Artifacts of Memory, Memories of Artifacts

When I held the key to the Bastille in my hand, testing its cold heft, I could imagine the clank of the massive lock closing.  Another person, having held the object, had opined that the lock opened by this key would have been easily picked, but that seemed hardly a weakness.  Who would have worried about break-ins at the heavily-guarded medieval fortress in the heart of Paris?  Breakouts would have been the more logical concern, though by the time the fortress fell there were only seven prisoners.  When the vainqueurs, officially numbering 954, decided to effect an entrance, the lock was surely an afterthought.  Once the edifice was in flames the key, now useless, was gifted to George Washington by the Marquis de Lafayette, a present from French revolutionaries to the Americans who had inspired them.

But of course, this wasn’t the key to the Bastille.  Ridiculous to think that such a priceless artifact would accompany the representative of Mount Vernon to this teaching seminar in Raleigh.  This key was a cast iron replica of the original which at that moment rested on display at Washington’s home, an object that is apparently one of three original objects that has remained at the house over the centuries.  Whatever emotional associations I made with the key I held in my hand were mine, it would seem, since unlike the original it had never passed through Lafayette’s hands to Washington’s (with Thomas Paine serving as an intermediary on one leg of the trip).

Holding this object brought to mind a scene from the Philip K. Dick novel The Man in the High Castle, as well as in the superb Amazon.com television series based on it.  In the scene, which takes place in an alternative world where the Axis powers triumphed in the Second World War, an antiquities dealer discusses what makes a certain object more valuable than some other, identical, object.  He displays two cigarette lighters, one of which had rested in the pocket of Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he was assassinated (the turning point in this world’s history) and another lighter, in all respects the same, except that it had no association with FDR.

What makes the one an object that his customers would pay thousands of yen for and the other a mere trinket?

Historicity, we are told.  That Roosevelt had held the locket, that it had been in his pocket as he died, imbued it with some essence lacking in other lighters.  In the show the antiquities dealer tells us this is all balderdash but that his Japanese clients believe in it is enough for him, and allows him to make his living. 

By extension, we can see that this applies to all sellers of memorabilia.  The baseball, or jersey, or signed photograph or autographed first edition itself isn’t the draw…it’s the personal connection to a sports hero, or movie star, or author.  Touching these objects, collectors seem to believe, will allow some of the power of the famous person to come through, much as some cannibals believe they can gain the power of a vanquished foe or the wisdom of a revered elder by eating their remains. 

Of course, like my impressions of the storming of the Bastille, this entire process occurs in our minds.  There are countless millions for whom hefting the replica of that famous key would have been nothing more than a physical appraisal of the object; the thing itself need be no more valuable than the iron it was made of.  My momentary reverie only occurred because I know the story of the Bastille, and I knew that this key was a replica of the other, more famous one.  So why bother?

Because I lied earlier—that object I held is really, literally, the key to the Bastille.  Though it was probably cast within the last couple of decades, it is just as real and just as much the key to the Bastille as the original displayed in Washington’s home.  How is this possible?  Staying in the present, this key was made using the original as a model.  It is made, inasmuch as it is possible, of the same material.  It looks the same, it feels the same (or so I assume), it probably tastes the same, has the same weight, harmonics, etc.  Were I to sneak into Mount Vernon in the dead of night, and switch the two keys, no one would likely be the wiser. 

If I destroyed the original I had stolen, who would know... or even care to?  Allowing the secret to die with me, the world would go on believing that the key in the display case had been touched by some anonymous vainqueur, Lafayette, Paine, and Washington.  The key I placed in the display cabinet would, to all intents and purposes, be the original. 

I also held the key to the Bastille in another, more direct sense.  Having this replica, and the ability to travel back in time, I should be able to unlock the famous prison.  Again, the circumstances of its production are irrelevant; if it would unlock the nefarious lock, it is the real key, historicity be damned.  And that’s a damned peculiar thought, one sobering to a historian, or anyone concerned with grasping reality, whatever that is.