no doubt, about the time when, as the popular phrase has it, I fiddled
while Rome burned? The opposition made a good deal of that circumstance
at the next election. They said I ought to have got out and hustled with
the firemen, regardless of the fact that I did not belong to their union.
Every man to his trade, I say. The firemen played on the flames and I
played on the violin.
“Possibly, on looking back now that it is all over, I might have made a
happier selection of the composition I performed on that occasion. It was
entitled ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning,’ a forerunner of a popular piece
which I believe is not entirely unknown in your own country today. But
that was a mere bit of thoughtlessness.
“The extent of that conflagration, also, has been much exaggerated.
It was confined to a few old garages in the suburbs upon which, oddly
enough, I had taken out insurance only a couple of days before. One of
those remarkable coincidences which do occasionally occur in real life.
“My political enemies tried to make a good deal out of it, but I am glad
to say they were unable to prove anything. My candidates for the Forum
were elected by the largest majorities on record. And if that isn’t
vindication, what is?”
“Very interesting, Mr. Nero. But how did you come to take up music as a
study and attain such remarkable proficiency?”
“I took up music in the first place as a remedy for baldness. I was
troubled considerably with falling hair and dandruff and I had observed
that all professional musicians were endowed with flowing locks. I looked
into the subject. I talked to the court barber and to several performers
on the violin, clarionet and bass drum, with names ending in ‘off’ and
‘sky,’ who had lately come to Rome from other countries. One musician
informed me that five years before he had been so bald that flies trying
to skate over the shiny surface would fall and break their legs, but
he was now wearing his hair in a Dutch pompadour. He was a skilled
performer on the classic lyre.
“I cannot say that the study and performance of music had a similar
effect in my case, no appreciable change being noted in the hirsute
adornment of my dome of thought, though my wife’s mother did refer to my
musical efforts as hair-raising—but there were other compensations. As a
result of my daily practicing on the violin—or rather nightly, my hours
being from about one to three A. M. as a rule—the price of real estate in
the neighborhood dropped twenty-five per cent, and I was able to buy in
some very desirable properties I had long had my eye on—for a song. (No
pun intended.) It was about this time that some one originated the saying
concerning making Rome howl.
“I also played at the Rome Asylum for the Insane every Saturday
afternoon, and they were just crazy to hear me. One Friday night five of
the inmates committed suicide and my political opponents, as usual, tried
to make capital of the occurrence.
“But these little things did not interfere with my purpose to become
a finished musician—even though unkind critics said they wished I had
finished. And speaking of criticisms, there were some that hurt me to
the quick though I suppose history does not regard me as an especially
sensitive creature. One of my favorite compositions was entitled ‘Through
All Eternity.’ I presume you are acquainted with it. It is still popular.
“I asked a young woman one day if she would like to hear me play ‘Through
All Eternity,’ and she replied that that would be her idea of—well, I
don’t like to say it, but you doubtless recall the classic definition of
war as promulgated by one of your most conspicuous generals. It was a
cruel saying.
“But you wished for my opinions on modern music and musicians. I don’t
know that I am qualified to judge; not if what I heard the other night
is music nowadays. A couple of the boys who were being materialized by a
friend of Sir Oliver Lodge inveigled me into going along and attending
what the advertisements said was a concert.
“As the first number on the programme, it was announced the orchestra
would give an imitation of ‘jazz,’ whatever that is. There was a crash
like a pantry shelf full of dishes coming down, followed by a noise that
was a combination of a battle and a boiler shop. I thought the roof would
fall in next, and I was just preparing to slide out when the man next to
me remarked reassuringly: ‘The agony is over.’
“There wasn’t a musical note or a hint of harmony in the whole slam-bang
from start to finish. A couple of kids with hammers and an old tin-pan
could have achieved the same effect. People paid two dollars and a half
a seat to hear that, when they could hire a small boy to run a stick
along a picket fence for ten cents. They called that music, and yet the
neighbors used to kick when I played ‘Way Down Upon the Tiber River’ and
‘There’s No Place Like Rome’ on my violin at three o’clock in the morning.
“Then a young woman with a low dress and high voice came out and screamed
like a patient at a painless dentist’s. One of the papers next morning
said she had a sweet voice, but ‘lacked execution.’ She wouldn’t have
lacked it very long if she’d lived when I was Emperor. The final number
on the programme was a performance on the ukelele by a pair of harmless
looking youths whose appearance belied their real natures.
“I have read in my ‘Pocket Chesterfield’ that a gentleman is one who
never inflicts needless pain or suffering on others. They were not
gentlemen. In my day we occasionally used racks and thumb-screws and
other instruments of necessary torture, but we knew nothing about
ukeleles. They had not been invented. Has your country no Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Audiences? But it is unnecessary to ask.
“Yet you moderns have one advantage over us ancients when it comes to
music, and I am willing to admit it: the phonograph. It is much more
satisfactory than any human singer or player, because you can shut it off
without hurting its feelings. It has a patent stop—something the tenor or
soprano lacks. If you get up at a concert and request the soloist in the
middle of a song kindly to cease as her effort is making you exceedingly
nervous, you are simply reserving a seat for yourself in the patrol wagon.
“But at home with the phonograph all you’ve got to do is to push the
little lever and it quits. You can enjoy its concerts without having to
put on a clean white shirt and an open-face vest and a dinner coat. You
can wear the same clothes you did at breakfast or sit around in an old
bathrobe with your collar off and listen to Mary Garden gargle. If you
did that at the grand opera house it would be sure to excite remark.
“And now you must excuse me, young man. I’ve promised to play tonight
at the Mount Olympus firemen’s ball and I must have a little time to
rehearse my piece—‘I’m a Roman in the Gloamin’.’ Perhaps you know it? By
the way, are you a musician yourself? But you must be. Everybody is,
more or less.”
“No, sir. I can’t play anything.”
“Oh, you must be mistaken. Are you married?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then to preserve the domestic harmony, you must be used to playing
second fiddle.”
As I staggered down the stairs I felt that I had richly earned a Nero—I
mean a hero, medal.
XIX
LORD BACON MUSES ON CIPHERS
“I’ll tell you one bet you’ve overlooked in your ramblings around with
shades,” remarked the city editor, “and that’s the chance to get the
right answer to that Shakespeare-Bacon controversy. I was reminded of
it last night when I happened across that old story of the woman who
said to her husband: ‘When I get to heaven I’m going to ask Shakespeare
if he really wrote those plays.’ ‘But suppose Shakespeare isn’t there?’
returned her husband. ‘Then you can ask him,’ she replied. Have you heard
any of the spooks discussing the question?”
“I’ve never even heard it mentioned,” I responded. “You may remember I
had a chat with Mr. Shakespeare himself some time ago on the subject of
the movies, but there was something in his attitude that kept me from
asking what might have been embarrassing questions. And besides, as is
quite common with these shades of the mighty, when they once get started
talking it’s pretty hard to get a word in edgewise. I believe it would
be better to tackle Lord Bacon and see what he has to say about it. If
he has a grievance he’s a lot more likely to talk than the man who’s
generally accepted as the author of Shakespeare’s works.”
I approached the eminent Lord Chancellor, jurist and philosopher with
considerable trepidation, but like all the truly great his modesty and
affability quickly put me at my ease.
“You wish to know who was the real author of the works attributed to
Shakespeare, eh?” he replied, with a smile of amusement. “So they’re
beginning to raise the question down on earth, are they? I thought those
ciphers might puzzle ’em for a few hundred years yet. Well, and who do
they think wrote ’em?”
“Some persons say you did, Lord Bacon, and others attribute the
authorship to the Earl of Dudley and other of your contemporaries. A
Detroit man got permission to dig in the bed of the river Wye for the
head of the Earl, which was supposed to be buried there, together with a
box of manuscripts that would prove him to be the real Shakespeare.”
“Hum, hum,” mused his lordship. “I guess somebody else lost his head that
time. Well, all you tell me is extremely interesting, I’m sure. And I
presume even Will Shakespeare has his partisans, too, who insist still
that the uneducated village lad from Stratford who used to hold horses
in front of the London theaters for a living—and then served his term as
a ‘chaser’ on the stage during the supper hour in vaudeville—that this
strolling actor was actually the author of the immortal plays bearing his
name?”
“Oh, yes, your lordship, Shakespeare would probably win by a large
majority, if the matter were left to a popular vote.”
“Excuse me if I smile. The thought is highly amusing. I don’t believe I
am quite ready, as yet, to present any formal claim to the authorship,
but if I were free to speak I could— But, pshaw! What’s the difference?
There are plenty of similar cases of masquerading authors in even later
English literature which no mortal has yet discovered. By the way, has
any question been raised, to date, about the so-called Dickens novels?
There hasn’t? Everybody takes it for granted that they were written
by Charles Dickens, the young, untrained reporter, who never had any
education after he was twelve years of age, who worked in a blacking
factory when he was ten? Well, well. You surprise me. Has nobody found
any ciphers yet in his work? Not a one? Well, then look out for a
sensation one of these days. Ciphers have always been my hobby, but long
before I found any cryptic corroboration for my theory in Dickens’ works
I was pretty sure who really wrote them. Can you think of a certain
great statesman, like myself, but who flourished in the Victorian era, a
dignified, austere personage who might not like to be known as the author
of humorous works, but who might have got Dickens to lend his name for
the purpose? You can’t? Try again. Well, I’ll make a suggestion: William
E. Gladstone. Don’t smile. Wait until you hear the proofs. Gladstone
had a contemporary and rival, Disraeli, who published novels under a
pen name. Later Disraeli used his own name and the fact did not help
his reputation as a statesman. Each of the principal so-called Dickens
novels deals with some great proposed reform, such as the abolition
of imprisonment for debt, the improvement of penal institutions and
poor-houses, removal of delays in the law, the cutting of red tape in
government offices, the wiping-out of the wretched Yorkshire schools.
“Gladstone was a born reformer. For a long time I was pretty sure that
Dickens could not have written these books, but I never associated
them with Gladstone until one day I happened to hit upon a cipher—as
conclusive a one, I think, as any that have been discovered in the
works of Shakespeare. Just before this I heard of the finding of the
manuscript of a letter written by Gladstone to his firm of publishers,
relating to the use of the name ‘Murdstone’ as one of the chief
characters in ‘David Copperfield.’ After writing a number of novels
Gladstone evidently felt that he would like to leave some more obvious
clue to their real authorship than a cipher, and apparently his intention
had been to call this character ‘Mirthstone,’ a sort of pun upon his
own name. But his publishers must have objected to the device as too
transparent, for we find him replying: ‘Very well. Then Murdstone let it
be.’ Another clue was afforded by the name of the ‘literary man with a
wooden leg’ in ‘Our Mutual Friend,’—Silas Wegg. Here we have the initials
in full in their regular order, ‘W. E. G.’
“And now,” continued Lord Bacon, “we come to the real cipher, buried in
the first of his longer stories, the ‘Pickwick Papers.’ I call it the
Ivy Green Cipher. Why this poem of three stanzas was inserted in this
book has long puzzled students of Dickens. The ostensible excuse for
its introduction was its recitation at an evening party at Manor Farm,
Dingley Dell, by the aged clergyman of the place, name not given, who
posed as its author. But the poem has absolutely nothing to do with the
plot of the story. Just write these first five lines, as I dictate, will
you?
‘Oh, a dainty plant is the ivy green,
That creepeth o’er ruins old,
Of right choice food are his meals I ween,
In his cell so lone and cold.
The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed—’
“Now, kindly take your pencil and write down the first letter of the
first line’s last word, the second letter of the second line’s last word,
the third letter of the third line’s third word from the last (a not
uncommon variant in ciphers of this character) and the fourth letter of
the fourth line’s last word. Those four letters, in this order, spell
GLAD. Now glance along the next line for the word that would form the
second syllable of a proper name. The next to the last word is STONE.
And there you have the conclusive clue to the authorship of the Dickens
novels!”
“That seems to be a clincher, your lordship,” I said, “and I am sure your
theory will create a sensation down below when the earth-dwellers hear of
it. But will you not tell me whether you are the author of ‘Hamlet’ and
the other immortal plays?”
“You may remember,” he replied with an enigmatic smile, “Sir Walter
Scott’s answer to the lady who asked whether he wrote the ‘Waverly
Novels,’ when they were appearing anonymously? ‘I did not write them,’
he rejoined, ‘but if I did I would not tell you.’ Some very curious
circumstances were connected with the writing of the works called
Shakespeare’s, and one day the world may learn of them. What’s in a name?
A rose by any other name would still cost twenty-four dollars a dozen on
Fifth Avenue.”
Then his lordship bowed me into my waiting astral plane.