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On the Heights: Dumas

The countess was laid at rest at early dawn. Down in the valley the king and queen were reading her journal. "They gazed at the rosy dawn and lifted their eyes to the mountains--to where Irma had been buried, On the Heights." DUMAS ONE man could hardly have written the extraordinary number of books that are credited to Alexandre Dumas. The fact was angrily brought up in the novelist's lifetime, some hostile critics pointing to an output of sixty volumes in a single year and asking how this could be justified.

Dumas did employ a host of collaborators and his partiality for jokes made his practice seem worse than it really was. On one occasion an ardent admirer ventured to remark that he had found a mistake in geography in one of his novels. "Which one?" asked Dumas. The worshiper gave the title. "Oh, the devil!" cried the novelist. "I have not read it. Let me see, who did that for me? It was the rascal Auguste. I'll fix him for that." The truth about "Dumas and Company" is involved and difficult to reach. There are novels bearing his name that the great romancer probably had little to do with. But these are not his great tales.