“The Magician’s Visitor” was written by Henry Neele and first appeared in Forget Me Not. A Christmas, New Year’s, and Birthday Present (1828). Neele (1798-1828) was a British author, poet, and critic.

“The Magician’s Visitor” is a short vignette from the life of Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), the notorious German alchemist and necromancer. Late one night in Florence a Stranger comes to Agrippa’s door. The Stranger is handsome, but has an air of mystery and even something repellant about him. He looks youthful but is bowed with the weight of years. His face is pale, beautiful, wise and sad. The Stranger flatters Agrippa, but when Agrippa talks of his long years the Stranger sounds doubtful (“thou, who hast scarcely seen fourscore since thou left’st thy cradle”¹) and begins describing how much better it is to slumber than to be the sun, who must run “the same dull and unvaried, but toilsome and unquiet, race.” Agrippa is taken aback by the Stranger’s words and manner. The Stranger goes on to request that Agrippa use his magic mirror,

in which whosoever looks may see the distant, or the dead, on whom he is desirous again to fix his gaze. My eyes see nothing in this outward visible world which can be pleasing to their sight: the grave has closed over all I loved; and Time has carried down its stream every thing that once contributed to my enjoyment.²

The man’s passionate pleading touches Agrippa, who usually declines similar requests for the use of the mirror, and he agrees to use it. The Stranger tells Agrippa that he wants to see Miriam, his daughter, but the Stranger is coy about how long ago she lived. This is a problem for Agrippa, who to make the mirror work must wave his wand once for every ten years which have lapsed since Miriam’s death. As Agrippa waves his wand he repeatedly asks how long ago Miriam died. The Stranger’s only response is, “Wave on, wave on.” At last the image of Miriam appears in the mirror. The Stranger is overjoyed to see Miriam, but he ignores Agrippa’s warnings and touches the mirror, which ends the enchantment and knocks out the Stranger. When he awakens he thanks Agrippa and offers him gold for his troubles. Agrippa declines if the Stranger will only tell him his name. Agrippa points out a portrait on the wall and says

“Behold!” said the stranger, pointing to a large historical picture…”That,” said Cornelius, with an emotion of horror, “is intended to represent the unhappy infidel who smote the divine Sufferer for not walking faster; and was, therefore, condemned to walk the earth himself, until the last period of that sufferer’s second coming.’” “‘Tis I! ‘Tis I!” exclaimed the stranger; and rushing out of the house, rapidly disappeared.³

Although “The Magician’s Visitor” is a short, predictable Wandering Jew story, it is a comparatively sympathetic version of the myth. Unlike many of his contemporaries Neele creates a Wandering Jew who is sympathetic rather than evil. Neele’s Wandering Jew has elements of the Hero-Villain in him, but he is more pitiable than conflicted by evil. The characterization is histrionic but not cartoonish.

The myth of the Wandering Jew has been traced back as far as the Legend of Malchus in the Book of John (circa 90-100 C.E.),⁴ with the “punishment by wandering” motif of the Wandering Jew myth going back at least to the Greek myths,⁵ but the Victorian version of the myth springs from its post-Renaissance recrudescence, beginning in the seventeenth century in Germany. By 1828, when Neele wrote “The Magician’s Visitor,” the Wandering Jew had left the “Romantic sinner” stage and become the representative of Jews as a whole—or, alternatively, a cynical commenter on humanity’s sins. Neele was typical of the pre-Eugène Sue (see: The Wandering Jew) authors of Wandering Jew narratives who, "while they make plain that they consider Ahasuerus as a sinner of deepest dye, have at the same time been sympathetic enough to allow him a certain amount of dignity in hell."⁶

Print: Henry Neele, “The Magician’s Visitor,” in Brian Stableford, ed., Tales of the Wandering Jew. Sawtry, UK: Dedalus Books, 1991.

¹ Henry Neele, “The Magician’s Visitor,” The Literary Remains of the Late Henry Neele (New York: Collins and Hannay, 1829), 295.

² Neele, “The Magician’s Visitor,” 295.

³ Neele, “The Magician’s Visitor,” 298-299.

⁴ George K. Anderson, The Legend of the Wandering Jew (Providence: Brown University Press, 1965), 12.

⁵ Anderson, Wandering Jew, 2.

⁶ Anderson, Wandering Jew, 216.