Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/149

 Minister to France, Mr John Bigelow, breakfasted with Dumas at Saint-Gratien, near Paris, where the romancer was temporarily sojourning. It was towards the close of the American Civil War, and he had a notion of going to the United States as War Correspondent for French papers, and to make another book, of course." Unhappily Dumas did not go, and the book is lost to us.

It was about this time that the famous quadroon, whose sympathies were naturally with the North in the great struggle, sent to Lincoln a large sum of money for the widows of the slain abolitionists. When acknowledging the gift, the President suggested that Dumas should send out some "mottoes" with his autograph attached. The author duly forwarded a hundred slips of paper, each with a sententious line or two and the great man's autograph. These were sold in the United States at 600 francs each.

The great writer was now growing old. He could no longer work twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day; and his efforts were unequal to the task of paying his way. Yet neither his dramatic instinct, nor his quixotic sense of honour failed him. The directorate of the Porte St Martin became bankrupt, and the company was left stranded. Dumas had just announced in the press that he had a play—a dramatisation of "Madame de