history. He often spoke to him, he says, of the Cherif, but always
refused to be “drawn” on the subject of his real origin and birth. He
treated him, however, with every consideration and endeavoured to induce
him to “take the cross,” promising him a great career and rapid
preferment if he would consent to do so. Cagliostro’s love of travelling
and of the study of medicine drew him in another direction, and on the
death of his guardian, Althotas, which occurred shortly after, he left
Malta for ever. After visiting Sicily and the Greek Archipelago in
company with the Chevalier d’Aquino he proceeded thence to Naples, where
he took leave of his companion. Provided with a letter of credit on the
banking house of Signor Bellone he left Naples for Rome, where his
destiny awaited him in the shape of Seraphina Feliciani, who shortly
after became his wife, and to whom he showed throughout his married life
a most unfailing devotion.[14] Cagliostro states that he was then (anno
1770) in his twenty-second year, and he appears to have continued to
pursue that nomadic life which was so dear to him, travelling from town
to town on the Continent of Europe till he at length emerges into the
light of day in the city of London, in the month of July 1776, in
furnished apartments in Whitcombe Street, Leicester Fields. London seems
always to have been an unfortunate place for Cagliostro, and here he was
destined, on the first of many occasions, to become the victim of his
own too trustful and generous disposition and to be fleeced of the
greater part of his possessions by a nest of rogues, who took advantage
of a foreigner entirely ignorant of London. Eventually he was rescued
from this gang of knaves by a good Samaritan in the shape of a certain
O’Reilly. Now O’Reilly was a prominent member of the Esperance Lodge of
Freemasons, and here we first find Cagliostro brought into contact with
that celebrated secret society, his connection with which was destined
to play so all-important a part in the subsequent years of his life.
O’Reilly, it appears, was the proprietor of the _King’s Head_, in Gerard
Street, where the Esperance Lodge assembled, and it was only natural
that one so fascinated with the occult as Cagliostro should be readily
persuaded by his benefactor and rescuer to become initiated into the
order of Freemasons. It is not necessary here to follow in detail the
sordid intrigues of which, during his sojourn in England, he was made
the victim. He was, however, glad eventually to escape from the country,
with “no more than £50 and some jewels” in his possession, having lost
in all, through fraud and consequent legal proceedings, some 3000
guineas during his sojourn. Cagliostro’s star, however, had not yet set,
and his all too brief spell of fame and triumph was still in front of
him. Providence, in the shape probably of the emissaries of Freemasonry,
was waiting at Brussels to replenish his purse, and the same Providence,
probably in the same guise, replenished it many times afterwards with no
niggardly hand.
From Brussels to The Hague, from The Hague to Nuremberg, from Nuremberg
to Berlin, from Berlin to Leipzig, we trace the Count’s peregrinations,
gathering fame and founding Egyptian Masonic Lodges as he went. It is
true he met with setbacks and reverses, and the capital of Frederick the
Great would have none of him, but it is clear that, in spite of these,
his credit and reputation as a healer and clairvoyant grew steadily in
volume. It was, in fact, on these two gifts that his fame rested. Though
he claimed to have been taught the secrets of occultism by Althotas, or
to have learned them from the Egyptian priests, there is no evidence[15]
throughout the records of his career of his possessing anything but a
smattering of such abstruse knowledge, and on several occasions, notably
at St Petersburg, there is something more than a suspicion that his
attempt to make good his claim to the name of occultist involved him in
serious humiliation and rebuffs. The tales, however, of his predictions
and their fulfilments were handed on from mouth to mouth, doubtless
losing nothing on the way, while his reputation as a healer and the
stories of the cures which he effected assured a perfect furore of
enthusiasm in every fresh town to which he paid a visit. He took
advantage of this enthusiasm to found fresh Masonic Lodges in all
directions, and, while he consistently refused to receive payment of any
kind for his cures, the shekels of an endless file of initiate converts
poured into the coffers at the headquarters of Egyptian Masonry. Never
was man at once more lavish with money and more indifferent to the
comforts which money brings. “He slept in an armchair,” said Madame
d’Oberkirch contemptuously, “and lived on cheese.” Whatever he spent,
however, he appeared to draw from an inexhaustible widow’s cruise. As in
spite of his refusal to accept fees, he paid his own bills with the
greatest promptitude; the problem whence this continuous stream of gold
flowed excited unbounded curiosity, and many were the fantastic stories
invented to account for it.
Meanwhile, after visiting Mittau, where he was enthusiastically taken up
by Marshal von Medem, the head of the Masonic Lodge at that place, he
passed on to Petersburg, Warsaw, and thence to Strassburg. Here he was
destined to enjoy a great triumph and to win a powerful friend, who was
eventually, through a pure accident, to prove the cause of his undoing.
This was none other than the notorious Cardinal de Rohan. It is hardly
necessary to state that the ecclesiastical dignitary of the eighteenth
century in France was not selected for his high office by reason of his
exemplary life or his Christian virtues. To neither of these did
Cardinal de Rohan make any claim. Yet honours had fallen thick and fast
upon him. He was Bishop of Strassburg, Grand Almoner of France,
Cardinal, Prince of the Empire, Landgrave of Alsace, in addition to
being Abbot of the richest abbey in France, the Abbey of St Waast
Handsune. Of fascinating manner, an aristocrat of the aristocrats, there
was no position in the kingdom to which he did not feel justified in
aspiring. The fact that he enjoyed a reputation for dissipation and
extravagance did not appear calculated to tell against him in such an
age.
Surprising as it may seem, the Cardinal combined with a pleasure-loving
disposition a passion for alchemy and the pursuit of the occult
sciences, and the arrival of Cagliostro at Strassburg naturally enough
excited his interest to no small degree. The Cardinal determined to lose
no time in making the acquaintance of the man about whom and whose
marvellous cures the whole town was already talking almost before he set
foot in its streets. But Cagliostro was inclined to ride the high horse.
“If the Cardinal is ill,” he replied to the great man’s messenger, “let
him come to me and I will cure him. If not, he has no need of me nor I
of him.” In spite of the Count’s stand-offishness, the Cardinal was not
to be denied, and the acquaintance once made soon ripened into the
closest intimacy. Cagliostro was told to consider the palace his own,
and he and his wife resided there on the footing of the most honoured
guests. Marvellous tales are told of the results of his experiments in
the Cardinal’s laboratory, how he manufactured gold and jewels, and
finally showed De Rohan in the crystal the form of the woman whom he had
loved. It is on these stories alone that the reputation of Cagliostro as
an alchemist really rests, and in the absence of further confirmatory
evidence one is inclined to take them with a grain of salt. However this
may be, it is certain that the Cardinal was completely won over, and
Cagliostro took care not to lose caste by assuming airs of humility or
deference. Never, certainly, was there less of a snob than this
marvellous adventurer. “Cagliostro,” says Madame d’Oberkirch, “treated
him and his other distinguished admirers as if they were under the
deepest obligation to him; but he under none whatever to them.” As
usual, our hero was besieged at Strassburg by those who would profit by
his medical knowledge and skill as a healer, for he really appears to
have possessed both, and as usual by obliging his clients he incurred
the inveterate hostility of the medical profession. In all ages of the
world’s history the natural healer has had the doctor as his enemy, and
the prophet, the priest. Orthodoxy has ever closed its ranks against
those who poach on its preserves. Doubtless it is the natural instinct
of self-defence. For Cagliostro, however, it was extremely inconvenient.
The people would throng his doorsteps to be cured and make him heal them
willy-nilly, and the medical profession were equally determined to make
each place in which he practised his medical skill too hot for him.
Others might have been willing to let the dogs bark, but a fatal
sensitiveness to criticism made the Count an all too easy target for
their venom. They drove him from Strassburg as they had driven him from
other places, in spite of the entreaties of De Rohan, who pressed him to
stay and disregard their clamour.
We need not follow Cagliostro from Strassburg to Bordeaux and from
Bordeaux to Lyons, where he added further laurels to his reputation and
founded further Lodges of Egyptian Masonry. He might have remained
indefinitely to all appearance at the latter place if it had not been
for the solicitations of Cardinal de Rohan, who urged him to respond to
the appeals of Parisian Society and visit the gay capital, where he
guaranteed him an enthusiastic reception. He even sent a special
messenger to back his request, and perhaps Cagliostro himself had heard
the capital of cultured Europe a-calling. Anyhow he came, his evil
fate—if not Paris—summoning him. Cagliostro declared that he took the
greatest precaution on arriving there to avoid causing ill-will. However
this may be, he immediately became “the rage” in fashionable circles;
people flocked to him by hundreds to be cured, and the stories of the
miracles which he was supposed to have effected were the talk of every
dinner-party in the capital. Mesmer had already left Paris with a
fortune of 340,000 livres, made by his lucrative practice, in his
pocket. Paris, craving for a new excitement, was ready to receive with
open arms the wonder-worker of whom it was said that no one of all his
patients ever succeeded in making him accept the least mark of
gratitude.[16]
Cagliostro was here surfeited with flattery. Houdin executed his bust.
His statuettes were in every shop window. His portrait was in every
house. Those who claimed to have been cured by him were met with on all
sides. Angels, it is said, and heroes of Biblical story appeared at his
séances. No story was too absurd for Paris to believe about him.
But a train of events in which he had no hand, and a catastrophe for
which he had no responsibility, were destined, while wrecking other
reputations and undermining the throne itself, to bring his career of
triumph to a sudden and tragic close, and eventually to drive him, a
forsaken and persecuted outcast, to his final doom. Cagliostro, as
already stated, had nothing whatever to do with the affair of the
Diamond Necklace. But for all that, he was caught in the web of deceit
that an unscrupulous woman had woven to suit her own purposes.
The Countess de Lamotte-Valois, a descendant of a natural son of Henri
II., and an adventuress of the most reckless type, had found a protector
in the person of the susceptible Cardinal de Rohan. Now the Cardinal was
by no means a _persona grata_ at the Court of Versailles. As a matter of
fact, he was never seen there except at the feast of the Assumption,
when it was his duty as Grand Almoner to celebrate Mass in the Royal
Chapel. The cause of this was the enmity of Queen Marie Antoinette. The
Cardinal had been recalled from the embassy at Vienna at the instance of
her mother, Maria Theresa, and doubtless the mother had communicated to
the daughter a distrust for the brilliant but pleasure-loving Cardinal.
This was a fatal obstacle to De Rohan, whose ambition it was to become
First Minister to the King. The Countess de Lamotte saw her chance in
the thwarted ambitions of her protector, and took care to pose as an
intimate friend of the Queen, a story to which her frequent visits to
Versailles in connection with a petition for the recovery of some family
property which had passed into the possession of the State, lent a
certain appearance of truth. She represented to the Cardinal the
interest the Queen took in him but which matters of policy compelled her
to dissemble. In the sequel, a series of letters—of course forged—passed
between De Rohan and the supposed Queen. The Queen, through the
intermediary of the Countess, borrowed large sums of money of the
Cardinal, which the Cardinal, on his part, being head over ears in debt
in spite of his enormous income, was compelled to borrow of the Jews.
Then, when the Cardinal was becoming suspicious, the Countess arranged a
bogus interview, at which another lady—admittedly remarkably like
her—posed as the Queen, and permitted De Rohan to kiss her hand.
Finally, Madame de Lamotte got in touch with Böhmer, the owner of the
famous necklace. This she represented to the Cardinal that the Queen had
set her heart on obtaining, but could not, at a moment’s notice, find
the ready cash. Would he become security? Needless to say, De Rohan fell
into the trap. The first instalment of the bill fell due, and the
Cardinal, who had not expected to be called on to pay, was unable
offhand to find the money. At this point Böhmer, feeling nervous,
consulted one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, who informed him that
the story of the Queen having bought the necklace was all moonshine. He
then went to the Countess de Lamotte, who had the effrontery to say she
believed he was being victimised, and advised him to go to the Cardinal,
thinking, doubtless, that De Rohan would take the entire responsibility
when the alternative was his ruin. The jeweller, however, instead of
taking her advice, went straight to the King. The King immediately
communicated with the Queen, who was furious, and insisted on having the
Cardinal arrested forthwith. The fat was now in the fire with a
vengeance. The arrest of the Cardinal was followed by that of the
Countess de Lamotte, of Cagliostro and his wife (whom the Countess in
utter recklessness accused of the theft of the necklace), of the
Baroness d’Oliva, who had “played” the Queen, of de Vilette, the forger
of the letters, and various minor actors in this astounding drama.
In the celebrated trial that followed Cagliostro was acquitted, but not
until he had spent nine months in the Bastille. There was, in fact, not
a shadow of evidence against him. His wife was released before the trial
took place. Cagliostro received an ovation from the people of Paris on
the occasion of his release, as well as De Rohan, who was also
acquitted, the popularity of the verdict being due to the hatred with
which the Royal Family were now everywhere regarded. But on the day
after, by a Royal edict, De Rohan was stripped of all his dignities and
exiled to Auvergne, while Cagliostro was ordered to leave France within
three weeks. The Count retired to England, fearful lest worse might
befall him; but even here the relentless malignity of the discredited
Queen, who regarded his acquittal as equivalent to her own condemnation,
followed his footsteps. The unscrupulous De Morande, as we have already
seen, was paid by the Court to ruin his reputation and to identify him
with the thief and gaolbird Joseph Balsamo. London was soon made so hot
for him that he returned once more to the Continent, and made his home
for a short time in Switzerland. Later on he went to Trent, where the
Prince-Bishop, who had a passion for alchemy, made him a welcome guest.
But the Count’s day was over, and misfortune continued to dog his
footsteps. The Emperor Joseph II. would not permit his vassal to harbour
the man who had been mixed up in the Diamond Necklace affair, and the
Bishop was reluctantly obliged to bid him begone. Cagliostro now found
himself driven from pillar to post, his resources were at an end, and
his friends were dead or had deserted him. He turned his steps towards
Italy, and eventually arrived at Rome. Here his presence becoming known
to the papal authorities, he and his wife were arrested as members of
the Masonic Fraternity. In those days, within the Papal States
Freemasonry was a crime punishable by death. After a mock trial the
death-sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life, while his wife was
confined in a penitentiary.
Rumour which wove a web of romance round all his doings, did not leave
him even here, and stories were circulated that he had escaped from his
dungeon and was living in Russia. There appears, however, to be no doubt
that neither Count nor Countess long survived their incarceration, and
when the French soldiers invaded the Papal States in 1797 and the Polish
Legion under General Daubrowski captured the fortress of San Leo, in
which the Count had been confined, the officers who inquired after the
once famous magician, hoping to set him free, were informed that it was
too late, and that he was already dead. The Queen, whose vindictive
spite had ruined these two lives, went to her doom first; but her
instrument, the blackmailer Morande, retired to a quiet corner of France
on his ill-gotten fortune, escaped the furies of the French Revolution,
and ended his life surrounded by an atmosphere of the most unquestioned
respectability.
And what of the man with whom not only his own fate, but the
misrepresentations of history have dealt so hardly? What manner of man
was he for whom even those who denounce him as mountebank might not
unreasonably, one would think, feel a passing sympathy? On two points we
have ample testimony. All those who knew him bore witness to the
marvellous magnetism of his personality and to the fascination and
beauty of his extraordinary eyes. “No two eyes like his were ever seen,”
says the Marquise de Crégny, “and his teeth were superb.” “He was not,
strictly speaking, handsome,” says Madame d’Oberkirch, “but I have never
seen a more remarkable face. His glance was so penetrating that one
might almost be tempted to call it supernatural. I could not describe
the expression of his eyes; it was, so to speak, a mixture of flame and
ice. It attracted and repelled at the same time, and, whilst it inspired
terror, it aroused along with it an irresistible curiosity. I cannot
deny,” she adds, “that Cagliostro possessed an almost demoniacal power.”
Not less noteworthy is the opinion of so hostile a witness as Beugnot,
who confesses, while ridiculing him, that his face, his attire, the
whole man, in fact, impressed him in spite of himself. “If gibberish can
be sublime,” he continues, “Cagliostro was sublime. When he began
speaking on a subject he seemed carried away with it, and spoke
impressively in a ringing, sonorous voice.”
This was the man whose appearance Carlyle caricatured in the following
elegant phraseology:
A most portentous face of scoundrelism; a fat snub abominable face;
dew-lapped, flat-nosed, greasy, full of greediness, sensuality,
ox-like obstinacy; the most perfect quack face produced by the
eighteenth century.
Carlyle, however, who would say anything or write anything in his moods
of irritability, also alluded to the late Cardinal Newman as “not
possessing the intellect of a moderate-sized rabbit”; and the two
statements may fairly be juxtaposed.
Mr W. R. H. Trowbridge, to whose recent book I am greatly indebted for
material for this brief sketch of Cagliostro’s life, well observes that
“there is perhaps no other equally celebrated personality in modern
history whose character is so baffling to the biographer.” History has
condemned him purely on the evidence of his most unscrupulous enemies.
But while dismissing such one-sided portraits, it is no easy matter to
arrive at an unprejudiced valuation of the real man. Of his latest
biographer’s impartiality and candour, as well as his careful research
of authorities, it is impossible to speak too highly. His conclusions
will be all the more widely accepted in view of the fact that he is
himself in no sense an occultist. In spite of a rather long chapter
dealing with “Eighteenth Century Occultism,” we feel instinctively and
at every turn that the subject is one in which he is obviously out of
his depth. Indeed, only on the second page of his biography we come
across the following surprising statement. Speaking of “theosophists,
spiritualists, occultists,” all of whom are unceremoniously lumped
together, he observes:
By these amiable visionaries Cagliostro is regarded as one of the
princes of occultism whose mystical touch has revealed the arcana of
the spiritual world to the initiated, and illumined the path along
which the speculative scientist proceeds on entering the labyrinth
of the supernatural.
Every occultist knows this to be sheer rubbish. Cagliostro has never
been regarded as an authority in any school of occultism. Many, if not
most occultists, have been inclined to believe that he was more than
half a quack. Mr Trowbridge—it is to be said to his credit—has judged
him in the light of the evidence more fairly than they. The truth is
that, Cagliostro with all his good qualities, with all his generosity of
heart, his human sympathy, his nobility—yes, it really was nobility—of
character, was beyond and above all things a poser and a mystery-monger.
He had a magnetic personality, a mediumistic temperament, and almost
certainly some clairvoyant power, though it is noticeable that he
invariably employed a little boy or girl whose assistance was essential
to his predictions. Beyond this, and, I think we must say, more
important than all this, he had an incontestable natural healing gift,
which he aided by no small knowledge of practical medicine. In these
qualifications we have the secret of his success, and also the clue to
his failure. He was excessively vain, and loved to impress the
multitude. He loved, moreover, to impress them by surrounding himself
with an atmosphere of mystery and posing as an occultist, which
(probably) he never was. He has left no body of teaching behind him. He
has left no followers, no disciples. He was merely the comet of a
season, though an exceptionally brilliant one. It would be absurd to
class him in the same category as such master occultists as Cornelius
Agrippa and Paracelsus, or indeed even as Eliphas Levi. He was not cast
in the same mould. He belonged to another and a lower type. But his was
withal a striking as well as a sympathetic personality, a personality
that makes appeal, by a certain glamour heightened by the tragedy of his
inglorious end, to all that is warm, and chivalrous, and romantic in the
human heart.
Footnote 13:
The Christian name of Balsamo’s wife was Lorenza, of Cagliostro’s
Seraphina. But the story is itself of doubtful authenticity.
Footnote 14:
It is perhaps almost superfluous to state that Joseph Balsamo got his
wife locked up in jail, beside compelling her to lead a life of
immorality.
Footnote 15:
Unless indeed we accept the (doubtful) story of his transmuting metals
for De Rohan.
Footnote 16:
Grimm.
VII
ANNA KINGSFORD AND EDWARD MAITLAND