Jacquot is a very interesting horror novella set in Russia during the
first quarter of the Nineteenth Century. In 1858-1859, Alexandre Dumas
traveled to Russia and the Caucasus, and brought back with him sufficient
inspiration to produce a spate of fiction set in Russia. Jacquot is a
horror novella with gothic touches, strongly reminiscent of (but superior
to) Dumas' earlier work,
Chateau d'Eppstein,
written in 1843 and set in Germany.
As in Chateau d'Eppstein,
Dumas employs the device of layered narration.
He recounts that while traveling down the Volga en route to Kazan, he
stopped at the ruined castle of the Groubenski family, abandoned some 30
years previously. There, Dumas viewed a painting of a beautiful woman with
the face covered with a smear of black paint. He heard a rumour of some
atrocity associated with a razed pavilion in the garden, and asked his
guide to make inquiries of the local ancients and mail him the story.
Dumas continues that, on his return to Paris, he received a manuscript
which purported to be a memoir written (in 1828) by a friend of Prince
Danilo, the last surviving scion of the Groubenski family, describing
Danilo's return to the castle.
Danilo meets an old family retainer, Jacquot, chief huntsman to his
grandfather, Prince Alexis Groubenski, (d. 1825), who confides to him a
terrible secret. Danilo and his friend repair to a pavilion in the garden,
break open a wall, and find sealed within the remains of Danilo's mother,
the Princess Varvara, who, judging from a farewell message inscribed on the
wall, had been entombed alive.
The friend then listens to Jacquot's story, which is an entertaining,
vivid, and typically Dumasian portrait of Price Alexis, the last of the
medieval Russian nobility, a man whom great wealth and absolute power
corrupted absolutely. The story is given piquancy by Jacquot's unqualified
admiration for his barbaric master, who would beat or kill his serfs, rape
their wives, hunt bears with knife and spear, give vast entertainments, and
ensure that his guests drank themselves into a stupor.
Jacquot earned his name when Prince Alexis ordered him to wrestle a bear.
The bear chewed off one ear, and Prince Alexis cut off the other one as
punishment for stabbing his pet.
When Prince Alexis' son brings his young wife to live at the castle, and
then departs (1806) for the wars, trouble brews...
There is one other curious feature about this work, the name of the
protagonist, Jacquot, which is not a Russian name. Jacquot is, however,
the real name of one
Eugene de Mirecourt,
who wrote a book in the 1840's
accusing Dumas of plagiarism, and citing
Chateau d'Eppstein
as being
plagiarized from an unnamed German work. It is not clear (to me) exactly
what Dumas was implying by giving the earless, morally obtuse narrator of
Jacquot
the name of his old tormentor. However,
Jacquot
may be thought
of as a reworking by Dumas of the
Chateau d'Eppstein
material, just as
Le Page du Duc de Savoy
is a reworking by Dumas of the material
originally published years before in
Les Deux Diane
under Dumas' name,
but actually written by
Paul Meurice.
