Storming the Bastille

Voltaire's Candide meets Wilkie Collins in Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities' - bizarre! I am not a fan of Dumas, and have previously only managed to read 'The Three Musketeers', but the French Revolution is one of my favourite literary subjects, so I persevered.

Ange Pitou, or 'The Taking of the Bastille', is one of a series written about Marie-Antoinette. The eponymous protagonist is a Rousseau-esque student of life who escapes his caricature of a mercenary aunt to live with the family of his sweetheart, before being forced to flee to Paris by the convoluted connections of his guardian. Perhaps reading the books in order would have made everything clearer, but it's doubtful. After Pitou and his 'worthy' paternal figure initiate the storming of the prison, and become the heroes of the hour, the scene shifts to Versailles and the sinking ship of Louis XVI's court. The two proletarian protagonists are then replaced by Doctor Gilbert, the smug and rather disturbing protector of young Pitou, who holds the Dark Secret of a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette. A student of Cagliostro (who features in the first novel of this sequence), Gilbert is able to 'mesmerise', in the orginal sense, both the Comtesse into divulging her nefarious doings, and King Louis by the force of his personality and the power of his mysticism. The King is weak and easily distracted ('Bring me my supper!'), but good at heart, whereas the Queen is the power behind the throne, cold and vindictive.

The first half of the book belongs to Pitou's childhood and youth, surviving personal hardships by returning to nature; honest and accepting, he is a pleasant character, and his adventures are presented with humour and wry observation. However, Dumas tends to use his characters to eulogise the Revolution, having them deliver diatribes on the good of the people instead of speaking naturally, and when his puppets fail to drill home his opinion, the author resorts to pontificating directly to the reader. This retrospective summary of history is relevant and all very educational, but only on the side of the People; the same lecture from the Baroness Orczy, for example, in 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' is today shot down in flames because she identified with the aristocracy. Modern readers tend to view history with rose-coloured reading glasses, yet Dumas is rated higher than Orczy, despite their similar melodramatic styles and florid language, because of his ability to combine romantic dialogue with dramatic action. ( )

Illustrated with a frontispiece in photogravure, each illustration has tissue guard printed with caption. Very attractive binding in black cloth with floral decoration on covers and spines in light green and orange. Spine titles are gold, most very bright, a few slightly rubbed.