The Square Pegs

by Irving Wallace

  There was no restraint. Their correspondence had made them friends, and they conversed quickly and easily. The talk soon turned to her theory and the publication of her book. Delia admitted that she was a recluse because she had no patience for meeting people not interested in her theory. She told Hawthorne that he was the fourth person to visit her apartment in all those months, and that except for a few evenings with Carlyle, and with Mrs. Farrar, who was visiting London, and business calls on the American Consul, she went out to see no one. She had even become estranged from her family in New England. They disapproved of her mission, and in an effort to bring her to her senses and force her to come home, they had ceased contributing to her support. Remembering this later, Hawthorne decided: “If taken from England now, she would go home as a raving maniac.” He would write her family and tell them so and do the best in his power “to supply her with some small means.”

  She was a brilliant talker. Speaking “in a low, quiet tone,” she discussed “the authorship of Shakspeare’s plays, and the deep political philosophy concealed beneath the surface of them.” As he listened, Hawthorne thought that the plays were so varied and so deep that a hundred philosophies and truths could be discovered in them by anyone wishing to prove anything, but he refrained from speaking his mind for fear of provoking his hostess. As she went on and on, he was entranced by her presentation, but cynical about her argument. He contained his disagreement because he did not wish to debate the subject.

  Next her conversation took a new turn that gave Hawthorne cause for dismay. The moment her book was accepted for publication, she said, she was going to open Shakespeare’s grave in Stratford. “In Lord Bacon’s letters, on which she laid her finger as she spoke, she had discovered the key and clew to the whole mystery,” Hawthorne recalled. “There were definite and minute instructions how to find a will and other documents relating to the conclave of Elizabethan philosophers, which were concealed (when and by whom she did not inform me) in a hollow space in the under surface of Shakspeare’s gravestone. Thus the terrible prohibition to remove the stone was accounted for… . All that Miss Bacon now remained in England for indeed, the object for which she had come hither, and which had kept her here for three years past was to obtain possession of these material and unquestionable proofs of the authenticity of her theory.”

  Hawthorne did not attempt to dissuade her from this macabre research. He felt sure that her “sturdy common-sense” would eventually keep her from attempting the sacrilege. The conversation finally turned to more practical matters. Hawthorne repeated his offer to submit her book to his own publisher. She bubbled with happiness. She would deliver the full manuscript in a week. She knew that Providence had brought Mr. Hawthorne into her life in this crisis.

  More than an hour had passed. Hawthorne took his leave. As he left the grocery shop he was still under the spell of Delia’s eloquence and fanaticism. But after a few blocks the sanity and bustle of English life about him knocked his “temporary faith” from his head and heart. By the time he reached Paternoster Row his meeting seemed an improbable dream. For a while he had been transported back into the Elizabethan era by sheer witchery, and had half believed what she had been saying, but now he was awake. Suddenly, his promise to have her book published seemed extravagant and impossible. (Had not Elizabeth Barrett Browning, at a recent breakfast-party given in his honor, been “horrified” by Miss Bacon’s theory?) Nevertheless, he had given his word. He would do what he could and hope for the best.

  In less than a week Hawthorne had the thick manuscript. He had no time to read it, but turned it over to his wife. Sophia Hawthorne was impressed by its erudition. A few days later, Hawthorne took the book to London and laid it on Routledge’s desk.

  Hawthorne did not feel his labors on Delia’s behalf were yet done. He was disturbed still by something that she had said about her family. He took it upon himself to address a lengthy letter to the Reverend Leonard Bacon in New Haven. He begged the clergyman not to think him impertinent for meddling in a family affair. But, he indicated, he felt it his duty to report on his relationship with Delia:

  “I understand from her (and can readily suppose it to be the case) that you are very urgent that she should return to America; nor can I deny that I should give her similar advice, if her mind were differently circumstanced from what I find it. But Miss Bacon has become possessed by an idea, that there are discoveries within her reach, in reference to the authorship of Shakspeare, and that, by quitting England, she should forfeit all chance of following up these discoveries, and making them manifest to the public. … I will say to you in confidence, my dear Sir, that I should dread the effect, on her mind, of any compulsory measures on the part of her friends, towards a removal. If I may presume to advise, my counsel would be that you should acquiesce, for the present, in her remaining here, and do what may be in your power towards making her comfortable.”

  Leonard Bacon was deeply disturbed by Hawthorne’s letter. He wrote his sister immediately. He tried to show restraint and good sense, but a more insensitive and intemperate communication cannot be imagined. His experience having been confined to giving advice on matters spiritual, he was ill equipped to hold forth on matters literary. He told Delia to concentrate on magazine articles and forget her book. He told her to limit her writings to Shakespeare’s plays and forget the authorship theory. “You know perfectly well that the great world does not care a sixpence who wrote Hamlet.” He warned her that she had yielded “to a delusion which, if you do not resist it and escape from it as for your life, will be fatal to you.” He thought her theory a mere “trick of the imagination.” But if she must persist with her book, he had one good, sound Yankee suggestion that might save all. “Your theory about the authorship of Shakspeare’s plays may after all be worth something if published as a fiction.”

  Though infuriated by her relative’s advice, Delia did not bother to fight back. For by the time she heard from Leonard she was already in Stratford on Avon, gathering all that remained of her wits to do battle with the real enemy. She had left London suddenly in late August with farewells to no one except Mrs. Eliza Farrar, and this of necessity.

  Mrs. Farrar was entertaining guests one afternoon when a servant whispered to her that there was a strange lady at the door who would not leave her name. “On hearing this I went to the door,” said Mrs. Farrar, “and there stood Delia Bacon, pale and sad. I took her in my arms and pressed her to my bosom; she gasped for breath and could not speak. We went into a vacant room and sat down together. She was faint, but recovered on drinking a glass of port wine, and then she told me that her book was finished and in the hands of Mr. Hawthorne, and now she was ready to go to Stratford-upon-Avon.” She revealed that the purpose of her mission was to open Shakespeare’s grave. Mrs. Farrar pleaded with her to abandon the mad scheme. Delia would not listen. She wanted only Mrs. Farrar’s help, and she would go. Mrs. Farrar gave her a sum of money and saw her off at the railroad station with heavy heart and a sense of impending tragedy.

  In 1856 the market village of Stratford, in Warwickshire, was surrounded still by the “shadowy forests” and “plenteous rivers” and “wide-skirted meads” that the Bard himself had known and written about. Well-traveled country lanes led into the worn cobbled streets of the quiet, lovely old town. It was into this idyllic village that Delia Bacon dragged her sick and exhausted person on her last English journey. She was, she felt, more dead than alive, and her mind clung to reality by tenuous threads. Even her method of finding a lodging was somewhat fantastic, if fortunate. She saw an attractive cottage on High Street, near Shakespeare’s last residence and the church that held his grave. She rapped on the door. The housekeeper told her that the lady of the house, Mrs. Terrett, was out. Delia said that she would wait. She forced herself inside and sat down, wracked with illness. Presently, the owner of the cottage, Mrs. Terrett, a respectable old widow who lived on her income, returned. She was only mildly surprised. Though she had never had a boar
der, or intended to have one, “she remembered, she said, that Abraham had entertained angels unawares.” The kindly woman realized at once that her visitor was an American, and very ill, and she knew what she must do. She made Delia lie on the sofa, covered her, and went to make dinner. Later she agreed that Delia should have two front-rooms and all service for seven shillings a week.

  It was more than four weeks before Delia had recovered sufficiently to leave her cottage and explore Stratford. She was attracted to the town at once. “I like Stratford,” she wrote Hawthorne. “Shakespeare was right. It is a very nice comfortable place to stop in, much better than London for a person of a genial but retiring turn of mind.” Hawthorne thought this was the only occasion on which he had ever known Delia to speak a word of praise for Shakespeare.

  Though lulled by the old place, she was not unmindful of her true mission. But she had not yet the strength to move Shakespeare’s bones. And then, suddenly, in her sixth week in Stratford she received the thrilling news that gave her all strength. Her book had been accepted for publication at last.

  In an ecstasy of fulfillment, she wrote everyone. “Patience has had its perfect work,” she wrote to Mrs. Farrar. “For the sake of those who have loved and trusted me, for the sake of those who have borne my burdens with me, how I rejoice!” Congratulations came back from friends and relatives and all were sincere. “Well done!” replied Carlyle. “This must be a greater joy to you than health itself, or any other blessing; and I must say that by your steadfastness you have deserved it! … My incredulity of your Thesis I have never hidden from you: but I willingly vote, and have voted, you should be heard on it to full length… .”

  The printer and publisher, who had connection with Fraser’s Magazine, was to be Parker “you could not have a better Publisher,” Carlyle assured her and the editor of the manuscript was to be a most exacting gentleman named Bennoch. In her brief delirium of happiness Delia did not know, nor would she ever know, the actual circumstances behind her book’s acceptance. Hawthorne had met with resistance to Delia’s masterwork everywhere. Yet, out of his deep concern for Delia, he had persisted in this Herculean labor. At last the respectable Parker had agreed to publish under the conditions that Hawthorne lend his name to an introduction and that he bear the burden of $1,000 in printing costs. Hawthorne was amenable to both conditions, and preparations for publication went ahead.

  In the six months that followed, Delia proved the most difficult of authors. She blocked Bennoch and Parker at every turn. They wished to call the volume The Shakespeare Problem Solved. Delia objected and supplied new titles with each new month. Until the eleventh hour there was no agreement. To the despair of all, she would not delete or rewrite a sentence, let alone a chapter. “Every leaf and line was sacred,” sighed Hawthorne, “for all had been written under so deep a conviction of truth as to assume, in her eyes, the aspect of inspiration. A practiced book-maker, with entire control of her materials, would have shaped out a duodecimo volume full of eloquence and ingenious dissertation… . There was a great amount of rubbish, which any competent editor would have shoveled out of the way. But Miss Bacon thrust the whole bulk of inspiration and nonsense into the press in a lump… .”

  As to an introduction by Hawthorne, Delia had hoped for one in the beginning and Parker had insisted upon it, but now suddenly, she determined to stand alone. She had read Hawthorne’s generous foreword, and she disapproved. She would gladly dedicate the book to him, but she would not accept his patronage in print. Bennoch and Parker pleaded with her. Hawthorne, exasperated, wrote: “I utterly despair of being able to satisfy you with a preface.” He wanted no dedication. The foreword was a condition of publication. The foreword was favorable in every way. He told her that he had “merely refrained from expressing a full conviction of the truth of your theory. But the book will be in the hands of the public. Let the public judge; as it must. Nothing that I could say, beforehand, could influence its judgment; and I do not agree with your opinion that I have said anything likely to prevent your cause being heard.” He suggested arbitration by Carlyle. Delia turned a deaf ear to his entreaties. Though the book was already set in type, Parker would not proceed unless Delia approved of the introduction. She refused and Parker, enraged, withdrew from the project entirely.

  Suddenly, her book was adrift again, and Delia was brought sharply to her senses. Terrified, she informed Bennoch that she had changed her mind. Hawthorne’s preface would be acceptable. But Parker wanted no more to do with Miss Bacon. The weary Bennoch, undoubtedly encouraged by the incredibly patient Hawthorne, turned elsewhere for a publisher. Soon enough, and by rare good fortune, he found one in the smaller firm of Groombridge and Sons, who promptly took over the final printing and binding of the book.

  Meanwhile, assured that her theory would soon be given the waiting world, Delia busied herself in Stratford with her last great enterprise. If she could now verify her writings with documentary evidence taken from Shakespeare’s grave, her book would be a sensation and her life’s work would be crowned with immortality. She began her “experiment” by making a preliminary visit to the Holy Trinity Church, hastily surveying Shakespeare’s burial place in the chancel, and then asking a clerk of the church when fewest visitors and tourists were present. He advised her as to the best day, and a week later she returned at eight o’clock in the morning and hovered near the grave of the Bard, awaiting a moment when she might be alone to examine the flagstone over the coffin more closely. But there were at least twenty visitors during the day, and Delia had no time alone. She asked the clerk if she could return one evening after hours. The clerk had no objection.

  At seven o’clock one evening, accompanied by Mrs. Terrett, in whom she had confided her daring purpose, Delia went back to the church. The clerk was waiting with key and candle. Delia and Mrs. Terrett went inside, though the elderly landlady was much frightened. “I told her I was not in the least afraid,” Delia related to Hawthorne. “I only wanted her to help me a little. So I groped my way to the chancel, and she waited till the light was struck. I had a dark lantern like Guy Fawkes, and some other articles which might have been considered suspicious if the police had come upon us. The clerk was getting uneasy, and I found he had followed us… .” Delia persuaded the clerk to take Mrs. Terrett with him and to leave her alone. She was left alone only after she promised not to disturb the grave or do anything that might cost the clerk his job.

  Now, for the first time, Delia was able to examine the flagstone over Shakespeare’s coffin. She had been directed, by Lord Bacon, to search beneath “stones.” She was worried lest there be another stone under the top lid. If so, there would be room for little else beyond the wooden coffin. She was alone for three hours, poking about in the crevices of the flagstone, judging its weight, peering up at Shakespeare’s bust lost in the darkness. A creak of the floor told her that she was being watched. The worried clerk had reappeared. At last she confessed to this bewildered person what her real purpose was and he, troubled, begged her to consult the church vicar.

  The vicar proved most considerate. He did not blanch when he heard Delia’s request. Solemnly, he heard her out. When she was done he did not say No. “I cannot help fancying,” said Hawthorne, “that her familiarity with the events of Shakspeare’s life, and of his death and burial (of which she would speak as if she had been present at the edge of the grave), and all the history, literature and personalities of the Elizabethan age, together with the prevailing power of her own belief, and the eloquence with which she knew how to enforce it, had really gone some little way toward making a convert of the good clergyman.” The vicar replied that he could not, under any circumstances, permit Delia to undertake the removal of the flagstone alone. However, it might be permitted in his presence, if she vowed not to touch the coffin itself. At any rate, he wanted time to think about it and to consult a Stratford lawyer who was a personal friend.

  In a few days the vicar reported his decision to Delia. While he doubted tha
t her experiment would prove successful, he saw no reason to prevent it. She could go ahead at once, and search beneath the flagstone in his presence if she guaranteed to leave no “trace of harm.” Whether the vicar was merely humoring her, hoping she would withdraw her request, or whether he sincerely meant to give her the chance to prove her theory, we shall never know. For at the brink of discovery, at the moment of scholarly truth, she hesitated. Had Bacon’s cryptic message meant that she would find her confirmation in this actor’s tomb or in his own? Or had he really meant that she look in Spenser’s last resting-place?

  “A doubt stole into her mind whether she might not have mistaken the depository and mode of concealment of those historic treasures,” Hawthorne wrote. “And after once admitting the doubt, she was afraid to hazard the shock of uplifting the stone and finding nothing. She examined the surface of the gravestone, and endeavored, without stirring it, to estimate whether it were of such thickness as to be capable of containing the archives of the Elizabethan club. She went over anew the proofs, the clues, the enigmas, the pregnant sentences, which she had discovered in Bacon’s letters and elsewhere, and now was frightened to perceive that they did not point so definitely to Shakspeare’s tomb as she had heretofore supposed… .”

  She did not go to the vicar again. Instead, she began to haunt the church by night. Lantern in hand, she would make her way down the aisle to the tomb and sit there staring. The age-worn curse leered up at her, and challenged her, but she did not accept its dare. She was afraid. And she was weary beyond all human weariness. Her mind was made up. Her frail hands need not move Shakespeare’s bones. Her book would accomplish the task far better.

  In the first week of April 1857 the book, the product of years of privation, obsession, and hope, appeared at last. It was entitled The Philosophy of The Plays Of Shakspere Unfolded By Delia Bacon … with A Preface by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Author of “The Scarlet Letter,” Etc. The title page carried quotations credited to Lord Bacon, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Prospero (the last reading: “Untie the spell”). One thousand copies of the huge volume Delia devoted 100 pages to a statement of her general proposition and 582 pages to her text were printed. Half bore the imprint of Groombridge and Sons, Paternoster Row, London, and the other half, at Hawthorne’s suggestion, the imprint of his American publisher, Ticknor and Fields, Boston, to be delivered for sale in the United States.