Ohio History Journal

THE TOWN OF TALLMADGE--THE BACONS

AND SHAKESPEARE*

BY T. C. MENDENHALL

The two ends of my topic seem widely separated,

both in space and in time; thousands of miles in space

and hundreds of years in time.

The object of this paper is to bridge this gap; to give

some information about the one, and to show how its

story may be of tremendous significance to the other.

First, then, the Town of Tallmadge. I use the

word "town" in that larger, finer sense in which it is

generally used in New England; redolent of the "town

meeting", the best example of a pure democracy. It

is geographically equivalent to the more common term

"township".

But in New England and originally in that part of

the state of Ohio in which is the Town of Tallmadge, it

implies a more intimate association of all the people of

the district. In accord with this idea, the geographical

center of these small political units, where will be found,

almost invariably, the postoffice, church, general store,

etc., is not differentiated from other parts by a separate

name, but is known simply as "the center". In Portage

County we speak of Randolph and Randolph Center; of

Atwater and Atwater Center, and there is undeniably a

more unified or "community" sentiment throughout the

twenty-five square miles of the "town" than is usual in

similar areas designated as "townships", in which the

* Address at annual meeting of the Ohio State Archaeological and

Historical Society, September 19, 1923.

(590)

Town of Tallmadge--The Bacons and Shakespeare 591

principal village is often not near the geographical cen-

ter and generally bears an entirely different name.

Thus, although throughout the Western Reserve the

name "township" is used as the proper legal designation,

the distinction is still recognized in the general use of the

township name alone, as meaning the twenty-five square

miles of territory, and not the village which may be

within its borders.

So when I speak of the "Town of Tallmadge" I

mean the twenty-five square miles of territory to which

the name "Tallmadge" belongs.

In this company even a brief resume of the incidents

leading to the creation of the Town of Tallmadge may

be considered an entirely unjustifiable and even unpar-

donable assumption of ignorance regarding national and

state history, but on the chance that some may have

forgotten what all once knew, I remind you that in the

year of our Lord, 1662, when Kings and Emperors were

generous in giving away what they never possessed,

Charles II of England granted to his Connecticut Col-

ony all the land between the 41st and 42nd degrees of

north latitude, from the western boundary of the state

to the Pacific ocean; a princely gift of about 185,000

square miles, or four and a half times the area of the

state of Ohio.

There were excepted such parts as had been already

occupied by properly authorized settlers; but the ag-

gressive Connecticut colony undertook to assert its

rights under this charter and became involved in dis-

putes with colonial authorities of both New York and

Pennsylvania. The Revolutionary War put an end to

this quarrel and at its conclusion the state of Connecticut

ceded to Congress all claims under this charter for ter-

592     Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

ritory west of the state of Pennsylvania, reserving, how-

ever, a strip bounded on the east by the Pennsylvania

line; on the south by the 41st parallel of north latitude

extending west to a point one hundred and twenty miles

from the Pennsylvania line, through which point a

meridian constitutes the western boundary, while Lake

Erie furnishes the northern.

Thus was created the Western Reserve or "New

Connecticut" as it was more often called a hundred years

ago.

Its area is approximately 6,000 square miles, or

nearly four million acres. All but a half million acres,

lying at the western end of the strip, was soon after-

ward sold to the Connecticut Land Company for $1,-

200,000.00, which sum became a part of the irreducible

school fund of the state of Connecticut.

In charge of the survey and mapping of this tract

was Moses Cleaveland, whose name is borne by Ohio's

most populous city. The whole was at first included in

a single county organization, created in the year 1800,

and bearing the name of the most distinguished of Con-

necticut families, one member of which, Jonathan Trum-

bull, Jr., famous soldier and statesman, was at that time

governor of the state. The phrase "Brother Jonathan"

which fifty years ago was used almost as frequently as

"Uncle Sam" is today, is supposed to refer to Jonathan

Trumbull, Sr., also governor under both kingdom and

republic, and an intimate friend and valiant supporter

of George Washington.

In this survey towns were made five miles square,

(smaller than in any other part of the state,) their

bounds being as nearly as possible meridians and paral-

lels of latitude.

Town of Tallmadge--The Bacons and Shakespeare 593

In 1807 Portage County was formed, including much

of what is now Summit County, the latter being organ-

ized in 1840. Thus our Town of Tallmadge has been

a part of three different county organizations, though

during the period of its history in which we are espe-

cially interested it was a part of Portage County. As

an easy way of describing its location I may say that in

recent years it has been despoiled to satisfy the in-

satiable appetite of the Rubber Tire, the city of Akron

having taken a good bite out of its southwestern corner,

while the northwestern corner has fallen prey to the

hunger of the municipality of Cuyahoga Falls.

Previous to the year 1807 it had neither name nor

white inhabitants. In July of that year came David

Bacon, missionary and colonist, in both capacities per-

haps one of the most conspicuous and certainly one of

the finest and most successful failures of his time.

I say this because, though measured by all or any

of the ordinary standards of success his work, both as

missionary and colonist, was an almost irredeemable

failure, his unselfish devotion to the betterment of the

condition of his fellows; his readiness to undergo the

severest hardships; to travel on foot for hundreds of

miles through dense, unblazed forests, clad as the

aborigines and often suffering from hunger and thirst;

his apparently unbreakable courage and buoyancy of

disposition; all these, together with the inborn nobility

of his character, go to make of David Bacon a truly

heroic figure.

In the year 1800 he was sent by the Missionary So-

ciety of Connecticut to service among the Indian tribes

on the border of Lake Erie. He was then about forty

years of age, an idealist and a dreamer.

Vol. XXXII -- 38.

594      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

Shortly before starting on the long and dangerous

journey to the military post at Detroit, which was to be

the center of his new field of labor, he had married Alice

Parks, aged eighteen years, who developed into a woman

of rare qualities. Possessing the missionary spirit to an

equal degree with her husband she combined great cour-

age with good, practical sense, the latter quality being

in him almost totally lacking. In reading the life of Da-

vid Bacon, as portrayed by his illustrious son, Dr. Leon-

ard Bacon, one cannot but feel that it was the mother

who patiently bore the greater share of the burden of a

hard life, not always buoyed up by the emotional op-

timism which never failed the father.

It was the misfortune of David Bacon always to

plan larger than he could build. At Detroit he became

involved in debt; his relations with the officers at the

military post were not entirely satisfactory and for va-

rious reasons that cannot have a place here, after a serv-

ice of nearly four years he was directed by the Con-

necticut Society to leave that part of the country and

"without unnecessary delay, to repair to New Connecti-

cut, there to itinerate as a missionary and improve him-

self in the Indian language." To most men this would

have been a serious blow but soon after he received the

order, which was nearly six months in reaching him. he

wrote as follows:

As my mind was fully bent on prosecuting the objects

of this mission, and as I had strong hopes that God would

glorify Himself by granting success to it, notwithstanding pres-

ent appearances, I was not thinking or wishing for a removal.

But the information I have mentioned (the order for removal)

gave a turn to my thoughts, and the more I contemplated the

increasing discouragements attending this mission and the

brighter prospects which were presented from another quarter,

the more occasion I saw for joy and thankfulness.

Town of Tallmadge--The Bacons and Shakespeare 595

Shortly we find him at Hudson, then a young and

small settlement, destined to furnish one of his great dis-

appointments, as the seat of the Western Reserve Col-

lege.

An unfriendly message from Connecticut called him

to New England to render an account of his mission in

Detroit.

This journey he made alone and almost entirely on

foot, though when he began it "he was just recovering

from a very serious attack of intermittent fever and

was pale and emaciated."

After being fully exonerated of all suspicions of dis-

honesty he was offered, on his return to Hudson, another

appointment by the Missionary Society. But in the

meantime there had developed in his mind a vision of

an adventure of another sort; one which he believed

would be of greater value to the "New Connecticut" to

which he had become greatly attached, than anything he

might accomplish as a missionary among the Indians.

Filled with enthusiasm for the new enterprise, he

again journeyed to Connecticut, where he sought the

proprietors of the twenty-five square miles of unoccu-

pied land, upon which he afterwards bestowed the name

of the principal owner, Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge

of Litchfield, Connecticut.

Another of the proprietors was Roger Newberry,

grandfather of Professor John S. Newberry, the dis-

tinguished geologist who, though born in Connecticut

was brought, at the age of two years, to Cuyahoga Falls,

where he grew up upon the estate inherited by his

father.

With a characteristic recklessness Bacon purchased

twenty of the twenty-five square miles of this tract with-

596      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

out having a dollar to put down in payment. The re-

maining five mostly belonged to persons who might, and

later did join in his enterprise.

His plan was to establish in this town a strictly Chris-

tian community, which should be a model in all of its

affairs for other settlements in the Western Reserve.

Farms or lots of land were to be sold only to members

in good standing of the Congregational Church, for the

support of which each purchaser, by special contract,

agreed to pay a yearly tax in proportion to the value of

his property.

It is related that for a time this condition of church

membership was strictly adhered to, with a single ex-

ception. It was necessary to have a blacksmith in the

community and in the discussion of this problem there

was a general agreement that one competent and willing

to shoe a kicking horse or a reluctant mule would prob-

ably find it necessary to use language of a strength and

flavor not in perfect harmony with the decalogue! Al-

most without exception the earlier followers of Bacon

were either directly from New England or New Eng-

landers from earlier settlements in adjoining counties.

In the first roll of the inhabitants there is nothing to

indicate the various occupations of the people, but in it

there is found the name "Boosinger", belonging to a

well-known German family which was among the first

to settle in that part of the state, and there can be little

doubt that in this instance it reveals the identity of the

profane blacksmith.

There is a tradition that during one of the prolonged

absences of the head of the community, engaged in a

propaganda for increasing its numbers, his frail but

heroic wife, alone with her small children in the log

Town of Tallmadge--The Bacons and Shakespeare 597

cabin in the woods, was on the verge of starvation and

when this fact was discovered by the blacksmith he went

at night to the farm of a well-to-do settler, stole a bag

of wheat, carried it to the mill to be ground, afterwards

depositing the flour at her door, thus adding the crime

of theft to that of profanity.

In his imagination Bacon saw the Town of Tall-

madge as a civic and social unit, and to this end in its

"laying out" it was a marked departure from the prac-

tice of other townships of the Western Reserve, indeed,

in this respect it is, I believe, unique. Instead of fol-

lowing the usual practice by dividing his tract into blocks

one mile square, with six hundred and forty acres in

each, his five miles square town was divided into sixteen

blocks, each being a mile and a quarter square and con-

taining one thousand acres.

Public roads were located along all four sides of each

block and from each of the corners of the town diagonal

roads were constructed, meeting at the center, thus

giving all parts of the tract comparatively easy access

to the central reservation of some hundreds of acres,

upon which the village was to grow, including the

church, the academy or high school, and also, in the near

future, what was closest to his heart, the "Yale" of New

Connecticut.

So alluring a prospect as that offered by Bacon could

not fail to attract those who were in sympathy with his

theory of life in a Christian community and the result

was a gathering of a group of families much above the

average in intelligence, culture and the essentials of high

character. Among them were some of the holders of

that part of the town not purchased by Bacon, who

gladly accepted his geographical and other limitations.

598     Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

There were, for example, the two Elizur Wrights,

father and son, the one already distinguished through-

out New England for his scholarly attainments, the

other destined to achieve an international reputation in

many fields of intellectual activity.

After graduating at Yale the younger Wright re-

turned to Ohio to serve for a few years as Professor of

Mathematics at Western Reserve College which had

only recently opened its doors at Hudson; the "Yale"

of New Connecticut, which both Bacon and Elizur

Wright, Sr., had hoped to see grow out of the Academy,

conducted by the latter in the Town of Tallmadge ten

years earlier. Elizur Wright, Jr., was one of the found-

ers of the American Anti-slavery Society, a writer of

eminence on a wide variety of topics, a distinguished

mathematician, a poet, a newspaper man, internation-

ally known as perhaps the first authority of his time in

matters relating to Life Insurance, and an inventor of

numerous valuable mechanical devices.

Indeed there are a few other men in our history who

have successfully cultivated so varied an assortment of

really serious occupations.

But from a material point of view the Christian com-

munity in Tallmadge was doomed to failure. Bacon

had expected to pay the Connecticut proprietors out of

the receipts from his sale of the tract to settlers, in

smaller lots. But too few settlers came and some of

those who did come had adopted the same financial pol-

icy as that of the founder of the community. Naturally

disaster followed. Bacon was deeply involved in debt

and much of the land became the property of the orig-

inal owners.

From the log cabin, built with his own hands on the

Town of Tallimadge--The Bacons and Shakespeare 599

bank of a small brook near the southern line of the town,

to which David Bacon had brought his wife and small

children in 1807, four years later, suffering, as he said,

from "illness and a broken heart" he led the way back

to the old Connecticut, which he, with his young wife

had left in such exaltation of spirit only ten years be-

fore. He had been practically dismissed by the Congre-

gational Society which he had founded, from which he

had been estranged for some time. In a little while he

died of premature decay, at the early age of forty-six

years.

But, to his everlasting credit, he had founded, first,

a line of direct descendants, for several generations all

eminent and useful men and women. Greatest of these

was his own son, Leonard, who left the town of Tall-

madge with his father at the age of nine years, later

the celebrated pastor of the First Congregational

Church in New Haven, which office he filled continu-

ously for fifty-seven years; sharing with Henry Ward

Beecher the distinction of being the most famous

preacher of the nineteenth century. To his able discus-

sion of the problem of human slavery Lincoln gladly

attributed his own "clear and sober conviction" on that

subject. His son, Leonard Woolsey, also a clergyman,

eminent as preacher, author and musical composer; six

other sons of Leonard who won professional and liter-

ary distinction; and a daughter who was instrumental

in founding the famous Hampton Institute.

And second, the Town of Tallmadge, which Dr.

Leonard Bacon declared to be his father's one great

achievement. Even before his death those of the set-

tlers who had believed themselves to have had a griev-

ance, acknowledged the great moral and intellectual

600     Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

value of the foundation which he laid, upon which the

community, after a period of depression, continued to

grow and to thrive.

And even today, after a lapse of a hundred years the

town still bears the impress of the missionary colonizer.

The intelligent traveler by automobile from Akron to

Youngstown and Pittsburgh, or vice versa, will be well

repaid for a short detour through the center of this

town, where on all sides he will see evidences of a higher

standard of living and a refinement of life not often

met with in rural communities.

There are still many families of good New England

ancestry, a superior type with whom civic pride flour-

ishes.

It is related that when, some years ago, the congre-

gation invited a Connecticut clergyman to be pastor of

the church, he declined, giving to an intimate friend the

reason that "there were too many great and good men

in Tallmadge."

A year or two ago during a pleasant afternoon spent

in the town I succeeded, after a good deal of trouble,

with the assistance of the Rev. W. B. Marsh, pastor of

the village church from 1875 to 1885, in finding the me-

morial tablet placed, more than forty years ago, on the

site of David Bacon's log cabin by direction of his

grandsons. It is a large boulder, one side of which is

nearly flat, and on this is cut the following:

HERE

THE FIRST CHURCH

IN TALLMADGE WAS

GATHERED IN THE

HOME OF

REV. DAVID BACON.

JAN. 22 1809.

Town of Tallmadge--The Bacons and Shakespeare 601

It was impossible to suppress a wish that instead of

commemorating the birth of the church, which closed its

doors against him at the moment of his severest trial,

there had been inscribed the name of the gentle but

heroic wife and mother, and also that of the child born

in that cabin, of whom more anon.

Some of us have had at least a mild interest in the

lists of "My Ten Favorite Books" which have appeared

in some of the daily newspapers during the past few

months.

Here was a sort of "grand jury" of one hundred and

thirty members, sitting upon the relative merits of all

books, in all languages and of all ages, with each mem-

ber rendering his verdict independently of the others.

This remarkable jury constituted a motley assembly,

representing nearly every conceivable occupation and

including, among others, literary critics, poets, revival-

ists, prize fighters, labor leaders, college professors,

Broadway dancers, architects, child prodigies and

others.

In all nearly one thousand books were named, each

being in the opinion of some member of the jury worthy

of a place in the first decade. Of the entire one thou-

sand only twenty received nine or more votes, out of a

total of one hundred and thirty.

Considering the rather bizarre character of this

project one is not surprised to find that, while in the

final resume, at the head of the column stand Shake-

speare and the Bible (the two most talked of and least

read of all books), Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn

is in third place! It is worth noting that the number

of votes cast for Shakespeare exceeded those for the

602     Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

Bible by fifty per cent; and it is still more worth noting

that of all the thousand in competition, the two given

first and second place were the only books whose author-

ship is in doubt.

Fifty years ago, to have raised the question "Who

wrote the Bible?" would have exposed one to contu-

melious criticism, and a century earlier might have en-

dangered one's life.

And a half century ago one who doubted the genu-

ineness of what is today by many, frankly spoken of

as the "Shakespeare Myth" would have been looked

upon as well on the road to insanity.

Of the first of these now admittedly unsolved prob-

lems, I shall have nothing to say, except to put into the

record a curious discovery which has suggested a pos-

sible solution of both at "one fell stroke."

I have it from no less an authority than Dr. George

B. Stewart, the distinguished head of the Auburn Theo-

logical Seminary (whose sense of humor is more highly

developed than is the case with many of his profession)

that there is very strong evidence that Shakespeare

wrote the Bible.  Some indefatigable searcher after

truth has found that in the forty-sixth Psalm the forty-

sixth word from the beginning is "shake"; starting at

the end (omitting the exclamatory and meaningless

word selah) and counting backward the forty-sixth

word is "spear."

It is hard to deny such a combination of "forty-

sixes" the conclusion that the Calculus of Probabilities

would indicate.

Seriously, however, this interesting fact is by no

means without significance in connection with the mat-

ter under consideration, as it is a good illustration of

Town of Tallmadge--The Bacons and Shakespeare 603

the method employed by a certain school of investi-

gators who claim to have found in cipher in the text of

the plays of Shakespeare, not only the names of the

real authors but complete stories of their origin, and

other things quite unrelated to the subject matter of the

plays themselves.

It is an extraordinary fact that nearly two hun-

dred and fifty years passed after the death of Shake-

speare before there was any printed or published sug-

gestion of doubt as to his being the real author of the

plays, which appeared in their first complete form in the

famous Folio Edition, an event, the three hundredth an-

niversary of which we are this year celebrating.

The evidence both for and against the generally ac-

cepted view was essentially the same one hundred and

fifty years ago as it is now. Like many of our strongly

intrenched opinions or beliefs, it may have begun as an

assumption or sort of "working hypothesis," intended

by those who were its sponsors or inventors to be only

temporary, but as time passed it became a firmly estab-

lished conviction of the intelligent human mind which,

up to the middle of the last century, seemed destined

to enjoy a placid perpetuity.

It was from America, where many new things have

been thought of and thought out, that the first shock

came.

In the year 1848 there was published by Harper

Brothers, a book entitled The Romance of Yachting,

by Joseph C. Hart, in which there is a vigorous attack

upon the then universally accepted view of Shake-

speare's authorship.

Of this Mr. Hart I know very little. His name did

not find its way into the Biographical Dictionaries of

604     Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

the period, but from "internal evidence," gleaned from

the pages of the book itself, it may safely be inferred

that he was of a Dutch family, a "Knickerbocker", a

lawyer by profession and an inveterate hater of Eng-

land and the English people, which latter fact may ex-

plain his readiness to entertain and exploit the anti-

Shakespeare idea. Starting with the well-known letter

of Robert Greene to Marlowe and others, in which he

refers to "an upstart crow, beautiful with our feath-

ers," he fills about twenty pages of his book with a

scholarly and somewhat detailed analysis of the more

important plays, reaching the conclusion that only the

very worst features of any of them, if any part at all,

should be credited to William Shakespeare.

It is highly probable that this attack upon the pop-

ular belief regarding the authorship of the plays re-

ceived, at the time, little, if any attention. There is rea-

son to believe that Hart's book enjoyed but a limited

circulation and was not widely read among those who

would be likely to take up the cudgels in defense of the

orthodox view.

But for some years previous to the publication of

Hart's book, the question raised therein had been in the

mind of another; one who had studied the plays from

an entirely different point of view and had arrived at

the same conclusion by an entirely different route.

That other was the child born in the Town of Tall-

madge, in the log cabin by the brook, on the second of

February, 1811, a few months before David and Alice

Bacon turned their faces away from the enterprise on

which all their hopes for the future had rested, to make

the long and weary journey back to Connecticut where

Town of Tallmadge--The Bacons and Shakespeare 605

were still a few faithful friends who would stand be-

tween them and starvation.

Delia Bacon shared with her brother in the inheri-

tance from a fine ancestry, of a remarkably brilliant

mind, together with a rare power of concentration and

devotion of self to a single idea which, in the end, proved

to be her Nemesis.

Though her early youth was spent in extreme pov-

erty she became one of the most accomplished women

of her day.

Highly educated, she was a successful teacher, a

popular lecturer and the author of two or three success-

ful volumes before she became absorbed in the develop-

ment of her theory regarding the plays of Shakespeare,

of which from childhood she had been an incessant

reader.

Briefly, her theory was that a profound political

philosophy is imbedded in the text or concealed beneath

the surface of the plays, the open avowal of which at

that period would have been fatal to the authors, who

were not Shakespeare, of whom she spoke disdainfully

as "Lord Leicester's groom," but a group of learned

men about the court of Queen Elizabeth, including

Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and others.

She was inspired by a great passion to unfold to the

world this philosophy, the key to which she believed she

had found in the letters of Lord Bacon.

In 1853, having matured her plans and committed

her thoughts to writing, she went to London (contrary

to the wishes of her family and friends) for further re-

search, especially in a certain direction.  Her desire

to accomplish this had become an unescapable obses-

606      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

sion, and she hoped, also, to procure the publication of

her magnum opus which, through the good offices of

Nathaniel Hawthorne, then American Consul at Liver-

pool, finally did appear as a large volume of about six

hundred pages, bearing the lofty title, The Philosophy

of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded.

It begins with a charming preface by Hawthorne,

prepared with great care, and tactful to a degree quite

worthy of the diplomatic post which he filled, for he

afterward admitted that he had never read the book and

that he knew of only one person who had succeeded in

doing so. "This person," he adds, "a young man of

genius and enthusiasm has assured me that he has read

it from beginning to end and is completely a convert to

its doctrines."

In style and composition the book shows excellent

literary ability, a knowledge of classical literature and a

remarkable command of the English tongue, but it is

involved and often obscure, so as to be quite forbidding.

Some notion of it may be had from the fact that the

opening sentence, stating the proposition to be demon-

strated, contains no fewer than two hundred and

twenty-five words, and this is followed by another num-

bering two hundred and twenty-one.

Hawthorne, who saw Delia Bacon but once, and that

in London, describes her as follows:

She was rather uncommonly tall and had a striking and

expressive face, dark hair, dark eyes, which shone with an in-

ward light as soon as she began to speak and by and by a color

came into her cheeks and made her look almost young.......

I could suppose her to have been handsome and exceedingly

attractive once....... Her conversation was remarkably sugges-

tive, alluring forth one's own ideas from the shy places where

they usually haunt.

Town of Tallmadge--The Bacons and Shakespeare    607

She visited Carlyle, to whom she had brought a letter

from Emerson. Of her he wrote in reply:

As for Miss Bacon, we find her, with her modest, shy

dignity, with her solid character and strange enterprise, a real

acquisition, and hope we shall see more of her, now that she

has come nearer to us to lodge.

I have not in my life seen anything so tragically quixotic

as her Shakespeare enterprise.......I do cheerfully what I can,

which is far more than she asks of me, for I have not seen a

prouder, more silent soul; but there is not the least possibility of

truth in the notion she has taken up.

Miss Bacon wrote to her sister as follows:

My visit to Mr. Carlyle was very rich. I wish you could

have heard him laugh. Once or twice I thought he would have

taken the roof of the house off. At first they were perfectly

stunned, he and the gentleman he had invited to meet me.

They turned black in the face at my presumption. "Do you

mean to say so and so?" said Mr. Carlyle with his strong em-

phasis, and I said that I did, and they both looked at me with

staring eyes, speechless from want of words in which to cen-

vey their sense of my audacity. At length Mr. Carlyle came

down on me with such a volley. I did not mind it in the least.

I told him he did not know what was in the plays, if he said

that, and no one could know who believed that "that booby"

wrote them.

It was then that he began to shriek, you could have heard

him a mile!

Some time before the publication of her book she

took up her residence at Stratford and began to haunt

the Church of the Holy Trinity in which is Shake-

speare's grave. She was obsessed with the idea that

rich secrets regarding the plays, their meaning and

origin, had been placed in that grave by Raleigh or

Bacon and that the "curse" which is inscribed upon its

cover, was put there as a protection, until there should

come one with the conviction that the laurel wreath

resting on the brow of the man of Stratford was a lie,

and the courage to tear it away.

608      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

The four lines of this well-known epitaph are really

little better than doggerel and quite unworthy of the

genius to whom they are attributed.

Good friend for Jesus' sake forbear

To dig the dust enclosed here:

Blest be the man that spares these stones

And curst be he that moves my bones.

That she was determined not to "spare these stones"

soon became evident, for along with the system of

philosophy which, as Hawthorne says, had grown up in

her mind "without her volition, contrary, in fact, to the

determined resistance of her volition," there had come

the belief, based on the letter of Lord Bacon, that if she

could raise the slab of stone on which the curse is cut,

the secret would be revealed.

Looking to the accomplishment of her purpose she

even ventured to begin negotiations with the clerk and

afterwards with the vicar of the church and it is thought

that both were inclined to favor her proposal.

At any rate, she was not interfered with, was al-

lowed the freedom of the church, even at a late hour of

the night. On one of her nightly visits she brought a

dark lantern and, thinking herself alone, made her way

to the tomb and began a careful examination of it, sat-

isfying herself that she could, alone, remove the cover.

Doubtless frightened by the chance of finding nothing

if she made the trial, thus wrecking hopes by which she

had been sustained for years, at the last moment her

courage failed her, and soon the clerk made his appear-

ance, having been purposely on the watch, though

hidden.

But the end had come; the brilliant intellect had

given way. The Mayor of Stratford assumed charge of

Town of Tallmadge--The Bacons and Shakesp are 609

her as an insane person and notified the American Min-

ister, then James Buchanan. She was sent home, placed

in an asylum, where a few months later, she died.

Her life seemed an even more complete failure than

that of her father.

The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Un-

folded had few readers but it was reviewed, and rather

brutally, by some of the critics of the English press, who

looked upon it as an assault upon the great master of

English literature, which, indeed, it was from their point

of view. These criticisms were reprinted in this country

where there was no word in defense of its author.

But it startled some people into thinking as they had

never thought before. Delia Bacon had hit the bull's-

eye of the controversy when she courageously flung into

the teeth of Thomas Carlyle the assertion that no one

could know the meaning of the plays of Shakespeare

"who believed that 'that booby' wrote them." Carlyle's

shriek of laughter might have been heard a mile, but her

challenge went further.

This is neither the time nor place for a discussion

of the merits of the Shakespeare controversy. I do not

call it the Shakespeare-Bacon or the Shakespeare-Mar-

lowe controversy, for it is primarily the Case of the

Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon, as he is known to

us after centuries of the most careful and minute re-

search, versus the awe-inspiring creature of our imag-

ination to whom for centuries we have attributed the

authorship of what are everywhere admitted to be the

greatest dramatic compositions to be found in any lan-

guage!

When Delia Bacon died, a victim of her own emo-

tional enthusiasm, she stood alone in her advocacy of

Vol. XXXII -- 39.

610     Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

what she conceived to be the truth, and in justice to her

memory I must remind you that if she were alive to-

day she would have much and excellent company. In

evidence of this I will cite a few words from those whose

opinions will command attention.

In a description of Stratford published in 1645,

there occurs the following:

"Stratford owes all its glory to two of its sons --

John, Archbishop of Canterbury, who built a church

there; and Hugh Clopton, who built at his own cost a

bridge of fourteen arches across the Avon."

The church referred to is that containing Shake-

speare's tomb and also those of the Clopton family. The

citation is evidence that twenty-nine years after his

death, and twenty-two years after the publication of

the complete, first folio edition of his works, Shake-

speare was not considered an asset in the town in which

he was born and which today, with its near ten thou-

sand inhabitants, lives and feeds upon his memory.

Evidently the "myth" had not yet started on its tri-

umphant way.

Lord Palmerston, famous English statesman and

prime minister, said: "I rejoice to see the reintegration

of Italy, the unveiling of the mystery of China, and the

explosion of the Shakespeare illusions."

John Bright, of whom Lord Salisbury said, "He was

the greatest master of English oratory that this gen-

eration -- I may say several generations -- has seen,"

declared that any man that believed that William

Shakespeare wrote "Hamlet" or "King Lear" was a

fool.

Bismarck said in 1892 that he "could not understand

how it were possible that a man, however gifted with

Town of Tallmadge--The Bacons and Slakcspeare 611

the intuitions of genius, could have written what is at-

tributed to Shakespeare unless he had been in touch

with the great affairs of state, behind the scenes of po-

litical life, and also intimate with all the social courte-

sies and refinements of thought, which in Shakespeare's

time were only to be met with in the highest circles."

In the Cambridge History of English Literature,

issued in 1910 from the very heart of conservative Eng-

land, we have the following regarding Shakespeare:

"We do not know the identity of Shakespeare's

father; we are by no means certain of the identity of

his wife. * * * We do not know whether he ever

went to school. No biography of Shakespeare, there-

fore, which deserves any confidence, has ever been con-

structed without a large infusion of the tell-tale words

"apparently," "probably," "there can be little doubt,"

and no small infusion of the still more tell-tale "per-

haps," "it would be natural," "according to what was

usual at the time," etc., etc.

Mark Twain, in 1911, wrote of Shakespeare (whom

he characterized as "just a Tar Baby"): "About him

you can find nothing; * * * We can go to the rec-

ords and find out the life history of every renowned

race horse of modern times -- but not Shakespeare's.

There are many reasons for this -- but there is one

worth all the rest put together; he hadn't any history

to tell!

There is no way of getting round that deadly fact.

And no sane way has yet been discovered of getting

round its formidable significance!"

Henry Watterson, of whom no one can deny the

possession of rare scholarly and literary insight, de-

clared: