-- which might have been better titled the Gratuitous Slaughter of Many Interesting Animals.
As I said below, the book alternates between anecdotes about Dumas' artist friends and their exotic pets, and tall tales of Capt Pamphile, the hunter/explorer/pirate/all-around-crazy-person who was responsible for bringing many of these animals to France.
I have to say that, on the basis of this book, there has never in the history of the world been a worse bunch of pet-owners than these Parisian artistes. One by one, a frog, a parrot, a cat, a trained black bear, two monkeys and a tortoise all die atrocious deaths, all because of their owners' negligence and stupidity. Some of the animals are mourned (such as the monkey James I, who not only gets an elaborate and sentimental death scene, but who also gets one of the best footnotes in the history of footnotes: 'If you get a voucher from M. Jardin,' Dumas kindly informs the reader, 'you can purchase the death mask of James I for the price of the moulding. M. Jadin lives at 5b, rue de la Rochefoucald.') but most of them are seen dispatched with callous disconcern.
And Dumas saves the final, most horrifying death for the final page of the story (not counting appendices) -- tucking it in with hilarious insouciance, almost by way of afterthought. "Ha ha," he seems to be saying, "You thought I was going to let one of the animals get off with just being maimed, didn't you? Well, you thought wrong: he dies too..."
...
If there's a moral to the story -- and probably there isn't -- it might be in the words of Black-Serpent, a Huron chief who says contemptuously to Pamphile, '[A] Huron is not a white man, pointlessly destroying the creatures of the Great Spirit.'
But probably, you know, there is no moral -- just a genial and completely thorough misanthropy, something like, "Aren't people completely awful? Luckily they're pretty funny too."
Intriguingly, Dumas often interjects comments along the lines of, "Even though Pamphile was an irreligious old reprobate who had already seen many wonders, he couldn't help but feel a sense of religious awe when he saw [insert phenomenon of nature here]." Statements like these occur often enough to be a kind of leitmotif.
But it ought to be added that many of the animals are almost as awful as the humans, especially the two monkeys, James I and James II, who are greedy, nasty and violent -- and appropriately enough, particularly beloved by their human counterparts.
...
I've read the Three Musketeers maybe half a dozen times over the years, I love that book -- except for one episode, the mock-trial and execution-style-murder of Milady, which I read once and have never been able to stomach reading again.
A few years ago, I ploughed through the Count of Monte Cristo with a kind of horrified fascination. If you've never had the pleasure, I can give you a quick breakdown: the first two hundred or so pages (basically, everything up to and including Dantes' escape from prison) are wonderful and exciting; the next eight hundred or so pages are excruciating and horrifying, an overblown, histrionic, turgid and bloated piece of sustained cruelty, with a heady dose of crass money-worship thrown in to boot. It was so fascinatingly awful I couldn't put it down; so fascinatingly awful that lately I've been thinking about reading it again.
There was only one part of Captain Pamphile that reminded me of this side of Dumas, the execution of Milady/Count of Monte Cristo side. The Captain and a young and injured Sioux warrior seek refuge in the cabin of a shrewish old woman near Lake Superior. In the middle of the night, the old woman and her two sons attempt to murder their sleeping guests. Pamphile and his companion kill the sons; then the young Sioux lynches the old woman, stringing her up from a tree, and burns her cabin to the ground.
In the introduction to the Hesperus edition, translator Andrew Brown comments that Capt Pamphile is 'entertainingly amoral rather than villainous' until he 'indulges in the slave trade... The slave trading episode in his career is the book's heart of darkness.'
This is trite and politic nonsense. First of all, if Mr Brown thought Pamphile was some kind of lovable rogue up until then, I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley. Second, it's overwhelmingly clear that Dumas disapproves of the slave trade (he was the grandson of a Haitian slave himself); but it's not at all clear that he disapproves of lynching old women, especially when it's an heroic Sioux warrior committing the act. There's a heart of darkness for you.
As I said below, the book alternates between anecdotes about Dumas' artist friends and their exotic pets, and tall tales of Capt Pamphile, the hunter/explorer/pirate/all-around-crazy-person who was responsible for bringing many of these animals to France.
I have to say that, on the basis of this book, there has never in the history of the world been a worse bunch of pet-owners than these Parisian artistes. One by one, a frog, a parrot, a cat, a trained black bear, two monkeys and a tortoise all die atrocious deaths, all because of their owners' negligence and stupidity. Some of the animals are mourned (such as the monkey James I, who not only gets an elaborate and sentimental death scene, but who also gets one of the best footnotes in the history of footnotes: 'If you get a voucher from M. Jardin,' Dumas kindly informs the reader, 'you can purchase the death mask of James I for the price of the moulding. M. Jadin lives at 5b, rue de la Rochefoucald.') but most of them are seen dispatched with callous disconcern.
And Dumas saves the final, most horrifying death for the final page of the story (not counting appendices) -- tucking it in with hilarious insouciance, almost by way of afterthought. "Ha ha," he seems to be saying, "You thought I was going to let one of the animals get off with just being maimed, didn't you? Well, you thought wrong: he dies too..."
...
If there's a moral to the story -- and probably there isn't -- it might be in the words of Black-Serpent, a Huron chief who says contemptuously to Pamphile, '[A] Huron is not a white man, pointlessly destroying the creatures of the Great Spirit.'
But probably, you know, there is no moral -- just a genial and completely thorough misanthropy, something like, "Aren't people completely awful? Luckily they're pretty funny too."
Intriguingly, Dumas often interjects comments along the lines of, "Even though Pamphile was an irreligious old reprobate who had already seen many wonders, he couldn't help but feel a sense of religious awe when he saw [insert phenomenon of nature here]." Statements like these occur often enough to be a kind of leitmotif.
But it ought to be added that many of the animals are almost as awful as the humans, especially the two monkeys, James I and James II, who are greedy, nasty and violent -- and appropriately enough, particularly beloved by their human counterparts.
...
I've read the Three Musketeers maybe half a dozen times over the years, I love that book -- except for one episode, the mock-trial and execution-style-murder of Milady, which I read once and have never been able to stomach reading again.
A few years ago, I ploughed through the Count of Monte Cristo with a kind of horrified fascination. If you've never had the pleasure, I can give you a quick breakdown: the first two hundred or so pages (basically, everything up to and including Dantes' escape from prison) are wonderful and exciting; the next eight hundred or so pages are excruciating and horrifying, an overblown, histrionic, turgid and bloated piece of sustained cruelty, with a heady dose of crass money-worship thrown in to boot. It was so fascinatingly awful I couldn't put it down; so fascinatingly awful that lately I've been thinking about reading it again.
There was only one part of Captain Pamphile that reminded me of this side of Dumas, the execution of Milady/Count of Monte Cristo side. The Captain and a young and injured Sioux warrior seek refuge in the cabin of a shrewish old woman near Lake Superior. In the middle of the night, the old woman and her two sons attempt to murder their sleeping guests. Pamphile and his companion kill the sons; then the young Sioux lynches the old woman, stringing her up from a tree, and burns her cabin to the ground.
In the introduction to the Hesperus edition, translator Andrew Brown comments that Capt Pamphile is 'entertainingly amoral rather than villainous' until he 'indulges in the slave trade... The slave trading episode in his career is the book's heart of darkness.'
This is trite and politic nonsense. First of all, if Mr Brown thought Pamphile was some kind of lovable rogue up until then, I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley. Second, it's overwhelmingly clear that Dumas disapproves of the slave trade (he was the grandson of a Haitian slave himself); but it's not at all clear that he disapproves of lynching old women, especially when it's an heroic Sioux warrior committing the act. There's a heart of darkness for you.
2 comments:
Here's a bit of historical context for lynching women, particularly old women. Milady's brand sounds an awful lot like the mark of a witch.
Interesting, thanks. I'd always assumed (without really thinking about it) that it was just a standard prison tattoo. Now I'll have to re-read that stupid chapter, I guess.
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