The Gift

On today's tour of the Cabinet, we encounter a very poor driver with a knack for trouble, and a family heirloom that took a fantastic journey. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
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 of Curiosities. Nick was not the

(00:29):
best driver in the world. He wasn't going to be
a champion racer, let alone someone who could safely navigate
the streets of most American towns. And that's okay. Some
people just aren't cut out for certain tasks, and Nick
apparently was not wired very well for driving. That didn't
stop him from trying, though the first time he got
behind the wheel, things actually looked promising for a while.

(00:50):
He didn't drive too fast, he was cautious, and he
was trustworthy enough to have a passenger with him. And yet, well,
that brick wall just sort of jumped out in one
of him, didn't it. He didn't give up, though. Most
people don't give up after their first accident. Sure, they're
shaken up and probably a lot more observant and careful
in the weeks and months that follow, but humans are

(01:12):
very good at moving on, and that's just what Nick did.
He got a new set of wheels, some new friends,
and went for another joy ride. This time there was
no brick wall to get in the way, thankfully, but
he apparently took a turn just a bit too fast
and as a result, his car, which was really large
and heavy, sort of rolled onto its side. I can't

(01:34):
decide which accident was more elegant and graceful. Was it
the head on collision with a solid wall or the
overturning of his vehicle with nothing else to point at
and blame except himself. Either way, the authorities took notice
and found very little humor in the man's driving. Nick's
car was impounded and he was tossed in jail for
reckless driving, and life changed for Nick after that. He

(01:59):
would never drive a in and he would never get
his car back. It's a sad ending to a story
full of so many bumps and turns, or lack thereof.
I suppose Nick wasn't special because of what he did
or how he did it. He was special because he
did all of those things long before any of us
would have guessed it was possible, long before Henry Ford,

(02:21):
Rudolph Diesel, and Carl Benz, before World War One, the
French Revolution, and the birth of America. That's because Nicholas Q.
Know wasn't just the first person to build a working
automobile way back in seventeen sixty nine. He was also
the first to do something else, something much less admirable.

(02:43):
He was the first to crash one. King Edward the Seventh,
like many of the wealthy elite of England, loved to hunt.

(03:05):
In eighteen sixties, when his mother, Queen Victoria, was still
on the throne and Edward was nothing more special than
the Prince of Wales, he would often gather his friends
and take them fox hunting. Among this group of friends
was another man named Edward, this one being an actor
by profession. The pair of Edwards were apparently very close,
and at some point in their relationship, the Prince gifted

(03:27):
the actor with the small golden match box, the sort
that a gentleman would keep attached to his pocket watch
chain for easy access and safe keeping. It even had
Edward's name on it, the actor, not the Prince. Years
went by, as they have a way of doing, and
both men continued to enjoy their hunts. Sometimes it was together,

(03:48):
but oftentimes Edward the actor Edward Southern, would hunt without
his friends, and it was on one of those solo
rides that he was thrown from his horse, and along
with picking up a few bruises, something else happened. He
lost the match box. He was heartbroken. It had been
in his pocket for years and he'd grown accustomed to
its usefulness, so he had a replacement made and then

(04:11):
moved on. Later in life, he passed that second match
box on to one of his three sons, a young
man named Lytton. Actually, Lytton was also an actor, just
like his father, and eventually his own career took him
overseas to Australia. While he was there, he made new
friends in the world of theater, and one of his
closest was a man by the name of La Bartouche.

(04:32):
When Lytton's time in Australia was up, he gifted his
golden match box from his father to La Bertouche and
went home to England. Many years later, another of Edward's sons,
named George, was on a hunt of his own. It
had been a long time since he had hunted in
his father's favorite areas, so as he did, he took

(04:53):
in the scenery with a bit of nostalgia. There's no
record of how successful his hunt was that day, but
he did happen to bump to the old farmer who
worked the land there and introduced himself as George Southern,
Edward Southern Son. The farmer was astonished. Not only did
he know the young man's father, but he had just
been thinking about him. That very morning. One of his

(05:15):
farm hands had been out plowing in the field when
a glimmer of something metal caught his eye. It turned
out to be something Edward had dropped years before, his
gold match box. George went home that day with the
matchbox in his pocket, the original one mind You, gifted
to his father by the Prince of Wales, as well
as a fantastic story he wanted to tell someone, so

(05:37):
later that day, George sat down and wrote a letter
to his youngest brother, Edward, who was traveling with a
theater production in America. This is the point in the
story where I stopped for a moment and tell you, Yes,
there were three Edwards, and that's pretty confusing. I know
Edward the Prince, Edward the Friend, and Edward the Sun
plus two other sons. Right, it's complicated, did but it's

(06:00):
also worth it. Trust me. Edward the Son received the
letter from his brother George on the morning of a
train ride, and waited until he was seated and the
train was moving before he opened it. Across the seat
from him was another actor, Lawrence by name, who had
just joined up with the company that day, and they
planned to get to know each other and prepare for

(06:21):
their next stop. Edward the son, read the letter, and
as he did, his eyes opened wide. Lawrence noticed this
and asked about it. My brother, he said, has found
our father's long lost matchbox, gifted to him by the
Prince of Wales himself. And then he proceeded to tell
Lawrence about how the match box was lost, how his

(06:43):
father had a second one made, and now his brother
Lytton had given that one away in Australia. I wonder,
Edward muttered, half to himself and half to Lawrence, whatever
became of that second matchbox. Does la Bartouche still possess it?
Or has he in turn given it to someone else?
Lawrence smiled at him from across the seat, and then

(07:05):
reached into his pocket. When he pulled his hand back out,
there in the middle of his palm sat a small
golden matchbox. Turning it over, both men could clearly see
the engraving on the back. Oh, he gave it to
someone else, Lawrence answered, And that's someone else, it was me.

(07:29):
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 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 show,

(07:52):
and you can learn all about it over at the
World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
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