Concerning the bi-literal cypher of Francis Bacon discovered in his works

by Elizabeth Wells Gallup

I am grateful for the opportunity to reply to the article of the late Mr. Bompas in the July number of Baconiana.

I am also grateful to Mr. Cunningham for his prefatory remarks and footnotes, and I wish to say that his regret is my own as well, that Mr. Bompas did not discuss the paper with members of the Society better advised than was he, and that the MS. of the article had not been submitted to me while Mr. Bompas was still with us, or at least before publication, for some, if not all, the erroneous conclusions drawn could have been dissipated before they took form. The explanations would have given that gentleman and his readers a more comprehensive view, a different view point, and greater light upon the subject.

It is rare that an article appearing in public print carries upon analysis its own evidences of error, and in the next preceding pages finds so complete a refutation as does this in the article of Mrs. Kindersley.

In his opening statement Mr. Bompas says: “The copies of Henry VII. which have been examined do not exactly correspond.... The form of many of the capitals also differs in the different copies.... Mr. Cuningham’s copy differs widely from the others.... Either each copy contains a different cipher story, which is absurd, or the decipherer happened by chance to light on the only correct copy, which is equally absurd.” Then Mr. Bompas proceeds to build an argument upon the fact that the copy of my MS., furnished to the Society, did not correspond with some copy of Henry VII. with which he compared it, concluding, therefore, that the cipher system must be a myth, and Mrs. Gallup a visionary or a fraud.

Any comparison to establish the correctness of my work must be made either with the copy I used or one identical with it. That Mr. Bompas used some copy not identical, but one printed differently, is substantiated by Mrs. Kindersley, whose three months’ work on an identical copy—as against one week Mr. Bompas spent on a different printing—resulted in her verification of nearly all the letters studied. It is still more forcibly proved by the table of headings Mr. Bompas prints, the Italics in which do not at all correspond in the different forms with the book I used. It therefore follows that the entire argument, from pages 169 to and including part of 176, so far as relates to Henry VII., is founded upon a false premise and falls to the ground.

Mr. Bompas says, “Either each copy contains a different cipher, which is absurd,” &c.

On the contrary, that is just what occurs in unlike copies. Those widely differing belong to different editions, although published in the same year, as I have found to be true, and stated in my article in Baconiana published in 1901. Two issues of the Treatise of Melancholy appeared in 1586 with differing Italic printing. I have deciphered both. One ends with an incomplete cipher word, which is completed in the other where the narrative is continued, and the book ends with the signature of Bacon on the last page. I have also found that in two editions of Bacon’s acknowledged works one had the cipher and one had not. The peculiar Italicizing and the same forms of letters were in both. In one the arrangement of the letters followed the cipher system, in the other no amount of study could make them “read.” Bacon refers in the cipher to some false and surreptitious copies issued without his authority.

The differences in print of Henry VII. first came to light, apparently, through the comparisons made with my MS. in London, and the report of it was a great surprise to me. Mrs. Kindersley was kind enough to send me one of her copies, and, as before stated, this was found to be identical with the one I used except that three or four typographical errors in her copy were corrected in mine, and one in mine did not occur in hers, but in no case was a verbal change made and only one orthographical.

About the same time it chanced that a copy of the work—a recent importation from London—was sent me from Chicago for examination. This I found quite different in the use of Italics. I did not decipher the work, but became convinced that it either contained another cipher story, or was one of the “false and surreptitious copies” before referred to.

In addition to the criticism of Henry VII., Mr. Bompas refers to some typographical errors making slight differences in our own editions of the Bi-literal Cipher, and to the examples in the editions of De Augmentis of 1623 and 1624.