Delia Bacon Salter
(1811-1859)

The Apocalypse either finds men mad
or leaves them so.

1771 her father, David was born. In the town of Tallmadge, in a log cabin which begun the town, was born to David and Alice Bacon, on the 2nd of February, 1811, their fifth child, Delia.
She was also called Delia Salter, and almost to the close of her life she continued to use both names thus given her in baptism; but when she began to contemplate closely the publicity which she was to confront, she seems though it was never spoken of by her to have thought of a certain ludicrousness in the sounds thus brought together, and then, for the first time, she dropped out of use the second name.

Her father died in 1817; it was not long after Delia had thus found an asylum in Hartford that a school for girls was opened there which made no small mark upon the generation then coming on. It was that of Catherine Beecher, whose father, Lyman Beecher, was a minister of the Congregational churches which were just then ceasing to be “by law established” in Connecticut, and one whose fame for homiletic and polemic power is far from extinct.

Into this school Delia entered as a pupil, and with her was the teacher’s sister, Harriet, a year her junior, who was destined to attain extraordinary renown and success in literature, not long before her schoolmate’s life of unsparing toil ended in disappointment and failure.
Thirty years afterward Catherine Beecher thus described young Dalia Bacon who now came under her charge: “If the writer were to make a list of the most gifted minds she has ever met, male or female, among the highest on the list would stand five young maidens, that were then grouped around the writer, in that dawning experience of a teacher’s life. And never did a teacher watch the unfoldings of intellect and moral life with more interest and delight. Of this number, one was the homeless daughter of that Western home missionary.

“Possessing an agreeable person, a pleasing and intelligent countenance, an eye of deep and earnest expression, a melodious voice, a fervid imagination, and the embryo of rare gifts of eloquence in thought and expression, she was pre-eminently one who would be pointed out as a genius; and one, too, so exuberant and unregulated as to demand constant pruning and restraint. With this was united that natural delicacy and purity of mind, which frequently not only protects the young maiden from all coarseness and indecorum, but, even to full womanhood, renders it impossible for her even to conceive what impurity may be. In disposition she was sensitive, impulsive, and transparent, possessing a keen longing for approbation, a morbid sensibility to criticism or blame, an honest truthfulness, and an entire freedom from all that could be called management or art.”

In this period of her mental history, had her future career been anticipated by the data of her natural endowments and probable circumstances, it would have been predicted that her genius, her confiding frankness, her interesting appearance, her gifts of eloquence, and her sincere aspirations after all that is good and pure, would make her an object of attention, and probably of excessive flattery. On the other hand, her keen sensibility to blame or injustice, her transparency, sincerity, and impulsiveness, the dangerous power of keen and witty expression, and the want of the guidance and protection of parents and home, would make her an object of unjust depreciation.

The persons who were objects of her regard, and to whom she confided her thoughts and feelings, would almost inevitably become enthusiastic admirers, while those who in any way came into antagonism would be as decided in their dislike. At fifteen, she was to begin a lifelong struggle. At the close of February 1826, she writes to her eldest brother, who, young as he was, stood in a father’s place to her: “I have but nine weeks more to remain in my present home,” and then, “I shall have no home in all the wide, wide world I can call my own. The future seems very dark to me, and I cannot imagine what I am to do. I know I am to depend upon my own exertions for subsistence, and were there any field for these exertions I would not fear. But there seems to me none, and every way I turn I am disappointed and perplexed.

In personal appearance, she was of middle stature, graceful, fair, and slight. Her habitual black dress set off to advantage the radiant face, whose fair complexion was that uncommon one which can only be described as pale yet brilliant. Intellect was stamped on every feature. Genius looked from brow and eye. The hair was a pale brown, gold tinted fit shading for such a countenance. The eye blue-gray, clear, shining, and passing rapidly through all expressions, from the swimming softness of tender sympathy to the flash that revealed the inspiration within.

Meeting her in a crowd, you glanced over and thought “a graceful woman.” But your eye unconsciously sought her again, and the second time you felt rather than thought “a remarkable woman.” “Who is that lady?” asked a newly appointed college official, “that lady whom I meet occasionally in the street.” He went on to paint her. There was no mistaking the description. “That”, was the reply, “is Miss Bacon.” “That Miss Bacon!” he exclaimed. “I knew it was some one remarkable! I never saw such an eye in my life! And how young she is!”

No one could know and appreciate Delia Bacon, without placing her in his estimation among the most highly endowed women whom he ever saw or heard of. Was philosophy the subject of her discourse? She dealt with abstract truth as but one woman does in generations. Weighing, balancing, analyzing, and comparing, she knew all systems, and had their resemblances and their differences clearly defined, distinctly remembered, and ready at her call. Her mastery of the subject astonished you; you were sure she had given her chief time and thought to that alone.

Was it history? She was equally at home, and showed an insight that illustrated her great intellectual powers. Chronology, geography, and narrative all its facts were familiar to her. Knowing what she knew of these, most people would have considered themselves thoroughly versed in historic lore. But history to her was not these were to her only the beginning. They were the husk, the rind, the outward covering of a philosophy, which she delighted to educe for duller minds to recognize. So with poetry and art. By her own originality and genius, she set forth each with new thoughts, or with old ones in new combinations. And a deep veneration for what is good, a clear recognition of God and his providence, underlay all her teachings. This is no high-sounding praise. Let those who knew her best make answer. 1

On the 14th of May, 1853, she sailed from New York in the steamer Pacific, and arrived in Liverpool on Queen Victoria’s birthday, the 24th. She was not long, after going at once to London, in beginning, by the help of one of Emerson’s letters, the friendship with Carlyle and his wife, which was to bring her much kindness and comfort in her solitude. This seems to be an answer to the letter of introduction:

Chelsea, 8 June, 1853
My Dear Madam, Will you kindly dispense with the ceremony of being called on (by sickly people, in this hot weather), and come to us on Friday evening to tea at 7. I will try to secure Mr. Spedding at the same time; and we will deliberate what is to be done in your Shakspere affair. A river steamer will bring you within a gunshot of us. You pronounce Chainie Row and get out at Cadogan Pier, which is your fast landing place in Chelsea. Except Mrs. C. and the chance of Spedding, there will be nobody here.

Yours very sincerely,
T. Carlyle.

Some account of the visit invited by Carlyle’s letter above, and referred to in that of the 14th, is given with familiar confidence to her sister, under date of several weeks later: “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 [Spedding]. They turned black in the face at my presumption. “Do you mean to say,” so and so, said Mr. Carlyle, with his strong emphasis; and I said that I did; and they both looked at me with staring eyes, speechless for want of words in which to convey their sense of my audacity. At length Mr. Carlyle came down on me with such a volley. I did not mind it 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. I told him too that I should not think of questioning his authority in such a case if it were not with me a matter of knowledge. I did not advance it as an opinion. They began to be a little moved with my coolness at length, and before the meeting was over they agreed to hold themselves in a state of readiness to receive what I had to say on the subject. I left my introductory statement with him. In the course of two or three days he wrote to me to ask permission to show my paper to Mr. Monckton Milnes, who had expressed a wish to see it, inviting me to come there again very soon. He told me I had left a beautiful handkerchief there which Mrs. Carlyle would keep till I came. He also enclosed to me a letter of introduction to Mr. Collier, which he had taken the pains to obtain for me from another literary gentleman. I have not yet sent it. That was five weeks ago.”

On 12th August, 1853, Carlyle writes to her: “On Wednesday I forgot to say that the printed Harley MSS. Catalogue, which I spoke of your buying, lies for consultation on its table in the Museum; and that you can examine it to all lengths, either as a preliminary or as a final measure. If you can find in that mass of English records (the main collection that exists) any document tending to confirm your Shakspere theory, it will be worth all the reasoning in the world, and will certainly surprise all men.”

Emerson: “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 Shakspere 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.” 2

On the last day of November, 1853, she took lodgings at St. Albans, attracted, no doubt, by its association with the great Chancellor, to whom it gave a title and a tomb. It was during her stay there that she sought through Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, as a note from him indicates, an introduction to Lord Verulam. As the bearer of that title was then not a Bacon but a Grimston, there would seem to have been little help from him to be hoped for.

For eleven months, until the beginning of November, 1854, she remained at St. Albans, pursuing her work with exhausting eagerness. For the next month she was at Hatfield, redolent of Elizabethan memories, ten miles beyond St. Albans; and thence, at the beginning of December, she returned to London.

About the beginning of April, 1857, her book came before the world. Its title, so long and so laboriously disputed, was this: The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded. By Delia Bacon. With a Preface by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Author of The Scarlet Letter etc. It was in form an octavo, of about seven hundred pages, including a hundred pages, separately numbered, of the author’s Introduction. This Introduction, after a statement, not too compact or clear, of The Proposition, contained a review of The Age of Elizabeth, and the Elizabethan Men of Letters; extracts from an altogether separate, and unpublished, Life of Raleigh; Raleigh’s School, and The New Academy.

When this work of hers, for which alone she had for years been willing to live, was done and failed her life was ended too.

In December, 1857, under the stress of her heightening malady, she was removed to an excellent private asylum for a small number of insane persons at Henley-in-Arden, in the forest of Arden, eight miles from Stratford. While she was there, Emerson was advised of her condition; and the terms in which, even in this eclipse of her intellect and after the failure of her work, he still expressed himself concerning her. Her brother’s opinion that she had been verging upon some mental disturbance from 1851, gives way to the 13th of April, 1858, five years, wanting but a few days, after she had sailed from New York upon her enthusiastic quest, she was returned to her native land. She was brought very soon to the Retreat at that city of Hartford where so many years of her childhood had been spent, and there she remained until the second day of September, 1859, as her brother then wrote: “she died, clearly and calmly trusting in Christ, and thankful to escape from tribulation and outer into rest.” In the old burying-ground at New Haven she was laid, in the parcel of ground with her brother’s family. A cross of brown stone, set there by some of the ladies who remembered the love and admiration with which they had received in her instruction in history, bears simply the record of her birth and death, and the words:

So He bringeth them to their desired haven.

No one, of all that cared most for her, could wish to have her judged of more kindly or justly than in the closing words that Hawthorne wrote of her:

“What she may have suffered before her intellect gave way, we had better not try to imagine. No author had ever hoped so confidently as she; none ever failed more utterly. A superstitious fancy might suggest that the anathema on Shakspeare’s tombstone had fallen heavily on her head in requital of even the unaccomplished purpose of disturbing the dust beneath, and that the “Old Player” had kept so quietly in his grave, on the night of her vigil, because he foresaw how soon and terribly he would be avenged. But if that benign spirit takes any care or cognizance of such things now, he has surely requited the injustice that she sought to do him the high justice that she really did by a tenderness of love and pity of which only he could be capable. What matters it though she called him by some other name? He had wrought a greater miracle on her than on all the world besides. This bewildered enthusiast had recognized a depth in the man whom she decried, which scholars, critics, and learned societies devoted to the elucidation of his unrivalled scenes, had never imagined to exist there. She had paid him the loftiest honour that all these ages of renown have been able to accumulate upon his memory. And when, not many months after the outward failure of her lifelong object, she passed into the better world, I know not why we should hesitate to believe that the immortal poet may have met her on the threshold and led her in, reassuring her with friendly and comfortable words, and thanking her (yet with a smile of gentle humour in his eyes at the thought of certain mistaken speculations) for having interpreted him to mankind so well.” 3