Solomon's Secret Arts (88 page)

66.
Kew Botanical Gardens (hereafter KBG), Banks Papers 1.222, 28 June 1786.

67.
Wellcome Library, Ms. 1030, ff. 98–100. Bacstrom remembered hearing lectures at Strasbourg on “
the Spiritual Resuscitation of Plants
” by the Jesuit Father Erhard, but a student at the Lutheran college might have been able to attend lectures by a Catholic professor. I have calculated his birth year from a statement made in 1771 that he was then twenty-eight years old.

68.
State Library, New South Wales (hereafter SL, NSW), Papers of Sir Joseph Banks, Series 06.140, dated March 1771; Series 06.141, Bacstrom to Banks, 8 March 1771, accessed through
http://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/banks/
. The use of exclamation marks is typical. See also J.G. Beaglehole, ed.,
The Endeavour Journals of Joseph Banks, 1768–71
(2 vols, Sydney, 1963), vol. 1, pp. 68, 73. Beaglehole calls Bacstrom a Dutchman, noting the occasional spelling of his name as “BacStrom.” The bill for a hammock and two pillows for Bacstrom appears in SL, NSW, Papers of Sir Joseph Banks, Series 06.096, 4 May 1772.

69.
Neil Chambers, ed.,
The Letters of Joseph Banks: A Selection, 1768–1820
(London, 2000), pp. 35–6; H.E. Connor and E. Edgar, “History of the Taxonomy of the New Zealand Native Grass Flora,”
Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand
, 32, 1 (2002), p. 100. Bacstrom is not mentioned by name in the chief account of the northern expedition, Uno von Troil,
Letters on Iceland
(London, 1780), and he does not appear in Edward Duyker and Per Tingbrand, eds,
Daniel Solander: Collected Correspondence, 1753–1782
(Melbourne, 1995).

70.
S. Bacstrom, “Account of a Voyage to Spitsbergen in the Year 1780,” from
The Philosophical Magazine
, July 1799, reprinted in John Pinkerton, ed.,
A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World
(17 vols, London, 1808), vol. 1, pp. 614–20.

71.
KBG, Banks Papers 1.222, 28 June 1786. These letters from Bacstrom to Banks, and Bacstrom's career down to 1801, are catalogued in Dawson, ed.,
Banks Letters
, pp. 26–7, and are discussed in Douglas Cole, “Sigismund Bacstrom's Northwest Coast Drawings and an Account of his Curious Career,”
BC Studies
, 46 (1980), pp. 61–86.

72.
KBG, Banks Papers 1.222 (Northumberland); 1.240, 21 Aug. 1786 (Cagliostro); 1.245, 26 Sep. 1786 (New Holland). The planned colony for convicts in the latter was, of course, Botany Bay.

73.
A Short Essay on the Virtues of Dr. Norris's Antinomial Drops
(London, [1775?]), p. 31. The last edition of this pamphlet that contains Shute's letter was apparently printed in 1788. For admissions to the Inner Temple, see
http://www.innertemple.org.uk/archive/itad/legal_profession.html
.

74.
KBG, Banks Papers 2.46, 15 June 1791; 2.49, no date. Unnamed in the letter, Shute is identified in GRL, MHC, Bacstrom Ms. 6, no. 2, p. [6]. For Paradise Row, see GRL, MHC, Bacstrom Ms. 2, no. 9. A drawing of a smelting furnace in Bacstrom's hand survives in the Rainsford papers at Alnwick Castle, Ms. 573A, pp. 191–2.

75.
KBG, Banks Papers 2.50, 18 Aug. 1791; SL, NSW, Papers of Sir Joseph Banks, Series 73.035, Banks to Bacstrom, 21 Aug. 1791. The imperial dimensions of the Nootka Sound crisis are considered in John M. Norris, “The Politics of the British Cabinet in the Nootka Crisis,”
English Historical Review
, 70, 277 (1955), pp. 562–80, while its local implications are treated in Daniel Wright Clayton,
Islands of Truth: The Imperial Fashioning of Vancouver Island
(Vancouver, 2000), ch. 7. See also George Vancouver,
A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and Round the World
(6 vols, London, 1801), and Janet R. Fireman, “The Seduction of George Vancouver: A Nootka Affair,”
Pacific Historical Review
, 56, 3 (1987), pp. 427–43. A collection of sixty-three paintings by Bacstrom is in the Beinecke Library, WA MSS S-2405, under the title “Drawings and Sketches Made during a Voyage Around the World, 1791–1795.” The paintings can be viewed online at
http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/SearchExecXC.asp?srchtype=CNO
.

76.
KBG, Banks Papers 2.153, 18 Nov. 1796.

77.
Copies of this document can be found in Wellcome Library, Ms. 33657, ff. 1–7; GUL, Ferguson Ms. 22, ff. 6–12 (misdated 1797 for 1794); GRL, MHC, Bacstrom Ms. 19 (an ornate version, illuminated in colour).

78.
KBG, Banks Papers 2.153. The Lodge of Antients no. 10 was constituted in 1751 at the Red Lyon, Cross Street, Long Acre, but in March 1792 was “granted and revived” to Lodge no. 159, which met at the Ship in the Strand. Bacstrom, who was living at East Street (now Lollard Street), Lambeth, may have been received by members of the old lodge. Robert Freke Gould,
The Atholl Lodges: Their Authentic History
(London, 1879), pp. 5, 31.

79.
Alexander Tilloch, ed.,
The Philosophical Magazine
, 1 (June 1798), sig. A
₂
.

80.
The Annual Biography and Obituary for the Year 1826
, vol. 10 (London, 1826), pp. 320–34, quotations on pp. 321–2, 331. Tilloch is also noticed in
ODNB
. His learned musings on the Apocalypse, dealing particularly with the date and structure of the book, were published as
Dissertations Introductory to the Study and Right Understanding of the Language, Structure and Contents of the Apocalypse
(London, 1823).

81.
GUL, Ferguson Ms. 22, f. 19, where Tilloch's name is crudely scratched out of the initiation certificate; GRL, MHC, Bacstrom Mss. vols 1–19, of which vols 1, 9, 11, 15, 16 and 17 are mostly written out by Tilloch, and vol. 18 is in a third hand.

82.
GRL, MHC, Bacstrom Ms. 2, no. 3, p. [i]; Bacstrom Ms. 5, no. 2, p. [ii].

83.
GRL, MHC, Bacstrom Papers, vol. 14, letters of 29 Dec. 1805, 28 May 1808. Bacstrom must have been among the earliest inhabitants of Albion Street. It had disappeared by the early twentieth century.

84.
GRL, MHC, Bacstrom Ms. 6, no. 8; Ms. 8, no. 3; Ms. 9, no. 7; Ms. 14, no. 13, letter of 29 Dec. 1805; Beinecke Library, Mellon Ms. 141, ff. 22
^v
–24. For a recipe communicated to Belisario by a rabbi, see GUL, Ferguson Ms. 311, no. 4.

85.
GRL, MHC, Bacstrom Ms. 3, no. 5, and vol. 4; GUL, Ferguson Ms. 25 (same material as preceding), 99 (a collection of short texts transcribed by Sibly), 305 (astrology).

86.
Wellcome Library, Ms. 3657, ff. 13–23; GRL, MHC, Bacstrom Ms. 14, no. 1; Beinecke Library, Mellon Ms. 141, f. 1. Bacstrom claimed that the younger Garden had founded the almshouses, which made his later residence there ironic. In fact, they were founded in 1703 by R. Morell, although Garden may well have given them a donation of £2,000, as Bacstrom asserts. Sampson Low, junior,
The Charities of London in 1861
(London, 1862), p. 185.

87.
GRL, MHC, Bacstrom Ms. 14, no. 8. No
burgemeester
of Amsterdam had the name Gommée, which sounds like Gomes, a common surname among the Dutch city's Sephardic Jewish community.

88.
GRL, MHC, Bacstrom Ms. 9, no. 3, Ms. 14, nos 6 (Rosenheim, Charas Stella), 7 (La Fountain); Wellcome Library, Ms. 1030, ff. 97
^v
, 98–100. For the Lafontaines, see Hans Vollmer, ed.,
Allgemeines Lexicon der Bildenden Künstler
, vol. 22 (1928), pp. 208–9.

89.
GUL, Ferguson Ms. 22, ff. 22–40
^v
.

90.
GUL, Ferguson Ms. 1031, f. 31, 62–3.

91.
Humphry Davy, “The Bakerian Lecture, on Some New Phænomena of Chemical Changes Produced by Electricity,” in Alexander Tilloch, ed.,
The Philosophical Magazine
, 32 (Oct.–Dec. 1808), pp. 3–18, 101–12, 146–54; Richard Knight,
Humphry Davy: Power and Science
(Cambridge, 1992), chs 5, 9; James Hamilton,
Michael Faraday
(London, 2002), ch. 1.

92.
GUL, Ferguson Ms. 1031, ff. 31
^v
, 63.

93.
GUL, Ferguson Ms. 314, no. 5.

94.
GRL, MHC, Bacstrom Ms. 8, no. 1.

95.
George S. Draffen, “Some Further Notes on the Rite of Seven Degrees in London,”
Ars Quatuor Coronatorum
, 39 (1956), pp. 100–1.

96.
W. Wonnacott, “The Rite of Seven Degrees in London,”
Ars Quatuor Coronatorum
, 39 (1926), pp. 85, 86.

97.
G.W. Speth, “A Symbolical Chart of 1789,”
Ars Quatuor Coronatorum
, 3 (1890), pp. 36–7, and “Editor's Note,” in
ibid.
, p. 109; “Masonic Charities,”
The New Age Magazine
, 18, 2 (1913), p. 172; R.A. Gilbert, “Shaping the Cubic Stone: Masonic Symbolism in Lambert de Lintot's Engraving,”
Hermetic Journal
, 39 (1988), pp. 23–8.

98.
B.L., Add. Ms. 23,665, ff. 50–1.

99.
ODNB
remains the best source for his biography, but for his most important appointment, see “Commissary Rainsford's Journal of Transactions, etc., 1776–78,” in
Collections of the New York Historical Society for the Year 1879
(New York, 1880), pp. 314–543. His letters on the posting of troops during the Gordon Riots are in B.L., Add. Ms. 23,669, ff. 63–6, 68–70.

100.
B.L., Add. Ms. 23, 667, ff. 18
^v
–19
^v
. For the Avignon Masons, see Joanny Bricaud,
Les Illuminés d'Avignon
(Paris, 1927), chs 5–6; Clarke Garrett,
Respectable Folly: Millenarians and the French Revolution in France and England
(Baltimore and London, 1975), ch. 5.

101.
L.F. Tafel,
Documents Concerning the Life and Character of Emanuel Swedenborg
(2 vols in 4 parts, London, 1877), vol. 2, part 2, p. 810; Lynne R. Wilkinson,
The Dream of an Absolute Language: Emanuel Swedenborg and French Literary Culture
(Albany, N.Y., 1996), p. 118; Samuel Beswick,
Swedenborg Rite and the Great Masonic Leaders of the Eighteenth Century
(New York, 1870), ch. 7. Beswick was the reviver of the “Swedenborg Rite of Masonry” in North America, and his treatment of its eighteenth-century origins is not always reliable, but his comments on the Exegetical Society are supported by other sources.

102.
Alnwick Castle, Ms. 599, pp. 108. Mendelssohn had a daughter named Jeanette, who was six years old in 1770, but the intended recipient of this letter sounds older and there is no indication that Rainsford was praising her father. For Jewish women who led salons in Berlin, see Deborah Hertz,
Jewish High Society in Old Regime Berlin
(New Haven, Conn., 1988), ch. 6.

103.
B.L., Add. Ms. 23, 675, ff. 11–16, 24, 33–4.

104.
Ibid.
, ff. 21–2; B.L., Add. Ms. 23, 669, f. 99.

105.
B.L., Add. Ms. 23,669, ff. 85–6, 91.

106.
B.L., Add. Ms. 23,670, f. 53; Add. Ms. 23,675, ff. 58–9; Wellcome Library, Ms. 957, “Extract from the Tables of Rotalo.”

107.
Alnwick Castle, Ms. 619, pp. 14, 16–17, 42.

108.
B.L., Add. Ms. 23,669, ff. 123–4. For Grabianka, see M.L. Danilewicz, “The King of the New Israel: Thaddeus Grabianka (1740–1807),”
Oxford Slavonic Papers
, n.s. 1 (1968), pp. 49–73.

109.
B.L., Add. Ms. 23,675, f. 15
^v
; B.L., Add. Ms. 23,669, f. 86.

110.
B.L., Add. Ms. 23,669, ff. 102–3, 129–30.

111.
Wellcome Library, Mss. 4032–9.

112.
Alnwick Castle, Ms. 624. For Goethe and Welling, see Nicholas Boyle,
Goethe: The Poet and the Age, Vol. 1
(Oxford, 1992), pp. 76, 88, 222.

113.
Wellcome Library, Ms. 3078, ff. 2–27
^v
.

114.
B.L., Add. Ms. 23,675, f. 41; SL, NSW, Banks Papers 06.014;
Philosophical Transactions
, 57 (1768), pp. 410–12; Dawson,
Banks Letters
, pp. 158, 837; Gorton, ed.,
General Biographical Dictionary
, vol. 2, under “Price, James” (information confirmed by biographical details available through RSA catalogue, accessed at
http://www2.royalsociety.org
). Woulfe's certificate of election as F.R.S., signed by the speech therapist Henry Baker, founder of the lectures, as well as by John Ellis and Daniel Solander, is in RSA, EC/1766/20, accessed at
http://www2.royalsociety.org
. Woulfe is noticed in
ODNB
.

115.
Ian Kelly,
Casanova: Actor, Lover, Priest, Spy
(New York, 2011), p. 246. Percy is noticed in
ODNB
.

116.
B.L., Add. Ms. 23,668, ff. 4–5. Dutens and Morse are noticed in
ODNB
. Rainsford was one of Morse's proposers for his Fellowship in the Royal Society in 1789: RSA, EC/1789/02, accessed at
http://www2.royalsociety.org
.

117.
John Brand,
Observations on Popular Antiquities: Including the Whole of Mr. Bourne's Antiquitates Vulgares, with Addenda to Every Chapter of That Work: As Also an Appendix, Containing Such Articles on the Subject, As Have Been Omitted by That Author
(London, 1810; 1st ed. 1777), pp. iv, xi. Brand is noticed in
ODNB
.

118.
B.L., Add. Ms. 23,668, f. 7
^v
.

119.
See Gregory R. Johnson, ed.,
Kant on Swedenborg: Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and Other Writings
(Chicago, 2003).

120.
The only English-language biography remains Arthur Edward Waite,
The Life of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, the Unknown Philosopher, and the Substance of his Transcendental Doctrine
(London, 1901).

121.
B.L., Add. Ms. 23,668, f. 5.

122.
Isabel Cooper-Oakley,
The Comte de St. Germain: The Secret of Kings
(Milan, 1912: reissued on Google Books, 2008), p. 90. The words are those of the landgrave August von Hessen-Philipsthal. For a more critical but arguably rose-coloured view of St.-Germain as having nothing to do with the occult sciences, see J.H. Calmeyer, “The Count of St. Germain or Giovannini: A Case of Mistaken Identity,”
Music and Letters
, 48, 1 (1967), pp. 4–16; David Hunter, “Monsieur le Comte de St.-Germain: The Great Pretender,”
Musical Times
, 144, 1885 (2003), pp. 40–4. Many nonsensical stories have been built up around this interesting character.