In 1985 a fine mural was discovered when the
panelling in a room in this public house was removed. The discovery
was reported only in the local Press and the photographs then
produced showed few recognizable features which identified its
subject. However, the Warburg Institute and the eminent Clive Rouse
were able to inspect it and Mr. Rouse gave a glowing report stating
it was a priceless discovery which can only be matched in places like
Hampton Court. In 1986, the painting was again enclosed in its
panelling, though not before our Francis Carr was able to make some
detailed photographs. No further notice appears to have been made to
this peculiar situation until the room was let by the Brewers to a
bedroom shop, the proprietors of which recently decided to exhibit
parts of this large painting which they have protected by glass
panels.
The death of Adonis depicted in the important mural is clearly
connected with the story of Venus and Adonis in which Adonis, having
been killed by a boar, is restored as a flower "the colour of his
blood on the ground."
In R.P. Knight's Enquiry into Symbolic Language of Ancient Art
(1876), we are reminded that "Adonis, or Adonae, was the Oriental
title of the Sun, and the boar supposed to have killed him was the
emblem of Winter during which the productive powers of nature were
suspended until Adonis was restored to life."
Shakespeare's Adonis was restored as a rose and the classical
scholar, W.F.C. Wigston, tells us in his Bacon, Shakespeare and
the Rosicrucians (1888) that "Adonis was the key figure or myth
centre round which the society of the Rosy Cross and their emblem
revolve" (p.87). That emblem is a Cross adorned with a Rose.
The allegory of Venus and Adonis is very ancient and Wigston also
tells us that in the poetical tales of the ancient Scandinavians,
Frey, the deity of the Sun, was fabled to have been killed by a boar.
In Shakespeare's Sonnet 53, Adonis is identified with the Sun which
brings in "The Spring and foyzon of the year."
Dame Francis Yates told us in her Shakespeare's Last Plays
(1975) that Shakespeare's and Bacon's works, such as The
Tempest and Bacon's New Atlantis, were strongly influenced
by Rosicrucian doctrines. We are also told that though she was
convinced that Shakespeare was the author of the plays and poems,
there was probably a link between Bacon and Shakespeare. It seems
clear, then, that this room at The White Hart was used at the end of
the sixteenth century as a Rosicrucian Lodge.
It is suggested that the horsemen in the mural, fully armed and
carrying their boar-spears, who are about to kill the boar, represent
the Rosicrucian Knights who sought to change Darkness to Light, or if
you like, Winter to the rebirth of nature in the Spring. It will be
noticed that the nearest horse wears a rose in its bridle, and the
use of boar-spears suggests a reference to Bacon's pseudonym. The
painting has been dated about 1600 some seven years after the
publication of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis.*
* More information about the Venus and Adonis mural at the
former White Hart Inn may be obtained from Francis Carr, Shakespeare
Authorship Information Centre, 9 Clermont Court, Clermont Road,
Preston, Brighton -Ed.
Reprinted from Baconiana,
vol. LXXII, No. 189, December, 1990.
