My Memoirs, Vol. IV, 1830 to 1831

Paris, 1830. The July Revolution has just toppled Charles X, and Alexandre Dumas, still years away from The Count of Monte Cristo, moves through a city thick with possibility and peril. This volume of his memoirs captures Dumas at the threshold of greatness, embedded in the theatrical world that sustained him before his novels made him immortal. He introduces us to the household of Mademoiselle Georges, the celebrated actress whose home buzzes with playwrights, performers, and would-be revolutionaries. Here we meet Harel, a man of devastating wit, and the young aspirants of the theatrical arts, all navigating a France still learning to breathe after the revolution. Dumas writes with the same verve he brought to his fiction, finding drama in rehearsal rooms and backstage intrigue. The memoir includes a haunting interlude: the story of Popol, a boy who cheerfully prayed for the misfortune of others, only to be swept away himself in the cholera epidemic that followed. Through anecdotes both hilarious and devastating, Dumas meditates on fame, artistry, and the fragile boundary between the personae we perform and the selves we carry home.