Bill Richmond bookshelf: The Black Count by Tom Reiss

Over the next few months I’ll be taking the time to review some of the books, articles and research facilities which I have found useful during the decade-long process of researching and writing Richmond Unchained. So far in the series I have looked at Peter Fryer's Staying Power, Pierce Egan’s  Boxiana and the biographies of Tom Cribb and Tom Spring penned by Jon Hurley. Today I examine The Black Count, Tom Reiss' account of the life and times of General Alexandre Dumas, a talented soldier in Revolutionary France and father of one of the greatest storytellers of all time ...

The Black Count is a somewhat unusual choice of book for my 'Bill Richmond bookshelf' series, as it is a volume with no direct connection to Georgian boxing or, indeed, to Richmond himself.

True, the events of The Black Count take place within the same period of history as Richmond Unchained (Dumas was born in 1762, the year before Richmond), but the real link between this book and mine is in its purpose and intent - Tom Reiss set out to resurrect the reputation of a hitherto unjustly neglected figure from 'black history', and my aim with Richmond Unchained is exactly the same.

When I first read The Black Count in 2013, I had been researching Bill Richmond's life for ten years. I had always intended to write up my research into a full-length biography but, truth be told, I had allowed that ambition to drift and there was a very real danger that I was not going to get around to writing the book for several more years, if at all.

Reiss's passion to ensure Dumas's story was told and his remarkable life was appropriately honoured was infectious. Reading his book shook me out of my creative torpor; so consummately crafted was the narrative and so vivid, yet unpretentious, was Reiss's prose that I was immediately inspired to craft my Richmond research into a book proposal.  If I hadn't read The Black Count, I might still be sitting on my research and Richmond Unchained might still be unwritten ...

Anyway, that's more than enough egotistical self-reflection! Let's get back to the book at hand ...

The central figure of The Black Count is General Alexandre Dumas, a remarkable, larger-than-life man who was born in Saint Domingue in 1762 to a white French father and a black female slave. The mixed-race Dumas moved to France as a teenager and later enlisted in the army, ultimately rising from the rank of private to the heights of divisional general, playing a vital and prominent role in the Revolutionary Wars, and winning a reputation for military brilliance and bravery. He also fathered one of the greatest story-tellers of all time - a son, also named Alexandre, among whose works were immortal tales such as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

Dumas senior was a contemporary of Napoleon Bonaparte and the connection and relationship between these two mighty men lies at the heart of the book, and provides it with plenty of its narrative energy. I won't spoil the book by giving away any more than that, but suffice it to say that Reiss's handling of the parallel lives of the two men, and how they intersect, is masterfully crafted as, indeed, is the whole book.

Reiss possesses an enviable talent for combining the rigour of a top historian with the narrative sweep of a master thriller writer. Combining these two forms within one book is a challenging feat that he accomplishes with aplomb. Impressively, he avoids the banality of lowest common denominator history and also ensures that he does not succumb to the breathless clichés of a paperback hack. The book is compulsive and thrilling, yet also possesses intellectual substance.

Ultimately, this is a book that deserves the accolade of 'masterpiece' because it works on so many levels: as biography, as a historical detective story, as a military thriller and as social and cultural comment. Many books of such technical brilliance fail to pack an emotional punch, yet, as well its immaculate word-craft, The Black Count is also infused with love. Indeed, it is, on a philosophical level, a compelling treatise on the importance of memory and love, and their interconnected nature.

Reiss's deep love of his subject shines through the entire book, yet he never falls into the trap of hagiography. However, the most touching demonstration of love within the book is the love of Dumas, the novelist, for his father, the great soldier - the love of a son for a man who, tragically, he barely ever knew. Through his painstaking research, Reiss advances the theory that Dumas used the pages of his novels to resurrect his father's memory and bring his spirit to glorious life, not only for himself but also for millions of readers.

This is a personal mission that Reiss honours nobly; indeed, he admits that he was inspired to write the book in the first place because of his own childhood memory of a vivid passage from Dumas' memoirs about his father. As he movingly explains towards the beginning of the book:

"To remember a person is the most important thing in the novels of Alexandre Dumas. The worst sin anyone can commit is to forget. The villains of The Count of Monte Cristo do not murder the hero, Edmund Dantès - they have him thrown in a dungeon where he is forgotten by the world. The heroes of Dumas never forget anything or anyone: Dantès has a perfect memory for the details of every field of human knowledge, for the history of the world and for everyone he has encountered in his life. When he confronts them one by one, he finds that the assassins of his identity have forgotten the very fact that he existed, and thus the fact of their crime.

I undertook the project of reconstructing the life of the forgotten hero General Alexandre Dumas because of that passage in his son's memoirs, which I read when I was a boy and have always remembered."

The Black Count stands as a beautiful epitaph for two great and charismatic men, both named Alexandre Dumas. It is an essential book for anyone with an interest in history, literature, the bonds between fathers and sons and the vital importance for all human beings of remembrance and love.

In short, it is a book for anyone with a pulse ... or, most important of all, a heart.

Bill Richmond bookshelf: Staying Power

Over the next few months I’ll be taking the time to review some of the books, articles and research facilities which I have found useful during the decade-long process of researching and writing Richmond Unchained. This series begins with my thoughts on Peter Fryer’s Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain.

Quite simply, any writer, historian or reader with an interest in ‘black history’ needs to own a copy of this book. Since its publication in 1984 Fryer’s near masterpiece has become the standard text on black British history, and it remains a model of concision, elegance and historical analysis.

Many would argue that ‘black history’ is still a neglected area of study, both within academic circles and also within the mainstream, however when this book first appeared the paucity of books on the subject was even more pronounced than it is today. Nevertheless, although many worthy books have appeared since examining the hitherto shamefully hidden and neglected histories of ‘minority’ groups in Britain, it remains disappointing that no ‘overview’ of black British history since Fryer’s work has come close to matching its comprehensive sweep.

(As an aside, the edition I own of the book is the sixth impression from 1992 and I’d be interested to know if the book has been updated at all since then or, indeed, since Fryer’s death in 2006 – I suspect not, which is a shame as it certainly warrants regular updating, even though Fryer is sadly not alive to perform the task himself).

Fryer himself was a fascinating figure.  Born in Hull in 1927, he later became a Communist Party member and wrote for the Yorkshire Post and Daily Worker. However he was apparently expelled from the party after dissatisfaction was expressed with his accounts of the 1956 Hungarian uprising and its suppression by the Soviets – events which Fryer, to his credit, condemned having observed them first-hand.

While working as a journalist, Fryer had also witnessed the arrival of the MV Empire Windrush in England in 1948, an ocean liner which brought with it many West Indian immigrants. This event ignited in him an interest in black British history, which he researched for many years before writing Staying Power.

Chief among Staying Power’s many virtues is its ability to puncture the many myths and untruths surrounding black history in Britain. Laudably, Fryer does this is a calm, measured way which avoids needless pontification or ideological grandstanding; witness for example, the masterful first sentence of the book - “There were Africans in Britain before the English came here” - which instantly undercuts the lazy assumptions often made by the ignorant or the bigoted. (Nigel Farage, for one, might do well to read Fryer's book!)

Despite Fryer’s Marxist / Communist leanings, the book never veers into didacticism and retains a simplicity of approach which is refreshing. It is at once academically rigorous and also accessible. Fryer’s own political sympathies are clear, and naturally influence his viewpoints but, to this reader at least, they are logically and reasonably outlined, without needless rhetorical flourishes that lesser writers might rely on to paper over gaps in their arguments or research. The book is all the more convincing as a result; for example, Fryer’s analysis of the link between slavery and the development of the British economy is extremely well explained.

During the first two or three months when I was researching Bill Richmond’s life (way back in 2003) I devoured Fryer’s book in about two days. I found it hugely valuable in enabling someone such as myself with a decent grasp of ‘black history’ - albeit one lacking in detail and refinement - to understand the social and cultural context of the times in which Bill Richmond lived, as well as the times which preceded and followed him. For example, references within Fryer’s book to Malachy Postlethwayt and Ukawsaw Gronniosaw opened up fruitful research avenues for me that have found their way, in one form or another, into the texture of Richmond Unchained, particularly the chapter where I take a brief detour myself into the history of black people’s presence in Britain.

Amid my otherwise fulsome praise, though, I do have one caveat.

I described the book earlier as a ‘near masterpiece’ and I use this phrase deliberately so, for the simple reason that I found Fryer’s work on Bill Richmond himself, and his protégé Tom Molineaux, somewhat sloppy and over-reliant on second-hand rather than primary sources. Several of the ‘facts’ Fryer recounts about Richmond are, to be blunt, not accurate, or at any rate cannot be proved correct beyond reasonable doubt based on existing sources or the sources which Fryer cites. To give one such example, Fryer states that Richmond’s parents were “Georgia-born slaves”, which has never actually been proven. He also accepts too readily (and over-relies on) Pierce Egan’s accounts of Richmond’s boxing career, with seemingly no consideration for the dramatic licence Egan may have employed, or the errors he may have made. Other factual errors also creep in; for example, Fryer states that Richmond fought Jack Carter in 1808 – which is incorrect. In common with many other writers, Fryer also claims that it was Richmond’s wife’s wealth that enabled him to come landlord of the Horse and Dolphin pub – a myth that I believe I pretty definitively debunk in Richmond Unchained. Fryer also makes a major error of omission by not mentioning Richmond’s role at George IV’s coronation celebrations, which it seems to me are a crucial symbol for the lofty status he managed to achieve – through boxing – within Georgian society.

Perhaps, given that his accounts of Richmond and Molineaux’s lives appear in an appendix, rather than the main body of his narrative, Fryer did not feel the need to research them as meticulously as the rest of the book. This is a rare miscalculation on his part, as is his decision to relegate these two crucial historical figures to an appendix in the first place, rather than the book’s main narrative, where they really belong.

I could go on in terms of the shortcomings of Fryer’s accounts of Richmond and Molineaux’s careers, but it would probably be churlish to do so; especially when, in the final analysis, Staying Power is a work of rare integrity and significance as well as lasting historical value.