The Humbugs of the World

Again, the Count would fall into cataleptic swoons, which continued often for hours, and even days; and, during these periods, he declared that he visited, in spirit, the most remote regions of the earth, and even the farthest stars, and would relate, with astonishing power, the scenes he there had witnessed!

He, of course, laid claim to the transmutation of baser metals into gold, and stated that, in 1755, while on a visit to India, to consult the erudition of the Hindoo Brahmins, he solved, by their assistance, the problem of the artificial crystallization of pure carbon – or, in other words, the production of diamonds! One thing is certain, viz.: that upon a visit to the French ambassador to the Hague, in 1780, he, in the presence of that functionary, induced him to believe and testify that he broke to pieces, with a hammer, a superb diamond, of his own manufacture, the exact counterpart of another, of similar origin, which he had just sold for 5,500 louis d’or.

His career and transformations on the Continent were multiform. In 1762, he was mixed up with the dynastic conspiracies and changes at St. Petersburg; and his importance there was indicated ten years later, by the reception given to him at Vienna by the Russian Count Orloff, who accosted him joyously as “caro padre” (dear father,) and gave him twenty thousand golden Venetian sequins.

From Petersburg he went to Berlin, where he at once attracted the attention of Frederick the Great, who questioned Voltaire about him; the latter replying, as it is said, that he was a man who knew all things, and would live to the end of the world – a fair statement, in brief, of the position assumed by more than one of our ward politicians!

In 1774, he took up his abode at Schwabach, in Germany, under the name of Count Tzarogy, which is a transposition of Ragotzy, a well-known noble name. The Margrave of Anspach met him at the house of his favorite Clairon, the actress, and became so fond of him, that he insisted upon his company to Italy. On his return, he went to Dresden, Leipzig, and Hamburg, and finally to Eckernfiorde, in Schleswig, where he took up his residence with the Landgrave Karl of Hesse; and at length, in 1783, tired, as he said, of life, and disdaining any longer immortality, he gave up the ghost.

It was during St. Germain’s residence in Schleswig that he was visited by the renowned Cagliostro, who openly acknowledged him as master, and learned many of his most precious secrets from him – among others, the faculty of discriminating the character by the handwriting, and of fascinating birds, animals, and reptiles.

To trace the wanderings of St. Germain is a difficult task, as he had innumerable aliases, and often totally disappeared for months together. In Venice, he was known as the Count de Bellamare; at Pisa, as the Chevalier de Schoening; at Milan, as the Chevalier Welldone; at Genoa, as the Count Soltikow, etc.

In all these journeys, his own personal tastes were quiet and simple, and he manifested more attachment for a pocket-copy of Guarini’s “Pastor Fido” – his only library – than for any other object in his possession.

On the whole, the Count de St. Germain was a man of magnificent attainments, but the use he made of his talents proved him to be also a most magnificent humbug.

CHAPTER XLIII

RIZA BEY, THE PERSIAN ENVOY TO LOUIS XIV

The most gorgeous, and with one sole exception the most glorious reign that France has known, so far as military success is concerned, was that of Louis XIV, the Grand Monarque. His was the age of lavish expenditure, of magnificent structures, grand festivals, superb dress and equipage, aristocratic arrogance, brilliant campaigns, and great victories. It was, moreover, particularly distinguished for the number and high character of the various special embassies sent to the court of France by foreign powers. Among these, Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Venice rivaled each other in extravagant display and pomp. The singular and really tangible imposture I am about to describe, practiced at such a period and on such a man as Louis of France, was indeed a bold and dashing affair.

“L’Etat c’est moi” – “I am the State,” was Louis’ celebrated and very significant motto; for in his own hands he had really concentrated all the powers of the realm, and woe to him who trifled with a majesty so real and so imperial!

However, notwithstanding all this imposing strength, this mighty domineering will, and this keen intelligence, a man was found bold enough to brave them all in the arena of pure humbug. It was toward the close of the year 1667, when Louis, in the plenitude of military success, returned from his campaign in Flanders, where his invincible troops had proven too much for the broad breeched but gallant Dutchmen. In the short space of three months he had added whole provinces, including some forty or fifty cities and towns, to his dominions; and his fame was ringing throughout Christendom. It had even penetrated to the farthest East; and the King of Siam sent a costly embassy from his remote kingdom, to offer his congratulations and fraternal greeting to the most eminent potentate of Europe.

Louis had already removed the pageantries of his royal household to his magnificent new palace of Versailles, on which the wealth of conquered kingdoms had been lavished, and there, in the Great Hall of Mirrors, received the homage of his own nobles and the ambassadors of foreign powers. The utmost splendor of which human life was susceptible seemed so common and familiar in those days, that the train was dazzling indeed that could excite any very particular attention. What would have seemed stupendous elsewhere was only in conformity with all the rest of the scene at Versailles. But, at length, there came something that made even the pampered courtiers of the new Babylon stare – a Persian embassy. Yes, a genuine, actual, living envoy from that wonderful Empire in the East, which in her time had ruled the whole Oriental world, and still retained almost fabulous wealth and splendor.

It was announced formally, one morning, to Louis, that His Most Serene Excellency, Riza Bey, with an interminable tail of titles, hangers-on and equipages, had reached the port of Marseilles, having journeyed by way of Trebizond and Constantinople, to lay before the great “King of the Franks” brotherly congratulations and gorgeous presents from his own illustrious master, the Shah of Persia. This was something entirely to the taste of the vain French ruler, whom unlimited good fortune had inflated beyond all reasonable proportions. He firmly believed that he was by far the greatest man who had ever lived; and had an embassy from the moon or the planet Jupiter been announced to him, would have deemed it not only natural enough, but absolutely due to his preëminence above all other human beings. Nevertheless, he was, secretly, immensely pleased with the Persian demonstration, and gave orders that no expense should be spared in giving the strangers a reception worthy of himself and France.

It would be needless for me to detail the events of the progress of Riza Bey from Marseilles to Paris, by way of Avignon and Lyons. It was certainly in keeping with the pretensions of the Ambassador. From town to town the progress was a continued ovation. Triumphal arches, bonfires, chimes of bells, and hurrahing crowds in their best bibs and tuckers, military parades and civic ceremonies, everywhere awaited the children of the farthest East, who were stared at, shouted at – and by some wretched cynics sneered and laughed at – to their hearts’ content. All modern glory very largely consists in being nearly stunned with every species of noise, choked with dust, and dragged about through the streets, until you are well nigh dead. Witness the Japanese Embassy and their visit to this country, where, in some cases, the poor creatures, after hours of unmitigated boring with all sorts of mummery, actually had their pigtails pulled by Young America in the rear, and – as at the windows of Willard’s Hotel in Washington – were stirred up with long canes, like the Polar Bear or the Learned Seal.

Still Riza Bey and his dozen or two of dusky companions did not, by any means, cut so splendid a figure as had been expected. They had with them some camels, antelopes, bulbuls, and monkeys – like any travelling caravan, and were dressed in the most outrageous and outlandish attire. They jabbered, too, a gibberish utterly incomprehensible to the crowd, and did everything that had never been seen or done before. All this, however, delighted the populace. Had they been similarly transmogrified, or played such queer pranks themselves, it would only have been food for mockery; but the foreign air and fame of the thing made it all wonderful, and, as the chief rogue in the plot had foreseen, blinded the popular eye and made his “embassy” a complete success.

At length, after some four weeks of slow progress, the “Persians” arrived at Paris, where they were received, as had been expected, with tremendous éclat. They entered by Barriére du Trône, so styled because it was there that Louis Quatorze himself had been received upon a temporary throne, set up, with splendid decorations and triumphal arches, in the open air, when he returned from his Flanders campaign. Riza Bey was upon this occasion a little more splendid than he had been on his way from the sea-coast, and really loomed up in startling style in his tall, black, rimless hat of wool, shaped precisely like an elongated flower-pot, and his silk robes dangling to his heels and covered with huge painted figures and bright metal decorations of every shape and size unknown, to European man-millinery. A circlet or collar, apparently of gold, set with precious stones (California diamonds!) surrounded his neck, and monstrous glittering rings covered all the fingers, and even the thumbs of both his hands. His train, consisting of sword, cup, and pipe bearers, doctors, chief cooks, and bottle-washers, cork extractors and chiropodists (literally so, for it seems that sharing the common lot of humanity, great men have corns even in Persia,) were similarly arrayed as to fashion, but less stupendously in jewelry.

Well, after the throng had scampered, crowded, and shouted themselves hoarse, and had straggled to their homes, sufficiently tired and pocket-picked, the Ambassador and his suite were lodged in sumptuous apartments in the old royal residence of the Tuileries, under the care and charge of King Louis’ own assistant Major-Domo and a guard of courtiers and regiments of Royal Swiss. Banqueting and music filled up the first evening; and upon the ensuing day His Majesty, who thus did his visitors especial honor, sent the Duc de Richelieu, the most polished courtier and diplomatist in France, to announce that he would graciously receive them on the third evening at Versailles.

Meanwhile the most extensive preparations were made for the grand audience thus accorded; and when the appointed occasion had arrived, the entire Gallery of Mirrors with all the adjacent spaces and corridors, were crowded with the beauty, the chivalry, the wit, taste, and intellect of France at that dazzling period. The gallery, which is three hundred and eighty feet in length by fifty in height, derives its name from the priceless mirrors which adorn its walls, reaching from floor to ceiling, opposite the long row of equally tall and richly mullioned windows that look into the great court and gardens. These windows, hung with the costliest silk curtains and adorned with superb historical statuary, give to the hall a light and aërial appearance indescribably enchanting; while the mirrors reflect in ten thousand variations the hall itself and its moving pageantry, rendering both apparently interminable. Huge marble vases filled with odorous exotics lined the stairways, and twelve thousand wax lights in gilded brackets, and chandeliers of the richest workmanship, shone upon three thousand titled heads.

Louis the Great himself never appeared to finer advantage. His truly royal countenance was lighted up with pride and satisfaction as the Envoy of the haughty Oriental king approached the splendid throne on which he sat, and as he descended a step to meet him and stood there in his magnificent robes of state, the Persian envoy bent the knee, and with uncovered head presented the credentials of his mission. Of the crowd that immediately surrounded the throne, it is something to say that the Grand Colbert, the famous Minister, and the Admiral Duquesne were by no means the most eminent, nor the lovely Duchess of Orleans and her companion, the bewitching Mademoiselle de Kerouaille, who afterward changed the policy of Charles II, of England, by no means the most beautiful personages in the galaxy.

A grand ball and supper concluded this night of splendor, and Riza Bey was fairly launched at the French court; every member of which, to please the King, tried to outvie his compeers in the assiduity of his attentions, and the value of the books, pictures, gems, equipages, arms, &c., which they heaped upon the illustrious Persian. The latter gentleman very quietly smoked his pipe and lounged on his divan before company, and diligently packed up the goods when he and his “jolly companions” were left alone. The presents of the Shah had not yet arrived, but were daily expected via Marseilles, and from time to time the olive-colored suite was diminished by the departure of one of the number with his chest on a special mission (so stated) to England, Austria, Portugal, Spain, and other European powers.

In the meantime, the Bey was feted in all directions, with every species of entertainment, and it was whispered that the fair ones of that dissolute court were, from the first, eager in the bestowal of their smiles. The King favored his Persian pet with numerous personal interviews, at which, in broken French, the Envoy unfolded the most imposing schemes of Oriental conquest and commerce that his master was cordially willing to share with his great brother of France. At one of these chatty tête-á-têtes, the munificent Riza Bey, upon whom the King had already conferred his own portrait set in diamonds, and other gifts worth several millions of francs, placed in the Royal hand several superb fragments of opal and turquoise said to have been found in a district of country bordering on the Caspian sea, which teemed with limitless treasures of the same kind, and which the Shah of Persia proposed to divide with France for the honor of her alliance. The king was enchanted; for these mere specimens, as they were deemed, must, if genuine, be worth in themselves a mint of money; and a province full of such – why, the thought was charming!

Thus the great King-fish was fairly hooked, and Riza Bey could take his time. The golden tide that flowed in to him did not slacken, and his own expenses were all provided for at the Tuileries. The only thing remaining to be done was a grand foray on the tradesmen of Paris, and this was splendidly executed. The most exquisite wares of all descriptions were gathered in, without mention of payment; and one by one the Persian phalanx distributed itself through Europe until only two or three were left with the Ambassador.

At length, word was sent to Versailles that the gifts from the Shah had come, and a day was appointed for their presentation. The day arrived, and the Hall of Audience was again thrown open. All was jubilee; the King and the court waited, but no Persian – no Riza Bey – no presents from the Shah!

That morning three men, without either caftans or robes, but very much resembling the blacklegs of the day in their attire and deportment, had left the Tuileries at daylight with a bag and a bundle, and returned no more. They were Riza Bey and his last body-guard; the bag and the bundle were the smallest in bulk but the most precious in value of a month’s successful plunder. The turquoises and opals left with the King turned out, upon close inspection, to be a new and very ingenious variety of colored glass, now common enough, and then worth, if anything, about thirty cents in cash.

Of course, a hue and cry was raised in all directions, but totally in vain. Riza Bey, the Persian Shah, and the gentlemen in flower-pots, had “gone glimmering through the dream of things that were.” L’etat c’est moi had been sold for thirty cents! It was afterward believed that a noted barber and suspected bandit at Leghorn, who had once really traveled in Persia, and there picked up the knowledge and the ready money that served his turn, was the perpetrator of this pretty joke and speculation, as he disappeared from his native city about the time of the embassy in France, and did not return.

All Europe laughed heartily at the Grand Monarque and his fair court-dames, and “An Embassy from Persia” was for many years thereafter an expression similar to “Walker!” in English, or “Buncombe!” in American conversation, when the party using it seeks to intimate that the color of his optics is not a distinct pea-green!

IX. RELIGIOUS HUMBUGS

CHAPTER XLIV

DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND; OR, YANKEE SUPERSTITIONS. – MATTHIAS THE IMPOSTOR. – NEW YORK FOLLIES THIRTY YEARS AGO

There is a story that on a great and solemn public occasion of the Romish Church, a Pope and a Cardinal were, with long faces, performing some of the gyrations of the occasion, when, instead of a pious ejaculation and reply, which were down in the programme, one said to the other gravely, in Latin “mundus vult decipi;” and the other replied, with equal gravity and learning, “decipiatur ergo:” that is, “All the world chooses to be fooled.” – “Let it be fooled then.”

This seems, perhaps, a reasonable way for priests to talk about ignorant Italians. It may seem inapplicable to cool, sharp, school-trained Protestant Yankees. It is not, however – at least, not entirely. Intelligent Northerners have, sometimes, superstition enough in them to make a first-class Popish saint. If it had not been so, I should not have such an absurd religious humbug to tell of as Robert Matthews, notorious in our goodly city some thirty years ago as “Matthias, the Impostor.”

In the summer of 1832, there was often seen riding in Broadway, in a handsome barouche, or promenading on the Battery (usually attended by a sort of friend or servant,) a tall man, of some forty years of age, quite thin, with sunken, sharp gray eyes, with long, coarse, brown and gray hair, parted in the middle and curling on his shoulders, and a long and coarse but well-tended beard and mustache. These Esau-like adornments attracted much attention in those close-shaving days. He was commonly dressed in a fine green frock-coat, lined with white or pink satin, black or green pantaloons, with polished Wellington boots drawn on outside, fine cambric ruffles and frill, and a crimson silk sash worked with gold and with twelve tassels, for the twelve tribes of Israel. On his head was a steeple-crowned patent-leather shining black cap with a shade.

Thus bedizened, this fantastic-looking personage marched gravely up and down, or rode in pomp in the streets. Sometimes he lounged in a bookstore or other place of semi-public resort; and in such places he often preached or exhorted. His preachments were sufficiently horrible. He claimed to be God the Father; and his doctrine was, in substance, this: – “The true kingdom of God on earth began in Albany in June 1830, and will be completed in twenty-one years, or by 1851. During this time, wars are to stop, and I, Matthias, am to execute the divine judgments and destroy the wicked. The day of grace is to close on December 1, 1836; and all who do not begin to reform by that time, I shall kill.” The discourses by which this blasphemous humbug supported his pretensions were a hodge-podge of impiety and utter nonsense, with rants, curses and cries, and frightful threats against all objectors. Here is a passage from one; – “All who eat swine’s flesh are of the devil; and just as certain as he eats it he will tell a lie in less than half an hour. If you eat a piece of pork, it will go crooked through you, and the Holy Ghost will not stay in you; but one or the other must leave the house pretty soon. The pork will be as crooked in you as rams’ horns.” Again, he made these pleasant points about the ladies: “They who teach women are of the wicked. All females who lecture their husbands their sentence is: ‘Depart, ye wicked, I know you not.’ Everything that has the smell of woman will be destroyed. Woman is the cap-sheaf of the abomination of desolation, full of all deviltry.” There, ladies! Is anything further necessary to convince you what a peculiarly wicked and horrible humbug this fellow was?

If we had followed this impostor home, we should have found him lodged, during most of his stay in New-York city, with one or the other of his three chief disciples. These were Pierson, who commonly attended him abroad, Folger, and – for a time only – Mills. All three of these men were wealthy merchants. In their handsome and luxuriously-furnished homes, this noxious humbug occupied the best rooms, and controlled the whole establishment, directing the marketing, meal times, and all other household-matters. Master, mistress (in Mr. Folger’s home,) and domestics were disciples, and obeyed the scamp with an implicitness and prostrate humility even more melancholy than absurd, both as to housekeeping and as to the ceremonies, washing of feet, etc., which he enjoined. When he was angry with his female disciples, he frequently whipped them; but, being a monstrous coward, he never tried it on a man. The least opposition or contradiction threw him into a great rage, and set him screaming, and cursing, and gesticulating like any street drab. When he wished more clothes, which was pretty often, one of his dupes furnished the money. When he wanted cash for any purpose indeed, they gave it him.

This half-crazy knave and abominable humbug was Robert Matthews, who called himself Matthias. He was of Scotch descent, and born about 1790, in Washington county, New York; and his blood was tainted with insanity, for a brother of his died a lunatic. He was a carpenter and joiner of uncommon skill, and up to nearly his fortieth year lived, on the whole, a useful and respectable life, being industrious, a professing Christian of good standing, and (having married in 1813) a steady family-man. In 1828 and 1829, while living at Albany, he gradually became excited about religious subjects; his first morbid symptoms appearing after hearing some sermons by Rev. E. N. Kirk, and Mr. Finney the revivalist. He soon began to exhort his fellow-journeymen instead of minding his work, so uproariously that his employer turned him away.

He discovered a text in the Bible that forbid Christians to shave. He let his hair and beard grow; began street-preaching in a noisy, brawling style; announced that he was going to set about converting the whole city of Albany – which needed it badly enough, if we may believe the political gentlemen. Finding however, that the Lobby, or the Regency, or something or other about the peculiar wickedness of Albany, was altogether too much for him, he began, like Jonah at Nineveh, to announce the destruction of the obstinate town; and at midnight, one night in June, 1826, he waked up his household, and saying that Albany was to be destroyed next day, took his three little boys – two, four, and six years old – his wife and oldest child (a daughter refusing to go,) and “fled to the mountains.” He actually walked the poor little fellows forty miles in twenty-four hours, to his sister’s in Washington county. Here he was reckoned raving crazy; was forcibly turned out of church for one of his brawling interruptions of service, and sent back to Albany, where he resumed his street-preaching more noisily than ever. He now began to call himself Matthias, and claimed to be a Jew. Then he went on a long journey to the Western and Southern States, preaching his doctrines, getting into jail, and sometimes fairly cursing his way out; and, returning to New York city, preached up and down the streets in his crazy, bawling fashion, sometimes on foot and sometimes on an old bony horse.

His New York city dupes, Elijah Pierson and Benjamin H. Folger and their families, together with a Mr. Mills and a few more, figured prominently in the chief chapter of Matthews’ career, during two years and a half, from May, 1832, to the fall of 1834.

Pierson and Folger were the leaders in the folly. These men, merchants of wealth and successful in business, were of that sensitive and impressible religious nature which is peculiarly credulous and liable to enthusiasms and delusions. They had been, with a number of other persons, eagerly engaged in some extravagant religious performances, including excessive fasts and asceticisms, and a plan, formed by one of their lady friends, to convert all New York by a system of female visitations and preachings – a plan not so very foolish, I may just remark, if the she apostles are only pretty enough!

Pierson, the craziest of the crew, besides other wretched delusions, had already fancied himself Elijah the Tishbite; and when his wife fell ill and died a little while before this time, had first tried to cure her, and then to raise her from the dead, by anointing with oil and by the prayer of faith, as mentioned in the Epistle of Saint James.

Curiously enough, a sort of lair or nest, very soft and comfortable, was thus made ready for our religious humbug, just as he wanted it worst; for in these days he was but seedy. He heard something of Pierson, I don’t know how; and on the 5th of May, 1832, he called on him. Very quickly the poor fellow recognized the long-bearded prophetical humbug as all that he claimed to be – a possessor and teacher of all truth, and as God himself.

Mills and Folger easily fell into the same pitiable foolery, on Pierson’s introduction. And the lucky humbug was very soon living in clover in Mills’ house, which he chose first; had admitted the happy fools, Pierson and Folger, as the first two members of his true church; Pierson, believing that from Elijah the Tishbite he had become John the Baptist, devoted himself as a kind of servant to his new Messiah; and the deluded men began to supply all the temporal wants of the impostor, believing their estates set apart as the beginning of the material Kingdom of God!

After three months, some of Mills’ friends, on charges of lunacy, caused Mills to be sent to Bloomingdale Asylum, and Matthias to be thrust into the insane poor’s ward at Bellevue, where his beard was forcibly cut off, to his extreme disgust. His brother, however, got him out by a habeas corpus, and he went to live with Folger. Mills now disappears from the story.

Matthias remained in the full enjoyment of his luxurious establishment, until September, 1834, it is true, with a few uncomfortable interruptions. He was always both insolent and cowardly, and thus often irritated some strong-minded auditor, and got himself into some pickle where he had to sneak out, which he did with much ease. In his seedy days the landlord of a hotel in whose bar-room he used to preach and curse, put him down when he grew too abusive, by coolly and sternly telling him to go to bed. Mr. Folger himself had one or two brief intervals of sense, in one of which, angered at some insolence of Matthias, he seized him by the throat, shook him well, and flung him down upon a sofa. The humbug knowing that his living was in danger, took this very mildly, and readily accepted the renewed assurances of belief which poor Folger soon gave him. In the village of Sing Sing where Folger had a country-seat which he called Mount Zion, Matthias was exceedingly obnoxious. His daughter had married a Mr. Laisdell; and the humbug, who claimed that all Christian marriages were void and wicked, by some means induced the young wife to come to Sing Sing, where he whipped her more than once quite cruelly. Her husband came and took her away after encountering all the difficulty which Matthias dared make; and, at a hearing in the matter before a magistrate, he was very near getting tarred and feathered, if not something worse, and the danger frightened him very much.

He barely escaped being shaved by violence, and being thrown overboard to test his asserted miraculous powers, at the hands of a stout and incredulous farmer on the steamboat between Sing Sing and New York. While imprisoned at Bellevue before his trial, he was tossed in a blanket by the prisoners, to make him give them some money. The unlucky prophet dealt out damnation to them in great quantities; but they told him it wouldn’t work, and the poor humbug finally, instead of casting them into hell, paid them a quarter of a dollar apiece to let him off. When he was about to leave Folger’s house, some roguish young men of Sing Sing forged a warrant, and with a counterfeit officer seized the humbug, and a second time shaved him by force. He was one day terribly “set back” as the phrase is, by a sharpish answer. He gravely asserted to a certain man that he had been on the earth eighteen hundred years. His hearer, startled and irreverent, exclaimed:

“The devil you have! Do you tell me so?”

“I do,” said the prophet.

“Then,” rejoined the other, “all I have to say is, you are a remarkably good-looking fellow for one of your age.”