The Book of the Dead (39 page)

Cagliostro never admitted his humble origins and most impostors never do. Some are unveiled by others; some move through a succession of disguises; very few unmask themselves. One who did was
George Psalmanazar
(1679–1763), who first appeared in England in 1704, feted as a prince of Formosa, the first from his remote land (modern-day Taiwan) ever to visit Europe. It was the culmination of several years roaming the Continent trying on personalities. The first of these was as an Irish pilgrim on his way to Rome—the pilgrim’s cloak gave him the right to beg for money—but people’s knowledge of Ireland proved to be annoyingly widespread, so he developed a new persona: that of a “heathen” from Japan, fond of swearing and eating heavily spiced raw meat and sleeping upright in a chair. In Germany, he enlisted as a mercenary, using his leisure to methodically build up corroborative evidence of his new identity: a “Japanese” alphabet of twenty characters that read from right to left; the rules of “his” language and pagan religion; and a calendar of twenty months. By the time he reached the Netherlands in 1701, he had adjusted his point of origin to the even more obscure Formosa and called himself Psalmanazar, a name he had borrowed from the biblical Assyrian king Shalamaneser, adding the foregoing
P
for a natty alien flourish.

In Holland he met an ambitious young Scottish army chaplain called Alexander Innes. One of the legacies of the anti-Catholic paranoia that Oates had left in his wake was a deep antipathy to
the Jesuits. They were believed to run a secret international spy ring designed to undermine Protestantism and make converts at every turn. Psalmanazar said he had been tricked into leaving his homeland by a Jesuit in disguise, which had left him with a strong aversion to Catholicism. Whether or not Innes believed him, he at once saw a chance for professional advancement. Here was a potentially high-profile convert in the opposite direction. Now all that was needed was for him to be received into the Church of England. The plan worked. The bishop of London was thrilled by the heathen-turned-Anglican and proudly introduced him to the great and the good of London society. Not only was Innes lavishly praised for having brought about the conversion, he also retained the lucrative rights to Psalmanazar’s public appearances, exhibiting him as a glamorous “royal” to a paying audience.

Given that even educated English people of the time knew next to nothing about the Far East (and even less about the island of Formosa), Psalmanazar was able to get away with some madly outlandish claims. Its capital Xternetsa, he revealed, was presided over by the Emperor Meriaandanoo and men went naked except for a decorative plate of silver or gold covering their sexual organs. Though now reformed, he himself had once been a cannibal, because in Formosa it was legal to eat adulterous wives. Men did not generally marry until they reached fifty, but thereafter did so as often as possible because a supply of baby boys was in constant demand as live sacrifices to their god, who appeared sometimes as an elephant, sometimes as an ox. Psalmanazar wore a snake around his neck because, he explained, that was how Formosans kept cool. Within a year he had produced a book that became an immediate bestseller.
A Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, an Island subject to the Emperor of Japan
, painted
elaborate pictures of Formosan life, language, and culture. It was ingenious, sensational, and entirely bogus.

Some were dubious from the beginning. Psalmanazar went head to head with Jean de Fontenay, a Jesuit who had actually spent time in Formosa, who asked him why his skin was so fair. He responded by saying that Formosan royalty lived underground. He was invited to speak to members of the Royal Society, where the astronomer Edmund Halley challenged him vigorously. Halley inquired if sunlight ever shone directly down the chimneys of Formosan houses. Since the island was near the equator it was logical that at certain times of year it would do so, but Psalmanazar said it didn’t. Then, sensing a trap, he added, “Formosan chimneys are almost always built at crooked angles and containing bends.”

By 1707 the Formosan craze was over. Psalmanazar’s attempts to capitalize on his fame by marketing a brand of lacquer that he called “white Formosan work” failed to catch on, and after brief stints painting ladies’ fans and working as a clerk to an army regiment, he decided to devote himself to writing. In 1717 he confessed to his friends that the whole thing had been a fraud. It’s a testament to his true character that he wasn’t ostracized. Far from it: The “pretended Formosan” settled quite easily into life as a jobbing member of Grub Street. Already fluent in Latin, he learned Hebrew and his contributions to several large encyclopedias were praised for the accuracy of their research, particularly when describing the customs and culture of ancient peoples. He even produced a corrective article on Formosa, this time basing it on fact. The young Dr. Johnson counted him a close friend, enthusiastically stating that his company was “preferable to almost anyone else.” When Boswell asked him if he
ever mentioned Formosa, Johnson replied he was “afraid even to mention China” and as for opposing so learned and devout a man: “I should as soon think of contradicting a Bishop!”

Psalmanazar’s final act of contrition was to write his memoirs. Published after his death, they throw light on his unfathomable decisions to construct and then deconstruct his Formosan identity. Though he never reveals his true name—and no one has ever been able to do so since—he does say that he was born into a poor family in southern France and was educated by Jesuits, and that his father left home when he was young. Psalmanazar’s troubles began when he was sacked as a tutor to a rich family for refusing the sexual advances of the mistress of the house. His “prodigious” gift for languages offered a way out and a chance to earn a living as someone else. Fastening on Formosa afforded him “a vast scope to a fertile fancy to work upon.” In another age, with his talent for finegrained invention, he might have made a superb fantasy novelist.

Unlike Oates and Cagliostro, Psalmanazar was, in the end, a truthful man. He underwent a religious experience after reading William Law’s
A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
(1728), an eighteenth-century self-help manual that also changed the life of his friend Dr. Johnson. Law’s mystical work advised surrender to God on the grounds that God’s wisdom is beyond rational inquiry. This new philosophical outlook, coupled with a deep absorption in his scholarship, somehow released Psalmanazar, enabling him to come to terms with what he called the “vile and romantic account” that had briefly made him famous. He reinvented himself as a pious and respected English man of letters, his last and happiest persona. But there is in the memoirs, written in his eighties, still a mischievous twinkle in his eye: “I never met with, nor heard of any one, that ever guessed right, or any thing
near it, with regard to my native country.” His last secret—who he really was—he took with him to his grave.

Almost half a century later, another example of self-appointed foreign royalty came to light in the West Country in the exotic persona of
Princess Caraboo
(1791–1864).

In April 1817 a beautiful young woman in a turban knocked at the door of a cobbler in the village of Almondsbury in Gloucestershire, not far from Bristol. She spoke an unintelligible language, but gestured that she needed a place to sleep. Unsure what to do, the cobbler’s wife took her to Mr. Hill, the overseer of the poor. He would normally have locked her up as a vagabond but instead chose to escort her to the manor house to seek advice from the local bigwig, Samuel Worrall, the county magistrate and town clerk of Bristol. Worrall’s manservant (who was Greek and spoke several European languages) could make no sense of her either, so it was arranged for her to spend the night at the village inn. There, she insisted on sleeping on the floor rather than a bed, and on seeing a picture of a pineapple on the wall, she said the word
ananas.
Offered a cup of tea, she covered her eyes and muttered what seemed to be a prayer before drinking it.

The next day she was taken back to the manor house for a second interview. Samuel Worrall’s American wife, Elizabeth, took a liking to her, showing her some furniture decorated with Chinese scenes and coaxing her into revealing her name was Caraboo. But the Greek manservant was suspicious and Worrall himself—known as “Devil” Worrall and a notorious drunkard—irritably intervened and declared she was a beggar and must be sent to Bristol to be tried for vagrancy. During her brief
incarceration there, a Portuguese sailor was found who claimed to understand her language. He explained that she was from an island called Javasu. Her mother had been killed in a war against the Boogoos (who were cannibals), and she had been kidnapped by pirates (killing one of them in the process). She had escaped by leaping from the pirate ship as it passed through the Bristol Channel and swum ashore. What’s more, she was a princess.

This rather altered things for “Devil” Worrall. He had been trying to publicize his struggling private bank and was most accommodating when his wife insisted the “princess” be brought back to Knole Park as an honored guest. She stayed with them through the summer, delighting throngs of visitors. She showed off her fencing and archery skills, swam naked in the lake, performed a war dance involving a gong, prepared a spicy chicken curry, and prayed to “Allah Tallah” from the treetops. The Worralls’ Greek manservant brooded in the background. Once, he woke her in the middle of the night yelling “Fire!” but the princess showed no sign of alarm. A written sample of Princess Caraboo’s native language found its way to Oxford University, where linguists gave their opinion that it was a fake, so Mr. Worrall invited the learned Dr. Wilkinson from Bath to settle the matter once and for all. Wilkinson, who lectured on everything from electricity to washable wallpaper, immediately brushed all doubts aside. The incisions on the back of her head could only be the work of oriental surgeons and her language was, of course, Rejang, a dialect of Sumatra.

A delighted Worrall encouraged Dr. Wilkinson to publish his findings in full in the local paper, and this proved to be the princess’s undoing. Mrs. Neale, a landlady from Bristol, identified her as a former lodger who had entertained the
household by reciting a made-up language. When confronted with the news, the princess broke down and confessed the truth to Mrs. Worrall: She was really Mary Baker, a cobbler’s daughter from Titheridge, in Devon.

The Worralls (and the ludicrous Dr. Wilkinson) became laughingstocks, but they decided that punishing the girl would only make things worse. It would be less embarrassing if she just disappeared, so they put her aboard a ship sailing for Philadelphia. Worrall’s bank collapsed soon afterward, forcing him to resign as town clerk. For a few months Mary made theatrical appearances in America and wrote letters to Mrs. Worrall, keeping her up-to-date with her progress as a minor celebrity. By the year’s end the letters stopped coming. Nothing more was heard of her until “Princess Caraboo” suddenly reappeared on Bond Street in London. Later she toured other European countries, but the shows were not a success and she returned to Bristol, where she got married (oddly enough, to a man called Baker) and gave birth to a daughter.

The details of her life before she became Princess Caraboo are sadly typical of many poor women of her time. She had contracted rheumatic fever as a child, after which, her father said, she had “never been right in the head.” Worn out by spells as a farm laborer and a domestic maid, but always a tomboy, she left home at nineteen and set off on the road, living rough. Half starved and depressed, she tried to hang herself, but stopped at the last minute, afraid of committing a mortal sin. When she reached London she was seriously ill—the scars on the back of her head that Dr. Wilkinson had found were in fact the result of a clumsy operation in a poorhouse hospital.

Mary had many other adventures during her five-or six-year
absence from the West Country. She was briefly admitted to Magdalen Hospital, a home for fallen women, but was asked to leave when it became clear she hadn’t ever actually worked as a prostitute. When asked why she had come there in the first place, she said simply that she’d liked the look of the brown dresses and straw hats the inmates wore. Once, walking over Salisbury plain, disguised as a man for safety, she was captured and imprisoned by a band of highwaymen. On another occasion, she became pregnant, identifying the father as an Exeter bricklayer called John Baker or a Frenchman she had met in a bookshop. The child didn’t live long and Mary was on her way once more. She fell in step with a group of Romanies, who may have inspired her to invent her “Javasu” language, and worked as a cook for a Jewish family, whose religious rituals possibly provided material for her own arcane incantations.