Recently the trustees of the deceased Edwin Merriman found a variety of photographs and papers relating to the career and affairs of his uncle, Charles Edward Merriman, an obscure yet influential early erotic photographer, artist and poet. Merriman's career had been an unusual one for a man of his background. He had started his working life as an apprentice printer and lithographer but moved into portrait photography whilst still a young man. He eventually set up his own studio but as a sideline started producing erotic or 'French' postcards, which were sold from a number of stalls on Tottenham Court Road through the 1880's and early 1890's. When Merriman fell foul of the oppressive indecency laws of the time he moved his operations to Paris where he prospered, not just as a photographer but also as a writer and graphic artist. Unfortunately most of his work was destroyed during the First World War so it was with great anticipation that we heard of this discovery among the possessions of his nephew Edwin.

These tinted photographs from the late 1890's give us a tantalising glimpse into the demi-monde that Merriman inhabited.

Alhough of course for Charles Albert his prime motive was to produce work as cheaply and as quickly as possible. As printing and photographic techniques improved the production of salacious images had become an extremely profitable business.

Although much of Merriman's work followed the conventional pornographic styles of the day there was still much in his work that can be considered ground-breaking. He lent a sensuous nature and compositional quality to his photographs that borrowed heavily from contemporary trends in the fine arts. 

Perhaps his most haunting study is that of Roxanne Fauchard, a well known actress and artists' model. The combination of innocence and intensity reaches out to us today, even with our cynical and world weary opinions;

Merriman's graphic works explore both his erotic interests and current artistic fashions. Here is his artwork for 'Green Fairy Absinthe';

And here is his artwork for 'Hussar Blend Tobacco';

While living in Paris Charles Albert frequented many of the notorious bars, cafes and bordellos of Montmatre. It was probably under the influence of absinthe and other intoxicants that he started composing the 'fleshly' poetry for which is now best known in obscure and academic literary circles.

MAGDALENA

Her gown so newly changed,

Her tresses hastily arranged

 Make we wonder

How stays she this refined?

Her boudoir seldom unattended

And by more than I frequented

Makes me wonder

What dreams therein recline?

Her sheets, though freshly spread,

Show sordid stains from other beds

And make me wonder

What loves have there been mimed?

Her skin, though lily white,

Bears bruises borne from other nights

And makes me wonder

Her platitudes sublime.

Yet her blissful, sinless kisses

Betray no taste of such caresses

And make me wonder

Her countenance divine.

Chambers of Albion

Languid passions hung with nectar

From the sweetest flowers gleaned

Pages torn from childhood wonders

Opaqued within the scented air.

Breathing deeply of her fancies

She transforms love to desires

Were I yet to chance her chamber

I would i imagine should I dare.

The qualities residing in there

Who indeed becomes the aim

Of her sweet demure frlirtatious

With the world outside her lair.

Is She lost  in dreams of beauty

Kissed from lids of lovers past

Only sisters for her suitors

Eden’s fruits upon their lips.

She wanders now with silken footsteps

Over lawns of velvet green

As a kitten’s yet unbuttered

She leads the way behind the screen

That shields me from desires improper

And for years I have forgone

I had once hoped I would avoid them

Yet held in trust for death’s sweet dream.

When she wakes is when we slumber

When she loves is when we cry

Sweet aurora, sweet anima,.

Dream’s desires anaesthetised.

 -

 Through a window glimpsed in wonder

As I walked through Gaslit streets

I chanced again upon her beauty

And dared again to rap her door.

Could I rouse her, gain her fancy

Perchance I could then call again

Arrange to visit  at her leisure

Leave my card as I depart.

Emboldened by the potions granted

Of my daily wanton ways

I chanced to pluck the fruits of passion,

retraced the steps of bygone days.

Her portals  opened hung with petals

Of lilies hued with joy not woe

She parts her sheets and plumps the pillows

I wander now wher’ere she goes.

My ventures lost in nights of passion,

Disdaining now the watchful gaze

Of prudent sceptics shorn of vision

Shackled to the desks of days.

I sleep now on the ships of fancy

Anchored in her wondrous bays

Where the sounds of pleasant nightfall

Hum lullabies over lapping waves.

When she wakes is when I slumber

When she sleeps is when I cry

Sweet aurora, sweet anima,

Dreams desires anaethetised.

Ode to a Long Dead Dreamer

What happened to the dreams

When my dreamer died,

Did they follow her to heaven

As feathers on her wings

Or fade as my poor love did wane

And only now can smile

Through ancient frames?

What plots had she imagined,

What loves had she enjoyed

When reading through the pages

Of a book long since destroyed?

When she looks at us from decades past

I wonder now what

caused her hands to wander in those dreams?

What happened to the dreams

When my dreamer died?

Do they mourn her

Do they miss her

Do they wish that they could kiss her

As I may wish on certain lonely nights...

Or did they rather vanish, never to return,

As my dreamer died.

 SLEEP OF THE SERAPHS' SISTERS

However, it is as a decadent author and poet that Charles Edward Merriman is best, and most notoriously, known in England. He returned penniless to London after the First World War and re-acquanted himself with some of his cohorts from the 'Gay Nineties'. A burgeoning night club scene was growing in London's Soho where nightclubs like the notorious 'Cave Of The Golden Calf' blossomed. Here occultists, junkies, decadents, prostitutes (both male and female), impoverished poets, dancers, actors and artists coalesced in what was to become a fertile breeding ground for creativity, drug abuse and scandal. Merriman's performance work 'Sleep Of The Seraphs' Sisters' is as much a paen for a lost generation as it is an outpouring Merriman's own grief for the loss of much of his own work during the war. 'Sleep of the Seraphs' Sisters' took the form of long dance and musical sequences (in the contemporary styles of Loie Fuller and Maud Allen) interspersed with poetic recitals by the performers. No two performances were the same and allegedly proceedings were known to take very unusual turns indeed. Below is a copy of the original work from 1919 followed by a transcription.

The Goddess of Sleep

For Saint Columba, the English were a race of angels. ‘Not angles’ he had exclaimed, ‘but angels’. The bloodbath of the great war saw that race of aspirant seraphim stripped of its’ sons, first born, second born, all, perhaps in way of atonement for the enslavement of so many others in the name of god and empire, perhaps in way of retribution. As angels were seen over battlefields and visiting the bereaved at home, the body and blood of Anglican manhood was blown into the firmament never to return or spread its' seed again. The sisters were all that remained. There would be no Passover for the race that mistook itself for seraphim once the real angel of death had visited the chlorine choked trenches and bottomless pits of no-man’s land. The sisters would have to settle their longings and forget their losses. The sisters would endure and live to rectify the vanities and the fallacies of the past…the nation of seraphim was no more.

In order to commune with the fallen angels, the sisters partook of certain rituals, first performed by the poetess Sappho on the island of Lesbos whilst she wept for Orpheus,

as they wept for their brothers too. They in turn appeased and intoxicated the gods with ambrosia to ensure, for the duration of their tranquillity, peace on earth and heaven. The sisters would also sleep, heavy lidded from the ingestion of their own names and, upon waking from their death-like slumber, found each time the world was not as they had left it, though they would return each time the same.

---   

                                                      The Morphiniste

Open, gates of paradise, open unto me

As one more time and time once more

I tremble with your key.

I tremble with your key again then ecstasy outride

As now within your walls I sleep,

Enraptured thief inside.

Enraptured thief inside, I say, yet prisoner as well,

For having dared to steal thy gifts I’m sentenced now to dwell

Within the realms of paradise, the palaces of pleasure,

A servant to my dying wish,

Blessed and cursed with equal measure.

---

The Smokers of Hemp and Tobacco

Come languid plumes of blue recount

Your many lurid tales,

Hasan-I-Sabah, Scheherezade,

And many more regale.

To fascinate, transport in time,

To wile away this hour,

Take us to your paradise

Where feasts we may devour.

Daughters of the Hashisheen,

Oh Genie, now obey,

From your bottle please arise

And while away the day

With pleasures that are many

And pleasures that are few

And pleasures we alone can grant

And gladly grant to you.

So come elusive sacrament

Within our souls rejoice

In giving pleasure to our hearts

And poetry a voice.

…

The Absinsetheuse and Cocaine Fanatic

Both our pleasures do require

A ritual enacted.

In order to enjoy our vice

                                                              It first must be extracted.

---

The Cocaine Fanatic

Like snuff, which ladies all agree,

The sinuses displease,

The extract of the coca plant

Can also make one sneeze.

So let us waste no granules

Propelled into the void,

Instead a hypodermic

Is most usefully employed.

The syringe itself, compact, discreet,

Is ladylike and charming,

To snort and sniff the opposite,

Impolite and alarming.

And furthermore, for time is short

And rations delectation,

When accessed through a vein like so

One speeds intoxication.

---

The Absintheuse

A lump of sugar thus dissolved

Within a naked spark

Brings such delights when blended

With distilled wormwood bark.

But lo, my friends, I hear you cry,

What demon feeds this flame!

To this, dear friends, my curt retort,

Absinthe our faerie’s name.

And though abstainers may tell tales

Of madness in her slumber

They will never stamp her out…

I know my devil’s number!

Come, green faerie, fly with me,

Fan prohibition’s fears.

Your kiss will be revered once more

Within a hundred years.

---

The Absintheuse , Cocaine Fanatic, Morphiniste, Smoker of Hemp and Smoker of Tobacco.

From society to demimonde,

Riches into rags,

Our vices flirt with one and all,

With debutantes and hags.

Our activities may scandalise,

Nay, cause a moral panic,

But who can judge and judge alone

But Majesties Satanic!

Perhaps too late to realise,

Once ventured in their realm,

That black is white and white is black

Now Charon guides the helm.

In passing through the doors once more

Illusion guides us well,

If man was made in God’s own form

Then lead us into Hell!

---

The Lotophage

Now gaze at the still waters, into the mirror of your dreams,

Know love that lasts once ventured as it carries you downstream.

Though nothing can restore what we have lost but never known

The sisters of fair sleep in our minds’ gardens here have grown

Such wonders as the ancient world could never then produce

And modern ways of science may never yet deduce.

These wonders metaphysic work fantasies sublime

Come with us all, good sister, at our table do imbibe

And tell us yet of Seraphim, Angelic and on high

And tell us yet, dear Seraphim, why is it you must die?

---

The Sisters

AND TELL US YET, DEAR SERAPHIM, WHY IS IT YOU MUST DIE?

…

The Smoker of Opium

And as we slept, our losses seemed more acute

and yet more bearable.

The comfort of my sisters

and the realisation of our names gave

Such power to our dreaming that the gods

were not only enamoured of our rapture

but intimate to our will.

As their names became our names too,

so we knew them and forced their hands

in sleep to surrender such power unto us

as they had feared and kept hidden

since the first hours of our persecution.

---

 

The Goddess of Sleep

And in that sleep they remembered

The epithets of sisters past,

As they slept

Those names became an incantation.

---

The Sisters

EVE, THE HESPERIDES, THE ASPARASAS, THE HOURIS,

CIRCE, PYTHIA, HELEN OF TROY,

DEMETER, PERSEPHONE, EURYDYCE, SAPPHO,

LUNA, MAMA COCA, PANACEA, MEDEE,

HATHOR, ISIS, NEFERTITI, CLEOPATRA,

HAGAR, DUNYAZAD, FAIR SHEHERAZADE.

---

The Goddess of Sleep

Whilst these denominations were recalled,

New voices clamoured to be ranked amongst them.

Their names hung as vapour upon

                                                The sweet breath of the sleeping sisters.

---

The Sisters

AURORE, MARGARET, CHARLOTTE, EMILY,

MARY, ELIZABETH, MARIA, MARIE,

GERTRUDE, ALICE, ALMA, BILLIE,

ANNA, OLIVE, MINA, CARESSE,

LOUISA, EMILY, RADCLYFFE, LALA,

CHRISTINA, ISABELLE, SARAH, JANE…

---

The Goddess of Sleep

And as the hoarse, reactionary voices of the dry old gods, impotent now,

bemoaned the threat of miscegenation from their dusty pulpits,

The sisters of the seraphim grew stronger. In their sleep they had pronounced their desires

and named them. You are their children and their grandchildren. And though you never

knew your uncles for their brothers all had died, do not mourn the passing of such dim and

distant angels, for they have found new ways and means with which to fly.

FINIS

Obviously in the wake of the Great War and subsequent 'Dope Girl' scandals Merriman's notoriety was guaranteed. He was feted by artists and occultists and at one point considered moving to Berlin, by then the world capital of decadence, or even Hollywood. We don't however know what became of Merriman after this time and rumours of his debauchery abound. Until now he had faded into history but who knows, maybe this discovery is just the first of many.