Author; sister of Dr. Leonard Bacon; born at Tallmadge, Ohio, Feb. 2, 1811; wrote, besides “Tales of the Puritans” and a drama entitled “The Bride of Fort Edward,” “The Philosophy of Shakespeare’s Plays” (1857), in which she first threw out the startling hypothesis that these plays were really written by Francis Bacon, who simply used Shakespeare as a shield against the prejudices of the time. In support of this hypothesis, which became an infatuation, she visited England, met much repression, and her troubles impaired her health. Died at Hartford, Conn., Sept. 2, 1859. See “Delia Bacon; A Biographical Sketch” by Theodore Bacon (1888); and “Recollections of a Gifted Woman,” in Hawthorne’s “Our Old Home.”

Personal

  I have lately made one or two drafts on your goodness,—which I hate to do, both because you meet them so generously, and because you never give me an opportunity of revenge,—and mainly in the case of Miss Bacon, who has a private history that entitles her to high respect, and who could be helped only by facilitating her Shakespeare studies, in which she has the faith and ardor of a discoverer. Bancroft was to have given her letters to Hallam, but gave one to Sir H. Ellis. Everett, I believe, gave her one to Mr. Grote; and when I told her what I remembered hearing of Spedding, she was eager to see him; which access I knew not how to secure, except through you. She wrote me that she prospers in all things, and had just received at once a summons to meet Spedding at your house. But do not fancy I send any one to you heedlessly; for I value your time at its rate to nations, and refuse many more letters than I give. I shall not send you any more people without good reason.

  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 now 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: alas, alas, there can be nothing but sorrow, toil, and utter disappointment in it for her! I do cheerfully what I can;—which is far more than she asks of me (for I have not seen a prouder silent soul);—but there is not the least possibility of truth in the notion she has taken up: and the hope of ever proving it, or finding the least document that countenances it, is equal to that of vanquishing the windmills by stroke of lance. I am often truly sorry about the poor lady: but she troubles nobody with her difficulties, with her theories; she must try the matter to the end, and charitable souls must further her so far.

  She was rather uncommonly tall, and had a striking and expressive face, dark hair, dark eyes, which shone with an inward light as soon as she began to speak, and by-and-by a color came into her cheeks and made her look almost young. Not that she really was so; she must have been beyond middle age: and there was no unkindness in coming to that conclusion, because, making allowance for years and ill health, I could suppose her to have been handsome and exceedingly attractive once.

  The first lady whom I ever heard deliver a public lecture was Miss Delia Bacon, who opened her career in Boston, as teacher of history, by giving a preliminary discourse, describing her method, and urging upon her hearers the importance of the study. I had called on her that day for the first time, and found her very nervous and anxious about her first appearance in public. She interested me at once, and I resolved to hear her speak. Her person was tall and commanding, her finely shaped head was well set on her shoulders, her face was handsome and full of expression, and she moved with grace and dignity. The hall in which she spoke was so crowded that I could not get a seat, but she spoke so well that I felt no fatigue from standing. She was at first a little embarrassed, but soon became so engaged in recommending the study of history to all present, that she ceased to think of herself, and then she became eloquent.

  This is the story of a life that was neither splendid in achievement or adventure, nor successful, nor happy. It began deep in a New World wilderness, in the simplicity of a refined and honored poverty; it continued for almost fifty years of labor and sorrow, and ended amid clouds of disappointment and distraction. Neither the subject of it, nor those to whom in her lifetime she was very dear by ties of kindred, would easily have consented that the world should know more of her than could be learned from her gravestone: that she was born and died. Yet because she was of rare intellectual force and acuteness, of absolute sincerity and truthfulness, of self-annihilating earnestness and devotion in whatever work she entered upon; and because the world is determined that it will speak of her as if it knew her, supplying its lack of knowledge with conjecture or with fable, I purpose to tell it something of Delia Bacon: of what she was, from inheritance and environment; and what she did.

  The personal charm and refined enthusiasm of Miss Bacon fairly magnetized Hawthorne; it did not appear to him incredible that the vicar at Stratford-on-Avon, and the sexton, had given her—apparently if not really—opportunity to open the grave of Shakespeare, in the night, in search of documents which were to disprove his authorship of the plays. The potency of the imprecation on that grave was shown in the faltering of her own heart.

  When this singular woman had exhausted all her financial means, when her family and friends declined to assist her unless she would give up her chimerical pursuit and return to America, she—almost despairingly—appealed to Hawthorne; and he responded in a manner that displayed his nobleness of heart, by the way in which he aided the forlorn enthusiast in her direst need. It gives one a higher estimate of human nature to hear of such unselfishness, such unwearied patience, and such rare delicacy as were exhibited by Hawthorne in extending the moral and material aid which she was too proud to solicit.

General

  I have often thought we had effects without cause in those works, if they were written by an uncultivated mind, or rather by a mind not cultivated and educated to the last possibility, and I have said “It is a miracle.” Yet I could believe in a miracle. To add all these, however, to what Lord Bacon has avowedly done, is to make him such a prodigy as the world never before saw. But this I have room enough for also. What I want now is more and more and more of your detections, your proofs, your criticism. I have an insatiable hunger, and I shall be glad when these and all are in print, for just as sure as there comes a point of trembling interest, you begin to interline and I am driven wild. But this last manuscript is much plainer than the others. Mr. Hawthorne has gone to Routledge this morning to speak about them. I hope that he will have the wit to publish them, for, irrespective of their ulterior purpose, they are wonderful, magnificent.

  On this object, which she conceives so loftily, the author has bestowed the solitary and self-sustained toil for many years. The volume now before the reader, together with the historical demonstration which it pre-supposes, is the product of a most faithful and conscientious labour, and a truly heroic devotion of intellect and heart. No man or woman has ever thought or written more sincerely than the author of this book. She has given nothing less than her life to the work…. And now, at length, after many delays and discouragements, the work comes forth. It had been the author’s original purpose to publish it in America; for she wished her own country to have the glory of solving the enigma of those mighty dramas, and thus adding a new and higher value to the loftiest productions of the English mind. It seemed to her most fit and desirable, that America—having received so much from England, and returned so little—should do what remained to be done towards rendering this great legacy available, as its authors meant it to be, to all future time. This purpose was frustrated; and it will be seen in what spirit she acquiesces…. I am not the editor of this work; nor can I consider myself fairly entitled to the honor (which, if I deserved it, I should feel to be a very high as well as a perilous one) of seeing my name associated with the author’s on the title-page. My object has been merely to speak a few words, which might, perhaps, serve the purpose of placing my countrywoman upon a ground of amicable understanding with the public. She has a vast preliminary difficulty to encounter. The first feeling of every reader must be one of absolute repugnance towards the person who seeks to tear out of the Anglo-Saxon heart the name which for ages it has held dearest, and to substitute another name, or names, to which the settled belief of the world has long assigned a very different position. What I claim for this work is, that the ability employed in its composition has been worthy of its great subject, and well employed for our intellectual interests, whatever judgment the public may pass upon the questions discussed.

  The subtlest critic of the last thirty years in America is Delia Bacon, who—devoting her life to the establishment of the thesis that Lord Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh were the joint authors of the plays attributed to Shakespeare—has, amid the mass of confused infatuations, occasionally thrown a finer light on passages of those plays than any English writer since Coleridge. No one, as Nathaniel Hawthorne asserts, has cast a more beautiful wreath on the tomb of the world’s “playwright” than the half insane woman of genius who almost denied his existence.

  A biography of Delia Bacon can only be justified by a belief in the truth of the theory with which her life is identified. Anything less than this is to stir the dust of the lunatic dead for commercial purposes; it is to exhibit her, straight-jacket and all, to an unsympathetic public, for a pecuniary consideration. If Delia Bacon was not insane when she framed and uttered that theory, if she was right in her views,—as right as Aristarchus of Samos was in his day,—then she deserves a hundred biographies to be written by tender and loving friends, with reverent eyes and enthusiastic admiration. If she was right, then was she, indeed, the profoundest thinker of her age, with a sweep of thought and depth of penetration a thousand miles beyond the shallow great ones of her generation. If she was right, she deserves to be honored as a martyr to the truth, who stood nobly up in the arena of the world until torn to pieces by the wild beasts of public opinion. There are many now who regard her as the greatest American yet born; they hope to see her biography yet written by some one who loves, honors, and believes in her.