Childhood
Dumont was born at Condé-sur-Noireau. His father, Gabriel Charles François Dumont d’Urville and Bailiff of Condé-sur-Noireau (1728–1796) was, like his ancestors, responsible for the court of Condé. His mother Jeanne Françoise Victoire Julie (1754–1832) came from Croisilles, Calvados and was a rigid and formal woman coming from an ancient family of the rural nobility of Lower Normandy. He was weak and often sickly. After the death of his father when he was six, his mother’s brother, the Abbot of Croisilles, played the part of his father and from 1798 was in charge of his education. The Abbot taught him Latin, Greek, rhetoric and philosophy. From 1804 Dumont studied at the lycée Impérial in Caen. In Caen’s library he began to read the encyclopédists and the reports of travel of Bougainville, Cook and Anson, and he became deeply passionate about these matters. At the age of 17 years he failed the physical tests of the entrance exam to the École Polytechnique and he therefore decided to enlist in the navy.
Read more about this topic: Jules Dumont D'Urville
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“When we raise our children, we relive our childhood. Forgotten memories, painful and pleasurable, rise to the surface.... So each of us thinks, almost daily, of how our own childhood compares with our children’s, and of what our children’s future will hold.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)
“But no matter how they make you feel, you should always watch elders carefully. They were you and you will be them. You carry the seeds of your old age in you at this very moment, and they hear the echoes of their childhood each time they see you.”
—Kent Nerburn (20th century)
“I long for scenes where man has never trod A place where woman never smiled or wept There to abide with my Creator God And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie The grass below, above, the vaulted sky.”
—John Clare (1793–1864)