You're Dead to Me - Alexandre Dumas (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

Greg Jenner is joined in 19th-century France by historian Professor Olivette Otele and comedian Celya AB to learn about acclaimed novelist Alexandre Dumas.Alexandre was born to an innkeeper’s daughter and a legendary Black general who fought for Napoleon. After his father’s death the family grew up in rural poverty, but after a visit to Paris as a teenager, Dumas fell in love with the city and its theatre. Using his father’s connections he found a job there and was soon a successful playwright, before turning his attention to novels. He was a prolific author, writing such blockbusters as The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Christo. But amidst the writing, Dumas also found plenty of time for romantic dalliances, political entanglements, and global travel. This episode explores his extraordinary life and the incredible works of literature he created, set against the turbulent background of French politics in the years after the Napoleonic wars.This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Emma Bentley Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are packing our book bags and travelling back to 19th century France to learn all about the acclaimed novelist and playwright Alexandra Dumain. And to help complete our trio of musketeers, we have two very special guests. In History Corner, she's Distinguished Research Professor of the Legacies and Memory of Slavery at Soas, University of London. He may have read her wonderful book, African Europeans, An Untold History, and you will remember her for my episode on the Chevalier de Saint-Georges.

It's Professor Olivet Otelais. Welcome back, Olivet. Oh, hello, Greg. Lovely to be back. We're delighted to have you back. And in Comedy Corner, she's an award-winning rising star who won the Chortle Best Newcomer Award in 2022. Maybe you've seen one of her sold-out live runs at the Edinburgh Fringe or Soho Theatre,

I certainly have, or watched her on TV on live at the Apollo, or heard her on all kinds of podcasts, including off-menu and the guilty feminist. It's Celia A.B. Welcome to the show Celia. Hello. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's lovely to have you in. Your first time on the show, which feels like a booking error. We should have had you on ages ago. I've been trying to get you on for ages.

I will say, like, the difference between your intro and my intro is so funny. And it's like, you're clear like a genius. And then it's like, and Celia's a clown. But a very respected clown. Yes, it is I. So Celia, you are French Algerian. You grew up in Paris. How do you feel about history, French history?

Did you do it at school? I didn't really like history at school. Oh. I like it a bit more now. Okay. But my, I would say the bit of history I know the most about is the Algerian war. It's not the funniest. No.

But it's, but I like it. I like history also when it's like more specific. So like day of the life of someone who lived in the period. Social history. Yeah, that's what I mean to. Good stuff. And Alexander Dumas, did you do them at school? Is he kind of like the French?

Dickens, do you have to read him? So the only thing I remember about Alexandre Dumas is that the first boy I was in love with lived on Dreamer Street. That's a good anecdote. We'll take it. I just find out he's a playwright just now. Just now. I thought he was a street.

Yes, we wouldn't really do an episode on a street, but it's nice to know that there's a romantic link there for you because he was a romantic writer. I'm excited to find out about this guy. So, what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And I imagine some of you will know Dumas' work. Maybe you've read The Three Musketeers or The Count of Monte Cristo or watched many of the film or TV adaptations of them.

Perhaps you enjoyed a baby-faced Leo DiCaprio in The Man in the Iron Mask, or you've seen the romantic and bloody Larenne Margot, a French cinema classic. And if you've been to Paris, you may have gone to the street named after him, or used a metro station named after Dumas. But who was the real man behind the stories? Was he as swashbuckling as his literary heroes, what life events inspired his epic novels, and just how many mistresses can one man have?

Let's find out. Right, Celia, give us a guess on where you think the story starts. March 2020. No, I'm going to say... The COVID pandemic, you think. The COVID pandemic, yeah. Right, okay. I think, okay, so I'm going to say it's beginning of the 1820.

Does that sound good? That sounds great. Olivet, more specificity, please. Yes, of course. She wasn't far off. Oh, there we go. I mean, he was born Alexandre Dumas, David de la Paetriere. On the 24th of July, 1802 in Villar Cotrette.

Okay. And he was the second son of General Toma, Alexander Dumas, David de la Paetrii, and Marie-Louis Elizabeth Labouré, an innkeeper's daughter. Okay, so the father has a fantastic name. Yes, he did. And mum is an innkeeper's daughter, perhaps slightly less fancy. Less fancy. Still, they made a baby.

They managed, yeah. So Toma Alexandre, the dad, was of dual heritage of mixed race, and he was born in Haiti to a minor nobleman and an enslaved woman. But the Juma decided to go by his mother's name, Jumar. Toma Alexandre's father brought him to France, freed him because he was born an enslaved person, gave him a French education. The dad was involved in the revolution, but on the Napoleonic side.

Oh, okay. Tell us about his military careers. This is the father of Alexander Dumas, Thomas Alexandra. Well, he joined the Queen's Dragoons in 1786, and quite quickly by 1793, he was general-in-chief of the Army of the Alps and commanded 50,000 troops. Wow. Wow. So this is during the French Revolution. And even racist Prussian soldier referred to him as the best soldier in the world. So he was admired by people who didn't like people like him. So I'm immediately getting a sense that the kind of Musketeer's book is basically fan fiction for Alexandra's own dad. Yeah. It must be so hard to have a dad this impressive. I'm very lucky. But there's a tragic twist in the tale. His heroic father, this soldier in charge of a vast army,

passes away when Alexandra is very young. Yes, absolutely. I mean, He died of stomach cancer in 1806 when Alexandre was just three years old. And that really plunged the family into poverty. The thing was that Alexandre actually worshipped his father. How do you imagine his childhood going from that point? That's a pretty rough start to life, isn't it, Celia? Yeah, that would have been also in terms of romanticising your dad's,

like we all growing up think that our dads are like heroes, but his dad was actually very impressive. Yeah, literally a hero. And to try and cling on to the last memory, have of him, that would be really hard. And the mum as well. Oh my God. Yeah, it's a really sad start. So you say they were plunged into poverty. I mean, we're talking Les Miserables, sort of on the streets, begging for scraps type. You know, is he singing like Anne Hathaway? What kind of poverty are we talking? Not quite. He moved with his maternal grandparents in their

hotel in Villar Cotret. Okay. So not quite that level of poverty. Does he get an education? attended parish school where he was taught by the very famous abolitionist, Abbe Grigua, but he was not a very attentive student, so he learned little French literature and history. But he did read the Bible, Le Baron Buffon, Arabianites, Robinson Crusoe in classical mythology. So he's taught by this famous abolitionist, Abbe Grigua, who's a sort of great intellectual and campaigner against slavery, which is a hugely important thing happening at the time,

because of course Napoleon reintroduces slavery. But we should talk about Napoleon, because this is peak Napoleon era, right? Napoleon makes himself, he crowns himself emperor in 1804, which is the most Napoleonic thing you can do. Presumely that influences Alexandra's childhood, Napoleonic wars, all the kind of drama. How does that affect him? Quite strongly because the wars lasted throughout his childhood, 1803, 1813. Young Alexandre even saw Napoleon twice. Wow.

And he described him as pale, sickly. and impassive. Oh. That's a pretty brutal review, Celia. Yeah, Napoleon is probably like, didn't say short, though. But after the Napoleonic Wars, Olivet, the Bourbon monarchs are trying to restore calm to France,

which, you know, they're doing their best. Does that mean that Alexander's sort of teenage years are a bit more chill? There's no more troops in the streets. Oh, chilled. I'm not sure. I mean, he became... It's still France, so no.

Yeah. He still became an under clerk at 14. Wow. He worked for a solicitor in Crepe. So while he was working as an underclerc, he skipped work and went to Paris one day and fell in love with the city in the theatre. And he eventually moved to the city in 1823 when he was 20. He continued his career.

Two generals, his father knew, recommended him for secretariat. Oh, so daddy's friends? Yeah, of Duke of Baby. Nepe baby, yeah, okay. Duke of Orleans, you know, no less. The assistant director of the office, lasagne, a man called lasagne, advised him, though, to educate himself further and to read people like Frasas, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Byron, Hugo, LaMartine. So he needed to further his education. So he's reading the classics. But I'm going to have to stop you there because you said Monsieur Lazzagna. Yeah, there's a lot of layers to this guy.

Hey, hello. I'd love to be called Monsieur Lazzania. Is there a Mrs. Lazzagna? He sleeps under lots of her. Okay. So Monsieur Lezanne is telling him, read the classics, educate yourself. Does he start to write? Yes, I mean, he's fascinated by literature. He met somebody called Adolf de Levin,

a well-educated son of a count, as you do, who'd been exiled from Sweden for complicity in the King's Murder. Oh, excellent. Good. So a bit of an edge there. Wow. Is he singing anyone? So you have Levin and Dumas started to collaborate on act and plays in verse comedies.

He was also writing solo, though, not very successfully. His first verse strategy, Le Gras, wasn't that good. I mean, according to himself, he said he gave it its due by burning it. Oh, you've burned anything you've written, have ever gone that intense? I think everyone is, like, a bit embarrassed by the first thing that you write. Instead of burning it, I performed it every day at the Edinburgh Festival. So in 1830, France again thrown into, you know, we talk about the French Revolution. We get another French Revolution, the 1813 July Revolution.

Do you know this one, Celia? The 14th of July. Oh, no, that was a different one. Yeah, I love revolutions in July. Yeah, well, it's sunny. You're out on the street, you know, barbecue weather, you think, actually, I don't really like the King. I don't know this revolution. This is the 1830.

It's called the Three Day Revolution. It's basically the Glastonbury of revolutions. Do you want to tell us about it, Olivet? Yeah. I mean, it's not supposed to be funny, though. Sorry, sorry. Try and stop us. Yes.

So you have Charles the 10th, whose brother of Louis X, the 18th, deposed and replaced with the Duke of Orleans. In a letter, Dumas, claimed that he was sent by Marquis de Lafayette, and the Duke on the mission to acquire gun powder. I mean, he probably exaggerated, but he did approach Lafayette

about forming a national gun. guard in the Vandé region, but the king told Dumas to return to poetry. Oh, stick to poetry. It's quite the burn. It's so sassy, isn't it? You know, the more I learn about the king. Okay, well, luckily for literature lovers, Dumas, Duma obeyed the royal decree of sticking to poetry, and he started banging out plays. Absolutely. I mean, between 1829 and 51, quite a long time,

he started a new play on the Parisian stage every year, except one. He pioneered two new genres, romantic historical drama and modern drama. And the plays often featured illegitimate or poor heroes, struggling against societal obstacles and herrians who become victims to their lovers. There's one called Henry III and his court, en route, there's one called Anthony. What's the general theme of his work? Anthony 1831 was about an illegitimate hero who was unable to marry his love because of social position. And in the end, she begs him to kill her.

Oh, you said he was funny, Oliver. That doesn't sound very funny. Another one, La Tour de Nelle, 1832. That was his most successful romantic drama, and it was about Margaret of Burgundy, who killed her lovers. Okay. I'm sensing a theme. Yes.

I mean, he was very successful, though, because you have 800 consecutive performances. That's absolutely huge. Okay, that is amazing. That's extraordinary. That's like mousetrap level, isn't it, of having a play that just runs and runs and runs. In 1832, Celia, we get another French Revolution. This one's more famous.

This one's the Anne Hathaway Revolution. This is Les Miserables. I like to call that Dance Dance Revolution. So we have the barricades in the streets. Yes. This time, Dumas, he has to leave France. He's in trouble. How old is he around this time?

He's about 29. He's late 20s. So he's written, he's done all of the first. this before 29. Yeah. Very prolific. Well, nepotism will get you anything. No, that's really...

There was no phones back there. That's it, right? He's just not an Instagram. The rest of us are just scrolling. Yeah, I could have an 800-day run of my beautiful play. But I'm too busy watching recipes. So he has to run away. He has to flee. He gets in trouble with the king.

What happened? Olivet. For some reason, he decided to officiate the funeral of a bonnet. partist general, something you shouldn't just do. We don't know why. Anyway, the king considered he's arrested. We've all done corporates, all right? Tax bills in January. Do you know what I mean? Check the date. But that was November, December.

The problem is that he had to leave, though. He had to leave Paris. And so he went to the south of France and then to Switzerland. Yeah, sure. So it wasn't too bad. And wintertime, 1830, 2.30. He published the accounts of his Swiss travel, so monetising the thing. Oh, okay, so he's a travel writer now. First person in the world to publish their Swiss accounts. Let's break from politics and plays.

Let's talk about the other big P. Let's talk about his big P. His passion. His passion for the ladies. Alexander Dumas was a player. Alexander's love life. Was it as saucy as Monsieur Lesagna's reading list? Even more.

Even more saucy. The source was Bachelemel. That was so stupid. Okay. He married, right. Exander, he found a wife. He settled down. He married her.

And that was the love of his life, yes? No, not white. 1840, he married his mistress. Ida Ferrier, who is an actress. They soon separated. She moved to Florence in 1844. They never saw each other again. Great.

Okay. But he didn't stop there, though. He had, oh, well, allegedly, he had 4. he had 40 mistresses throughout his life. 4-0? 4-0 and claimed... 40 mistresses. Yeah, but that's not it.

Juma himself said, I don't want to exaggerate, but I really believe that up and down the world, I have more than 500 children. How do you even... But you can say anything, can't you? I mean, sure. No one's going to be like, all right, bring them.

From a legal point of view, in terms of inheritance law, How many of those 500 kids does he actually recognize legally and say, this is my son, this is my daughter? Well, he recognized five of them. Oh, my God. So 99% of his kids, he's like, you're dead to me. Or maybe four, four or five. Wow.

Okay, who are the kids he recognizes? Do we have a kind of roll call of like official Dumas airs? Yes, we do. I mean, we have Alexandre Dumas, Fis. Yes. With a dressmaker, Catherine, or Catherine Labet. Dumas Fis went on to become famous because he wrote the novel

The Dame O Camellia. Yeah, the ladies in the camellias. Yeah. And then you have Marie Alexandrine Dumas with Belle Krell-Sameur. Henry Bauer with Anna Bauer, who was the wife of an Austrian merchant in Paris. Great, so his wife's,

his mistresses are cheating on their husbands. Great. That's all so lovely. Michaela, Clely, Josefa, Elizabeth Cordier with Emily Cordier, who was 19 at the time when Dumas was 15. What did they talk about? Yeah.

You pulled the face there, Celia, that best be described is smell the fart. Yes. It was an absolute. She was 19. He was 57? Yeah. They probably didn't talk, right?

No, okay. Whatever did they get up to? I think we know. At the start of the episode, Oliver, I listed some of the novels that have been turned into movies and TV shows. We haven't talked about novels yet, so we've talked about plays so far.

He writes a lot of novels, but we'll know some of the big ones. What he does is writing things that can be serialised and that can be put into magazines. Just to give you an example, Le Capitaine Pohl, earned the magazine Siacle 5,000 subscribers in just three weeks. He's doing amazingly.

So he carries on, he writes a novel called Georges about a biracial dual heritage son of a planter, possibly drawing on his own life. But his greatest success is, of course, with D'Artagnan romances, Yeah. Including the three musketeers serialized for six years and the Count of Monte Cristo serialized for two years in 1844-46.

A lot of his stories are based on real historical events, certainly. D'Artagnan was a real guy. Was it? Yeah, and the musketeers were real and D'Artagnan was real. That's so cool. We should mention, however, the ghost writer, August Mackay, who no one, we're not doing a podcast about this guy. Yes.

He had a kind of secret co-writer. He did He was really criticised about that Marquette helped him with development and ideas but Juma wrote the novels He was accused So he was like a director

That's interesting So as a stand-up You have you write your own shows But you have a director who Sometimes yeah You can like I think some stand-up will have directors Like directors take on different roles

So like The way I've used them is more like Architectural just because I'm too much of a silly belief of structure. And that's medical. It seems to me that it was a collaboration between the two. Development ideas, it's a bit like they're brainstorming. And then they're demised one writing the novel.

The problem is that not everyone like that. For example, in 1845, there's a journalist who accused him of running a, quote, novel factory. The journalist also used the term he's using a negre, which has a, double meaning. It means a black enslaved person from the colonies and a ghost writer in mainland France. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. Right, so there's a sort of allusion there to his mixed race heritage, do you think? Yeah, definitely. And the fact that he's not doing the work himself, but you might answer quite rightly by saying that he had research assistants in the same way Napoleon had generals. Right. Oh, that's sick. That's sick. And he won. That's quite a comeback, isn't it?

Yeah. The more popular he got, it probably had more and more people trying to be contrarian as well. I imagine journalists wanting to... Yeah, taking, take sort of shots at him. Yeah, which is often the thing with mixed-race people. Like, there's often accusations of like... You can't do it yourself. You can't do it yourself.

You can't do it yourself. Who's really doing this? Right, yeah. So Dumas is an incredible superstar of writing and, you know, saying he's doing a play every year for those 30 years. He's writing these vast novels, you know, co-creating them with Macay. And, of course, he's incredibly rich now. He's laughing all the way to La Bonk. And he builds himself a fancy little chateau.

Celia, what do you think he calls it? What would you call it? Where is the chateau? Where is the chateau? It's in northern France, isn't it? Yes, it's in the outskirt. Yeah, so outside Paris. D-Town.

Bring all the ladies to D-Town. Okay, for his 500 kids. He calls it the Chateau de Monte Cristo. But he didn't relax for long, Olivet. He was off travelling again. You know, he's already toured Europe or whatever. But off he went again in 1846. He did.

He was offered 10,000 francs by the Minister for Public Information to travel to Algeria. Ah. Represent. But the following year, Celia, uh-oh, the creditors came in and turned out, Alexander Dumas did not have as much money as he thought he had. And he had to pay an awful lot of money to his ex-wife. So he's in trouble for,

Eventually, he has to sell his chateau, isn't he, for a pittance of what he'd spent building it. That's a shame. That's a real shame. Yeah. And then... Yeah, the name would feel so sad. It's like if you had a house called Chateau de Greg Giennard. So he has to sell his house.

Yeah. And then there's a coup in France, another revolution, the coup of Louis Napoleon, 1851. Absolutely. Where the president of France says, actually, I'm basically emperor now. Yes, yes. Obey me from now on. French history's fun, isn't it? But, you know, he...

He used that as an excuse to kind of evade his creditors. Oh, good. So he's on the run. He's on the run. Where did he go? He went to Belgium. Excellent. He stayed there for two years.

But he didn't stop his lifestyle because he was living in luxurious, luxurious lifestyle on credit. Over there. Yes. Good. So he's got his credit card. Amazing. 1858, he travels to Russia. He did.

He even, he traveled to Russia. He made another investment. she bought a small boat that he called Emma he landed in Genoa he learned that Garibaldi was trying to unite Italy so he's involved in politics again. So this is Rossoj Mento

is the unification of Italy. Absolutely. He's getting involved in other people's politics. He's getting involved. He's saying, well, let me help. Let me stay and help. Because he's like on the run, but he can't stay away from the action. I'm fascinated by this guy. Yeah. I don't know if I like him.

I can't figure it out and that's like what's interesting. I mean, we could do so many podcasts on his writing career. But at the end of his life, ill health caught up with him, didn't it? Yes, I mean, he had an illness, possibly drop C. He had, he ran into financial difficulties and eventually he died on the 5th of December 1870 and he sends home. It would take the French state over 100 years to recognize him as a literary figure, but almost as a state person, because his remains were transferred to the Pantheon

in 2002. So it's quite a life, Celia. Yeah, how old was he when he died? He died in 1870s, so he'd been about 67, give or take. That's quite a long life. Yeah, he saw some stuff. From the street of the boy are fancy. There we go. To an entire man. The nuance window! It's time now for the nuance window. This is where Celia and I sit quietly for two minutes and make a start on reading the Count of Monte Cristo while Professor Olivet steps into the literary salon

to tell us something we need to know about Alexandra Dumas. So my stopwatches, ready, Olivet, take it away. I like to talk about Dumas and prejudice against people of African descent in the 19th century and in particular how life was like for Dumas. He was the son of a minor aristocrat and the descendant of an enslaved person. The first point is that it wasn't unusual at all throughout the 18th and 19th century where you have a number of people of African descent from

aristocratic families across Europe. However, the way they were treated depended on whether they were wealthy and protected by the country's leaders or not. Alexander was attacked because of his ethnic background, but in many ways he was also protected by his class and his father's reputation as a respected general. He was not wealthy enough to just be a man of leisure, as we have seen, but he made a very decent life with his writings and could afford to live in very bourgeois houses in and outside Paris. However, racism against him was evident in many ways. His popularity with readers and theatre gores made him very well known as a literary figure. In other words, he was a celeb in the 19th century. He was the symbol of what

white middle and upper class France dreaded, a racially ambiguous man whose identity crossed several boundaries, especially at the time when so-called racial purity was advocated by the fathers of eugenics and race science. It was also the time when French Parliament voted for an act abolishing slavery, and that was in 1848. We have the government expecting and demanding actually former enslaved people forget about centuries of discrimination, as they had officially been granted citizenship, and that was very important. They were expected to get on with the order of things, for example, the white men on top of the social and cultural ladder and them at the bottom. In other words, accept to be, officially, accept to be second-class citizens and forget

about the past almost overnight. So behind the prolific author and love interest, we should also bear in mind that Alexandre Dumas was a dual heritage man who had to navigate a cruel and profoundly racist society. He did it with panache and charm. Amazing, Oliver. Thank you so much. Yeah, I was thinking about, is it sorry to interrupt you, is the report to class, because in my experience in France, obviously there's quite a lot of racism in France, but you can, we'll talk about racism, but not classism in France, that's my experience. And, like, I think that the position that he was in where he could be in with the higher society is because of his dad, but, like, still be a biracial man and suffering from that. Don't know what I mean? Like, the, it must have been quite a confusing place to be in for him. and quite like heartbreaking at times to kind of like be sitting at the top with all of these generals but still being made to feel small because of the

rampant racism if that makes sense like that must have been really difficult you know you said that you don't know if you like him you see there's something there yeah you're coming around to him amazing thank you so much olivette thank you so much celia and if you want more professor olivet listener check out episode

on the Chevalier de Saint-George we've also got episodes on the Haitian revolution Napoleon Catherine Mnichie and of course episodes on Josephine Baker, who is also buried in the Pantheon. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with friends. Subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds, so you never miss an episode. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In History Corner, we have the outstanding Professor Olivet Odelle from Soas University of London.

Thank you, Olivet. Thank you, Olivia. Thank you, Sen. And in Comedy Corner, we have the superb Celia AB. Thank you, Celia. Thank you so much for having me. That was so fun. It was fun. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we turn the pages of another forgotten historical epic. But for now, I'm off to go and rename my daughter Greg Jenner Fee

and encourage her to write history books for kids. So I get to be rich and build a castle called the Chateau de Greg Jenner. Bye! Your Dead to Me is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4. some time in the next three weeks. I'm Kim Cottrell, back with a new series of Central Intelligence. This is a CIA covert op, top secret. The drama podcast that tells the history of the CIA from the inside out. Starring Ed Harris, Johnny Flynn, and me, Kim Katrow.

Ms. Page, such a pleasure to meet a real American. Listen to Central Intelligence Series 2 first on BBC Sounds.