COMPACTS BETWEEN THE LIVING AND DEAD
Sometimes ghosts appear in consequence of an agreement made before
death with some particular friend, that he or she who first died should
appear to the survivor. Numerous tales are told illustrative of this
belief, one of the best authenticated being that recorded by Lord
Brougham,[222] who, speaking of his intimate friend at the University,
writes: 'There was no divinity class, but we frequently in our walks
discussed and speculated upon many grave subjects, among others, on
the immortality of the soul and on a future state. This question and
the possibility, I will not say of ghosts walking, but of the dead
appearing to the living, were subjects of much speculation; and we
actually committed the folly of drawing up an agreement written with
our blood, to the effect that whichever of us died first should appear
to the other, and thus solve any doubts we had entertained of the
"life after death."' Years afterwards--on December 19, 1799--when Lord
Brougham had almost forgotten the existence of his friend, as he was
taking a warm bath, he appeared to him; but, as he adds, 'No doubt I
had fallen asleep, and the appearance presented to my eyes was a dream.
I recollected quickly enough our old discussion, and the bargain we
had made. I could not discharge from my mind the impression that my
friend must have died, and that his appearance to me was to be received
by me as a proof of his future state.' In October 1862 Lord Brougham
made this postscript: 'I have just been copying out from my journal the
account of this strange dream--_certissima mortis imago_. And now to
finish the story begun about sixty years since. Soon after my return to
Edinburgh, there arrived a letter from India, announcing G----'s death,
and stating that he had died on the 19th of December.'
A curious story is told by John Darley, Carthusian monk, who relates
that, as he was attending upon the death bed of Father Raby, in 1534,
he said to the expiring man, 'Good Father Raby, if the dead can visit
the living, I beseech you to pay a visit to me by-and-by;' and Raby
answered, 'Yes;' immediately after which he drew his last breath. But
on the same afternoon, about five o'clock, as Darley was meditating
in his cell, the departed man suddenly appeared to him in a monk's
habit, and said to him, 'Why do you not follow our father?' And I
replied, 'Why?' He said, 'Because he is a martyr in heaven next to the
angels.' Then I said, 'Where are all our fathers who did like to him?'
He answered and said, 'They are all pretty well, but not so well as he
is.' And then I asked him how he was, and he said 'Pretty well.' And
I said, 'Father, shall I pray for you?' To which he replied, 'I am as
well as need be, but prayer is at all times good,' and with these words
he vanished.[223]
There is the well-known Beresford ghost tale, about which so many
accounts have been given. It appears that Lord Tyrone and Miss Blank
were orphans, educated in the same house 'in the principles of Deism.'
When they were about fourteen years old their preceptor died, and their
new guardian tried to persuade them to embrace revealed religion. The
boy and girl stuck to Deism. But they made a compact, that he or she
who died first should appear to the survivor, 'to declare what religion
was most approved by the Supreme Being.' Miss Blank married St. Martin
Beresford, and one day she appeared at breakfast with a pale face, and
a black band round her wrist. On her death-bed she explained how the
ghost of Lord Tyrone had appeared to her at the hour of his death, and
had correctly prophesied her future: 'He struck my wrist; his hand
was as cold as marble; in a moment the sinews shrank up, every nerve
withered.... I bound a piece of black ribbon round my wrist.' The black
ribbon was formerly in the possession of Lady Betty Cobb, who, during
her long life, was ever ready to attest the truth of this narration,
as are, to the present hour, the whole of the Tyrone and Beresford
families.[224]
As Mr. Andrew Lang points out in the 'Nineteenth Century,'[225] Lord
Tyrone merely did what many ghosts had done before in the matter of
touching Lady Beresford's wrist. Thus, as he says, according to Henry
More, 'one' (bogie) 'took a relation of Melanchthon's by the hand, and
so scorched her that she bore the mark of it to her dying day.' Before
Melanchthon the anecdote was improved by Eudes de Shirton, in a sermon,
who tells how a certain clerk, Serlon, made with a friend the covenant
which Miss Blank made with Lord Tyrone. The friend died, and appeared
to Serlon 'in a parchment cloak, covered with the finest writing in the
world.' Being asked how he fared, he said that this cloak, a punishment
for his love of logic, weighed heavier than lead, and scorched like the
shirt of Nessus. Then he held out his hand, and let fall a drop which
burned Serlon to the bone--
And evermore that master wore
A covering on his wrist.
Before Eudes de Shirton, William of Malmesbury knew this anecdote. His
characters are two clerks, an Epicurean and a Platonist, who made the
usual compact that the first to die should appear to the survivor, and
state whether Plato's ideas, or Epicurus in his atoms, were the correct
reply to the conundrum of the universe. The visit was to be paid within
thirty days of the death. One of the philosophical pair was killed, and
appeared to the other, but after the time arranged, explaining that he
had been unable to keep his appointment earlier, and, stretching out
his hand, let fall three burning drops of blood, which branded the brow
of the psychical inquirer.
Mrs. Grant, in her 'Superstitions of the Highlands,' tells how a widow,
returning home through a wood at dusk, was met by her husband's ghost,
'who led her carefully along a difficult bridge, but left a blue mark
on her wrist which the neighbours had opportunities of seeing during
the week; she survived the adventure.' A similar circumstance is
related by Richard Baxter,[226] in connection with a lady, soon after
the Restoration, when Parliament was passing Acts which pressed sore on
the dissenters. While praying for the deliverance of the faithful from
the evils which threatened them, 'it was suddenly given her, that there
should be a speedy deliverance, even in a very short time. She desired
to know which way, and it being set strongly on her as a revelation,
she prayed earnestly that if this were a true divine impulse and
revelation, God would certify her by some sign, and she ventured to
choose the sign herself, and laid her hand on the outside of the upper
part of her leg, begging of God, that if it were a true answer, He
would make on that place some visible mark. There was presently the
mark of black spots, like as if a hand had burnt it, which her sister
witnessed, there being no such sign before.'
In Scott's well-known ballad, the phantom knight impresses an indelible
mark on the lady who has been his paramour, and in the Tartan stories,
written by a Frenchman, a ghost appears to Prince Faruk in a dream, and
touches him on the arm. The Prince finds the mark of the burn when he
awakes.[227] There are numerous stories of this kind scattered here and
there in the traditionary lore of this and other countries, and such
indelible marks, left by ghosts of their visits, have been held as a
mysterious proof of their materialistic power.
A correspondent of 'Notes and Queries' (2nd S. v. 343) vouches for
the authenticity of the following 'incontrovertible facts,' which, he
says, 'occurred to a friend of my own, and to the companion of his
early youth, who, having obtained a cadetship, went to India.' The
story runs thus. 'The former was towards evening driving across a long
barren heath. Suddenly, by his side in the vehicle, was seen the figure
of his playmate. Happening to turn his head from him to the horse,
and on looking again, the apparition had vanished. Remembering the
conversation that they had held together at parting, he doubted not but
that his friend was at that moment dead, and that in his appearing to
him, he was come in the fulfilment of their mutual promise, in order to
remove all pre-existing doubts as to the possibility of a denizen of a
higher sphere appearing to its friend on earth. By the next Indian Mail
was received intelligence of his death, showing the exact coincidence
as to the time of the two events.'
In the biography of William Smellie is the history of a compact he made
with his friend William Greenlaw, whereby it was mutually agreed that
whoever died first should return and give the other an account of his
condition after death. Shortly after the anniversary of his death, the
ghost of Greenlaw is reported to have appeared to Smellie, and in a
solemn tone informed him 'that he had experienced great difficulties
in procuring permission to return to this earth, according to their
agreement; that he was now in a much better world than the one he had
left,' but added 'that the hopes and wishes of its inhabitants were
by no means satisfied, as, like those of the lower world, they still
looked forward in the hope of eventually reaching a still happier state
of existence.' Another case of a similar kind is that of the appearance
of the Rev. Theodore Alois Buckley, formerly one of the chaplains of
Christ Church, Oxford, to his friend Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie. The story,
as narrated in Newton Crosland's 'Theory of Apparitions,' is, that
about the year 1850 the two friends, when at Oxford, entered into
a compact of the kind already described, the signal of appearance
arranged between them being the laying of a ghostly hand on the
forehead of the surviving friend. On January 30, 1856, Mr. Buckley
died, and on February 2, it is said, kept the agreement, for as Mr.
Mackenzie 'was lying in bed, watching the candle expiring, he felt
placed over one eye and his forehead a cool, damp hand, and on looking
up saw Buckley in his ordinary apparel, with his portfolio under his
arm standing by his bedside.'
The Duchess of Mazarin is said to have appeared to Madame de Beauclair,
in accordance with a solemn compact made in life, that whoever died
first should return, if it were possible, and inform the other of the
existence of the future state. But it was some years after her death
that the Duchess kept her promise, and when she did, it was to make
this announcement: 'Beauclair, between the hours of twelve and one this
night you will be with me.' The non-appearance of her friend's spirit
for so long had caused Madame de Beauclair to doubt the non-existence
of a future life.[228]
But in some cases such compacts have not been kept. Dr. Chance tells us
in 'Notes and Queries' (6th S. ii. 501) that in 1846-1847, as a young
man, he made such a compact, but when his friend died in 1878 he did
not appear, neither has he ever done so. To quote Dr. Chance's words:
'It is true my friend died about noon, and that I knew of his death the
same evening, so that if he had appeared to me I should have learnt
nothing new, whilst in most, if not all, of the recorded cases the
apparition has been the first to convey the intelligence of the death.
But this did not exonerate my friend from his promise; and if he did
not keep it, I must take it that he could not come, for nothing but
inability would have kept me from fulfilling my share of the compact if
I had been called upon to do so.'
In Mather's 'Remarkable Providences' the failure of a spirit to keep
a promise of appearing after its separation from the body is referred
to, the author being of opinion that there is great hazard attending
such covenants. To quote his words: 'It may be after men have made
such agreements, devils may appear to them pretending to be their
deceased friends, and thereby their souls may be drawn in woful
snares. Who knoweth whether God will permit the persons, who have
thus confederated, to appear in the world again after their death?
And if not, then the survivor will be under great temptation unto
Atheism, as it fell out with the late Earl of Rochester, who (as is
reported in his life by Dr. Burnet) did in the year 1665 enter into a
formal engagement with another gentleman, not without ceremonies of
religion, that if either of them died, he should appear, and give the
other notice of the future state if there were any. After this the
other gentleman was killed, but did never appear after his death to
the Earl of Rochester, which was a great snare to him during the rest
of his life. Though, when God awakened the Earl's conscience upon his
death-bed, he could not but acknowledge that one who had so corrupted
the natural principles of truth as he had done, had no reason to expect
that such an extraordinary thing should be done for his conviction. Or
if such agreement should necessitate an apparition, how would the world
be confounded with spectres; how many would probably be scared out of
their wits; or what curious questions would vain men be proposing about
things which are (and it is meet they should be) hid from mortals?'
FOOTNOTES:
[222] _Life and Times of Lord Brougham_, written by himself, 1871.
[223] See Brand's _Popular Antiquities_, 1870, iii. p. 117.
[224] Dr. F. G. Lee: _Glimpses of the Supernatural_; the subject has
been discussed in _Notes and Queries_.
[225] _Comparative Study of Ghost Stories_, April 1885, pp. 630, 631.
[226] _Certainty of a World of Spirits_, p. 181.
[227] Yardley's _Supernatural in Fiction_, p. 94.
[228] T. M. Jarvis: _Accredited Ghost Stories_, 1823