Premium Leducq Maison de Ventes aux enchères
49
-
All is not well at the Dumas-Maquet company
See original version (French)
49
-
All is not well at the Dumas-Maquet company
See original version (French)
Estimate €500 - €600
Voluntary lot
Description
All is not well at the Dumas-Maquet company
(Autographs) – Alexandre DUMAS. Two documents, undated [January 1858].
In January 1858, Auguste Maquet asked the First Chamber to recognise him as a co-author of the works on which he had collaborated (novels and plays). Dumas defends himself.
- Signed autograph letter to his lawyer Charles-Denis Duverdy. ‘Thursday midnight’.
4 pp. in-4 on blue paper.
An interesting letter in which Dumas recounts the history of his relationship with Auguste Maquet and their literary and financial arrangements.
‘Maquet had written a play that had been rejected everywhere… I rewrote it for him and had it performed under his name alone. It was called *Bathilde*. Two years later, Maquet came to see me with 60 pages… they had been rejected by the *Revue de Paris*… I saw in them the material for a four-volume novel… and indeed turned them into a four-volume novel under the name of the Chevalier d’Harmental, and my bookseller paid Maquet five hundred francs per volume… I pointed out to him that this way of working tired me out enormously – Maquet has only an imagination for details… the imagination for the substance, which is particularly mine, is completely lacking in him… We agreed that from now on I would choose the subjects and provide the outlines, and that Maquet would receive a thousand francs per volume… Some time later, Mr Hostein came to propose… that we write a play for him based on the novel *The Three Musketeers*… It was agreed that we would share the royalties equally – Maquet and I – but that I alone would be credited as the author. I was all the more entitled to this as Maquet had never written a single word in our plays.’ Contrary to what had been decided, Dumas had Maquet’s name credited, whereas he had never done so for any of his other collaborators in the theatre. From that moment on, Maquet’s demands grew: an increase in the number of daily tickets, in the amount of bonuses…
- Note for Paillard de Villeneuve. 1½ pages, in-4 on blue paper.
Adolphe-Victor Paillard de Villeneuve (1804–1874) was an influential lawyer and a champion of 19th-century writers. He was also Duverdy’s father-in-law. Dumas’s note concerns omissions by Duverdy ‘which may be of use to us’: ‘Maquet never contributed anything to the plays: in the first one we wrote together, he tried his hand at the exposition – it was unusable… When I went on my trip to Spain, I took him with me as my son was coming along; for the whole time he was in Spain and Africa, he had nothing to do… Maquet only became acquainted with *Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge* when it was read to the actors… Thanks to his collaboration, which only contributed to the profits, Maquet was able to acquire, in turn, horses, carriages and a house. I had all that too – but the losses took it all away from me…’
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
You may also like