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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
CONTENTS
CLAIMANTS TO ROYALTY.
IN ALL SHADES.
TOBACCO CULTIVATION.
‘WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS.’
THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.
A NEW THEORY OF DEW.
COMRIE EARTHQUAKES.
WHICH?
No. 126.—Vol. III.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, MAY 29, 1886.
CLAIMANTS TO ROYALTY.
Since the famous Tichborne trial brought ‘TheClaimant’ so prominently before the readingpublic, the general use of a term which accuratelydescribed his position without seeming toprejudge his case has given it universal currencyas a convenient designation in similar cases ofdisputed or doubtful identity. For instance, thenewspapers have recently announced a ‘NapoleonicClaimant,’ who makes his appearance in the mostunromantic manner, by presenting himself beforea magistrate at a police station in Paris, andasking for money to pay his passage to England.He claimed to be the Prince Imperial, thelegitimate son of the Emperor Napoleon III. andthe Empress Eugenie. The announcement of hisdeath in Zululand was a mistake: he was notkilled, but captured by the Zulus. After sometime, he effected his escape, and having traversedAfrica from south to north, he crossed theMediterranean and landed at Marseilles. Hispoverty and his dignity prevented him frompresenting himself before his mother, and so hestayed and worked in Marseilles incognito forseveral years. But he met the Empress once:it was at Vienna, at the tomb of Maximilian.So violent was his emotion, that he swoonedaway. The Empress herself raised him andtended him; but when he became conscious, shehad gone. He wished now to go to her, but hewas penniless. Would the magistrate grant himthe sum necessary; and his mother, the Empress,would repay the loan? When asked to showhis papers, he produced a book in which wasentered the name of Pollak, a journeyman clockmakerof Vienna. It had been lent to him toenable him to maintain his incognito.
When he found that his story was not to becredited, he accused the magistrate of yieldingto pressure put upon him by the Princes Victorand Louis, whose interest it was to supplant therightful heir. He spoke in the language of awell-educated man; and when examined with aview to determine his mental condition, hebetrayed no symptom of derangement.
The methods of all Claimants have a certainsimilarity, though some have been more audacious