The Cabinet of Curiosities (21 page)

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Chapter Forty

To Etienne Lambert

c/o The Three Violins

Mala Strana

Prague

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21st November, 1598

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Dear Etienne,

We have now been at the hospital for three weeks. My Uncle Anselmus has been given an imposing residence overlooking the river. I continue with my medical studies and often accompany him on his rounds.

Uncle was disappointed that Otka chose to stay with her stepfather in Golden Lane. She has been greatly distressed by these recent events. But this has worked out well. Aunt Elfriede refused to come away with us, much to my great relief! Now Otka has promised to look in on her as often as she can. She also promises to visit us frequently. It is not too arduous a journey from Prague to Plzen. We are greatly in need of a housekeeper and cook, and Anselmus has written to Celestina and Perpetua in Zidice to offer them accommodation and work, should they be willing to accept it.

I miss Prague, but I feel safer here. When I went for a last look around the city before we left, I saw Hlava’s head up there on the Stone Bridge tower, next to Dorantes’s. Are they still there now? Over the last few months I often wondered if our own heads would end up there too, but we’ve been lucky so far.

When we first met you said you would help me get to Prague but I would have to do something for you in return. You never kept me to this, but I would like to do so now. The last time we spoke you said you had had enough of Prague, so perhaps you would like to make a fresh start in Plzen. There is a flourishing market here, with merchants from all over the Empire, and someone with your talent for foreign tongues will find his services in great demand.

My uncle has said you can stay with us until you are able to afford to rent somewhere. I hope you will decide to come here.

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Your friend,

Lukas

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Fact and Fiction

This book was inspired by Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s fruit and vegetable portrait of Rudolph II,
Vertumnus
– easy to find on the internet. A culture that produced something so magnificently strange and original sparked further investigation.

Prague and its Castle are well worth a visit. Woodcuts and engravings from the era show that much of the city remains from Rudolph’s time. The contents of his Cabinet of Curiosities are well documented. Many of these artefacts were scattered to the four corners of Europe when Prague fell to Swedish troops during the Thirty Years’ War. A fraction remain in Prague. The rest can be found in museums and art galleries around the world.

Rudolph was plagued throughout his life by severe depression – all the more reason to admire his open-mindedness, tolerance and passion for art and science. In a Europe haunted by the Inquisition, his Prague was an oasis of freethinking, where Catholics, Protestants and Jews lived side by side. Here, ‘natural philosophers’ could investigate and share their knowledge of the newly emerging sciences without fear of being burned at the stake as heretics. In his patronage of alchemy, and fascination with the world, Rudolph was an early champion of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century.

I have tried to portray Rudolph as I imagine he would have been, and Anselmus Declercq is very loosely based on Rudolph’s Belgian physician, and curator of his Cabinet, Anselmus de Boodt. Father Johannes Pistorius, who makes a brief appearance at the end of the story, was Rudolph’s real-life confessor. All other characters in the book are fictitious.

Although the plot by Spanish envoys to remove him is also invented, Rudolph had plenty of enemies in the Holy Roman Empire and there were many court intrigues and even assassination attempts against him.

I based Hrusosky Hlava’s alchemy confidence trick on an incident reported in Henry Carrington Bolton’s book described below.

Dorantes’s Aztec knife can be seen in the British Museum. You can also see it on their website.

If you would like to read more about Rudolph and his era, you might like to dip into
The Mercurial Emperor:
The Magic Circle of Rudolph II in Renaissance Prague
, Peter Marshall (Pimlico 2007), which I think is the most accessible introduction to this subject.

There’s also:

Rudolph II and Prague:
The court and the city
, edited by Eliska Fucikova (Thames and Hudson 1997). This features acres of academic articles – many in translation – but it is also crammed with fascinating illustrations.

The Follies of Science at the Court of Rudolph II: 1576–1612,
by Henry Carrington Bolton is worth a look. It was originally published in 1904. You can download it from the internet.

You could also try John Hale’s very readable
The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance
(Harper Perennial 1993 and new edition 2008), which is a more general introduction to the era.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Ele Fountain at Bloomsbury for her patient moulding of the story, Talya Baker and Margaret Histed for their sterling edits, and Dilys Dowswell for wading through the first drafts. Their advice is much appreciated. Kate Clarke and The Parish produced the evocative cover.

Thanks also to Jenny and Josie Dowswell and Charlie Viney for looking after me; Sally Hoban and Christine Whitney for lending me two beautiful books; Adam Guy, Jeremy Lavender and John Dowswell for their sound advice, and Ben and Jana Anderson, and Nina Jelnikova of Prague Tours, for making me so welcome in Prague.

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About the Author

Paul Dowswell is a former researcher and editor. Published in the UK and internationally, he has written over sixty books and has twice been shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award. Paul lives in Wolverhampton with his family.

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Also by Paul Dowswell

Ausländer

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The Adventures of Sam Witchall in reading order:

Powder Monkey

Prison Ship

Battle Fleet

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Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney

First published in Great Britain in July 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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Text copyright © Paul Dowswell 2010

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A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 4088 1183 2

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