Auteville, was called up at the same time. So was Isaac
de Portau, from Pau. Portau’s family title dated back to 1590, when Henri IV rewardedone of his forebears for good service as comptroller of his household. Athos and
Auteville are both villages in the lush valley to the west of Sauveterre. The Three Musketeers, Athos, Porthos and Aramis, were based on real people. In Orriule, Athos, the handsome one, is our
local hero.
D’Artagnan’s real name was Charles de Batz-Castelmore. He came from Lupiac, a village some way north of Pau, in the Gers. His pretty little chateau, with its conical towers, is still
a private home. He too joined the musketeers in 1640 and rose to the rank of
captaine-lieutenant
. He then became governor of the substantial northern town of Lille, before he took a bullet
in the siege of Maastricht and died in 1673.
The life stories of the real musketeers may be read in the old archives of Gascony, and in the romance called
Memoirs of D’Artagnan
, written only a few years after his death by a
contemporary novelist called Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras. This work was, in turn, discovered in the early nineteenth century by a writer of dreary historical fiction named Auguste Maquet. Maquet
was never famous himself, but he found notoriety working as a researcher in the hit-factory of the bestselling writer Alexandre Dumas. ‘I have collaborators,’ said Dumas, ‘the way
Napoleon had generals.’
In his novels, Dumas romanticized the Béarn and its people on such a glorious scale that he shaped the attitudes of the whole world. Although he certainly visited the region, he never
lived here. His ancestors were not born here – his mother’s family were inn-keepers from north of Paris, and his paternal grandparents were a black slave from Haiti and a young
aristocrat exiled there after a scandal. In spirit, however, this gutsy, witty, down-to-earth and hugely energetic genius is as much a Béarnais as any of his characters. A photograph of him
around the time that T
he Three Musketeers
was published shows an ebullient, hilarious hedonist whose fleshy face gazes out keenly below a grizzled afro.
Dumas’s father joined the army, and became a general during the Revolution; his troops called him ‘the black Hercules’. Once he returned to Europe, however,
the miserable climate of northern France finished him off when his son was only four years old. Little Alexander left school at fourteen to become an office boy.
He then took part in a marathon billiards match and won six hundred glasses of absinthe. These he sold for ninety francs to finance his move to Paris, where he became a clerk to one of his
father’s aristocratic associates.
The young Dumas wrote up ledgers for an eleven-hour day, finishing at 10 p.m., when he sat down with his books to make up his education. He fell in love with a seamstress and they had a son
– how he found the time for affairs when he worked all day and read all night would always be a mystery, even to his friends. The son would grow up to be a writer as well, known as Alexandre
Dumas
fils
, and best known for
The Lady of the Camellias.
Dumas
père
didn’t have an easy start. He wrote plays which nobody wanted to produce, and self-published a short-story collection which sold only four copies. Then his
late-night orgies of autodidacticism led him to Shakespeare, who he called ‘the greatest creator after God’, as well as the dusty works of history and bad period novels from which he
grabbed characters and plots by the armful.
His genius was for animating the past as everyone wants it to be, a brilliant cascade of sword fights, love affairs, heroism, passion and treachery with a good few laughs along the way. His
genius was also for finding in these dusty old tales the themes that pushed buttons with his audience. They were, like him, members of the newly literate masses who were hungry for stories that
dramatized their own lives, rather than
de Portau, from Pau. Portau’s family title dated back to 1590, when Henri IV rewardedone of his forebears for good service as comptroller of his household. Athos and
Auteville are both villages in the lush valley to the west of Sauveterre. The Three Musketeers, Athos, Porthos and Aramis, were based on real people. In Orriule, Athos, the handsome one, is our
local hero.
D’Artagnan’s real name was Charles de Batz-Castelmore. He came from Lupiac, a village some way north of Pau, in the Gers. His pretty little chateau, with its conical towers, is still
a private home. He too joined the musketeers in 1640 and rose to the rank of
captaine-lieutenant
. He then became governor of the substantial northern town of Lille, before he took a bullet
in the siege of Maastricht and died in 1673.
The life stories of the real musketeers may be read in the old archives of Gascony, and in the romance called
Memoirs of D’Artagnan
, written only a few years after his death by a
contemporary novelist called Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras. This work was, in turn, discovered in the early nineteenth century by a writer of dreary historical fiction named Auguste Maquet. Maquet
was never famous himself, but he found notoriety working as a researcher in the hit-factory of the bestselling writer Alexandre Dumas. ‘I have collaborators,’ said Dumas, ‘the way
Napoleon had generals.’
In his novels, Dumas romanticized the Béarn and its people on such a glorious scale that he shaped the attitudes of the whole world. Although he certainly visited the region, he never
lived here. His ancestors were not born here – his mother’s family were inn-keepers from north of Paris, and his paternal grandparents were a black slave from Haiti and a young
aristocrat exiled there after a scandal. In spirit, however, this gutsy, witty, down-to-earth and hugely energetic genius is as much a Béarnais as any of his characters. A photograph of him
around the time that T
he Three Musketeers
was published shows an ebullient, hilarious hedonist whose fleshy face gazes out keenly below a grizzled afro.
Dumas’s father joined the army, and became a general during the Revolution; his troops called him ‘the black Hercules’. Once he returned to Europe, however,
the miserable climate of northern France finished him off when his son was only four years old. Little Alexander left school at fourteen to become an office boy.
He then took part in a marathon billiards match and won six hundred glasses of absinthe. These he sold for ninety francs to finance his move to Paris, where he became a clerk to one of his
father’s aristocratic associates.
The young Dumas wrote up ledgers for an eleven-hour day, finishing at 10 p.m., when he sat down with his books to make up his education. He fell in love with a seamstress and they had a son
– how he found the time for affairs when he worked all day and read all night would always be a mystery, even to his friends. The son would grow up to be a writer as well, known as Alexandre
Dumas
fils
, and best known for
The Lady of the Camellias.
Dumas
père
didn’t have an easy start. He wrote plays which nobody wanted to produce, and self-published a short-story collection which sold only four copies. Then his
late-night orgies of autodidacticism led him to Shakespeare, who he called ‘the greatest creator after God’, as well as the dusty works of history and bad period novels from which he
grabbed characters and plots by the armful.
His genius was for animating the past as everyone wants it to be, a brilliant cascade of sword fights, love affairs, heroism, passion and treachery with a good few laughs along the way. His
genius was also for finding in these dusty old tales the themes that pushed buttons with his audience. They were, like him, members of the newly literate masses who were hungry for stories that
dramatized their own lives, rather than
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