The Funny Side of Physic Part 31

As Richmond lodged that night with his friend Davyd, he gave him till the following morning to make up his decision, when the seer a.s.sured Richmond that he "would succeed gloriously."

For this wonderful and timely information Lloyd received immense rewards at the hand of his grateful prince when he became King Henry VII.

Now for the secret of his success: During the time granted for the answer, Davyd, in great perplexity and trepidation, consulted his wife, instead of the heavens, for an answer. See the wisdom of the reply.

"There can be no difficulty about an answer. Tell him he will certainly succeed. Then, if he does, you will receive honors and rewards; and if he fails, depend on't he will never come here to punish you."

DEE, THE ASTROLOGER.

One of the most remarkable and successful fortune-tellers known to English history was John Dee, who was born in London, 1527, and died in 1608. A biographer says, "He was an English divine and astrologer of great learning, celebrated in the history and science of necromancy, chancellor of St. Paul's, and warden of Manchester College, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was also author of several published works on the subject of astrology, revelations of spirits, etc., which books are preserved in the Cottonian library and elsewhere."

Dee enjoyed for a long time the confidence and patronage of Elizabeth. He then resided in an elegant house at Mortlake, which was still standing in 1830, and was used for a female boarding school. "In two hundred years it necessarily had undergone some repairs and alterations; yet portions of it still exhibited the architecture of the sixteenth century.

"From the front windows might be seen the doctor's garden, still attached to the house, down the central path of which the queen used to walk from her carriage from the Shan road to consult the wily conjurer on affairs of love and war.

"He was one of the few men of science who made use of his knowledge to induce the vulgar to believe him a conjurer, and one possessing the power to converse with spirits. Lilly's memoirs recorded many of his impostures, and at one time the public mind was much agitated by his extravagances.

The mob more than once destroyed his house (before residing at Mortlake) for being too familiar with their devil. He pretended to see spirits in a stone, which is still preserved with his books and papers.... In his spiritual visions Dee had a confederate in one Kelley, who, of course, confirmed all his master's oracles. Both, however, in spite of their spiritual friends, died miserably--Kelley by leaping from a window and breaking his neck, and Dee in great poverty and wretchedness. The remains of the impostor lie in Mortlake Church, without any memorial."

He unfortunately had survived his royal patroness.

Queen Mary had had Dee imprisoned for practising by enchantment against her life; but her successor released him, and required him to name a lucky day for her coronation.

"In view of this fact," asks the author of 'A Morning's Walk from London to Kew,' "is it to be wondered at that a mere man, like tens of thousands of other fanatics, persuaded himself that he was possessed of supernatural powers?"

ANOTHER IMPOSTOR.--THE GREAT FIRE.

William Lilly followed in the wake of, and was even a more successful impostor than the Reverend Dee. He was first known in London as a book-keeper, whose master, dying, gave him the opportunity of marrying his widow and her snug little fortune of one thousand pounds. The wife died in a few years, and Lilly set up as an astrologer and fortune-teller.

His first great attempt at a public demonstration of his art was about 1630, which was to discover certain treasures which he claimed were buried in the cloister of Westminster Abbey. Lilly had studied astronomy with a Welsh clergyman, and doubtless may have been sufficiently "weather-wise"

to antic.i.p.ate a storm; but however that might have been, on the night of the attempt, there came up a most terrific storm of wind, rain, thunder and lightning, which threatened to bury the actors beneath the ruins of the abbey, and his companions fled, leaving Lilly master of the situation.

He unblushingly declared that he himself allayed the "storm spirit," and "attributed the failure to the lack of faith and want of better knowledge in his companions."

"In 1634 Lilly ventured a second marriage, with another woman of property, which was unfortunate as a commercial speculation, for the bride proved extravagant beyond her dowry and Lilly's income. In 1644 he published his first almanac, which he continued thirty-six years. In 1648 he therein predicted the "great fire" of London, which immortalized his name. While Lilly was known as a cheat, and was ridiculed for his absurdities, he received the credit for as lucky a guess as ever blessed the fortunes of a cunning rogue.

"In the year 1656," said his prediction, "the aphelium of Mars, the signification of England, will be in Virgo, which is a.s.suredly the ascendant of the English monarchy, but Aries of the kingdom. When this absis, therefore, of Mars shall appear in Virgo, who shall expect less than a strange _catastrophe_ of human affairs in the commonwealth, monarchy, and kingdom of England?"

He then further stated that it would be "_ominous to London, unto her merchants at sea, to her traffique_ at land, to her poor, to her rich, to all _sorts of people inhabiting her or her liberties, by reason of fire and plague_!" These he predicted would occur within ten years of that time.

The great plague did occur in London in 1665, and the great fire in 1666!

The fire originated by incendiarism in a bakery on Pudding Lane, near the Tower, in a section of the city where the buildings were all constructed of wood with pitched roofs, and also a section near the storehouses for shipping materials, and those of a highly combustible nature. It occurred also at a time when the water-pipes were empty.

This fearful visitation destroyed nearly two thirds of the metropolis.

Four hundred and thirty-three acres were burned over. Thirteen thousand houses, eighty-nine churches, and scores of public buildings were laid in ashes and ruins. There was no estimating the amount of property destroyed, nor the many souls who perished in the relentless, devouring flames.

If this great fire originated at the instigation of Lilly, in order to demonstrate his claims as a foreteller of events, as is believed to be the case by nearly all who were not themselves believers in the occult science, what punishment could be meted out to such a villain commensurate to his heinous crime? Curran says, "There are two kinds of prophets, those who are inspired, and those who prophesy events which they themselves intend to bring about. Upon this occasion, Lilly had the ill luck to be deemed of the latter cla.s.s." Elihu Rich says in his biography of Lilly, "It is certain that he was a man of no character. He was a double-dealer and a liar, by his own showing, ... and perhaps as decent a man as a _trading_ prophet could well be, under the circ.u.mstances." Lilly was cited before a committee of the House of Commons, not, as was supposed by many, "that he might discover by the same planetary signs _who_ were the authors of the great fire," but because of the suspicion that he was already acquainted with them, and privy to the supposed machinations which brought about the catastrophe. At one time, 1648-9, Parliament gave him one hundred pounds a year, and he was courted by royalty and n.o.bility, at home and abroad, from whom he received an immense revenue. He died a natural death, in 1681, "leaving some works of interest in the history of astrology," which, in connection with the important personages with whom he was a.s.sociated, and the remarkable events above recorded, have immortalized his name.

Respecting the prediction of the plague, I presume that if any prominent personage should, at any time, predict a great calamity to a great metropolis, to take place "_within ten years, more or less_," there necessarily would be something during that time, of a calamitous nature, that might seem to verify their prediction. Besides, we should take into consideration how many predictions are never verified. Dr. Lamb, Dee, Bell, and others prophesied earthquakes to shake up London at various times in 1203, 1598, 1760, etc., which never occurred, to any great extent.

Supposing a great tidal wave should devastate our coast, within ten years even, would not Professor Aga.s.siz be immortalized thereby, although he never predicted it, except in the imaginative and mulish brains of certain individuals, who will have it that he did so predict?

A RAID ON FORTUNE-TELLERS.

In London, at the present day, it is estimated that nearly two thousand persons, male and female, gain a livelihood under the guise of fortune-telling. Some of them are "seers," or "astrologers," "seventh sons," clairvoyants, etc.

From the London Telegraph of the year 1871 we gather the following description of a few of the most prominent of these, with their arrest and trial, as fortune-telling is there, as elsewhere, proscribed by law:--

"First was arraigned 'Professor Zendavesta,' otherwise John Dean Bryant, aged fifty, and described as a 'botanist.' He was charged with having told a woman's fortune, for the not very extravagant sum of thirteen cents. Two married women, it seems, instructed by the police, went to No. 3 Homer Street, Marylebone, and paid sixpence each to a woman, who gave them a bone ticket in return. One might have imagined that it was a spiritualist's _seance_, but for the fact that the fee for admittance was sixpence, and not one guinea. Professor Zendavesta shook hands with one of the women, and warmly inquired after her health. She told him she was in trouble about her husband, which was false, and he bade her be of good cheer, and made an appointment to meet her on another day. Subsequently, two constables went to Bryant's house, and on going into a room on the ground floor, found thirty or forty young women seated there. The ladies began to scream, and there was a rush for the door; while the police, who seemed to labor under the impression that to attend an astrological lecture was as illegal an act as that of being present at a c.o.c.k-fight or a common gambling-house, stopped several of the women, and made them give their names and addresses. The walls of the apartment were covered with pictures of Life and Death, with the 'nativities of several royal and ill.u.s.trious personages, and of Constance Kent.' It is a wonder that the horoscopes of Heliogabalus and Jack the Painter should have been lacking.

Then there was a medicine chest containing bottles and memoranda of nativities; also a 'magic mirror, with a revolving cylinder,' showing the figures of men and women, old and young. Of course the collection included a 'book of fate.' This was the case against Bryant.

"One Shepherd, alias 'Professor Cicero,' was next charged, and it was shown that the same 'instructed' women went to his house, paying sixpence for the usual bone ticket. They saw Shepherd separately. When one of them said that she wanted her fortune told, 'Professor Cicero' took a yard tape and measured her hand. He gabbled the usual nonsense to her about love, marriage, and good luck, hinting that the price of a complete nativity would be half a crown, and before they left the place he gave them a circular, with their phrenological organs marked. Indeed, the man's defence was, that he was a professor of phrenology, and not of the black art. A 'magic mirror' and a 'lawyer's gown' were, however, found at his house, and the last named item has certainly a very black look. The evidence against the next defendant, William Henry, alias 'Professor Thalaby,' and against the fourth and last, Frederick Shipton, alias 'Professor Baretta,' did not differ to any great extent from the testimony given against Zendavesta. The solicitor retained for this sage contended that if he had infringed the law, it was likewise violated at the Crystal Palace, where the 'magic mirror' was to be seen every day. Mr. Mansfield, however, had only to deal with the case and the culprits before him, and, convicting all the four fortune-tellers, he sent them to the house of correction, there to be kept, each and every one of them, to hard labor for three months."

THE FORTUNE-TELLERS OF TO-DAY.

Before entering upon the _expose_ of the viler practices of this vile art,--the "selling of families," and of virginity, and the abominable practices of the procuresses, who carry on their d.a.m.nable treacheries, particularly in our large cities, at the present day,--I wish to enliven this chapter by one or more amusing instances relative to country fortune-tellers.

_Filliky Milliky._--During the summer of 185-, the writer was one of a large party of excursionists to Weymouth's Point, in Union Bay. There was a large barge full of people, old and young, male and female, besides several sailboat loads, who, on the return in the afternoon, decided to stop at the hut of a fortune-teller called "Filliky Milliky." This old man, with his equally ignorant wife, professed to tell fortunes by means of a tea-cup. He claimed that he knew of our intended visit, and had set his house in order; but if that house was "in order" that day, deliver us from seeing it when out of order.

There were some one hundred or more of us, and whilst but two could occupy the attention of the "Millikies" at once, we sought other means of whiling away the time. The old man lived near the river side, and at his leisure had picked up a large pile of lath edgings which had floated down from a lath mill on the river.

One Captain Joy took it upon himself to form "all the gentlemen who would enlist in so n.o.ble a cause" into a "home guard," and forthwith arming themselves with the aforesaid lath edgings, a company of volunteers was quickly raised, and drawn up in battle array.

I do not recollect the glorious and patriotic speech by which our n.o.ble captain fired our "sluggish souls with due enthusiasm for the great cause in which we were about to embark," but we were put through a course of military tactics, "according to Hardee," and took up our line of march.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARGE, INFANTRY!]

There was no Bunker Hill on which to display our valor, but there was another hill, just in rear of the barn nearly, which had not been used in farming purposes that spring, and for this hill we charged at "double-quick." In this charge--the danger lay in the _swamping_ part of the hill--we unambushed a large flock of hens, chickens, and ducks, from the opposite side.

"_Charge bayonet!_" shouted our n.o.ble captain, with great presence of mind.

We charged! The ducks quacked and fled. The hens cackled and ran. The noise was deafening, the chase enthusiastic, and above the dust and din of battle arose the stentorian cry, "Charge bayonet!" The Donnybrook Fair advice of "Wherever there's a head, hit it," was followed to the letter, until the last enemy lay dead on the gory field, or had hid so far under the barn that the small boys could not bring them forth. Then orders came to withdraw, and gather up the dead and wounded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AFTER THE BATTLE.]

There was an interesting string of hens, chickens, and ducks brought in and laid at the feet of our great commander, to represent the fowl products of that campaign. The captain's congratulatory speech was characteristic also of the _fowl proceedings_, at the close of which harangue he appointed the "orderly a committee of three to wait on the fortune-teller, and present him with the spoils of war," of which his "cups" had given him no previous intimation.

What next? The captain informed us that "as the company was 'mutual,' it became necessary, in consideration of the losses, to draw on the _stock-holders_ (_gun-stock_), as he could see no other 'policy' under which to a.s.sess those 'damages.'"

"Filliky Milliky" never carried fowl to a better market.

The "fortunate" ones entertained us, on the barge, with the marvellous revelations that had transpired within the hut. One married lady was a.s.sured that she was yet single, but would marry in a six-month. A double-and-twisted old maid was told that her husband was in California.

But the most absurd revelation was to a well-known respectable middle-aged lady, who was inclined to believe in the foreseeing powers of old Mother Milliky until now, who was told that she was "soon to receive a letter from her absent husband, also in California for the last five years; that he had become rich, and was soon to return; but that her youngest child, a year old, was inclined to worms, and might not live to see its father return!" All this wonderful information for a ninepence.