A bed for Bacon?
The day I saw a copy of an old book in a charity shop; it was No Bed for Bacon (1941) by Caryl Brahms and S. J. Simon, and it’s a kind of proto-Shakespeare in Love, a comic novel about the trials and tribulations of our greatest dramatist as he acts (badly) in a revival of one of his plays, supports his company as they face competition from their rival, Philip Henslowe, falls in love with a woman (who’s disguised as a boy, naturally), tries to placate fellow actors, and struggles to write a play for performance in front of Queen Elizabeth I while also trying (unsuccessfully) to start writing a sequel to one of his most popular comedies, to be entitled Love’s Labours Won.
All of this made me think of the myths that cluster around Shakespeare. Not so much that the plays ‘must have’ been written by someone else, Francis Bacon perhaps. No, Brahms and Simon fortunately have no truck with that. More the ideas of Olde Englande, all roast beef, good cheer, and half-timbered buildings. The sort of thing embodied by structures such as Stratford’s delightful, early-20th century faux-Elizabethan shop front of W. H. Smith, about which I’ve posted before.
These days most of the other surviving early-20th century shopfronts built by this company are mostly bland modern facades. The buildings’ interiors have been refitted at least once since the shops were built, and features such as plaster ceilings and Gill lettering are nearly all long gone. Newtown in Powys is the best place to to see what we have lost in these shop interiors.
But at Stratford, one trace remains, in the shape of a series of coloured glass roundels on the stairs. Here, among the suspended ceilings and modern shelf units, are portraits of British writers. These days they depend for their effect on being lit from behind, and not all were illuminated the other day – Shakespeare himself was as dark as the mysterious lady. But three were glowing with backlit colour: Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Charles Dickens, and, wonderfully Francis Bacon. Not a bad selection: Sheridan was a theatrical star, Dickens loved the theatre and was a virtuoso public reader of his own novels, Bacon was a contemporary of Shakespeare.
These portraits in glass speak of a time when Smith’s were committed and successful booksellers as well as stationers. They remind us that for this company at least, the Olde England myth was more than a fancy front – William Henry Smith loved the idea that he could help people educate themselves with cheap editions of the literary classics, and the idea lasted well beyond his time. You could still buy novels by Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens in my local WHS last time I looked, although such classics were in the minority on the shelves. And I doubt they’d have a copy of Francis Bacon’s Essays. Back in the 1930s, though, Smith’s might well have provided, if not a bed, a shelf for Bacon.
The day I saw a copy of an old book in a charity shop; it was No Bed for Bacon (1941) by Caryl Brahms and S. J. Simon, and it’s a kind of proto-Shakespeare in Love, a comic novel about the trials and tribulations of our greatest dramatist as he acts (badly) in a revival of one of his plays, supports his company as they face competition from their rival, Philip Henslowe, falls in love with a woman (who’s disguised as a boy, naturally), tries to placate fellow actors, and struggles to write a play for performance in front of Queen Elizabeth I while also trying (unsuccessfully) to start writing a sequel to one of his most popular comedies, to be entitled Love’s Labours Won.
All of this made me think of the myths that cluster around Shakespeare. Not so much that the plays ‘must have’ been written by someone else, Francis Bacon perhaps. No, Brahms and Simon fortunately have no truck with that. More the ideas of Olde Englande, all roast beef, good cheer, and half-timbered buildings. The sort of thing embodied by structures such as Stratford’s delightful, early-20th century faux-Elizabethan shop front of W. H. Smith, about which I’ve posted before.
These days most of the other surviving early-20th century shopfronts built by this company are mostly bland modern facades. The buildings’ interiors have been refitted at least once since the shops were built, and features such as plaster ceilings and Gill lettering are nearly all long gone. Newtown in Powys is the best place to to see what we have lost in these shop interiors.
But at Stratford, one trace remains, in the shape of a series of coloured glass roundels on the stairs. Here, among the suspended ceilings and modern shelf units, are portraits of British writers. These days they depend for their effect on being lit from behind, and not all were illuminated the other day – Shakespeare himself was as dark as the mysterious lady. But three were glowing with backlit colour: Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Charles Dickens, and, wonderfully Francis Bacon. Not a bad selection: Sheridan was a theatrical star, Dickens loved the theatre and was a virtuoso public reader of his own novels, Bacon was a contemporary of Shakespeare.
These portraits in glass speak of a time when Smith’s were committed and successful booksellers as well as stationers. They remind us that for this company at least, the Olde England myth was more than a fancy front – William Henry Smith loved the idea that he could help people educate themselves with cheap editions of the literary classics, and the idea lasted well beyond his time. You could still buy novels by Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens in my local WHS last time I looked, although such classics were in the minority on the shelves. And I doubt they’d have a copy of Francis Bacon’s Essays. Back in the 1930s, though, Smith’s might well have provided, if not a bed, a shelf for Bacon.
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