A King's Portfolio

— “ There are men who can be left unwatched in a bank safe,” says Mr. T. W. Higginson in a recent essay, “ but not in an autograph collection. All experienced librarians know that the really dangerous visitor is the collector, the connoisseur, the student, the seeker after a rare pamphlet or an odd number.”

No doubt Mr. Higginson could have cited many an interesting proof of his statement : of rare maps and illustrations pilfered from old books by those in whom he had trusted, by those he could not even accuse of the theft; the strange disappearance from well-guarded archives of scraps of paper the professional thief would have treated as rubbish. The fact that a valuable autograph letter is recorded as among the treasures of a society like the New York Historical is by no means an assurance that it will be found there when the custodian takes his key to produce it. So great has been the interest in the exile of the three Bourbon princes in this country (the Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis Philippe, and his two brothers, the Duke of Montpensier and the Count of Beaujolais, 1796-99) that the two contributions to the Contributors’ Club this year upon the subject, Louis Philippe in a Wigwam (February) and Royalty in the Genesee Country (May), have led to no little search among old records and the reminiscences of pioneers.

The contradictory versions regarding the route of the royal exiles, and the silence upon the subject by the first biographer who has been allowed access to the family papers of Louis Philippe, the Marquis de Flers, led me to exclaim with joy when, in delving among musty documents, in search of something else, I came upon a Report of the New York Historical Society for November, 1847, and read in the report of the foreign correspondence that J. Romeyn Brodhead had written from London under date October 4, 1847, inclosing a letter “ from George Catlin, dated at Paris, September 20, 1847. . . . The letter of Mr. Catlin contained some interesting statements referring to the exile of the king of the French in America.” The Report then gives the following extracts from the letter, omitting, however, as my reader will say when he strikes the aggravating row of . . . the very things we were all wanting to know, the detail of pleasing incidents “ which happened in the western parts of the State of New York.” This is the extract as given : —

“ During the two years which I have spent in Paris with my Indian collection, my works have been highly approved by the king, for whom I have painted and delivered twenty-five pictures of Indian costumes and scenes of the western country, which are to be placed in the Marine Gallery at Versailles. I have had, therefore, several interviews with his Majesty, in all of which he has spoken familiarly of his several years of rambles in exile in America in company with his two younger brothers, . . . and related to me many of the most extraordinary and pleasing incidents of his life, several of which happened while he was traversing the western parts of the State of New York, and are full of interest as matters of history. . . .

“ These scenes transpired during their travels from Erie to Buffalo, to the villages of the Seneca Indians ; from thence to Canandaigua, paddling their own canoe through the whole length of the Seneca Lake to Ithaca ; from thence on foot, with their knapsacks on their backs, to the Tioga River, where, having purchased a canoe from the Indians, they descended the river to the Susquehanna, and the latter river to the valley of Wyoming (my native valley). Thence on foot they crossed the Wilkesbarre and the Pokono mountains to Easton, and thence to Philadelphia. They afterwards traversed the Alleghany Mountains to Pittsburg, and, having purchased a small boat, descended the Ohio and the Mississippi to New Orleans, having slept along the shores of those rivers when in their wildest and rudest condition, and existed upon the food they could purchase from the Indians and from the rivers and the forests.”

The secretary further reports that Mr. Catlin also stated (showing how much of the letter was withheld) that the king’s portfolio of sketches and notes made during these wanderings was then in existence.

Naturally, application was made at once to the New York Historical Society for a full copy of the letter. The letter could not be found.

The report has given much valuable information, and promises to lead to the discovery, and possibly the publication, of the king’s portfolio. The foreign correspondent of an Historical Society of the Genesee Country, a well-known historian residing in Paris, is looking for that portfolio, and for documents relating to the most interesting episode in the life of the Citizen King. But the missing letter of George Catlin, — who will bring it to light ?