The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall

by Daphne Du Maurier

  In New Atlantis Francis Bacon was developing into a fable for the future the dream that had obsessed him all his life. Years before, when he had helped to produce the Revels at Gray’s Inn as a young barrister in January 1595, the theme of the Gesta Grayorum had been along the same lines: the knightly Order of the Helmet suggesting many of the rules of conduct observed by the Brethren of Salomon’s House. It was not by rules of conduct, though, that his dream-world could come into being: it was by a new understanding of natural science, and we have seen how he continually developed this idea in later years, with Cogitata et Visa and The Advancement of Learning. Thence his desire, forever frustrated, to become vice-chancellor of a university, or, if not vice-chancellor, then master of a college, and finally (though this also was denied him) to be provost of Eton. Students, men of learning, must be directed to research. There must be nothing in heaven or earth, or under the earth, left unexplored. Nobody listened. Nobody cared.

  Very well, then. A fable, and in English, about an island in the Pacific, with caverns and towers equipped as laboratories, and the Father of Salomon’s House a glorified image of what Francis himself might have been; no Prospero on the stage with a magician’s wand and spirits to do his bidding, but the director of an institution for research, and men of goodwill working beside him.

  A fable of some thirty pages, left unfinished, put aside. To be published by chaplain Rawley a year after Francis’s death, with the preface to the reader: ‘This fable my Lord devised, to the end that he might exhibit therein a model or description of a college instituted for the interpretation of nature and the producing of great and marvellous works for the benefit of men; under the name of Salomon’s House, or the College of Six Days’ Works. And even so far his Lordship hath proceeded, as to finish that part. Certainly the model is more vast and high than can possibly be imitated in all things; notwithstanding most things therein are within men’s power to effect. His Lordship thought also in this present fable to have composed a frame of laws, or of the best state or mould of a commonwealth; but foreseeing it would be a long work, his desire of collecting the Natural History diverted him, which he preferred many degrees before it…’

  Disappointment may also have had its effect. It was reported in April that Sir. Henry Wotton was likely to become the new provost of Eton, and by midsummer the appointment was confirmed; no schoolboy, with ‘his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school,’ would greet Francis in College Yard to be moulded into a man of science. Instead, he must rest content with those student lawyers at Gray’s Inn, and the many other handy pens who loved him well.

  And at this point, July and August of 1624, he fell ill once more, as he had done the preceding summer, and his helpers were set to work to copy down, from dictation at his bedside, some 280 apophthegms, or sayings that he had memorised during his lifetime. It was not a fatiguing occupation for a sick man who knew each of the apophthegms by heart, though it may have taxed his attendants. As might be expected from ‘the most prodigious wit’ of this side of the sea, many of the sayings betray a pungent sense of humour. He drew them from every source: classical, historical, his own time, sayings from the previous reign, some spoken by Queen Elizabeth herself, and one or two by his own father. The following happen to appeal to the present writer:

  ‘A great officer in France was in danger to have lost his place; but his wife, by her suit and means making, made his peace; wherein a pleasant fellow said, “That he had been crushed, but that he had saved himself upon his horns”.’

  ‘There was a young man in Rome, that was very like Augustus Caesar. Augustus took knowledge of it, and sent for the man, and asked him “Was your mother never at Rome?.” He answered “No, sir, but my father was”.’

  ‘Alexander was wont to say: “He knew he was mortal by two things; sleep and lust”.’

  ‘Sir. Edward Coke was wont to say, when a great man came to dinner with him, and gave him no knowledge of his coming: “Well, since you sent me no word of your coming, you shall dine with me; but if I had known of it in due time, I would have dined with you”.’

  ‘There was a gentleman that came to the tilt all in orange-tawney, and ran very ill. The next day he came all in green, and ran worse. There was one of the lookers-on asked another; “What’s the reason that this gentleman changeth his colours?” The other answered “Sure, because it may be reported that the gentleman in the green ran worse than the gentleman in the orange-tawney”.’

  ‘The counsel did make remonstrance unto Queen Elizabeth of the continual conspiracies against her life; and namely of a late one… and upon this occasion advised her that she should go less abroad to take the air, weakly accompanied, as she used. But the Queen answered: “That she had rather be dead, than put in custody”.’

  James Spedding was of the opinion that Francis published his apophthegms because he owed both publisher and printer money, which may well have been the case; his debts were piling up as usual. We do not know which of the many ‘idle pens’ copied the sayings down, to chuckles from the sick bed, but possibly not the chaplain Rawley, who would have preferred the other slim volume that appeared at the same time, the Translations of Certain Psalms into English Verse, dedicated to the poet George Herbert as ‘this poor exercise of my sickness.’

  One wonders what Tobie Matthew would have thought of them. No evidence of prodigious wit here, or indeed of talent. Is it possible that Francis had been turning over some of the faded effusions of his devout mother, the late Lady Bacon, and then, with judicious alterations here and there, had decided to send them off with the apophthegms for good measure?

  Whatever the reason for the publication of both apophthegms and psalms, there is no doubt that Francis Bacon had been seriously ill through summer and autumn, and so had many others, adults and children alike. John Chamberlain reported in September from London that, ‘We have here but a sickly season, and yet admit of no infection. 407 this week, 150 of them children, most of the rest carried away by this spotted fever, which reigns almost everywhere in the country as well as here.’ He gives the names of some of those who had died, or been ill, and mentions Lord St. Alban amongst them.

  Writing three months later, just before Christmas, to Dudley Carleton abroad, he mentions Francis’s apophthegms, ‘newly set out this week, but with so little allowance or applause that the world says his wit and judgement begins to draw near the lees; he hath likewise translated some few psalms into verse or rhyme which shows he grows holy towards his end: if I could meet with a fit messenger you should have them both.’

  Francis himself, in his very scanty correspondence during the autumn, makes no mention of ‘spotted fever’ in a letter to the Duke of Buckingham, but speaks of ‘the raving of a hot ague,’ which sounds equally painful if not so dangerous. He was still without that formal pardon for which he craved, and it seems uncertain whether his pension had been paid. He would have learnt that summer, possibly with mixed feelings and with a certain sense of irony, that Lord Treasurer Cranfield, first Earl of Middlesex, who had succeeded him as the owner of York House, had been accused of certain offences, confined to the Tower, deprived of all his offices and heavily fined, and was now an exile in the country, just as he himself had been three years previously. Few statesmen those days could climb the winding stair without a fall.

  Nevertheless, although Viscount St. Alban had no more part in the government of the country, his advice regarding a French alliance had not gone altogether unheeded, and he would have heard, with an equally ironic smile, in November of 1624, that negotiations for a marriage between the Prince of Wales and Princess Henrietta Maria, daughter of King Louis XII of France, were nearing completion. The Duke of Buckingham was expected to cross the Channel early in the new year, accompanied by a retinue of peers, and bring the princess to England.

  Unfortunately, Bacon’s counsel that, before any British army should be sent abroad to help recover the Palatinate, military authorities must be c
onsulted was apparently disregarded. Some 12,000 men, composed of Scots and English regiments, arrived in Holland to take part in a joint expedition with Count Mansfeldt, but without definite orders and under poor leadership. The British contingent was so ill-disciplined that it went on its way looting and despoiling the countryside as if, so John Chamberlain was obliged to report, ‘it had been in an enemy’s country… We hear they have mutinied already so that Count Mansfeldt durst not show himself among them.’ Later half the number were carried off by disease and privation. Apparently no attempt was made to feed the troops or to organise supplies, and the enterprise was a total failure.

  It was not a happy start to the year 1625, and John Chamberlain spoke, for once, for all his fellow-countrymen when he wrote in February, ‘The time hath been, when so many English as have been sent into those parts within these six or eight months would have done somewhat, and made the world talk of them, but I know not how we that have been esteemed in that kind more than any other nations, do begin to grow by degrees less than the least, when the basest of people in matter of courage dare brave and trample upon us.’

  On March 5th King James became ill, after hunting at Theobalds. Although he had suffered for some time with gout, and possibly arthritis, it was not at first realised that his condition was now serious. He lingered for some three weeks, unable to speak—perhaps the result of a stroke—and died on March 27th 1625, aged fifty-eight. His body was brought to London and lay in state at Denmark House until the funeral on May 7th, ‘the greatest indeed that ever was known in England,’ after which King James I of England and VI of Scotland was buried in the chapel of Henry VII at Westminster Abbey.

  His son, who succeeded him as King Charles I, had been married by proxy to the Princess Henrietta Maria on May 1st, but was obliged to wait for his bride six weeks, when he received her at Canterbury on June 13th.

  ‘The Queen,’ reported Chamberlain, ‘hath brought they say such a poor pitiful sort of women that there is not one worth the looking after saving herself and the Duchess of Chevreuse, who though she be fair yet paints foully.’ The Duke of Buckingham gave a magnificent banquet in their honour at York House, but because of indisposition neither of their Majesties was present. We do not know whether Francis Bacon was well enough to attend and to partake of the sumptuous fare that was provided in his old home. A sturgeon ‘six foot long’ that had leapt into a sculler’s boat that very afternoon was served at supper.

  The new King summoned his first Parliament on June 18th. His speech was short. He told the Members ‘they had drawn him into a war, and they must find means to maintain it.’ The means were not forthcoming. His father, as ‘the wisest fool in Christendom,’ though he had never won the hearts of his subjects, might have handled the matter with more discretion and been applauded. King Charles was not so fortunate. The reign of that ill-fated monarch, destined to die upon the scaffold in 1649, had now begun. He was at this time twenty-four years old.

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  Plague and sickness raged through the summer of 1625. Nobody stayed in town who could get away. Whether Francis Bacon left his lodgings in Gray’s Inn for Verulam House at Gorhambury in spring or later we have no means of knowing, for there is no correspondence from him extant for at least six months, dating from December of the previous year until the following June. He can hardly have remained silent on the death of King James in March, and on the marriage and accession to the throne of King Charles, unless he was himself ill. Whatever the reason, no letters to or from him have survived.

  Tobie Matthew was apparently in Boulogne in June, just before the new Queen Henrietta Maria left France to join her husband, for he wrote to the Duke of Buckingham describing her appearance with enthusiasm, despite the fact that the previous year he had done the same about the Infanta. He would undoubtedly have written in similar vein to his close friend at Gorhambury, although with the start of a new reign Tobie was to find himself fresh patrons in Lucy, Countess of Carlisle, and the Duchess of Chevreuse, whose use of cosmetics had been so deplored by John Chamberlain. This invaluable scribe also became silent during 1625, for reasons of failing health, and the gossip of the day, so fascinating to readers in later centuries, went unreported.

  As the summer progressed, so did the plague, and the people swarmed out of London, carrying the infection further afield. The King and Queen retired to Hampton Court, then to Windsor, and finally to Woodstock near Oxford, where notices were displayed forbidding anyone from plague-ridden districts to go near. Shops and inns were closed down, graveyards became congested, and to make conditions worse the rain fell ceaselessly day and night, threatening the growing crops. It was said that no letters were delivered from the town to the country during this period, and this may be the most likely reason for Francis Bacon’s lack of correspondence. The only surviving letters date from June, soon after the Queen’s arrival in England, one of which welcomes the French ambassador, the Marquis d’Effiat. The others, as might be expected from one whose pension still remained unpaid, were requests to the new Lord Treasurer Lord Ley for financial aid, and to Sir. Humphrey May, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, praying him to ‘quicken’ the Lord Treasurer, ‘that the King may once clear with me. A fire of old wood needeth no blowing; but old men do.’

  Thereafter silence until October, when we have a long letter in Latin written to a Father Fulgentio, a divine of the republic of Venice, in which Francis speaks of having suffered ‘under a very severe illness, from which I have not yet recovered.’ In the same month he writes from Gorhambury to a Mr. Roger Palmer, saying, ‘I thank God, by means of the sweet air of the country, I have obtained some degree of health… Sending to the court, I thought I would salute you: and I would be glad, in this solitary time and place, to hear a little from you how the world goeth…’ It is sad to think of a man of his eminence relying on news from a comparatively obscure correspondent in this final period of his life.

  The world, alas, was going rather badly, or those parts of it that Francis had closest to his heart. King Charles had signed a treaty with the Dutch against Spain, and had sent an expedition out to Cadiz in September under the command of Edward Cecil, brother of Lady Hatton, which was an even more disastrous failure than the expedition to Holland the year previously.

  As to the Lady Hatton herself, it is very possible that by withdrawing to the sweet air of the country Francis was spared some of the histrionics that might have been inflicted upon him at Gray’s Inn, so close to Holborn, for Elizabeth Hatton had been plunged into family troubles for the last three years. Her elder daughter Elizabeth, who had married Sir. Maurice Berkeley, had died in November of 1623, while the younger, Frances, about whom there had been so much to-do before her marriage in 1617 to Sir. John Villiers, Buckingham’s brother, had suffered a series of disasters ever since. Her husband, created Lord Purbeck, became insane and was confined to his house, and Lady Purbeck returned to her mother. Here she was foolish enough to fall in love with her own cousin, Sir. Robert Howard. Lady Hatton wisely took her daughter off to Holland on a visit to the exiled Electress Palatine, ex-Queen of Bohemia, but the unhappy girl could not forget her lover, and in 1624 gave birth to a son, whom her husband’s family pronounced a bastard, despite the fact that Frances declared she had received visits from her insane lord during the preceding months.

  Sir. Robert Howard was clapped in the Fleet and Lady Purbeck placed in confinement. The bitter dispute continued into 1625, with the Duke of Buckingham the most virulent against his sister-in-law, declaring there should be a divorce, although his brother, Lord Purbeck, protested between bouts of insanity that the child born to his wife was indeed his.

  The new reign brought some respite for the lovers. Sir. Robert Howard was released from the Fleet, and Lady Purbeck from her confinement in an alderman’s house. But two years later she was found guilty of infidelity, and was sentenced to a fine of £500 and to do penance by walking barefoot from St. Paul’s Cross to the Savoy, standing at the door of the chur
ch for all to see. She escaped this ordeal by dressing up as a page, and later she, her lover and her baby son went into hiding in Shropshire. Her mother withstood the shock of this second ordeal, and resumed her life of ceaseless activity.

  It is small wonder that during the long summers of 1624 and 1625 Francis Bacon pleaded sickness and wrote few letters or none at all, his friendship for Lady Hatton being well known. One can imagine the knock on the door, and one of his numerous attendants announcing, in hushed tones, that the Lady Hatton was without. Then the cry of exasperation from the invalid, and a wave of the hand, ‘No… no… I am far too ill to receive her ladyship or any visitor,’ and the sigh of relief when her departure was confirmed. This would be the moment to reach for his list of herbal remedies. ‘An orange flower water to be smelt or snuffed up,’ ‘to use once during supper time wine in which gold is quenched…’ But better still, though this would have been at Gorhambury and impossible at Gray’s Inn, ‘In the third hour after the sun is risen, to take in air from some high and open place, with a ventilation of rose moschatae, and fresh violets; and to stir the earth, with infusion of wine and mint.’

  He had remedies for the stomach, for gout, for the stone—evidently he suffered from all three—and four precepts of health he upheld firmly: ‘To break off custom. To shake off spirits ill disposed. To meditate on youth. To do nothing against a man’s genius.’ And, very important indeed, ‘Never to keep the body in the same posture above half-an-hour at a time.’ Possibly the astringent he recommended, ‘which, by cherishing of the parts, do comfort and confirm their retentive power,’ was noted down for its originality and because it may have shocked his chaplain Rawley. ‘A stomacher of scarlet cloth. Whelps, or young healthy boys, applied to the stomach. Hippocratic wines, so they be made of austere materials.’