A MASONIC ANECDOTE
(After the caricature by Gillray)
(click image to enlarge)
His Masonic experiences in England, moreover, were not of a nature to encourage the hopes he had entertained of making converts to the sect he had founded. At first it seemed as if Egyptian Masonry might prosper on English soil. Assisted by a number of adepts from Paris and Lyons, whose zeal had induced them to follow their master to London, Cagliostro had sought to found a lodge for the observance of the Egyptian Rite. To this end he had held séances which many people of distinction attended. These were so successful that to encourage some of the more promising of his clientele he “transmitted to them, as a mark of exceptional favour, the power to obtain manifestations in his absence.” Unfortunately, instead of the angels they expected to evoke, devils appeared.[44] The effect produced upon these inexperienced occultists was deplorable; combined with the attacks of the Courier de l’Europe it effectually killed Egyptian Masonry in England.
The Freemasons, who had welcomed him to their lodges with open arms, as the victim of a degenerate and despicable despotism, influenced by the scathing attacks of Morande, who was himself a Mason, now gave him the cold shoulder. At a convivial gathering at the Lodge of Antiquity which he attended about this time, instead of the sympathy he expected he was so ridiculed by one “Brother Mash, an optician,” who gave a burlesque imitation of the Grand Cophta of Egyptian Masonry as a quack-doctor vending a spurious balsam to cure every malady, that the victim of his ridicule was compelled to withdraw.
The mortification which this incident occasioned Cagliostro was further intensified by the wide notoriety that it was given by Gillray in a caricature entitled “A Masonic Anecdote,” to which the following lines were attached in English and French:—
“EXTRACT OF THE ARABIAN COUNT’S MEMOIRS
“Born, God knows where, supported, God knows how,
From whom descended—difficult to know;
Lord Crop adopts him as a bosom friend,