Marguerite & The Sonnets *

Marguerite de Valois had been married to King Henry of Navarre for reasons of State. Though her beauty had inspired all the French poets and litterateurs, her husband had been so indifferent to her that the marriage had never been consummated. Literature, music, and art ran in her blood, for the first Marguerite, her ancestress (she was the third Marguerite), was a poetess and the creator of the Heptameron, a collection of Tales. Marguerite of Navarre was brilliantly clever with almost a touch of genius. She possessed high literary gifts and a wide range of knowledge. She was also a superb conversationalist. When Francis Bacon arrived at the French Court a divorce was being arranged at her instigation. Circumstances dragged out the proceedings but she did eventually divorce King Henry and retired into semi-private life, constructing a magnificient mansion on the Seine, facing the Louvre, completing it in 1608. Here she spent the last years of her life, dying in 1615, aged nearly sixty-three.

http://www.sirbacon.org/marquerite.htm

Marguerite was in the prime of young womanhood, in the hey day of youth, aged twenty-five, when Francis Bacon first became acquainted with her, under the most congenial surroundings. Her husband's apartments might be crowded with politicians, schemers, and wasters, as became a hotbed of intrigue where plots were hatched, the Huguenot pastor versus the Catholic priest, but Queen Marguerite's salon was thronged with thinkers and scholars. They were men of a very different calibre, being philosophers, scientists, poets, litterateurs, inventors, and the like, attracted by the sheer genius of her intellectual personality. Francis Bacon fell in love almost immediately on his arrival at the French Court; and the woman who stirred him was no less a person than Queen Marguerite herself. In a book published in 1621, six years after her death, written in Latin under the mask of "John Barclay," entitled John Barclay his Argenis , Francis Bacon tells us of his feelings about the fair Marguerite. In later editions of this book a Key is given to the names John Barclay uses. "Argenis" is Marguerite, Francis being named and Queen Elizabeth also. There is no possibility of error. outstanding fact that her cast of intellect was more akin to Francis Bacon's than that of anyone else at the French Court-- save Ronsard--it is inconceivable that such persons with so much in common would not be rapidly drawn together by the sheer force of mental gravitation. They were both genuises of similar tastes, both had their private problems through husband and mother, both needed sympathy, both longed for the ideal things of life and their establishment on earth and both were of the Blood Royal....though one was under a cloud as a concealed Prince. Marguerite was aware of his real identity from their first private meeting. His passion for Marguerite had the direct result of bringing into being the most remarkable diary of emotion ever written. "When he supped alone silent and in private, hearing love speak, with cares that tortured him as a lover" he began to unburden himself by outpouring his emotions in verse. And throughout the years to old age, in all the great crises of his life he found heart-ease, an outlet, by pursuing the habit he had acquired when in France. The Marguerite Sonnets were the beginnings of the mysterious body of verse known today as Shake-spear's Sonnets. They became literally and truly his Sonnet -Diary. It was written in secret and kept, so the author tells us, " in sure Wards of Trust that to my muse my Jewels of Emotion might unused stay." (Sonnet Diary. 105-xlviii).

From his contact with Marguerite he acquired the habit of clothing his emotions in imaginative terms. They were the true beginnings of what was described by Francis Bacon's friends as "Living Art." They knew his secret, the art of writing poetry of perfection. He was a highly sensitive soul who suffered the rapture and agony of varying conflicting emotions all his life. He suffered more intensely than the average man. Few have been placed on the rack of fate more than the concealed Prince who wore the Bacon mask...

Voice-over narrative:

"Let those who are in favour with their Stars
Of Public honour and Proud Titles boast,
Whilst I whom Fortune of such Triumph bars,
Unlook'd for JOY in that I honour most."

"Then happy I that Love am Beloved,
Where I may not Remove, nor be Removed"
(42-xxv.)

The second Canto to Marguerite opens with the avowal that the preciousness of her love is above all things, in the possession of her he possesses everything.

"Some Glory in their BIRTH , some in their Skill, Wealth, Bodies' Force, Garments, Hawks, Hounds, or an adjunct Pleasure wherein it finds a joy above the rest. But these particulars are not my measure, all these I better in one general Best. Thy Love is Better than High BIRTH TO ME. And having Thee of all Men's Pride I boast." He then fears lest she should take all this away "and me most wretched make. But do thy worst to steal away for Term of Life thou art assured mine; and my Life no longer than Thy Love will stay for it depends upon that Love of Thine. O what a Happy Title do I find, Happy to have thy Love, Happy to die." (57-xcii.).

He knows, too, all the unclean things that go on in the Court and so he begs her to take care. "Heaven in thy creation did decree that in thy face sweet love should ever dwell. How like Eve's Apple doth thy Beauty grow, if thy Sweet Virtue answer not thy Show." He continues his warning notes, and shows that he is not blind to her frailties:

How sweet and Lovely dost thou make the Shame,
Which like a Canker in the Fragrant Rose,
Doth Spot the Beauty of thy Budding Name!
O, in what Sweets dost thou thy Sins enclose!
The Tongue that tells the Story of thy Days
Making lascivious comments on thy Sport
Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise.
(60-xcv).

The next Sonnet was the result of having been to a Royal Ball given by King Henry and the Queen which had lasted until the small hours of the morning. He said his farewell to Marguerite privately, when the sun was rising in the East. When he is alone his thoughts run riot about her appearance, her face, he eyes, her dress.... from which we know that Marguerite was a brunette, dark complexion,dark eyes, full and round, more glorious than the "Morning Sun of Heaven or the Star that ushers in the Even." Her Black Dress suited her eyes that looked upon him like "Loving Mourners." And so the poet "Swears Beauty itself is Black, and all thy Foul that thy Complexion lack." And from the secret message in the poem we learn tht the emotion which called it into being was "King Henry's Ball," which had lasted until the early hours of the morning when the lovers had welcomed together the dawn and the rising sun. "Hush! We see the East.....Farewell!"

opens with the avowal that the preciousness of her love is above all things, in the possession of her he possesses everything.

"Some Glory in their BIRTH , some in their Skill, Wealth, Bodies' Force, Garments, Hawks, Hounds, or an adjunct Pleasure wherein it finds a joy above the rest. But these particulars are not my measure, all these I better in one general Best. Thy Love is Better than High BIRTH TO ME. And having Thee of all Men's Pride I boast." He then fears lest she should take all this away "and me most wretched make. But do thy worst to steal away for Term of Life thou art assured mine; and my Life no longer than Thy Love will stay for it depends upon that Love of Thine. O what a Happy Title do I find, Happy to have thy Love, Happy to die." (57-xcii.).

He knows, too, all the unclean things that go on in the Court and so he begs her to take care. "Heaven in thy creation did decree that in thy face sweet love should ever dwell. How like Eve's Apple doth thy Beauty grow, if thy Sweet Virtue answer not thy Show." He continues his warning notes, and shows that he is not blind to her frailties:

How sweet and Lovely dost thou make the Shame,
Which like a Canker in the Fragrant Rose,
Doth Spot the Beauty of thy Budding Name!
O, in what Sweets dost thou thy Sins enclose!
The Tongue that tells the Story of thy Days
Making lascivious comments on thy Sport
Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise.
(60-xcv).

Francis Bacon never married his Marguerite. But he treasures her in his heart as an ideal, and in the last four Sonnets he mingles her as an idealized Love with other Loves--literature, Masonry, his wife Alice, the Earth-Mother--that have taken possession of his life during the marching years. The last Sonnet he writes about her was after she had passed to the Higher Life. He says he knows the lost Ideal is not dead. She still lives.

Thy Bosom (the Bosom of Mother Earth) is endeared with all Hearts,
Which I, by lacking, have supposed Dead;
And there reigns Love and all Love's Loving parts,
And all those Friends which I thought buried...but
Thou art the Grave where Buried Love dothe LIVE,
Hung with the Trophies of my Lovers gone...
Their images I loved I view in THE,
And thou (All THEY) hast all the All of Me.

(71-xxi).

This entirely new evidence--which is indisputable--alters the entire scholastic outlook respecting the character of Francis Bacon. I have stressed it at length because it shows unmistakably that instead of being a cold, calculating cynic, he was the very reverse. He was warm hearted, emotional, sensitive and, as is the way with exceptionally fine fibred natures, he could not bare his heart to the world and betray he inne most feelings. But he did discharge his feelings in a way unique that only a genius could have imagined.....the manipulation of a Sonnet carrying in it's heart the truth of the particular emotion that called it into being; and he also made provision for the Secret of the Sonnets not to be known to the general world for long generations until all the principal actors were dust, when no harm could be done to anyone by the Diary's disclosures.

Unless we give Francis Bacon's Diary full consideration, regarding it as basis of authority of his inner life, his aims, his ideals, we cannot possibly understand the springs of his actions. The writing of biography without the light is sheds is a mere ploughing of the sands, a waste of time and paper. Francis Bacon's Personal Poems are the hidden factor which enters into the problem of his life and falsifies the conclusions of the majority of his previous biographers.

The Sonnet-Diary is confirmed by historical facts...every Theme, every Canto, every Poem. During the years 1576-7 Sir Amyas Paulet and Francis Bacon, with the ambassadorial train, went on tour with the French Court visiting Blois, Poicitiers, and other places. Young Francis treasured up all he saw abroad, Calais, Rouen, Orleans, Tours, Rheims, Bordeaux, Guienne, and Gascony. He made notes and reflections for the future use of all he saw and heard. Nothing was too great or too small to escape his attention.

“Look,” said Marguerite. “See what he has drawn here”. She showed the others the mysterious drawing Francis had made above the two love sonnets. It appeared to be two “A”s slanting to left and right, surrounded by branches and leaves. “And what is the significance of these symbols?” she asked Francis, curiously.
“I am working on the idea of using a coded symbol in my works, a double “A” which at once represents the twin peaks of Mount Parnassus and the first letters of Athena and Apollo. Finally the curved side of each “A” forms a “C”, which means 100, and is the count of my name, ‘Francis Bacon’ in Gematria.