Alexandre Dumas (father) / Signed Autograph Letter / 1847 / Monte-Cristo / Novels

  

Signed autograph letter "A Dumas" to the "Patriarch of Jerusalem" S. L, April 15 [18]47, 2 ½ pages in-8°, with autograph envelope (pasted on the back of the second sheet). Embossed letterhead with a small coat of arms and a crown. Small tears at the folds.

In the midst of serious financial difficulties and pursued by creditors, the author of The Three Musketeers requests the proxy of Madame Dumas in order to borrow a large sum of money. I have received your letters, and if anything could have added to the troubles in the midst of which I find myself, due to two successive bankruptcies that have cost me nearly 80,000 francs, it is that you believed for a moment that my delays depended on my will. I will finally free myself from my house's many debts. The father of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo has always lived beyond his means.

Thanks to generous royalties following the publication of his masterpieces, he built the Château de Monte Cristo in Port-Marly in 1846. At the same time, his wife Ida Ferrier, from whom he is separated, asks him for alimony. Parties organized with all of Paris, extravagant lifestyle, the writer spends more than he earns, and the revolution of 1848 will ruin him. He is deprived of his usual income (theater performances and feuilletons halted for several months) and will be forced to sell his castle after enjoying it for less than two years. In this year 1847, Dumas began writing The Vicomte de Bragelonne, the famous sequel to The Three Musketeers.