Alfred Mercier, Adrien Rouquette, Placide Canonge: The Doctor, the Priest and the Dandy.

Alfred Mercier, Adrien Rouquette and Placide Canonge stood side by side on the New Orleans cultural stage where they played founding roles in the establishment of Creole literature and music. The variety of their interests typifies the vibrant cultural life of Nineteenth Century New Orleans in which people preferred dabbling in many artistic disciplines to specializing in just one. Mercier, a scholarly and kind-hearted physician, was as skillful in writing novels as he was in writing prescriptions. He was surrounded by an erudite group of Creole doctors, including Charles Deléry and Charles Testut, that shared his love of Francophone literature. While Adrien Rouquette dedicated his many talents to his work as a Catholic priest, he also diligently created poetic and musical compositions. Louis Placide Canonge was a jack-of-all-trades, working tirelessly on many journalistic, literary and theatrical projects. While these three men lived and worked primarily in Louisiana, they traveled often to France to oversee the publication of their work. Mercier, Rouquette and Canonge shared their considerable talents and recognized the importance of their colleagues’ literary efforts.

Alfred Mercier (1816-1894)

Alfred Mercier was born in Louisiana in 1816. His family, immigrants to Louisiana from South-West France, sent him to Paris at a very young age for his education. While he attended the prestigious Collège Louis le Grand and then went on to law school, he felt a greater love for literature than for the law. After several years spent in Louisiana and Boston, Mercier left in 1842 for a grand tour of Europe. His five-month stay in Italy and Sicily provided him with the inspiration for a novel he would publish in 1873, Le Fou de Palerme (The Fool of Palermo). During the 1848 Revolution in France, he contributed articles to Louisiana newspapers about the events leading to the crowning of Napoleon III. He also married the daughter of the owner of his boarding house after a long and serious illness from which she helped him to recover. At 33, Mercier began his medical studies in Paris. After graduating, he moved his family back to New Orleans where he established his medical practice. During the Civil War Mercier returned to Paris and played an important part in efforts to convince France to support the Confederacy. Back in New Orleans again after the war, Mercier wrote reviews of performances given at the French Opera House for the New Orleans Picayune. A great lover of literature, Mercier spoke several languages and devoted himself to the preservation of the French language in Louisiana. He was a founding member of L'Athénée louisianais, and served as the organization’s secretary and treasurer until his death. In an article entitled "Progrès de la langue française" ("Progress of the French Language"), published in Les Comptes-Rendus de l'Athénée louisianais in September 1883, Mercier forecast the extinction of Francophone New Orleans in this nostalgic yet visionary prediction:

The day when we will no longer speak French in Louisiana, if that day ever arrives – which we do not believe – there will not be any more Creoles; the original and powerful group they formed in the great national family of the United States will have vanished, just as wine poured into a running river loses its flavor and color.

After publishing La fille du prêtre (The Priest's Daughter) in 1877, a novel that tackled the issue of ecclesiastic celibacy, Mercier was accused of being a free thinker and was nearly ostracized from the literary community in Francophone New Orleans. In 1881 he published L'Habitation Saint-Ybars (The Saint-Ybars Plantation). Reviews of this “récit social” (social narrative) praised Mercier’s liberal-mindedness and the boldness that drove him to compose much of the novel’s dialogue in the Louisiana Creole language. Grateful for his devotion to the French cause, the French government elected him “officier de la Légion d’Honneur” (officer in the Légion of Honor) in 1885. Mercier died in 1894 at the age of seventy-eight.
 

See: Edward Larocque Tinker. Les écrits de langue française en Louisiane au XIXème siècle. Essais biographique et bibliographique. (Paris: H. Champion, 1932).

Case 9 Gallery:

Pamphlet. "Etrenne offerte aux abonnés de l'Athénée", Alfred Mercier, (1888) in Pamphlets, Alfred Mercier.
[Hill Louisiana Rare Oversize PQ 3939 M5 A6 no.5 ]

Pamphlet. "La fièvre jaune, sa manière d'être à l'égard des étrangers à la Nouvelle-Orléans et dans les campagnes". Alfred Mercier. (Paris, Delahaye, 1860). in Pamphlets, Alfred Mercier.
[Hill Louisiana Rare PQ3939M5A6, no.1]

Photograph. “Alfred Mercier". in A History of Louisiana.Vol.3. Alcée Fortier. (New York: Goupil & co. of Paris, Manzi, Joyant & co., successors, 1904).
[Hill Louisiana F369 F74 1904a v. 4. c.1]

Engraving. "A Nurse Mammy." in Century Magazine, vol.31 no.6, April 1886.
[Hill Rare 051 C33]

Fiction. Le vieux Salomon, ou une famille d’esclaves au XIXème siecle. Charles Testut. (New Orleans, 1972).
[Hill Louisiana PQ 3939 .T4 V5 1872]

Fiction. L'Habitation Saint-Ybars ou Maîtres et Esclaves en Louisiane. Récit Social. Alfred Mercier (New Orleans: Imprimerie franco-américaine (E. Antoine), 1881).
[Hill Louisiana Rare PQ 3939 M5 H3 1881 c.3]