CURIOUS IMPOSTURES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4774, 14 October 1893, Page 2

CURIOUS IMPOSTURES.

The list of Btrange impostures in history ■would of itself fill pages; the narrative oE their conception and fulfilment would occupy Beveral volumes. Some of them have been quite purposeless ; some have been daring and well effected; .but the shrewdest and most daring of them all hatve been criminal in design, and too often SUOCBflaful. An apparently purposeless imposture was perpetrated in Saltcoata at the beginning of this century. Helen Oliver, a maid-servant at a farmhouse, was supposed to be courted by the ploughman there, but this person proved to be a woman in disguise. Helen then helped herself to a suit of her brother's clothes, took his name of John, and maxohed off to Glasgow as a boy.- She learned the trade of a plasterer, and worked at it in several towns for a year or two, her sex being unBuspeoted. To complete the impoature, ! ehe even courted a girl and offered her | marriage. Finally, after several adventures, she was compelled to admit that she was a woman; but for many years Bhe continued to followed the laborious trade she had adopted. The late Colonel Bunuby told of the discovery of a woman who served as a sol* ! dierinthe ranks of Don Carlos in 1874. ! She wore the uniform, and lived and fought just as .the other soldiers, but a priest in whose parish Bbc had lived identified her. Don Carlos removed her to the nurses' quartere, but she begged to be sent baok to the ranks. He laughed:. "Not to the regiment of men; but when. I. form a battalion of women you! shall be colonel." There have been many other instances of impostures of this kind, and where .they have had no romantic association they j have generally been mere whims or freaks. j One of the romantic phases of imposition may be quoted. A few yeais ago, a San Francisco steamer carried to the railway works, at Tale, a man about fifty — gentle and well educated — and a lad, who seemed to be about sixteen, and had. remarkably winning ways. Together these two worked at the sawing and chopping and rough labour of the railroad, and in a fortnight they made many friends. But the man fell sick, and the boy followed him to the hospital and nursed him, and there the doctor sooa discovered that the devoted lad was really a girl. Then their story came out. They had been lovers in San Francisco, but the girl's parents objected to her choice, so she married him secretly and then ran away with him, disguised bb a boy, to avoid pursuit. The end of it was that the navvies in the camp made a great demonstration in favour of the girl who endured the hardships of the life in order to be near her husband ; and then the pair Bailed for 'Frisco on the Dakota, to settle down in sober and more conventional matrimony. A very different kind of impoature waß that upon which Sir Walter Scott founded the character of Fenella in " Peveril of the Peak." That strange girl, it will be remembered, passed for a long time ag one absolutely deaf and dumb, although she poBB6BBed.aU her senses in perfect development. The author eayß that in the middle of the, last century a female wanderer ■went to the door of Mr Robert Scott, his grandfather, an opulent farmer in j and made signs that she desired shelter for the night. . According to custom it was given to her, and on the next day the weather was so bad that Bhe remained then and for many more days, till at last Bhe was a recognised'member of the household, and earned her food by her akilful work. Thus she lived for three or four years, and it was always supposed that she wai both deaf and dumb. > "But," said Sir Walter; "in a moment of surprise she dropped the mask which I ehe had worn bo long." ! She was alone in the house one Sunday ! while the others were at church, and came suddenly upon a shepherd lad who was thieving some tit-bit. She forgot her part for the moment, and exclaimed loudly, and in perfectly good Scotch :— , " Ah, you little Meyil's limb !" The boy fled in dismay, and spread the news that the dumb woman had found her tongue ; but ahe did not speak again, and skilfully evaded all the traps which were laid for. her. By-and-by she got tired of the mistrust which grew up, for one morning, she departed as she came, without leave-taking. She was afterwards seen in i perfect possession of her speech, and no ! reason was ever found for her strange imposture.. , About the middle of the last century a Ftenoh vessel reached Martinique, bearing a very handsome youth, who waß introduced as the Prince, of Modena. He was received with great homage by the people of the j piece, and was actually appointed Governor of the island after a farcical passage with the acknowledged Governor, Marquis de Caylua. The steward of the Prince's estates in the island gave him unlimited money, v believing that he was supplying him on' justifiable grounds. In fact, the young. man, who, was certainly a princelylooking personage, had a royal time for six months. Then, however, expecting newß from v Ffance of his imposture, he Buddenly discovered that his health was failing, and he set Bail for Bordeaux amid demonstration! and salute?. A little later letters arrived which showed that the whole affair was a masquerade, and that the real Prince had not been out of Europe. When the young impostor arrived in Europe he was very summarily arrested, and after some curious proceedings he disappeared. About a dozen years ago a man named August Mevea died in London after proseouting a preposterous claim to the Crown of Fiance. The Dauphin, the son of Louis XVI., is supposed to have died at the age of ten in the Temple prison at Paris. But Moves knew better than this. He said his grandmother told her reputed son that in 1794 the young Dauphin waß rescued, and another substituted for him in the prison.- The lad was taken to London and tended by a music master, who was the woman's husband, till 1818, the year of the Bevolutioo. . The reputed son of the music master was thus alleged to be the King of France, and August ' Meyes> a 9 hie child, claimed the Crown. But the story was too obviously absurd, and he was only laughed at. A much more peculiar imposture than the foregoing mußt conclude the liat. It was in the sixteenth century that Bertrande Guerre and her husband, Martin, lived in the French town of Eieux. After some years of married life, in which they had one son, Martin suddenly disappeared. Then eight years elapßed, without; word of him, till one day, suddenly, he came back to his wife and his home, and was rapturously welcomed. Three years again went by, in which the pair lived together without incident. Then Martin's uncle had the man arrested as an impostor, and a long litigation began. The accused asserted his identity with so much earnestness, his wife swore to him as her husband, he showed almost perfect familiarity with Martin's life and affairs, he gave such a circumstantial account of himself, and be was so much like Martin as to be almost! absolutely his double* The litigation was of an extraordinary

kind : first the accused was condemned as an impostor, then the judgment was reversed on appeal,, and yet a further I inquiry was made which went in favour oE the accused, when lo ! in walked the real I Martin Guerre ! ! j For .a long time the first comer asserted I that the second was the impostor, but facts , were too strong for him in the end, and J before he was hanged he confessed his offrmce and asked pardon. The motive of his imposture lay in the fact that Martin .had some snug possessions of which he became the holder while jßertrande's husband. To such strange devices will men resort for a little gain.