recall I really loved because of their romance and
adventure; “The Count of Monte Christo”, “The Three Musketeers”, and I believe
that he was also the author of another book I treasured; “The Prisoner of
Zenda”.
Dumas himself, though, wanted to be remembered especially for his last great
work, the “Grand Dictionaire de Cuisine”, which was almost finished before his
death in 1870 when he was 68 years old and published three years later in 1873.
The “Grand Dictionaire” was a bit of an enigma for the reviewers and critical
readers. In the first place, it was awfully bulky, containing about 600,000
words, and in the second place, it was rather erratic. Many of the recipes,
ideas and writings were borrowed from other prominent eighteenth and nineteenth
century food writers , sometimes with references but mostly - more than he
admitted - without any mention of the original sources at all. Some of the
entrees, for instance, were literally taken from “La Physiologie du Goût” by
Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a much admired French “gourmand” and writer, who
was a generation older than Dumas.
The well known food writer and retired British foreign service man, Alan
Davidson, who together with his wife Jane, translated parts of the “Dictionaire”
into English, says in his introduction to “Dumas on Food” (The Folio Society,
Michael Joseph Ltd. 44 Bedford Square, London. ISBN o 7181 1842 I), that the
writings make an unbalanced impression. For instance, very rare food items, like
a South American bird called “Hocco”, most unlikely to be seen on the menu of a
Parisian restaurant, get two pages of writing while milk deserves only half a
page. One of the most amazing entrees is a complete essay on mustard followed by
an advertisement for a certain brand name of the relish.
Still, although the French never seem to have become as enthusiastic about it as
they are about Brillat’s musings on food, it was still a major work on 19th
century cuisine by one of the greatest and most prolific writers of the time,
who was also an intrepid traveller and explorer of the unknown. We should
therefore not ignore it as of little importance. It is fortunate that Alan and
Jane, who started and owned the publishing firm “Prospect Books” which
specialised in works on food and related subjects (since sold), and who still
publish that most interesting albeit rather academic magazine called P.P.C. or
“Petits Propos Culinaires”, did take it upon them to save some of this curious
“Dictionaire” for the English reader.
What many people don’t realise - at least I didn’t - is that Dumas was actually
of West Indian origin. His grandfather was the “Marquis de la Pailleterie” who
lived in Santo Domingo and his grandmother a black slave girl called Cessette
Dumas. The offspring of this liaison, Alexandre’s father, an illegitimate child,
was brought back to France as a young lad where he joined the army when he grew
up and eventually rose to become a general in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army. He
married a woman by the name of Marie-Louise Laboret and as a result of this
union, Alexandre was born in the small town of Villers-Cotterêts in 1802. For
some reason, while on duty in Egypt, his father managed to fall out of favour
with “Le Petit General” and was subsequently poisoned in jail in Brindisi,
Italy, a misfortune from which he never recovered, and he died when Alexandre
was four years old. The boy grew up under modest circumstances as the family
fortune had disappeared, learning how to read and write from his mother and
sister who never could have anticipated how famous Alexandre as a writer would
become one day.
Dumas was a handsome youth and an incurable ladies man who had many affairs with
fascinating courtesans all through his life, the last one - when he was 65 -
being an young American “artiste” called Adah Menken, who did daring things on
horseback. Alexandre loved to travel and explore and he was keenly interested in
matters of the table as well as the food of the peoples he encountered on his
journeys and expeditions. It is certain that he loved to eat and he gave lavish
dinner parties whenever he had the means, as his fortunes fluctuated all through
his most interesting life.
There is a whole entry in the book devoted to a “Leporide” a so-called “Belgian
Rabbit”, a supposed cross between a rabbit and a hare. This animal has never
existed and is pure fiction. Leporidae is the family name of the hares and some
other furry mammals. Turkeys, American birds, were, according to Dumas, known in
Greece, where they were called Meleagrides, after Meleager the King of
Macedonia, who supposedly brought them there in the 3559th year after the
creation of the world. He also tells us the still popular myth that Sir Walter
Raleigh brought the potatoes from Virginia to England in 1585. The original
potatoes were cultivated by the Incas in the Andes mountains of South America
and not in what is now the US, where they were much later introduced by European
emigrants.
Correction:
Dear readers,
Before more irate citizens of the United States of America pursue me with their
fangs bared because of my gaffe concerning Lincoln and the “Declaration of
Independence”, I herewith offer my most sincere apologies to everybody
concerned, including George Washington. The offending line should have been as
follows: “One morning when he (Abraham Lincoln) was sitting for the painting
‘The first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation’, he interrupted......”
Sincerely
Dolf Riks
