Spy, magician and magician: for whom the greatest medium in the history of mankind worked.
The bright sun floods the room. Only a narrow window is open in the window. There are dozens of people in the room. They surrounded a man in strange clothes, reminiscent of a medieval troubadour, in a semicircle. The person rises into the air and soars freely. The audience is ecstatic, but then something completely unimaginable happens. The person shrinks, turning, as it were, into a board with a face - like in Photoshop or a computer game. It lies down in the air and gently seeps through the window. A minute later, having flown to the adjacent balcony, he returns to the room in triumph. Such things were done in the middle of the 19th century by the greatest magician of all times and peoples, the Scotsman Daniel Hume. A friend of Alexander II, an Orthodox Christian and, possibly, a spy of His Imperial Majesty, who supplied Russia with the most modern technologies at that time.
What's wrong with the "Formula of Love"
The film "Formula of Love" - about how a great magician came to Russia and is trying to find his love here - takes us to the scenery of the 18th century, as well as the literary source of the picture, Alexei Tolstoy's novel "Count Cagliostro" (1921). This is confusing: everyone thinks that we are talking about the adventurer of the gallant age, Alessandro Cagliostro. But that sorcerer was forgotten in the 1920s. Alexei Tolstoy had another, much more striking example of a touring magician almost before his eyes. His full namesake, also Aleksey Tolstoy, and also a writer, but who lived half a century earlier, invited Daniel Hume to Petersburg and even married a Russian woman. The one who went out through the window into the street. So much for the magician and love! There is also a family tradition. But the author of "Count Cagliostro" for some reason decided to cover his tracks. I really wanted to write such a story, what a magnificent plot! But,apparently there was something about which even in 1921 it was not worth spreading. The image of Alessandro Cagliostro confused the reader and masked the realities.
… A man with a strikingly modern face is looking at us from an old photograph. It’s a strange thing: reading the numerous eyewitness accounts of Hume’s sessions, you almost begin to believe. You look at the photo of Hume himself: no. The cunning face of a deceiver, who seems to be laughing at the world, at human nature - I will show you a trick, and you will never guess how I did it. And at the same time before us is a man full of inner pain and some kind of anxiety. What to say, worries Hume, even us, after a century and a half.
Who is he? His biography is a set of clichés and legends, which he himself most likely composed. You can't trust her. Even as a child, the glowing outline of a friend appeared to him - and it turned out that at that moment the friend died. An unknown force covered the child Yuma, furniture moved in his presence and voices sounded. They were afraid of him, he became an outcast. Etc. And if we want, for example, to understand how he ended up in Russia, how he met Alexander II, and what he did in our country in general, we will run into continuous questions. Nevertheless, let's try.
Promotional video:
Without a passport - immediately to the king
Whether Hume was a psychic or a magician, one way or another, he was a great hard worker. He was eager to emerge from the very bottom with all his might: he was born into a poor family, his father drank and his mother beat. His childhood is a bit like the biography of our writer Maxim Gorky. He and the other had seen enough of the horrors, and began to work like the damned to get up. For the first experiments, Hume chose inexperienced America, gathered the press and fans there, after which he conquered Europe, and now he found himself in Russia. How?
It is known for certain that he arrived in Petersburg in June 1858 together with Dumas the father. That is, in the minds of contemporaries, these were figures of equal scale, both were invited and looked after by Count Koshelev. But in the story with his invitation, the writer Alexander Aksakov, the nephew of the one who is world famous, as well as the world scientist Alexander Butlerov, appear. We'll talk about the role of the latter later, Aksakov was keenly interested in the paranormal, and with his light hand the word "telekinesis" appeared in Russian. It was probably like this: Hume toured Europe and ended up at the court of Sophia of Württemberg. In the future, Sofia will become Queen of the Netherlands, and it is important for us that her grandfather was Paul I. Sofia's memories have survived: she is full of delight, happy that she met such a great man. Through Sofia, the Russian "get-together" learns about Yuma,Aksakov is imbued with sympathy for Hume as a colleague, and then a matter of technology.
The wife of Alexander II, Maria Alexandrovna, immediately decided to invite Yuma to the palace. Reminds the story of Grigory Rasputin, for whom the female part of the crowned labor collective also stood up. But Hume proved to be a subtle psychologist. Refused: not in perfume. This only provoked the Romanovs, and, of course, Hume a few days later was already in Peterhof. The spirit of his mother allegedly appeared to him and persistently advised the queen to respect. The experiments ran from noon to half past one in the morning. The king himself was present, and from the counts and maids of honor rippled in his eyes. The description of the experiments has been preserved: a standard set of "knocks" with which the "spirits" answer questions. At some point, the table began to hover, and the tsar's bell was torn from his hands, and he, ringing, flew through the air to the Count of Württemberg.
Daniel Hume.
The king, of course, is in a pleasant shock. From his words they recorded: Alexander II was amazed that the hands of the medium became transparent and lit up. The Tsar talked with the late Nicholas the First and other relatives from the other world. True, the maid of honor Anna Tyutcheva, who was also at the session, did not see a miracle, she considered Yuma a magician, but without evil: she liked the show just as a show. In general, from the descriptions it is clear that he was a great artist. Hume disposed, did not pose as the master of the elements, and even seemed to suffer, as if his spirits were tormenting him.
Here Hume announces that he intends to marry, and Alexander II takes an active part in the matter. A characteristic feature: Hume arrived in St. Petersburg without a passport, they say, the Scottish authorities are red tape. Those were the times when a policeman beat a peasant without documents with a rifle butt in the teeth, they say, not a man. But the king said: yes, you don't need a passport, get married. I wonder what Hume actually had with the documents? Where was he actually born, for example? The bride's name was Alexandra Krol, she was either 17 or 18 years old, she was the sister of the writer Nikolai Krol, in general, the Scotsman got into high society and settled in Petersburg.
And then as a failure, what he did, what he did, we hardly know. He gave few sessions, he said he had run out of strength. Fyodor Tyutchev left an interesting remark: everyone was amazed by Yuma's performances, but few people wanted to visit them again. The show left a kind of sad aftertaste. Perhaps Hume simply ran out of clients. It is possible that he was afraid to do experiments under Dmitry Mendeleev. Although almost all major Russian (and not only) scientists believed Hume, Mendeleev did not, and was eager to expose the medium. But he didn't give the chemist a chance.
At some point, Hume converted to Orthodoxy, but apart from the fact itself, nothing is known about this. He was married to Alexandra in a Catholic church. The first wife soon died, Hume married Yulia Glumilina. The biography of this woman has not been studied, although excerpts from her letters come across on the Web. It follows from them that she considered her husband a real wizard. Genealogy is a complex science, and I did quite a bit of delving into the family ties of Julia Glumilina. She turned out to be associated with the Aksakovs and Butlerovs. The circle that invited Hume to Russia surrounded him later, and this is very interesting.
A little radio is good for mysticism
Hume died in Paris in 1886 and is buried in the Russian cemetery as an Orthodox Christian. And then at the very time to try to somehow explain the strangeness of his Russian biography. It is clear that he is not just a visiting magician who cut down money and disappeared. Something was different, the main thing.
There are keys to this secret, but we will have to make a sharp turn in our history - from magic to science. We promised that the chemist Butlerov appeared on the stage for a reason.
In those years, the military and governments had colossal hopes for radio technology. There was no radio as such yet, but everywhere there was only talk about death rays and the transmission of energy through the air. Hundreds of scientists are fighting, the truth is somewhere nearby, in the hands of not given, the situation, as before the invention of the atomic bomb and space flights. So, in 1868 (Alexander Popov, the inventor of radio, only 9 years old), a certain Mahlon Loomis from the USA, in the presence of government members, transmits a radio signal over 20 kilometers. But for some reason the matter stalled. Maybe the US government was wild, or maybe it was also a trick like Hume's.
In 1870, one man who had every conceivable military and technological secret of the time in his head decided to get to know Hume. It was William Crookes, president of the Royal Society of London, laureate of every possible gold medal, and a person very close to the royal palace. Unfortunately for him, Crookes believed in magic and worked on scientific telepathy. Hume humbly accepted all the conditions of the scientist. The experiments will be in Crookes territory. On an unknown day and hour. The content of the experience will be revealed along the way. Hume even changed clothes under Crookes. Here, of course, such a cutesy scene was played out: Crooks did not seem to insist, but Hume himself brought him into the bedroom and changed his clothes in front of him, as if by chance. Crookes fell in love and wrote in his diary: thanks to this happy circumstance, I realized that he had nothing secret on his body.
To read descriptions of Crookes-Hume's experiments, of course, is both sad and funny. In one English-language source, I came across the exact phrase: people think that scientists have some kind of special eyes or a special mind, and when they encounter a trick, they immediately expose it. Not really. Moreover, Crookes already believed in magic and subconsciously wanted to make sure he was right. I got what I wanted.
Crooks built a frightening-looking cage, stuffed the accordion there, the cage under the table. Hume had to play it without hands. But from the description it is clear that he touched the accordion either with his hand or with his knee, they climbed under the table from time to time, but they were just surprised that she was playing under the table. In another experience, Yuma was put on a scale and showed that he was lighter by a few pounds. And, although he did not fly with Crookes, this was quite enough for the Englishman. From now on - friendship in the gums, your home is my home and complete trust. And the political situation is complicated. The war between Russia and England ended only in 1856. Who knows when the new one will be. Interestingly, Crooks suffered a lot at home for his closeness with Hume. They even wanted to deprive him of all posts, they had to deny publicly from spiritualism. Was it only "anti-science" that alerted the British government in this story? After all, then it was poorly understood what was scientific and what was unscientific. And who in Albion is embarrassed by cute eccentricities like table-turning?
Of course, Hume, even with access to secrets, needed a curator. He's not a physicist. What to ask, what to clarify, what to remember. And how can one fail to recall the Petersburg scientists with whom he was friends and related. There is no evidence of our version yet, but, you must agree, the spy channel is being built up a notable one. And already the king is not a gullible mystic, and the sessions in the palace are just for diversion. Was it not this secret that the writer Alexei Tolstoy knew, and did not want to divulge, because England was an enemy in the 1920s?
It would seem, what does Tesla have to do with it?
Hume was already at the cemetery in Paris when Alexander Popov presented his radio in 1895. The dispute about who actually invented it is eternal, and will never be resolved, because many went around the bush, the same Crookes with his telepathy. The problem was that all the receivers worked only in sterile laboratories, and Popov gave a thing that was simple and reliable in Russian, take it and use it. And, by the way, the Ministry of Defense immediately took it: the radio was immediately introduced to communicate with warships on the roadstead of Kronstadt.
To say that without Hume there would be no radio, of course, is not necessary. There are dreamers, they say, we stole a rocket and a bomb. Here are the drawings, do it! Yes, not everyone can do something. Of course, about the bomb and space, we know for sure that our intelligence was not dozing (as well as theirs). But we don’t think about the radio. But in vain: the military was choking without communication. In the same Crimean War, ours in Sevastopol made mirrors that blinked at distant battalions. So so solution. And in the First World War, when the receivers ran out, the Germans came up with the idea of sticking the pins from the phone straight into the ground and talking like that for five kilometers. Communication is a great thing in war. And the struggle for communication technologies was at the most serious level.
In addition, in those years, they seriously thought that a powerful radio beam could kill. Nikola Tesla made one experiment, and right there somewhere in Asia - a terrible earthquake. So he imagined that it was he, Tesla, who rocked the earth and killed thousands of people. That is the level at which even high science was. By the way, Tesla was quickly taken to a military base after that, and we hardly know what he did for the second half of his life. And the HAARP radar in Alaska, they say, is made from Tesla's drawings and can cause hail and drought anywhere in the world. Now imagine that Butlerov, for example, makes a report to Alexander II and describes the prospects in a nutshell. The king's reaction? Of course you do! We have no idea if such a conversation actually took place or not, but there is nothing improbable in such an assumption.
Hume left another trace in Russia - mystical. Let the king pretend to believe (we do not really know). But in the women's chambers they were gossiping, and how can you not remember Grigory Rasputin - the soul of the maid of honor longed for mysticism. Of course, it was not Rasputin who “ruined the country,” but mystics both then and then at other courts were enough. The time was like this, you could not understand where the achievements of technology, and where is deception. And yet.
It's funny how another Anglo-Saxon, Robert Wood, has parodied this story. Wood was both the antipode of Hume and his colleague - also a showman, only from science. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he came to Russia under the legend of a journalist, and turned to the first policeman who came across with the words: "Can I, my dear, see the great white king?" Known for his wit, Wood built the joke around parallelism. Here there are spiritualistic experiences - there are mystical experiences. This scout (dissuade Wood was not) is apparently the same. And with irony: can the Tsar see how I, they say, Hume is worse?
This is what Count Cagliostro really was with the human face of a Scottish bard.
EVGENY ARSYUKHIN
