T.S. Eliot's "Confidential Clerk"

[Guest Ryan Murtha]

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to interpret Eliot's play The Confidential Clerk along Baconian lines; a tale of confused identity, in the end (spoiler) we learn Barnabas Kaghan is the long-lost son of Lady Elizabeth. You guys should read it, it should become part of our arsenal because it's pretty clear Eliot is talking about Bacon. 

Synopsis

Sir Claude Mulhammer, a wealthy entrepreneur, decides to smuggle his illegitimate son Colby into the household by employing him as his confidential clerk. He hopes that his eccentric wife, Lady Elizabeth Mulhammer, will take a liking to the boy and allow him to live as her adopted son. She in fact becomes convinced that Colby is actually her own son. Meanwhile, Lucasta Angel wants to marry B. Kaghan, but neither seems to have any parents at all. A drama of mistaken identity and confusion ensues. The "confidential clerk" of the title refers both to Colby, in his new job, and Eggerson, Sir Claude's old clerk who is seen retiring at the start of the play but returns in the final act to resolve the situation.

[Light-of-Truth]

Never heard of it, sounds interesting! 

I am slightly familiar with Eliot from many years before I knew of Bacon. When I read Pike after becoming a Baconian I thought I saw a similar style. Not the same ideas and words, but something else. Same, but not. Different, but not. One day everything ends up in a single dot, all the same.

😉

 

[Guest Ryan Murtha]

14 minutes ago, Light-of-Truth said:

Never heard of it, sounds interesting! 

 

 

Another spoiler, in the end, Angel Lucasta (Lucifer) ends up at the knee of Sir Claude Mulhammer (God) - it's very allegorical, you will love it. I can't believe it took me this long to post about it, now that I think of it. 

Also Eliot's Four Quartets is great, and Prufrock. And Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Leave the Wasteland aside, it's too difficult even for nerds, but his other stuff is great. 

[Light-of-Truth]

I'll try to read it. Found it here:

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.547673/mode/2up

I had to play.

A PLAY BY F BACON

T S ELIOT is 100 Simple cipher with the modern 26 letter codes.

Did Bacon write this Play? No way. Did Eliot have any clue on ciphers? I am certain he knew of Bacon, as you present. 

But there is something bigger in the Universe. You have your God, others have their Gods, I'm not sure what I have. But whatever it is there is a connection between every single life form on Earth and into the Universe. Time as a concept is a Joke to the level where time is a Joke. 

I suspect we as Baconians, some as Christians, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, and EVERYTHING else, should be aware of hints and messages of Truth backed up by Synchronicity on all plains have a purpose that is in sync with Bacon's plan. Bacon was a Virgin Born savior to the Modern World. 

😉

For me, Eliot is a faded memory of the past, but I remember the name. Many are long lost... 

I suspect this is well worth a read with Bacon in mind. Good vs Evil, who wins in the end, I'm curious about how Bacon fits in. 

EDIT:

Just read a first couple pages and all I got was in your face sexual innuendo and humor! I think Eliot is known to have these concepts in his bag of tricks. But maybe it is just me stressed out from computer issues since last night and need a break.

And I see Bacon ciphers. Hanging Bacon? 😉

LOL

 

 

Edited August 13, 2022 by Light-of-Truth

[Light-of-Truth]

Looking at this play, to me it looks like fertile cipher grounds. Bacon seems to be there on several levels. Every new line starts with an upper case letter. Veiled meanings are obvious. Lot of word play, and of course Lady Elizabeth with a secret son.

I'm not reading as I should; front to back. I am jumping around. Sometimes reading back to front. I can't help it, years of bad habits.

Sleeping on it last night when I've had time today I have looked to see if TS Eliot was a Baconian. It became evident early in my poking around he may have been a fan of ciphers and "secret writing". Knowledge of ciphers leads to some knowledge of Bacon. Makes sense, I was seeing it last night before I went to bed. 

Look at page 103 of his play:

TS Eliot may have been playing with secret writing for fun to tell the story of Bacon's Royal Birth. 

EDIT:

Just want to add this from The Cryptographic Imagination, page 14:

But Poe's generic influence also requires one to consider how particular writers have learned from Poe's fictional practices. This is peculiarly true of cryptographic writing, which always forces one to confront the essential, shocking anonymity of language. And since cryptographic texts lead to a linguistic doubling of reader and writer contained within the imaginative space of the cryptograph, secret writing naturally encourages imitation and plagiarism. Because of the powerful transferential effects of Poe's secret writing, a disproportionate number of his readers have come to think of themselves as Poe's "secret readers," who reproduce his cryptographic paradigm either in their writing or in their lives.

Literary cryptography turns out to be, in part, a set of mechanisms for producing these transference effects, and so part 2 of The Cryptographic Imagination examines the effects of Poe's secret writing on his later readers. These include writers and critics such as T. S. Eliot and Jacques Lacan; cryptographers such as William Friedman; and the Boston spiritualist Lizzie Doten, who believed she served as a spiritual telegraph through whom Poe posthumously dictated poems.

Edited August 14, 2022 by Light-of-Truth

[Light-of-Truth]

It is indeed curious that it turns out Lady Elizabeth's secret son is B. Kaghan (Bacon). 😉

 

[Guest Ryan Murtha]

1 hour ago, Light-of-Truth said:

It is indeed curious that it turns out Lady Elizabeth's secret son is B. Kaghan (Bacon). 😉

 

Yes I've wondered about Eliot, he's my favorite poet.

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince, no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous:
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous-
Almost, at times, the Fool.

He was extraordinarily well read and knew about the authorship controversy; in deference to tradition (he was very much an old school guy, the last poet to wear spats) he quietly upheld the Stratfordian position, knowing its absurdity, but in the introduction to a book called Wheel of Fire by G. Wilson Knight, he says 

What at first appears to be their “philosophy of life” sometimes turns out to be only a felicitous but shameless lifting of a passage from almost any author . . . [Shakespeare] has his Montaigne, his Seneca, and his Machiavelli, or his Anti-Machiavelli like the others.

If Eliot knew the Anti-Machiavel, maybe throwing in Montaigne is a clue as well. 

If anyone has some time and reads French, look at the Montaigne essays (particularly the early ones) and compare them with the French of Anti-Machiavel a few years earlier. Montaigne is known to have consulted the book. 

 

[Light-of-Truth]

I keep wondering about the next line after page 103:

He was run over. By a rhinoceros.

I can see Bacon and then eros which is cupid? Cupid the son of Venus may represent Bacon the son of Elizabeth.

No matter what, he was "run over by a rhinoceros"? Eliot was obviously playing and having fun. 😉

 

[Kate]

On 8/15/2022 at 1:31 AM, Light-of-Truth said:

I keep wondering about the next line after page 103:

He was run over. By a rhinoceros.

I can see Bacon and then eros which is cupid? Cupid the son of Venus may represent Bacon the son of Elizabeth.

No matter what, he was "run over by a rhinoceros"? Eliot was obviously playing and having fun. 😉

 

Bacon Rose ?