"A YANKEE DAUPHIN." * THERE may be said to be
four, if not five, pseudo-Dauphins of the first class. How many lesser incarnations,—may be calcu- lated according to the general love of looking for mares'-nests. The line may stretch out to the crack of doom. After the death of Naundorff, the most pretentious of the Pretenders, his family were still preferring their claims in the Paris Courts of Law against the Comte de Chambord in 1874. We are told that there is a weekly paper still published at Bordeaux, entitled La LegitimiM, which perseveres in main- taining their rights. Naundorff's story is a difficult nut to crack before we turn to any other claimant ; and 253 pages of this volume, containing in all 358, are devoted to routing him, bag and baggage, from the field. The writer concludes thus,—" So far as he is concerned, the testimony relative to his asserted identity with the Dauphin is all comprised within his short autobiography, and any sensible person studying "that work in a scientific and critical spirit cannot fail te 'be convinced of its essential falsity." The verdict on Mr. Williams's pretension may be the same, but with a difference. Eleazar Williams has left no autobiography at all. The author uses the Naundorff ingenuity of narrative, and . accumulates the Naundorff evidence that the Captive of the Temple did not die in the Temple, to get over the initial difficulties of her task, and starts at Albany, New York, - quickly, however, transferring her boy to an Indian wigwam at Ticonderoga. " Elegantly-dressed " Frenchmen—some of whom were eminent nobles—come and go on the romantic . stage. We escape the usual insinuations of the Comte de ,Provence's treachery and the Duchesse d'Angouleme's consent to it. They are kept for the Naundorff narrative. Williams was for some dim reason carried off by a Mr. Ely, Congrega- tional minister, to Long Meadow, Mass. The boy took kindly to his books ; his new patron, Mr. Ely, said he "was born to be a great man." Somebody came who looked at his feet and legs, and these are given as three considerable links in the • chain of conjecture that he was the legitimate King of France. Ile "cherished the idea of his superiority to every other person," "which he attributed to his Indian blood." Then came "fantastic descriptions of splendid existence," He was considered as inclined to be romantic ; his cousin feared for his sanity. He kept a journal from the time he was eighteen. He suffered a " religious revival," and began an independent career as a Protestant missionary. Here begin some suggestions of a Popish plot, for there seems to have been no more money forthcoming for his maintenance, as before, when he adopted his new profession. His health was delicate, and he was obliged to "resort to change of air and scene." He became acquainted with a Catholic priest, who questioned him about some boy who had been brought from France and left among the Indians. Then "Mr. Ely's conduct on this occasion was very singular." He went to hear the music in a Catholic church on a Sunday ! But Mr. Ely died in 1808, and Eleazar worked as well as his health would allow among the Indians near Montreal, and • controverted the Catholic missionaries as much as he could. He fell in love with "a member of the Dwight family," but his suit did not prosper, as "the mystery of his origin seemed to imply an illegitimate birth." Sergeant Buzfuz alone could have interpreted with sufficient profundity the few remaining evidences of Eleazar's exalted birth. "Chops and tomato sauce" can be made to involve very tremendous issues. Only Sergeant Buzfuz could do justice to the one important, if it were not incredible, incident of the excitable young mission- ary's life. In 1841 the Prince de Joinville, stated by the author to have been the eldest son of Louis Philippe, made a tour in the United States. We know how France and Chilteaubriand had interested themselves in the Indian races of North America. The Royal tourist was an inquiring young gentleman, and he heard that Eleazar Williams had influence among these races. But the "chops and tomato sauce" must be treated seriously. He asked his long-lost cousin to meet him on board a .steamer as be passed through Canada. When he saw Wil- • The Story of Louis XVII of Prance, By Elizabeth E. Evang. London : Swan Sonnonsohein and Co. 1893. llama, "the Prince started with involuntary surprise. His manner betrayed great agitation of feeling. He turned pale, and his lip quivered." There was a good deal of conversation about the "connection of France with American Revolution" that day and the nest. Arrived at an hotel, the Prince received Eleazar "alone in his chamber," revealed to him his birth, "took out of his trunk an elaborate parchment, and put it on the table, where were already pen, ink, wax, and a costly seal." No doubt the costliness of the seal adds local colour to the discovered Dauphin.
It was a form of abdication, with an offer of a princely establishment either in France or America if Eleazar would only sign it. The humble missionary would not, however, give up his own rights or sacrifice the interests of his family. But meantime he assumed the position of a superior, and scolded the Prince, who stood in respectful silence, for the line the Orleans family had taken in the affairs of his family. Nothing can surprise the reader after this ; but they will be somewhat relieved when they read Eleazar's own account of the scene, for they will see how his imagination may have played him tricks for which he was probably irresponsible.
In 1853, twelve years after the Prince de Joinville's visit, an article appeared in Pub?, s Magazine, New York, entitled, "Have we a Bourbon among us ? " The answer from the Prince de Joinville was immediate, for copies of the maga- zine had been sent to him. His secretary, M. Trognon, wrote that the Prince was disposed to treat the story with the indifference it deserved, and then, as "a small portion of truth was mingled with the great mass of false- hood, he considered it wise to state what really happened in his intercourse with this Pretender." Much as we have already described, the Prince's interest in Williams did not go beyond the history of the French settlement in North America. In short, Eleazar had suffered a severe stroke of imagination. William's relations of the day disowned the poor man's dreams so long ago as 1847, and he seemed hence- forward, as his present champion, who is some connection of his, says, "to have no rightful place among his fellow-men. Ignored by his royal kin across the sea, regarded askance by his spiritual brethren in the ministry," this victim of am- bitious fancy had no doubt much to bear ; but the ingenious author adds that "his affliction was mercifully tempered by the induced effects which had prevented his full development throughout his unfortunate career." Exactly so; and "popu- lar belief" was not far wrong in thinking "that he had gone crazy over the idea of his being the 'lost Prince.'
The bibliographer of pseudo-Dauphins finds in the history of Naundorff far more dangerous stuff than poor Williams gathered round him. "He is an impostor, but a very skilful one," the Duchesse d'Angouleme remarked, and she had large experience of false brothers, each of course referring to her as the best if not the only living witness to the prison scenes in the Temple. She has been aspersed for her hardness of heart towards those numerous Dauphins. The blackest sup- pressions were ascribed to her uncle, Louis XVIII., which might indeed have been conceivable if they had not been, on the whole, impolitic; but Marie Therese, the "Orphan of the Temple," the Antigone of the Bourbons, was austerely virtuous. It is impossible to think of her but as a devotee to, the memory of her kindred, one and all, with whom she had shared the prison of the Temple. The shafts aimed at her uncle glanced aside from her as from a venerated and saintly but stony figure in a shrine. She wrote on December 12th, 1833, six years after Naundorff's appearance in Paris, in answer to one of the many petitions addressed to her by his adherents "I have too much certainty of the death of my brother to be able to recognise him in the person who now presents himself. The proofs which he gives me are not sufficiently clear. I have no remembrance of the incidents of which he reminds me, and I cannot consent to the interview which he proposes. I am not frightened by the threats which he ventures to pronounce. Let him give me more positive proofs, if he has any.--IL T."
The Duchesse, when she wrote thus after the final exile of her family from France, had no urgent political schemes to further, as was suggested in 1814, when France was ebullient with delight that the empire of Napoleon had apparently come to an end, and in its frantic loyalty might have snatched up and reinstated the victim of its former disloyalty could he have been found. At Prague, Marie Therese might have, prudently or not, welcomed a harmless Due de Normandie had she been the most intriguing of politicians. The cer- Minty of the death of her brother had never been shaken, and without fresh investigation of a fact proved in so many law-courts, we think there can be no case for any pretender until that fact can be set aside.
In 1851, the widow and children of Naundorff brought an action at law against the Comte de Chambord for a restitu- tion on his part of their rights, before the Civil Court of the Seine. In 1874, when the Imperial system had given place to the Republic, the plaintiffs appealed again. M. Jules Fevre spoke for several days consecutively in support of the Naundorff claim, and the able advocate recapitulated every circumstance that could give colour to it, going at great length into the question of the death of the Dauphin, or uncrowned Louis XVII., in the Temple. It was certainly the most for- midable argument that had been yet heard in disproof of that primary fact. The Paris Court of Appeal in a long judgment met each point of M. Favre's argument. We can but quote the clauses touching the fact of the Dauphin's death which sum up the convictions of all the more intimate adherents of the elder Bourbons, and of all descendants of the devoted followers of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, to whom the history of the Temple was almost Holy Writ :— " Considering that Louis Charles, Duke of Normandy, son of the King Louis XVI., died in the tower of the Temple at Paris, the 8th of June, 1795, as has been declared in an authentic certificate of his death, dated the 12th of the same month (24 Prairial, year III.); that this certificate, which had been preserved in the archives of the Hotel de Ville of Paris, and which existed at the date of judgment, was destroyed in 1871, with all the municipal archives, in the conflagration during the Commune, but of which =contro- verted copies exist, and one of which was especially produced by the appellants in their preliminary writ of instance ; considering that the certificate of death aforesaid was made out in due form, and within lawful delay by the public officer, on the declaration of two witnesses, according to the law then in force of the 24th December, 1792 ;" —the Court, after carefully showing how flimsy was the evi- dence in proof of any substitution of another boy for the real Dauphin, adds :— " Considering finally that this judgment only accords so full an examination of motives, and one possibly beyond what is suitable to the character of the suit, in order that the barriers of justice may be the higher raised against the audacious attempt to usurp a royal name, and to falsify history ;—on these grounds, and moreover, adopting those taken by the first Judges, the Court annuls the appeal, confirms the judgment which nonsuited the widow Naundorff and her children, and condemns them in costs."
There are always persons who demand for certain events rigid proofs that are seldom forthcoming in the misty and uncertain ways of human life, specially misty and uncer- tain in periods of revolution ; but to reasonable minds the Dauphin's death is as certain as that of Queen Anne is gener- ally supposed to be. Meantime, the champion in this volume of Eleazar Williams has written a well-composed and curious story. It betrays here and there an ingenuous indifference to the ways of European royalty ; but that somewhat breaks the monotony of the old argument.
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