Trails of unusually thick smoke were often to be seen rising from the chimneys of Třeboň Castle. Lying amid the fishponds and meadowlands of southern Bohemia, almost equidistant between Prague and Vienna, the quiet town of Třeboň was an ideal location for the undisturbed practice of alchemy. And on 14 September 1586, it became Dee’s new home.
The previous four months had been difficult for Dee and his family. He, Kelley, Kelley’s wife Joanna, Jane and Dee’s four children, including the infant Michael, had been packed into two coaches, together with all their possessions, and forced to leave Bohemia without anywhere to go. They had endured accommodation that was ‘sordid and cramped’, as well as dangerous.1 They had to cover hundreds of miles in search of a new home. And they had been pestered by Pucci, who had followed them as far as Erfurt in Germany, where he had tried to persuade them to return to Prague. He claimed that it was the Emperor, rather than the nuncio, who was responsible for their banishment – an assertion Dee knew to be contradicted by other sources. Pucci even suggested that they should all go to Rome to present their case, claiming that they were sure of a sympathetic hearing.
Dee was having none of it. He had developed an uncharacteristically intense personal dislike for Pucci, not just for ‘his blabbing of our secrets’, but because of ‘household behaviour, not acceptable to our wives and family’.2 He did not specify what this behaviour was, but it was the reason the Italian would be later branded a ‘pervert’. Dee refused to have anything to do with Pucci, and sent him back to Prague empty handed.
The exiles finally found a convivial temporary home in Hesse-Kassel, a German principality run by the eccentric Calvinist Count Moritz. Moritz was passionately interested in astrology and alchemy.3 Kassel, the capital of the province, had become an intellectual centre rivalling Rudolf’s Prague, and Dee was welcomed there, almost as a trophy to add to Moritz’s impressive collection of philosophical friends.
However, Dee was determined to go back to Bohemia, and in August received news that the Emperor had given permission for their return. This had been secured by the fabulously wealthy Vilem Rozmberk, ruler of the lands surrounding Třeboň. Rozmberk was Bohemia’s most powerful noble.4 He had held the crown at Rudolf’s coronation in 1575, and received the Order of the Golden Fleece, the Hapsburgs’ highest honour for chivalry. He was a Catholic, but like so many in Bohemia, relaxed in his views: his motto was ‘Festina Lente’ (make haste slowly).5
Dee’s first recorded meeting with Rozmberk had taken place in Prague just days after the nuncio petitioned the Emperor for the philosopher’s banishment. It was May Day, and a carriage drove Dee to the beautiful terraced gardens Vilem had recently completed along the slopes beneath the imperial palace.
Among the spring blooms and budding saplings, they sowed ‘good seeds for the service of God’, discussing Vilem’s past and future, his ‘loose life’ and his marriage prospects. The Rozmberk line was faced with extinction. Vilem had married three times, but failed to produce an heir. He now had an eye on Polyxena, daughter of the Bohemian Chancellor, Vratislav von Pernstein, and was wondering whether he would have any more success with her. The failure of Europe’s princes to produce heirs was a continuing source of anxiety: it was taken as a further sign of the great cosmic disturbance signalled by the Nova of 1572. Elizabeth remained unmarried, as did Rudolf, though the latter had fathered several illegitimate children. Even Philip II, who had passed through four marriages and had produced two heirs, had been found wanting: his first son, Don Carlos, had turned mad and against his father; the second, Philip, had rejected his royal obligations. It seemed as if the divine right was being withdrawn. Rozmberk wanted to see if Dee could somehow summon spiritual intervention to halt this relentless dynastic entropy.
It was Rozmberk’s yearning to reproduce, as much as the promise of unlimited wealth, that drew him to becoming one of Bohemia’s most generous alchemical patrons, rivalling even the emperor Rudolf. Murals on the walls of his sumptuous castle at Český Krumlov explored the theme of fertility using alchemical as well as astrological and biblical symbolism. Indeed, the entire city became a shrine to the art of transmutation. Its houses were covered with occult symbols, and the magnificent round tower overlooking the city was painted in vivid colours thought to have alchemical significance.6
To pursue his interests, Vilem financed no fewer than six laboratories which were scattered around his domains. The one at Trebon, about twenty-five miles north-east of Český Krumlov, was now to be made available to Dee and Kelley.
According to legend, the German philosopher Cornelius Agrippa, author of De Occulta Philosophia, would pay merchants with gold coins, which invariably turned into slate or stone within twenty-four hours. Similar stories are linked with many Renaissance philosophers: Ramon Lull, Trithemius, Paracelsus, and Dee himself. 7 Alchemy was a preoccupation peculiar to sixteenth-century Europe. Most monarchs and many nobles financed alchemical experiments. The puzzling feature of this trend was that it continued even though such experiments invariably failed or were revealed as fraudulent. Renaissance metallurgists had reliable methods for testing or ‘assaying’ for gold with ‘cupellation’, which involved melting the sample in a ‘cupel’ or dish, then blasting it with hot air, which oxidised impurities, including other metals such as lead, copper or tin.8
One possible reason for alchemy’s popularity was that it tapped into a ‘silver rush’ that had been released by the discovery of a number of silver mines in Bohemia and Poland, several of which were to be found on the extensive Rozmberk estates. Metallurgy, which had proved very effective at extracting precious metals from the dark ores being lifted from the earth, was regarded as a form of alchemy, and the yields of the one seemed to confirm the fundamental soundness of the other.
Another reason for irrepressible alchemical optimism was that success depended on the right spiritual as well as chemical conditions. Laboratories were often positioned next to chapels or ‘oratories’, one to prepare the chemicals to be experimented upon, the other to prepare the experimenter himself. If the experiment failed, then it was easy to claim that it was the alchemist, rather than alchemical principles, that were at fault. Hope sprang eternal that just as soon as practitioners became pure, then lead would be transformed into gold, dead matter into living and – this being the focus of Rozmberk’s interest – sterility into fertility.
Kelley’s interest in alchemy seemed at first more pecuniary than procreative. But he may well also have been drawn by the art’s ‘vitalistic’, often sexual imagery: the depiction of alchemical processes as the union of feminine and masculine principles for the production of a ‘child’. Dee himself used the symbolism of the fertilised egg in his alchemical allusions in the Monas.9 Kelley believed his marriage to Joanna was cursed and therefore would never produce offspring, and this became a growing preoccupation during his time at Třeboň. Perhaps it was the prospect of children as well as riches that encouraged him to join the pursuit of the Philosopher’s Stone.
The experiments began soon after their arrival at Rozmberk’s castle, using the mysterious red ‘powder’ Kelley had found buried at Northwick Hill. These were not the first such experiments that Dee had undertaken. There are several earlier references to alchemical secrets and activities in his diaries, and the Monas suggests that his interest in the subject was more than academic as far back as the early 1570s. However, the work he undertook at Třeboň marks the beginning of Dee’s systematic attempt to explore alchemy under spiritual guidance.
The actions had for some time touched on alchemical themes, particularly in Prague, where Kelley described furnaces with doors made of crystal, rivers of quicksilver, streams of coloured water, giants with legs made of gold and lead, and miners digging up lodestones and alabaster.10 The spirits had also commanded Dee to tell both Rudolf and Stephen Báthory that he had discovered the Philosopher’s Stone, promising him that he would soon do so.
In Třeboň, they now had the time and resources to start work on fulfilling the spirits’ promise. Over the next two years, Dee filled his diaries with innumerable coded jottings about his experiments: using combinations of salts and rare earths suspended in water, horse manure and menstrual blood.11 Rozmberk ordered his engineers to construct a laboratory in one of the gatehouses of Třeboň castle specifically for Dee and Kelley. Dee also visited other Rozmberk alchemical facilities, such as the laboratory in Reichenstein, Silesia.12
On 19 December 1587, three months after their arrival at Třeboň, Kelley revealed how advanced their alchemical work had already become. Edward and Francis Garland had just arrived from England to announce that Fyodor Ivanovkh, Ivan the Terrible’s successor, was offering Dee the post of philosopher to the Muscovite court at a magnificent annual salary of £2000 which would be supplemented by a further one thousand roubles from the imperial Lord Protector. As before, Dee was not drawn by the offer.13 Besides, if it was riches he wanted, Kelley himself suddenly seemed to have even greater wealth at his disposal. For the benefit of the Garland brothers, Kelley, drawing on the same skills that made him such an effective skryer, put on the first of many demonstrations of his newly acquired alchemical powers. He produced a speck no larger than a grain of sand of the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ – presumably a sample of the red powder.14 He placed the sample into one and a quarter ounces of mercury held in a crucible. Then almost an ounce of the ‘best gold’ was produced. This was divided up between the Garlands, Dee and Kelley, and the crucible was given to Edward Garland as a souvenir.
Such impressive demonstrations inevitably set people talking. Rumours spread through Třeboň that Kelley and Dee were dealing with devils – some evidently started by jealous members of Rozmberk’s household, such as Jakub Krčín. Krčín was Rozmberk’s powerful estates manager, responsible for building farms, breweries and laboratories. During Dee and Kelley’s time in Třeboň he had built a dam one and a half miles long and over one hundred and fifty yards thick, which had created an enormous artificial lake around the south side of the town. Dee and Kelley were taken on a tour round the lake in July 1588, and when the drunken driver tried to turn round on the dam’s narrow causeway, the coach toppled and the entire party fell into the water.15 Krčín took a strong dislike to the ‘privileged scoundrels’ Dee and Kelley, refusing to attend a marriage supper at Třeboň’s town hall just because they would be there.16
News of Kelley’s powers also spread further afield, soon reaching the English court, which buzzed with reports of the miraculous transmutation of coins, pewter dishes, flagons, even bedpans, of games of quoits played with silver ingots, and of his possession of a magic powder so powerful one ounce could yield 272,330 ounces of gold.17 Such rumours produced an unexpected frisson in William Cecil, who in coming years would do everything in his power to lure Kelley back to England.
Dee featured in none of these stories – indeed, he claimed he had no more ability to transmute base metal than to summon spirits. He was now cast in the role of sorcerer’s apprentice rather than the sorcerer. At nine one February evening in 1588, Dee recorded receiving a summons from Kelley to ‘his laboratory over the gate: to see how he distilled sericon’, an order that clearly showed that by this stage the philosopher had become little more than a spectator.18
While alchemical tales worked their magic abroad, in Třeboň Kelley underwent an appropriately miraculous transformation of his finances. Within a month of Dee and Kelley’s appearance in Třeboň, Francesco Pucci had turned up. Dee and Kelley, who were now convinced he was acting as a spy, tried to buy him off. Pucci refused their offers, so Dee called upon him to come to the court house in Třeboň and publicly proclaim before witnesses, including Lord Rozmberk, that he had no claim over them. Once there, two large bags of money were placed before him, out of which eight hundred florins were counted. Pucci found the sight of such bounty irresistible, though, as he heaved the heavy bags off the counting table, he stipulated that it was ‘received in the name of God and from us as servants of God’. This was not, however, the last they were to see of Pucci.
In early 1587, Kelley made regular visits to Prague alone. On 18 January, he returned from a trip with more evidence of his newfound wealth: a fabulous gold necklace of Rozmberk’s, valued at three hundred ducats, which he presented to Dee’s wife Jane. The gallant gesture was a significant one, as it anticipated a new theme that began to insinuate itself into the continuing, but now sporadic, spiritual actions.
On 21 January, Kelley left Třeboň once again for Prague, and then Poland. While away, he wrote to Dee, closing the letter, ‘I commend me unto Mrs Dee a thousand times, and unto your little babes: wishing myself rather amongst you than elsewhere.’ Dee happened to be riding to the nearby town of Newhouse19 when the letter arrived, and Jane sent a messenger to take it to him, together with a covering note:
Sweetheart, I commend me unto you, hoping in God that you are in good health, as I and my children with all my household am here, I praise God for it. I have none other matter to write unto you, at this time.
This short, loving note is one of Jane’s very rare appearances in the pages of his spiritual actions, and the only one that hints at the feelings she had for her husband. Where she surfaces elsewhere, it is usually in connection with illness or arguments. Dee variously describes her as impatient, testy, fretting and angry. She was also a stern mother; on one occasion she boxed her daughter Katherine’s ears so violently that the girl’s nose bled profusely for over an hour.20
However, Dee was obviously devoted to and dependent upon Jane. His reports of her outbursts are those of an anxious or bewildered husband rather than a carping one. He ‘sank into low spirits’ when she was angry with him.21 He fretfully noted any sickness or worry that afflicted her.22
But the challenges of living with a spirited wife were nothing in comparison to those of living with a philosopher husband. Through the unflattering prism of Dee’s diaries and notebooks, Jane’s domestic life is portrayed as totally determined by the demands of her husband’s work. Dee’s entire spiritual enterprise, as well as his intellectual and consulting work, was conducted at whichever location he currently called home. Jane Dee had to create a hospitable setting for the reception of Dee’s angelic as well as noble visitors, a place where spirits could enjoy an atmosphere of peace and privacy while guests were entertained lavishly. But the demands upon her went further still.
Paracelsus, the alchemist and pioneering physician who strongly influenced Dee’s work, wrote: ‘In the heavens you can see man, each part for itself; for man is made of heaven. And the matter out of which man was created also shows the pattern after which he was formed.’23 And the same applied to woman – even more so. Menstruation in particular marked a close link between the female and lunar cycles. It was in this spirit that Dee kept a detailed, coded record of Jane’s periods, carefully logging in the margins of his astrological tables when they occurred. He would even observe how heavy they were, whether or not the ‘show’ was ‘small’ or ‘abundant’. He also noted when they had sex, using a symbol combining the astrological signs for Venus and Mercury, giving not just a date, but a time.24
One of the earliest references to a spiritual visitation in his diaries was a dream of Jane’s, which she told to Dee. An angel had come to her, touched her and said, ‘Mistress Dee, you are conceived of child: whose name must be Zacharias: be of good cheer, he shall do well as this doth.’25 According to the Bible, Zacharias (or Zecharia) was the husband of Elizabeth, who was barren but became pregnant with John the Baptist following a visit by the angel Gabriel.26 Dee clearly considered the dream significant, and also sensitive, as he recorded it in his diary in coded form.
Over the coming years, Jane was to make a number of appearances in the actions. On one occasion, Gabriel apparently recreated a version of her dream about Zacharias. He appeared and announced that Jane was pregnant, which indeed she was. He also explained the reasons why she was having difficulties with the pregnancy. When she had been ‘a milky substance’ in the womb, he said, her mother had contracted a disease, which meant she had developed a ‘second vessel’ or vagina ‘so thin, and tied short, that it is not able to keep in or retain the simile and quiddity of her own substantial being and seed’.27 The following year, Jane gave birth to her third child. He was named Michael in honour of the archangel. Dee would also name one of their daughters after the puckish, mischievous Madimi.
It was the angel Madimi who, within six months of Dee’s arrival in Třeboň, drew Jane into the angelic conferences in a way that even Dee had never anticipated, and in the process helped bring the entire spiritual mission to a ruinous end.