Publisher's Synopsis
....The preface by the translator, Henri Pene du Bois, describes the author's interesting personality, and mentions the principal facts of his well-known career. He, the translator, quotes Goncourt as saying that Merimee talked slowly, as if he were distilling words; that as he talked he made glacial coldness fall around him; that his irony was dry. wicked, astonishing, and domineering. He, the translator, goes on, however, to tell of Goncourt's dislike of Merimee. and adds that Hugo, Gautier, Banville, and George Sand were equally prejudiced against him.
"He found on George Sand's table one day, while he was waiting for her in her drawing-room, a portrait of him in prose, which she had written. George Sand, half dressed, rushed into the drawing-room and tore the manuscript from his hands. He said: 'These lines are true, perhaps. but they are not flattering. I confess I am sorry I was honest, and did not steal them. I would have burned them."
But no reader of his "Letters to an Unknown" will accept any such estimate of the character revealed between the lines, so tender, so loyal, so profoundly pathetic to the very end, for the death. Of the work itself there is nothing to say that has not been said many times by the lovers of the best in literature. It is interesting, however, to be reminded by the translator that Merimee's apartments were burned by the Communists six months after his death, and that his paintings, books, medals, manuscripts, and letters were destroyed. which is supposed to be the reason why there are no letters from the Unknown.
--The Bookman: A Review of Books and Life [1888]
