Charles Lewis Meryon

Artist Info

Charles Lewis MeryonSussex, 1783 - 1877, London

LC name authority n 83800849

LC Heading: Meryon, Charles Lewis, 1783-1877

Biography:

Meryon, Charles Lewis (1783–1877), physician, son of Lewis Meryon of Rye in Sussex, of an old Huguenot family, was born on 27 June 1783. He was the uncle of Edward Meryon (bap. 1807, d. 1880). Meryon was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, London, from 1796 to 1802, and obtained a Stuart's exhibition to St John's College, Oxford; he matriculated on 29 March 1803, and graduated BA in 1806, MA in 1809, and BM and DM in 1817. He studied medicine at St Thomas's Hospital, London, under Henry Cline, on whose recommendation he was in 1810 engaged to accompany Lady Hester Stanhope, as her medical attendant, on a voyage to Sicily and the Middle East. He travelled with her for seven years, saw her finally settled at Mount Lebanon, and then returned to England in 1817 to take his medical degrees.

Meryon married shortly after his return and pursued his medical career. He was admitted as a candidate of the Royal College of Physicians on 26 June 1820, and as a fellow on 25 June 1821. Shortly afterwards he became domestic physician to Sir Gilbert Heathcote, but in 1827, at the earnest request of Lady Hester, he set out once more for Syria and Lebanon in company with his wife. They were attacked and plundered en route by pirates off Crete, and returned to Leghorn in Italy, where Mrs Meryon was unwilling to continue with their journey. The couple returned to England in 1828 but soon set out again; they arrived at Mount Lebanon in 1830. Lady Hester was then at the zenith of her power, and Meryon subsequently described with the utmost minuteness her complicated living arrangements, her tyranny, and her interminable conversations and cross-questionings, of which he himself was often a victim. Owing to disagreements, chiefly resulting from Lady Hester's intolerance of his wife, Meryon left Mount Lebanon in April 1831 and spent several years living in Nice. But along with his wife and daughter Eugenia he paid Lady Hester a final visit between 1837 and August 1838. After finally settling in London he published his Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope (3 vols.), in 1845. Although published earlier the Memoirs are in reality a sequel to the scarcely less entertaining Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope (2 vols., 1846). His relationship with Narcisse Chaspoux, a French ballet dancer, produced a son, also named Charles Meryon (1821–1867). Meryon died in London on 11 September 1877, at his home, 88 The Grove, Hammersmith, aged ninety-four.

Thomas Seccombe, rev. Michael Bevan

Sources V. Childs, Lady Hester Stanhope (1990) · Foster, Alum. Oxon. · C. J. Robinson, ed., A register of the scholars admitted into Merchant Taylors’ School, from AD 1562 to 1874, 2 (1883), 166 · Munk, Roll · Allibone, Dict. · CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1878)

Archives Bodl. Oxf., corresp. :: Wellcome L., corresp., incl. letters to Lady Hester Stanhope · Wellcome L., papers interleaved in volume of travels of Lady Hester Stanhope

Likenesses A. Meyer, oils, c.1846, RCP Lond. [see illus.] · photograph (as an old man), BM · portrait, repro. in [C. L. Meryon], Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope (1846), 3

Wealth at death under £5000: resworn probate, 29 Sept 1878, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

Thomas Seccombe, ‘Meryon, Charles Lewis (1783–1877)’, rev. Michael Bevan, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/18614, accessed 20 Oct 2015]