(1755 - 98), dilettante poet and dramatist, s. of John Merry, gov. of Hudson's Bay Company; educ. Harrow and Christ's Camb. 1771; L.Inn 1770; army officer in the Hse. Gds.
1780 - 7 Turin (by 20 Mar. 1780), Florence (by 1781 - 7) [England spring 1787]
With 'elegant and airy Manners' and a radical disposition, Merry spent some seven years in Florence, writing occasional verses and enjoying the favours of the Countess Cowper. He had previously led a dissipated life in the British army before going abroad in 1780. On 20 March he was presented at the Court in Turin1 and by the spring of 1781 he had settled in Florence;2 in December 1783 he said he had already lived there for three years.3
In 1782 he published an Ode on Lord Rodney's defeat of the French in the West Indies and in the following year he published his Arno Miscellany, a poetical anthology 'printed for the amusement of [the contributors'] friends', to which the aging Allan Ramsay, then staying in Florence, somewhat surprisingly agreed to contribute: according to his son, Ramsay 'kept up a poetical correspondence' with Merry.4 In June 1785 Merry met Mrs Piozzi who introduced him to those kindred spirits Bertie Greatheed and William Parsons, all of whom were staying in Megit's hotel. Together they contributed to The Florence Miscellany, another verse anthology published that year, see Hester Piozzi. When Merry was threatened with arrest by Megit (the cause unknown) the group moved to another hotel.5
Merry achieved further notoriety through his affair with the young Countess Cowper (see Hannah Gore). In May 1784 Thomas Brand had observed his 'old pupil Merry' acting as her Cicisbeo, 'but I think she keeps him at a great distance as if he were her Maitre d'Hotel or Primo Gentiluomo di Camera',7 but by November 1784 their affair was generally known.8 That year Merry had sat to H.D. Hamilton, Sir James Hall seeing the portrait in the artist's studio on 12 November.6
Merry returned to England in the spring of 1787. He continued to write verse, adopting the pseudonym 'Della Crusca' as an acknowledgment of his sympathy for the Florentine poets whose Accademia della Crusca had been suppressed in 1783. Merry's political support of the French Revolution then made it expedient for him to travel to America, where he died in 1798.
1. AST cf. 2. Kelly, Reminiscences, 1:107. 3. Parkinson jnl.mss (30 Dec. 1783). 4. Ramsay jnl.mss (23 Mar 1783). Ramsay 1992, 275 - 6. 5. Thraliana, 2:643n3. 6. Hall jnl.mss 6326, f.200v. 7. Brand letters mss d (16 May 1784). 8. A. Hayward Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs Piozzi [1861], 1:330, and Hall jnl.mss 6326, f.184.
H.G. B.