The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson

by Lillian de la Torre

  LE COMTE DE SAINTGERMAIN CELEBRATED ALCHEMIST

  Even as Prometheus, he stole the Fire

  By which the World exists, and all Men respire,

  Nature at his Voice must lay down her Lyre,

  If he is not a god himself, a God does him inspire.

  “There he is, to the life,” said Dr. Johnson with a smile. “Many a night has he sat by my fireside and discoursed of strange marvels. A singular being he is, and of a quizzing humour; but he is not therefore immortal. It is singular enough behaviour if he chooses thus to make a lady a secret gift from his store of gems; but he is not thereby an alchemist. More likely a prestidigitator. Had he been searched when his hocus-pocus was done, the smaller diamond would have been found hid about his person.”

  “Nay, sir, do not deprive me of my faith in the Philosopher’s Stone.”

  “Well, well, Bozzy, I should soon hear the straight of it did I but know where my old friend lodges. I must put him on his guard against the harpy Hall.”

  “What, you have been rusticated indeed. Have you not seen your Publick Advertiser?”

  I unfolded it where it lay neglected, and read out:

  “M. Le Comte de Saint-Germain, called ‘Trompe-le-Mort’ (which is to say Diddle-Death), is newly come to London, and lodges at the Cross Keys. In the drawing-rooms of Mayfair he bears away the bell, and rumour will have it, that he will meet with a certain lady of the town, at a certain witching hour, to display his marvels to her, in conjuring of diamonds or otherhow. What marvels the lady will requite him with, is beyond our province to inquire.”

  Johnson: “Come, this is brazen. What will the Earl say?”

  Boswell: “He has said it. The Fleet is in port. He walks in upon us hard upon the heels of the lapidary, and Miss Fan, afire as she is—”

  Johnson: “For Saint-Germain?”

  Boswell: “For diamonds. Miss Fan could scarce support the interval; but by great good fortune, the Earl has business in the country, Miss Fan is left to her own devices, and tonight comes the great conjury.”

  Johnson: “What, he will conjure again?”

  Boswell: “Aye, sir, now that he has proved his mastery Mistress Fanny is in haste to have her great necklace augmented.”

  Johnson: “Sure he’ll never undertake it. This would cost him too dear in diamonds.”

  Boswell: “He has undertaken it.”

  Johnson: “What, another conjury à deux?”

  Boswell: “No, sir. He has frighted Miss Fan with his wildfire, and she will have a protector by her side—James Boswell, at her service.”

  I smirked the satisfaction I felt.

  Johnson: “And quis custodiet ipsos custodes, Who shall guard the guard? I said it, there’s coney-catching toward, and I fear the gentlemen, my friends, are the coneys.”

  He clapped his little three-cornered hat on his old brown scratch-wig.

  Johnson: “I’ll e’en pay my old friend a call at the Cross Keys.”

  As twilight fell, I was before The Turk’s Head inhaling the scent of roasting buttock of beef, when Dr. Sam: Johnson came along the foot-way, touching each post as he passed, and muttering to himself.

  “Well, sir, did you see your old friend at the Cross Keys?”

  “Yes, sir, I saw him, and I shall make one at the conjury, at his express invitation, nay at his insistence. Will you not dine with me, and we’ll go along together?”

  “No, sir. I do not dine, lest it affront the spirits.”

  “Bozzy, Bozzy, clear your mind of humbug!”

  “Miss Fan will have it so,” I rejoined, sheepish but stubborn.

  “Then so, I suppose, must it be. Well, well, I care not for the spirits. I’ll have a cut off the joint, and make my way thither betimes.”

  As Dr. Johnson turned in at the fragrant doorway, I glanced just once over the hatch to where the spit turned at the fire, and then turned resolutely away to dine, as they say, with Duke Humphrey, which is to say, on air.

  Yet when nearing midnight I presented myself at Miss Fanny Hall’s door, there was no sign of Dr. Johnson. Firelight flickered, on sea-green panelling, on the sea-green damask sofa where sat Miss Fanny Hall, on the black shape of the wizard before the chimney-piece.

  The wizard did not delay longer to make his preparations. First he presented a flask of his sovereign elixir.

  “It will,” he said, “so strengthen the vital fluid in your veins that you may laugh at any danger.”

  I set it to my lips. It tasted bitter. My lady choked over her glass. As the alchemist bent to aid her, I tipped my share quickly over the coals in the hod. Let my vital fluid take care of itself.

  Next arrived the necessaries. There was fire on the hearth, earth in the Deathless One’s scrip. Water arrived in a copper pitcher, air in the kitchen bellows, borne in upon a marble table by two serving-men in green baize aprons. One was a neat-built, clever-looking young-old fellow with a quizzical glance. I knew his face and nodded affably, getting a quiet smile and a sketched bow in return.

  The other was a tall thick clown such as I had never before seen in Miss Fanny’s service, louting low with many an obsequious scrape.

  “This new fellow overplays his part,” thought I, and looked again, and almost laughed, for he played a part indeed. Was I light-headed from hunger, or did I indeed see behind the green baize apron the majestic paunch of—Dr. Sam: Johnson! Was it come to this, that my common-sensical old friend should appear in his shirt-sleeves at midnight, as conjurer’s acolyte and factotum to a wizard! His old friend Saint-Germain must be a warlock indeed!

  The master ignored him. Mistress Fan signed the servants to begone. They went, but, I noted, no further than the curtained alcove, from which, as I knew to my cost, there was no egress—but that is another story.

  “M. le Comte, we are ready.”

  The wizard turned the key in the lock.

  “You have the necklace?”

  The great pendant gems flashed in the firelight as their owner placed them in the copper bowl.

  “There is great danger,” said the conjurer solemnly, “more especially in the moment of fire. I beg that you will shield your eyes. You may use these masques.”

  We took the beak-nosed Venetian masques. The eye-holes were blocked. Secretly I resolved not to resort to mine. If Benvenuto Cellini could look upon a salamander, why not James Boswell?

  The moment had come. The long deep strokes of midnight began to sound. On the last stroke the wizard opened his book, and the conjury began.

  With elemental earth from his scrip, Saint-Germain the Deathless traced about himself on the marble floor three circles, pouring the dry dust in a thin stream between his long fingers. As he did so he muttered strange words:

  “Spugliguel, Amaday, Abraym, Aguista, Yayn, Michaiel—Michaiel—Michaiel—”

  This thrice-sacred word he traced on the circle with a strange cabbalistic device:

  “Tilui, Caracasa Con, Amatiel, Commissoros …”

  Suddenly there was a stench as of the Pit indeed: the wizard was making fumigations of sulphur. There was no light save the glow and reek of the fire, no sound save its secret voice. In the stillness the adept, tracing the holy pentacle, cried out aloud, invoking sacred names:

  “By the mighty names of Adonay, El, Elohim, Elohe, Labaoth, Elion, Escerchie, Jah, Tetragrammaton, Saday—appear, assist!”

  My head was reeling. I seemed to hear spiny wings rustle in red shadow above me, and spirit voices squeak in answer to their names. A black form against the fire in the grate, Saint-Germain bent over the copper bowl, lost in shadow before him.

  “Aye, Seraye, aye, Seraye! El, Aty, Azia, Hin, Jen, Achaden, Vay! El, El, El, Hau, Hau, Hau, Va, Va, Va …”

  I heard air sigh from the bellows; water lapped; then a shout:

  “Now! Beware the fire!”

  He seized a blazing brand from the hearth and whirled it about, dashing it around his head, around the bowl, and around the protecting magick circle. Half-swooning
, Miss Fan hid her eyes; but mine, open, beheld the great red blaze that sheeted up, so that the distorted face in the ring of fire gleamed like a demon’s in Hell. Then his hand shot up above the dwindling blaze to wave in triumph—the necklace we conjured for. Thus he stood till the red fire had died to the floor. Then he stepped forward and laid a much augmented necklace in milady’s hand.

  “I have obeyed your command,” he said. “I am exhausted in blood and spirit. Thank me, and let me go.”

  “A moment,” said Dr. Sam: Johnson, stepping from the alcove.

  Saint-Germain whirled.

  “You have betrayed me!” he cried angrily. “You have put spies on me!”

  “I, set spies?” protested Miss Fan. “Are not these your people?”

  “My people? I have no people. I desired your butler to send up air and water, and supposed the bearers to be your footmen.”

  “I am no footman,” said Dr. Johnson. “I am Sam: Johnson, at your service, ma’am, and I have a mind to conjure on my own account.”

  “Stand back, fellow!” cried the wizard angrily. “Take care, the spirits may do you an injury; and if they do not, I will!”

  He was a menacing figure, rearing black and tall in the firelight. But Dr. Sam: Johnson stood as tall, and bulkier. With one powerful thrust he shouldered the threatening magus aside.

  “By your leave, sir, my conjury is soon done. Ducdame! Ducdame! Ducdame! Honorificabilitudinitatibus!”

  At each of these oddly-chosen incantations he took a handful of magick earth from the scrip on the table. The first two he scattered in a ring. The third, from the left hand, he broadcast widdershins. The fourth he flung on the fire, where it exploded in a sheet of crimson flame. Above the inferno, Dr. Johnson’s great left hand brandished—a diamond necklace.

  The Deathless One was at the door; but the key was no longer in the lock. By the door the second attendant stood smiling to himself. Saint-Germain shrugged, and turned back. The little man in the green baize apron stepped forward and took the augmented necklace from Mistress Fanny’s hand.

  “By your leave, Madame,” he said. “I have some skill as a lapidary.”

  I stared at the speaker as he fixed a jeweller’s glass in his eye. So my friend had fetched along a lapidary. I had been foolish in taking that quietly commanding face for a servant’s; but if not above a green baize apion, where had I seen that quizzical glance before?

  As he studied the augmented necklace, motionless, Dr. Sam: Johnson officiously used his green apron to dust the necklace he had conjured up. Then it in its turn came under the scrutiny of the jeweller’s glass. Something held us all silent. At last:

  “This necklace,” said the lapidary, extending the augmented collar, “is paste; paste made by a master, but paste. These—” tendering the smaller necklace—“are right diamonds—”

  “Being,” put in Johnson, “in fact your own Golconda stones, which this scoundrel would have carried off in his scripful of red fire, had not I conjured it forth again.”

  “What!” ejaculated Miss Fanny, unready to believe, “the famous Comte de Saint-Germain, the Deathless One, a charlatan and a thief?”

  “He is not the Comte de Saint-Germain. He is Andrew Hopper, formerly diamond-cutter to Brouwere of Amsterdam.”

  “This fellow is mad,” said the tall alchemist loftily.

  “Mrs. Cornelys admits the imposture—”

  “I thought she was mighty pat with her part, like one that had conned it!” cried I.

  “When taxed with it, she just laughs, and says there is no harm in it. Andrew Hopper was ever a quiz, she says, and his jest will pay out Mistress Hall for her pride, which ill becomes a h—hem, which ill becomes her.”

  “Says she so?” muttered Mistress Fan, and looked like a thunder cloud.

  “I came incognito,” said the wizard. “Shall I blab my name to the first footman that asks it? I am the Comte de Saint-Germain.”

  “You are Andrew Hopper,” retorted Dr. Johnson. “You fled from Amsterdam having stolen from Brouwere’s coffers this necklace—” he dangled it contemptuously—“which is the paste pattern Brouwere made for the Empress; and with it you came to England, of purpose to cozen Mistress Hall by the hocus-pocus we have seen.”

  “All lies. I am the Comte de Saint-Germain.”

  “I cry a thousand pardons,” said the little lapidary softly. “I am desolated to say it; but, sir, you lie. You are not the Comte de Saint-Germain.”

  “How are you so sure, my little man?” demanded the wizard.

  “Because I am the Comte de Saint-Germain.”

  “You?” cried Mistress Fan. “You, Saint-Germain the Deathless?”

  “Yes, I, madame, at your service. When I saw in the English newspapers that the Comte de Saint-Germain was in London, when I knew I was at Amsterdam; and moreover that diamonds were to be conjured in my name; I hastened across the Channel. Putting up incognito at the Cross Keys, I walked straight into the arms of my old friend here, who informed me of what had already passed. Together we observed the false Comte, and I recognized Andrew Hopper, who had mystified Amsterdam when he absconded with so many false stones, and one right diamond only—”

  “To begin the plot if need be,” struck in Dr. Johnson, “with a right diamond, that should reassure the lady, and get the necklace into his hands.”

  “When we had heard Mrs. Cornelys, I would have exposed the charlatan at once; but my old friend here was for catching him red-handed at his jugglery.”

  “How did you appear so pat, then?” inquired milady.

  “Money opened the way at your kitchen door, where indeed our only difficulty lay in perswading milady’s woman to conduct us, not to milady’s bedchamber, but to the scene of the conjury—and such conjury! Really, monsieur, such puerilities will do my reputation scant credit! Whence had you this hodge-podge, fellow?” From the table he took the wizard’s book. “Pietro d’Albano! Give me leave to say, my friend, that you took great risks in summoning Michaiel on a Tuesday, and with fumigations of sulphur besides! This it is to copy at random from a book you do not understand! Not that Dr. Johnson’s cantrips were any better. What is this ‘Ducdame?’”

  “As the wise Shakespeare will have it—an invocation to call fools into a circle,” replied Dr. Johnson with a grin. “Let my cantrips be what they will, you’ll admit I conjured forth the right gems.”

  “By what magic did you so?” I asked him.

  “By observing. Let a man use his eyes, he may penetrate mysteries not revealed in the Golden Chain of Homer, the Great nor the Little Albert, nor the mysterious volume of Picatrix.”

  “What did you observe?”

  “That the false conjurer’s hands went never to his pockets, many times to his scrip, the only thing upon the table in which, being his, he might carry away a prize. It was thence, while we were dazzled by his feu d’artifice, that he must have produced the false necklace, and there he must have hidden the true one. I groped for it, drew it on the third cast forth, and there it is.”

  “Is the comedy ended?” demanded the unabashed impostor. “If so, I will bid you good night.”

  “Shall I fetch the constables?” I cried.

  “The constables? What have they to do here? I have amused the company by my art, and the performance is at an end. It was nothing but an evening’s pastime.”

  “Nothing!” I cried hotly. “Is theft nothing!”

  “Theft? What have I stolen?” demanded the charlatan coolly. “Ah, yes, theft. It is true that in the course of these proceedings the harlot here has cozened me out of a valuable diamond, for which she could be branded on the hand—”

  “Branded!” shrieked Miss Fanny Hall. “Unlock the door!”

  “—but I give it her, and the paste necklace to boot, and so I take my leave—” (as Dr. Johnson flung wide the door) “—and may the Devil fly away with the lot of you!”

  “Ma foi,” said the true Count in his soft, sonorous voice, “what a species of a pork, to pa
ss for the Comte de Saint-Germain!”

  “Monsieur le Comte,” breathed Miss Fanny Hall, seating him graciously, green baize apron and all, by her side on the sea-green damask sofa, “is it true that you will live forever?”

  “That, madame,” he replied with his quiet smile, “remains to be seen.”

  “And pray, Count,” she wheedled, fingering the stones of her restored necklace, “is it true as they say—”

  Observing the thunder clouds gathering on my brow, to see myself once more slighted, Dr. Johnson with a grim jerk of his head recalled me to myself and haled me forth of the room; but the mellifluous coaxing voice floated after us:

  “Is it true, Count, that you can augment the size of diamonds?”

  [The historical Saint-Germain once presented the French King with a diamond which, he said, he had magically re-made. He is not known to have met Johnson. Certain esoteric sects still think he is immortal, because they believe they have seen him recently.]

  THE MISSING SHAKESPEARE MANUSCRIPT

  (Stratford-on-Avon, 1769)

  ’Twas Dr. Sam: Johnson, in the end, who restored the missing Shakespeare manuscript at the Stratford Jubilee in the year 1769; though in the beginning he would not so much as look at it. In that rainy September, he preferred to hug the fire at the Red Lion Inn.

  There he stood, bulky and immovable, holding forth his large, well-shaped hands to the glow of the coals and turning a deaf ear to my perswasions. But if he was stubborn, I was pertinacious.

  “Do, Dr. Johnson,” I urged, “give me your company to Mr. Ararat’s though you come but to scoff.”

  “I shall not remain to pray, I promise you,” rejoined the great Cham of literature intransigeantly.

  “So much is unnecessary,” I replied, “but indeed I have promised we would meet there with Dr. Percy and his young friend Malone, the Irish lawyer.”

  “This is very proper for Thomas Percy and his scavenging friends,” remarked Dr. Johnson, lifting his coat-tails before the blaze, “for they are very methodists in the antiquarian enthusiasm. But truly this is ill for a scholar, to run with the vulgar after a parcel of old waste paper.”