The house of Doctor Dee Read online

  'Right back. Back to the beginning, if that's necessary.'

  We left soon after. He told me that he had an appointment on the other side of London, but I decided to linger in the summer night. I sat in the churchyard of St James, and looked out across the rooftops in the vicinity of the old house. And then there was some kind of movement: it must have been a bat, but for a moment I seemed to see the dark shape of a man soaring upward above Cloak Lane.

  THE SPECTACLE

  'WHAT BECAME OF the flying man?' one of the concourse beholding this scene asked of his neighbour. 'Where was the wire?'

  'I saw no wire. This is somewhat like the old fashion of magic.'

  'It is a deceit of the eye,' said another. He was a pert little man, in green jerkin and leather doublet. 'All these things are but toys.'

  I could have whipped him at the cart's arse for such empty words. Here was no deceit, no, nor even any magic; here was thaumaturgy, or the science of wonders. It is the mathematical art which gives order to appearances, and makes strange work of the senses of men. So I, Doctor Dee, am come to dazzle your imagination with mirabilia: these are my shows and apparitions which draw the eye cunningly — and what knave, gazing about like a fool with an apple or piece of spice-cake in his mouth, can unriddle their mystery? In all affairs of the world which we command, there is somewhat that is true and somewhat that is false: so who here can tell me what is real and what is unreal?

  By sundry means these wonder-works are made: some by pneumatics, some by strained ropes, some by springs that imitate lively motion. Painting is more powerful upon ragged walls than upon fine marble, and so my artificial house shows itself best in a flickering light. My candles are lit behind bottles of painted colour, with a bright basin to reflect their varied rays upon the scene, and every eye can invent for itself a deeper shadowing. But all have their source, or root, in optical perspective, which along beams and natural lines does recreate the world. Light is thus the origin of wonders, and through its emanations it controls all action and passion in this lower world. So let this spectacle abound with light, as the house revolves and the grave ancient man flies above the city. The beholders are removed from their own corporeal shapes in the surprise of this action, and in imagination fly upward with him to their first cause. These words are plain and easy English, but the reach of their meaning is further than you think.

  I have performed many wonders before this time. Once I created a flying wooden dove, much like the statue of Diomedes which plays a trumpet, and in my green days my Aristophanes scarab mounted up to the top of Trinity Hall. I already knew the history of mechanic marvels by that time, and out of old books had read their secret: in Agellius, how there was a wooden fly which the mathematician Archytas made to hover in the air; in Plato, how Daedalus fashioned strange images; in Homer, how the engine of Vulcan moved itself by concealed wheels. And then again there was in Nuremberg of late days a beetle of iron which, being let out of the artificer's hand, flew about by the guests at table and at length, as though it were sore weary, returned to its master's hand again. Moreover an artificial eagle was ordered to fly out of the same town a mighty way towards the emperor coming thither and, all aloft in the air, to follow him until he came to the gate. So do we cause the material residue of the earth to quicken and stir itself beyond the confines of its proper sphere.

  Yet there are greater wonders still which I alone have performed. I have a mirror that reveals an image hanging in the air between you and the glass, and by perspective I can devise many strange things: you may come into my chamber and there see the lively shows of gold, silver or precious stones but, going to take them in your hand, you will find them nothing but air. By wind, smoke, water, weight or springs I can move you with all manner of display. And now, on this day, I have made a man fly upward through the air.

  I came to this place a month ago, in order to construct the machine of the spectacle. Nathaniel Cadman, gentleman, warmly entreated me and asked me to prepare a disguising to mark his coming into his inheritance; and since part of his land lay beyond the Spital where there was a great wooden barn only recently erected, it was here considered best for the show to be staged. It is on the right hand beyond Shoreditch Church, on the other side of the highway from Bishopsgate and Houndsditch, a little past Hog Lane where there is now a continual building of small cottages. Each morning I have come here by horse from Clerkenwell, riding very speedily at break of day when the misty air is as thick as ancient butter and the dew lies on the fields outside the city like frog-spawn. I pass along the Clerkenwell Road and cross St John Street among the carts and drays coming in from the farms around Hockley — there is no garden, no arbour, no weathercock, no yew tree that I do not know in this parish which harbours my own sad rambling house. The quickest path is by way of Pardon Churchyard and Old Street, which thoroughfare is now pestered with cobblers' benches and cooks' stalls and stocking-menders who put out their worm-eaten signs as if they were within the city itself; here too I ride speedily by the white cross down into Chiswell Street, for fear of the cutpurses who haunt the lanes hereabouts. My satchel of dogskin is tightly bound to my side for I know these to be the scum of people who, like the worm in the straw, see but are not seen. Then I pass on my way by the windmills of Finsbury Fields, where the bogs and quagmires of the marshy land send up their foul stench, until I come to Hog Lane and the Curtain Road. In earlier years the fox was hunted here, and over Mallow Field and Bunhill Field the horns and the cries of the riders could be heard at the death; but now all that is clean gone, and where there was level grass there are now many buildings being erected. So I turn me down Shoreditch and enter into Cold Lane, lately a filthy passage into the fields but now both sides builded with small tenements. Then I ride over the grass where, a week or two since, Nathaniel Cadman came forward to greet me. He is a young blade, a square-set fellow brightly apparelled in a black taffeta doublet and spruce leather jerkin with crystal buttons; because his doublet was new, the sleeves hung down very properly and he wore round breeches of white with two guards about the pocket-hole. What a piece of work is man, I said to myself as I came down from my horse, when he attends more to his doublet than his destiny.

  'Why now,' he said, approaching me, 'you smoky persecutor of nature, what have you in your satchel there? What new budget of papers to order our spectacle?'

  'This is no show for Houndsditch pump or Cheapside,' I replied. 'I bring with me here new fashions in geometry and opticks, with all the mechanical arts of weight and measure.'

  I knew this was the honey to catch the fly, and at the mere utterance of 'fashion' he pricked up his ears. 'Man may do many wonderful things, Doctor Dee,' he said. 'May I?' He took my papers and seemed to survey them. 'You have been a busy fellow with your pen, but it is all one to me. I am not of your order of the Inspirati. Is that how you call it?' He had a quick way of speaking, so I had room only to nod and say nothing. 'I do not understand any of your meaning herein.'

  I fart at you, was my thought; but with a show of patience I explained to him how those who had most diligently examined the conditions of space occupied by matter, and observed that the surfaces of neighbouring elements are joined together by the law and force of nature, may thereby display wonderful things. Air, fire and water go in all directions according to their natural tendencies, and it is for the mechanic to harness them accordingly. 'So the craft of hydraulics,' I continued, 'can lead us to the executing of such things as no man would easily believe.'

  'You are a dark man, Doctor Dee —'

  'I come from a dark house.'

  '— and your doings are still quite hidden from me.'

  I smiled in my sleeve to think how I had puzzled him. 'There is no secret,' I replied, 'unless it is the secret of the whole world in which the elements are intermingled.'

  'But these are hard and indigestible matters. Hydraulics. Elements. There are few indeed who care a nutshell for them.' At that he smiled, bowed, and returned to me my papers. 'Bu
t all eyes will be dazzled by your display.'

  'All things tend towards the same end, Nathaniel Cadman. I am content.' At which point he wrapped his blue velvet cloak around himself, and walked with me towards the wooden barn where the scene was being constructed. You are very like the peacock, I thought, who is wrapped in the pride of his beauteous feathers but is known to be a dunghill bird by reason of his foul feet.

  The carpenters, joiners and painters were all busily at work when we entered in, though no doubt they had gone on but ploddingly before our arrival. Theirs is no light or fanciful work, since sundry slaughters and mayhemmings of the people have happened by ruin of scaffold, frames and stages, or by the engines, weapons and powder employed in the spectacles. It is true that blood is the humour wherewith we are all nourished, but I do not wish any infant of my own devising to see it sadly spilled. Yet it is not enough to have good intentions in such a work and, before ever I began this scene, I made for myself a small model of wood and paper wherein I set down piece by piece and joint by joint until I could judge perfectly how the spectacle was to be revealed. Now, as I entered, I could see how everything had been resolved according to that judgement: one scaffold was at the level of men's eyes with a second scaffold above it, while a third was set at an incline so that the scene could more easily be viewed. Meanwhile the craftsmen were working in wood and copper, in tin and lead, setting up so great a din that I could scarce hear myself thinking. Piled up around the scaffolding were the pulleys for the clouds, the hoops and blue linen cloths for the sky, together with the bodies of men cut out of pasteboard and daubed in pink and white. The painter, Robin Mekes, had been desperately at work and now before me I could see the house and the streets about it, the frames of doors and windows, the counterfeit moss and the flowers made out of glue and paper. Already in the centre of the scaffold were double doors which, according to their machinery, revolved with decorated faces; there was a false wall fair painted and adorned with stately pillars, while beyond it were the cranes and engines which would lift my apparitions into the air.

  Mr Mekes approached me, and gave a low bow. 'My good doctor,' said he, 'beso los manor. How do you?' He was a little fellow in a taffeta suit cut to the skin, and he carried a nosegay to ward off the stink of the workmen.

  'Well, I thank God.'

  'Say nothing of God here, my good doctor. The very noise of this place puts me in mind of hell. I love an interlude or a show as much as any man but, lord, the preparation!'

  I was about to complain about the state of the painted cloths, which lay unfinished on the ground, but I stopped myself and offered him a smile. 'All great work takes time,' I replied. 'We are corrupted nature.'

  'I thought you would say so, Doctor Dee.' I could have struck him for his malipert sauciness. 'But I wish that we might have only a dumb show before the tragical act.'

  He laughed at his own wit, so I cut him short. 'Now that you speak of acts, Mr Mekes…' Whereupon I began to remind him of the order of representations; how in the tragic scenes it was necessary to have columns, pediments and statues, while the comic would require mere balconies and windows. 'And for the satyric,' I continued, 'we need your trees and herbs and hills.'

  'Silk,' said he. 'Silk for the flowers. It is much more commendable than the natural things themselves.' He gave a little turn, as if it were a figure in a dance. 'Oh good lord, what magnificence there might be with sundry trees and fruits, herbs and flowers, all made with fine silk of diverse colours. And shall you want watercourses with banks of coral and mother of pearl? And shells of ivory laid between the stones? Oh good lord!'

  'There will be a greater marvel still, Mr Mekes, when your trees and flowers descend.'

  'Descend?' He was in a little effeminate pang of perplexity.

  'There will be an engine underneath the stage, which will cause all your display gently to sink.'

  'And what will come in its place?'

  'Oh a miracle, Mr Mekes, a miracle.'

  *

  And so it was, as the various parts of the scene began to yield. The notes of the viol and the lute moved strangely so that the music became, in a mysterious manner, the emblem of the whole spectacle: there were such harmonies within these changing chords that they echoed the very harmony of heaven. On my stage, numerology, geometry and astrology were all combined in one. As the music played, a roof of stars appeared, many shining spheres wrought within a background of the deepest blue; and upon the same ground of artifice it seemed as if the eleven circles of the eleven heavens revolved wonderfully with the planets and the stars. Nothing perishes, but stands in eternity: which is to say the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the fixed stars of the firmament, the crystalline heavens, the primum mobile, and then the imperial heaven which is the godhead and the source of all our life and light.

  Whereupon the roof of the stars opened and suddenly there came down circles of light and glass, one within another, all within a sphere and all as it were turning perpetually; which light and motion so occupied the eyes of the concourse that they hardly saw above this glistening sphere an infinite number of lights which blazed down upon the scene. These were the fixed stars which ever stand at like distance one from another, and neither come nearer together nor go further asunder. At which moment came a louder and fuller music, harmonia mundi, like the primum mobile itself which ravishes all the spheres; and then, as this great image was set before them, a sweet odour crept forth among the beholders. Image — no, not image, but emblem. O thou picture of the celestial world drawn in little compass! O thou perspective glass, in which we may behold upon earth all the frame and wonders of the heavens! So then it was that three figures came down from the painted vault of the universe and seemed to hover in the air (held up by iron chains which could not be seen), and in their majestic attire of robes coloured white, black and red they were the tokens of astrology, of natural philosophy and of opticks, through which the cabala of nature may be known. Then all vanished away behind a curtain of mist and darkness, and the spectacle ended.

  Whereupon there was a hum of conversation, as if flies in swarms were buzzing about the hall. There were some who sat in silence, scarcely able to take the measure of what they had recently observed, while others discoursed as loud as ever they could upon the merits of the engines, the painted scenes and such like.

  'There is nothing new here,' said one. 'It is all old stuff dressed up. Wherefore does he dwell upon past topics when there is so much in the present world to concern us?'

  'Newfangleness,' said another, 'and without meaning. Some new new nothing.'

  'Like the frozen zone,' said a third. 'Without humane actions or passions to move us.'

  Others again merely stretched, and sighed, and gaped at the fellows beside them. I stood at the back, my head bowed, like some aged reverend gentleman in my black velvet coat and black cloth gown. I said not a word but watched everything, as my heart sank rapidly beneath me: for what end had my spectacle been prepared, now that the larger part of the hall merely yawned and scratched their heads as if they had seen nothing at all? I had displayed to them certain secrets of the known world, but the glistening spheres were to them no more than children's toys or a trickery and a deceit which signified nothing. Was this always the path by which true knowledge would be received? I, who had taken much great care to produce this artificial spectacle, was of no more account than some old forsworn mathematician whose diagrams are viewed hastily once and then forgotten. I had created wonders but, truly, there is no wonder greater than the folly and forgetfulness of the world.

  Nathaniel Cadman came up to me smiling aimlessly, like some vagabond boy. 'Here is my hand,' said he. 'Take it. By God, sir, I love you. I could not love you so well as I do if you were the heir of a kingdom.' I bowed to him. 'I could scarce make an end to my words, sir, in a thousand years —'

  But then he stopped abruptly when an idle fellow clapped him on the back. 'Is this he?' he asked. 'Is this the cunning man? The
doctor?'

  Nathaniel Cadman flapped his hand like a Frenchman. 'The right worshipful master, John Dee,' he said.

  'At your service, sir,' I replied and bowed again, while all the time locking my fingers together beneath my cloak.

  'When he was in my service,' the fool Cadman added, 'he cost me more angels than are in heaven.'

  At that I crossed myself. The newly arrived gentleman (though in truth little more than a squab) was dressed in dainty gear, with a great monstrous ruff of cambric, and boots that might have come up to his very eyes if the ruff were not there as a barricade. 'I think,' he said, introducing himself to me as Bartholomew Bodele, 'that I have known you before?'

  'If you knew me before, sir, you may the easier know me now.'

  'Oh you are a Platonist, sir. I cry you mercy. I took you to be a maker of engines.'

  'The world is filled with errors and vain reports, and if I were to answer them all I could not find enough words.'

  At this retort he held his peace, but we were joined now by others of his kind who, being also known to Nathaniel Cadman, set up a clamour that we should eat and drink together. I do not care for companions, whether they be gallants or car-men, since they leave me bereft of that intercourse with my own self which aids my work: to spend too much time in company leads me into so great a storm of doubting and misliking that I scarcely know myself. But there was no help for it at this present juncture: they saluted me with fair words and pressed me to ride with them into the city. 'But the engines,' I said, 'and the scenes of the spectacle must all be carefully preserved.'

  'No rats or spiders will injure them in the space of one night,' Nathaniel Cadman replied, 'and I doubt that any jarkman or crossbiter will remove the spheres or stars. You concern yourself too much, Doctor Dee. Pass the time with us, your followers. Come and eat.'

  I thought I heard one whisper 'Doctor Dog' and laugh as I assented to his earnestly expressed wish; I did not turn, but walked a little ahead of them and let my eyes burn away their anger into the fields. It was a very fair calm evening, and so it was agreed that we should leave our horses munching upon the grass (in the care of some hired men to ward off the priggers of prancers) and make our way by foot through the gates. They had decided upon the Seven Stars in New Fish Street, a tavern or ordinary where the meat was fresh, and so we entered the city by way of Artillery Yard and Fisher's Folly. By the time we had arrived at Bishopsgate Street, these idle fellows were skipping and leaping like the jacks on a pair of virginals; with their lace sleeves, and their silk stockings, and their ruffs, and their jewels, they might have been a troupe of Italian mountebanks, but for the excess of English oaths which they used wildly among themselves.