‘Sir,’ said Dr. Johnson, ‘it is the most extraordinary thing that has
happened in my day.’
The most extraordinary thing that had happened in Dr. Johnson’s day was
the ‘warning’ to the noble peer generally spoken of as ‘the wicked Lord
Lyttelton.’ The Doctor went on thus: ‘I heard it with my own ears from
his uncle, Lord Westcote. I am so glad to have every evidence of the
spiritual world that I am willing to believe it.’ Dr. Adams replied,
‘You have evidence enough--good evidence, which needs no support.’ Dr.
Johnson growled out, ‘I like to have more!’
Thus the Doctor was willing to believe what it suited him to believe,
even though he had the tale at third or fourth hand; for Lord Westcote
was not with the wicked Lord Lyttelton at the time of his death, on
November 27, 1779. Dr. Johnson’s observations were made on June 12,
1784.
To Lord Westcote’s narrative we shall return.
As a study in Russian scandal, and the growth and development of
stories, this anecdote of Lord Lyttelton deserves attention. So first we
must glance at the previous history of the hero. Thomas Lord Lyttelton
was born, says Mr. Coulton (in the ‘Quarterly Review,’ No. 179, p. 111),
on January 30, 1744.* He was educated at Eton, where Dr. Barnard thought
his boyish promise even superior to that of Charles James Fox. His
sketches of scenery in Scotland reminded Mrs. Montagu of the vigour of
Salvator Rosa, combined with the grace of Claude Lorraine! At the age
of nineteen, already affianced to Miss Warburton, he went on the Grand
Tour, and excelled the ordinary model of young debauchery abroad. Mr.
James Boswell found a Circe at Siena, Lyttelton found Circes everywhere.
He returned to England in 1765; and that learned lady, Mrs. Carter, the
translator of Epictetus, ‘admired his talents and elegant manners,
as much as she detested his vices.’ In 1768 he entered the House of
Commons, and, in his maiden speech, implored the Assembly to believe
that America was more important than Mr. Wilkes (and Liberty). Unseated
for bribery in January 1769, he vanished from the public view, more
or less, for a season; at least he is rarely mentioned in memoirs, and
Coulton thinks that young Lyttelton was now engaged--in what does the
reader suppose? In writing ‘The Letters of Junius’!**
*The writer was not Croker, but Mr. Coulton, ‘a Kentish gentleman,’
says Lockhart, February 7, 1851, to his daughter Charlotte.
**If
Lyttelton went to Italy on being ejected from Parliament, as Mr. Rigg
says he did in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography,’ Coulton’s theory
will be hard to justify.
He was clever enough; his rank was like that assumed as his own by
Junius; his eloquence (as he proved later in the House of Lords) was
vituperative enough; he shared some of Junius’s hatreds, while he
proclaimed, like Junius, that the country was going to the dogs. Just as
Junius was ending his Letters, the prodigal, Thomas Lyttelton, returned
to his father’s house; and Chatham wrote to congratulate the parent
(February 15, 1772). On May 12, 1772, Junius published his last letter
in ‘The Public Advertiser;’ and on June 26 Mr. Lyttelton married a
widow, a Mrs. Peach. He soon left his wife, and was abroad (with a
barmaid) when his father died in 1773. In January 1774 he took his seat
in the Lords. Though Fox thought him a bad man, his first speech was in
favour of securing to authors a perpetual copyright in their own works.
He repeated his arguments some months later; so authors, at least, have
reason for judging him charitably.
Mr. Carlyle would have admired Lyttelton. His politics (at one juncture)
were ‘The Dictatorship for Lord Chatham’! How does this agree with the
sentiments of Junius? In 1767-69 Junius had exhausted on Chatham his
considerable treasury of insult. He is ‘a lunatic brandishing a crutch,’
‘so black a villain,’ ‘an abandoned profligate,’ and he exhibits ‘THE
UPSTART INSOLENCE OF A DICTATOR!’ This goes not well with Lyttelton’s
sentiments in 1774. True, but by that date (iii. 305) Junius himself had
discovered ‘that if this country can be saved, it must be saved by Lord
Chatham’s spirit, by Lord Chatham’s abilities.’ Lyttelton and Junius
are assuredly both of them ruffianly, scandal-loving, inconsistent, and
patrician in the manner of Catiline. So far, the likeness is close.
About America Lyttelton wavered. On the whole, he recognised the need
of fighting; and his main idea was that, as fight we must, we should
organise our forces well, and fight with our heads as well as with our
hands. He disdained the policy of the ostrich. The Americans were in
active rebellion; it could not be blinked. He praised Chatham while
he opposed him. He was ‘fighting for his own hand.’ Ministers felt the
advantage of his aid; they knew his unscrupulous versatility, and in
November 1775 bought Lyttelton with a lucrative sinecure--the post
of Chief Justice of Eyre beyond the Trent. Coulton calls the place
‘honourable;’ we take another view. Lyttelton was bought and sold, but
no one deemed Lyttelton a person of scrupulous conscience.
The public prospects darkened, folly was heaped on folly, blunder on
blunder, defeat on defeat. On April 24, 1779, Horace Walpole says that
Lord Lyttelton ‘has again turned against the Court on obtaining the
Seals’ * November 25, 1779, saw Lyttelton go boldly into Opposition.
He reviewed the whole state of the empire. He poured out a torrent of
invective. As to his sinecure, he said, ‘Perhaps he might not keep it
long.’ ‘The noble Lords smile at what I say!’
*Is this a slip, or misprint, for ‘on NOT obtaining the Seals’?
They need not have smiled. He spoke on Thursday, November 25; on
Saturday, November 27, the place in Eyre was vacant, and Lord Lyttelton
was a dead man.
The reader will keep in mind these dates. On Thursday, November 25,
1779, the first day of the session, Lyttelton overflows in a volcanic
speech against the Court. He announces that his place may soon be
vacant. At midnight on November 27 he is dead.
On all this, and on the story of the ghostly ‘warning’ to Lord
Lyttelton, delivered in the night of Wednesday, November 24, Coulton
builds a political romance. In his view, Lyttelton, expelled from
Parliament, lavished his genius and exuded his spleen in the ‘Letters
of Junius.’ Taking his seat in the Lords, he fights for his own hand, is
bought and muzzled, wrenches off his muzzle, blazes into a fierce attack
on the wrongs which he is weary of witnessing, the hypocrisy which he
is tired of sharing, makes his will, sets his house in order, plays
one last practical joke by inventing the story of the ghostly warning,
surrounds himself with dissolute company, and at midnight on November 27
deliberately fulfils his own prediction, and dies by his own hand. It
is a tale creditable to Coulton’s fancy. A patrician of genius, a wit,
a profligate, in fatigue and despair, closes his career with a fierce
harangue, a sacrilegious jest, a debauch, and a draught of poison,
leaving to Dr. Johnson a proof of ‘the spiritual world,’ and to mankind
the double mystery of Junius and of the Ghost.
As to the identity of Junius, remembering the warning of Lord
Beaconsfield, ‘If you wish to be a bore, take up the “Letters of
Junius,”’ we shall drop that enigma; but as to the alleged suicide of
Lord Lyttelton, we think we can make that seem extremely improbable.
Let us return to the course of events, as stated by Coulton and by
contemporaries.
The warning of death in three days, says Coulton, occurred (place not
given) on the night of November 24, 1779. He observes: ‘It is certain
that, on the morning after that very day’ (November 25), ‘Lord Lyttelton
had related, not to one person alone, but to several, and all of them
people of credit, the particulars of a strange vision which he said had
appeared to him the preceding night.’ On Thursday, the 25th, as we saw,
he spoke in the Lords. On Friday, the 26th, he went down to his house
at Epsom, Pitt Place, where his party, says Coulton, consisted of Mr.
(later Lord) Fortescue, Captain (later Admiral) Wolsley, Mrs. Flood, and
the Misses Amphlett. Now, the town had no kind of doubt concerning the
nature of Lord Lyttelton’s relations with two, if not three, of the
Misses Amphlett. His character was nearly as bad, where women were
concerned, as that of Colonel Charteris. But Walpole, writing to Mann
on November 28 (the day after Lord Lyttelton’s death), says: ‘Lord
Lyttelton is dead suddenly. SUDDENLY, in this country, is always at
first construed to mean BY A PISTOL... The story given out is, that he
looked ill, AND HAD SAID HE SHOULD NOT LIVE THREE DAYS; that, however,
he had gone to his house at Epsom... with a caravan of nymphs; and on
Saturday night had retired before supper to take rhubarb, returned,
supped heartily, went into the next room again, and died in an instant.’
Nothing here of a dream or ghost. We only hear of a prophecy, by
Lyttelton, of his death.
Writing to Mason on Monday, November 29, Walpole avers that Lord
Lyttelton was ‘attended only by four virgins, whom he had picked up in
the Strand.’ Here Horace, though writing from Berkeley Square, within
two days of the fatal 27th, is wrong. Lord Lyttelton had the Misses
Amphlett, Captain Wolsley, Mr. Fortescue, and Mrs. Flood with him.
According to Walpole, he felt unwell on Saturday night (the 27th),
‘went to bed, rung his bell in ten minutes, and in one minute after the
arrival of his servant expired!’ ‘He had said on Thursday that he should
die in three days, HAD DREAMT SO, and felt that it would be so. On
Saturday he said, “If I outlive to-day, I shall go on;” but enough of
him.’
Walpole speaks of a DREAM, but he soon has other, if not better,
information. Writing to Mason on December 11, he says that ghost stories
from the north will now be welcome. ‘Lord Lyttelton’s vision has revived
the taste; though it seems a little odd that an APPARITION should
despair of getting access to his Lordship’s bed, in the shape of a young
woman, without being forced to use the disguise of a robin-redbreast.’
What was an apprehension or prophecy has become a dream, and the dream
has become an apparition of a robin-redbreast and a young woman.
If this excite suspicion, let us hasten to add that we have
undesigned evidence to Lord Lyttelton’s belief that he had beheld an
APPARITION--evidence a day earlier than the day of his death. Mrs.
Piozzi (then Mrs. Thrale), in her diary of Sunday, November 28, writes:
‘Yesterday a lady from Wales dropped in and said that she had been at
Drury Lane on Friday night. “How,” I asked, “were you entertained?”
“Very strangely indeed! Not with the play, though, but the discourse of
a Captain Ascough, who averred that a friend of his, Lord Lyttelton, has
SEEN A SPIRIT, who has warned him that he will die in three days. I have
thought of nothing else since.”’