In 1838, Dumas found himself in need of a promised manuscript, and he
decided to adapt his play,
Paul Jones,
into a novel. The principal
character of both book and novel is the American naval hero,
John Paul Jones (1747-1792).
However, Dumas' John Paul Jones bears little
resemblance to the historical Paul Jones, as Dumas' Jones is of French
origin, most of the action takes place in France, and reflects Dumas'
novelistic concerns. The novel betrays its theatrical origin, with a small
cast, with the action advanced largely through dialogue and tightly
compressed into a series of set piece scenes taking place in rapid
succession, leading to a dramatic climax.
The novel opens in Port Louis, Brittany, where the young French aristocrat,
Count Emmanuel d'Auray, encounters the mysterious captain of an an unknown
warship, anchored in the harbor. Count Emmanuel asks Captain Paul, by
order of the King, to transport a prisoner (M. Lusignan) into exile in the
West Indies. Captain Paul agrees, and promptly falls in with a British
warship. During the ensuing battle, the Lusignan acquits himself so
bravely that Captain Paul frees him.
Lusignan, we learn, is commoner who has fallen in love with Count
Emmanuel's sister, Marguerite, and Count Emmanuel has used his influence
with the King to unjustly exile Lusignan. Jones and Lusignan return to
France, and Jones, having first been received by King Louis XVI, pays a
call on Count Emmanuel. Jones demands compensation on behalf of the
unfortunate Lusignan, but when he learns that Marguerite still loves
Lusignan, he demands her hand for Lusignan. Emmanuel refuses, both because
Lusignan is not an aristocrat, and also because he has arranged an
advantageous marriage-of-convenience for Marguerite, to the decadent Baron
de Lectoure. Emmanuel challenges Paul to a duel, and Paul refuses.
Marguerite tells the Baron that she can never marry him because she loves
another. The Baron, astonished, points out that people of their class
never marry for love, and that she is quite welcome to marry and to keep
her lover, too, so long as she is discreet. Marguerite, astonished in
turn, flees.
However, after innumerable plot twists, Count Emmanuel learns to his horror
that the commoner Paul Jones is actually the issue of his mother's
adulterous affair. Paul is briefly reunited with his mother. Captain Paul
has also prevailed upon the King to ennoble Lusignan and appoint him
Governor of Guadeloupe, so that the couple may wed and decamp, and has
procured the captaincy of a regiment for Count Emmanuel. Having righted
various wrongs, Paul sails off to resume warfare against the British.
Captain Paul can be seen as an early sketch for the Count of Monte Cristo:
a mysterious, wealthy, powerful yet déclassé figure acting as the
instrument of providence. While aristocratic pretensions are skewered,
Dumas (as in his life) never quite goes so far as to renounce them.
The standard biography of the historical John Paul Jones is Samuel Eliot
Morison's John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography, (Little, Brown, & Co.,
1959). The historical Jones (born in Scotland, the son of a gardener) had
enough adventures to fill several romances. His body is interred in a tomb
at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland. There is also a John Paul
Jones website: http://www.seacoastnh.com/jpj/
