Word: abbotsford
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...thought nothing of his fame as a writer compared with his place as . . . clansman of Buccleuch." He tossed off such novels as Ivanhoe and Rob Roy without revising or even rereading, dictating at times while racked by pain from gallstones and stomach cramps. He was extravagant: his "hut" at Abbotsford became a castle, where he spent immense sums buying up land, planting trees (3,000 laburnums, 3,000 Scotch elms, 100,000 birches) and entertaining noblemen, statesmen, lairds and literary lights...
Dumas wrote day and night, working with and without collaborators, laughing as the wonderful pages of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte-Cristo rolled off. In a suburban castle even bigger and uglier than Scott's Abbotsford, surrounded by his menagerie and mistresses, he gave ducal parties (he often did the cooking) and spent money as fast as he made it. When Napoleon III pulled his 1851 coup and restored the Empire, Dumas fled to Belgium with Victor Hugo and other republicans. "The difference," says Maurois, "was that Hugo was fleeing before a tyrant, Dumas before...