On my day off this week I visited the most recent exhibition at the Royal College of Physicians: Scholar, courtier, magician: the lost library of John Dee. John Dee, or Dr Dee as he is often known (though he was not a doctor in the commonly understood sense of the word, and had no formal medical training), was an Elizabethan polymath, a lover of learning who collected a huge library of books, travelled throughout Europe and was rumoured to have been a spy for Queen Elizabeth I.
Dee was born in London to Rowland Dee and Johanna Wild. He studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, and became an Original Fellow of the newly-founded Trinity College, but he spent most of his adult life at Mortlake, just south of London, where his mother owned property. The way in which the Royal College of Physicians ended up with Dee’s books is rather sad. While Dee was on a trip to Europe, he entrusted his library to his brother-in-law Nicholas Fromond, who sold it off. Many of the books ended up in the possession of Nicholas Saunder, a former pupil of Dee’s, who tried to remove Dee’s name from the front of the books by repeatedly overwriting it with his own. Saunders’ books later passed to Henry Pierrepont, the 1st Marquis of Dorchester, and ended up at the RCP via a family bequest in 1680.
The exhibition explores different facets of Dee’s life: his role as a scholar, his experience as a courtier, his travels abroad and his life as a mathematician. Within each section, books from the Royal College’s collections that used to or were believed to belong to Dee are displayed, to illustrate the different aspects of his life. Dee annotated his books throughout his life with his signature and other notes about the contents of the books. He also had a habit of doodling in his books: the pages are littered with small bearded faces, and in one case a ship.
I liked the anecdotes relating to Dee: in Cambridge he devised a moving dung beetle for a theatrical production, which led some who saw it to claim that it was done by magic. On a more serious note, Dee’s alchemical experiments and attempts to converse with angels got him in trouble throughout his life: he was arrested for casting Mary I’s horoscope, though he was later approached by the Earl of Leicester on Elizabeth I’s accession in order to determine the most favourable day for her coronation. There are several items used by Dee on display, including a scrying glass and a crystal ball. There is also a painting by Henry Gillard Glindoni in which it is just possible to make out a ring of skulls around Dee that has been painted over.
Upstairs, the exhibition continues with a display exploring the way Dee and his story have been represented over the years, in literature, graphic novel and, most recently, opera. There are also books exploring his attempts to contact angels. The exhibition runs until July and is well worth seeing, a fascinating exploration of the life of one of Elizabethan England’s most enigmatic figures.