Odd, Old News: A Fieldbrook Giant and the Astor Dining Table

[Photo from the Independent]

THE ASTOR DINING TABLE

After last week’s “fluff(y)” piece, Odd Old News will move on to weightier subjects.

A number of media have recently covered the Archangel Project’s endeavors to grow clone trees from old growth redwood stumps. The first clone planted in the ground by the Archangel Project came from the giant Fieldbrook Stump. Samples were taken from the basal shoots in order to grow new saplings. The tree is said to have been 3,500 years old when it was sawed down in 1896, and has a thirty-five foot diameter stump. There is quite a backstory to an earlier project involving the same tree.

Drawing of the Astor redwood Slab from the San Francisco Call Jan 15, 1899.

W.W. Astor, the wealthy American-born only son of John Jacob Astor III, reportedly commissioned the slabbing of this enormous Humboldt County Redwood tree. He shipped it to England to win a bet that he had made that he could seat and dine twenty people around a table made of one slab of wood sliced from one of the legendary giant Redwoods of California. The story took on a life of its own and the number of people to be seated around the table grew to forty. Soon after the story of Astor’s table bet was reported in the English press, retractions to the story appeared and he threatened to sue anyone who repeated the story. The slab was not made into a table And now rests in the garden at Cliveden, owned by the National Trust.

A HUMBOLDT PRODUCTION

An Account of the Section of the Huge Redwood Stump Shipped From Eureka to London

January 5, 1898

   A few months ago the Times published an account of the shipment by the Vance Mill & Lumber Company of a section of one of Humboldt’s large redwood stumps to W.W. Astor, of London. Mention has also been made of the re-shipment at San Francisco of the huge piece of redwood and also of its arrival at London. In the New York Journal appears a further account of its reception and movements since its arrival across the pond which will be of interest to our readers:

   People in England are watching with a great deal of interest to see whether William Waldorf Astor will win his bet, made nearly a year ago, that he could give a dinner to twenty guests and seat them all around a table made from a single slab of an American tree. Mr. Astor has had an enormous slab cut from the trunk of a California redwood. This tree was felled and sawed far from the sea-coast and laboriously put aboard a ship which took it around Cape Horn and brought it to London.

   The gigantic slab is now lying on the ground at Cliveden, but it is still in a rough state and has not yet been made into a table. The slab weighs 13 ½ tons and it is 16 feet in diameter and 2 ½ feet thick. It has a circumference of 46 feet.

   If Mr. Astor’s twenty guests are to sit at the table with any degree of comfort each will require at least 2 ½ feet of space, and this would call for a table 50 feet in circumference or 52 ½ feet, including the chair of the host.

  The slab of redwood, as it exists at the present time, is somewhat uneven around the edges, and when it is trimmed to uniformity it is said that it may come down to a circumference of about 40 feet.

  In Mr. Astor’s bet there was no stipulation as to the amount of room which each guest should occupy. This is a matter in which, according to English custom, a host may exercise a great deal of latitude, as dining room chairs here different very much in size, and tables are frequently crowded.  Mr. Astor is taking a great deal of interest in the manufacture of this extra-ordinary table and is, it is said, intent upon winning his bet. In order to do this he may have a score of special chairs made, each a little under two feet in width. Seating his guests in these chairs, which would by no means be uncomfortable, Mr. Astor would win. But if any of the young lords whom he is going to invite to the dinner are built like Mr. “Fatty” Bates, of New York, there is certain to be a kick when they endeavor to crowd themselves into Mr. Astor’s two-foot chairs. This is an amusing contingency which is now being discussed in London clubs, and it will raise the whole question of the conditions under which the bet was made.

  One proposition that was made to Mr. Astor was that this huge slice of California redwood should be sunk level with the ground and that the guests should place their chairs upon it, sitting around a big circular table rising from the center. But when measurements were made it was found that this would call for a much larger slab than the tone Mr. Astor has secured, and which was the largest available slice of redwood that money could buy.

   He would have no chance at all of winning the bet if the slab were to be used as a flooring. His only chance is to make it into a table, and this work is now about to be begun. It will make a table the likes of which exists in no other part of the world. It will be the most expensive table in existence, and undoubtedly the most curious, and people are already so anxious to see it that Mr. Astor could go on for years giving dinners around this slice of redwood without exhausting the curiosity of the aristocratic circles.

   This proposed top is so ponderous that the mere question of making it into a dinner table is seriously bothering the conservative minds of the English cabinet makers and carpenters who will undertake the job. Mr. Astor has had a great deal of difficulty in driving into the heads of these people that he want the table made as he desires it, and not as they wish it. In England if you do anything at all outside of the ordinary routine, it is almost impossible to get your orders filled. All of the fittings of the table and legs which will support it must be of the most ponderous nature to sustain the huge weight of thirteen and a half tons of redwood.

   When this gigantic slab of a California tree was take at London out of the hold of the ship which brought it around the Horn and drawn all the way along the banks of the Thames to Cliveden, it excited the wonder and amazement of the whole population. The journey from London to Cliveden occupied two days during the first week of last month. The slice of tree was loaded on to what they call here a trolley. This was drawn by sixteen horses and attended by over a dozen men who, with the cracking of whips and much loud profanity, urged on the stout Norman horses tugging at the traces.

   At one point on the road the wide-tired wheels of the trolley sink into a culvert and it took three hours labor with hoisting jacks to get them out. Heavy planks were also used when the trolley was pulled over soft places in the road. But the weight of the redwood slice was so enormous that it smashed these thick planks, and the wheels again several times sank into the roadway and had to be lifted out with hoisting jacks.

  Several firms of contractors, jobmasters, carters and truck owners were employed in this curious task of hauling Mr. Astor’s table top along the bank of the Thames. When opposite the Dumb Bell Tavern the whole cavalcade stopped to take a drink, in accordance with the immemorial British usage. At this point the gigantic slab of redwood was photographed, with the carters and contractors in the foreground. Some of these men were also employed by Mr. Astor in transporting the stupendous blocks of stone which form a part of his new gigantic fountain, and some of these block of stone weigh quite as much as the redwood slice.

   So accustomed have the people along the road become to seeing stupendous objects pulled by anywhere from a dozen to sixteen horses that hardly anything Mr. Astor could now do would surprise the. At the Dumb Bell Tavern his fancy for enormous weights is frequently discussed. He has had more heavy carting done than any man in the history of England.  This heavy carting along the roads about Maidenhead calls for a huge quantity of drinking of ale and bitter beer by the carters, so that Mr. Astor’s name is now popular in all the public houses about the neighborhood.

   The work on the redwood slab is going to be done at Cliveden, where a special carpenter’s shop will be erected over the slab as it now lies on the ground. The work of trimming and polishing it may take as much as six months, for the wood is extremely hard, and special tools will have to b made for the purpose. The table, when finished will have cost, it is said, over $30,000.

The story took on a life of its own and the number of people to be seated around the table grew to forty. The claim that the Fieldbrook Stump was the source of the slab has never been tested by DNA, but is thought to be true despite the gap in years between its being cut down in 1890, but not slabbed until 1898.

Soon after the story of Astor’s table bet was reported in the English press, retractions to the story appeared and he threatened to sue anyone who repeated the story. The slab was not made into a table and now rests in the garden at Cliveden,  owned by the National Trust.

The Fieldbrook Stump lives on, with cloned saplings growing in the Presidio, New Zealand and England.

Earlier Odd and Old News:

There are many more, but here are the most recent:

• Odd, Old News: The Blue Lakes Monster
• Odd, Old News: The Great Rio Dell Gold Strike of 1878
• Odd, Old News: Wee Willie’s Wayward Wandering Ways
• Odd, Old News: The Wreck of the Chilkat
• Odd, Old News: The Chilkat’s Cat