The opening of Bacon’s essay “Of Marriage and Single Life”:
“He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly, the best works, and of the greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men.”
Bacon was unmarried and gay, so the dictum holds for him. And the list unmarried great thinkers is very long. How well has the claim stood up over the nearly-four centuries since Bacon?
[Let’s not forget Nietzsche: “A married philosopher belongs in comedy” (GM 3:7). Friedrich the Unmarried notes that Socrates the Henpecked was married and so is perhaps an exception — except that Nietzsche thinks Socrates was not much of a philosopher, which, he suggests, proves his point.]
Related: Francis Bacon and Friedrich Nietzsche, in the Philosophers, Explained series.
Nietzsche was too big for his britches.
Great philosophers aren’t just single — they’re ugly. Handsome, charming guys with rich social and sex lives aren’t usually deep and original thinkers. Painful to admit — but evidently true.
Aristotle was married to a woman who died before he did. He left a will asking to be buried beside her. He sired a daughter, then a son. As the seminal Western philosopher he doesn’t appear to have been particularly deficient in either looks or charm. But looking at Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer…
Francis Bacon married at the age of 45, and not for money. Previously he had courted another woman, a rich widow younger than he, and regretted losing out to another richer man. In his NEW ATLANTIS he decries “masculine love,” and most of the allegations against him are rooted in his intrinsic opportunism. The writer of the greatest essays in English, he strangely disliked Aristotle. A precocious genius, he was admitted to Cambridge at the age of 12. Homosexuality was often imputed to prominent men, and, if they experimented with it (as did Christopher Hitchens), they did not pursue sodomy. In a similar vein, Thomas Jefferson was accused of fornicating with his daughter’s maid, but the timing of her many birthings precludes half of Jefferson’s alleged advances (it turns out that his cousin was a vile Lothario, hence the possible DNA “evidence”). Leonardo and many other Renaissance artists were accused of buggery ‘n’ such, but it was more likely they embraced “Platonic love,” and it was not easy to seek female company, unless one was courting, or the women were whores. Respectable (and marriageable) women did not go out on “dates,” a custom originating in America with automobiles.
Bacon wrote his wife two love sonnets and his essays in no way encourage anything but good Protestant work ethics and beliefs. As for the good looks of philosophers, a good many we see as old men. Socrates often joked about his homely face. Professor Hicks might do well to have a survey, with graphic choices, about the ugliest philosopher, in lieu of the most hateful.
A few more data points, Stephen, in addition to yours about Bacon’s life. He wrote “Of Marriage and Single Life” several years before he married. When he married Alice, she was 14 years old and he was 45. The two sonnets he wrote for her were also before the marriage, one during courtship and one presented as part of the wedding ceremony. His wife had a long-standing affair with another man, which led Bacon to disinherit her, and she married that man eleven days after Francis’s death. None of the evidence is decisive, though all of that and more would be good raw material for a soap opera.
It seems a truism that rumor often reflects facts, or, rumor often becomes fact. Hence, the destructive power of gossip. “Everybody knows that…” &c. Homosexuality in the good ole days was used to damn another. Overt and notorious homosexuals like Christopher Marlow made no secret of their desires, and his play on Edward II exaggerates this legend, although Gaveston may just have been an old and trusted “Hero” friend. Brilliant people are often labeled as “queer” because many associate (wrongly, I believe) artistic genius with effeminate natures. A good many homosexuals take wives, as in the marriage of Linda and Cole Porter. In the case of Bacon, one cannot determine his bias from his writings, which are concise and coldly accurate. People who impute homosexuality to Shakespeare ignore his obsession with female personae and with marriage. Some of these folks also believe Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays (!). Oscar Wilde had a successful marriage until he met Alfred Douglas. It may also be relevant that many English boarding schools looked on sodomy as a rite of passage, and young men are often fascinated by older men and, as I said above, “experiment.” The practice of buggery is also used to humiliate youths lacking a desire to fence or play football. It is a standard taunt. There is the pubescent fascination with emerging manhood. After one week in prep school and the communal gym shower everyone knew who the more ‘gifted’ students were (!). Perhaps, as some argue, man is inherently bisexual. As in the Arabian phrase, “For children, a woman; for love, a boy; for ecstasy, a melon.” Sex is a powerful force in practice, and as the subject of discussion. There may be a genetic tendency toward homosexuality as there is toward alcoholism. But first, you’d have to take a drink.
English women also enjoyed enormous freedom, compared to the continent (Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor) and were quintessential to the court, indeed, to any true nicety. Women were thought to be by nature flighty and unfaithful, being easily seduced. They were more carefully observed than were men. Men had to go out and bring home the bacon (bad pun, oh-oh) but Elizabeth’s court was not known for gay-ness whereas King James I was known to “admire men’s buttocks.” Perhaps the secret papers of Walsingham hold the answer. As for Elizabeth’s virginity, often mocked by horny Hollywood hacks, it was given good proof when she considered marriage with a French duke, but was told by her doctor (in an official transcript) they might have to incise her maidenhead, as it was deemed “leathery.”
Bacon was a devoted Bible student and Protestant, shown by his essay “Atheism,” (which atheists should study, methinks) and other writings, and the Bible clearly condemns “men lying with a man as one would with a woman,” as abhorrent to the Creator. Of course, it also condemns drunkenness, and that never stopped any good Elizabethan from draining a tankard!