Herman Charles Merivale

Who was Herman Charles Merivale?

Herman Charles Merivale MA was an English dramatist and poet, son of Herman Merivale. He also used the punning pseudonym Felix Dale.

A barrister, writer, and civil servant who was Permanent Under-Secretary of the India Office, he was educated at Harrow School and Balliol College, Oxford, where Algernon Charles Swinburne and Charles Bowen were his contemporaries. He graduated BA in 1861. At his father's home he met many distinguished men, including Lord Robert Cecil, who became a lifelong friend. His friends in literary and dramatic circles included William Makepeace Thackeray, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Matthew Arnold, Anthony Trollope, W. S. Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan, Edmund Yates, Charles Dickens and others.

Following his father's death in 1874 he gave up the law in favour of literature and the theatre. Merivale wrote many farces and burlesques. For John Hollingshead he produced a burlesque, The Lady of Lyons Married and Settled, performed at the Gaiety Theatre, and Called There and Back. The Butler and The Don were both written for the actor J. L. Toole.