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Autobiographical Dictation, 11 January 1909 ❉ Textual Commentary

Source document.

TS      Typescript, seven unnumbered leaves, made from Howden’s notes and revised.

This is the last typescript that Howden is known to have made. On 3 February she received her last payment (“Approximate Pay Roll March 1st ’07 to Feb’y 28th ’09,” Schedule 8 of “Accountants’ Statements and Schedules” 1909). Numerous badly inked letters and typographical errors have been corrected in ink, apparently by Howden; these are not reported.

Dictated at Stormfield, January 11textual note, 1909

From away back towards the very beginning of the Shakspearetextual note-Bacon controversy I have been on the Bacon sideexplanatory note, and have wanted to see our majestic Shakspearetextual note unhorsed. My reasons for this attitude may have been good, they may have been bad, but such as they were, they strongly influenced me. It always seemed unaccountable to me that a man could be so prominent in Elizabeth’s little London as historians and biographers claim that Shakspearetextual note was, and yet leave behind him hardly an incident for people to remember him by; leave behind him nothing muchtextual note but trivialities; leave behind him little ortextual note nothing but the happenings of an utterly commonplace life, happenings that could happen to the butcher and the grocer, the candlestickmaker and the undertaker, and there an end—deep, solemn, sepulchral silence. It always seemed to me that not even a distinguished horse could die and leave such biographical poverty behind him. His biographers did their best, I have to concede it, they took his attendance at the grammar-school; they took his holding of horses at sixpenny tips; they took his play-acting on the other side of the river; they took his picturesque deer-stealingtextual note; they took his diligent and profitable Stratford wool-staplings, they took his too-previoustextual note relations with his subsequent wife; they took his will—that monumental will!—with its solemnly comic second-best bed incident; they took his couple of reverently preserved and solely existenttextual note signaturesexplanatory note in the which he revealed the fact that he didn’t know how to spell his own name; they took this poortextual note half-handful of inconsequential odds and ends,textual note and spun it [begin page 299] out, and economised it, and inflated it to bursting, and made a biography with a capital B out of it. It seemed incomprehensibly odd to me, that a man situated as Shakspearetextual note apparently was, could live to be fifty-two years old and never a thingtextual note happen to him.

When Ignatius Donnelly’s book came out, eighteen or twenty years ago, I not only published it, but read itexplanatory note. It was an ingenious piece of work and it interested me. The world made all sorts of fun of it, but it seemed to me that there were things in it which the thoughtful could hardly afford to laugh at. They have passed out of my mind now, or have grown vague with time and wear, but I still remember one of those smart details of Donnelly’s. According to my recollection he remarked that it is quite natural for writers, when painting pictures with their pens, to use scenery that they are familiar with in place of using scenery that they only know about by hearsay. In this connection he called attention to the strikingtextual note fact that Shakspearetextual note does not use Stratford surroundings and Stratfordtextual note names when he wants to localizetextual note an event, but uses scenes familiar to Lord Bacon instead; hardly even mentioning Stratford, but mentioning St. Albans three-and-twenty times!

Ignatius Donnelly believed he had found Bacon’s name acrostified—or acrosticised—I don’t know which is right—crypticallytextual note concealed all through the Shakspereantextual note plays. I think his acrostics were not altogether convincing; I believe a person had to work his imagination rather hard sometimes if he wanted to believe in the acrostics. Donnelly’s book fell pretty flat, and from that day to this the notion that Bacon wrote Shakspearetextual note has been dying a slow death. Nowadaystextual note one hardly ever sees even a passing reference to it, and when such references have occurred they have uniformly been accompanied by a gentle sneer.

Well, two or three weeks from now a bombshell will fall upon ustextual note which may possiblytextual note woundily astonish the human race! For there is secretly and privately a book in press in Boston, by an English clergyman, which may unhorse Shakspearetextual note permanently and put Bacon in the saddle. Once more the acrostic will be in the ascendant, and this time it may be thattextual note some people will think twice before they laugh at it. That wonder of wonders, Helen Keller, has been here on a three days’textual note visit with her devoted teachers and protectors Mr. and Mrs.textual note John Macy, and Macy has told me about the clergyman’s bookexplanatory note and bound me to secrecy. I am divulging the secret to my autobiography for distant future revealment, but shall keep the matter to myself in conversation. The clergyman has found Bacon’s name concealed in acrostics in more than a hundredtextual note places in the plays and sonnets. I have examined a couple of the examples and I feel that just these two examples all by themselves are almost sufficient to discrown Shakspearetextual note and enthrone Bacon. One of the examples is the Epilogue to “The Tempest.”textual note In this acrostic Bacon’s name is concealed in its Latin form—Francisco Baconoexplanatory note. You take the last word of the Epilogue (free) and move your finger to the left to the beginning of that last line, then to the right along the next line above, then to the left again to the beginning of the third line and so on and so on, going left then right then left until you find a word which begins with R. You will find it in the fifth line from the bottom; your finger will then be moving to the left; it will encounter an A at the beginning of the sixth line and will thence move to the [begin page 300] right; it will move to the left through the seventh line and to the right again along the eighth line and will encounter an N in that line. Nine lines above,textual note it will find C and I; two lines above that it will find S. In this acrostic no letters aretextual note used that occur within a word or at the right-handtextual note end of it; continue the process and you find the C and the O properly placed;textual note only letterstextual note that begin textual note words and letters that stand by themselves textual note are used.

“Bacono”textual note begins with the word “be” at the end of the next to the last line, and proceeds right and left as before,textual note picking up initial letters as it goes along until it reaches the first line of the Epilogue,textual note and that line furnishes the close of the name “Bacono.”textual note

Through the last page of “King Lear”textual note is scattered the acrostic “Verulam,” spelt backwards. It begins with the last word of the last line,textual note which is a stage-directiontextual note ( “Exeunt with a dead march” textual note). That line furnishes two of the letters, M and A, the line immediately above furnishes the L; you travel upward nine lines before you come to a word beginning with U; four lines higher up you find a word beginning with R; twenty-onetextual note lines above that you find a word beginning with E, and you do not find it any earlier; you find the V in the line immediately above that and the acrostic stands completed.

One may examine these two examples until he is tired, hoping that these two names got distributed in this orderly and systematic way without a hitch anywhere, by accident textual note, and he will have only his interesting labor for his pains. If he had only one example he might, by clever and possibly specious reasoning, convince himself that the thing was an accident; but when he finds two examples strictly following the law of the system he will know, for sure, that not both of them are accidents; and he will probably end by conceding that nineteen-twentieths of the probabilities are that both are results of design and neither of them a miracle. For he will know that nothing short of a miracle could produce a couple of such elaborate and extraordinary accidents as these.

Mr. Macy says that there are between 100 and 150 examples in the plays and sonnets that are the match of these two. This being so, the likelihood that Shakspearetextual note riddled his works with Bacon’s name and Bacon’s titles and forgot to acrosticise his own anywhere is exceedingly remote—much remoter than any distance measurable on this planet, indeed remoter than that new planet of Professor Pickering’sexplanatory note which is so far outside Neptune’s orbit that it makes Neptune seem sort of close to ustextual note and sociably situated.

These acrostics have been dug out of the earliest and least doctoredtextual note editions of Shakspearetextual note. Sometimes in the much-editedtextual note editions of our day changes in the text break up the acrostic. The general reader will not have access to the folio of 1623 and its brethren, therefore photographic facsimiles will be made from those early editions and placed before the reader of the clergyman’s book, so that he can trace out the acrostics for himself. I am to have proof sheetstextual note as fast as they issue from the galleys, and am to behave myself and keep still. I shall live in a heaven of excitedtextual note anticipation for a while now. I have allowed myself for so many many years the offensive privilege of laughing at people who believed in Shakspearetextual note that I shall perish with shame if the clergyman’s book fails to unseat that grossly commercial wool-stapler. However, we shall see. I shan’t order my monument yet.

Textual Notes Dictated at Stormfield, January 11, 1909
  11 ●  11th (TS) 
  Shakspeare ●  Shakespear (TS) 
  Shakspeare ●  Shakespear (TS) 
  Shakspeare ●  Shakespear (TS) 
  much ●  much  (TS-SLC) 
  little or ●  little or  (TS-SLC) 
  deer-stealing ●  deer-stealing (TS-SLC) 
  too-previous ●  two too- previous (TS-SLC) 
  existent ●  existant (TS) 
  poor ●  poor little  (TS-SLC) 
  odds and ends, ●  rubbish, odds and ends,  (TS-SLC) 
  Shakspeare ●  Shakespear (TS) 
  thing ●  blame thing (TS-SLC) 
  striking ●  very striking (TS-SLC) 
  Shakspeare ●  Shakespear (TS) 
  Stratford ●  stratford | ford  (TS-SLC) 
  localize ●  localise (TS) 
  cryptically ●  cr i yptically (TS-SLC) 
  Shaksperean ●  Shakespearian (TS) 
  Shakspeare ●  Shakespear (TS) 
  Nowadays ●  Now-a-days (TS) 
  will fall upon us ●  will fall upon us  (TS-SLC) 
  possibly ●  pos | possibly (TS) 
  Shakspeare ●  Shakespear (TS) 
  it may be that ●  it may be that  (TS-SLC) 
  days’ ●  day’s (TS) 
  and Mrs. ●  andMrs. (TS) 
  a hundred ●  100 (TS) 
  Shakspeare ●  Shakespear (TS) 
  “The Tempest.” ●  the Tempest. (TS) 
  above, ●  above,  (TS-SLC) 
  are ●  are  (TS-Howden) 
  right-hand ●  right hand (TS) 
  continue . . . placed; ●  continue the process and you find the C and the O properly placed;  (TS-SLC) 
  letters ●  letters  (TS-SLC) 
  begin  ●  begin ‘begin’ underscored  (TS-SLC) 
  by themselves  ●  by themselves ‘by themselves’ underscored  (TS-SLC) 
  “Bacono” ●  Bacono (TS) 
  before, ●  before,  (TS-SLC) 
  Epilogue, ●  Epilogue,  (TS-SLC) 
  “Bacono.” ●  Bacono. (TS) 
  “King Lear” ●  King Lear (TS) 
  line, ●  line,  (TS-SLC) 
  stage-direction ●  stage direction (TS) 
  “Exeunt with a dead march”  ●  Exeunt with a dead march (TS) 
  twenty-one ●  21 (TS) 
  accident  ●  accident ‘accident’ underscored  (TS-SLC) 
  Shakspeare ●  Shakespear (TS) 
  to us ●  by to us  (TS-SLC) 
  least doctored ●  unaltered least doctored  (TS-SLC) 
  Shakspeare ●  Shakespear (TS) 
  much-edited ●  much-edited (TS-SLC) 
  proof sheets ●  proof-sheets (TS) 
  excited ●  delighted and excited (TS-SLC) 
  Shakspeare ●  Shakespear (TS) 
Explanatory Notes Dictated at Stormfield, January 11, 1909
 

From away back towards the very beginning of the Shakspeare-Bacon controversy I have been on the Bacon side] The theory that Sir Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam, 1561–1626) wrote the plays usually ascribed to William Shakespeare was first put forward by Delia Bacon (1811–59), of Hartford. In a magazine article published in 1856 and a book published the next year, she asserted that the plays’ author had to be of better birth and education than Shakespeare, the “stupid, ignorant, illiterate, third-rate play-actor” of Stratford. If Clemens’s account in Is Shakespeare Dead? (1909) is to be trusted, “Delia Bacon’s book” made him a Baconian in 1856 or 1857; evidence is against this. He recorded some doubts about Shakespeare’s authorship in an 1873 notebook, but as a rule his adherence to the Baconian party is not apparent before 1887 (see the note at 299.4–5; Delia Bacon 1856, 19; Delia Bacon 1857; SLC 1909a, 4–17; N&J1 , 562–63; Berret 1993; Gribben 1980, 2:633–36).

 

his holding of horses . . . his couple of reverently preserved and solely existent signatures] These incidents (of varying degrees of verifiability) in the life of Shakespeare are discussed in standard biographies, such as Sidney Lee’s Life, and in studies of Shakespearean biography such as S. Schoenbaum’s Shakespeare’s Lives (Sidney Lee 1908; Schoenbaum 1991).

 

When Ignatius Donnelly’s book came out . . . I not only published it, but read it] Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901) was a Minnesota politician, lawyer, and author. In The Great Cryptogram (1888) he claimed Bacon wrote the plays, scattering clues to his authorship, written in a cipher, throughout the text of the 1623 First Folio edition. Donnelly’s theory was much discussed in newspapers before publication. Clemens’s memory that he published Donnelly’s book is erroneous. On 9 July 1887 he wrote from Elmira to Fred Hall (deputizing for Charles Webster): “Couldn’t we get Ignatius Donelly’s Shakspeare-cipher book?—or has Thorndike Rice captured it?” He crossed out that sentence, however, and wrote: “No—we don’t want it” (NPV, in MTBus, 384). Hall replied that “Donnelly offered us his Shakespeare book, but Mr. Webster thought it best to decline it, especially as the author wanted all the profits” (10 Aug 1887, CU-MARK). Clemens then forgot his earlier letter, and blamed Webster for a decision that merely duplicated his own. He wrote to Orion on 7 September that Webster “had the hardihood to turn Donelly’s Shakspeare book away without asking me anything about it . . . Of course he didn’t know he was throwing away $50,000; he was merely ignorant; had probably never heard of Bacon & didn’t know there was a controversy. This won’t happen again” (CU-MARK; N&J3, 324 n. 73). On the same day, Susy Clemens wrote to Edward H. House (ViU):

There is a great discussion in our family at the present time, upon . . . the authorship of Shakespeares plays.

The notices of Mr. Donnelrys book are not very favorable to poor old William. It would be a revolution if Shakespeare should be dethroned and Bacon, placed upon his long occupied pedestal.

Mamma revolts at the mere idea, but papa favors Bacon, & so do I.

The Great Cryptogram received wide (but mostly contemptuous) press coverage, and was a financial failure (Friedman and Friedman 1957, 27–50; Fish 1892, 115).

 

a book in press in Boston . . . Macy has told me about the clergyman’s book] Helen Keller, with her guardians Anne (Sullivan) Macy and John Macy, arrived at Stormfield on 8 January 1909. Isabel Lyon noted in her diary that John Macy had brought the galleys of a new book on the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy: “The King was instantly alert.” The book, William Stone Booth’s Some Acrostic Signatures of Francis Bacon, was yet another attempt to show Bacon’s authorship through ciphered messages in the First Folio text. “He has convinced the King of this truth,” wrote Lyon, “and the King has seized upon it with a destroying zeal . . . you’d think both men had Shakespeare by the throat righteously strangling him for some hideous crime.” At Macy’s urging, Clemens began to write Is Shakespeare Dead? on 11 January and finished it on 9 March; Harper and Brothers published it in April (Lyon 1909; Booth 1909; SLC 1909a). The British-born writer William Stone Booth (1864–1926) was not a “clergyman,” as Clemens repeatedly calls him.

 

One of the examples is the Epilogue to “The Tempest.” . . . Francisco Bacono] This example is specifically discussed by William Friedman and Elizebeth Friedman, who show that, using Booth’s methods, it is just as easy to extract the “signature” of Ben Jonson or several other Tudor luminaries (Friedman and Friedman 1957, 120–21).

 

that new planet of Professor Pickering’s] In the first days of 1909 it was reported that Harvard astronomer William H. Pickering (1858–1938) had concluded, from analysis of the “perturbations” of Neptune’s orbit, that a ninth planet existed. (Pickering’s conjectural planet is not identical with Pluto, which would be discovered in 1930.) On 4 January, Clemens wrote his short sketch “The New Planet,” which was published in Harper’s Weekly at the end of the month (New York Times: “Report a New Planet,” 2 Jan 1909, 1; “Finding the Orbit of the New Planet,” 4 Jan 1909, 3; “To Verify New Planet,” 10 Jan 1909, 4; SLC 1909a, 1909b; Hoyt 1976).