famous imposter 6

famous imposter 6

The second and third aspirants to the honour of the vacant crown were

inconspicuous persons possessing neither personal qualification nor

apparent claim of any sort except that of a desire for acquisition. One

was Persat, an old soldier; the other, Fontolive, a bricklayer. The

pretence of either of these men would have been entirely ridiculous but

for its entirely tragic consequences. There is short shrift for the

unsuccessful impostor of royalty--even in an age of fluctuation between

rebellion and anarchy.

 

The fourth pretender was at least a better workman at crime than his

predecessors. This was Mathurin Brunneau--ostensibly a shoemaker

but in reality a vagabond peasant from Vezins, in the department of

Maine-et-Loire. He was a born criminal as was shown by his early

record. When only eleven years of age he claimed to be the son of the

lord of the village, Baron de Vezins. He obtained the sympathy of the

Countess de Turpin de Crisse, who seemed to have compassion for the

boy. Even when the fraud of his parentage was found out she took him

back into her household--but amongst the servants. After this his life

became one of adventure. When he was fifteen he made a tour through

France. In 1803 he was put in the House of Correction at St. Denis. In

1805 he enlisted as a gunner. In 1815 he re-appeared with an American

passport bearing the name of Charles de Navarre. His more ambitious

attempt at personation in 1817, was not in the long run successful.

He claimed his rights, as “Dauphin” Bourbon under Louis XVIII, was

arrested at St. Malo, and confined at Bicêtre. He got round him a

gang of persons of evil life, as shown by their various records. One

was a false priest, another a prisoner for embezzlement, another an

ex-bailiff who was also a forger, another a deserter; with the usual

criminal concomitant of women, dishonoured clergy and such like. At

Rouen he was sentenced to pay a fine of three thousand francs in

addition to imprisonment for seven years. He died in prison.

 

The imposture regarding the Dauphin was like a torch-race--so soon

as the lighted torch fell from the hand of one runner it was lifted

by him who followed. Brunneau, having disappeared into the prison at

Rouen, was succeeded by Henri Herbert who made a dramatic appearance in

Austria in 1818. At the Court in Mantone, the scene of his appearance,

he gave the name of Louis Charles de Bourbon, Duc de Normandie.

His account of himself, given in his book published in 1831, and

republished--with enlargements, by Chevalier del Corso in 1850, is

without any respect at all for the credulity of his readers.

 

The story tells how an alleged doctor, one answering to the not common

name of Jenais-Ojardias, some time before the death of the Dauphin had

had made a toy horse of sufficient size to contain the baby king, the

opening to the interior of which was hidden by the saddle-cloth. The

wife of the gaoler Simon, helped in the plot, the carrying out of which

was attempted early in 1794. Another child about the Dauphin’s size,

dying or marked for death by fatal disease, was drugged and hidden

in the interior. When the toy horse was placed in the Dauphin’s cell

the children were exchanged, the little king having also been drugged

for the purpose. It would almost seem that the narrator here either

lost his head or was seized with a violent _cacoethes scribendi_, for

he most unnecessarily again lugs in the episode adapted from Trojan

history. The worthy doctor of the double name had another horse

manufactured, this time of life size. Into the alleged entrails of

this animal, which was harnessed with three real horses as one of a

team of four, the Dauphin, once more drugged, was concealed. He was

borne to refuge in Belgium, where he was placed under the protection

of the Prince de Condé. By this protector he was, according to his

story, sent to General Kléber who took him to Egypt as his nephew under

the name of Monsieur Louis. After the battle of Marengo in 1800, he

returned to France, where he confided his secret to Lucien Bonaparte

and to Fouché (the Minister of Police), who got him introduced to the

Empress Josephine, who recognised him by a scar over his right eye. In

1804 (still according to his story), he embarked for America and got

away to the banks of the Amazon, where amid the burning deserts (as

he put it) he had adventures capable of consuming lesser romancists

with envy. Some of these adventures were amongst a tribe called “the

Mamelucks”--which name was at least reminiscent of his alleged Egyptian

experiences. From the burning deserts on the banks of the Amazon he

found his way to Brazil, where a certain “Don Juan,” late of Portugal

and at that time Regent of Brazil, gave him asylum.

 

Leaving the hospitable home of Don Juan, he returned to Paris in 1815.

Here Condé introduced him to the Duchesse d’Angoulême (his sister!)

and according to his own naïve statement “the Princess was greatly

surprised,” as indeed she might well have been--quite as much as the

witch of Endor was by the appearance of Samuel. Having been repulsed

by his (alleged) sister, the alleged king made a little excursion,

embracing in its erratic course Rhodes, England, Africa, Egypt, Asia

Minor, Greece, and Italy. When in Austria he met Silvio Pellico in

prison. Having spent some years himself in prison in the same country,

he went to Switzerland. Leaving Geneva in 1826, he entered France,

under the name of Herbert. He was in Paris the following year under

the name of “Colonel Gustave,” and forthwith revived his fraud of being

“the late Dauphin.” In 1828, he appealed to the Chamber of Peers. To

this appeal he appears to have received no direct reply; but apropos

of it, Baron Mounier made a proposition to the Chamber that in future

no such application should be received unless properly signed and

attested and presented by a member of the Chamber. He gathered round

him some dupes who believed in him. To these he told a number of

strange lies based on some form of perverted truth, but always taking

care that those of whom he spoke were already dead. Amongst them was

the wife of Simon, who had died in 1819. Desault, the surgeon, who

had medical care of Louis XVII, and who died in 1795, the ex-Empress

Josephine, who died in 1814, General Pichegru, who died in 1804, and

the Duc de Bourbon (Prince de Condé) who died in 1818. In the course

of his citation of the above names, he plays havoc with generally

accepted history--Desault according to him did not die naturally but

was poisoned. Josephine died simply because she knew the secret of

the young King’s escape. Pichegru died from a similar cause and not

by suicide. Fualdes was assassinated, but it was because he knew the

fatal secret. With regard to one of his dead witnesses whose name was

Thomas-Ignace-Martin de Gallardon, there is a rigmarole which would not

be accepted in the nursery of an idiot asylum. There is a mixture of

Pagan mythology and Christian hagiology which would have been condemned

by Ananias himself. In one passage he talks of seeing suddenly before

him--he could not tell (naturally enough) whence he came--a sort of

angel who had wings, a long coat and a _high hat_. This supernatural

person ordered the narrator to tell the King that he was in danger,

and the only way to avoid it was to have a good police and to keep the

Sabbath. Having given his message the visitant rose in the air and

disappeared. Later on the suggested angel told him to communicate with

the Duc Decazes. The Duke naturally, and wisely enough, handed the

credulous peasant over to the care of a doctor. Martin himself died,

presumably by assassination, in 1834.

 

The Revolution of 1830 awoke the pretensions of Herbert, who now

appeared as the Baron de Richmont, and wrote to the Duchesse

d’Angoulême, his (supposed) sister, putting on her the blame of all

his troubles. But the consequences of this effort were disastrous to

him. He was arrested in August, 1833. After hearing many witnesses the

Court condemned him to imprisonment for twelve years. He was arraigned

under the name of “Ethelbert Louis-Hector-Alfred,” calling himself the

“Baron de Richmont.” He escaped from Clairvaux, whither he had been

transferred from Saint-Pélagie, in 1835. In 1843 and 1846 he published

his memoirs--enlarged but omitting some of his earlier assertions,

which had been disproved. He returned to France after the amnesty of

1840. In 1848 he appealed--unheeded--to the National Assembly. He died

in 1855 at Gleyze.

 

The sixth “Late Dauphin” was a Polish Jew called Naundorf--an impudent

impostor not even seeming suitably prepared by time for the part

which he had thus voluntarily undertaken, having been born in 1775,

and thus having been as old at the birth of the Dauphin as the latter

was when he died. This individual had appeared in Berlin in 1810,

and was married in Spandau eight years later. He had been punished

for incendiarism in 1824, and later got three years’ imprisonment

at Brandenburg for coining. He may be considered as a fairly good

all-round--if unsuccessful--criminal. In England he was imprisoned for

debt. He died in Delft in 1845.

 

The last attempt at impersonating Louis XVII, the seventh, afforded

what might in theatrical parlance be called the “comic relief” of the

whole series, both as regards means and results. This time the claimant

to the Kingship of France was none other than a half-bred Iroquois, one

called Eleazar, who appeared to be the ninth son of Thomas Williams,

otherwise Thorakwaneken, and an Indian woman, Mary Ann Konwatewentala.

This lady, who spoke only Iroquois, said at the opportune time she was

_not_ the mother of Lazar (Iroquois for Eleazar). She made her mark as

she could not write. Eleazar had been almost an idiot till the age

of thirteen; but, being struck on the head by a stone, recovered his

memory and intelligence. He said he remembered sitting on the knees of

a beautiful lady who wore a rich dress with a train. He also remembered

seeing in his childhood a terrible person; shewn the picture of Simon

he recognised him with terror. He learned English but imperfectly,

became a Protestant and a missionary and married. His profile was

something like that of the typical Bourbon. In 1841, the Prince de

Joinville, seeing him on his travels in the United States, told him

(according to Eleazar’s account) that he was the son of a king, and got

him to sign and seal a parchment, already prepared, the same being a

solemn abdication of the Crown of France in favour of Louis Philippe,

made by Charles Louis, son of Louis XVI, also styled Louis XVII King of

France and Navarre. The seal used was the seal of France, the one used

by the old Monarchy. The “poor Indian with untutored mind” made with

charming diffidence the saving clause regarding the seal,--“if I am not

mistaken.” Of course there was in the abdication a clause regarding

the payment of a sum of money “which would enable me to live in great

luxury in this country or in France as I might choose.” The Reverend

Eleazar, despite his natural disadvantages and difficulties, was

more fortunate than his fellow claimants inasmuch as the time of his

imposture was more propitious. Louis Philippe, who was always anxious

to lessen the danger to his tottering throne, made a settlement on him

from his Civil List, and the “subsequent proceedings interested him no

more.”

 

Altogether the Louis XVII impostures extended over a period of some

sixty years, beginning with Hervagault’s pretence soon after the death

of the Dauphin, and closing at Gleyze with the death of Henri Herbert,

the alleged Baron de Richmont who appeared as the alleged Duc de

Normandie.

 

 

 

 

E. PRINCESS OLIVE

 

 

The story of Mrs. Olive Serres, as nature made it, was one thing; it

was quite another as she made it for herself. The result, before the

story was completely told, was a third; and, compared with the other,

one of transcendent importance. Altogether her efforts, whatsoever

they were and crowned never so effectively, showed a triumph in its

way of the thaumaturgic art of lying; but like all structures built

on sand it collapsed eventually. In the plain version--nature’s--the

facts were simply as follows. She, and a brother of no importance, were

the children of a house painter living in Warwick, one Robert Wilmot,

and of Anna Maria his wife. Having been born in 1772 she was under

age when in 1791 she was married, the ceremony therefore requiring

licence supported by bond and affidavit. Her husband was John Thomas

Serres who ten years later was appointed marine painter to King George

III. Mr. and Mrs. Serres were separated in 1804 after the birth of two

daughters, the elder of whom, born in 1797, became in 1822 the wife

of Antony Thomas Ryves a portrait painter--whom she divorced in 1847.

Mrs. A. T. Ryves twelve years later filed a petition praying that the

marriage of her mother, made in 1791, might be declared valid and she

herself the legitimate issue of that marriage. The case was heard in

1861, Mrs. Ryves conducting it in person. Having produced sufficient

evidence of the marriage and the birth, and there being no opposition,

the Court almost as a matter of course pronounced the decree asked for.

In this case no complications in the way of birth or marriage of Mrs. Serres were touched on.