Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 October 1889 — Alexandre Dumas and the Dogs. [ARTICLE]

Alexandre Dumas and the Dogs.

He could not even turn a dog out of doors. At his Abbotsford, “Monte Cristo,” the gates were open to everybody but bailiffs. His dog asked other dogs to come and stay; twelve came, making thirteen in all. The old butler wanted to turn them adrift, and Dumas consented and repented. “Michael,” he said, “there are some expenses which a man’s social position and the character which he has had the ill luck to receive from heaven force upon him. I don’t believe these dogs ruin me. Let them bide. But, in the interests of their own good-luck, see they are not thirteen, an unfortunate number!” “Monsieur, I’ll drive one of them away.” “No, no, Michel; let a fourteenth come. Those dogs cost me some three three pounds a month,” said Dumas. “A dinner to five or six friends would cost thrice as much, and, when they went home they w r ould say my wine was good, perhaps, but certainly that my books were bad.” In this fashion Dumas fared royally “to the dogs,” and his Abbotsford ruined him as certainly as that other unhappy palace ruined Sir Walter. He. too, had his miscellaneous kennel; he, too, gave while he had anything to give, and, when he had nothing else, gave the work of his pen. Dumas tells how his big dog Mouton-once flew at him and bit one of his hands, while the other held the throat of the brute. “Luckily my hand, though small, is powerful; what it once holds it holds long—money excepted.” He could not “hand a guid grip o’ the gear.” Neither Scott nor Dumas could shut his ears to a prayer or his pockets to a beggar, or his doors on whoever knocked at them. “I might at least have asked him to dinner,” Scott was heard murmuring, when some insufferable bore at last left Abbotsford, after wasting his time and nearly wearing out his patience. Neither man preached socialism; both practiced it on the Aristotelian principle: the goods of friends are common, and men are our friends.—Sfiribner’s Monthly.