Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 February 14

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February 14

Beatty's armchair at Jutland

Our article Viva Seton Montgomerie says of David Beatty "There was a certain armchair which accompanied them everywhere they went, and when the Admiral was leading forth his fleet, en route for his great Battle of Jutland, he discovered that the chair had been left behind. I shall have no luck without it, he said, and the whole fleet had to be drawn up while his talisman was fetched. It was a chair he had looted during his campaign in China and he firmly believed it was haunted by its former owner. Ethel confirmed this, for she told me that she had distinctly seen a Chinese figure sitting in it as she came into the room, and she saw it fade as she drew near". Is there any truth in the story (I mean the bit about Jutland, not the haunting)? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 13:28, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

I found "armchair admirals", "armchair critics", "armchair tacticians" and "armchair historians" in relation to Jutland, but sadly nothing about Beatty's Chinese armchair. Alansplodge (talk) 17:16, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

I can similarly find absolutely nothing about it outside of the Wikipedia article. It seems to be an anecdote only attributed to Montgomerie's own writing, and unconfirmed by any other source I can find. --Jayron32 17:28, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

He consulted at times an Edyth du Bois and other fortune tellers[1]. Talisman might not be out of character. No evidence for the ancedote tho.—eric 18:02, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

You'd have thought at least one of the five thousand or so men involved might have mentioned it... Alansplodge (talk) 18:57, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

They noticed when he "bowed the knee three times to this sisterly divinity", a pagan practice Wikipedia fails to inform me of. "A GHEALACH UR".—eric 19:46, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

We seem to be at cross-purposes; I meant the 5,000 members of the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron (but interesting nonetheless).

While researching naval armchairs, I came across the grisly tale of Admiral François-Paul Brueys d'Aigalliers, who after his legs had been blown off in the Battle of the Nile, had himself strapped to an armchair on the deck of his flagship so that he could continue to direct the battle; an arrangement which worked well until he was cut in half by a second cannonball. It wasn't his day. Alansplodge (talk) 20:13, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Shoot, linked the wrong page: ...known to surprise his staff by by bowing three times to a new moon...[2] and i wondered at the origin of the practice.—eric 03:05, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

No idea, but The Book of the Moon (p. 29) has that and many other new moon superstitions. Alansplodge (talk) 10:03, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks all, I've not found anything about the chair either, but lots about Beatty being very superstitious. One wonders if the armchair tale gained in the telling, it does seem unlikely that nobody else should have mentioned it in the interminable writings about Jutland. DuncanHill (talk) 15:47, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

As a child, I was taught to bow to the new moon - not three times, but it seems to be an old superstition, like green herbs around your door on the last day of the old moon. RomanSpa (talk) 23:50, 17 February 2020 (UTC)