第17章 THE COUNTESS AND THE COZENER(3)

It is a curious phenomenon, and one that constantly recurs in the history of cozenage, how people who live by spoof fall victims so readily to spoofery.Anne Turner had brains.There is no doubt of it.Apart from that genuine and honest talent in costume-design which made her work acceptable to such an outstanding genius as Inigo Jones, she lived by guile.But I have now to invite you to see her at the feet of one of the silliest charlatans who ever lived.There is, of course, the possibility that Anne sat at the feet of this silly charlatan for what she might learn for the extension of her own technique.Or, again, it may have been that the wizard of Lambeth, whom she consulted in the Lady Essex affair, could provide a more impressive setting for spoof than she had handy, or that they were simply rogues together.My trouble is to understand why, by the time that the Lady Essex came to her with her problem, Anne had not exhausted all the gambits in flummery that were at the command of the preposterous Dr Forman.

The connexion with Dr Forman was part of the legacy left Anne by Dr Turner.Her husband had been the friend and patron of Forman, so that by the time Anne had taken Mainwaring for her lover, and had borne him three children, she must have had ample opportunity for seeing through the old charlatan.

Antony Weldon, the contemporary writer already quoted, is something too scurrilous and too apparently biased to be altogether a trustworthy authority.He seems to have been the type of gossip (still to be met in London clubs) who can always tell with circumstance how the duchess came to have a black baby, and the exact composition of the party at which Midas played at `strip poker.' But he was, like many of his kind, an amusing enough companion for the idle moment, and his description of Dr Forman is probably fairly close to the truth.

This Forman,'' he says,

was a silly fellow who dwelt in Lambeth, a very silly fellow, yet had wit enough to cheat the ladies and other women, by pretending skill intelling their fortunes, as whether they should bury their husbands, and what second husbands they should have, and whether they should enjoy their loves, or whether maids should get husbands, or enjoy their servants to themselves without corrivals: but before he would tell them anything they must write their names in his alphabetical book with their own handwriting.By this trick he kept them in awe, if they should complain of his abusing them, as in truth he did nothing else.Besides, it was believed, some meetings were at his house, wherein the art of the bawd was more beneficial to him than that of a conjurer, and that he was a better artist in the one than in the other: and that you may know his skill, he was himself a cuckold, having a very pretty wench to his wife, which would say, she did it to try his skill, but it fared with him as with astrologers that cannot foresee their own destiny.

And here comes an addendum, the point of which finds confirmation elsewhere.It has reference to the trial of Anne Turner, to which we shall come later.

I well remember there was much mirth made in the Court upon the showing of the book, for, it was reported, the first leaf my lord Cook lighted on he found his own wife's name.''

Whatever Anne's reason for doing so, it was to this scortatory old scab that she turned for help in cozening the fair young Countess.The devil knows to what obscene ritual the girl was introduced.There is evidence that the thaumaturgy practised by Forman did not want for lewdness--as magic of the sort does not to this day--and in this regard Master Weldon cannot be far astray when he makes our pretty Anne out to be the veriest baggage.

Magic or no magic, philtre or no philtre, it was not long before Lady Essex had her wish.The Viscount Rochester fell as desperately in love with her as she was with him.

There was, you may be sure, no small amount of scandalous chatter in the Court over the quickly obvious attachment the one to the other of this handsome couple.So much of this scandalous chatter has found record by the pens of contemporary and later gossip-writers that it is hard indeed to extract the truth.It is certain, however, that had the love betweenRobert Carr and Frances Howard been as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, jealousy would still have done its worst in besmirching.It was not, if the Rabelaisian trend in so much of Jacobean writing be any indication, a particularly moral age.Few ages in history are.It was not, with a reputed pervert as the fount of honour, a particularly moral Court.Since the emergence of the lovely young Countess from tutelage at Audley End there had been no lack of suitors for her favour.And when Frances so openly exhibited her preference for the King's minion there would be some among those disappointed suitors who would whisper, greenly, that Rochester had been granted that prisage which was the right of the absent Essex, a right which they themselves had been quite ready to usurp.It is hardly likely that there would be complete abnegation of salty gossip among the ladies of the Court, their Apollo being snatched by a mere chit of a girl.

What relative happiness there may have been for the pair in their loving--it could not, in the hindrance there was to their free mating, have been an absolute happiness --was shattered after some time by the return to England of the young husband.The Earl of Essex, now almost come to man's estate, arrived to take up the position which his rank entitled him to expect in the Court, and to assume the responsibilities and rights which, he fancied, belonged to him as a married man.In respect of the latter part of his intention he immediately found himself balked.His wife, perhaps all the deeper in love with Rochester for this threat to their happiness, declared that she had no mind to be held by the marriage forced on her in infancy, and begged her husband to agree to its annulment.