32 French Property News August 2019 http://www.completefrance.com
A
ll for one and one for all, united we
stand, divided we fall!”
A classic wet Sunday afternoon telly
treat has to be watching the tale of The Three
Musketeers and joining in with their rallying
cry as the brave d’Artagnan endeavours to join
their elite corps.
Who can forget their portrayal on the big
screen? It seems anyone who’s anyone at
Pinewood or Hollywood has had a turn at
depicting the characters in this swashbuckling
adventure at some point in their careers.
Indeed, almost 200 versions of Alexandre
Dumas’ stories have been filmed!
My favourite has to be the 70s version
directed by Richard Lester. It stars Oliver
Reed merrily carousing as Athos, Richard
Chamberlain playing a particularly smooth
Aramis (in misguided innocence I thought
Aramis aftershave had been created
especially for him!), a young Michael York
galumphing around as the irrepressible
d’Artaganan and Frank Finlay making up
the quartet as the honest and slightly
gullible Porthos.
Sets and costumes were magnificent, as was
the star-studded cast. Faye Dunaway, at the
height of her beauty, played the wicked
temptress, a particularly malevolent Milady,
while a saturnine Charlton Heston portrayed
the notorious Cardinal Richelieu.
The story rattled around from deepest
Gascony from whence d’Artagnan and his three
cohorts came, to Paris, thence to London to
collect the Queen’s diamonds from the Duke of
Buckingham, and back again – all on horseback
at toute vitesse with many a sword fight, duel
and chase thrown into the mix!
Nothing beats a jolly good story.LOCATION
If you’re looking for adventure in the horseshoe prints
of The Three Muskeeters, gallop towards Picardy, Gascony
and Pyrénées-Atlantiques, says Joanna Leggett
High adventure
Alexandre Dumas brought these characters to
life in the first book of his trilogy of historical
adventure novels entitled The Three Musketeers.
Arguably the most widely read and famous of
French authors (translated into many
languages), Dumas is lauded for his storytelling
of many other ‘rattling good tales’ including the
Count of Monte Cristo.
This time his hero was falsely imprisoned in
the Château d’If during late Napoleonic times
and the story follows how he plotted revenge
on his accusers. The Three Musketeers and The
Count of Monte Cristo were originally both
serialised in newspapers in 1844.
Such was their popularity and his success,
Dumas ended up acquiring land close to
St-Germain-en-Laye in Ile-de-France where he
built his own Renaissance-style château, the
Château de Monte Cristo (well what else would
you call it?). Here he lived in considerable
style, dispensing largesse by opening his house
to all and sundry... and thereby hangs, as they
say, yet another tale.
Alexandre Dumas père (his son, Alexandre
Dumas fils, wrote La Dame au Camélias) was,
to put it mildly, a very interesting character and
would make the subject of another ‘jolly good
read’ if, indeed, the book hasn’t already been
written, filmed or published.
His father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, was
born in Haiti of mixed race parentage – his
father an aristocrat, his mother an African
slave. Back in France he was educated at
military school, serving with distinction in the
French Revolutionary Wars and becoming a
general under Bonaparte in the Italian and
Egyptian campaigns. He fell out of favour in
1800 and died in 1806 when our Alexandre,the future author, was just four years old. His
impoverished mother couldn’t provide much of
an education, but the boy read everything he
could, taught himself Spanish, and traded on
his father’s distinguished reputation and
aristocratic rank to advance. At the age of 20,
after the restoration of the monarchy, Dumas
moved from his birthplace in Villers-Cotterêts
to Paris to a position at the Palais Royal in the
office of Louis-Philippe, the Duke d’Orléans.
At the same time, he started writing and
quickly achieved fame. He also started making
money, leading to him to build his own
château, complete with a separate smaller
moated château in the grounds – called the
Château d’If – which he used as a writing base.
Lavish entertaining and a colourful lifestyle- he’s known to have had 40 mistresses – ate
into his funds, however, and the estate was sold
just two years after its completion.
For king and country
Dumas’ historical novels were often based on
real people and events. D’Artagnan was in fact
Charles de Batz-Castelmore d’Artagnan, a
French musketeer who served Louis XIV as
captain of the Musketeers of the Guard. Born
around 1611 in Gascony, he served in the
King’s Guard and, having entered the service of
Cardinal Mazarin, he was entrusted with
several delicate missions by Louis XIV which he
carried out with discretion. He became a
Lieutenant Captain in the King’s Musketeers
but died during the siege in Maastricht in 1673.
His story was already interesting, but became
more interesting still once Dumas read of and
reimagined his exploits!
Athos was actually Armand d’Athos, taking
his name from the small market town ofm
% <<<
The Three Musketeers came from the
area around Sauveterre-de-Béarn