An Eminent Baconian

A very curious chapter in the history of the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy closes with the death of Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence. Amid all the strange multitude of retired judges, lawyers, astrologers, and American ladies who have championed the cause of Lord Verulam there has been no figure more singular than that of this affluent old ex-M.P., who, after a lifetime spent in business, platform speaking, and the study of modern mechanical improvements, suddenly plunged into the fight with unprecedented enthusiasm and methods of argument never equalled in their singularity. Setting out with the conviction that Shakespeare could not possibly have written the plays, and that Bacon was the only man who could have, Sir Edwin became so obsessed with the subject that he found proofs of his contention everywhere, and gradually came to the conclusion that Bacon wrote almost all the Elizabethan and Jacobean literature that is worth reading. We have heard of the devout mystic who sees “every common bush afire with God”: to Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence every common bush was afire with Bacon. His outlook being of this character, it is scarcely to be wondered at that his methods of reasoning and of research were most surprising.

Most people who read his pamphlet, The Shakespeare Myth, must have been astounded by the naïveté of some of the “proofs” there contained. The fact that Bacon was called Bacon—a name so easily interchangeable with pig, hog, and rasher—was a great help; for where the application of ciphers did not obtain one word it might obtain another. Bacon, according to Sir Edwin, must have been at least as preoccupied with ensuring his identification by posterity as with the writing of good verse, for he would take great pains to work in such a word as “hang-hog,” or to make three consecutive lines begin with words—such as Pompey, In, and Got—out of the initials of which could be constructed the appellation “pig.” Everything was pork that came to Sir Edwin’s net, and he would by tortuous ratiocination get evidence from the most seemingly innocent contemporary English and foreign engravings. For there was a secret brotherhood at work carrying on the Baconian tradition, and the artist who gave the portrait of Shakespeare two left sleeves (the confirmation of this was, I think, obtained from the editor of the Tailor & Cutter) had a subtle and profound intention. Sir Edwin collected a very large library in connexion with his work, and the study of it was his passion; but, save industry, he had none of the qualifications for his task.

I myself obtained in a strange way an amusing insight into his looseness of procedure. He had been writing letters maintaining his thesis in a contemporary weekly. Wondering whether he could be hoaxed, I sent to the paper a letter over what might have seemed, to a man with any real detective faculty, the suspicious signature “P. O. R. Ker.” In this letter I called Sir Edwin’s attention to a quotation (which I had myself invented and written in Elizabethanese) which I ascribed to one of the best-known works of Greene. My “quotation” (I forget its wording, but it contained phrases about “Shakescene” and “the semblance of a hogg”) made it perfectly clear that Shakespeare was merely Bacon’s dummy. Any man with the slightest qualifications for his work would have looked up Greene for reference—and would not have found it. Not so Sir Edwin. He wrote in at once (the editor, in order to spare his feelings, did not print the communication) to say that the fact that Mr. Ker’s important and convincing reference had been ignored by the Shakespeareans showed their utter incompetence.

But the most striking thing about him was his detestation of Shakespeare. There are people who hate Napoleon; there are people who object to Torquemada; there are even people who feel a pronounced distaste for Nero. But never has any one loathed and despised a dead man as the really mild and amiable Sir Edwin despised and loathed Shakespeare. No epithets were, he felt, too opprobrious for this rascal, who for three hundred years had cheated another man out of his due fame. He denied Shakespeare any virtue at all; he pointed out that there existed no proof that Shakespeare could even read; and he habitually referred to him as the “drunken, illiterate clown of Stratford,” “the sordid money-lender of Stratford,” and “the mean, drunken, ignorant, and absolutely unlettered rustic of Stratford.” So strong, indeed, were his feelings that when the Times says that “One cannot but feel that he was happy in not living to see the celebrations which the British Academy and other friends of literature are to hold in 1916, the third centenary of Shakespeare’s—not Bacon’s—death,” it is not making a weak and untimely jest, but stating the sober truth.

Who will now take on Sir Edwin’s mantle as the most conspicuous Baconian? Mr. George Greenwood is hors concours because, though an anti-Shakespearean, he has doubts about Bacon; and we have heard nothing lately about that romantic American doctor who a year or two ago began digging for evidence in the bed of the sylvan Wye. That another ardent combatant will soon appear is pretty certain; in fact, there will probably be a continual succession of such for all time unless—which is unlikely—somebody discovers documentary proofs of Shakespeare’s authorship so irrefutable that no one could dream of challenging them. For the examination of a mystery—if you can persuade yourself that there is a mystery—is always fascinating, and the search for and application of ciphers and hidden meanings produces such entertaining results that it would be almost worth while becoming a Baconian for the fun of it. Almost, but not quite.