ROMAN GOSSIP: SUETONIUS' RACY YET COY ACCOUNT OF CAESAR'S PERSONAL HABITS

Caesar, and Suetonius (Gaius Tranquillus, 69-122 AD)
EXTRACT FROM: Suetonius Lives of the Twelve Caesars (H. M. Bird transl) London: Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, pp 32-3.

[Caesar's] stature is said to have been tall, his complexion light and clear, with eyes black, lively and quick, set in a face somewhat full; his limbs were round and strong, and he was also very healthy, except towards his latter days when he was given to sudden swoons and disturbance in his sleep; and twice in the conduct of military affairs, he was seized with the falling sickness. In the care of his person, his scrupulousness almost approached the fantastical; for he not only kept the hair of his head closely cut and had his face smoothly shaved, but even had the hair on other parts of his body plucked out by the roots, a whim for which he was often twitted. Moreover, finding by experience that his baldness exposed him many times to the jibes of his enemies, he was much cast down because of it, and was wont to bring forward the thin growth of hair from his crown to his forehead; hence, of all the honours bestowed upon him by the senate and people, there was none which he accepted or used with greater alacrity than the privilege of wearing constantly a laurel crown.
It is said that in his apparel he was noted for a certain singularity; for he wore his senatorial purple bordered robe trimmed with fringes about the wrists, and always had it girded about him, though rather loosely.  This habit gave rise to the saying of Sulla, who admonished the nobels often ot 'beware of the ill-girt boy'.
He dwelt at first in the Suburra but after he was raised to the pontificate, he occupied a palace belonging to the state in the Via Sacra. Many writers say that he was exceedingly addicted to elegance in his house and sumptous fare at his table; and that he entirely demolished a villa near the grove of Aricia, which he had built from the foundation and finished at great cost, because it did not exactly realise his taste, although at that time he possessed but slender means and was deeply in debt.  Finally it is said that in his military expeditions he carried about him tassellated and marble slabs to grace the floor of his tent.
He made a voyage (as they say) into Britain in the hope of finding pearls; for he rumour was current that excellent pearls of all colours, but chiefly white, were found in the British seas; and he would compare the size of these and poise them in his hand to ascertain their weight. He was most eager also, to purchase, at any cost, gems, carved works, statues, and pictures, executed by the eminent masters of antiquity. And for young finely set-up slaves, he would pay a price so great that out of shame for his own extravagance he forbad its being recorded in the diary of his accounts.
........
His reputation for continence and a clean life was unblemished save by the occasion of his intimacy with Nicomedes; but that was a foul stain that remained within him always and provoked many taunts and reproaches. I will not dwell at length on the notorious verses of Calvus Licinius, beginning:
Whate'er Bithynia and her lord possess'd, / Her lord who Caesar in his lust carress'd
I pass over the invectives and accusations of Dolabella, and Curio the father; in which Dolabella dubs him 'the queen's rival, and the inner side of the royal couch', and Curio, 'the brothel of Nicomedes, and the Bithynian stew'. I likewise pass over the edicts of Bibulus wherein he proclaimed his colleague under the name of 'the queen of Bithynia', adding that 'he had formerly been in love with a king, but now coveted a kingdom'.  At which time, as Marcus Brutus relates, there was one Octavius, a man of disordered brain and one given to overboard jests, who, in a crowded assembly, after he had saluted Pompey by the title of king, addressed Caesar as queen. ...
...Finally, in the Gallic triumph, his soldiers recited these verses among others which they chanted merrily upon such occasions, and they have since that time become commonly current:
The Gauls to Caesar yield, Caesar to Nicomede, / Lo! Caesar triumphs for his glorious deed, / But Caesar's conqueror gains no victor's meed.

Funny how Suetonius, despite claiming he will not dwell on any of the rumours regarding Caesar, manages to gleefuly reproduce every single one in maximum detail.  It is for this reason that many prefer his account, which is more like a political cartoon/gossip rag to the more serious minded historians dwelling on battles, assassinations and events with gravitas. Though Suetonius may gloss over important battles or political events in the space of a sentence, he seems to always find room for any scandalous one-liner that he'd heard in the market place or at a party, sometimes in fact just presenting streams of them one after the other without much narrative. It should be noted that the treatment meted out to Caesar is fairly mild compared to that which he gives to emperors like Tiberius, not to even mention Caligula and Nero.

LITERARY & SEXUAL INTRIGUE AT THE ROMANIAN COURT IN THE 1880s: QUEEN ELIZABETH AND MITE KREMNITZ' NOVEL DITTO AND IDEM

Elizabeth of Wied, Queen of Romania

Romania's queen Elizabeth, born in Germany's Black Forest, was a poetess who married a very pragmatic constitutional monarch. Whilst her husband attended to the modernisation of the country, she surrounded herself with a group of attractive young artists (see yesterday's post), and published romantic poems under the pseudonym Carmen Sylva ('the poetry of the woods' in Latin). She also wrote novels, one of them in collaboration with Mite Kremnitz, a fellow German who was married to the court doctor and was sister in law to Romania's foremost literary critic, Titu Maiorescu (whose influential voice was at the time shaping the new country's literary tradition).

Mite Kremnitz

Maiorescu was a patron of Mihail Eminescu, the country's greatest romantic poet (as he would turn out to be) who, often being unemployed and unable to look after himself, was asked to live at the Maiorescus' mansion and to give Romanian language lessons to Mite Kremnitz. The lessons soon turned into a torrid affair (Eminescu gave her a hand written poem entitled 'So tender', fact which alarmed Maiorescu who, following the death of his wife, had designs on Mite Kremnitz himself. After the end of the affair (Eminescu moved on to another married lady), Kremnitz translated Eminescu's greatest poem, Luceafarul (the Morning Star) into German. The poem dealt with the predicament of genius, and the idea that talent creates an enforced isolation, when one would much rather enjoy love and life along with other ordinary mortals (especially ordinary mortal women). 

Mihail Eminescu

Kremnitz and Queen Elizabeth then co-wrote the novel Ditto & Idem, which they intended as an answer to Eminescu's Luceafarul. Amidst a contemporary flaring of interest in Bucharest's past, this book has been recently reprinted, along with a profusion of interesting memoirs from the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the novel, two German sisters fall in love with the same man – the husband of the older sister – and perish as a result. The story - which opens when the younger sister is sent to live in the household of her elder sister in Transylvania - is told via an interesting device whereby each sister independently writes to the mother, telling her side of the developing love intrigue. The morale of the story is deeply romantic – loving a man who is very much worth loving (the hero is very very Byronic!) is something one can not resist, despite one's best intentions, rational attitude and selfless urges. The book is interesting and infuriating by turns (so much could have been made of the 'letter to mother' device and of the story itself, had facile romantic cliches not kept reasserting themselves again and again...). But of course one has to read it in its historical context – this was a time, just after Byron, when women were discovering and exploring a different way of relating to their men, and a different kind of hero, dangerous, hard to understand, yet irresistible.

Mite Kremnitz, who was the daughter of a famous German surgeon, Professor Bardeleben. She also became the subject of a novel written by another Romanian literary critic, Eugen Lovinescu, entitled Mite. Some of her books - Romanian fairytales and her reminiscences of King Carol I of Romania – are available in English and German from Barnes and Noble.

Genealogical tangles

Titu Maiorescu

The relations between Mite's family, the Bardelebens, the Kremnitz family and Maiorescu make truly fascinating reading, and perhaps help explain some of the kinship claustrophobia of the Ditto and Idem novel. Mite was the daughter of the famous German doctor Bardeleben, professor of surgery in Berlin, and her mother's sister married a lawyer called Kremnitz, the father of her future husband. Maiorescu, whilst a student in Berlin, was French tutor to the Kremnitz children, one of whom, Clara, he ended up marrying. The other Kremnitz sister, Helene, married Professor Bardeleben, Mite's father, a few months after he was prematurely widowed. And Wilhelm Kremnitz, a favourite pupil of Bardeleben and brother of Clara and Helene, married Mite (Bardeleben's daughter and his first cousin)! Then Maiorescu invited the young couple to visit Bucharest, where they decided to settle. After Clara's death Maiorescu pursued an affair with Mite...

GEORGE ENESCU'S OPERA OEDIPE AND THE SENSATIONAL STORY OF ITS DEDICATION

Enescu (left, on violin) with Romania's queen Elizabeth and other musicians.

Departing from our usual format (given we are still away from London), we would like to draw attention to George Enescu's masterpiece Oedipe, which we saw last night at the Bucharest National Opera. Enescu is considered Romania's greatest composer, but whilst almost everything music-related is named after him, and his face appears on the 5 lei banknote (along with the atonal opening contrabassoon motif from the opera's overture) the actual music on which his artistic reputation stands is often overlooked and certainly performed less frequently than it deserves to be.


The opera, with a libretto in French by Edmond Fleg, was started in 1922 and completed in 1931. Although it falls squarely in the Deco period, its sinuous graceful and lush textures belong really to the earlier Art Nouveau aesthetic. Enescu made much of his career in France and, the language of the opera aside, the music shows the unsurprising influence of the French impressionists (Debussy, Ravel, etc), most obviously his colouristic, non-functional use of tonal harmony. The orchestration is also a tour-de-force, its immensely-subtle fabric managing to be both rich and finely-etched in the manner of Mahler's late symphonies. There seems to be little influence from the ethos of neo-classicism prevalent in France at the time. Enescu employs a large orchestra and goes straight for the jugular of musical expression. He doesn't treat the myth as a series of emotionally- static, even ironic tableaux in the manner of Stravinsky's almost-contemporary treatment of the same myth. There does however seem to be a clear influence of Austro-German expressionism – the drowning scene of Wozzeck clearly comes to mind in the encounter with the Sphinx and the blinding scene. The rapidly-shifting tonality of the rest of the work is replaced by a world of strange pedal-points, extreme registers and instrumental colours, tiny, pregnant flecks of melody and ostinato, Sprechstimme-like vocal writing and sudden, devastating climaxes and silences. Whilst the extremity of the expressive content of the music is matched by extremity (and strangeness) of style, these scenes do not feel like a graft from another work. The opera does have a style where expressionism and more 'conventional' music – such as set choral pieces and dances at the opening of the first act, and the triumphant music after the Sphinx's demise – seem like extensions of a unitary, supple compositional style that can encompass opposites.
Enescu grew up in Moldavia and throughout the opera one can glimpse seems the musical mannerisms characteristic of Romanian folk ballads or dances being seamlessly worked into this musical style. In particular, one thinks of the doina-like song Oedipe sings to himself just before arriving at the crossroads, where he kills Laios. The composer never had the chance to write another opera, a great pity as he seems to have had a natural knack for this art-form, making it truly his own.

Enescu dedicated Oedipe to the Princess Maruca Rosetti, and the love story behind this is simply sensational. A lady in waiting to Romania's queen Marie and descendant of the Cantacuzenes, an old Romanian boyar family, Maruca was a sort of Romanian Alma Mahler. Married to the richest man in Romania, she became a femme fatale, collecting illustrious and talented admirers, after catching her husband in her sister's bed. She met Enescu in the summer of 1907 at Sinaia, Romania's royal mountain retreat, and it was reportedly love at first sight (in a letter she refers to him as “man, god or demon... destiny incarnate”). At the end of that summer Enescu had to return to Paris, leaving Maruca at her landed estate, comparing her love to that of Isolde for Tristan and considering divorce from her husband. Just as she was about to leave for Paris to be reunited with her lover, she received a letter from him accusing her of cheating with another aristocrat. She was so incensed that she immediately cancelled the tickets and booked different ones for Italy. After a revenge affair with an English lord, she reunited with the contrite Enescu a month later in Paris. In 1913 she left on a long journey to Norway to find herself and take some breathing space from the intense affair. For the next few stormy years, the relationship was on and off several times. Whilst on a break she met the philosopher and academic Nae Ionescu (Mircea Eliade's teacher) one of the architects of Romanian fascism. A charismatic figure at the height of his popularity, he soon began an affair with the princess, which lasted five years. Ionescu eventually left her for the aristocratic pianist Cella Delavrancea, but told one of his pupils that his life had been broken in two at the moment of his separation from Maruca. Maruca herself retreated at her family estate in Tescani where she fell into a deep depression and came to believe that she was cursed. Apparently the curse had come from a witch who had been the gypsy lover of her grandfather. The grandfather was said to have abandoned his wife for the gypsy, but when his son grew up he sent the gypsy away, incurring a curse upon his family. In the wake of her break-up with Nae Ionescu Maruca disfigured herself either by throwing acid on her face, setting herself on fire or both (sources differ) - she wore a black veil for the rest of her life. Hearing about this Enescu rushed to her side and, after a brief period in a mental institution, nursed her back to health and they married in 1937.

VOLTAIRE VS QUAKER ELDER: THE LETTERS ON ENGLAND

EXTRACT FROM: Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet) 1778 Letters on England 'Letter I: On the Quakers' Available on Project Gutenberg.




 

I was of opinion that the doctrine and history of so extraordinary a people were worthy the attention of the curious.  To acquaint myself with them I made a visit to one of the most eminent Quakers in England, who, after having traded thirty years, had the wisdom to prescribe limits to his fortune and to his desires, and was settled in a little solitude not far from London.  Being come into it, I perceived a small but regularly built house, vastly neat, but without the least pomp of furniture.  The Quaker who owned it was a hale, ruddy-complexioned old man, who had never been afflicted with sickness because he had always been insensible to passions, and a perfect stranger to intemperance.  I never in my life saw a more noble or a more engaging aspect than his.  He was dressed like those of his persuasion, in a plain coat without pleats in the sides, or buttons on the pockets and sleeves; and had on a beaver, the brims of which were horizontal like those of our clergy.  He did not uncover himself when I appeared, and advanced towards me without once stooping his body; but there appeared more politeness in the open, humane air of his countenance, than in the custom of drawing one leg behind the other, and taking that from the head which is made to cover it.  “Friend,” says he to me, “I perceive thou art a stranger, but if I can do anything for thee, only tell me.”  “Sir,” said I to him, bending forwards and advancing, as is usual with us, one leg towards him, “I flatter myself that my just curiosity will not give you the least offence, and that you’ll do me the honour to inform me of the particulars of your religion.”  “The people of thy country,” replied the Quaker, “are too full of their bows and compliments, but I never yet met with one of them who had so much curiosity as thyself.  Come in, and let us first dine together.”  I still continued to make some very unseasonable ceremonies, it not being easy to disengage one’s self at once from habits we have been long used to; and after taking part in a frugal meal, which began and ended with a prayer to God, I began to question my courteous host.  I opened with that which good Catholics have more than once made to Huguenots.  “My dear sir,” said I, “were you ever baptised?”  “I never was,” replied the Quaker, “nor any of my brethren.”  “Zounds!” say I to him, “you are not Christians, then.”  “Friend,” replies the old man in a soft tone of voice, “swear not; we are Christians, and endeavour to be good Christians, but we are not of opinion that the sprinkling water on a child’s head makes him a Christian.”  “Heavens!” say I, shocked at his impiety, “you have then forgot that Christ was baptised by St. John.”  “Friend,” replies the mild Quaker once again, “swear not; Christ indeed was baptised by John, but He himself never baptised anyone.  We are the disciples of Christ, not of John.”  I pitied very much the sincerity of my worthy Quaker, and was absolutely for forcing him to get himself christened.  “Were that all,” replied he very gravely, “we would submit cheerfully to baptism, purely in compliance with thy weakness, for we don’t condemn any person who uses it; but then we think that those who profess a religion of so holy, so spiritual a nature as that of Christ, ought to abstain to the utmost of their power from the Jewish ceremonies.”  “O unaccountable!” say I: “what! baptism a Jewish ceremony?”  “Yes, my friend,” says he, “so truly Jewish, that a great many Jews use the baptism of John to this day.  Look into ancient authors, and thou wilt find that John only revived this practice; and that it had been used by the Hebrews, long before his time, in like manner as the Mahometans imitated the Ishmaelites in their pilgrimages to Mecca.  Jesus indeed submitted to the baptism of John, as He had suffered Himself to be circumcised; but circumcision and the washing with water ought to be abolished by the baptism of Christ, that baptism of the Spirit, that ablution of the soul, which is the salvation of mankind.  Thus the forerunner said, ‘I indeed baptise you with water unto repentance; but He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.’  Likewise Paul, the great apostle of the Gentiles, writes as follows to the Corinthians, ‘Christ sent me not to baptise, but to preach the Gospel;’ and indeed Paul never baptised but two persons with water, and that very much against his inclinations.  He circumcised his disciple Timothy, and the other disciples likewise circumcised all who were willing to submit to that carnal ordinance.  But art thou circumcised?” added he.  “I have not the honour to be so,” say I.  “Well, friend,” continues the Quaker, “thou art a Christian without being circumcised, and I am one without being baptised.”

Voltaire, one of the foremost 'philosophes', or thinkers who articulated the ethos of the Enlightenment, was a bit of a trouble maker. He managed to get into several scrapes with influential figures of the French academic, clerical and aristocratic establishment - and had to go into exile until things had cooled off. Sometimes he sought refuge on his aristocratic friends' estate, but on one occasion he moved to England and took advantage of the opportunity to visit and chronicle the country. The Letters on England are the result - fascinating reading, available freely on Project Gutenberg.
English Quakers are a fascinating and exciting group. They have traditionally run very successful businesses - Cadbury and Rowntree are prime examples - conceived as businesses with a social conscience. Even today, Quaker businesses are still at the forefront of corporate social responsibility schemes and support charities started by these families. During WWII many consciencious objectors found solace and refuge in Quaker circles - since being nonviolent Quakers were among the few people entirely exempt from military service. This however did not mean they didn't do service during the war - The Friends Ambulance Unit and the Hadley Spears were just some of the outfits that did incredible medical and other support work on the front lines across the battle theatres in Europe, Asia and Africa.

SIXTEENTH CENTURY SPANISH SLAPSTICK: DON QUIXOTE AND THE KING'S LIONS

Don Quixote and the lion

EXTRACT FROM: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 2003 [1604] The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha (J. Rutherford transl), London: Penguin Books.

About events that revealed the very highest peak ever reached by Don Quixote's unprecedented courage, in the happily concluded adventure of the lions

The history says that when Don Quixote shouted to Sancho for his helmet, Sancho was buying some curds from the shepherds and, flustered by his master's urgency, he didn't know what to do with them or where to put them; and so, determined not to leave them behind, because he'd already paid for them, he decided to put them into the helmet and, once he'd taken this wise precaution, went to see what his master wanted.

Don Quixote said:

'Give me that helmet, my friend; either I am a poor judge of adventures or what I can see over there is one that will require me to take up arms, and indeed is doing so at this very instant'.

The man in the green topcoat heard this and looked around in all directions, but all he could see was a cart coming towards them bearing two or three small flags, which gave him to understand that it must be carrying a load of the King's money, and this is what he said to Don Quixote; but Don Quixote wouldn't accept what he said, believing as always that everything that happened to him must be adventures and still more adventures, and so he replied to the hidalgo:

'He is wise who looks ahead, and nothing is lost by my looking ahead, because I know from experience that I have both visible and invisible enemies, and I do not know when, or where, or at what moment, or in what shape they will attack me'.

And turning to Sancho he again asked for his helmet; Sancho, with no time to remove the curds, had to hand it over as it was. Don Quixote took it and, not noticing what was inside, rammed it down over his head, which gave the curds a thorough pressing and sent the whey running down over his face and his beard, alarming him so much that he exclaimed:

'What can this be, Sancho? It is as if my brain-box were softening, or as if my brains themselves were melting, or as if I were perspiring from head to toe! And if I am perspiring, it is most certainly not from fear: I am quite sure now that the adventure about to befall me is a terrible one indeed. Give me something with which to wipe myself, if you have anything about you: all this perspiration in my eyes is blinding me.'

Sancho kept quiet and gave his master a cloth and God thanks that his master hadn't tumbled to what had happened. Don Quixote wiped his face and removed his helmet to see what it was that had given him a cold head, if not cold feet; and then he saw all that white pap in there, and then he lifted it to his nose, and as soon as he smelled it said:

'By the life of my lady Dulcinea del Toboso, these are curds you've put in here, you treacherous villainous, ill-mannered squire!'

To which Sancho replied with imperturbable duplicity:

'if it's curds, let's have them and I'll eat them. But better let the devil eat them, because it must have been him that put them in there. ... I must have my enchanters, too, pursuing me because I'm your creature and your limb, and they must have put that muck in there to make you lose your temper and beat me up as you usually do... I put my trust in my master's good sense, he knows full well that I haven't got any curds or milk or anything of the sort, and if I had I'd put them in my belly  not your helmet'.

...'What you say could be true', said Don Quixote.... 'And now, come what may! Here I wait to join battle with Satan himself in person'.

As he said this the cart with the flags rolled up, accompanied only by the carter, riding one of the mules, and by another man sitting on the front seat. Don Quixote planted himself before the cart and said:

'Where are you going, my good men? What cart is this, what are you carrying on it and what flags are these?'

To which the carter replied:

'The cart is mine, on it are two fierce lions in crates, which the general in Oran is sending to court as a present for His Majesty; and the flags are the King's banners, showing that what we're carrying here belongs to him'.

END OF EXTRACT

Cervantes' comic genius lies in sketching out so vividly the fine line between madness and reason, and the way it keeps slipping away from the characters. At the point where this story picks up, Don Quixote has just managed to persuade the hidalgo in green, a fellow traveller, that he is sane. He wasn't trying to persuade him, but incidentally achieved this by giving the hidalgo good advice and entertaining him with his knowledge of poetry and the classics. However, the minute this conversation is completed Don Quixote promptly sees the cart coming along wheupon he engages in his most dangerous and pointless mad feat to date.  Not only does he do this, but there is a brilliant bit of farce with the curds. Sancho's influence is not entirely blameless either as one moment he is egging his master on, and confirming his belief that he is subject to evil enchanters to further his own ends, and the next moment tries to reason with him as if he were a normal person.  The prologue's characterisation of the pair as a sane madman and a wise fool is worked out in the finest of nuances.

Cervantes himself served as a valet to a wealthy Roman priest (later elevated to cardinal) and then enrolled in the Spanish Navy only to be captured by Algerian corsairs (there is a subplot which mythologises the great feats against the Turks of "the soldier Saavedra" (himself) in one of the subsidiary romances included in the second part of Don Quixote). Later he worked as a tax collector and ended up in jail because of discrepancies in his accounts, before becoming a successful writer once Don Quixote was published, and settling in Madrid for the rest of his life.

A CONVERSATION WITH 'AERIAL MEN': THE FASCINATING WORLD OF THE BRITISH MERCURY

EXTRACT FROM: “Occult Sciences” In: The British Mercury Or Annals of History, Politics, Manners, Literature, Arts etc. of the British Empire. Vol XI for 1789 By I. W. von Archenholtz, Hamburg, Nr 40, Oct 3, pp 1-4.

Books on the Occult Sciences, however vain and however useless, are still pleasing; and perhaps more universally so than any other species of Literature. To the superstitious, they suit with the romantick gloom of their minds, and give encouragement to their wish of knowing future events; to the philosophical they revive the soothing recollection of their childish ways, when with credulous attention they used to listen to the tales of witches and apparitions.
For this species of writing few persons have rendered themselves more distinguished than our own countryman, John Heydon; and it is somewhat peculiar that a man with a mathematical mind like him should give way to such superstitions. As a proof of this we give the following extract; and who could expect that such a rhapsody and a fiction could be made the Preface of a book? Yet such it is, and we select it for its curiosity. It may perhaps prove pleasing by its singularity; and superstitious as the author proves himself; or – as some persons may conceive – poor as appears his opinion of the understandings of his readers, no one will assert that the passage is not romantick.
The Preface in question is as follows:
“In Mr. Slade's orchard at Sidmouth in Devon, about the dawning of day-break, being tired with a tedious solitude and those pensive thoughts which attend it, after much loss and labour, I suddenly fell asleep. Here then day was no sooner born than strangled: I was reduced to a night of more deep tincture than that which I had formerly spent. My fancy placed me in a region of inexpressible obscurity, and as I thought more than natural, but without any terrors; I was in a firm even temper, and though without encouragements, not only resolute but well pleased; I moved every way for discoveries, but was still entertained with darkness an silence; and I thought myself translated to the Land of Desolation. ...
[After] we had done our holy things at the twentieth hour of the tenth day of June 1648, there appeared to us, after their usual manner, Seven men, clothed in silk garments, with cloaks after the English mode, with purple stockings and crimson velvet coats, red and shining on their breasts: nor were they all thus clad, but only two of them, who were the chief: on the ruddier and taller of these two, other two waited, but the less and paler had three attendants: So that they made up seven in all; they were about forty years of age, but looked as if they had not reached thirty; when they were asked who they were? They answered, that they were Homines Aerii, Aerial men, who are born and die as we; but that their life is much longer than ours, as reaching to three hundred years, and they raise each other from death to live. Being asked concerning the immortality of Daemons? They answered ... that they were of a nearer affinity with the Divi than we, but yet infinitely different from them; and that their happiness or misery as much transcended ours as ours does [that] of beasts; that they knew all things, past, present, or to come, and what is hid, whether money or books; and that the lowest sort of them were the Genii of the best and noblest men amongst the Rosie Crucians, as the best men are the trainers up for the best sort of dogs; that the tennuity of their bodies was such that they can neither do us good nor hurt...
We asked what religion was best amongst us? They answered the Protestant; and Episcopacy was the best form of Church Government, and that they were both public Professors in an Academy and that he of the lesser stature had three hundred disciples, the other twenty. We asked further why they would not reveal such treasures as they knew onto me? They answered that there was a special law against it, upon a very grievous penalty.
These Aerial inhabitants stayed at least ten hours disputing and arguing of sundry things, amongst which was the Original of the World: the taller denying that God made the World, ab aeterno; The lesser affirmed that he so created it every moment, that if he should desist but one moment it would perish, whereupon the other cited something out of the disputations … in the Rosie Crucian Axiomata, the second book: which books, if this be acceptable, I shall shortly publish....

Since I am away from home at the moment, I shall publish some extracts from various e-books I have discovered, and few are more entertaining than this 1789 collection (just one of many volumes) which brings together a quite indiscriminate and bewildering variety of everyday newspaper accounts of 18th century life, thought and endeavour - extremely fascinating reading!
In this particular volume (available on google books), there is a vivid account of the immolation of widows in India's Maharastra state, news accounts of Parliamentary proceedings and goings on at the House of Lords, followed by and an account of the general meeting of Publicans, Coffee House and Tavern Keepers to discuss licensing legislation, as well as the extract above, on occultism – a snapshot of random events and pursuits joined together by their contemporaneity.
The extract above is from the preface of a book by the English occultist John Heydon who, judging by the various symbols to which he alludes, seems to have dabbled in alchemy, witchcraft as well as the odd “experiments in medicines, admirable glorious tinctures... and the secrets of nature”. His Aerial men would of course find themselves perfectly at home at Hogwarts.
Heydon (1629-67) was an English attorney who took a keen interest in Rosicrucianism, Neoplatonism and astrology. As a young man he had served in the royalist army during the English Civil War, and later travelled as far as Egypt and Persia. After training in law upon his return, he opened a practice offering, symultaneously, assistance with legal and astrological concerns. On account of his occult interests he was imprisoned by Cromwell during the final years of the Commonwealth era, but the Restoration brought his release. Later, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for plotting against the Duke of Buckingham, but was eventually released when the powers that be decided this colourful, entertaining maverick was just a harmless mystic and a bit of a crank.

RIOTOUS ELECTIONEERING IN 1820s 'EATANSWILL' (POSSIBLY BURY ST EDMUNDS): DICKENS' PICKWICK PAPERS

EXTRACT FROM: Charles Dickens The Pickwick Papers. London: Penguin Books, pp 167-9, 173, 176-7).

It appears that the Eatanswill people, like the people of many other small towns, considered themselves of the utmost and most mighty importance, and that every man in Eatanswill, conscious of the weight that attached to his example, felt himself bound to unite, heart and soul, with one of the two great parties that divided the town - the Blues and the Buffs.

...It was late in the evening, when Mr Pickwick [founder of the Pickwick society] and his companions, assisted by Sam, dismounted from the Eatanswill coach. Large blue silk flags were flying from the windows of the Town Arms Inn, and bills were posted in every sash, intimating, in gigantic letters, that the honourable Samuel Slumkey's committee sat there daily. A crowd of idlers were assembled in the road, looking at a hoarse man in the balcony, who was apparently talking himself very red in the face in Mr. Slumkey's behalf; but the force and point of whose arguments were somewhat impaired by the perpetual beating of four large drums which Mr Fizkin's [his opponent] committee had stationed at the street corner. There was a busy little man beside him, though, who took off his hat at intervals and motioned to the people to cheer, which they regularly did, most enthusiastically...

The Pickwickians had no sooner dismounted [at Eatanswill's inn] than they were surrounded by a branch mob of the honest and independent, who forthwith set up three deafening cheers, which being responded to by the main body of the honest and independent... swelled into a tremendous roar of triumph, which stopped even the red-faced man in the balcony.

Hurrah! shouted the mob in conclusion. ... Slumkey forever!

'Slumkey for ever!' echoed Mr Pickwick, taking off his hat.

'No Fitzkin!', roared the crowd. 'Certainly not', shouted Mr Pickwick.

'Who is Slumkey?' whispered Mr Tupman.

'I don't know' replied Mr Pickwick in the same tone.

'Hush. Don't ask any questions. It's always best on these occasions to do what the mob do'.

'But suppose there are two mobs?' suggested Mr Snodgrass.

'Shout with the largest' replied Mr Pickwick. ... 'Can we have beds here?' inquired Mr Pickwick, summoning the waiter.

'Don't know, Sir', replied the man; 'afraid we're full, Sir - I'll inquire, sir'. Away he went for that purpose and presently returned, to ask whether the gentlemen were 'Blue'. As neither Mr Pickwick nor his companions took any vital interest in the cause of either candidate, the question was rather a difficult one to answer. ...

'Do you know a gentleman of the name of Perker?' inquired Mr Pickwick.

'Certainly Sir; honourable Mr. Samuel Slumkey's agent'.

'He is Blue, I think?'. 'Oh yes, Sir.'

'Then we are Blue' said Mr Pickwick...

...'Spirited contest, my dear Sir' said [Mr Perker].

'I am delighted to hear it', said Mr Pickwick, rubbing his hands.

'I like to see sturdy patriotism, on whatever side it is called forth; - and so it's a spirited contest?'

'Oh yes', said the little man, 'very much so indeed. We have opened all the public houses in the place, and left our adversary nothing but the beer-shops - masterly stroke of policy that, my dear Sir, eh?' - and the little man smiled complacently and took a large pinch of snuff.

'And what are the probabilities as to the result of the contest?' inquired Mr Pickwick.

'Why doubtful, my dear Sir, rather doubtful as yet' replied the little man.

'Fitzkin's people have got three-and-thirty voters in the lock-up coach-house at the White Hart'.

'In the coach-house!' said Mr Pickwick, considerably astonished by this second stroke of policy.

'They keep 'em locked up there till they want 'em', resumed the little man. 'The effect of that is, you see, to prevent our getting at them; and even if we could, it would be of no use, for they keep them very drunk on purpose. Smart fellow Fitzkin's agent - very smart fellow indeed.' Mr Pickwick stared, but said nothing.

'We are pretty confident though', said Mr Perker, sinking his voice almost to a whisper. We had a little tea-party here, last night - five and forty women, my dear Sir - and gave every one of 'em a green parasol when she went away'.

'A parasol!' said Mr Pickwick.

'Fact, my dear Sir, fact. Five and forty green parasols, at seven and six pence a piece. All women like finery - extraordinary the effect of those parasols. Secured all their husbands, and half their brothers - beats stockings and flannel, and all that sort of thing hollow. My idea, my dear Sir, entirely. Hail, rain or sunshine you can't walk half a dozen yards up the street without encountering half a dozen green parasols'.

[Pickwick meets some more locals and spends the night at the house of one of the notables. On the morning of the election...] The noise and bustle which ushered in the morning ... the beating of drums, blowing of horns and trumpets, the shouting of men, and tramping of horses, echoed and re-echoed through the streets from the earliest dawn of day; and an occasional fight between the light skirmishers of either party, at once enlivened the preparations, and agreeably diversified their character.

'Well Sam', said Mr Pickwick [to his valet] ... all alive today I suppose?

'Reg'lar game, Sir' replied Mr Weller; 'our people's a collecting down at the Town Arms and they're hollering themselves hoarse already'.

...'Fine, fresh, hearty fellows they seem' said Mr Pickwick, glancing from the window.

'Verry fresh', replied Sam; 'me and the two waiters at the Peacock has been a-pumpin' over the independent voters as supped there last night'.

'Pumping over the independent voters!' exclaimed Mr Pickwick.

'Yes', said his attendant, 'every man slept where he fell down; we dragged 'em out, one by one, this mornin' and put 'em under the pump, and they're in reg'lar fine order now. Shillin' a head the committee paid for that 'ere job'.

'Can such things be!' exclaimed the astonished Mr Pickwick.

... [the honourable Slumkey is met by voters as he leaves Slumkey Hall]

'Is everything ready?' said the honourable Samuel Slumkey to Mr Perker. ...'Nothing has been omitted, I hope?'

'Nothing has been left undone, my dear Sir - nothing whatever. There are twenty washed men at the street door for you to shake hands with; and six children in arms that you're to pat on the head, and inquire the age of; be particular about the children my dear Sir, it has always a great effect, that sort of thing... And perhaps, my dear Sir' said the cautious little man, 'perhaps if you could manage to kiss one of 'em - I don't say it's indispensable - but if you could manage it would produce a very great impression on the crowd.'

'Wouldn't it have as good an effect if the proposer or seconder did that?' said the hon. Samuel Slumkey.

'Why I'm afraid it wouldn't', replied the agent; 'if it were done by yourself, my dear Sir, I think it would make you very popular'.

'Very well,' said the hon Samuel Slumkey with a resigned air, 'then it must be done. That's all'.

... Suddenly the crowd set up a great cheering.

'He has come out', said little Mr Perker, greatly excited... Another cheer, much louder.

'He has shaken hands with the men', cried the little agent. Another cheer, far more vehement.

'He has patted the babes on the head', said Mr Perker, trembling with anxiety. A roar of applause rent the air.

'He has kissed one of 'em!' exclaimed the delighted little man. A second roar.

'He has kissed another', gasped the excited manager. A third roar.

'He's kissing 'em all!' screamed the enthusiastic little gentleman. And hailed by deafening shouts of the multitude, the procession moved on. 

END OF EXTRACT

The year is somewhere in the late 1820s, the town may possibly be Bury St Edmunds, and the Pickwick society founded 'to the advancement of knowledge and the diffusion of learning' is one of an efflorescence of early 19th century amateur societies established by wealthy dilettantes who fancied themselves scientists or antiquarians. Pickwick, the founder, is incessantly complimented on his gifts as a natural scientist and antiquarian by his three incompetent sidekicks Winkle (the sportsman), Snodgrass (the poet) and Tupman (the lover) all of whom get into extremely sticky situations when expected to perform within their chosen fields. It is often left to the sharp-witted Sam Weller, Pickwick's valet (a cockney Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote) to get the Pickwickians out of their various scrapes. If you wish to find out who won the election read Chapter 13 in all its anarchic glory. Dickens was a journalist and many of these scenes bear the unmistakeable imprint of very fine journalistic notes. His eye for the grotesque and pompous is unparalelled but he manages to make the electioneers appear very sympathetic. Apparently at the time, in the UK they often had to stagger the polling around the country, rather like in modern day India, because they didn't have the necessary police resources to maintain order across the country. If elections were even half as interesting as that at Eatanswill one can really see why.