Snapshot

There are so many curious stories hidden in plain sight--behind locked doors or metaphorically beneath common names. And we're going to explore a couple of them today.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

(00:27):
of Curiosities. Time, as many have said, is like a river.
It is constantly flowing, carrying moments away on a current,
never to be seen again. And like a river, time
changes everything it touches. It erodes mountains and topples civilizations. Eventually,

(00:52):
much of what we know today will be gone and
replaced with something else, all thanks to the passage of time.
But every once in a while I misses something like
an island whose people have been isolated from the rest
of the world, or a box buried for future individuals
to on Earth and learn about an era they weren't
around to see. And once in a while, these overlooked

(01:13):
pockets of time are brought to the surface, giving us
a glimpse into a past once thought to be lost forever.
Francis LaBelle Leepac was a period of great significance between
eighteen seventy one and nineteen fourteen, Europe saw a boom
in scientific and cultural breakthroughs, and at the center of
it all was Paris. The City of Lights became the

(01:34):
birthplace for groundbreaking movements in art and music. Around this
time lived a woman named mart du Florian. Born in
eighteen sixty four, she'd lived a rough life, dating all
the way back to her early childhood. Her brother and
sister had died when they were infants, leaving her and
only child. Things didn't get much better as she got
older either. She gave birth to her first son, Henri,

(01:56):
when she was just eighteen, only to lose him three
months later. Fortunately, a year after that, she had another son,
whom she also named Henri. He lived far longer, passing
away in the mid nineteen sixties. Du Florian was a
French courtesan, moving within elite social circles and carrying on
affairs with prominent politicians and artists at the time, and

(02:18):
one such artist was Giovanni Bordini. Baldini hailed from Italy,
yet much of his career was spent in Paris. He
was known for his beautiful portraits of people like artist
John Singer, Sergeant and poet Robert du Montesquieu. Funny enough,
do Montesquieu also happened to be a client of du Florian's.
Baldini's nickname was the Master of Swish, which he had

(02:40):
earned for his unique flowing style, not his basketball skills.
His paintings seemed to come alive, as though he had
captured his models in motion. Among his many subjects was
du Florian. Though much of Baldini's work eventually found its
way into galleries and private collections, his portrait of Madame
du Florian was lost to time. Now do Florian lived

(03:01):
in a fifte hundred square foot apartment for most of
her life. It was located near the Red Light District,
putting her right in the middle of the action during
the Belle Lipoch. Sadly, do Florian passed away in that
home in nineteen thirty nine, leaving on Red to handle
her affairs. He then began living in the same apartments himself,
along with his own daughter, but she fled Paris in

(03:22):
nineteen forty two and moved to the south of France.
In doing so, she left her father and the apartment
behind her and never looked back. It was believed that
on relived there until he died in nineteen sixty six,
but even that wasn't enough to bring her back for
a visit. Despite not once returning to the property even
after her father's death, she chose to pay the rent

(03:42):
each month for the next forty four years. She died
in two thousand ten at the age of ninety one.
With no one left to claim ownership of the apartment
nor its contents, it was opened up by the executors
of her will to a local auctioneer, and what he found,
albeit under a thick layer of dust, astounded him. The
apartment had been untouched for decades. It was filled to

(04:05):
the brim with elegant furniture one years old or more.
In the bedroom, they found a four poster bed complete
with a canopy. A massive vanity had been tucked into
the corner, on top of which sat empty bottles and canisters,
as well as an array of hair brushes. In the kitchen,
glassware pots, pans, and cutlery, all of it still in place,

(04:26):
as though it had been waiting for its owner to
come home. There was a giant stuffed ostrich in one room,
along with some mickey mouse and porky pig dolls, all
made before the Second World War, and artwork paintings of
all shapes and sizes hung on the walls. Some had
been leaned against furniture and were even seated on chairs
across from each other, like they'd been having a conversation.

(04:49):
The piece to resistance, however, was one particular painting, the
portrait of the apartment's original owner, Madame du Florian, painted
by the master of Swiss himself, Giovanni Boldini. In the end,
it seems the auctioneer hadn't unlocked an apartment door at all.
He'd unearthed the time capsule that nobody knew had existed

(05:09):
for over seventy years. Better late than never. I suppose
there's something powerful about a name. If it's a name

(05:31):
we share with others, it has power to connect us
to them. Maybe your own name comes from an emotional
experience had by your parents, or perhaps it's a way
to pay respects to a loved one from our past. Sometimes, though,
a name transforms over the years to represent more than
just a family line, but an actual legacy. In Heinrich
would eventually experience that. But it all started with a

(05:54):
simple gift. Actually, there was a lot about Heinrich that
was simple. He was born into a simple life in
the mountains of Germany back in seventeen nine seven. His
father was a simple forester, and while he had a
lot of siblings eleven, in fact, life with all of
them was fairly simple. And then war changed all that.

(06:14):
Sometime around eighteen oh five, his father left to fight
the French elsewhere in Europe, and he took all of
the oldest boys with him. Heinrich, though, was only eight,
so he stayed behind with his mother and the rest
of his siblings. But the French were stronger, and soon
enough they were pressing into German territory. In Heinrich's mountain town.
To protect the family, his mother took them deeper into

(06:35):
the mountains, but while it protected them from the French,
had put them in other dangers. Before long, only Heinrich
and one sister survived orphans in a war torn country.
And then a miracle happened. The father he believed to
have died, suddenly returned. With the war over, the remnants
of his family pulled together, and if there was one

(06:57):
thing they knew better than most, it was would Not
only was Heinrich's father a forester, but he was a carpenter,
and those skills came in handy as their town and
those around it began to rebuild homes, roads, barns, fences,
and of course, his father also planted more trees. In
eighteen twelve, though, tragedy visited Heinrich's family once again. A

(07:19):
powerful storm drove everyone in town to seek shelter, and
while it was over quickly, there was a bit of lightning,
and one lightning strike coincidentally struck the house his family
was hiding in. Everyone except Heinrich was instantly killed. It
was more war after that. There he was at the
age of fifteen with no one to care for him

(07:40):
or to call family, so he joined up with the
Prussian army, a post that took him all the way
to a Belgian town called Waterloo. He survived, although tens
of thousands of his fellow soldiers did not. Again, loss
had become a part of his world. When peace returned
and Heinrich was able to settle down, he fell back
on that family love of wood. Soon enough. He was

(08:03):
a skilled cabinet maker, but also dabbled in music on
the side. In fact, that was a passion he shared
with his wife Julianne, who he married in eight Now
it might be easy to assume Heinrich's legacy was loss,
the loss of his mother and siblings, the loss of
his father, even the loss of his fellow soldiers in
Belgium at the Bottle of Waterloo. He and his wife

(08:25):
certainly did their best to replace that missing family by
having ten children of their own. If you want to
interpret his story that way, there's nothing wrong with that.
But Heinrich would be remembered for something else, something that
came not out of loss but out of joy. And
like I said at the beginning of this story, it
was all about a gift. You see, when he married

(08:45):
his wife Julianne, he did something very romantic. He made
her something with his own hands, something wonderful and beautiful,
something that would fill their home with joy and happiness
and song. Heinrich made her a p know and it
wouldn't be the last one he would make. For the
rest of his life. Heinrich would grow a business around

(09:06):
that skill, and his pianos would win countless awards. Before
long they were coveted instruments, and they still are to
this day. Maybe his loss was our gain. Maybe he
wanted his family name to live on without fear of
war or tragedy taking it away. Whatever his reason for creating,
the world of music and the piano itself, will never

(09:28):
be the same, all thanks to Heinrich Heinrich Steinway. I
hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show

(09:49):
was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
which is a podcast, book series, and television and show,
and you can learn all about it over at the
World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,