XIX
LORD BACON MUSES ON CIPHERS
“I’ll tell you one bet you’ve overlooked in your ramblings around with shades,” remarked the city editor, “and that’s the chance to get the right answer to that Shakespeare-Bacon controversy. I was reminded of it last night when I happened across that old story of the woman who said to her husband: ‘When I get to heaven I’m going to ask Shakespeare if he really wrote those plays.’ ‘But suppose Shakespeare isn’t there?’ returned her husband. ‘Then you can ask him,’ she replied. Have you heard any of the spooks discussing the question?”
“I’ve never even heard it mentioned,” I responded. “You may remember I had a chat with Mr. Shakespeare himself some time ago on the subject of the movies, but there was something in his attitude that kept me from asking what might have been embarrassing questions. And besides, as is quite common with these shades of the mighty, when they once get started talking it’s pretty hard to get a word in edgewise. I believe it would be better to tackle Lord Bacon and see what he has to say about it. If he has a grievance he’s a lot more likely to talk than the man who’s generally accepted as the author of Shakespeare’s works.”
I approached the eminent Lord Chancellor, jurist and philosopher with considerable trepidation, but like all the truly great his modesty and affability quickly put me at my ease.
“You wish to know who was the real author of the works attributed to Shakespeare, eh?” he replied, with a smile of amusement. “So they’re beginning to raise the question down on earth, are they? I thought those ciphers might puzzle ’em for a few hundred years yet. Well, and who do they think wrote ’em?”
“Some persons say you did, Lord Bacon, and others attribute the authorship to the Earl of Dudley and other of your contemporaries. A Detroit man got permission to dig in the bed of the river Wye for the head of the Earl, which was supposed to be buried there, together with a box of manuscripts that would prove him to be the real Shakespeare.”
“Hum, hum,” mused his lordship. “I guess somebody else lost his head that time. Well, all you tell me is extremely interesting, I’m sure. And I presume even Will Shakespeare has his partisans, too, who insist still that the uneducated village lad from Stratford who used to hold horses in front of the London theaters for a living—and then served his term as a ‘chaser’ on the stage during the supper hour in vaudeville—that this strolling actor was actually the author of the immortal plays bearing his name?”
“Oh, yes, your lordship, Shakespeare would probably win by a large majority, if the matter were left to a popular vote.”
“Excuse me if I smile. The thought is highly amusing. I don’t believe I am quite ready, as yet, to present any formal claim to the authorship, but if I were free to speak I could— But, pshaw! What’s the difference? There are plenty of similar cases of masquerading authors in even later English literature which no mortal has yet discovered. By the way, has any question been raised, to date, about the so-called Dickens novels? There hasn’t? Everybody takes it for granted that they were written by Charles Dickens, the young, untrained reporter, who never had any education after he was twelve years of age, who worked in a blacking factory when he was ten? Well, well. You surprise me. Has nobody found any ciphers yet in his work? Not a one? Well, then look out for a sensation one of these days. Ciphers have always been my hobby, but long before I found any cryptic corroboration for my theory in Dickens’ works I was pretty sure who really wrote them. Can you think of a certain great statesman, like myself, but who flourished in the Victorian era, a dignified, austere personage who might not like to be known as the author of humorous works, but who might have got Dickens to lend his name for the purpose? You can’t? Try again. Well, I’ll make a suggestion: William E. Gladstone. Don’t smile. Wait until you hear the proofs. Gladstone had a contemporary and rival, Disraeli, who published novels under a pen name. Later Disraeli used his own name and the fact did not help his reputation as a statesman. Each of the principal so-called Dickens novels deals with some great proposed reform, such as the abolition of imprisonment for debt, the improvement of penal institutions and poor-houses, removal of delays in the law, the cutting of red tape in government offices, the wiping-out of the wretched Yorkshire schools.