It is now over a hundred and ten years since the first publication of the works that made Dumas Père famous, yet he still towers head and shoulders above every other historical novelist; so much so that even a mention of the words “historical romance” brings “Dumas” automatically to mind.

His output was immense and he wrote at great speed. Often there were copy-boys waiting at his elbow to run to the press with the next instalment of a serial, page by page as he dashed it off. He never bothered to correct his work before it was published in book form, and much of it was slipshod. Sometimes, when he was hard up—as he was generally writing at a rate of so much per line—he put in great chunks of padding, or long staccato conversations deliberately drawn out by making his characters misunderstand one another.

In consequence, small-minded literary purists have often asked why his tales should have achieved immortality while those of many fine and more conscientious writers should now have passed into oblivion.

The answer is not far to seek. He understood the art of story-telling as few writers have ever done; and that includes a subtle appeal to all the best instincts of the reader. His heroes and heroines are portrayed with the faults, fears, and sometimes small meannesses, which make them entirely human, yet, basically, they are upright, brave and generous-hearted. No-one can read him without being gripped by his plot, drawn to his principal characters, and eager to learn how they surmount their dangers and difficulties.

He left the world two wonderful legacies.

Firstly, in his long romances, where humorous episodes alternate with dark intrigue, love scenes and desperate conflict, there runs like a golden thread the doctrine of Noblesse Oblige. It is impossible to estimate how many millions of young people, reading him in their teens, have been influenced by his characters to develop the qualities of loyalty, courage and fortitude in themselves.

Secondly, as the great French historian, Jules Michelet, said of him, “You have done more to teach the people history than all the historians put together.” At school nearly everyone hated those hours devoted to memorising long lists of dates and learning about dreary parliamentary bills. But what a joy history can be when one starts to read of the conquests of Alexander, the loves of Cleopatra, the voyages of Captain Cook, the wickedness of the Borgias, and of the tragedies and triumphs of innumerable other fascinating people.

I am one of the countless legion for whom Dumas’s magic words transformed the dry bones of history into living reality. I started reading him at the age of ten, and soon all my pocket money was going on pocket editions such as this. Little did I think then that I should one day write historical novels myself, and be invited to write an introduction to one of his best stories; but I am more than delighted at this opportunity to pay tribute to his genius.

The present volume is unquestionably among the greatest of his historical masterpieces, and the principal character in it is that lovely, lovable but tragic figure, Queen Marie Antoinette.

Dumas opens an earlier novel, The Memoirs of a Physician, by showing her to us as a young Archduchess of fifteen, entering France on her way to become the wife of the Dauphin. Their marriage, accompanied by many ill omens, took place in 1770; and the tale soon discloses the situation, bristling with difficulties, in which the little Princess found herself.

King Louis XV’s mistress, Madame du Barry, was the fount of all favour at Court. On Marie Antoinette’s arrival there, she was at once made the puppet of intrigues aimed at bringing about the favourite’s downfall; but the beautiful courtesan had many powerful friends, who retaliated by spreading calumnies about the future Queen, and pursued her all her life with their enmity. The other royal ladies were envious of her looks and charm, and her husband was an uncouth, boorish creature. For seven years he proved incapable of consummating their marriage so, most unjustly, she suffered year after year the jibes of jealous women and malicious pamphleteers at having failed in her duty to give an heir to France.

All this, and the dreary etiquette of endless Court ceremonies, would have crushed the spirit of most young women; but so courageous, gay and buoyant was the nature of this Viennese Princess that she emerged from that grim apprenticeship a lively, fine and uncompromising personality. Yet through her very determination to enjoy life and say what she thought, by 1774—at which date, with the death of the old King, the book ends—she had already sown many of the seeds which were later to bring about her ruin.

It is in The Queen’s Necklace, therefore, that we see her for the first time as Queen. But ten years have elapsed; it is now 1784; she is twenty-eight years of age, the mother of two beautiful children, at the height of her beauty and in the happiest period of her life—or what would have been the happiest had it not been for this wretched “affair of the Necklace.”

She was at that time the most enchanting woman in Europe. For that we have the testimony of widely travelled men of a dozen different nations—Charles Fox among them—who visited her Court. Proud yet gracious, dignified yet affable, of regal bearing yet loving laughter; knowledgeable about music, poetry and gardening, a joy to look upon and a delight to listen to; can one wonder that, from lackeys to princes, hundreds of men cherished a secret love for her.

In Stefan Zweig’s Life of Marie Antoinette—perhaps the best of the many that have been written—he can find only one serious accusation to bring against her: that she is not known ever to have visited a factory or hospital. But were such activities considered a part of royal duties in those days? I do not think so. In any case it is known that she gave enormous sums to charity, and it is interesting to note that her first appearance in this book is while on a charitable mission. And Dumas, having been born only nine years after her death, could have had accounts of her habits from her still living contemporaries; a source not enjoyed by Zweig.

What is the truth about this fabulous necklace—which at to-day’s values would be worth half a million pounds? The conspiracy which came to light as the result of its theft caused a scandal that was not equalled by any in France till that of the Dreyfus case over a hundred years later. Commentaries without end have been written upon it, but the absolute truth will never be known.

The Cardinal-Prince, Louis de Rohan, just after his arrest, managed to scribble a line on the leaf of his prayer-book to his faithful secretary, the Abbé Georgel. It was an order to burn the documents relevant to the necklace. The Abbé succeeded in doing so before seals were put on the Cardinal’s papers, and in those flames disappeared for ever the complete explanation of this fascinating mystery.

However, it can be said that out of the welter of lies, contradictions and deliberately misleading silences Dumas has extracted the salient features of the case; and that, in the main, his version of the personalities involved, their motives and their acts, can be taken as substantially correct.

The only questionable part of his account is the rôle he allots to the sorcerer, Count Cagliostro. This extraordinarily plausible rogue was born at Palermo in 1743, and died, after five years in the dungeons of the Inquisition, at Rome in 1795. That he was the Cardinal’s confidant and brought to trial with him is fact; and, as he was a revolutionary, there can be little doubt that he would have used his influence over the Cardinal with the secret intention of involving the Queen in a scandal and so bringing the monarchy into disrepute. Apart from that, the machinations with which he is credited are obviously fictitious. Yet the way in which Dumas produces him to intrigue the reader, in the opening scene of the book, is a tour-de-force in story-telling.

It was undoubtedly the fertile brain of Jeanne de La Motte that planned this classic crime; and, while one may marvel at the skill and courage she displayed in carrying it out, Dumas’s description of her as “a viper” could not be more apt.

The unfortunate Cardinal was completely duped by her. He was therefore guilty only of intriguing to become a Minister and, almost certainly, of an illicit passion for the Queen.

The Queen can have played no part whatever in the deception of either the Cardinal or the jewellers. Her astonishment when the latter begged her to pay the first instalment on the necklace is proved to have been genuine by the forged undertaking they produced, for it was signed Marie Antoinette de France, whereas, having been born an Archduchess, she always signed herself d’Autriche.

Yet it was the ill-fated Queen who became the major victim of Jeanne’s plot. This was due to the incredible stupidity of the King, who insisted that the conspirators should be brought to public trial in spite of the fact that it was out of the question for the Queen to be called on to give evidence. That gave her enemies a free hand to slander her uncontradicted. The result was that, by inference, the public judged her guilty of having employed Jeanne as her agent, of having been willing to take the Cardinal as her lover in return for the necklace and, when it transpired that he could not pay for it, having not only betrayed them both but kept it. Thus, this miserable affair did more than any other to damage her in the eyes of her people and alienate their sympathies from her.

Skilfully woven into the main plot we have the personal tragedies of the Count Olivier de Charny, the Chevalier Philippe de Taverney, and his sister Andrée. The two young men are simultaneously smitten with desperate passions for the Queen. Poor unhappy Andrée is torn between sympathy for her brother and love for his rival. One could wish, in view of her earlier misfortunes, that Dumas had dealt more kindly with her, but her suffering is essential to the dénouement of the tale.

Once the theft of the necklace is discovered the story mounts chapter by chapter in suspense and drama. No-one could read unmoved of the noble silence of the Cardinal; of the doubts that harrow the minds of de Taverney and de Charny in the face of apparently incontestable evidence that the Cardinal has been the Queen’s lover; of the pitiful situation into which Andrée is forced, and of the terrible distress of the Queen herself.

There remains one question. Did Marie Antoinette take lovers? Her name had already been coupled with that of de Lauzun, de Coigny, and de Vaudreuil, and in this story Dumas makes her confess her love for de Charny.

History’s verdict is that she remained a faithful wife, at least until after 1786, when she bore her last child to the King. After that it is probable that she allowed her instincts as a woman to be fulfilled with a man of her own choice; for up till the moment when she was deprived of her last possessions before going to the guillotine she wore a signet ring bearing the arms of a handsome Swedish nobleman, Court Axel Fersen.

Dennis Wheatley