The Journal of Jean Laffite
 

I purchased a copy of this book, _The Journal of Jean
Laffite_ (NY:Vantage Press (1958), copyrighted by John A.
Laffite, yesterday and only just examined it today, to find
that with this particular copy I actually have evidence in a
controversy. The book claims to be a translation of a
French language manuscript written by the famous pirate
Laffite between 1845 and 1850 and passed down to his
descendants, arriving in the hands of John A. Laffite (or
Laffitte, see below) when he inherited the manuscript in
1926. Eventually, he had it translated and published by a
vanity press. The manuscript was later donated to the Sam
Houston Regional Library and Research Center.

The problem is that many people have questioned whether the
manuscript is a forgery. There have been claims that the
handwriting of the manuscript is similar to that of John A.
Laffite. There has, apparently, been no definitive analysis
one way or the other.

The copy that I have is inscribed and signed by the man who
had it published. The inscription reads:

With best wishes and kind regards
To David Laffitte
From John A. Laffitte
Route No. 4
Spartanburg, So. Carolina
June 17th, 1959

Note that in signing the book, he spells his name "Laffitte"
not "Laffite" as shown on the copyright page. Now the
copyright page could have an error, so that is not terribly
important. The book contains some pages of photographs
after page 16 and two of the photos show excerpts from the
original manuscript (in French, of course). So I compared
the handwriting as best I could, given that I am not an
expert in the field. What I found was this.

The formation of letters "a", "o", "p" and "v", for
instance, are different in
the inscription from the two photographed pages; also, in
the inscription,
the flourish on capital "L" is to the left, whereas the
flourish in the manuscript
is to the right. The crossing of "t" in the inscription
(four exemplars) is
always bowed as a faint smile, while the crossing of "t" in
the manuscript is
a straight line (at least eight exemplars). The letter "a"
is so different that
even a layman can see it. The "o" is open at the top in the
inscription but closed
in the manuscript.

Based on the limited sample I have, it would seem that if it
is a forgery, it was not done by John A. Laffite. Now other
information would be relevant. Is the French of the
manuscript consistent with the state of the language in the
early 19th century? Are the paper and ink from the right
period? These and other questions have as yet no answer.

But it is interesting to actually possess evidence relevant
to the controversy.

--
Francis A. Miniter

Mesure is Medicine þauh þou muche ȝeor[n]e.
Al nis not good to þe gost þat þe bodi lykeþ,
Ne lyflode to þe licam þat leof is to þe soule.

William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman
Passus I, lines 33 - 35