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I had looked down that coombe as we drove by; and catching sight of these chimneys felt something like reassurance, as if I had been counting, all the way, to find them there. But here let me explain who I am and what brought me to these parts. My name is Samuel Wraxall the Reverend Samuel Wraxall, to be precise: I was born a Cockney and educated at Rugby and Oxford.
The impartial old Wraxall, the memorialist of the times of George III, having described a noble as a gambler, a drunkard, a smuggler, an appropriator of public money, who always cheated his tradesmen, who was one and sometimes all of them together, and a profligate generally, commonly adds, "But he was a perfect gentleman."
I find that early on the following day Mr Wraxall had some conversation with his landlord.
Wraxall, and the sic volo sic jubeo of Lieutenant-Governor Delancey, is to be ascribed that mighty renown which echoed through the colonies, reverberated to Europe, and elevated a raw, inexperienced youth into a kind of second Marlborough. Parliament gave him five thousand pounds, and the King made him a baronet." On the Battle of Lake George a mass of papers will be found in the N.Y. Col.
Lascelles Wraxall, again, in Remarkable Adventures , says: "Whatever truth there may be in Saint-Germain's travels in England and the East Indies, it is undubitable that, for from 1745 to 1755, he was a man of high position in Vienna," while in Paris he does not appear, according to Wraxall, till 1757, having been brought from Germany by the Marechal de Belle-Isle, whose "old boots," says Macallester the spy, Prince Charles freely damned, "because they were always stuffed with projects."
"Returning," says Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, a poor authority, but piquant gossip-monger, "by way of frolic, very late at night, on horseback, to Wimbledon, from Addiscombe, the seat of Mr. Jenkinson, near Croydon, where the party had dined, Lord Thurlow, the Chancellor, Pitt, and Dundas, found the turnpike gate, situate between Tooting and Streatham, thrown open.
Not being very familiar with alchemical literature, Mr Wraxall spends much space which he might have spared in setting out the names and beginnings of the various treatises: The book of the Phoenix, book of the Thirty Words, book of the Toad, book of Miriam, Turba philosophorum, and so forth; and then he announces with a good deal of circumstance his delight at finding, on a leaf originally left blank near the middle of the book, some writing of Count Magnus himself headed 'Liber nigrae peregrinationis'. It is true that only a few lines were written, but there was quite enough to show that the landlord had that morning been referring to a belief at least as old as the time of Count Magnus, and probably shared by him.
Mr Wraxall compares it to the tentacle of a devil-fish, and continues: 'On seeing this, I said to myself, "This, then, which is evidently an allegorical representation of some kind a fiend pursuing a hunted soul may be the origin of the story of Count Magnus and his mysterious companion.
Wraxall says that he had seen the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, "then in the first bloom of youth, hanging on the sentences that fell from Johnson's lips, and contending for the nearest place to his chair"; and it is recorded of Kitty Clive the actress, whom he used to go and see in the green-room, that she said of him, "I love to sit by Dr. Johnson: he always entertains me."
The landlord was evidently unwilling to give a full answer, or indeed any answer, on the point, and, being called out for a moment, trotted out with obvious alacrity, only putting his head in at the door a few minutes afterwards to say that he was called away to Skara, and should not be back till evening. So Mr Wraxall had to go unsatisfied to his day's work at the manor-house.
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