famous imposter 19

famous imposter 19

This case of Madame de Brinvilliers is a typical one of how a human

being, goaded by passion and lured by opportunity, may fall swiftly

from any estate. It is so closely in touch with that of Madame Voisin

that the two have almost to be considered together. They began with the

desire for dabbling in forbidden mysteries. Three men--two Italians

and one German, all men of some ability--were violent searchers for

the mythical “philosopher’s stone” which was to fulfil the dream of

the mediæval alchemist by turning at will all things into gold. In the

search they all gravitated to Paris. There the usual thing happened.

Money ran short and foolish hoping had to be supplemented by crime.

In the whirling world of the time there was always a ready sale for

means to an end, however nefarious either might be. The easy morality

of the time allowed opportunity for all means, with the result that

there was an almost open dealing in poisons. The soubriquet which stole

into existence--it dared not proclaim itself--is a self-explanatory

historical lesson. The _poudre de succession_ marks an epoch which,

for sheer, regardless, remorseless, profligate wickedness is almost

without peer in history, and this is said without forgetting the time

of the Borgias. Not even natural affection or family life or individual

relationship or friendliness was afforded any consideration. This phase

of crime, which was one almost confined to the upper and wealthier

classes, depended on wealth and laws of heredity and entail. Those who

benefited by it salved what remnants of conscience still remained to

them with the thought that they were but helping the natural process of

waste and recuperation. The old and feeble were removed, with as little

coil as might be necessary, in order that the young and lusty might

benefit. As the change was a form of plunder, which had to be paid

for in a degree in some way approximate to results, prices ran high.

Poisoning on a successful scale requires skilful and daring agents,

whose after secrecy as well as whose present aid has to be secured.

Exili and Glasser--one of the Italians and the German--did a thriving

trade. As usual in such illicit traffic, the possibility of purchase

under effective conditions made a market. There is every reason to

believe from after results that La Voisin was one such agent. The cause

of La Brinvilliers entering the market was the purely personal one of

an affair of sensual passion. Death is an informative circumstance.

Suspicion began to leak out that the polyglot firm of needy foreigners

had dark dealings. Two of them--the Italians--were arrested and sent to

the Bastille where one of them died. By unhappy chance the other was

given as cell-companion Captain Sainte-Croix, who was a lover of the

Marquise de Brinvilliers. Sainte-Croix as a Captain in the regiment

of the Marquis had become intimate in his house. Brinvilliers was a

fatuous person and of imperfect moral vision. The Captain was handsome,

and Madame la Marquise amorous. Behold then all the usual _personnel_

of a tragedy of three. After a while the intrigue became a matter of

family concern. The lady’s father,--the Civil Lieutenant d’Aulroy,

procured a _lettre de cachet_, and had the erring lover immured in the

Bastille as the easiest and least public way out of the difficulty.

“Evil communications corrupt good manners,” says the proverb. The

proverbial philosopher understated the danger of such juxtaposition.

Evil manners added corruption even to their kind. In the Bastille the

exasperated lover listened to the wiles of Exili; and another stage

of misdoing began. The Marquise determined on revenge, and be sure

that in such a case in such a period even the massive walls of the

Bastille could not prevent the secret whisper of a means of effecting

it. D’Aulroy, his two sons, and another sister perished. Brinvilliers

himself was spared through some bizarre freak of his wife’s conscience.

Then the secret began to be whispered--first, it was said, through

the confessional; and the _Chambre Ardente_, analogous to the British

Star Chamber, instituted for such purposes, took the case in hand. The

result might have been doubtful, for great social forces were at work

to hush up such a scandal, but that, with a truly seventeenth century

candour, the prisoner had written an elaborate confession of her guilt,

which if it did not directly assure condemnation at least put justice

on the right track.

 

The trial was a celebrated one, and involved incidentally many

illustrious persons as well as others of lesser note. In the end, in

1676, Madame la Marquise de Brinvilliers was burned--that is, what was

left of her was burned after her head had been cut off, a matter of

grace in consideration of her rank. It is soothing to the feelings of

many relatives and friends--not to mention those of the principal--in

such a case when “great command o’ersways the order” of purgation by

fire.

 

Before the eddy of the Brinvilliers’ criminal scandal reached to the

lower level of Madame Voisin, a good many scandals were aired; though

again “great command” seems to have been operative, so far as human

power availed, in minimising both scandals and punishments. Amongst

those cited to the _Chambre Ardente_ were two nieces of Cardinal

Mazarin, the Duchesse de Bouillon, the Comtesse de Soissons, and

Marshal de Luxembourg. In some of these cases that which in theatrical

parlance is called “comic relief” was not wanting. It was a witty if

impertinent answer of the Duchesse de Bouillon to one of her judges,

La Reyne, an ill-favoured man, who asked, apropos of a statement made

at the trial that she had taken part in an alleged invocation of

Beelzebub, “and did you ever see the Devil?”--

 

“Yes, I am looking at him now. He is ugly, and is disguised as a

Councillor of State!”

 

The King, Louis XIV, took much interest in the trial and even tried

now and again to smooth matters. He even went so far as to advise

the Comtesse de Soissons who was treated by the Court rather as a

foolish than a guilty woman, to keep out of the way if she were really

guilty. In answer she said with the haughtiness of her time that

though she was innocent she did not care to appear in a Law Court. She

withdrew to Brussels where she died some twenty years later. Marshal

de Luxembourg--François Henri de Montmorenci-Boutteville, duke, peer,

Marshal of France to give his full titles--was shown to have engaged in

an attempt to recover lost property by occult means. On which basis

and for having once asked Madame Voisin to produce his Satanic Majesty,

he was alleged to have sold himself to the Devil. But his occult

adventures did not stand in the way of his promotion as a soldier

though he had to stand a trial of over a year long; he was made Captain

of the Guard and finally given command of the Army.

 

La Voisin with her accomplices--a woman named Vigoureux and Le Sage,

a priest--were with a couple of score of others arrested in 1679, and

were, after a spell of imprisonment in the Bastille, tried. As a result

Voisin, Vigoureux and her brother, and Le Sage were burned early in

1680. In Voisin’s case the mercy of previous decapitation, which had

been accorded to her guilty sister Brinvilliers, was not extended to

her. Perhaps this was partly because of the attitude which she had

taken up with regard to religious matters. Amongst other unforgivable

acts she had repelled the Crucifix--a terrible thing to do according to

the ideas of that superstitious age.

 

 

 

 

D. SIR EDWARD KELLEY

 

 

Carlyle in his _French Revolution_ makes a contrast between two works

of imagination which mark the extremes of the forces that made for

the disruption of France, _Paul et Virginie_ and _Le Chevalier de

Faublas_. The former he calls “the swan-song of old dying France”; of

the latter he says “if this wretched _Faublas_ is a death-speech, it

is one under the gallows, and by a felon that does not repent.” This

double analogy may well serve for a comparison of Dr. Dee and the man

who was at once his partner for a time, and his evil genius. The grave

earnest old scholar, with instincts for good, high endeavour, and a

vast intellectual strength, contrasts well with the mean-souled shifty

specious rogue who fastened himself on him and leech-like drained him

“dry as hay.”

 

Such historians as mention the existence of the latter are even a

little doubtful how to spell his name. This, however, does not matter

much--nay, at all, for it is probably not that to which he was born.

Briefly the following is his record as far as can be discovered. He

was born in 1555 to parents living in Worcester, who having tried

to bring him up as an apothecary, sent him to Oxford when he was

seventeen years of age. There he was entered at Gloucester Hall,

under the name of Talbot. As however three men of that name were in

the Hall at the same time, it is doubtful what family can claim the

honour of his kinship. His college life was short--only lasting a

year--and inconspicuous. “He left,” we are told, “abruptly.” Then, as

if to complete the purely educational phase of his existence, he was

for a while an attorney, eking out the tenuity of his legal practice

by aid of forgery. Thus full-fledged for his work in life, he made

his first properly-recorded appearance in the pillory in 1580, for

an offence which is variously spoken of as forgery and coining. At

any rate his ears were cropped off, a loss which necessitated for

prudential reasons his wearing a skullcap for the remainder of his

days. This he wore with such conspicuous success that it is said that

even Doctor Dee, who was his partner for nearly seven years, did not

know of his mutilation. Kelley’s next recorded offence was one which

in a later age when subjects for dissection (necessary for purposes of

education in anatomy) were difficult to obtain, was popularly known

as “body-snatching.” The commission of this offence though a serious

breach of the law, came to be regarded as a necessary condition of

study; and even if punishment was meted out, it was not looked upon as

dishonour. But in Kelley’s case the offence was committed not for the

purpose of scientific education but for one of sorcery. It took place

in Walton-le-dale in Lancashire, where Kelley dug up a body buried

on the previous day, for purposes of necromancy, which, it will be

remembered, was, as the etymology of the word implies, divination by

means of the dead.

 

From this time on, he seemed to see his way clear to the final choice

of a profession. He had tasted crime and punishment, and considered

himself well qualified to accept the risks as well as the benefits;

and so chose fraud as his life work. He was still under twenty-five

years of age when he began to look about him for his next means

or occasion of turning his special talents to profit. After some

deliberation he fixed on the existence and qualities of the famous (as

he had then become) Doctor Dee, and carefully commenced operations.

He called on the mathematician at his house at Mortlake and made his

acquaintance. Dee was naturally impressed by the conversation and

ostensible qualities of the young man, who had the plausibility of the

born rogue and laid himself out to captivate the old man, more than

double his companion’s age and worn by arduous study. He fostered all

Dee’s natural weaknesses, humoured his fads, was enthusiastic regarding

his beliefs which he appeared to share, and urged on his personal

ambitions. The belief in occultism which the philosopher cherished

in secret, though he had openly and formally repudiated it a dozen

years before in his preface to Sir Henry Billingsley’s translation

of Euclid, gave the parasitic rogue his cue for further ingratiating

himself, and before long he entered Dee’s service at an annual salary

of fifty pounds. His special function was that of “skryer,” which

was his own or Dee’s reading of “seer.” His contribution to the

general result was to see the figures which did--or did not--appear

in the so-called “magic” crystal, an office for which his useful

imagination, his unblushing assurance, and his utter unscrupulousness

eminently fitted him. In fact he was in his designs of fraud a perfect

complement of the simple-minded scientist. Of course as days went on

and opportunities offered themselves, through Dee’s growing madness

and Kelley’s social enlargements, the horizon of chicanery widened.

This was largely assisted by the opportune arrival in England of the

Palatine Albert Laski in 1583. Laski was just the man that Kelley was

waiting for. A rich man with a taste for occult science; sufficiently

learned to keep in touch with the theories of occultism of that time;

sufficiently vain to be used by an unscrupulous adventurer who tickled

his intellectual palate whilst he matured his frauds upon him.