Dope

The Judge�s skin


�Cambyses was a great emperor, such another as our master is. He had many lord-deputies, lord-presidents, and lieutenants under him. It is a great while ago since I read the history. It chanced he had under him, in one of his dominions, a briber, a gift-taker, a gratifier of rich men; he followed gifts as fast
as he that followed the pudding, a hand-maker in his office to make his son a great man, as the old saying is: Happy is the child whose father goeth to the devil. The cry of the poor widow came to
the emperor�s ear, and caused him to flay the judge quick, and laid his skin in the chair of judgment, that all judges that should give judgment afterwards should sit in the same skin. Surely it was a
goodly sign, a goodly monument, the sign of the judge�s skin. I pray God we may once see the skin in England.�

This is Hugh Latimer, quoted for splendid, bloody effect by Macaulay as he reaches his butcher�s hand in and takes hold of the last little sweetmeats that are left to Francis Bacon�s immortal moral character. Macaulay has a very meat eater�s joy in attacking his prey. His prose assumes this wonderful sahib drollery, which you can tell he used to roll out when some heathen was brought to his office in Calcutta and he had to �straighten the boy out.� There�s a phrase in one of Shaw�s plays, Heartbreak House, in which Lady Utterwood explains what her husband does in the colonies:

LADY UTTERWORD. There is Hastings. Get rid of your ridiculous sham democracy; and give Hastings the necessary powers, and a good supply of bamboo to bring the British native to his senses: he will save the country with the greatest ease.

I should say that Lady Utterword belongs to a latter period of the governing classes, when they were in decay. Still, that bamboo sometimes obviously tempts our Mac.

There must be, there is, more to say about Latimer's vivid, wild, frightening image. If Limited Inc had world and time, we would dive into the numerous literary uses of the flayed human skin � from the Nazi lampshade to this marvelous judge�s chair. Judges, of course, ask for it. Daumier saw it � how costume essentially gives them away, how the faces assume, over the years, a Polichinello cast. But to see
the sign of the skin in England � ah, that is harsh, harsh. Yet doesn�t LI wish, sometimes, to see some (not all, a select few) congressmen and Senators flayed in just this way? The insufferable Billy Tauzin, for instance, presiding right now, with appropriate outbursts of righteousness, over the Enron scandal, who previously shilled shamelessly for the auditor giants and against Levitt.

Off track, (CHARACTER WITH MOUSTACHE SAYS), we are getting off track...

Macaulay�s assault on Francis Bacon chose an object of enduring, and mysterious, interest. Francis Bacon has a knack for attracting attention -- or at least he does dead.. There is the famous McGuffin of claiming Bacon wrote Shakespeare�s plays. There are also claims that he was Queen Elizabeth�s bastard son, that he was one of the avatars, like Buddha and whoever the guru of the day is, and so on. The Macaulay attack, for these people, is a perennial source of infinite indignation. It is the devil�s view of the gospels. For a nice point by point in this direction, click this link.

Where to start with Francis Bacon? We aren't going for the whole bio. A few facts is all. Francis Bacon and his brother Anthony were born to one of the Tudor�s political families. Like the Cecils, the Bacons flourished in office, had that peculiar ability to administer. This was no mean thing � the Tudors, unlike the clan monarchs before them, or the Stuarts that succeeded them, survived by administering.

Francis Bacon rose very high in Elizabeth�s court. Lord Essex was, Macaulay points out, his patron. Elizabeth had an incredible number of very sinister figures working for her. If you read about the infighting that characterized her reign, you soon get the feeling that there was something very ... Stalinistic about the whole thing. Not that she was Stalin. Rather, it is the way the odor of the secret police seems to scent the air of her counselor's confabs.

Lord Essex is one of her great courtiers. We all associate him with Shakespeare. Macaulay emphasizes the relationship between the rising Francis B. and Essex, leaving out Anthony B., who was even more attached to the man. It is an invidious elision -- much of what went down when Essex conspired against Elizabeth, and Francis made his move against Essex, has to do with loyalties to Anthony.

But the worst is that Macaulay sentimentalizes Essex. Bacon�s most recent biographers, Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart, emphasize the homoerotic culture of Essex�s entourage. Macaulay doesn�t even mention Anthony Bacon, but, J and S have painstakingly discovered, Anthony was in trouble with the authorities over a little bit of sodomy... in his time. And Francis, too, was inclined to is it AC or DC? I always forget. Until, at forty, he married some thirteen year old girl.

Well, we can�t expect the Victorians to be as endlessly fascinated with sex as we are, so these are the
unmentioned in Macaulay�s essay. That doesn�t mean he is unaware of at least the rumor that Bacon was AC (or DC). Macaulay�s first accusation against Bacon is that he betrayed Essex. It is a very interesting accusation, considering how Macaulay is considered the epitome of philistinism, because it echoes something very deep in English culture � one hear�s in this boorish gentleman�s creed the distant tintinnabulation of the Bloomsbury credo, phrased, in this century, by E.M. Forster�s �if I had to betray my friend or my country, I hope I would have the guts to betray my country.�

Those who defend Bacon make the point that Macaulay abbreviates episodes, distorts the meaning of the
justification of Essex�s execution that Bacon, under Elizabeth�s order, was obliged to grind out, and quotes
selectively from the trial. J. and S., however, come down gingerly on Macaulay�s side. It seems that Coke, that
idiot, was messing up the hearing on Essex, when Bacon straightened the case out with a well chosen
comparison to recent events in France. Macaulay is horrified by the coolness of Bacon�s move.
TBC