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HAD SWEDENBORG A MISTRESS ? 629
kept to the end of his life. It appears, therefore, that instead of
.
having had a mistress in his younger years, as is reported by
Robsahm on mere hearsay, Swedenborg was simply in love with a
young lady, with a view of marrying her; that she was also promised
in marriage to him by her father, but that Swedenborg renounced
his claims upon her, when he found that his love was not returned.
The truth of this statement was confirmed by Swedenborg himself
in his conversation with General Tuxen, by whom he is reported to
have said, that “once in his youth he had been on the road to
matrimony; King Charles XII having recommended the famous
Polhem to give him his daughter.” When General Tuxen asked
him what obstacle had prevented it, Swedenborg is said ito have
answered, “she would not have me, as she had promised herself to
another person to whom she was more attached."
This account was written out by General Tuxen for Augustus
Nordensköld,35 brother of C. F. Nordensköld,20 and translated by
Augustus Nordensköld from Danish into English, and published
by him in 1790 in an appendix to the "New Jerusalem Magazine."
In this account Augustus Nordensköld makes General Tuxen say
further, that Swedenborg had told him besides, that " in his youth
he had a mistress in Italy .” Is this statement correct and reliable ?
We answer, No ! for the following reasons : First, it is proved to
be incorrect by internal evidence, for it declares that Swedenborg
was in Italy in his youth; when yet he entered Italy for the first
time in March, 1738 (as is proved by the journals of his travels),
when he was fifty years of age, for he was born in 1688. Secondly,
the whole of General Tuxen’s account loses very much in weight and
importance, as the Danish original has been lost, and we have only
the English translation, which was made by Augustus Nordensköld,
who was a talented man, and well versed in the doctrines of the
New Church, but morally, in the latter part of his life, utterly
depraved. The venerable Thomas Dawes* says respecting him , in a
letter addressed to the Swedenborg Society, which is dated Jan. 14,
1842: “I think the New Church should not wholly depend upon the
fidelity of Mr. Nordensköld’s copying; for his unchaste conduct dur
* According to the Intellectual Repository for April, 1860, " Mr. Thomas Dawes, formerly
of Yoxall, in the county of Stafford, was for many years a well-known and ardent receiver
of the doctrines of the New Church, who was removed into the spiritual world in advanced
age, in 1849. He and his father were the instruments through whom the late Rev.
E. Madeley, of Derby, was introduced to the writings of Swedenborg, of which Mr. Dawes
has himself left an interesting account, in a letter published in the London New Jerusa
lem Magazine’ for the year 1828. He was the writer of several papers in the ’Aurora,’
and also in subsequent periodicals, the secretary of the General Conference held in
Birmingham in 1808, and the author of an anonymous " Treatise on Redemption.’ ”
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