The Lost Dauphin: Controversy springs

Continued from last week

When the February 1853 edition of Putnam’s magazine reached England, the Prince of Joinville had his secretary write to the London agent for the magazine claiming the story a falsehood.

“His first thought was to treat (it) with the indifference which it deserves, the absurd invention on which this article is founded, but on reflecting that a little truth is there mixed with much falsehood, the Prince deemed it right that I should in his name give a few lines in reply to show the exact portion of truth there is in this mass of fables,” wrote Aug. Trognon, former preceptor and secretary for the Prince de Joinville.

“It is very true that in a voyage which he made to the United States towards the end of the year 1841, the Prince finding himself at Machinac met on board the steamboat a passenger whose face he thinks he recognizes in the portrait given in the Monthly Magazine, but whose name had entirely escaped him.”

According to the Prince, Eleazer Williams was knowledgeable in North American history and had an Iroquois mother and a French father and was therefore able to regale the Prince with stories, as the Prince was traveling the area to retrace the path of the French as they established residency in the country.

“Since then, some letters have been exchanged between Mr. Williams and the persons attached to the Prince…,” he added.

“But there ends all which the article contains of truth, concerning the relations of the Prince with Mr. Williams. All the rest, all which treats of the revolution which the Prince made to Mr. Williams of the mystery of his birth, all which concerns the pretended personage of Louis XVII is from one end to the other a work of the imagination — a fable women wholesale, a speculation upon the public credulity.

“If by chance any of the readers of the monthly magazine should be disposed to avow belief in it, thy should procure from Paris a book which has been very recently published by M. Beauchense. They will there find concerning the life and death of the unfortunate Dauphine, the most circumstantial and positive details.”

From there controversy erupted in the country for those for and against the likelihood that Williams was the Lost Dauphin.

Stories and lectures on both sides hit print mediums and venues, as people even took to traveling to seek out the truth about the Lost Dauphin.

To be continued