RTWF - Oui, je parle la langue...et aussi - e anche Parlo Italiano....and at one time We hui jiang gwo yu. I have been 48 years in the Foreign Service, 25 years abroad...a lot of time in Africa but also in the Far East, Central and South Asia, and Europe. (Battle is from Versailles...which I assumed to be Paris, France - but there is a Paris, Virginia which has 20 houses in it so - this Versailles could be somewhere else).
check out this line that I authored:
https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=480959Ky, thanks for the observations on the stocks. They look like Reilly stocks which is maybe where I went wrong. And I think Imperidix observations are interesting. The double case though remains intact (yet the advertisement is glibly vague - it only says "a brass bound case" not an "original one.") David Travallion recalls Purdey making consecutive numbered guns which were 12 and 16 bore and putting them into a double case numbered "1" & "2"...not a matched pair but a pair of sorts.
I wrote to the auction house asking for photos of the trade label (I really don't have an example of a Reilly label after the move to 295 Oxford Street...except for several examples of 277 Oxford street labels with the 277 crossed out and 295 inserted above. No response from Bonhams. Disappointing.