famous imposter 9

famous imposter 9

“You share the opinion which my learned brothers and I have

entertained for a long time; that every one of the documents is

spurious.”

 

As the Counsel for the Petitioners had “felt it his duty to make some

observations to the jury before they delivered their verdict,” and had

made them, the Lord Chief Justice summed up. Towards the conclusion of

his summing-up he said, in speaking of the various conflicting stories

put forth by Mrs. Serres:

 

“In each of the claims which she made at different times, she

appealed to documents in her possession by which they were

supported. What was the irresistible inference? Why, that

documents were from time to time prepared to meet the form which

her claims from time to time assumed.”

 

The jury, without hesitation, found that they were not satisfied “that

Olive Serres, the mother of Mrs. Ryves, was the legitimate daughter of

Henry Frederick Duke of Cumberland and Olive his wife; and they were

not satisfied that Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, was lawfully

married to Olive Wilmot on the 4th of March 1767....”

 

The case of Mrs. Serres is an instance of how a person, otherwise

comparatively harmless but afflicted with vanity and egotism, may be

led away into evil courses, from which, had she realised their full

iniquity, she might have shrunk. The only thing outside the case we

have been considering, was that she separated from her husband; which

indeed was an affliction rather than a crime. She had been married

for thirteen years and had borne two children, but so far as we know

no impropriety was ever alleged against her. One of her daughters

remained her constant companion till her twenty-second year and through

her long life held her and her memory in filial devotion and respect.

The forethought, labour and invention which she devoted to the fraud,

if properly and honestly used, might have won for her a noteworthy

place in the history of her time. But as it was, she frittered away in

criminal work her good opportunities and great talents, and ended her

life within the rules of the King’s Bench.

 

 

 

 

II. PRACTITIONERS OF MAGIC

 

 

 

 

PARACELSUS

 

 

I feel that I ought to begin this record with an apology to the _manes_

of a great and fearless scholar, as earnest as he was honest, as

open-minded as he was great-hearted. I do so because I wish to do what

an unimportant man can after the lapse of centuries, to help a younger

generation to understand what such a man as I write of can do and did

under circumstances not possible in times of greater enlightenment.

The lesson which the story can tell to thinking youth cannot be told

in vain. The greatest asset which worth has in this world is the

irony of time. Contemporaneous opinion, though often correct, is

generally on the meagre side of appreciation--practically always so

with regard to anything new. Such must in any case be encountered in

matters of the sixteenth century which being on the further side of

an age of discovery and reform had hardened almost to the stage of

ossification the beliefs and methods of the outgoing order of things.

Prejudice--especially when it is based on science and religion--dies

hard: the very spirit whence originates a stage of progress or reform,

makes its inherited follower tenacious of _its_ traditions however

short they may be. This is why any who, in this later and more open

minded age, may investigate the intellectual discoveries of the past,

owe a special debt in the way of justice to the memories of those to

whom such fresh light is due. The name and story of the individual

known as Paracelsus--scholar, scientist, open minded thinker and

teacher, earnest investigator and searcher for elemental truths--is

a case in point. Anyone who contents himself with accepting the

judgment of four centuries passed upon the great Swiss thinker, who

had rendered famous in history his place of birth, his canton and his

nation, would inevitably come to the conclusion that he was merely a

charlatan a little more clever than others of his kind; an acceptor of

all manner of eccentric beliefs (including the efficacy of spirits and

demons in pathological cases), a drunkard, a wastrel, an evil liver,

a practiser of necromancy, an astrologer, a magician, an atheist,

an alchemist--indeed an “ist” of all defamatory kinds within the

terminology of the sixteenth century and of all disputatious churchmen

and scientists who have not agreed with his theories and conclusions

ever since.

 

Let us begin with the facts of his life. His name was Theophrastus

Bombast von Hohenheim, and he was the son of a doctor living in

Einsiedeln in the canton of Schwyz, named Wilhelm Bombast von

Hohenheim, natural son of a Grand Master of the Teutonic Order. He

was born in 1490. It was not uncommon for a man of that age who was

striving to make a name for himself, to assume some _nom de plume_

or _de guerre_; and with such a family record as his own, it was no

wonder that on the threshold of his life the young Theophrastus did so.

In the light of his later achievements, we can well imagine that he

had some definite purpose in mind, or at least some guiding principle

of suggestiveness, in choosing such a compound word from the Greek

as Paracelsus (which is derived from “para,” meaning before, in the

sense of superior to, and Celsus, the name of an Epicurean philosopher

of the second century.) Celsus appears to have had views of great

enlightenment according to the thought of his own time. Unhappily only

fragments of his work remain, but as he was a follower of Epicurus

after an interval of between four and five centuries, it is possible

to get some idea of his main propositions. Like Epicurus he stood for

nature. He did not believe in fatalism, but he did in a supreme power.

He was a Platonist and held that there was no truth which was against

nature. It is easy to see from his life and work that Theophrastus

Bombast von Hohenheim shared his views. His intellectual attitude

was that of a true scientist--denying nothing _prima facie_ but

investigating all.

 

“There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds.”

 

His father moved in 1502 to Villach in Carinthia, where he practised

medicine till his death in 1534. Theophrastus was a precocious boy;

after youthful study with his father, he entered the University of

Basel when he was about sixteen, after which he prosecuted chemical

researches under the learned Trithemius Bishop of Sponheim who had

written on the subject of the Great elixir--the common subject

of the scientists of that day,--and at Wurzburg. From thence he

proceeded to the great mines in the Tyrol, then belonging to the

Fugger family. Here he studied geology and its kindred branches of

learning--especially those dealing with effects and so far as possible

with causes--metallurgy, mineral waters, and the diseases of and

accidents to mines and miners. The theory of knowledge which he deduced

from these studies was that we must learn nature from nature.

 

In 1527, he returned to Basel, where he was appointed town physician.

It was a characteristic of his independence and of his mind, method

and design, that he lectured in the language of the place, German,

foregoing the Latin tongue, usual up to that time for such teaching.

He did not shrink from a bold criticism of the medical ideas and

methods then current. The effect of this independence and teaching was

that for a couple of years his reputation and his practice increased

wonderfully. But the time thus passed allowed his enemies not only

to see the danger for them that lay ahead, but to take such action

as they could to obviate it. Reactionary forces are generally--if

not always--self-protective, without regard to the right or wrong

of the matter, and Paracelsus began to find that the self-interest

and ignorance of the many were too strong for him, and that their

unscrupulous attacks began to injure his work seriously. He was called

conjurer, necromancer, and many such terms of obloquy. Then what we may

call his “professional” enemies felt themselves strong enough to join

in the attack. As he had kept a careful eye on the purity of medicines

in use, the apothecaries, who, in those days worked in a smaller field

than now, and who found their commerce more productive through guile

than excellence, became almost declared opponents. Eventually he had to

leave Basel. He went to Esslingen, from which however he had to retire

at no distant period from sheer want.

 

Then began a period of wandering which really lasted for the last dozen

years of his life. This time was mainly one of learning in many ways

of many things. The ground he covered must have been immense, for he

visited Colmar, Nurnberg, Appengall, Zurich, Augsburg, Middelheim,

and travelled in Prussia, Austria, Hungary, Egypt, Turkey, Russia,

Tartary, Italy, the Low Countries and Denmark. In Germany and Hungary

he had a bad time, being driven to supply even the bare necessaries of

life by odd--any--means, even to availing himself of the credulity

of others--casting nativities, telling fortunes, prescribing remedies

for animals of the farm such as cows and pigs, and recovering stolen

property; such a life indeed as was the lot of a mediæval “tramp.” On

the other hand, as a contra he did worthy work as a military surgeon

in Italy, the Low Countries and Denmark. When he got tired of his

wandering life, he settled down in Salsburg, in 1541, under the care

and protection of the Archbishop Ernst. But he did not long survive

the prospect of rest; he died later in the same year. The cause of his

death is not known with any certainty, but we can guess that he had

clamorous enemies as well as strong upholding from the conflicting

causes given. Some said that he died from the effects of a protracted

debauch, others that he was murdered by physicians and apothecaries, or

their agents, who had thrown him over a cliff. In proof of this story

it was said that the surgeons had found a flaw or fracture in his skull

which must have been produced during life.

 

He was buried in the churchyard of Saint Sebastian; but two centuries

later, 1752, his bones were moved to the porch of the church, and a

monument erected over them.

 

His first book was printed in Augsburg in 1526. His real monument

was the collection of his complete writings so far as was possible,

the long work of Johann Huser made in 1589-91. This great work was

published in German, from printed copy supplemented by such manuscript

as could be discovered. Then and ever since there has been a perpetual

rain of statements against him and his beliefs. Most of them are too

silly for words; but it is a little disconcerting to find one writer of

some distinction repeating so late as 1856 all the malignant twaddle

of three centuries, saying amongst other things that he believed in

the transmutation of metals and the possibility of an _elixir vitæ_,

that he boasted of having spirits at his command, one of which he

kept imprisoned in the hilt of his sword and another in a jewel; that

he could make any one live forever; that he was proud to be called a

magician; and had boasted of having a regular correspondence with Galen

in Hell. We read in sensational journals and magazines of to-day about

certain living persons having--or saying that they have--communion in

the shape of “interviews” with the dead; but this is too busy an age

for unnecessary contradictions and so such assertions are allowed to

pass. The same indifference may now and again have been exhibited in the case of men like Paracelsus.