SECRETS IN A FRENCH BOX

Evening Star, Issue 20428, 8 March 1930, Page 20

SECRETS IN A FRENCH BOX

A RELIC OF 1810 THE CHATHAM HULKS About tbo year 1876 a troopship landed from India the King’s Royal Rifles, formerly the 60th Root, says ‘The Times Weekly.’ The soldiers, after tho habit of their kind, brought with them many curious objects, tokens ■ and souvenirs of their foreign Service. And ono of them, named Swan, carried in his baggage perhaps the most curious object of them all. It _ was a little box, the sides made of four-pieces of different* woods, hard and soft, with a slightly overlapping lid of soft wood attached by twe hinges of iron wire. The whole box measured 7in long by 3in high and deep The sides and the lid were decorated with an applied ornament made of small strips of variously coloured straw arranged in a central panel representing houses and trees within a border of tho straws set aslant. There is m record to tell in what Indian bazaar tho soldier had picked up this, peculiar treasure For some fifty years it remained in his son's family, preserved among tho ‘‘ army things,” as tho memorials of his father were called. Then one day tho son of the house, looking round for a box to use in the construction of a wireless set; found this Indian relic, and began to handle it, when the bottom fell out, and from tho cavitv thus revealed came eighteen letters written on old paper and in a language . unknown to the family. His father, Mr J. IV. Swan, brought the box and its contents to the British Museum, and there the strange history of tho casket was revealed.. For tho straw work was of a familiar type, a manufacture which occupied the long, weary leisure of French prisoners in English camps and hulks in the days of the Napoleonic wars. Tho letters are dated in November and December of tho year 1810, from two of the Chatham hulks, the Canada and the Irresistible, members of that grim fleet of ten dismantled ships which has an evil pre-eminence even in tho vnuals of war prisoners. Antoine Damarc, of # tho commune of Staples, had been carried off while pursuing his lawful avocatiou of fishing, and ill this winter of 1810 ho was to bo sent •home. Hero, was a chance of smuggling letters. Amflid much cciteincnt iu tho hulks •a bos with a false bottom was made, and the prisoners fell to writing their hopes and their despairs and their appeals ,to their distant fricucls. Antoine no doubt took away tho precious contraband, but we do not know what happened to him. The box was never opened, the letters failed of their destination, and wandered over many seas and lands until tho wireless enthusiast gave them back to the light of day. Tho men write in agony at the failure of their hopes'of exchange. ‘‘lf wb liven in the days of fairies,” says one, ‘‘l would implore their favour to take me from this place.” They promise that they will sparo their friends the description of the accursed deu iu which they rot. But we can represent their circumstances to ourselves by studying the accounts of life iu the hulk given by Colonel Lebertro in bis letter to Croker from the Canada, and by Louis Garneray in his fascinating book ‘ Mos Pontons.’ Lebertrc's letter is illustrated by a horrible engraving of tho orlop deck of the Brunswick, where 460 prisoners are shown lying packed like herrings in hammocks slung in a space some 130 ft long by 40ft broad and Oft high. There was space for only 431 hammocks, so that tiventy-nino men had to find a place underneath this mass of human beings. The official regulations were not inhumane, but tho carelessness of those in command and the villainy of contractors frequently made a mock of the intentions of tho Government. The food was vile, „nd the prisoners themselves often gambled away their clothes. Garneray describes them emerging on deck from their prison. “ Imagine,” ho says, “ a generation of tho dead rising for a moment from their tombs with hollow eyes, and wan, carth-colourcd complexions, their backs fallen in, their beards untrimmecl, their dreadfully emaciated bodies scarcely covered with tattered rags, and you will have but a faint conception of tbo appearance of my comrades in misfortune.” Garneray was an artist, and perhaps _ intensifies bis picture, but there is sufficient independent evidence that it is not wholly overdrawn.

The letters the poor fellows wrote amid these horrors are for the most part on the one monotonous note. 'l'hcir messages homo have received no answer, and they complain bitterly that they arc forgotten in their desolate captivity. It is an afflicting thought that these letters, too, wore destined to receive no answer. Some arc tile work of illiterates hardly to be deciphered except by an expert in French phonetics, save when they give an unconsciously ironic turn io the universal sentiment of tho rustic Jotter writer and “ hope that tliis letter imds you as it leaves mo at present.’' These men li.'.d been gathered by the hazards of war from ail France. Tliis last was a Breton, but another, Van liaverbeke, came from Dunkirk. He had commanded a privateer with the extraordinary name Bo singe eu batiste, and. one ol Ins crew, Louis Benoit, of Antwerp, was in the same prison. Van Havcrboko had asked to bo put on bis parole and to bo released from the hulks, but that grace was refused him because bis ship mounted only twelve guns. Two more guns, it appears, would liavo set him free. He writes two letters to ids father and to ids love, Mademoiselle Kcrkhovc, in the same tone of resigned despair. So all, writing to father, mother, wife, mistress, and friend, strike the same plaintive note of sick hearts and hope deferred. Their purgatory was to endure for release came only with the fail of Napoleon in 1814. Among the papers is a certificate of the death of one of the prisoners on board the Brunswick. Tho dead from tho hulks lie now in the grounds of the naval barracks at Chatham, where n memorial lias been erected -over their bones. Hie story of these letters, recovered by so odd a chance after their distant wanderings, will have a poignant meaning for those of this general inn who have shared tho experience of the dead and forgotten writers. ,