Early Life
Thomas-Alexandre had two siblings by his parents: Adolphe and Jeannette. They also had an older half-sister, Marie-Rose, born to Marie-Cessette before Davy de la Pailleterie purchased her and began their relationship. His father sold Marie-Cessette and her other three children before arranging to take Thomas-Alexandre with him to France.
In 1776 when Alexandre was fourteen years old, his father sold the boy for 800 French livres in Port-au-Prince, officially to a Lieutenant Jacques-Louis Roussel (but unofficially to a Captain Langlois). This sale (with right of redemption) provided both a legal way to have Alexandre taken to France with Langlois and a temporary loan to pay for his father's passage. The boy accompanied Captain Langlois to Le Havre, France, arriving on August 30, 1776, where his father bought him back and freed him.
From his arrival in France until Autumn 1778, Alexandre (then using the name Thomas Retoré) first lived with his father at the Davy de la Pailleterie family estate in Belleville-en-Caux, Normandy. After his father sold that estate in 1777, they moved to a townhouse on the rue de l'Aigle d'Or in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. There, Alexandre studied at the academy of Nicolas Texier de La Boëssière, where he was given the higher education of a young nobleman of the time. At this school, he learned swordsmanship from the Chevalier de Saint-George, another mixed-race man from the French Caribbean.
Flush with cash from the sale of his family estate, Davy de la Pailleterie for many years spent lavishly on Dumas. His notary said wrote that the boy "cost him enormously." From 1777 to 1786, from age 15 to 24, thanks to his father's wealth and generosity, Dumas lived a life of considerable leisure.
In 1784, at age 22, Alexandre moved to an apartment on Rue Etienne, near the Louvre Palace in Paris, socializing at venues such as the Palais-Royal and Nicolet's Theater. In September 1784, while seated at Nicolet's Theater in the company of "a beautiful Creole" woman, he and his companion were harassed by a white colonial naval officer, Jean-Pierre Titon de Saint-Lamain, and one or two others. Following Dumas's verbal protests, the men "tried to force him to kneel before his attacker and beg for his freedom." The police report on the incident shows that Titon chose not to press charges as he might have, and all participants were released.
Read more about this topic: Thomas-Alexandre Dumas
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