Corpse in a Keg (New Orleans)

Lyle Saxon, Edward Dreyer, and Robert Tallant, Gumbo Ya-Ya: A Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1945), pp. 152-3.

These bridal testers, at least the most elaborate ones, were the creations of a certain Monsieur Dufau, a merchant at 37 Rue Chartres. But poor M. Dufau was the victim of an unfortunate occurrence that all but wrecked his career and business.

This gentleman's shop was noted for its objets d'art, bric-à-brac, and fine paintings. But the most famous articles of merchandise were the artistically fashioned ciel-de-lits or testers. These were very popular, even the ordinary ones being tastefully made of calico or sateen. But most of M. Dufau 's art was expended on ciel-de-lits for brides. These were always of pale blue silk, gathered in the middle by gilt ornaments. Across the pale blue heaven chubby cupids would chase each other with bows and arrows, pink ribbons modestly draping these tiny love gods. A wide cream-colored dentelle valencienne, the finest lace obtainable, trimmed the edge. It all combined to create an atmosphere symbolizing eternal love, blue horizons and rosy dreams.

Then ruin descended upon M. Dufau. A member of a club called Le Comité des Bon Amis, the time came for him to entertain his good friends. And it seemed that an extraordinarily good piece of luck occurred at about the same time. A sailor offered M. Dufau a keg of rum at a ridiculously low price. Seizing this opportunity, the merchant bought the liquor with no loss of time and invited his friends over to enjoy it. When the first round of drinks was passed everyone remarked on its peculiar flavor. The second drink was so bad that no one could finish it.

There was great consternation and curiosity. An axe was brought and M. Dufau himself split the keg open. What met the eyes of his guests was enough to stand their hair on end. Inside the keg, sitting upright, in a perfect state of preservation, was a little old man with long whiskers!

Poor M. Dufau, though technically cleared of any connection with the corpse in the rum, was immediately banished from his club, and he received no more orders for his masterfully fashioned bridal ciel-de-lits.

Corpse in the Cask (Nova Scotia, 1874)

Crystal Fulton & Glen C. Phillips, Four-Foot Cucumbers, Juvenile Delinquents & Frogs From the Sky! Snippets of Life in Victorian Canada. London, Ont.: Cheshire Cat Press, 1997, pp. 93-4.

A Startling Story for Pictou Rum Drinkers -- We are credibly informed that last summer a corpse preserved in liquor was sent home from the United States to a certain place in this County. The man to whose care the corpse was sent, being somewhat economical in his disposition, and opposed to anything like extravagance, drew the liquor off the corpse and retailed it by the glass to customers who doubtless considered it first rate liquor. Those who got the liquor can reflect over the story at their leisure. -- [New Glasgow] Eastern Chronicle.

Halifax [N.S.] Morning Chronicle, January 3, 1874

The Corpse in the Cask (James Pattle)

Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf (London: Chatto & Windus, 1996), p. 87.

'Oh the old Pattles! They're always bursting out of their casks.'[19] The reference is to the sensational end of Julia Jackson's grandfather, James Pattle, notorious liar and drinker and member of the Bengal Civil Service, who reputedly drank himself to death and whose body, sent back to England in a cask of rum, exploded out of its container during a storm. The shock drove his widow mad and she died on the journey home; the sailors drank the rum. This Pattle story was always popping up: on a visit in 1918 to the redoubtable Lady Strachey Virginia and Leonard heard 'how old Pattle shot out of his tank, & thereby killed his wife, who thought him come to life again'.[20] There was an even more sensational version of the same story in the reminiscences of Ethel Smyth, which Virginia read in 1919, long before they met. Virginia relayed it with relish in her essay on Julia Margaret Cameron, and it's there again, a family heirloom, in Quentin Bell's biography -- though a less sensational and possibly truer version does not mention the widow's insanity, and maintains that it was James Pattle's brother, Colonel William (known as 'Jemmy Blazes', and leader of a famous charge against the Amirs of Sindh in 1843), who drank himself to death.[21]

19. VW to Violet Dickinson, [13 Apr 1937], The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 6 vols., Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann, eds. (Hogarth Press, 1975-80), VI, 3235, p. 120.
20. The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 5 vols., Anne Oliver Bell and Andrew McNeillie, eds. (Hogarth Press, 1977-84), 18 Jan 1918, I, p. 107.
21. For the two versions, see Boyd, pp. 14, 143. [I couldn't find in the notes and bibliography any further details on the Boyd reference. --bc]

Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf: A Biography (NY: Harvest Books, 1974), p. 14.

James Pattle [...] was, we are told, a quite extravagantly wicked man. He was known as the greatest liar in India; he drank himself to death; he was packed off home in a cask of spirits, which cask, exploding, ejected his unbottled corpse before his widow's eyes, drove her out of her wits, set the ship on fire and left it stranded in the Hooghly.

The story has been told many times. Some parts of it may be true.