John Aubrey: My Own Life (57 page)

My friend William Holder
⁵⁹
has suggested a cure for the trouble in my eye. He recommends medicine sold by the apothecary who lives at the Pestle & Mortar in St Martin’s Lane.

. . .

I cannot now read
⁶⁰
because of a mist that has come over my eyes ever since I left Oxford. I had to cut my visit short owing to business in London. I think my visit to the barber’s on the Saturday morning before I left caused the mist. I was hot and sweaty so I went to the barber’s to have my head shaved. He had no hot water, so since I was in a hurry, I let him do it in cold water. On the following Monday I was in the coach by five o’clock in the morning and it was very cold. My fellow passengers were women and out of respect for them I sat on the coldest side of the coach. I was vexed at being torn away from Oxford on business and ever since then there has been this mist in my eyes.

I can hardly read
⁶¹
a letter and write by guess. Lady Russell’s French doctor believes the mist will wear off, but meanwhile I am advised to drink only Stretham waters. I will go to Oxford again on my way to Wales with Sir John Aubrey, but God knows when I will get back to my beloved city after that.

. . .

August

I write now by guess and cannot properly see the page. My eyes are not mending. Dr Goodall is hoping Mr Wood will undertake to write the Antiquities of Cambridge University. About half the Heads of Houses have expressed an interest in this.

. . .

I am in London
⁶²
, but my mind wanders in Bagley Wood, which is so lovely and pleasant in the summertime. It is a most romantic place, with such a great variety of plants: no garden is more delightful. I think there should be a fair there every summer, for finery, etc. It would draw together all the young people of both sexes for twenty miles around.

. . .

Mr Wood has written
⁶³
to me with advice on how to cure my eyes. I can hardly read his letter. He suggests I make an incision in one of my shoulders, or between my shoulder and neck-bone on the left side, through which the issue in my head will drain in three months; or else take pills; or lay plasters of mastic to my temples and leave off sleeping on a bed after dinner. He tells me too that the chalybeate spring I found earlier this year in Bagley Wood on my way to Oxford has been dismissed because it is not running water.

Mr Wood asks me
⁶⁴
to bring Norden’s
Surveyors’ Dialogues
to Oxford with me when I go. He desires to see Dr Holder’s collection of old musical printed books, as he intends to publish the lives of English musicians and writers on musical theory and practice, just as there are accounts of English dramatic poets.

. . .

I have sent by Mr Rush, the bargeman, two trunks, one of sealskin and the other black leather, and two great boxes addressed to Mr Lhwyd at the Ashmolean Museum. I will go to Oxford myself in a week or so to divide the contents between the museum and the library of Gloucester Hall, then send the boxes on to Borstall, where I will be staying with my relative Sir John Aubrey.

My eyes are mending
⁶⁵
very slowly. My candle burns low. My dear friend Mr Edmund Wylde grows very weak and I fear cannot long continue.

. . .

September

My eyes mend
⁶⁶
but slowly. I will go to Llantrithyd with my cousin Sir John Aubrey on Monday. If I live long enough, I hope I will be able to go to Oxford to see Mr Wood again.

. . .

October, Llantrithyd

My cousin spoils me
⁶⁷
with all the varieties of sustenance that the sea and land afford. But, oh! How much I would rather eat a simple commons in a college with good ingenious company. I should love to converse with my friend Mr Llwyd, for example. My cousin and I pass the tankard and bottle between us all afternoon and drink his good health.

. . .

November

I have written
⁶⁸
to Mr Hooke to thank him for all his favours and kindnesses to me. How much I miss him and our Wednesday meetings at Gresham College!

My eyes are failing, but I am still working on my collection of Hermetick Philosophy, which I hope to see in print before I die.

I have given
⁶⁹
the Royal Society three more books:
Chronicon Saxonicum
(by my friend Edmund Gibson);
Margarita Philosophica
; and
Wardi Astronomica Geometrica
. The books will be delivered to the Society’s library keeper accordingly.

. . .

December

I shall never see
⁷⁰
my old friend, correspondent, collaborator and fellow antiquary Mr Wood again. He died on 28 November. I am extremely sorrowful. Even though his spleen used to cause him to chagrin and chide me, we could not be asunder. He would always come to see me at my lodgings with his dark lantern, which should now be a relic. Mr Tanner has his papers and will be faithful to him and finish what he left undone. Mr Wood has bequeathed his papers to the University to be placed next to Mr Dugdale’s.

. . .

It is so cold
⁷¹
! I do not think it has been this cold since the Great Freeze of 1684!

. . .

My dear friend Mr Wylde has died. When I was most in need, he took me in his arms and it was with him that I most commonly took my diet and sweet otiums. Nor was I, by any means, the only friend in need whom he helped. He will be laid to rest in Glazeley church.

. . .

Anno 1696

January

I will stay
⁷²
with Lady Long in Wiltshire for a month. I wish to know if Mr White Kennett proposes to do anything with my Remaines of Gentilisme, and if not I hope Mr Lhwyd will get it out of his hands. I have also told him to get Mr Rowland to give back my Idea of Education so it can be placed in the museum again.

. . .

February, Llantrithyd

When Mr Lhwyd comes to visit me here at my cousin’s house in Wales, I hope he will bring with him a small piece of the alum stone he found in Whitby, for comparison with some local stone here.

I am told another
⁷³
chalybeate spring has been discovered near Oxford. Quaere: if it is at Wytham? I found one there but Lord Norris would not let me publicise it, as he thought it would bring him too many visitors.

. . .

At long last
⁷⁴
a book of mine has been published. Today I have held a printed copy of my
Miscellanies
in my hand. The publisher is Edward Castle, in Whitehall next to Scotland Yard Gate. I have dedicated my book to the Earl of Abingdon, in whose gardens at Lavington last summer I found time to review some of my papers and put them in order to make this book. I had hoped to dedicate my Description of Wiltshire to his lordship, but it is still only half finished and I am too far spent in age for that undertaking now. Instead I make my honoured friend, who has taken me into his favour and protection for many years, this smaller offering of my
Miscellanies
.

The matter of this book of mine is beyond human reach, we being miserably in the dark as to the workings of the invisible world, which knows what we do, or incline to do, and works upon our passions. I have collected some remarks of visions and prophecies, etc. within my own remembrance or that of persons worthy of belief in the age before me.

My book begins with a copy of Mr John Gibbon’s
Day Fatality
, which was printed on two sheets in folio in 1678. But I have omitted Mr Gibbon’s concluding remarks on the 14 October, the birthday of King James II, who was Duke of York when
Day Fatality
first appeared. Mr Gibbon offered eulogies to James that should not be reprinted now he is disgraced. In this way I hope that what is useful in Mr Gibbon’s book for the advancement of Hermetick Philosophy can be separated from the politics of the time at which he wrote it. There have been such changes in politics and power in my lifetime.

After Mr Gibbon’s remarks, I present my own on fatalities of families and place, portents, omens, dreams, apparitions, voices, impulses, knockings, blows invisible, prophecies, marvels, magic, etc. There are twenty-one short chapters in my book, the last dedicated to second-sighted persons.

In my chapter on magic
⁷⁵
I have included some spells:

To Cure the Thrush

There is a certain piece in the beef, called the mouse-piece, which given to the child or party so affected to eat does certainly cure the thrush. An experienced midwife told me this.

Another to Cure Thrush

Take a living frog and hold it in a cloth, so it does not go down the child’s mouth. Put the head of the frog into the child’s mouth until it is dead, then take another frog and do the same.

To Cure the Tooth-ache

Take a new nail and make the gum bleed with it, then drive it into an oak. This cured William Neal, Sir William Neal’s son, a very stout gentleman, when he was almost mad with pain and minded to pistol himself.

To Cure the Tooth-ache

(Out of Mr Ashmole’s manuscript, written in his own hand)

Mars, hur, abursa, aburse.

Jesu Christ for Mary’s sake

Take away this Tooth-ach.

Write the words three times; and as you say the words, let the afflicted party burn one paper, then another, and then the last. Mr Ashmole told me he saw this experimented with and the party was cured.

For the Jaundice

The jaundice is cured by putting the urine after the first sleep to the ashes of the ash tree, bark of barberries.

. . .

I am at Llantrithyd
⁷⁶
. I hoped that Mr Lhwyd would be able to visit me here, but he cannot at the present time. I hope I will see him here in the autumn. In the meantime, I have sent him the dividing compasses invented and made by Mr Potter for the museum.

When I next go
⁷⁷
to Oxford I will take one of Sir John Aubrey’s guineas for Mr Thomas Tanner as a small token of the great respect I bear him.

. . .

13 July

Tonight I sail from Cardiff, on my way to Borstall, from whence Sir John and I will take the coach to London.

I am hoping
⁷⁸
that when I get to London, via Rycot, I will be able to borrow the original of Van Dyck’s painting of the Earl of Danby in St George’s robes, which is in possession of Lady Derham, of Derham Abbey, Norfolk. To do this, I will need assistance from my well-connected kinsman John, and help from the Earl of Abingdon.

I hope to be at Oxford or Borstall by the end of August at the latest and to meet my brother then. I feel surprised by age.

. . .

November

The printer
⁷⁹
and Mr Churchill are shamefully long in producing my Monumenta Britannica. I fear I will never see it in print.

. . .

December

In the country recently, I found my old copy of Mr Christopher Love’s unlicensed pamphlet,
Scripture Rules
, from 1647 – the other copies were burnt in the Great Conflagration – and I have had it reprinted. I am sending some of the reprints to Mr Lhwyd to distribute among his friends.

How clearly
⁸⁰
I still remember the summer day in 1651 on which I saw Christopher Love beheaded on Tower Hill for plotting against the Commonwealth. The sky went black.

. . .

Anno 1697

January

I have presented
⁸¹
the Royal Society with a copy of my
Miscellanies
: the only book of mine that has been printed so far. I have made corrections and additions throughout by hand. There are many things I would like to have included that are not in the printed text.

. . .

I have written to ask Mr Lhwyd to give my Remaines of Gentilisme to Dr Charleton to revise. And I have asked him to have my manuscript on the Idea of Education ready for transcription when I visit Oxford.

. . .

June

I will visit Oxford on my way to visit my long-honoured friend Lady Long.

Men think that because everybody remembers a memorable event soon after it is done, it will never be forgotten; and so it ends up not being registered and cast into oblivion.

I have always done my best
⁸²
to rescue and preserve antiquities, which would otherwise have been utterly lost and forgotten, even though it has been my strange fate never to enjoy one entire month, or six weeks, of leisure for contemplation.

I have rescued what I could of the past from the teeth of time.

Matters of antiquity
⁸³
are like the light after sunset – clear at first – but by and by
crepusculum
– the twilight – comes – then total darkness.