And Satire’s laugh to fraud shall put an end.”
To recover the prestige he had lost in the Masonic world Cagliostro seems for a moment to have sought affiliation with the Swedenborgians, whose extravagant form of spiritualism was not unlike that of the Egyptian Rite. It was undoubtedly with this object in view that he inserted a notice in the Morning Herald in which he invited “all true Masons in the name of Jehovah to assemble at O’Reilly’s Hotel to form a plan for the reconstruction of the New Temple of Jerusalem.” The Swedenborgians, however, failed to respond to the invitation.
Smitten thus hip and thigh, England became impossible to Cagliostro; and having made the necessary preparations he set out with great secrecy and alone for Switzerland some time in May 1787. But Morande even now did not cease persecuting him. Not content with boasting that “he had succeeded in hunting his dear Don Joseph out of England,” he circulated the report that “the charlatan had gone off with the diamonds of his wife, who in revenge now admitted that her husband was indeed Giuseppe Balsamo and that all the Courier de l’Europe had written about him was true.”
This report is another instance of the vindictive rumours on which so much of the prejudice against Cagliostro is based. It was devoid of the least particle of truth, and was deliberately fabricated and circulated solely for the purpose of injuring the man it slandered.
As a matter of fact, in travelling without his wife for the first and only time in his career, Cagliostro did so from necessity. Beset with spies who, as he was informed, suspecting his intention of leaving England had planned to capture him en route,[45] he had need of observing the greatest caution in his movements. The Countess Cagliostro, far from being left in “great distress,” as Morande asserted, had ample means at her disposal as well as valuable friends in the Royal Academician de Loutherbourg and his wife, with whom she lived till her own departure for Switzerland.
Philip James de Loutherbourg was a painter of considerable note in his day. An Alsatian by birth, he had studied art under Vanloo in Paris, but meeting with little success in France, migrated to England, where fortune proved more propitious. His battle-pieces and landscapes in the Salvator Rosa style were very popular with the great public of his day. Engaged by Garrick to paint scenery for Drury Lane Theatre, the innovations that he introduced completely revolutionized the mounting of the stage. He was also the originator of the panorama. His “Eidophusicon,” as he called it, in which, by the aid of mechanical contrivances, painted scenes acquired the appearance of reality, when exhibited in London excited the unbounded admiration of Gainsborough.
Of a decidedly visionary temperament, de Loutherbourg “went in” for alchemy, till his wife, who was equally visionary and more spiritually inclined, smashed his crucible in a fit of religious exaltation. Converted in this violent fashion to a less material though no less absurd form of supernaturalism, the popular Royal Academician, whose pictures at least had nothing mystical about them, became assiduous in attending Baptist chapels, revivalist meetings, and Swedenborgian services. After associating with the enthusiast Brothers, who called himself “the nephew of the Almighty” and was more fitted for a lunatic asylum than the prison to which his antics led him, de Loutherbourg turned faith-healer. At the same time his wife also acquired the power to heal.
PHILIP JAMES DE LOUTHERBOURG
Beside the cures the de Loutherbourgs are reported to have performed those of Cagliostro pale into insignificance. Even Mrs. Eddy, of Christian science fame, with her “absent treatment,” has only imitated them. Unlike her, the de Loutherbourgs healed free of charge.