21-Richard and Isabella Ingalese

This was another project that obsessed me for many years. However, unlike the Franz Bardon research, the mystery still seems to remain.

After I thought the door was closed on this work, thanks to the miracle of the Internet, two people got in touch with me out of the blue with amazing discoveries. I’ll write about them when I finally get this section filled in again.

For now, I need to put this article I wrote in 1998 back up:

Did they confect the Philosopher’s Stone?

(This used to be here only in MS Word format; now it’s a PDF).

Here’s the text from my original website:

Many years ago I got very interested in the story of Richard and Isabella Ingalese.

It all started with a sidebar in the “Alchemy” entry in the “Encyclopedia of Man, Myth and Magic” published in 1970. It mentioned a Richard Ingalese who gave a lecture in Los Angeles in 1928, matter-of-factly making the claim that his wife and he had created the legendary Philosopher’s Stone which would cure diseases and even defeat death. But there was no follow up (which would be the immediate question you’d ask at this date) and it led to a very interesting investigation on my part with some surprising twists. I still don’t have all the answers I’d like, but to cut to the chase, Richard and Isabella actually did get sick and die (around 1935) — unless they faked their deaths are are living the life of immortals in Nepal somewhere.

I spent years off and on trying to chase down any information I could about this couple. I thought that, since I lived in southern California and they lived in Los Angeles, that should make things easier. It didn’t help too much. What I did find is in that article referenced above.

What’s not included in that article was something amazing that happened in 2003.

In November, I was contacted by a gentleman in north coastal San Diego county who read my Ingalese material on the net. Astoundingly, he had in his possession a diary actually belonging to Richard Ingalese! I of course rushed to see it, but unfortunately it was mainly just tourist notes of a cruise he took with Isabella in 1929, but it was still very fascinating,and the first actual artifact touched by either of them that I had ever handled. I took some pictures and scans of this which will eventually show up on this site.

Update Sept 2004

Just to keep you from suspense: the diary did not reveal many alchemical secrets, in fact it was 90% kvetching about the other passengers on their cruise complaining about the primitive conditions of the countries they visited. Apparently they were so disgusted with their other passengers (remember this was in the Roaring 20′s right before the Great Depression) that they got off the cruise in Italy and considered staying there. Since they died in L. A. I presume that that means that some time between 1929 and 1935 they did return to the USA. But at the moment, that’s all I know. A bit of a disappointment, but exciting nonetheless. Although I carefully questioned my friend who loaned me the diary, unfortunately it was a dead end on the connection of him to how he got it…it seemed like basically just a fluke. Very disappointing!

Update Oct 2011

Every couple of years I do a web search to see if there’s anything new on these characters; but as far as I can tell to date there is no new research on them. If you know any different I’d be excited to hear.

“Linked Lives” and the Ingaleses

by me (Oct 1998)

I have not been able to find out anything about the Ingalese’s personal lives, particularly before their marriage. I have long wondered why they changed their names, and why they chose the names they did (Richard Ingalese was born “Richard Ward” and Isabella changed her name from “Mary Robbins Weller”. The question also comes up whether Isabella was ever married before.)

Since I’ve pretty much come up against a blank wall, I decided to try to get Isabella’s two novels (Linked Lives and Mata the Magician) to try to see if I could infer any clues from those.

Linked Lives by “Isabella Ingalese“: Synopsis

This seems to be a somewhat typical melodramatic novel of the time. One thinks of “The Perils of Pauline”: virtuous maiden beset by evil men (and an evil mother in this case) and ultimately rescued by a benevolent father-figure type…sort of cringe-worthy in style when read now (I guess just as novels of the present day will be cringe-worthy when read 100 years from now.)

The first thing I’ll mention is that I don’t think Dion Fortune has anything to worry about in this genre (of course since Fortune and Isabella are both dead maybe that’s a bad perspective…none the less…) But I’ll mention more about that in the critique.

The story opens in New York, probably late 1800s, where protagonist/victim “Margaret Blondell” and her mother have been reduced to penury due to the suicide of Margaret’s wealthy father. The reason for his action was supposedly financial ruin, but it may have been motivated in part by Mrs Blondell who is portrayed as an insanely vicious harridan.

Mother and daughter have pawned practically everything and their last hope devolves on Margaret getting a secretarial job so they can at least pay rent and buy food. Mother alternates between heaping vituperation and physical abuse on Margaret, playing the unappreciated, neglected mother, and spewing random hatred on the world for putting her in this fix.

Margaret finds a job, but her bosses are a misanthropic miser and a predatory Don Juan. About this time her mother, finally going over the edge, robs a diner and attacks the officer arresting her. She is committed to an institution and eventually dies there. One plot complication removed.

Her boss, Dorn, is used to having his ways with the ladies and is nonplused that he cannot get our fair heroine to comply. Desperate to prevail, he proposes to marry her, which she accepts, thinking that this may be a way out of her straitened circumstances. Dorn goes through gyrations keeping the marriage a secret and since he never truly gets his way, dumps Margaret off at a remote cottage with weak lies about joining up with her there later.

A messenger comes the next day with a letter from Dorn that the marriage was a fake and that he’s off to Europe with his real wife. This stuns and crushes Margaret so much that she just decides to lay down to die.

Enter Deus Ex Machina in the person of Mata Bennett, occult doctor. Through her psychic abilites she rescues Margaret and brings her back to New York to her sanitarium for women. (Presumably she is the subject of Isabella Ingalese’s other book Mata the Magician).

Mata reveals to Margaret the complex of past lives through the last many centuries of history that link her with her mother, father, Dorn, Mata herself, her original fiance Mortimer and his uncle, kindly Judge Hale. (‘n’ hearty?) One of the revelations is that Margaret was called Isabella in a life in ancient Roman times.

Some weeks later the nearby Windsor Hotel burns, and among the victims helped by Mata are a badly burned Dorn, who finally confesses that his marrage to Margaret was was valid and thus her son will not be illegitimate. Whew! Wouldn’t want that now! Then Dorn dies and good riddance.

To wrap up, after a couple years more Margaret is packed off to sconset near Nantucket h- for some much needed rest and relaxation. Who should show up but Judge Hale and nephew Mortimer. Margaret is more beautiful than ever, motherhood being kind to her plus probably an element of inner peace, and Mortimer decides that she will have no choice but to marry him. He doesn’t care for kids but it will be no problem to bundle little Gilbert off to school. Hale is revolted by his crassness, as he has become very attached to little Gilbert.

Once again a man with the mental consistency of concrete is foiled by Margaret’s resolve. Mortimer is on the verge of practically forcing her to submit, when in a bizarre carriage accident, he is killed and Judge Hale injured.

Hale is healed via psychic visit from Mata, and on hearing that Mortimer is dead, he asks Margaret if she and little Gilbert will live with him as his heirs. So all is sort of well that ends well.

Analysis

Let me preface this whole thing with “I may be totally wrong, but…”

Isabella, I’m afraid, gives gothic novelists nothing to worry about. Her ear for dialog is resoundingly tin.

When Dorn asks “By the way, what are your ideas about marriage, Margaret?” she declaims as follows: (p. 122)

“For those who love each other and intend to be true to their vows, the formality of a marriage neither increases nor diminishes their happiness; but since it is lawful that all marriages in this country are solemnized in that way, and since children born of parents not united in that manner are considered illegitimate, it is both right and proper to conform to the customs of the country in that resepect as well as in all other resepects.”

You said a mouthful, Margaret. When was the last time you met anyone who uses semicolons in their speech?

Without pretending to be a psychologist, I found it interesting how truly evil and hateful the Mother is portrayed. Although it’s possible Isabella is writing this from firsthand experience, I think it’s more likely that she either (a) hated her mother, who may have had some of the characteristics described or (b) took the portrayal from somewhere else.

Isabella is fairly merciless on some of the other characters too. They appear to be pretty one-dimensional, i.e., they are either kind and good or horrible, petty, selfish and mean. Margaret’s betrothed, Mr Mortimer, has to break off with her since he cannot bear to live in the same house with Mrs Blondell, and Margaret will not abandon her mother.

It’s very tempting to think the character of Margaret is Isabella’s idealized picture of herself.

I don’t remember but I think I wasn’t able to lay my hands on a copy of “Mata the Magician”, but if I have to pay more than a couple dollars for it, I’ll probably pass it by.