MERIMEE, PROSPER (1803-187o), French novelist, archaeologist, essayist, and in all these capacities one of the greatest masters of French style during the 19th century, was born at Paris on Sept. 28, 1803. His grandfather, of Norman extraction, had been a lawyer and steward to the marechal de Broglie. His father, Jean Francois Leonor Merimee (1757-1836), was a painter of repute. Merimee had English blood in his veins on the mother's side, and had English proclivities in many ways. He was educated for the bar, but entered the public service in stead. A young man at the time of the Romantic movement, he felt its influence strongly, though his peculiar temperament pre vented him from joining any of the coteries of the period. Nothing was more prominent among the romantics than the fancy, as Merimee himself puts it, for "local colour," the more unfamiliar the better. He exhibited this in an unusual way. In 1825 he pub lished what purported to be the dramatic works of a Spanish lady, Clara Gazul, with a preface stating circumstantially how the supposed translator, one Joseph L'Estrange, had met the gifted poetess at Gibraltar. This was followed by a still more audacious and still more successful supercherie. In 1827 appeared a small book entitled la Guzla (the anagram of Gazul), and giving itself out as translated from the Illyrian of Hyacinthe Maglanovich.
He had already obtained a considerable position in the civil service, and after the revolution of July he was chef de cabinet to two different ministers. He was then appointed to the more
congenial post of inspector-general of historical monuments. He did not, however, neglect novel writing during this period, and numerous short tales appeared, chiefly in the Revue de Paris. The best of all, Colomba, a Corsican story of extraordinary power, appeared in 1840. He travelled a good deal; and in one of his journeys to Spain, about the middle of Louis Philippe's reign, he made an acquaintance destined to influence his future life not a little—that of Mme. de Montijo, mother of the future empress Eugenie.
Merimee, though in manner and language the most cynical of men, was a devoted friend, and shortly before the accession of Napoleon III. he had occasion to show this. His friend, Libri Carucci dalla Sommaja, was accused of having stolen valuable manuscripts and books from French libraries, and Merimee took his part so warmly that he was actually sentenced too, and under went fine and imprisonment. Between 184o and 185o he wrote more tales, the chief of which were Arsene Guillot and Carmen (1847), this last, on a Spanish subject, hardly ranking below Colomba.
The marriage of Napoleon III. with the daughter of Mme. de Montijo at once enlisted what was always strongest with Merimee —the sympathy of personal friendship—on the emperor's side. He was made a senator, but his most important role was that of a constant and valued private friend of both the "master and mistress of the house," as he calls the emperor and empress in his letters. He was occasionally charged with a kind of irregular diplomacy, and once, in the matter of the emperor's Caesar, he had to give literary assistance to Napoleon.
At this time he wrote the letters which have been published as Lettresa une inconnue, and also the letters addressed to Sir Anthony Panizzi, librarian of the British Museum. After various conjectures it seems that the inconnue just mentioned was a cer tain Mlle. Jenny Daqin of Boulogne. The acquaintance extended over many years.