Readers of this blog are probably well familiar with Monsieur Le Doux, who in 1595 was a tutor at the home of Sir John Harington in Rutland, was instructed on the gathering of intelligence for the Earl of Essex and Anthony Bacon in 1596, and whose name appears briefly in Thomas Birch's Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth and in Bacon's papers. We had believed until very recently that Le Doux might have been an identity for the surviving Christopher Marlowe in hiding. But we now know this was not the case.
In fact, this Monsieur Le Doux was
Catharinus Dulcis or Catherin Le Doux, a reputable European scholar of the
Italian and French languages. He was born in Savoy in 1540, worked for a long
time as an itinerant tutor to young noblemen, and became a professor of Italian
and French at the University of Marburg in Germany in 1605. He compiled an
Italian-Latin dictionary, translated works by Tasso and Terence, and wrote a
comedy of his own, Tobie (Tobias).
Much information about his life can be found at this German website.
Marburg was the world's first
Protestant-founded university, and in fact Dulcis's Protestant beliefs were the
reason he had to leave the Continent and stay in England as Monsieur Le Doux in
the period 1594-1596.
Co-author Caveney first discovered the
identity of Le Doux as Dulcis in a letter Dulcis wrote from London in November
1594 to Sir John Skene. It appears on pp. 156-157 of the book Memorials of the family of Skene of Skene...,
published in 1887. The letter is written in French and signed "Le
Doulx," and below it, "CATHARINUS DULCIS". Among other things in
the letter, he mentions the kindness and courtesy of Anthony Bacon.
Further research by the two of us has
uncovered abundant confirming information that clearly shows that this man must
have been Monsieur Le Doux. Dulcis's own autobiographical sketch Vitae Curriculi Breviarium, written in
Latin, mentions his time in England working for Essex and Bacon and even
tutoring for the Haringtons, the main activity of Le Doux that we knew of from
Bacon's papers. This work of Dulcis also mentions Antonio Perez, Mittelburg,
Baron Zeirotine, Count Maurice of Nassau, Archduke Albert and Henri d'Eberbach,
all figures who appeared in Le Doux's correspondence as we knew it.
Finally, co-author Farey examined a letter
by Dulcis in 1607 and found that the handwriting and signature are so similar
to those found in the letters that we have of Monsieur Le Doux, that it is
quite clear that they were written by the same person.
© Geoffrey Caveney and Peter Farey, May 2014
© Geoffrey Caveney and Peter Farey, May 2014
