A Travelling Chair June 3, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Beach has recently been trying to explain to his daughters the meaning of an heirloom. Interesting how children lack the essential measure of time – Beach’s eldest is 5, and doesn’t really do ‘centuries’. ‘This ring was in our family before Granddad’s granddad was born’ cue blank expression and ‘Let’s watch Tom and Jerry’. Anyway wiping away the melancholy of the hopelessness of communication across the generations Beach revived himself with this little story of a chair passed down through countries and centuries. Half of it, perhaps all of it, isn’t true. But it is a nice story and who knows if this thing is still around, turned upside down in someone’s attic.
In a Berlin journal, which guarantees its truth, we find the following story:—An old woman, who lately died in the hospital, left a very old arm-chair, of Gothic style, richly decorated. In the sale of her effects, a foreigner paid 500 francs for the chair and surprise having been expressed at his giving so large a sum, he made this explanation The chair, with other articles, was offered by the States of Moeliren to Maria Theresa, and figured in her boudoir. After her death it, by her express desire, was sent to Marie Antoinette, in France, and afterwards was one of the pieces of furniture allowed to Louis the Sixteenth in the Temple. The King’s valet-de-chambre, Fleury, afterwards became possessed of the chair, and took it to England, where it became the property of the Prince Regent, and afterwards of the Duke of Cumberland. The latter took it to Berlin, and there it was given to an upholsterer to repair. The workman charged with the job found secreted in it a diamond pin, a portrait in pencil of a boy, and a number of sheets of paper filled with very small writing. The things he appropriated; the pin he sold, and the portrait and papers he gave to a watchmaker, a friend of his. Although the writing was in a foreign language the watchmaker succeeded in making out that it consisted of a series of secret and very important instructions, drawn up by Louis the Sixteenth for the Dauphm, his son, the portrait being that of the latter. The watchmaker, whose name was Naundorff, some years after gave himself out as Louis the Seventeenth, and produced the papers and portrait in question to prove his allegation. After making some noise in France and Belgium, in which latter country he passed by the name of Morel de Saint-Didier, this man died in 1849. His son, who called himself Duke of Normandy, went to Java, in 1853. The Berlin workman who discovered the documents naturally did not state how Naundorff became possessed of them; but just before his death, he made a full disclosure to his family. They found out that the famous arm-chair had remained in Berlin, and had come into possession of the old woman; and they caused it to be bought in order to sell it again in Austria.
Any other heirlooms: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
