I’ve been reading the Count of Monte Cristo this week, and loving it. But, something puzzled me - there is a character referred to as ‘Countess G–’, certainly a fairly odd name. Does anyone know why the last two letters of her name are blanked out? Was her name in the original text ‘Countess God’, or something?
*No Spoilers, Please
Obviously, the author didn’t want you to know about COUNTESS GODZILLA ahead of time.
First of all, it seems a common convention in 18th and early 19th century literature to use initials only for proper names such as towns and people, e.g. “In the little town of S, there lived a young man…”
But to answer your question: who was G? (designated that way also in the original french text)
My information is taken from Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, Editions Garnier Frères, 6, Rue des Saint-Pères, Paris, 1962: Introduction, bibliography, notes and list of text variations by J.-H. Bornecque, Professor at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences at Caen.
Professor Bornecque asserts that Dumas was certainly referring to Teresa Guiccioli, one of lord Byron’s lovers. Before someone wonders why Dumas would have introduced a real character into his novel, let me give a little background on the genesis of the novel (from the introduction in the edition mentioned above.)
Dumas at first wanted to do something different than a novel (he had recently finished the Three Musketeers) and had contracted with one of his editors to write a travel book entitled “Travel impressions in Paris.” However, Eugene Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris had just been published and was very successful, so Dumas’ editor persuaded him to write another novel. Dumas had recently read a “true crime” story found in police archives and adapted by an attorney named Peuchet - Le Diamant et la Vengeance (the Diamond and the Revenge) and used that story as a basis for the plot of Monte-Cristo.[sup]1[/sup] The middle section of the novel, the scenes in Rome having as protagonist baron Franz d’Epinay, were originally written in the first person (with Franz being Dumas himself) as part of travel notes that Dumas had been intending to publish in another book relating his travels. Finally, the third section, in Paris, contains allusions to several Parisian personalities known during Dumas’ lifetime. Dumas and his collaborator Maquet adapted those travel notes and fleshed them out to include them in Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. So one should not be surprised to see a depiction of a real person in the novel.
Other sites of interest:
This site shows a letter from Byron to Teresa Guiccioli. And you can see here a fairly well-known poem by Alfred de Musset which mentions Countess Guiccioli.
[sup]1[/sup]Dumas was also inspired by a novel from a certain Auguste Arnould, La Roue de fortune (The Wheel of Fortune) with which The Count of Monte-Cristo has many plot points in common. The poisoner Mme de Villefort was suggested to him by the crimes of french murderer Castaing, described by Dumas in chapter XCI of his memoirs. Finally, the theme of a person travelling abroad and returning for revenge was also used by Dumas in his previous novel Georges, relating the story of a mulatto (Dumas was also of mixed parentage) who returns to a French colony to avenge the humiliation suffered by his father.