Video by Francis Bacon Society
‘‘What is truth?’ said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer’. That was delicious! I being then about 9 years old….read that first Essay of Truth… I was thenceforward a Baconian.’ So said Constance Fearon, later Mrs Henry Pott, inspiration for the founding of the Francis Bacon Society in 1886. And when the Society became, ‘so formal and proper that it has lost all sociability’, she proceeded to found a second Bacon Society in 1905. Mrs Pott had 11 children, and in the words of one Baconiana editor: ‘she even managed to have her first born on Francis Bacon’s birthday’!
The talk encompasses a selection from Mrs Pott’s impressive output: her publication of Bacon’s Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, her books, ‘Did Francis Bacon Write Shakespeare?’, and ‘Francis Bacon and his Secret Society’, and excerpts from her private letters, papers and Baconiana articles.
