Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

92 FRANCIS BACON
The mother of Anthony and Francis was an important and
interesting personage. She was the second wife of Sir Nicholas.
The first wife seems to have been a quiet, ordinary woman, of
whom there is little or nothing to say excepting that she left
three sons and three daughters. Of these half-brothers and
sisters, not one appears to have been in any way " brotherly,
kind, or useful to Francis, excepting the second son, Nathaniel,
who took to the arts, and painted a portrait of his mother standing
in a pantry, habited as a cook. It is probable that Nathaniel
assisted his younger brother by making some of the designs
and pictures which will be explained further on.
Lady Anne Bacon was a woman of higher birth, of loftier
character, than her husband. If the three life-like terra cotta
busts at Gorhambury and other existing portraits are compared,
it will be seen that it is from the mother that the boy derived
the chiseled features and the fine development of the brow.
From the father came the softer expression, the side-long look,
the humourous twinkle in the eye. Lady Anne, though we
know her to have been a tender mother and a woman of strong
affections, was yet a somewhat stern, masterful and managing
head of the house, and so she appears in her portraits. The
daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke of Geddy Hall in Essex, scholar
and tutor to Edward VI., she inherited the whole of her
father's religious creed, and not a little of his accomplishments
in Greek. That religion was to fear God and hate the Pope.
For a papist she had no tolerance, for this ^discriminating repugnance
had been born in her blood and bred in her bone.
The importance of these particulars can hardly be over-estimated
when taken in connection with what we know of the
development of Francis Bacon's character, and with the aims
and aspirations which he set up for himself. There never was
a period in his life when judgment seems to have been lacking
to him. His earliest and most childish recorded speeches are
as wise, witty, and judgmatical in their way as his latest.
" His first and childish years, " says Dr. Rawley, " were not
without some mark of eminency; at which time he was enslaved
with that pregnancy and towardness of wit, as they were pre-