*Notes and Queries. Series V., vol. ii. p. 508. December 26,1874.
Here is proof absolute that the story, with apparition, if not with
robin, was current THE DAY BEFORE LORD LYTTELTON’S DECEASE.
Of what did Lord Lyttelton die?
‘According to one of the papers,’ says Coulton, vaguely, ‘the cause
of death was disease of the heart.’ A brief ‘convulsion’ is distinctly
mentioned, whence Coulton concludes that the disease was NOT cardiac. On
December 7, Mason writes to Walpole from York: ‘Suppose Lord Lyttelton
had recovered the breaking of his blood-vessel!’
Was a broken blood-vessel the cause of death? or have we here, as is
probable, a mere inference of Mason’s?
Coulton’s account is meant to lead up to his theory of suicide. Lord
Lyttelton mentioned his apprehension of death ‘somewhat ostentatiously,
we think.’ According to Coulton, at 10 P.M. on Saturday, Lord Lyttelton,
looking at his watch, said: ‘Should I live two hours longer, I shall
jockey the ghost.’ Coulton thinks that it would have been ‘more natural’
for him to await the fatal hour of midnight ‘in gay company’ than to
go to bed before twelve. He finishes the tale thus: Lord Lyttelton was
taking rhubarb in his bedroom; he sent his valet for a spoon, and the
man, returning, found him ‘on the point of dissolution.’
‘His family maintained a guarded and perhaps judicious silence on the
subject,’ yet Lord Westcote spoke of it to Dr. Johnson, and wrote an
account of it, and so did Lord Lyttelton’s widow; while Wraxall, as we
shall see, says that the Dowager Lady Lyttelton painted a picture of the
‘warning’ in 1780.
Harping on suicide, Coulton quotes Scott’s statement in ‘Letters
on Demonology:’ ‘Of late it has been said, and PUBLISHED, that the
unfortunate nobleman had determined to take poison.’ Sir Walter gives
no authority, and Coulton admits that he knows of none. Gloomy but
commonplace reflections in the so-called ‘Letters’ of Lyttelton do not
even raise a presumption in favour of suicide, which, in these very
Letters, Lyttelton says that he cannot defend by argument.* That
Lyttelton made his will ‘a few weeks before his death,’ providing
for his fair victims, may be accounted for, as we shall see, by the
threatening state of his health, without any notion of self-destruction.
Walpole, in his three letters, only speaks of ‘a pistol’ as the common
construction of ‘sudden death;’ and that remark occurs before he has
heard any details. He rises from a mere statement of Lord Lyttelton’s,
that he is ‘to die in three days,’ to a ‘dream’ containing that
assurance, and thence to apparitions of a young woman and a
robin-redbreast. The appearance of that bird, by the way, is, in the
folk-lore of Surrey, an omen of death. Walpole was in a position to know
all current gossip, and so was Mrs. Piozzi.
*Coulton’s argument requires him to postulate the authenticity of
many, at least, of these Letters, which were given to the world by the
author of ‘Doctor Syntax.’
We now turn to a narrative nearly contemporary, that written out by Lord
Westcote on February 13, 1780. Lord Westcote examined the eldest Miss
Amphlett, Captain (later Admiral) Charles Wolsley, Mrs. Flood, Lord
Lyttelton’s valet, Faulkner, and Stuckey, the servant in whose arms, so
to speak, Lord Lyttelton died. Stuckey was questioned (note this) in
the presence of Captain Wolsley and of MR. FORTESCUE. The late Lord
Lyttelton permitted the Westcote narrative to be published in ‘Notes
and Queries’ (November 21, 1874). The story, which so much pleased Dr.
Johnson, runs thus:--On Thursday, November 25, Mrs. Flood and the three
Misses Amphlett were residing at Lord Lyttelton’s house in Hill Street,
Berkeley Square. Who IS this Mrs. Flood? Frederick Flood (1741-1824)
married LADY Julia Annesley in 1782. The wife of the more famous Flood
suits the case no better: his wife was LADY F. M. Flood; she was a
Beresford. (The ‘Dictionary of National Biography’ is responsible for
these facts.) At all events, on November 25, at breakfast, in Hill
Street, Lord Lyttelton told the young ladies and their chaperon that he
had had an extraordinary DREAM.
He seemed to be in a room which a bird flew into; the bird changed into
a woman in white, who told him he should die in three days.
He ‘did not much regard it, because he could in some measure account
for it; for that a few days before he had been with Mrs. Dawson, when a
robin-redbreast flew into her room.’ On the morning of Saturday he told
the same ladies that he was very well, and believed he should ‘BILK THE
GHOST.’ The dream has become an apparition! On that day--Saturday--he,
with the ladies, Fortescue, and Wolsley, went to Pitt Place; he went
to bed after eleven, ordered rolls for breakfast, and, in bed, ‘died
without a groan,’ as his servant was disengaging him from his waistcoat.
During dinner he had ‘a rising in his throat’ (a slight sickness),
‘a thing which had often happened to him before.’ His physician, Dr.
Fothergill, vaguely attributed his death to the rupture of some vessel
in his side, where he had felt a pain in summer.
From this version we may glean that Lord Lyttelton was not himself very
certain whether his vision occurred when he was awake or asleep. He is
made to speak of a ‘dream,’ and even to account for it in a probable
way; but later he talks of ‘bilking the GHOST.’ The editor of ‘Notes
and Queries’ now tries to annihilate this contemporary document by
third-hand evidence, seventy years after date. In 1851 or 1852 the late
Dowager Lady Lyttelton, Sarah, daughter of the second Earl Spencer,
discussed the story with Mr. Fortescue, a son of the Mr. Fortescue who
was at Pitt Place, and succeeded to the family title six years later, in
1785. The elder Mr. Fortescue, in brief, is said to have averred that he
had heard nothing of the dream or prediction till ‘some days after;’
he, therefore, was inclined to disbelieve in it. We have demonstrated,
however, that if Mr. Fortescue had heard nothing, yet the tale was
all over the town before Lord Lyttelton died. Nay, more, we have
contemporary proof that Mr. Fortescue HAD heard of the affair! Lyttelton
died at midnight on the Saturday, November 27. In her diary for the
following Tuesday (November 30), Lady Mary Coke says that she has just
heard the story of the ‘dream’ from Lady Bute, who had it from Mr. Ross,
WHO HAD IT FROM MR. FORTESCUE!* Mr. Fortescue, then, must have told the
tale as early as the Monday after the fatal Saturday night. Yet in old
age he seems to have persuaded himself that the tale came later to his
knowledge. Some irrelevant, late, and fourth-hand versions will be found
in ‘Notes and Queries,’ but they merely illustrate the badness of such
testimony.
*See The Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke, iii. 85. Note--She
speaks of ‘a dream.’
One trifle of contemporary evidence may be added: Mrs. Delany, on
December 9, 1779, wrote an account of the affair to her niece--here a
bird turns into a woman.
In pursuit of evidence, it is a long way from 1780 to 1816. In November
of that year, T. J. wrote from Pitt Place, Epsom, in ‘The Gentleman’s
Magazine;’ but his letter is dated ‘January 6.’ T. J. has bought Pitt
Place, and gives ‘a copy of a document in writing, left in the house’
(where Lyttelton died) ‘as an heirloom which may be depended on.’
This document begins, ‘Lord Lyttelton’s Dream and Death (see Admiral
Wolsley’s account).’
But where IS Admiral Wolsley’s account? Is it in the archives of Sir
Charles Wolseley of Wolseley? Or is THIS (the Pitt Place document)
Admiral Wolsley’s account? The anonymous author says that he was one
of the party at Pitt Place on November 27,1779, with ‘Lord Fortescue,’
‘Lady Flood,’ and the two Misses Amphlett. Consequently this account
is written after 1785, when Mr. Fortescue succeeded to his title. Lord
Lyttelton, not long returned from Ireland, had been suffering from
‘suffocating fits’ in the last month. And THIS, not the purpose of
suicide, was probably his reason for executing his will. ‘While in his
house in Hill Street, Berkeley Square, he DREAMT three days before his
death he saw a bird fluttering, and afterwards a woman appeared in white
apparel, and said, “Prepare to meet your death in three days.” He was
alarmed and called his servant. On the third day, while at breakfast
with the above-named persons, he said, “I have jockeyed the ghost, as
this is the third day.”’ Coulton places this incident at 10 P.M. on
Saturday, and makes his lordship say, ‘In two hours I shall jockey the
ghost.’ ‘The whole party set out for Pitt Place,’ which contradicts
Coulton’s statement that they set out on Friday, but agrees with Lord
Westcote’s. ‘They had not long arrived when he was seized with a usual
fit. Soon recovered. Dined at five. To bed at eleven.’ Then we hear how
he rebuked his servant for stirring his rhubarb ‘with a tooth-pick’ (a
plausible touch), sent him for a spoon, and was ‘in a fit’ on the man’s
return. ‘The pillow being high, his chin bore hard on his neck. Instead
of relieving him, the man ran for help: on his return found him dead.’
This undated and unsigned document, by a person who professes to have
been present, is not, perhaps, very accurate in dates. The phrase
‘dreamt’ is to be taken as the common-sense way of stating that
Lord Lyttelton had a vision of some sort. His lordship, who spoke of
‘jockeying the GHOST,’ may have believed that he was awake at the time,
not dreaming; but no person of self-respect, in these unpsychical days,
could admit more than a dream. Perhaps this remark also applies to
Walpole’s ‘he dreamed.’ The species of the bird is left in the vague.
Moving further from the event, to 1828, we find a book styled
‘Past Feelings Renovated,’ a reply to Dr. Hibbert’s ‘Philosophy of
Apparitions.’ The anonymous author is ‘struck with the total inadequacy
of Dr. Hibbert’s theory.’ Among his stories he quotes Wraxall’s
‘Memoirs.’ In 1783, Wraxall dined at Pitt Place, and visited ‘the
bedroom where the casement window at which Lord Lyttelton asserted the
DOVE appeared to flutter* was pointed out to me.’ Now the Pitt Place
document puts the vision ‘in Hill Street, Berkeley Square.’ So does Lord
Westcote. Even a bird cannot be in two places at once, and the ‘Pitt
Place Anonymous’ does seem to know what he is talking about. Of course
Lord Lyttelton MAY have been at Pitt Place on November 24, and had his
dream there. He MAY have run up to Hill Street on the 25th and delivered
his speech, and MAY have returned to Pitt Place on the Friday or
Saturday.** But we have no evidence for this view; and the Pitt Place
document places the vision in Hill Street. Wraxall adds that he has
frequently seen a painting of bird, ghost, and Lord Lyttelton, which was
executed by that nobleman’s stepmother in 1780. It was done ‘after the
description given to her by the valet de chambre who attended him, to
whom his master related all the circumstances.’
*It was a ROBIN in 1779.
**Coulton says Friday; the Anonymous says Saturday, with Lord Westcote.
Our author of 1828 next produces the narrative by Lord Lyttelton’s
widow, Mrs. Peach, who was so soon deserted. In 1828 she is ‘now alive,
and resident in the south-west part of Warwickshire.’ According to Lady
Lyttelton (who, of course, was not present), Lord Lyttelton had gone to
bed, whether in Hill Street or Pitt Place we are not told. His candle
was extinguished, when he heard ‘a noise resembling the fluttering of
a bird at his chamber window. Looking in the direction of the sound, he
saw the figure of an unhappy female, whom he had seduced and deserted,
and who, when deserted, had put a violent end to her own existence,
standing in the aperture of the window from which the fluttering sound
had proceeded. The form approached the foot of the bed: the room was
preternaturally light; the objects in the chamber were distinctly
visible. The figure pointed to a clock, and announced that Lord
Lyttelton would expire AT THAT VERY HOUR (twelve o’clock) in the third
day after the visitation.’
We greatly prefer, as a good old-fashioned ghost story, this version of
Lady Lyttelton’s. There is no real bird, only a fluttering sound, as in
the case of the Cock Lane Ghost, and many other examples. The room is
‘preternaturally light,’ as in Greek and Norse belief it should have
been, and as it is in the best modern ghost stories. Moreover, we have
the raison d’etre of the ghost: she had been a victim of the Chief
Justice in Eyre. The touch about the clock is in good taste. We did not
know all that before.
But, alas! our author of 1828, after quoting the Pitt Place Anonymous,
proceeds to tell, citing no named authority, that the ghost was that of
Mrs. Amphlett, mother of the two Misses Amphlett, and of a third sister,
in no way less distinguished than these by his lordship. Now a ghost
cannot be the ghost of two different people. Moreover, Mrs. Amphlett
lived (it is said) for years after. However, Mrs. Amphlett has the
preference if she ‘died of grief at the precise time when the female
vision appeared to his lordship,’ which makes it odd that her daughters
should then have been revelling at Pitt Place under the chaperonage of
Mrs. Flood. We are also informed (on no authority) that Lord Lyttelton
‘acknowledged’ the ghost to have been that of the injured mother of the
three Misses Amphlett.
Let not the weary reader imagine that the catena of evidence ends here!
His lordship’s own ghost did a separate stroke of business, though
only in the commonplace character of a deathbed wraith, or ‘veridical
hallucination.’
Lord Lyttelton had a friend, we learn from ‘Past Feelings Renovated’
(1828), a friend named Miles Peter Andrews. ‘One night after Mr. Andrews
had left Pitt Place and gone to Dartford,’ where he owned powder-mills,
his bed-curtains were pulled open and Lord Lyttelton appeared before
him in his robe de chambre and nightcap. Mr. Andrews reproached him for
coming to Dartford Mills in such a guise, at such a time of night,
and, ‘turning to the other side of the bed, rang the bell, when Lord
Lyttelton had disappeared.’ The house and garden were searched in
vain; and about four in the afternoon a friend arrived at Dartford with
tidings of his lordship’s death.
Here the reader with true common sense remarks that this second ghost,
Lord Lyttelton’s own, does not appear in evidence till 1828, fifty years
after date, and then in an anonymous book, on no authority. We have
permitted to the reader this opportunity of exercising his acuteness,
while laying a little trap for him. It is not in 1828 that Mr. Andrews’s
story first appears. We first find it in December 1779--that is, in the
month following the alleged event. Mr. Andrews’s experience, and the
vision of Lord Lyttelton, are both printed in ‘The Scots Magazine,’
December 1779, p. 650. The account is headed ‘A Dream,’ and yet the
author avers that Lord Lyttelton was wide awake! This illustrates
beautifully the fact on which we insist, that ‘dream’ is
eighteenth-century English for ghost, vision, hallucination, or what you
will.
‘Lord Lyttelton,’ says the contemporary ‘Scots Magazine,’ ‘started
up from a midnight sleep on perceiving a bird fluttering near the
bed-curtains, which vanished suddenly when a female spirit in white
raiment presented herself’ and prophesied Lord Lyttelton’s death in
three days. His death is attributed to convulsions while undressing.
The ‘dream’ of Mr. Andrews (according to ‘The Scots Magazine’ of
December 1779)* occurred at Dartford in Kent, on the night of November
27. It represented Lord Lyttelton drawing his bed-curtains, and saying,
‘It is all over,’ or some such words.
*The magazine appeared at the end of December.
This Mr. Andrews had been a drysalter. He made a large fortune, owned
the powder-mills at Dartford, sat in Parliament, wrote plays which had
some success, and was thought a good fellow in raffish society. Indeed,
the society was not always raffish. In ‘Notes and Queries’ (December 26,
1874) H. S. says that his mother, daughter of Sir George Prescott, often
met Mr. Andrews at their house, Theobalds Park, Herts. He was extremely
agreeable, and, if pressed, would tell his little anecdote of November
27, 1779.
This proof that the Andrews tale is contemporary has led us away from
the description of the final scene, given in ‘Past Feelings Renovated,’
by the person who brought the news to Mr. Andrews. His version includes
a trick played with the watches and clocks. All were set on half
an hour; the valet secretly made the change in Lord Lyttelton’s own
timepiece. His lordship thus went to bed, as he thought, at 11.30,
really at eleven o’clock, as in the Pitt Place document. At about
twelve o’clock, midnight, the valet rushed in among the guests, who were
discussing the odd circumstances, and said that his master was at the
point of death. Lord Lyttelton had kept looking at his watch, and at a
quarter past twelve (by his chronometer and his valet’s) he remarked,
‘This mysterious lady is not a true prophetess, I find.’ The real hour
was then a quarter to twelve. At about half-past twelve, by HIS watch,
twelve by the real time, he asked for his physic. The valet went into
the dressing-room to prepare it (to fetch a spoon by other versions),
when he heard his master ‘breathing very hard.’ ‘I ran to him, and found
him in the agonies of death.’
There is something rather plausible in this narrative, corresponding, as
it does, with the Pitt Place document, in which the valet, finding his
master in a fit, leaves him and seeks assistance, instead of lowering
his head that he might breathe more easily. Like the other, this tale
makes suicide a most improbable explanation of Lord Lyttelton’s death.
The affair of the watches is dramatic, but not improbable in itself.
A correspondent of ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine’ (in 1815) only cites ‘a
London paper’ as his authority. The writer of ‘Past Feelings Renovated’
(1828) adds that Mr. Andrews could never again be induced to sleep at
Pitt Place, but, when visiting there, always lay at the Spread Eagle, in
Epsom.
Let us now tabulate our results.
At Pitt Place, Epsom, or Hill Street, Berkeley Square, On November 24,
Lord Lyttelton Dreamed of, or saw, A young woman and a robin. A bird
which became a woman. A dove and a woman. Mrs. Amphlett (without a dove
or robin). Some one else unknown.
In one variant, a clock and a preternatural light are thrown in, with
a sermon which it were superfluous to quote. In another we have the
derangement of clocks and watches. Lord Lyttelton’s stepmother
believed in the dove. Lady Lyttelton did without a dove, but admitted a
fluttering sound.
For causes of death we have--heart disease (a newspaper), breaking of a
blood-vessel (Mason), suicide (Coulton), and ‘a suffocating fit’ (Pitt
Place document). The balance is in favour of a suffocating fit, and is
against suicide. On the whole, if we follow the Pitt Place Anonymous
(writing some time after the event, for he calls Mr. Fortescue ‘Lord
Fortescue’), we may conclude that Lord Lyttelton had been ill for some
time. The making of his will suggests a natural apprehension on his
part, rather than a purpose of suicide. There was a lively impression
of coming death on his mind, but how it was made--whether by a dream, an
hallucination, or what not--there is no good evidence to show.
There is every reason to believe, on the Pitt Place evidence, combined
with the making of his will, that Lord Lyttelton had really, for some
time, suffered from alarming attacks of breathlessness, due to what
cause physicians may conjecture. Any one of these fits, probably, might
cause death, if the obvious precaution of freeing the head and throat
from encumbrances were neglected; and the Pitt Place document asserts
that the frightened valet DID neglect it. Again, that persons under the
strong conviction of approaching death will actually die is proved by
many examples. Even Dr. Hibbert says that ‘no reasonable doubt can be
placed on the authenticity of the narrative’ of Miss Lee’s death, ‘as it
was drawn up by the Bishop of Gloucester’ (Dr. William Nicholson) ‘from
the recital of the young lady’s father,’ Sir Charles Lee. Every one
knows the tale. In a preternatural light, in a midnight chamber, Miss
Lee saw a woman, who proclaimed herself Miss Lee’s dead mother, ‘and
that by twelve o’clock of the day she should be with her.’ So Miss
Lee died in her chair next day, on the stroke of noon, and Dr. Hibbert
rather heartlessly calls this ‘a fortunate circumstance.’
The Rev. Mr. Fison, in ‘Kamilaroi and Kurnai,’ gives, from his own
experience, similar tales of death following alleged ghostly warnings,
among Fijians and Australian blacks. Lord Lyttelton’s uneasiness and
apprehension are conspicuous in all versions; his dreams had long been
troubled, his health had caused him anxiety, the ‘warning’ (whatever
it may have been) clinched the matter, and he died a perfectly natural
death.
Mr. Coulton, omitting Walpole’s statement that he ‘looked ill,’ and
never alluding to the Pitt Place description of his very alarming
symptoms, but clinging fondly to his theory of Junius, perorates thus:
‘Not Dante, or Milton, or Shakespeare himself, could have struck forth
a finer conception than Junius, in the pride of rank, wealth, and
dignities, raised to the Council table of the sovereign he had so
foully slandered--yet sick at heart and deeply stained with every
profligacy--terminating his career by deliberate self-murder, with every
accompaniment of audacious charlatanry that could conceal the crime.’
It is magnificent, it is worthy of Dante, or Shakespeare himself--but
the conception is Mr. Coulton’s.
We do not think that we have provided what Dr. Johnson ‘liked,’
‘evidence for the spiritual world.’ Nor have we any evidence explanatory
of the precise nature of Lord Lyttelton’s hallucination. The problem
of the authorship of the ‘Junius Letters’ is a malstrom into which we
decline to be drawn.
But it is fair to observe that all the discrepancies in the story of the
‘warning’ are not more numerous, nor more at variance with each other,
than remote hearsay reports of any ordinary occurrence are apt to be.
And we think it is plain that, if Lord Lyttelton WAS Junius, Mr. Coulton
had no right to allege that Junius went and hanged himself, or, in any
other way, was guilty of self-murder.