The Witches of New York

This was delivered in a very jerky manner, with occasional twitchings of the face and violent claspings of the hand, which her visitor retained, although it gave him a cold sweat to do it. Johannes, who has friends in Minnesota, and whose questions were therefore all in good faith, tried to get the sleeping female to descend a little more to particulars, to describe individuals or localities minutely enough to be recognised if the descriptions approached the truth; but Mrs. Seymour was not to be caught in this manner. She invariably dodged the question, and dealt only in the most vague and uncertain generalities – giving no description of persons or things that might not have applied with equal accuracy to a hundred other persons or things in that or any other locality. Her assertions concerning the persons supposed to be her customer’s friends did not approach the truth in any one particular; nor was there the slightest shadow of even probability in any single statement she uttered. She is not, however, a woman to lack customers, so long as there remain in the world fools of either sex.

When the inquirer had concluded his questioning, he was somewhat at a loss how to awake the woman from her trance, but she solved that little difficulty herself by opening her eyes (as if she had been wide awake all the time) and calling for the beauteous maiden of the snarly hair, who accordingly appeared and made a few mysterious mesmeric passes lengthwise of her sleeping mistress, and awoke her to the necessity of dunning her visitor, which she did instantly and with a relish. He paid the demanded dollar and departed.

CHAPTER X.

MADAME CARZO, THE BRAZILIAN ASTROLOGIST, No. 151 BOWERY

Describes Madame Carzo, the Brazilian Astrologist, of No. 151 Bowery, and gives all the romantic adventures of the “Individual” with that gay South American Naiad

The illustrious lady who is the subject of the present chapter, came to the city of New York in 1856, and at once took lodgings and began business in the fortune-telling way. She did well, pecuniarily speaking, for a time, but the details of a visit to her having been published at length in one of the daily journals, she at once retired from the business, and subsided into private life. She is not now extant as a witch, and it is not impossible that she is earning an honester living in other ways.

The newspaper article that convinced her of the error of her ways, and induced her to give up fortune-telling, is the subjoined chapter by the “Individual:”

He meets a Yankee-Brazilian. She is not ill-looking, etc.

Whether the budding beauties of maidenhood are inconsistent with the orgies of witchcraft; whether there be an irreconcilable antagonism between youth and loveliness, and the unknown mysteries of the black art, is a vexed question of some interest. Can’t a woman be supposed to indulge in a little devilment before her hair turns grey, and her teeth fall out? and is it impossible for her to have reliable and trustworthy dealings with Old Scratch until she is wrinkled and withered?

That’s what I want to know.

And I am very naturally urged to the inquiry by the observation that every professional witch in New York calls herself a “Madame.” There is not a “Miss” or a “Mademoiselle,” in the whole batch. They all make a pretence of being widows, or wives at the very least, as if a certain amount of matrimonial tribulation was indispensable to their accomplishment in the arts of sorcery and magic. The only exception to this rule is found in the person of a female calling herself “The Gipsy Girl,” who is otherwheres mentioned, and in her case the several agencies of nature, rum, and small-pox have made her so strikingly ugly that old age could not add a single other trait of repulsiveness to her excruciating features.

Now this is all a sad mistake. Let some young and undeniably pretty girl go into the business, and she’d soon get a run of exclusive customers who would stand any price and pay without grumbling. If the original Satan should refuse to recognise her eligibility, and should decline to furnish her with the requisite quantity of diabolic knowledge to set her up in business, she could easily find an opposition devil who would provide her stock in trade, and possibly at something less than the usual rates. I’ll be bound that Lucifer doesn’t monopolize the whole trade in witchcraft, and pocket all the profits himself; for if some of the numerous clerks in his employ haven’t yet learned the trick of stealing the stock and selling it at a reduced price, then the young gentlemen of our earthly mercantile houses are a good deal up-to-snuffer than the virtuous demons of Mr. Satan’s establishment. This last-named dealer generally demands the soul of the contracting party in return for the powers and privileges conferred; and in very many cases he must get decidedly the worst of the bargain, for some of his precious adopted children never had soul enough to pay for the ink to sign it away with; but there is no doubt, in case a brisk competition should arise for customers, that some of his cashiers and head-clerks would contrive to under-sell him even at this price.

The person who is so very anxious to effect this desirable consummation, and to bring on a crop of young and pretty witches to supersede the grizzled ones of this present generation was Johannes, who had of late been getting rather sick of the “Madames,” and would prefer, if possible, to have the rest of his fortunes told by ladies of tenderer age, and greater inexperience in the ways of the world.

However, he was not the man to be deterred, in his pursuit of wisdom, by the age and ugliness, grey hairs, wrinkles, false teeth, no teeth, dirt, ignorance, and imbecility he had encountered, and he was determined to go on to the very end and see if these are the sum total of modern witchcraft.

And then duns came o’er the spirit of his dream, and fond visions of sundry small debts, paid by magic and a wife, as soon as he should succeed in finding the wife who had the magic, floated across his hard-up brain, and encouraged him to perseverance in his matrimonial quest. And when he had won that invaluable lady, he would stuff his mattress with receipted bills, and cram his pillow with cancelled notes, lie down to pleasant dreams, and awake to ready cash.

Sweet thought!

So he made ready to visit the humble abode of Madame Carzo, the Brazilian Astrologist, No. 151 Bowery.

To say that he discovered, in this lady, the ideal of his search, that he found her handsome, intelligent, learned in the stars and thoroughly posted in the other branches of her trade, would be to anticipate. Suffice to say that boa-constrictors, half-naked savages, dye-woods, Jesuit’s bark, cockatoos, scorpions and ring-tailed monkeys, are not, as he had hitherto supposed, the only contributions to the happiness of mankind afforded by South America, for the Province of Brazil grows fortune-tellers of a very superior quality as to respectability and neatness of appearance. A Brazilian witch was something new, and without stopping to inquire how she had strayed so far away from home, he immediately argued that that single fact was decidedly in her favor. Thus ran the logic:

If there be any diabolism in modern witchcraft, the practisers thereof who have received their education in tropical latitudes ought to be the most worthy of credence and belief, inasmuch as the temperature of their places of residence seems to afford a supposition that they live nearer head-quarters, and are, therefore, most likely to receive information by the shortest routes.

By the time he arrived at the spot where the great astrologist condescended to abide, he had, by this course of reasoning, convinced himself that he ought to place implicit confidence in any revelations of the future made by the mysterious woman who advertised herself and her calling, daily in the papers as follows:

“Madame Carzo, the gifted Brazilian Astrologist, tells the fate of every person who visits her with wonderful accuracy, about love, marriage, business, property, losses, things stolen, luck in lotteries, absent friends, at No. 151 Bowery, corner of Broome.”

The South American lady had located her mysterious self in a fragrant spot.

The corner of Bowery and Broome Street and vicinity seems to have some kind of a constitutional disorder, and it relieves itself by a cutaneous eruption of low rum shops and pustulous beer saloons, which always look as if they ought to be squeezed and rubbed with ointment of red lead. To an observing person it appears as if the city wanted to scratch itself in that particular part to relieve the local irritation, and then ought, for the sake of its general health, to take a large dose of brimstone immediately afterward. The liquors sold at these places are those pure and healthful beverages, “warranted to kill at forty rods,” and are the very drinks with which a convivial, but revengeful man, would wish to regale his friend against whom he held a secret grudge. Why Madame Carzo had chosen this particular locality, does not appear; perhaps because the liquor was cheap and the rent low. Certain it is that there she sat, at a window overlooking the Bowery, in full view of all the pedestrians in the street and the passengers in the 4th Avenue Railroad.

Madame Carzo was, doubtless, deeply attached to her old Brazilian home, and loved to surround herself with circumstances and things that would constantly and vividly recall pleasant memories of her southern country. Cherishing, probably, kindly and regretful remembrances of the harmless reptiles of her own Brazilian forests, she had taken up her abode in the very thick of the Bowery bar-rooms, as the only things afforded by our frigid climate, at all approaching in life-destroying malignity the speedier venoms to which she had been accustomed in her delightful southern home. First-rate facilities for drugging a man into a state of crazy madness are offered at the bar across the way; he may swill himself into a condition of beastly stupidity with lager beer from next door below; he may be pleasantly poisoned by degrees with the drugged alcohol, in various forms, which is sold next door above; or he may be more speedily disposed of with a couple of doses of “doctored” whiskey from the festering den just round the corner. Lucrezia Borgia was a novice, a mere babe in toxicology. New York wholesale liquor dealers could teach her the alphabet in the fine art of slow poisoning. She would no longer need the subtle chemistry of the Borgias; she could learn of them to poison wholesale and to do the work by labor-saving machinery.

Johannes, resolved that if he should marry the astrologist he would move out of the neighborhood, and take a house in a cleaner part of the city, for he felt that if he had to do even the courting here, he would have to fumigate himself after every visit to his lady-love as though he had just come out of a yellow-fever ship. He knew that if he should chance to meet the Health Officer in the street after a two hours’ stay in that locality, that trusty official would, from the unhealthy smell of his coat, quarantine him for forty days, and put him up to his neck in a barrel of chloride of lime every morning.

But a full-fledged Cupid is a plucky animal, and not easily killed by anything no more tangible than smell, and the particular Cupid that had possession of the voyager’s heart came of a long-suffering breed, and was equal to almost any emergency. So as Johannes did not feel his ardent passion die, or even turn sick at the stomach, he thought he could manage to get through. If he couldn’t get along any other way, he could fill his pockets with brimstone matches, and his boots full of blue vitriol. Or he could carry a bunch of Chinese fire-crackers in his hat, and touch them off on the sly whenever he felt himself in need of a healthy smell. Then he could wash himself all over in lime-water, and drink a quart or so of some liquid disinfectant every time he came away. So he went ahead.

Madame Carzo, the Brazilian interpreter of Yankee fate and fortunes, lives in the third story of the house No. 151 Bowery, with her sister, a girl of about fifteen years of age. The two occupy themselves with plain sewing, except when the Madame is overhauling the future and taking a look at the hereafter of some anxious inquirer, who pays her as much for the reliable information she imparts in three minutes, as she would charge him for making three shirts. The inquirer gave his customary modest ring at the door, and was admitted with as little question as if he had been the taxes, the Croton water, or the gas. Up the two flights of stairs walked the gentleman in the pursuit of witchcraft, gave a bashful knock at the door, at the side of which was painted, on a small bit of pasteboard, “Madame Carzo” – repented of his temerity before the echo of the knock had died away, but was admitted into the room before his repentance had time to develop itself into running away.

A shabby-looking girl, with her hair in as much confusion as if the city had contracted to keep it straight, with one ear-ring in her ear, and the other on the table, with her shoes down at the heel, her dress unhooked behind, and her breast-pin wrong side up, was the model young woman who had answered the knock. She had evidently been engaged in an animated single combat with another young woman, of about the same quality and age, who was seated on a low stool in the corner, for she instantly renewed hostilities by stabbing her antagonist in the arm with a needle, tapping her on the head with a thimble, and kicking her pin-cushion under the table, so she could not recover it without crawling on her hands and knees.

On a small sofa or lounge at the side of the room was a quantity of what ladies call “work,” thrown down in a great hurry, with the needle yet sticking in it, and the scissors, and the beeswax, and the measuring tape, and the bodkin half-concealed inside, as if the knock at the door had startled the needle-woman, and she had flown to parts unknown. It was undoubtedly Madame Carzo herself who had so unceremoniously deserted her colors and her weapons, and Johannes looked at the needle with veneration, viewed the thimble with respect, and regarded the beeswax and the bodkin with concentrated awe.

A small cooking-stove was in the side of the room, and immediately over it was a picture of St. Andrew in such a position that he could smell all the dinners; a number of other pictures of Roman Catholic subjects were neatly framed and hanging against the wall. St. Somebody taking his ease on an X-shaped cross, St. Somebody Else comfortably cooking on a gridiron, and St. Somebody, different from either of these, impaled on a spear like a bug in an Entomological Museum. There was also an atrocious colored print labelled “Millard Fillmore,” which, if it at all resembled that venerated gentleman, must have been taken when he had the measles, complicated with the mumps and toothache, and was attired in a sky-blue coat, a red cravat, yellow vest, and butternut-colored pantaloons.

The room was neatly furnished with carpet, table, chairs, cheap mirror, and a lounge. While the visitor was taking this observation, the two young ladies before mentioned had continued to spar after a feminine fashion, and had finished about three rounds; the model, who had answered the bell, had got the other one, who was black-haired and vicious, under the table, and was following up her advantage by sticking a bodkin into the tender places on her feet and ancles. When the model had at length thoroughly subjugated and subdued the black-haired one, and reduced her to a state of passive misery, she turned to her visitor with an amiable smile, and asked him if he desired to see the Madame. Receiving an affirmative reply, she gave a sly kick to her fallen foe, stepped on her toes under pretence of moving away a chair, and then disappeared into another room to inform Madame Carzo that visitors and dollars were awaiting her respectful consideration in the anteroom.

The “gifted Brazilian astrologist” regarded the suggestion with a favorable eye, for the model soon reappeared and showed the searcher after hidden knowledge into a bedroom nearly dark, wherein were several dresses hanging on the wall, a bed, two chairs, a table, and Madame Carzo. The light was so arranged as to fall directly in the face of the stranger, while the countenance of the Madame was, to a certain extent, hidden in shadow.

Johannes, nevertheless, in spite of this disadvantage, by careful observation, is enabled to give a tolerably accurate description of Madame Carzo, as follows: She is a tall, comely-looking woman, with unusually large black eyes, clear complexion, dark hair worn à la Jenny Lind, a small hand, clean, and with the nails trimmed, and she has a low sweet voice. Her dress was lady-like, being a neat half-mourning plaid, with a plain linen collar at the neck, turned smoothly over; altogether, Madame Carzo, the Brazilian astrologist, who speaks without a symptom of foreign accent, impressed her customer as being a transplanted Yankee school ma’am, with shrewdness enough to see that while civilization and enlightenment would only pay her twenty dollars a month, and superstition and ignorance would give her twice that sum in a week, she couldn’t, of course, afford to live in a civilized and enlightened neighborhood, and depend exclusively on civilization and enlightenment for a living.

And Johannes was smitten, he had found her, and if his fortune was propitious he would yet win and wed the Brazilian astrologist, and she should have the honor of paying his debt, and earning his bread and butter. But he would make no advances yet for fear of accidents; he would not commit himself until he had called upon the rest of the witches on his list, to see, if perchance, he might not find one more eligible. If not, then by all means Madame Carzo should be the chosen one. The first thing evidently was to ascertain her proficiency in the magic arts.

The sorceress and the anxious inquirer seated themselves face to face, and the following dialogue ensued: “Do you wish to consult me, Sir?” “Yes.”

“My terms are a dollar for gentlemen.”

The expected dollar was handed over, when the ’cute Yankeeism of the Brazilian lady blazed out brilliantly, for she instantly produced a “Thompson’s Bank-note Detector” from under a pillow, and a one dollar note, issued by the President and Directors of the “Quinnipiack Bank” of Connecticut, underwent a severe scrutiny. At last the genuineness of the bill and the solvency of the bank were certified to the Madame’s satisfaction, in his oracular pamphlet, by Thompson with a “p,” and Madame Carzo was evidently satisfied that her customer didn’t mean to swindle her, but was good for small debts not exceeding one dollar each. Accordingly she took his left hand, regarded it for some time, apparently delighted with its model symmetry, but at last so far conquered her silent admiration as to speak and say:

“You were born under two planets, Moon and Mars, Moon brings you a great deal of trouble in the early part of your life. Moon has occasioned a great deal of anxiety to your parents on your account. Moon made you liable to accidents and misfortunes while you was a boy, and Moon will give you great trouble until you arrive at middle age. You were born, I should say, across the water, and you will die across the water in a city, but not a great city. You are, I should say, now far away from that city, and from your home, and parents, and friends, who are, I should say, all now far across the water. You will be sure, however, I should say, for to see them all before you die, and to die in the city that I told you of. Your line of life runs to 60; you will, I should say, live to be 60, but not much after. Moon will cause you much trouble for many years, but you will be certain for to succeed well in the end, I should say. You will be certain for to have final success and to conquer every obstacle, in spite of Moon, I should say.”

Incensed as was Johannes at Moon for thus unjustifiably interfering with his prospects and meddling with his private affairs, he still admired the more the profitable science of the wonderful lady whose acquirements in magic had given her so intimate an acquaintance with Moon, as to enable her to tell so exactly the plans and intentions of that unruly and adverse planet.

He mastered his indignation and listened attentively to the sequel.

On the small stand were two packs of cards of different sizes, and a volume of Byron. Madame Carzo took up one pack of the cards, presented them to the young man, waited for them to be cut three times, after which she said:

“You face up a good fortune I should say, you have had trouble but can now, I should say, see the end of it – you face up money, which is coming to you from over the water, I should say, and you will be sure for to get it before a great while. You will never have much money from relations or friends, though you will, I should say, perhaps have some – but though you will handle a great deal of money in your lifetime you will make the most of it yourself, I should say – you will not, however, I should say, ever be able for to become very rich, for you will never be able for to keep money, although you will have the handling of a great deal in your life. No, I am certain that you will never be rich.”

Here Johannes remembered the malicious influence of Moon upon his fortunes, and as he clinched his fists, felt as if he would like to get at the man who resides in that ill-conditioned planet, and have a back-hold wrestle with him on stony ground.

But the astrologist continued thus: “You face up a letter; you also face up good news which is to come speedily I should say; you don’t face up a sick bed, or a coffin, or a funeral, or any kind of immediate bad luck that I am able to see. You face up two men, one dark and one light complexioned. You must beware of the dark-complexioned man, for I should say he will do you an injury if you allow him for to have a chance. You like to study: the kind of business you would do best in is doctor. You face up a light-complexioned lady; you will, I should say, be able to marry this lady, though a dark-complexioned man stands in the way. You must, I should say, be particularly careful to beware of the dark-complexioned man. You will be married twice; your first wife will die, but your last wife, I should say, will be likely for to outlive you. You will have three children, which will be all, I should say, that you will be likely for to have.”

And this was all for the present, except that she told her visitor that he might draw thirteen cards, and make a wish, which he did, and she, on carefully examining the cards, told him that he would certainly have his wish.

Cheered by this last grateful promise, and bidding a mental defiance to Moon, the traveller left the room. In the reception chamber he found the model and the black-eyed one just coming to time for what he should judge was the twenty-seventh round, both much damaged in the hair, but plucky to the last.

Johannes walked briskly away, feeling that his matrimonial prospects were brighter now than for many a day, and fully determined that if, on going further he fared worse, he would certainly retrace his steps and wed Madame Carzo off-hand.

CHAPTER XI.

MADAME LEANDER LENT, No. 163 MULBERRY STREET

In which is set down the prophecy of Madame Leander Lent, of No. 163 Mulberry Street; and how she promised her Customer numerous Wives and Children

I have before suggested, in as plain terms as the peculiar nature of the subject will allow, that these fortune-telling women, having most of them been prostitutes in their younger days, in their withered age become professional procuresses, and make a trade of the betrayal of innocence into the power of Lust and Lechery. This assertion is so eminently probable that few will be inclined to dispute it, but I wish to be understood that this is no matter of mere surmise with me – it is a proven fact. And the evidences of its truth have been gathered, not alone from the formal and hurried records of the police courts, but from the lips of certain inmates of various Magdalen Asylums who have been reclaimed from their former homes of shame; and from the mouths of other repentant women, who, under circumstances where there was no object to deceive, and at times when their hearts were full of grateful love for those who had interposed to save them from utter despair, have in all simple truthfulness and honor, related their life-histories. It is impossible to give even a plausible guess at the aggregate number of young women, in this great city, who compromise their honorable reputations in the course of a single year; but of those whose shame becomes publicly known, and especially of those who eventually enter houses of ill-repute, the percentage whose fall was accomplished through the instrumentality, more or less direct, of the professional fortune-tellers, is astounding. And a curious fact connected with this subject is, that of these unfortunates who thus wander astray, not one in ten but has ever after the most superstitious and implicit faith in the supernatural powers of the witch. Each one sees in her own case certain things that have been foretold to her by the fortune-teller with such circumstantiality of time and place, and which have afterwards “come to pass,” so exactly in accordance with the prophecy, that she can only account for it by ascribing supernatural prescience to the prophetess.