Background
Charles Alfred Mercier was born on June 3, 1816, in McDonogh, a surburb of New Orleans. He was the son of Jean Mercier, a native of Louisiana, and Éloise Le Duc, a Canadian.
Charles Alfred Mercier was born on June 3, 1816, in McDonogh, a surburb of New Orleans. He was the son of Jean Mercier, a native of Louisiana, and Éloise Le Duc, a Canadian.
Intended for the law, Charles was sent to France at fourteen to study at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, where he read extensively both the classical and romantic writers. Not finding a law to his taste, he turned to literature. In 1838 he returned to Louisiana for a short stay; then went to Boston to perfect his English, but soon crossed to Paris again.
In Paris Mercier published La Rose de Smyrne; L'Ermite du Niagara; Erato Labitte (1840). The first is an Oriental tale in verse; the second a mystery play, telling the story of an Indian girl and her white lover; the third, a series of short poems redolent of Louisiana. After the appearance of this volume, Mercier traveled far and wide in Europe. In Paris, he composed a drama, Hénoch Jédésias, which was lost during the Revolution of 1848. A novel of the same name written at this time, a gruesome tale of miserliness, he later rewrote and published in New Orleans. In 1848 he published in Paris Biographie de Pierre Soulé, a study of the career of his brother-in-law. His interest in literature yielded somewhat to medicine, and in 1855 his dissertation appeared in Paris under the title, De la fièvre typhoide dans ses rapports avec la phtisie aiguë. He returned to New Orleans to practice his profession but in 1859 was again in Paris, then sojourned in Normandy for several years. After the war, Charles returned to New Orleans to seek a livelihood in medicine. The rest of his life was divided between the arduous duties of a family physician and the profitless pursuit of literature. In 1873, Le Fou de Palerme was issued, with its gypsies and daggers. In 1877, he published La Fille du Prêtre, a novel in three parts attacking the celibacy of the priesthood. After a long illness, bravely borne, he died of cancer in 1894, survived by his widow and three children. Services were held in the Catholic church of Ste. Rose de Lima and interment was in Metairie Cemetery, New Orleans.
Mercier was the leading French Creole writer of Louisiana; and the Athénée Louisianais, his proudest creation, is a monument to him. On January 12, 1876, Charles founded the Athénée Louisianais, an organization devoted to the perpetuation of the French language in Louisiana, in whose Comptes Rendus he created a vehicle for his prose and verse. Of his numerous poems found in the Comptes Rendus, the best are "Tawanta" (November 1887) and "Les Soleils" (March 1889); of his travelogues, "Excursion dans les Pyrénées" (July-September 1889) is typical. Along with scientific lines, "Sommeil, Rêves, Somnambulisme" (March 1889) best represents his thought; in philology, "Étude sur la Langue Créole en Louisiane" (July 1880). His best novelettes are Lidia (1887), a Parisian and Sicilian idyll, and Émile des Ormiers (1891), the pathetic tale of a Parisian painter. Mercier also wrote a long drama, Fortunia, whose purpose was to teach that fate rules the world. The French government rewarded the author's efforts with its Palmes académiques in 1885.
Although Charles disapproved of slavery, when he saw in the American Civil War the approaching triumph of what he called Anglo-Saxon civilization, he broke his silence in Du Pan-Latinisme Nécessité d'une Alliance entre la France et la Confédération du Sud.
Mercier belonged to the generation of French Creoles of Louisiana who wished to be primarily Louisianians; to be identified as Latins rather than Anglo-Saxons, but as Americans in France. His was a cultivated mind. His talent was best at narration in prose; his style was clear and elegant, but he was too much inclined toward romanticism and he was prone to preach.
On May 10, 1849, Mercier married Virginie Vezian.
