Witch, Warlock, and Magician Part 7

It was then Kelly's turn to affect a superior morality, and he earnestly protested that the spirits could not be messengers from heaven, but were servants of Satan. Whereupon they then declared that he was no longer worthy to act as their interpreter. But why dwell longer on this unpleasant farce? By various means of cajolery and trickery, Kelly contrived to accomplish his design.

This communistic arrangement, however, did not long work satisfactorily--at least, so far as the ladies were concerned; and one can easily understand that Mrs. Dee would object to the inferior position she occupied as Kelly's paramour. However this may be, Dee and Kelly parted company in January, 1589; the former, according to his own account, delivering up to the latter the mysterious elixir and other substances which they had made use of in the trans.m.u.tation of metals. Dee had begun to turn his eyes wistfully towards his native country, and welcomed with unfeigned delight a gracious message from Queen Elizabeth, a.s.suring him of a friendly reception. In the spring he took his departure from Trebona; and it is said that he travelled with a pomp and circ.u.mstance worthy of an amba.s.sador, though it is difficult to reconcile this statement with his constant complaints of poverty. Perhaps, after all, his three coaches, with four horses to each coach, his two or three waggons loaded with baggage and stores, and his hired escort of six to twenty-four soldiers, whose business it was to protect him from the enemies he supposed to be lying in wait for him, existed only, like the philosopher's stone, in the imagination! He landed at Gravesend on December 2, was kindly received by the Queen at Richmond a day or two afterwards, and before the year had run out was once more quietly settled in his house 'near the riverside' at Mortlake.

Kelly, whom the Emperor Maximilian II. had knighted and created Marshal of Bohemia, so strong a conviction of his hermetic abilities had he impressed on the Imperial mind, remained in Germany. But the ingenious, plausible rogue was kept under such rigid restraint, in order that he might prepare an adequate quant.i.ty of the trans.m.u.ting stone or powder, that he wearied of it, and one night endeavoured to escape. Tearing up the sheets of his bed, he twisted them into a rope, with which to lower himself from the tower where he was confined. But he was a man of some bulk; the rope gave way beneath his weight, and falling to the ground, he received such severe injuries that in a few days he expired (1593).

Dee's later life was, as G.o.dwin remarks, 'bound in shallows and miseries.' He had forfeited the respect of serious-minded men by his unworthy confederacy with an unscrupulous adventurer. The Queen still treated him with some degree of consideration, though she had lost all faith in his magical powers, and occasionally sent him a.s.sistance. The unfortunate man never ceased to weary her with the repet.i.tion of his trials and troubles, and strongly complained that he had been deprived of the income of his two small benefices during his six years'

residence on the Continent. He related the sad tale of the destruction of his library and apparatus by an ignorant mob, which had broken into his house immediately after his departure from England, excited by the rumours of his strange magical practices. He enumerated the expenses of his homeward journey, arguing that, as it had been undertaken by the Queen's command, she ought to reimburse him. At last (in 1592) the Queen appointed two members of her Privy Council to inquire into the particulars of his allegations. These particulars he accordingly put together in a curious narrative, which bore the long-winded t.i.tle of:

'The Compendious Rehearsall of John Dee, his dutiful Declaracion and Proof of the Course and Race of his Studious Lyfe, for the s.p.a.ce of Halfe an Hundred Yeares, now (by G.o.d's Favour and Helpe) fully spent, and of the very great Injuries, Damages, and Indignities, which for those last nyne Years he hath in England sustained (contrary to Her Majesties very gracious Will and express Commandment), made unto the Two Honourable Commissioners, by Her Most Excellent Majesty thereto a.s.signed, according to the intent of the most humble Supplication of the said John, exhibited to Her Most Gracious Majestie at Hampton Court, Anno 1592, November 9.'

It has been remarked that in this 'Compendious Rehearsal' he alludes neither to his magic crystal, with its spiritualistic properties, nor to the wonderful powder or elixir of trans.m.u.tation. He founds his claim to the Queen's patronage solely upon his intellectual eminence and acknowledged scholars.h.i.+p. Nor does he allude to his Continental experiences, except so far as relates to his homeward journey. But he is careful to recapitulate all his services, and the encomiastic notices they had drawn from various quarters, while he details his losses with the most elaborate minuteness. The quaintest part of his lamentable and most fervent pet.i.tion is, however, its conclusion.

Having shown that he has tried and exhausted every means of raising money for the support of his family, he concludes:

'Therefore, seeing the blinded lady, Fortune, doth not governe in this commonwealth, but _just.i.tia_ and _prudentia_, and that in better order than in Tullie's "Republica," or bookes of offices, they are laied forth to be followed and performed, most reverently and earnestly (yea, in manner with b.l.o.o.d.y teares of heart), I and my wife, our seaven children, and our servants (seaventeene of us in all) do this day make our pet.i.tion unto your Honors, that upon all G.o.dly, charitable, and just respects had of all that, which this day you have seene, heard, and perceived, you will make such report unto her Most Excellent Majestie (with humble request for speedy reliefes) that we be not constrained to do or suffer otherwise than becometh Christians, and true, and faithfull, and obedient subjects to doe or suffer; and all for want of due mainteynance.'

The main object Dee had in view was the masters.h.i.+p of St. Cross's Hospital, which Elizabeth had formerly promised him. This he never received; but in December, 1594, he was appointed to the Chancellors.h.i.+p of St. Paul's Cathedral, which in the following year he exchanged for the wardens.h.i.+p of the College at Manchester. He still continued his researches into supernatural mysteries, employing several persons in succession as 'skryers'; but he found no one so fertile in invention as Kelly, and the crystal uttered nothing more oracular than answers to questions about lovers' quarrels, hidden treasures, and petty thefts--the common stock-in-trade of the conjurer. In 1602 or 1604, he retired from his Manchester appointment, and sought the quiet and seclusion of his favourite Mortlake. His renown as 'a magician' had greatly increased--not a little, it would seem, to his annoyance; for on June 5, 1604, we find that he presented a pet.i.tion to James I. at Greenwich, soliciting his royal protection against the wrong done to him by enemies who mocked him as 'a conjurer, or caller, or invocator of devils,' and solemnly a.s.serting that 'of all the great number of the very strange and frivolous fables or histories reported and told of him (as to have been of his doing) none were true.' It is said that the treatment Dee experienced at this time was the primary cause of the Act pa.s.sed against personal slander (1604)--a proof of legislative wisdom which drew from Dee a versified expression of grat.i.tude--in which, let us hope, the sincerity of the grat.i.tude is not to be measured by the quality of the verse. It is addressed to 'the Honorable Members of the Commons in the Present Parliament,' and here is a specimen of it, which will show that, though Dee's crystal might summon the spirits, it had no control over the Muses:

'The honour, due unto you all, And reverence, to you each one I do first yield most spe-ci-all; Grant me this time to heare my mone.

'Now (if you will) full well you may Fowle sclaundrous tongues for ever tame; And helpe the truth to beare some sway In just defence of a good name.'

Thenceforward Dee sinks into almost total obscurity. His last years were probably spent in great tribulation; and the man who had dreamed of converting, Midas-like, all he touched into gold, seems frequently to have wanted bread. It was a melancholy ending to a career which might have been both useful and brilliant, if his various scholars.h.i.+p and mental energy had not been expended upon a delusion. Unfortunately for himself, Dee, with all his excellent gifts, wanted that greatest gift of all, a sound judgment. His excitable fancy and credulous temper made him the dupe of his own wishes, and eventually the tool of a knave far inferior to himself in intellectual power, but surpa.s.sing him in strength of will, in force of character, in audacity and inventiveness. Both knave and dupe made but sorry work of their lives.

Kelly, as we have seen, broke his neck in attempting to escape from a German prison, and Dee expired in want and dishonour, without a friend to receive his last sigh.

He died at Mortlake in 1608, and was buried in the chancel of Mortlake Church, where, long afterwards, Aubrey, the gossiping antiquary, was shown an old marble slab as belonging to his tomb.

His son Arthur, after acting as physician to the Czar of Russia and to our own Charles I., established himself in practice at Norwich, where he died. Anthony Wood solemnly records that this Arthur, in his boyhood, had frequently played with quoits of gold, which his father had cast at Prague by means of his 'stone philosophical.' How often Dee must have longed for some of those 'quoits' in his last sad days at Mortlake, when he sold his books, one by one, to keep himself from starvation!

After Dee's death, his fame as a magician underwent an extraordinary revival; and in 1659, when the country was looking forward to the immediate restoration of its Stuart line of kings, the learned Dr.

Meric Casaubon thought proper to publish, in a formidable folio volume, the doctor's elaborate report of his--or rather Kelly's--supposed conferences with the spirits--a notable book, as being the initial product of spiritualism in English literature. In his preface Casaubon remarks that, though Dee's 'carriage in certain respects seemed to lay in works of darkness, yet all was tendered by him to kings and princes, and by all (England alone excepted) was listened to for a good while with good respect, and by some for a long time embraced and entertained.' And he adds that 'the fame of it made the Pope bestir himself, and filled all, both learned and unlearned, with great wonder and astonishment.... As a whole, it is undoubtedly not to be paralleled in its kind in any age or country.'

FOOTNOTES:

[24] 'Adeo viro prae credulo errore jam factus sui impos et mente captus, et Daemones, quo arctius horrendis hisce Sacris adhaerescent illius ambitioni vanae summae potestatis in Patria adipiscendae spe et expectatione lene euntis illum non solius Poloniae sed alterius quoque regni, id est primo Poloniae, deinde alterius, viz. Moldaviae Regem fore, et sub quo magnae universi mundi mutationes incepturas esse, Judaeos convertendos, et ab illo Saraemos et Ethnicos vexillo crucis superandos, facili ludificarentur.'--Dr. Thomas Smith, 'Vitae Eruditissimorum ac Ill.u.s.trium Virorum,' London, 1707. 'Vita Joannis Dee,' p. 25.

[25] He was suspected of coining false money, but Dr. Dee declares he was innocent. (June, 1583.)

NOTE.

In the curious 'Apologia' published by Dee, in 1595, in the form of a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 'containing a most briefe Discourse Apologeticall, with a plaine Demonstration and formal Protestation, for the lawfull, sincere, very faithfull and Christian course of the Philosophicall studies and exercises of a certaine studious Gentleman, an ancient Servant to her most excellent Maiesty Royall,' he furnishes a list of 'sundry Bookes and Treatises' of which he was the author. The best known of his printed works is the 'Monas Hieroglyphica, Mathematice, Anagogice que explicata' (1564), dedicated to the Emperor Maximilian. Then there are 'Propae deumata Aphoristica;'

'The British Monarchy,' otherwise called the 'Petty Navy Royall: for the politique security, abundant wealth, and the triumphant state of this kingdom (with G.o.d's favour) procuring' (1576); and 'Paralaticae Commentationis, Praxcosque Nucleus quidam' (1573). His unpublished ma.n.u.scripts range over a wide field of astronomical, philosophical, and logical inquiry. The most important seem to be 'The first great volume of famous and rich Discoveries,' containing a good deal of speculation about Solomon and his Ophirian voyage; 'Prester John, and the first great Cham;' 'The Brytish Complement of the perfect Art of Navigation;' 'The Art of Logicke, in English;' and 'De Hominis Corpore, Spiritu, et Anima: sive Microcosmic.u.m totius Philosophiae Naturalis Compendium.'

The character drawn of Dr. Dee by his learned biographer, Dr. Thomas Smith, by no means confirms the traditional notion of him as a crafty and credulous practiser in the Black Art. It is, on the contrary, the portrait of a just and upright man, grave in his demeanour, modest in his manners, abstemious in his habits; a man of studious disposition and benevolent temper; a man held in such high esteem by his neighbours that he was called upon to arbitrate when any differences arose between them; a fervent Christian, attentive to all the offices of the Church, and zealous in the defence of her faith.

Here is the original: 'Si mores exterioremque vitae cultum contemplemur, non quicquam ipsi in probrum et ignominium verti possit; ut pote sobrius, probus, affectibus sedatis, compositisque moribus, ab omni luxu et gula liber, justi et aequi studiosissimus, erga pauperes beneficus, vicinis facilis et benignus, quorum lites, atrisque partibus contendentium ad illum tanquam ad sapientum arbitrum appellantibus, moderari et desidere solebat: in publicis sacris ctibus et in orationibus frequens, articulorum Christianae fidei, in quibus omnes Orthodoxi conveniunt, strenuus a.s.sertor, zelo in haereses, a primitiva Ecclesia d.a.m.natas, flagrans, inqui Peccorum, qui virginitatem B. Mariae ante partum Christi in dubium vocavit, accerime invectus: licet de controversiis inter Romanenses et Reformatos circa reliqua doctrinae capita non adeo semperose solicitus, quin sibi in Polonia et Bohemia, ubi religio ista dominatur, Missae interesse et communicare licere putaverit, in Anglia, uti antea, post redditum, omnibus Ecclesiae Anglicanae ritibus conformis.' It must be admitted that Dr. Smith's Latin is not exactly 'conformed' to the Ciceronian model.

CHAPTER III.

DR. DEE'S DIARY.

I am not prepared to say, with its modern editor, that Dr. Dee's Diary[26] sets the scholar magician's character in its true light more clearly than anything that has yet been printed; but I concede that it reveals in a very striking and interesting manner the peculiar features of his character--his superst.i.tious credulity, and his combination of shrewdness and simplicity--as well as his interesting habits. I shall therefore extract a few pa.s.sages to a.s.sist the reader in forming his opinion of a man who was certainly in many respects remarkable.

(i.) I begin with the entries for 1577:

'1577, January 16th.--The Erle of Leicester, Mr. Philip Sidney, Mr. Dyer,[27] etc., came to my house (at Mortlake).

'1577, January 22nd.--The Erle of Bedford came to my house.

'1577, March 11th.--My fall uppon my right nuckel bone, _hora 9 fere mane_, wyth oyle of Hypericon (_Hyperic.u.m_, or St.

John's Wort) in twenty-four howers eased above all hope: G.o.d be thanked for such His goodness of (to?) His creatures.

'1577, March 24th.--Alexander Simon, the Ninevite, came to me, and promised me his service into Persia.

'1577, May 1st.--I received from Mr. William Harbut of St.

Gillian his notes uppon my "Monas."[28]

'1577, May 2nd.--I understode of one Vincent Murfryn his abbominable misusing me behinde my back; Mr. Thomas Besb.i.+.c.h told me his father is one of the c.o.kes of the Court.

'1577, May 20th.--I hyred the barber of Cheswik, Walter Hooper, to kepe my hedges and knots in as good order as he saw them then, and that to be done with twice cutting in the yere at the least, and he to have yerely five s.h.i.+llings, meat and drink.

'1577, June 26th.--Elen Lyne gave me a quarter's warning.

'1577, August 19.--The "Hexameron Brytanic.u.m" put to printing. (Published in 1577 with the t.i.tle of "General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the perfect Art of Navigation.")

'1577, November 3rd.--William Rogers of Mortlak about 7 of the clok in the morning, cut his own throte, _by the fiende his instigator_.

'1577, November 6th.--Sir Umfrey Gilbert[29] cam to me to Mortlak.

'1577, November 22nd.--I rod to Windsor to the Q. Majestie.

'1577, November 25th.--I spake with the Quene _hora quinta_; I spoke with Mr. Secretary Walsingham.[30] I declared to the Quene her t.i.tle to Greenland, Estotiland, and Friesland.

'1577, December 1st.--I spoke with Sir Christopher Hatton; he was made Knight that day.

'1577, December --th.--I went from the Courte at Wyndsore.

'1577, December 30th.--Inexplissima illa calumnia de R.

Edwardo, iniquissima aliqua ex parte in me denunciebatur: ante aliquos elapsos diro, sed ... sua sapientia me innocentem.'

I cannot ascertain of what calumny against Edward VI. Dee had been accused; but it is to be hoped that his wish was fulfilled, and that he was acquitted of it before many days had elapsed.

I have omitted some items relating to moneys borrowed. It is sufficiently plain, however, that Dee never intended his Diary for the curious eyes of the public, and that it mainly consists of such memoranda as a man jots down for his private and personal use.

a.s.suredly, many of these would never have been recorded if Dee had known or conjectured that an inquisitive antiquarian, some three centuries later, would exhume the confidential pages, print them in imperishable type, and expose them to the world's cold gaze. It seems rather hard upon Dr. Dee that his private affairs should thus have become everybody's property! Perhaps, after all, the best thing a man can do who keeps a diary is to commit it to the flames before he shuffles off his mortal coil, lest some laborious editor should eventually lay hands upon it, and publish it to the housetops with all its sins upon it! But as in Dr. Dee's case the offence has been committed, I will not debar my readers from profiting by it.