The Swashbuckling Press

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~NEW! RALPH NEVILL, ENGLISH TRANSLATOR OF MEMOIRS OF D'ARTAGNAN, FROM 1898~

THE MAN WHO MADE D'ARTAGNAN FAMOUS

That is correct - if it wasn't for Dumas, D'Artagnan would not be as famous as he is. Today, in many instances, d'Artagnan is a household name - thanks to Alexandre Dumas, who breathed life into a character whom many thought for the longest time was nothing more than a ficticious hero! In fact, he is not ficticious! D'Artagnan existed in the flesh, as well as his Three Musketeer friends: Athos, Porthos and Aramis. It has been suggested that Dumas himself was ignorant that d'Artagnan was a real person, yet I seriously doubt that, judging from the preface of 'The Three Musketeers' where, when quoting the memoirs of d'Artagnan, he plainly says: "D'Artagnan relates that when he entered the antechamber of Monsieur de Treville . . . " suggesting that d'Artagnan actually wrote his own memoirs - which, by the way, he may have not! His memoirs were written by an ex-French soldier named Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras, who may have actually knew the real d'Artagnan, and decided to write the events of his life, claiming them to have been written by d'Artagnan himself when d'Artagnan was near the end of his life. But d'Artagnan biographer Geoffrey F. Hall seriously doubted that, saying that d'Artagnan avoided writing when he could, not being fully educated until he was in the French army, and still even then his writing skills weren't up to par. In one letter he wrote to the Minister of War, in almost every other word he wrote the word 'that' in such a fashion that his lacked education was showing through. In another instance, when holding the famous prisoner Fouquet, The Minister of War wrote to d'Artagnan asking him why he hadn't written to him in a long while, that being a requirement for a jailer. Gatien Courtilz claimed that he took these memoirs from d'Artagnan's home after the man died, and merely gave the pages some "sequence", for they had none themselves. An inventory was taken after d'Artagnan's death that indicated there were no "memoirs" there to be found. But listed amongst the items were "his private papers!" But what that could have meant, one could only guess. Memoirs perhaps? Perhaps not, perhaps so! Courtilz was found to be a writer of half-truths only - proven by real events of history. If d'Artagnan did decide to write his life story and if Courtilz did indeed find them in his house, then Courtilz's account was perhaps half d'Artagnan's and half his own imagination - the "sequence" in question.

But even though these efforts of Courtilz were proved to be quiet popular in his day (this being published in 1700 A.D.), the hero would not be as popular as when Alexandre Dumas got ahold of him a hundred and fifty years later.

Published in a local serial magazine/newspaper, Dumas proved to be the king of fiction - especially with the d'Artagnan stories. Began in the mid eighteen forties, d'Artagnan would be dominent in the French public for the next five years. Publishing what would be considered 1 chapter at a time, the public could hardly wait until they got the next edition to see what d'Artagnan would do next. After the run of these serials, the stories went into novels, and the public eagerly devoured them as well, and was then published into many languages, d'Artagnan proved to be famous the world over - thanks to Dumas!

Only to help further his fame, d'Artagnan was starting to appear in film, beginning in the late 1800's - I believe 1895 is the correct date. But d'Artagnan's most popular film debut would be in 1921 when the famed movie actor "Douglas Fairbanks" would play the part of d'Artagnan on film. He was highly praised for the role, and this made d'Artagnan, as well as Fairbanks himself, an international hero. Booth Tarkington, writer of Monsieur Beaucaire, said that Fairbanks was d'Artagnan!

D'Artagnan was Fairbanks' childhood hero, so the partnership would work out just fine!