Élisa Mercœur (24 June 1809 in Saint-Sébastien-sur-Loire, 7 January 1835 in Paris) was a French writer, poet and essayist and was one of the most prominent names in Breton Romanticism. Mercœur was a child prodigy and autodidact, who published two collections of elegies, the first one when she was 16. During her lifetime, she was known as "La Muse armoricaine" (The Armorican Muse) and was widely known throughout France. After Mercœur's death in 1835, her mother posthumously edited her work to ensure it survived for posterity and in the process constructed much of her modern image as a virginal child prodigy. According to Wendy Greenberg, "her notoriety was based on an apparent acceptance of dominant views concerning femininity and shows clear engagement with the model of masculine genius and voice". Mercœur is renowned more for her tragically short life rather than her poetry, which has largely been forgotten. It wasn't until 1990 with the publication of Geoffroy Daniel's biography "Elisa Mercoeur Nantaise romantique" that she began to be more widely known.
Life Mercoeur's mother was Adèlaïde (or Adèle) Aumand, an embroiderer who was born in 1780 in Nantes. Her father was Jules-François Barré, a solicitor in the Vendée department of the Les Landes-Genusson region. Adélaïde came from a bourgeois family, her father was a surgeon, her grandfather a notary. Her job as an embroiderer corresponded to the professional use of a hobby for young girls of good society.
A number of biographical details were provided by her mother in her Memoirs. However, she does not mention a significant aspect of Élisa's life: she was abandoned at birth and, although Élisa's first name came from her parents, the name Mercœur was given to her by a police commissioner in Nantes. Elisa's abandonment is recorded in the Nantes birth register, First Division, on 3 July 1809. Further research was carried out by the Franciscan Ubald d'Alençon (1872-1927) in 1925. An article by Paul Caillaud in the Annales de Bretagne journal (1952) gives a detailed account.
Abandoned at birth As the couple were unable to afford to look after their baby, her mother abandoned Mercoeur when she was only three days old. On 27 June 1809 at 10pm, the baby was taken in at the door of the Nantes Orphans' Hospice (Hospice des Orphelins, Nantes), located in the Saint-Clément district near the lycée and La Bouteillerie Cemetery, by Jean Favret, an employee of the orphanage. The baby carried a piece of paper with these words:
"Élisa, born 24 June 1809, not registered in civil acts. Heaven and gentle humanity will watch over her. Her parents may be happy enough to claim her one day."
At 4 p.m. on 28 June, Jean Favret presented the baby to Police Commissioner Sébastien-Barthélemy Benoist, who was primarily responsible for orphans in the Lycée district, and who, in view of the information presented, gave her the name Élisa Mercœur. Mercœur was the name of a street in Nantes. The baby was then taken to the orphanage. On 21 April 1811, as she had wished, her mother, Adélaïde Aumand, took Élisa back from the orphanage; in the Memoirs, this event appears as "she was twenty-one months old when I was left alone to raise her". Adélaïde Aumand accepted the name given by Benoist.
Early life On 2 March 1825, Mercœur's father died, leaving the family essentially destitute. Adèle Aumand, who was now single, and her daughter were registered in 1818 and 1826, at the same address at 30 rue du Calvaire in Nantes. In 1818, they had two rooms for 40 francs in rent; in 1826, only one piece for 30 francs: the death of Jules-François Barré made their situation more precarious.
Mercœur certainly knew her father, as she wrote a poem about his death on 31 March 1825:
Du sommeil de la mort tout prêt à s'endormir… Mon père retenait son âme délirante Par les liens du souvenir.
Poised to fall into the sleep of death, my father yet holds his delirious soul by the ties of memory
Child prodigy Mercœur was only twenty-one months old when her mother remained alone to raise her, with more than limited resources. A friend of the family came to their aid and took care of the child's educational expenses. According to her mother, Mercœur was a little wonder. At six years old, she was already constructing subjects for tales and comedy. At eight, she wanted to compose a tragedy in five acts and in verse for the Comédie-Française. At twelve years old, Mercœur gave her young companions lessons in history, geography, writing, English and French. She also read Virgil openly and knew a little Greek and Italian.
The first time that Mercœur had the opportunity to reveal her literary talent to the public was the day of the debut, on the theatre of Nantes, of a famous singer. Élisa Mercœur wrote a piece of eighteen verses in one go and sent it to her address. The next day, the whole town applauded this poetic essay published by an unofficial friend in the newspaper Le Lycée Armoricain. At the age of sixteen, Mercœur who published a number of other poems, was quickly given the nickname the "Armorican Muse".
Published poet
Mercœur, who was looking for recognition and encouraged by her friends, decided to approach a printer Mélinet-Malassis in Nantes in 1825. Camille Mélinet agreed to print her first poem "Dors, mon Ami" that would be part of the volume of verses "Poesies", in the "Journal de Nantes". Due to the quality of her work, Mélinet took an interest in Mercœur and offered her a contract to print further pieces on a monthly basis in the Lycée Armoricain, a newspaper that appeared between 1823 and 1831, and was distributed to cities all over France. Every month Mercœur would write a new poem to be published and once published, Mélinet would send her a copy of the newspaper, so Mercœur could read the letters and reviews.
At the end of 1825, Mélinet encouraged Mercœur to compete for the prizes being awarded by the in both the years of 1825 and 1826. The subjects were on the Lighthouse of the Plateau du Four for 1825 and the Combat of the Thirty for 1826. While Mercœur didn't win anything, her work did get an honourable mention.
After a year of publishing poems, Mercœur was so widely known that she was elected as a corresponding member to the Academy of Lyon in October 1826. The intellectual society, whose motto was "Union and tolerance" was chaired by François-René de Chateaubriand. In January 1827, Mercœur wrote the poem "La Pensée" specifically for the academy. The historian Alphonse Rastoul describes the "vague and dreamy" nature of Mercœur's work that compares favourably with the English poets of the time. Thanks to the encouragement that came from all quarters, Mercœur's reputation soon spread throughout France. The recognition that Mercœur for her work corpus resulted in her being elected first to and then later in May 1927, to the Academic Society of Nantes and Loire-Atlantique. But all these successes, all these honours were not enough for Mercœur who, from 1827, seemed to focus on her verses complaining about her fate and regretting the alleged forgetfulness in which she was left. Nothing was more unfair than those complaints. Since the publication of her volume, the newspapers had surprised her with their praises, subscriptions abounded and high-ranking people, including the Marie-Caroline of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duchess of Berry, had sent her praises. However, with no income and no wish to work as an embroiderer, Mercœur sought other paid activity by placing an advert in the Journal de Nantes offering private lessons in English, French, geography and mythology as well as a translating from French to English.
In November 1826, Camile Mellinet created the "Le Breton" liberal newspaper. The paper encouraged women to take part in the arts and letters but not to meddle in philosophy and politics. It states:
"We believe that, in the order of creation, women have been destined for a nobler role and we will never complain that she is cultivated by the arts and letters. Let her exhibit at the salon, let her cheer on our theaters, let her thoughts be applauded. Women, teach us by enchanting consolations of the earth, celebrate your joys and loves, drag us into your sweet dreams"
Mercœur's sensuous emotive poetry follows this assumption. Described as an imitator of André Chénier, Alphonse de Lamartine and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, she is capable of "looking out of time" with poems "The Song of the Scottish Bard" or "Childe-Harold, Imitation of Lord Byron". Whatever one thinks of the virginal composition that she eventually identifies as her own lyrical muse that is reflected in her mother's virginal characterisation after her death, in Mercœur's work it can be seen that she was at ease with the harmonious in accordance with contemporary tastes.
Elegies In 1827, Mellinet offered Mercœur a contract for a collection of poetry which was produced in June 1827 with a printing of 2700 copies. The collection was dedicated to François-René de Chateaubriand. The first poem, titled À Chateaubriand (To Chateaubriand), was addressed to him, written as an invocation, the ending of which has the following: "I need, feeble child, someone watching over my cradle. And the eagle can, at least, in the shadow of its wing, protect the timid bird". The eagle replied to the shy bird, which he could not offer any shelter to anyone, in the form of a letter that was reproduced in the Nantes press on 18 July 1827. Ludovic Chapplain, a writer and publisher reviewed the collection in Lycée Armoricain. He stated the collection has the "soft and light chords" of the first works, but more expressiveness and "more male accents" later. He described Mercœur as a "women of letters" who has attained "a complete emancipation", and has succeeded in abolishing "the dividing line that had separated the sexes". Finally thus:
"She wants ... although she has the misfortune of being both a woman, a poet and a provincial woman, trying to make people forget these very serious wrongs in the eyes of Parisian readers, to get her compatriots to approve a collection of poetry; in a word, to obtain a literary success in her hometown".
On 21 July 1827 the "Breton" newspaper, created in November 1826 by Camile Mellinet stated of the appearance of the elegy:
"..."Mercœur is the only Breton woman who dared to call herself a poet in her own province and present herself with a volume by hand to the eyes of her stunned compatriots. A single female author with a small collection. It is not too much, especially when several hundred of his fellows can, in the capital, be impending poets, philosophers, learned, playwrights or simply making novels"
Paris After Mercœur's elegy was published, she was still without a regular income but still insisting that she wanted to live off of her poetry. In June 1828, Marie-Caroline of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duchess of Berry visited Nantes. Mercœur organised the festivities, wrote a poem for the Duchess and recited it in her presence while at the Grand Ball. However, she was sidelined for the next ceremony and didn't understand the reason why it happened as she didn't understand the current political situation in pre-revolutionary France.