CHAPTER V.

Spirits of the Living." Mistakes of Identity, Followec by Arrival of Real Person. ^^ Arrivals!' Mark Twain's Phantom Lady. Phantom Dogcart. In- fluence of Expectant Attention, Goethe. Shelley. The Wraith of the Czarina. Queen Elizabeth's Wraith. Second Sight. Case at Ballachulish. Experiments in sending Wraiths. An ^' Astn Body'\ Evidence discussed. Miss RusselVs Cas{ ** Spirits of the Dying." Maori Examples. Thee of Chance Coincidence. In Tavistock Place. T) Wynyard Wraith. Lord Brougham's Wraith Stoi Lord Brougham's Logic. The Dying Mother Comparison with the Astral Body. The Visit of the Bride. Animals as affected by the supposed Presence of Apparitions. Examples. Transition to Appearances of the Dead,
" Spirits of the living " is the Highland term for the appearances of people who are alive and well — but elsewhere. The common Highland be- lief is that they show themselves to second- sighted persons, very frequently before the arrival of a stranger or a visitor, expected or unexpected. Probably many readers have had the experience of meeting an acquaintance in the street. He passes us, and within a hundred yards we again meet and
PHANTOM DOGCART. 85
talk with our friend. When he is of very marked appearance, or has any strong pecuHarity, the experience is rather perplexing. Perhaps a few bits of hallucination are sprinkled over a real object. This ordinary event leads on to what are called " Arrivals," that is when a person is seen, heard and perhaps spoken to in a place to which he is travelling, but whither he has not yet arrived. Mark Twain gives an instance in his own experience. At a large crowded reception he saw approaching him in the throng a lady whom he had known and liked many years before. When she was near him, he lost sight of her, but met her at supper, dressed as he had seen her in the " levee ". At that moment she was travelling by railway to the town in which he was.^
A large number of these cases have been printed.^ In one case a gentleman and lady from their win- dow saw his brother and sister-in-law drive past, with a horse which they knew had not been out for some weeks. The seers v/ere presently joined by the visitors' daughter, who had met the party on the road, she having just left the'm at their house. Ten minutes later the real pair arrived, horse and all.'^
This last affair is one of several tales of " Phantom Coaches," not only heard but seen, the coach being a coach of the living. In 1893 the author was staying at a Highland castle, when one of the ladies observed to her nephew, " So you and Susan did drive in the dogcart ; I saw you pass my window ".
I
^ Tom Sawyer, Detective.
2 Phantasms of the Living, by Gurney and Myers.
3 The story is given by Mr. Mountford, one of the seers.
86 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
" No, we didn't ; but we spoke of doing it." Th( lady then mentioned minute details of the dress and attitudes of her relations as they passed hej window, where the drive turned from the hall dooi through the park ; but, in fact, no such journey had been made. Dr. Hack Tuke published the story of the ''Arrival" of Dr. Boase at his house a quarter of an hour before he came, the people who saw him supposing him to be in Paris.^
When a person is seen in "Arrival" cases before] he arrives, the affair is not so odd if he is expected.] Undoubtedly, expectation does sometimes conjure u] phantasms, and the author once saw (as he supposed] a serious accident occur which in fact did not take place, though it seemed unavoidable.
Curiously enough, this creation of phantasms bj expectant attention seems to be rare where "ghosts*1 are expected. The author has slept in several haunted houses, but has never seen what he wa? led to expect. In many instances, as in " The Lady in Black " {infra), a ghost who is a frequent] visitor is never seen when people watch for her.^ Among the many persons who have had delusions as to the presence of the dead, very few have been] hoping, praying for and expecting them.
" I look for ghosts, but none will force Their way to me : 'Tis falsely said That there was ever intercourse
Between the living and the dead, For surely then I should have sight Of him I wait for day and night With love and longings infinite."
jfournal of Medical Sciencey April, 1880, p. 151.
WRAITH OF THE EMPRESS. 87
The Affliction of Margaret has been the affliction of most of us. There are curious historical examples of these appearances of the living. Goethe declares that he once met himself at a certain place in a certain dress, and several years later found himself there in that costume. Shelley was seen by his friends at Lerici to pass along a balcony whence there was no exit. However, he could not be found there. The story of the wraith of Catherine the Great is variously narrated. We give it as told by an ej^e-witness, the Comte de Ribaupierre, about 1862 to Lady Napier and Ettrick. The Count, in 1862, was a very old man, and more than thirty years have passed since he gave the tale to Lady Napier, whose memory retains it in the following form : —
THE WRAITH OF THE CZARINA.
" In the exercise of his duties as one of the pages- in-waiting, Ribaupierre followed one day his august mistress into the throne-room of the palace. When the Empress, accompanied by the high officers of her court and the ladies of her household, came in sight of the chair of state which she was about to occupy, she suddenly stopped, and to the horror and astonished awe of her courtiers, she pointed to a visionary being seated on the imperial throne. The occupant of. the chair was an exact counterpart of herself. All saw it and trembled, but none dared to move towards the mysterious presentment of their sovereign.
88 DREAMS AND GHOSTS
"After a moment of dead silence the great Catherine raised her voice and ordered her guard to advance and fire on the apparition. The order was obeyed, a mirror beside the throne was shattered, the vision had disappeared, and the Empress, with no sign of emotion, took the chair from which her semblance had passed away." It is a striking barbaric scene !
" Spirits of the living " of this kind are common enough. In the Highlands "second sight" generally means a view of an event or accident some time before its occurrence. Thus an old man was sitting with a little boy on a felled tree beside a steep track in a quarry at Ballachulish. Suddenly he jerked the boy to one side, and threw himself down on the further side of the tree. While the boy stared, the old man slowly rose, saying, '* The spirits of the living are strong to-day ! " He had seen a mass of rock dashing along, killing some quarrymen and tearing down the path. The acci- dent occurred next day. It is needless to dwell on second sight, which is not peculiar to Celts, though the Highlanders talk more about it than other people.
These appearances of the living but absent, whether caused by some mental action of the person who appears or not, are, at least, unconscious on his part.^ But a few cases occur in which a living person is said, by a voluntary exertion of mind, to have made himself visible to a friend at a distance. One case is vouched for by Baron von
1 Catholic theology recognises, under the name ot " Bilocation," the appearance of a person in one place when he is really in another.
I
AN EXPERIMENT. 89
Schrenck-Notzig, a German psychologist, who him- self made the experiment with success. Others are narrated by Dr. Gibotteau. A curious tale is told by several persons as follows : —
AN "ASTRAL BODY".
Mr. Sparks and Mr. Cleave, young men of twenty and nineteen, were accustomed to '* mesmerise " each other in their dormitory at Portsmouth, where they were students of naval engineering. Mr. Sparks simply stared into Mr. Cleave's eyes as he lay on his bed till he "went off". The experiments seemed so curious that witnesses were called, Mr. Darley and Mr. Thurgood. On Friday, 15th January, 1886, Mr. Cleave determined to try to see, when asleep, a young lady at Wandsworth to whom he was in the habit of writing every Sunday. He also intended, if possible, to make her see him. On awaking, he said that he had seen her in the dining-room of her house, that she had seemed to grow restless, had looked at him, and then had covered her face with her hands. On Monday he tried again, and he thought he had frightened her, as after looking at him for a few minutes she fell back in her chair in a kind of faint. Her little brother was in the room with her at the time. On Tuesday next the young lady wrote, telling Mr. Cleave that she had been startled by seeing him on Friday evening (this is an error), and again on Monday evening, ' much clearer," when she nearly fainted.
All this Mr. Sparks wrote to Mr. Gumey in
90 DREAMS AND GHOSTS
the same week. He was inviting instructions on hypnotic experiments, and " launched a letter into space," having read something vague about Mr. Gurney's studies in the newspapers. The letter, after some adventures, arrived, and on 15th March Mr. Cleave wrote his account, Mr. Darley and Mr. Thurgood corroborating as to their presence, during the trance and as to Mr. Cleave's statement when he awoke. Mr. Cleave added that he made experiments ''for five nights running" before seeing^ the lady. The young lady's letter of 19th January, 1886, is also produced (postmark, Portsmouth, 20th^ January). But the lady mentions her first visioi of Mr. Cleave as on last Tuesday (not Friday), and' her second, while she was alone with her little brother, at supper on Monday. '' I was so fright- ened that I nearly fainted."
These are all young people. It may be said that all five were concerned in a complicated hoax on Mr. Gurney. Nor would such a hoax argue any' unusual moral obliquity. Surtees of Mainsforth, in other respects an honourable man, took in Sir Walter Scott with forged ballads, and never un- deceived his friend. Southey played oif a hoax with his book llie Doctor. Ho^g, L,ockhart, and Wilson, with x\llan Cunningham and many others, were constantly engaged in such mystifications, and a *' ghost-hunter " might seem a fair butt.
But the very discrepancy in Miss 's letter
is a proof of fairness. Her first vision of Mr. Cleave was on ''Tuesday last". Mr. Cleave's first im- pression of success was on the Friday following.
i
I MAORI WRAITHS. Ql
lut he had been making the experiment for five ights previous, including the Tuesda}^ of Miss
's letter. Had the affair been a hoax, Miss
would either have been requested by him to re-write her letter, putting Friday for Tuesday, or what is simpler, Mr. Sparks would have adopted her version and written "Tuesday" in place of "Friday" in his first letter to Mr. Gurne3^ The young lady, naturally, requested Mr. Cleave not to try his ex- periment on her again.
A similar case is that of Mrs. Kussell, who tried successfully, when awake and in Scotland, to appear to one of her family in Germany. The sister cor- roborates and says, *' Pray don't come appearing to me again ".^
These spirits of the living lead to the subject of spirits of the dying. No kind of tale is so common as that of dying people appearing at a distance. Hundreds have been conscientiously pub- lished.^ The belief is prevalent among the Maoris of New Zealand, where the apparition is regarded as a proof of death.^ Now there is nothing in savage philosophy to account for this opinion of the Maoris. A man's *' spirit " leaves his body in dreams, savages think, and as dreaming is infinitely more common than death, the Maoris should argue that the appearance is that of a man's spirit wan- dering in his sleep. However, they, like many
^Phantasms, ii., pp. 671-677. '^Phantasms of the Living.
3 Mr. E. B. Tylor gives a Maori case in Primitive Culture, Another is in Phantasms, ii., 557. See also Polack's New Zealand for the prevalence of the belief.
92 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
Europeans, associate a man's apparition with his death. Not being derived from their philosophy, this habit may be deduced from their experience.
As there are, undeniably, many examples of hallu- cinatory appearances of persons in perfect health and ordinary circumstances, the question has been asked whether there are more cases of an apparition coinciding with death than, according to the doc- trine of chances, there ought to be. Out of about 18,000 answers to questions on this subject, has been deduced the conclusion that the deaths do coincide with the apparitions to an extent beyond mere accident. Even if we had an empty hallu- cination for every case coinciding with death, we could not set the coincidences down to mere chance. As well might we say that if "at the end of an hour's rifle practice at long-distance range, the record shows that for every shot that has hit the bull's eye, another has missed the target, therefore the shots that hit the target did so by accident ".^ But as empty hallucinations are more likely to be forgotten than those which coincide with a death ; as exaggeration creeps in, as the collectors of evi- dence are naturally inclined to select and question people whom they know to have a good story to tell, the evidence connecting apparitions, voices, and so on with deaths is not likely to be received with favour.
One thing must be remembered as affecting the theory that the coincidence between the wraith and
^ Gurney, Phantasms, ii., 6.
AN ODD WRAITH. 93
the death is purely an accident. Everybody dreams, and out of the innumerable dreams of mankind, a few must hit the mark by a fluke. But hallucinations are not nearly so common as dreams. Perhaps, roughly speaking, one person in ten has had what he believes to be a waking hallucination. Therefore, so to speak, compared with dreams, but a small number of shots of this kind are fired. Therefore, bull's eyes (the coincidence between an appearance and a death) are infinitely less likely to be due to chance in the case of waking hallucinations than in the case of dreams, which all mankind are firing off every night of their lives. Stories of these coincidences between appearances and deaths are as common as they are dull. Most people come across them in the circle of their friends. They are all very much alike, and make 'odious reading. We give a few which have some picturesque features.
IN TAVISTOCK PLACE.i
" In the latter part of the autumn of 1878, between half-past three and four in the morning, I was leisurely walking home from the house of a sick friend. A middle-aged woman, apparently a nurse, was slowly following, going in the same direction. We crossed Tavistock Square together, and emerged simultaneously into Tavistock Place. The streets and squares were deserted, the morning bright and
1 The late Surgeon-Major Armand Leslie, who was killed at the battle of El Teb, communicated the following story to the Daily Telegraph in the autumn of 1881, attesting it with his signature.
94 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
calm, my health excellent, nor did I suffer from anxiety or fatigue. A man suddenly appeared., striding up Tavistock Place, coming towards me, and going in a direction opposite to mine. When first seen he was standing exactly in front of my own door (5 Tavistock Place). Young and ghastly pale, he was dressed in evening clothes, evidently made by a foreign tailor. Tall and slim, he walked with long measured strides noiselessly. A tall white hat, covered thickly with black crape, and an eye- glass, completed the costume of this strange form. The moonbeams falling on the corpse-like features revealed a face well known to me, that of a friend and relative. The sole and only person in the street beyond myself and this being was the woman already alluded to. She stopped abruptly, as if spell-bound, then rushing towards the man, she gazed intently and with horror unmistakable on his face, which was now upturned to the heavens and smiling ghastly. She indulged in her strange contemplation but during very few seconds, then with extraordinary and unexpected speed for her weight and age she ran away with a terrific shriek and yell. This woman never have I seen or heard of since, and but for her presence I could have explained the incident : called it, say, subjection of the mental powers to the domi- nation of physical reflex action, and the man's presence could have been termed a false impression on the retina.
" A week after this event, news of this very friend's death reached me. It occurred on the morning in question.. From the family I learned that according
WYNYARD WRAITH. 95
to the rites of the Greek Church and the custom of the country he resided in, he was buried in his evening clothes made abroad by a foreign tailor, and strange to say, he wore goloshes over his boots, according also to the custom of the country he died in. . . . When in England, he lived in Tavistock Place, and occupied my rooms during my absence." ^
THE WYNYARD WRAITH.^
" In the month of November (1785 or 1786), Sir John Sherbrooke and Colonel Wynyard were sitting before dinner in their barrack room at Sydney Cove, in America. It was duskish, and a candle was placed on a table at a little distance. A figure dressed in plain clothes and a good round hat, passed gently between the above people and the fire. While passing, Sir J. Sherbrooke exclaimed, * God bless my soul, who's that ? '
" Almost at the same moment Colonel W. said, 'That's my brother John Wynyard, and I am sure he is dead '. Colonel W. was much agitated,
" This is a remarkably difficult story to believe. " The morning bright and calm " is lit by the rays of the moon. The woman (a Mrs. Gamp) must have rushed past Dr. Leslie. A man who died in Greece or Russia "that morning" would hardly be arrayed in evening dress for burial before 4 a.m. The custom of using goloshes as •* hell-shoes " (fastened on the Icelandic dead in the Sagas) needs confirmation. Men are seldom buried in eye-glasses — never in tall white hats. — Phantasms of the Living, ii., 252.
2 From a memorandum, made by General Birch Reynardson, of an oral communication made to him by Sir John Sherbrooke, one of the two seers.
96 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
and cried and sobbed a great deal. Sir John said, ' The fellow has a devilish good hat ; I wish I had it '. (Hats were not to be got there, and theirs were worn out.) They immediately got up (Sir John was on crutches, having broken his leg), took a candle and went into the bedroom, into which the figure had entered. They searched the bed and every corner of the room to no effect ; the windows were fastened up with mortar. . . .
" They received no communication from England for about five months, when a letter from Mr. Rush, the surgeon (Coldstream Guards), announced the death of John Wynyard at the moment, as near as could be ascertained, when the figure appeared. In addition to this extraordinary circumstance, Sir John told me that two years and a half afterwards he was walking with Lilly Wynyard (a brother of Colonel W.) in London, and seeing somebody on the other side of the way, he recognised, he thought, the person who had appeared to him and Colonel Wynyard in America. Lilly Wynyard said that the person pointed out was a Mr. Eyre (Hay ?), that he and John Wynyard were frequently mistaken for each other, and that money had actually been paid to this Mr. Eyre in mistake."
A famous tale of an appearance is Lord Brougham's. His Lordship was not reckoned precisely a veracious man ; on the other hand, this was not the kind of fable he was likely to tell. He was brought up under the regime of common-sense. " On all such subjects my father was very sceptical," he says. To disbelieve Lord Brougham we must suppose either
BROUGHAM. 97
that he wilfully made a false entry in his diary in 1799, or that in preparing his Autobiography in 1862, he deliberately added a falsehood — and then explained his own marvel away !
LORD BROUGHAM'S STORY.
" December ig, 1799.
"... At one in the morning, arriving at a decent inn (,in Sweden), we decided to stop for the night, and found a couple of comfortable rooms. Tired with the cold of yesterday, I was glad to take advantage of a hot bath before I turned in. And here a most remarkable thing happened to me — so remarkable that I must tell the story from the beginning.
"After I left the High School, I went with G ,
my most intimate friend, to attend the classes in the University. . . . We actually committed the folly of drawing up an agreement, written with our blood, to the effect that whichever of us died the first should appear to the other, and thus solve any doubts we had entertained of ' the life after death '.
G went to India, years passed, and," says
Lord Brougham, " I had nearly forgotten his exis- tence. I had taken, as I have said, a warm bath, and while lying in it and enjoying the comfort of the heat, I turned my head round, looking towards the chair on which I had deposited my clothes, as I was about to get out of the bath. On the chair
sat G , looking calmly at me. How I got out
of the bath I know not, but on recovering my
7
98 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
senses I found myself sprawling on the floor. The apparition, or whatever it was that had taken the
likeness of G , had disappeared. ... So strongly
was I affected by it that I have here written down the whole history, with the date, 19th December, and all the particulars as they are now fresh before me. No doubt I had fallen asleep " (he has just said that he was awake and on the point of leaving the bath), " and that the appearance presented so distinctly to my eyes was a dream I cannot for a moment doubt. . . ."
On i6th October, 1862, Lord Brougham copied this extract for his Autobiography y and says that on his arrival in Edinburgh he received a letter from
India, announcing that G had died on igth
December. He remarks " singular coincidence ! " and adds that, considering the vast number of dreams, the number of coincidences is perhaps fewer than a fair calculation of chances would warrant us to expect.
This is a concession to common-sense, and argues an ignorance of the fact that sane and (apparently) waking men may have hallucinations. On the theory that we may have inappreciable moments of sleep when we think ourselves awake, it is not an ordinary but an extraordinary coincidence that Brougham should have had that peculiar moment
of the ** dream " of G on the day or
night of G 's death, while the circumstance
that he had made a compact with G
multiplies the odds against accident in a ratio which mathematicians may calculate. Brougham was used to dreams, like other people ; he was not
FALSE LOGIC. 99
shocked by them. This "dream" "produced such a shock that I had no incHnation to talk about it ". Even on Brougham's showing, then, this dream was a thing unique in his experience, and not one of the swarm of visions of sleep. Thus his including it among these, while his whole language shows that he himself did not really reckon it among these, is an example of the fallacies of common-sense. He completes his fallacy by saying, " It is not much more wonderful than that a person whom we had no reason to expect should appear to us at the very moment we had been thinking or speaking of him ". But Lord Brougham had not been speaking or
thinking of G ; " there had been nothing to call
him to my recollection," he says. To give his logic any value, he should constantly when (as far as he knew) awake, have had dreams that "shocked " him. Then one coincidence would have had no assignable cause save ordinary accident.
If Lord Brougham fabled in 1799 or in 1862, he did so to make a " sensation ". And then he tried to undo it by arguing that his experience was a thoroughly commonplace affair.
We now give a very old story, " The Dying Mother". If the reader will compare it with Mr. Cleave's case, " An Astral Body," in this chapter, he will be struck by the resemblance. Mr. Cleave and Mrs. Goffe were both in a trance. Both wished to see persons at a distance. Both saw, and each was seen, Mrs. Goffe by her children's nurse ; Mr. Cleave by the person whom he wished to see, but not by a small boy also present.
iOO DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
THE DYING MOTHER.^
" Mary, the wife of John Goffe of Rochester, being afflicted with a long illness, removed to her father's house at West Mulling, about nine miles from her own. There she died on 4th June, this present year, i6gi.
* " The day before her departure (death) she grew very impatiently desirous to see her two children, whom she had left at home to the care of a nurse. She prayed her husband to * hire a horse, for she must go home and die with the children '. She was too ill to be moved, but ' a minister who lives in the town was with her at ten o'clock that night, to whom she expressed good hopes in the mercies of God and a willingness to die '. ' But ' said she, * it is my misery that I cannot see my children.'
" Between one and two o'clock in the morning, she fell into a trance. One, widow Turner, who watched with her that night, says that her eyes were open and fixed and her jaw fallen. Mrs. Turner put her hand upon her mouth and nostrils, but could perceive no breath. She thought her to be in a fit ; and doubted whether she were dead or alive.
"The next morning the dying woman told her
^ This is an old, but good story. The Rev. Thomas Tilson, minister (non-conforming) of Aylesford, in Kent, sent it on 6th July, 1691, to Baxter for his Certainty of the World of Spirits. The woman Mary Goffe died on 4th June, i6gi. Mr. Tilson's informants were her father, speaking on the day after her burial ; the nurse, with two corroborative neighbours, on 2nd July ; the mother oi Mary Goffe ; the minister who attended her, and one woman who sat up with her — all " sober intelligent persons ". Not many stories have such good evidence in their favour.
MRS. GOFFE. lOI
mother that she had been at home with her children. . . . ' I was with them last night when I was asleep.'
" The nurse at Rochester, widow Alexander by name, affirms, and says she will take her oath on't before a Magistrate and receive the sacrament upon it, that a little before two o'clock that morning she saw the likeness of the said Mary Goffe come out of the next chamber (where the elder child lay in a bed by itself) the door being left open, and stood by her bedside for about a quarter of an hour ; the 5'ounger child was there lying by her. Her eyes moved and her mouth went, but she said nothing. The nurse, moreover, says that she was perfectly awake ; it was then daylight, being one of the longest days in the year. She sat up in bed and looked steadfastly on the apparition. In that time she heard the bridge clock strike two, and a while after said, ' In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, what art thou ? ' Thereupon the appa- rition removed and went away ; she slipped on her clothes and followed, but what became on't she cannot tell.
" Mrs. Alexander then walked out of doors till six, when she persuaded some neighbours to let her in. She told her adventure ; they failed to persuade her that she had dreamed it. On the same day the neighbour's wife, Mrs. Sweet, went to West Mulling, saw Mrs. Goffe before her death, and heard from Mrs. Goffe's mother the story of the daughter's dream of her children, Mrs. Sweet not having men- tioned the nurse's story of the apparition." That
I02 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
poor Mrs. Goffe walked to Rochester and returned undetected, a distance of eighteen miles is difficult to believe.
Goethe has an obiter dictum on the possibility of intercommunion without the aid of the ordinary- senses, between the souls of lovers. Something of the kind is indicated in anecdotes of dreams dreamed in common by husband and wife, but, in such cases, it may be urged that the same circumstance, or the same noise or other disturbing cause, may beget the same dream in both. A better instance is
THE VISION OF THE BRIDE.
Colonel Meadows Taylor writes, in The Story of my Life (vol. ii., p. 32) : " The determination (to live unmarried) was the result of a very curious and strange incident that befel me during one of my marches to Hyderabad. I have never forgotten it, and it returns to this day to my memory with a strangely vivid effect that I can neither repel nor explain. I purposely withhold the date of the year. In my very early life I had been deeply and devotedly attached to one in England, and only relinquished the hope of one day winning her when the terrible order came out that no furlough to Europe would be granted.
" One evening I was at the village of Dewas Kudea, after a very long afternoon and evening march from Muktul, and I lay down very weary; but the barking of village dogs, the baying of jackals and over- fatigue and heat prevented sleep, and I was wide
THE BRIDE. IO3
awake and restless. Suddenly, for my tent door was wide open, I saw the face and figure so familiar to me, but looking older, and with a sad and troubled expression ; the dress was white and seemed covered with a profusion of lace and glistened in the bright moonlight. The arms were stretched out, and a low plaintive cry of ' Do not let me go ! Do not let me go ! ' reached me. I sprang forward, but the figure receded, growing fainter and fainter till I could see it no more, but the low plaintive tones still sounded. I had run barefooted across the open space where my tents were pitched, very much to the astonishment of the sentry on guard, but I returned to my tent without speaking to him. I wrote to my father. I wished to know whether there were any hope for me. He wrote back to me these words : ' Too late, my dear son — on the very day of the vision you describe to me, A. was married'."
The colonel did not keep his determination not to marry, for his Life is edited by his daughter, who often heard her father mention the incident, " pre- cisely in the same manner, and exactly as it is in the book ".1
If thinking of friends and lovers, lost or dead, could bring their forms and voices before the eye and ear of flesh, there would be a world of hallu- cinations around us. " But it wants heaven-sent moments for this skill," and few bridal nights send a vision and a voice to the bed of a wakeful lover far away.
Stories of this kind, appearances of the living or
1 Phantasms^ ii., 52S.
104 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
dying really at a distance, might be multiplied to any extent. They are all capable of explanation, if we admit the theory of telepathy, of a message sent by an unknown process from one living man's mind to another. Where more than one person shares the vision, we may suppose that the in- fluence comes directly from A to B, C and D, or comes from A to B, and is by him unconsciously *' wired " on to B and C, or is " suggested " to them by B's conduct or words.
In that case animals may be equally affected, thus, if B seems alarmed, that may frighten his dog, or the alarm of a dog, caused by some noise or smell, heard or smelt by him, may frighten B, C and D, and make one or all of them see a ghost.
Popular opinion is strongly in favour of beasts seeing ghosts. The people of St. Kilda, according to Martin, held that cows shared the visions of second-sighted milk-maids. Horses are said to shy on the scene of murders. Scott's horse ran away (home) when Sir Walter saw the bogle near Ashie- stiel. In a case given later the dog shut up in a room full of unexplained noises, yelled and whined. The same dog (an intimate friend of my own) bristled up his hair and growled before his master saw the Grey Lady. The Rev. J. G. Wood gives a case of a cat which nearly went mad when his mistress sav/ an apparition. Jeremy Taylor tells of a dog which got quite used to a ghost that often appeared to his master, and used to follow it. In "The Lady in Black," a dog would jump up and fawn on the ghost and then run away in a fright. Mr. Wesley's
DOGS. 105
mastiff was much alarmed by the family ghost. Not to multiply cases, dogs and other animals are easily affected by whatever it is that makes people think a ghost is present, or by the conduct of the human beings on these occasions.
Absurd as the subject appears, there are stories of the ghosts of animals. These may be discussed later ; meanwhile we pass from appearances of the living or dying to stories of appearances of the dead.
io6
CPIAPTER VL
Transition to Appearances of the Dead. Obvious Scien- tific Difficulties, Purposeless Character of Modern Ghosts. Theory of Dead Men's Dreams. Illus- trated by Sleep-walking House-maid. Purposeful Character of the Old Ghost Stories. Probable Causes of the Difference between Old and New Ghost Stories. Only the most Dramatic were re- corded. Or the Tales were embellished or invented. Practical Reasons for inventing them. The Daemon of Spraiton. Sources of Story of Sir George Villier's Ghost. Clarendon. Lilly, Douch. Wyndham. Wyndham's Letter. Sir Henry Wotton. Izaak Walton. Anthony Wood. A Wotton Dream proved Legendary. The Ghost that appeared to Lord Lyttleton. His Lordship's Own Ghost.
APPEARANCES OF THE DEAD.
We now pass beyond the utmost limits to which a " scientific " theory of things ghostly can be pushed. Science admits, if asked, that it does not know everything. It is not inconceivable that living minds may communicate by some other channel than that of the recognised senses. Science now admits the fact of hypnotic influence, though, sixty years ago, Braid was not allowed to read a paper on it before the British Association. Even now
PURPOSELESS GHOSTS. 107
the topic is not welcome. But perhaps only one eminent man of science declares that hypnotism is all imposture and malobservation. Thus it is not wholly beyond the scope of fancy to imagine that some day official science may glance at the evidence for "telepathy".
But the stories we have been telling deal with living men supposed to be influencing living men. When the dead are alleged to exercise a similar power, we have to suppose that some consciousness survives the grave, and manifests itself by causing hallucinations among the living. Instances of this have already been given in " The Ghost and the Portrait," ''The Bright Scar" and " Riding Home after Mess". These were adduced as examples of veracity in hallucinations. Each appearance gave information to the seer which he did not pre- viously possess. In the first case, the lady who saw the soldier and the suppliant did not know of their previous existence and melancholy adventure. In the second, the brother did not know that his dead sister's face had been scratched. In the third, the observer did not know that Lieutenant B. had grown a beard and acquired a bay pony with black mane and tail. But though the appearances were veracious, they were purposeless, and again, as in each case the information existed in living minds, it may have been wired on from them.
Thus the doctrine of telepathy puts a ghost of the dead in a great quandary. If he communi- cates no verifiable information, he may be explained as a mere empty illusion. If he does yield fresh
I08 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
information, and if that is known to any living mind, he and his intelligence may have been wired on from that mind. His only chance is to communi- cate facts which are proved to be true, facts which nobody living knew before. Now it is next to impossible to demonstrate that the facts communi- cated were absolutely unknown to everybody.
Far, however, from conveying unknown intelli- gence, most ghosts convey none at all, and appear to have no purpose whatever.
It will be observed that there was no traceable reason why the girl with a scar should appear to Mr. G., or the soldier and suppliant to Mrs. M., or Lieutenant B. to General Barker. The appear- ances came in a vague, casual, aimless way, just as the living and healthy clergyman appeared to the diplomatist. On St. Augustine's theory the dead persons who appeared may have known no more about the matter than did the living clergyman. It is not even necessary to suppose that the dead man was dreaming about the living person to whom, or about the place in which, he appeared. But on the analogy of the tales in which a dream or thought of the living seems to produce a hallucination of their presence in the minds of other and distant living people, so a dream of the dead may (it is urged) have a similar effect if " in that sleep of death such dreams may come ". The idea occurred to Shakespeare ! In any case the ghosts of our stories hitherto have been so aimless and purposeless as to resemble what we might imagine a dead man's dream to be.
SOMNAMBULISM. IO9
This view of the case (that a " ghost " may be a reflection of a dead man's dream) will become less difficult to understand if we ask ourselves what natural thing most resembles the common idea of a ghost. You are reading alone at night, let us say, the door opens and a human figure glides into the room. To you it pays no manner of attention ; it does not answer if you speak ; it may trifle with some object in the chamber and then steal quietly out again.
It is the House-maid walking in her Sleep,
This perfectly accountable appearance, in its aim- lessness, its unconsciousness, its irresponsiveness, is undeniably just like the common notion of a ghost. Now, if ordinary ghosts are not of flesh and blood, like the sleep-walking house-maid, yet are as irre- sponsive, as unconscious, and as vaguely wandering as she, then (if the dead are somewhat) a ghost may be a hallucination produced in the living by the unconscious action of the mind of the dreaming dead. The conception is at least conceivable. If adopted, merely for argument's sake, it would first explain the purposeless behaviour of ghosts, and secondly, relieve people who see ghosts of the im- pression that they see " spirits ". In the Scotch phrase the ghost obviously "is not all there," any more than the sleep walker is intellectually *'all there". This incomplete, incoherent presence is just what might be expected if a dreaming disem- bodied mind could affect an embodied mind with a hallucination.
no DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
But the good old-fashioned ghost stories are usually of another type. The robust and earnest ghosts of our ancestors " had their own purpose sun- clear before them," as Mr. Carlyle would have said. They knew what they wanted, asked for it, and saw that they got it.
As a rule their bodies were unburied, and so they demanded sepulture ; or they had committed a wrong, and wished to make restitution ; or they had left debts which they were anxious to pay ; or they had advice, or warnings, or threats to com- municate ; or they had been murdered, and were determined to bring their assassins to the gibbet.
Why, we may ask, were the old ghost stories so different from the new ? Well, first they were not all different. Again, probably only the more dramatic tales were as a rule recorded. Thirdly, many of the stories may have been either embellished — a fancied purpose being attributed to a purposeless ghost — or they may even have been invented to protect witnesses who gave information against mur- derers. Who could disobey a ghost ?
In any case the old ghost stories are much more dramatic than the new. To them we turn, beginning with the appearances of Mr. and Mrs. Furze at Spraiton, in Devonshire, in 1682. Our author is Mr. Richard Bovet, in his Pandcemonium, or the Devil's Cloister opened (1683). The motive of the late Mr. Furze was to have some small debts paid ; his wife's spectre was influenced by a jealousy ol Mr. Furze's spectre's relations with another lady.
BOVET. 1 1 1
THE DAEMON OF SPRAITON IN DEVON.^ Anno 1682.
" About the month of November in the year 1682, in the parish of Spraiton, in the county of Devon, one Francis Fey (servant to Mr. PhiHp Furze) being in a field near the dwelHng-house of his said master, there appeared unto him the resemblance of an aged ge7itleman like his master's father, with a pole or staff in his hand, resembling that he was wont to carry when living to kill the moles withal. The spectrum approached near the young man, whom you may imagin not a little surprized at the appear- ance of one that he knew to be dead, but the spectrum bid him not be afraid of him, but tell his master (who was his son) that several legacies which by his testa- ment he had bequeathed were unpaid, naming ten shillings to one and ten shillings to another, both which persons he named to the young man, who replyed that the party he last named was dead, and so it could not be paid to him. The ghost answered he knew that^ but it must be paid to the next relation, whom he also named. The spectrum likewise ordered him to carry
1 " That which was published in May, 1683, concerning the Daemon, or Daemons of Spraiton was the extract of a letter from T. C, Esquire, a near neighbour to the place ; and though it needed little confirmation further than the credit that the learning and quality of that gentleman had stampt upon it, yet was much of it likewise known to and related by the Reverend Minister of Barn- staple, of the vicinity to Spraiton. Having likewise since had fresh testimonials of the veracity of that relation, and it being at first designed to fill this place, I have thought it not amiss (for the strangeness of it) to print it here a second time, exactly as I hadt transcribed it then. " — Bo vet.
112 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
twenty shillings to a gentlewoman, sister to the deceased, living near Totness in the said county, and promised, if these things were performed, to trouble him no further ; but at the same time the spectrum, speaking of his second wife (who was also dead) called her wicked woman, though the gentleman who writ the letter knew her and esteemed her a very good woman. And (having thus related him his mind) the spectrum left the young man, who according to the direction of the spirit took care to see the small legacies satisfied, and carried the twenty shillings that was appointed to be paid the gentlewoman near Totness, but she utterly refused to receive it, being sent her (as she said) from the devil. The same night the young man lodging at her house, the aforesaid spectrum appeared to him again ; whereupon the young man challenged his promise not to trouble him any more, saying he had performed all according to his appointment, but that the gentlewoman, his sister, would not receive the money.
" To which the spectrum replied that was true indeed ; but withal directed the young man to ride to Totness and buy for her a ring of that value, which the spirit said she would accept of, which being provided accor- dingly, she received. Since the performance of which the ghost or apparition of the old gentleman hath seemed to be at rest, having never given the young man any further trouble.
*' But the next day after having delivered the ring, the young man was riding home to his master's house, accompanyed by a sei*vant of the gentle-
SECOND WIFE, II3
woman's near Totness, and near about the time of their entrance (or a Httle before they came) into the parish of Spraiton aforesaid, there appeared to be upon the horse behind the young man, the re- semblance of the second wife of the old gentleman spoken of before.
" This daemon often threw the young man off his horse, and cast him with such violence to the ground as was great astonishment, not only to the gentlewoman's servant (with him), but to divers others who were spectators of the frightful action, the ground resounding with great noise by reason of the incredible force with which he was cast upon it. At his coming into his master's yard, the horse which he rid, though very poor and out of case, leaped at one spring twenty-five foot, to the amaze- ment of all that saw it. Soon after the she-spectre shewed herself to divers in the house, viz.^ the aforesaid young man. Mistress Thomasin Gidly, Ann Langdon, born in that parish, and a little child, which, by reason of the troublesomeness of the spirit, they were fain to remove from that house. She appeared sometimes in her own shape, some- times in forms very horrid ; now and then like a monstrous dog belching out fire ; at another time it flew out at the window, in the shape of a horse, carrying with it only one pane of glass and a small piece of iron.
" One time the young man's head was thrust into a very strait place betwixt a bed's head and a wall, and forced by the strength of divers men to be removed thence, and that not without being much
8
114 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
hurt and bruised, so that much blood appeared about it : upon this it was advised he should be bleeded, to prevent any ill accident that might come of the bruise ; after bleeding, the ligature or binder of his arm was removed from thence and conveyed about his middle, where it was strained with such violence that the girding had almost stopp'd his breath and kill'd him, and being cut asunder it made a strange and dismal noise, so that the standers by were affrighted at it. At divers other times he hath been in danger to be strangled with cravats and hand- kerchiefs that he hath worn about his neck, which have been drawn so close that with the sudden violence he hath near been choaked, and hardly escaped death.
"The spectre hath shewed great offence at the perriwigs which the young man used to wear, for they are often torn from his head after a very strange manner; one that he esteemed above the rest he put in a small box, and that box he placed in another, which he set against the wall of his chamber, placing a joint-stool with other weight a top of it, but in short time the boxes were broken in sunder and the perriwig rended into many small parts and tatters. Another time, lying in his master's chamber with his perriwig on his head, to secure it from danger, within a little time it was torn from him and reduced into very small frag- ments. At another time one of his shoe-strings was observed (without the assistance of any hand) to come of its own accord out of its shoe and fling itself to the other side of the room ; the other was
FANTASTICAL FREAKS. II5
crawling after it, but a maid espying that, with her hand drew it out, and it strangely clasp'd and curl'd about her hand like a living eel or serpent; this is testified by a lady of considerable quality, too great for exception, who was an eye-witness. The same lady shewed Mr. C. one of the young man's gloves, which was torn in his pocket while she was by, which is so dexterously tatter'd and so artificially torn that it is conceived a cutler could not have contrived an instrument to have laid it abroad so accurately, and all this was done in the pocket in the compass of one minute. It is further observable that if the aforesaid young man, or another person who is a servant maid in the house, do wear their own clothes, they are certainly torn in pieces on their backs, but if the clothes belong to any other, they are not injured after that manner.
" Many other strange and fantastical freaks have been done by the said daemon or spirit in the view of divers persons ; a barrel of salt of considerable quantity hath been observed to march from room to room without any human assistance.
"An hand-iron hath seemed to lay itself cross over- thwart a pan of milk that hath been scalding over the fire, and two flitches of bacon have of their own accord descended from the chimney where they were hung, and placed themselves upon the hand- iron.
" When the spectre appears in resemblance of her own person, she seems to be habited in the same cloaths and dress which the gentlewoman of the house (her daughter-in-law) hath on at the same
Il6 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
time. Divers times the feet and legs of the young man aforesaid have been so entangled about his neck that he hath been loosed with great difficulty, sometimes they have been so twisted about the frames of chairs and stools that they have hardly been set at liberty. But one of the most consider- able instances of the malice of the spirit against the young man happened on Easter Eve, when Mrs. C. the relator, was passing by the door of the house, and it was thus : —
" When the young man was returning from his labour, he was taken up by the skirt of his doublet by this female daemon, and carried a height into the air. He was soon missed by his Master and some other servants that had been at labour with him, and after diligent enquiry no news could be heard of him, until at length (near half an hour after) he was heard singing and whistling in a bog or quag- mire, where they found him in a kind of trance or extatick fit, to which he hath sometimes been accus- tomed (but whether before the affliction he met with from this spirit I am not certain). He was affected much after such sort, as at the time of those fits, so that the people did not give that attention and regard to what he said as at other times ; but when he returned again to himself (which was about an hour after) he solemnly protested to them that the daemon had carried him so high that his master's house seemed to him to be but as a hay-cock, and that during all that time he was in perfect sense, and prayed to A Imighty God not to suffer the devil to destroy him ; and that he was suddenly set down in that quagmire.
LEVITATION. 11/
The workmen found one shoe on one side of his master's house, and the other on the other side, and in the morning espied his pemwig hanging on the top of a tree ; by which it appears he had been carried a considerable height, and that what he told them was not a fiction.
" After this it was observed that that part of the young man's body which had been on the mud in the quagmire was somewhat benummbed and seem- ingly deader than the other, whereupon the following Saturday, which was the day before Low Sunday, he was carried to Crediton, alias Kirton, to be bleeded, which being done accordingly, and the company having left him for some little space, at their return they found him in one of his fits, with his forehead much bruised, and swoln to a great bigness, none being able to guess how it happened, until his recovery from that fit, when upon enquiry he gave them this account of it : that a bird had with great swiftness and force flown in at the window with a stone in its beaky which it had dashed against his forehead, which had occasioned the swelling which they saw.
" The people much wondering at the strangeness of the accident, diligently sought the stone, and under the place where he sat they found not such a stone as they expected but a weight of brass or copper, which it seems the daemon had made use of on that occasion to give the poor young man that hurt in his forehead.
*' The persons present were at the trouble to break it to pieces, every one taking a part and preserving it m memory of so strange an accident. After this
Il8 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
the spirit continued to molest the young man in a very severe and rugged manner, often handHng him with great extremity, and whether it hath yet left its violences to him, or whether the young man be yet alive, I can have no certain account."
I leave the reader to consider of the extraordinary strangeness of the relation.
The reader, considering the exceeding strangeness of the relation, will observe that we have now reached " great swingeing falsehoods," even if that opinion had not hitherto occurred to his mind. But if he thinks that such stories are no longer told, and even sworn to on Bible oath, he greatly deceives himself. In the chapter on " Haunted Houses" he will find statements just as hard narrated of the years 1870 and 1882. In these, however, the ghosts had no purpose but mischief.^
We take another "ghost with a purpose".
SIR GEORGE VILLIERS' GHOST.
The variations in the narratives of Sir George Villiers' appearance to an old servant of his, or old protege, and the warning communicated b}' this man to Villiers' son, the famous Duke of Buckingham, are curious and instructive. The tale is first told in print by William Lilly, the astrologer, in the second part of a large tract called Mmiarchy or No Monarchy in England (London, 165 1), twenty-three years after Buckingham's murder. But while prior
1 Shchapoff case of " The Dancing Devil " and " The Great Amherst Mystery ",
VARIOUS VERSIONS. 119
in publication, Lilly's story was probably written after, though independent of Lord Clarendon's, in the first book of his History of the Rebellion, begun on i8th March, 1646, that is within eighteen years of the events. Clarendon, of course, was in a position to know what was talked of at the time. Next, we have a letter of Mr. Douch to Glanvil, undated, but written after the Restoration, and, finally, an original manuscript of 1652.
Douch makes the warning arrive "some few days" before the murder of Buckingham, and says that the ghost of Sir George, " in his morning gown," bade one Parker tell Buckingham to abandon the expedi- tion to La Rochelle or expect to be murdered. On the third time of appearing the vision pulled a long knife from under his gown, as a sign of the death awaiting Buckingham. He also communicated a *' private token " 'to Parker, the *' percipient," Sir George's old servant. On each occasion of the appearance, Parker was reading at midnight. Parker, after the murder, told one Ceeley, who told it to a clergyman, who told Douch, who told Glanvil.
In Lilly's version the ghost had a habit of walking in Parker's room, and finally bade him tell Bucking- ham to abstain from certain company, "or else he will come to destruction, and that suddenly ". Par- ker, thinking he had dreamed, did nothing ; the ghost reappeared, and communicated a secret "which he (Buckingham) knows that none in the world ever knew but myself and he ". The duke, on hearing the story from Parker, backed by the secret, was amazed, but did not alter his conduct. On the third
I20 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
time the spectre produced the knife, but at this information the duke only laughed. Six weeks later he was stabbed. Douch makes the whole affair pass immediately before the assassination. "And Mr. Parker died soon after," as the ghost had foretold to him.
Finally, Clarendon makes the appearances set in six months before Felton slew the duke. The per- cipient, unnamed, was in bed. The narrative now develops new features ; the token given on the ghost's third coming obviously concerns Bucking- ham's mother, the Countess, the " one person more" who knew the secret communicated. The ghost produces no knife from under his gown ; no warning of Buckingham's death by violence is mentioned. A note in the MS. avers that Clarendon himself had papers bearing on the subject, and that he got his information from Sir Ralph Freeman (who introduced the unnamed percipient to the duke), and from some of Buckingham's servants, " who were informed of much of it before the murder of the duke". Clarendon adds that, in general, ^*no man looked on relations of that sort with less reverence and consideration " than he did. This anecdote he selects out of " many stories scattered abroad at the time "as " upon a better foundation of credit ". The percipient was an officer in the king's wardrobe at Windsor, " of a good reputation for honesty and discretion," and aged about fifty. He was bred at a school in Sir George's parish, and as a boy was kindly treated by Sir George, " whom afterwards he never saw". On first beholding the
I
CAVALIER STORY. 121
Spectre in his room, the seer recognised Sir George's costume, then antiquated. At last the seer went to Sir Ralph Freeman, who introduced him to the duke on a hunting morning at Lambeth Bridge. They talked earnestly apart, observed by Sir Ralph, Clarendon's informant. The duke seemed abstrac- ted all day ; left the field early, sought his mother, and after a heated conference of which the sounds reached the ante-room, went forth in visible trouble and anger, a thing never before seen in him after talk with his mother. She was found "overwhelmed with tears and in the highest agony imaginable". " It is a notorious truth " that, when told of his murder, '' she seemed not in the least degree sur- prised."
The following curious manuscript account of the affair is, after the prefatory matter, the copy of a letter dated 1652. There is nothing said of a ghostly knife, the name of the seer is not Parker, and in its whole effect the story tallies with Clarendon's version, though the narrator knows nothing of the scene with the Countess of Buckingham.
CAVALIER VERSION.i
" 1627. Since William Lilly the Rebells Jugler and Mountebank in his malicious and blaspheamous discourse concerning our late Martyred Soveraigne of ever blessed memory (amongst other lyes and falsehoods) imprinted a relation concerning an Apari- tion which foretold several Events which should
^ Additional MSS., British Museum, 27,402,/. 132.
122 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
happen to the Duke of Buckingham, wherein he falsifies boeth the person to whom it appeared and ye circumstances; I thought it not amis to enter here (that it may be preserved) the true account of that Aparition as I have receaved it from the hande and under the hande of Mr. Edmund Wyndham, of Kellefford in the County of Somersett. I shall sett it downe {ipsissimis verbis) as he delivered it to me at my request written with his own hande.
WYNDHAM'S LETTER.
" Sr. According to your desire and my promise I have written down what I remember (divers things being slipt out of my memory) of the relation made me by Mr. Nicholas Towse concerning the Aparition wch visited him. About ye yeare 1627/ I and my wife upon an occasion being in London lay att my Brother Pyne's house without Bishopsgate, wch. was ye next house unto Mr. Nicholas Towse's, who was my Kinsman and familiar acquaintance, in consideration of whose Society and friendship he tooke a house in that place, ye said Towse being a very fine Musician and very good company, and for ought I ever saw or heard, a Vurtuous, religious and wel disposed Gentleman. About that time ye said Mr. Towse tould me that one night, being in Bed and perfectly waking, and a Candle burning by him (as he usually had) there came into his Chamber and stood by his bed side an Olde Gentleman in such
^ Really 1628, unless, indeed, the long-continued appearances began in the year before Buckingham's death ; old style.
MR. TOWSE. 123
an habitt as was in fashion in Q : Elizabeth's tyme, at whose first appearance Mr. Towse was very much troubled, but after a little tyme, recollecting him- selfe, he demanded of him in ye Name of God what he was, whether he were a Man. And ye Apariticn replyed No. Then he asked him if he were a Divell. And ye answer was No. Then Mr. Towse said ' in ye Name of God, what art thou then ? ' And as I remember Mr. Towse told me that ye Apparition answered him that he was ye Ghost of Sir George Villiers, Father to ye then Duke of Buckingham, whom he might very well remember, synce he went to schoole at such a place in Leicester- shire (naming ye place which I have forgotten). And Mr. Towse tould me that ye Apparition had perfectly ye resemblance of ye said Sr George Vil- liers in all respects and in ye same habitt that he had often scene him weare in his lifetime.
" The said Apparition then tould Mr. Towse that he could not but remember ye much kindness that he, ye said Sr George Villiers, had expressed to him whilst he was a Schollar in Leicestershire, as aforesaid, and that as out of that consideration he believed that he loved him and that therefore he made choyce of him, ye sayde Mr. Towse, to deliver a message to his sonne, ye Duke of Buckingham ; thereby to prevent such mischiefe as would otherwise befall ye said Duke whereby he would be inevitably ruined. And then (as I remember) Mr. Towse tould me that ye Apparition instructed him what message he should deliver unto ye Duke. Vnto wch. Mr. Towse replyed that he should be very unwilling to
124 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
goe to ye Duke of Buckingham upon such an errand, whereby he should gaine nothing but reproach and contempt, and to be esteemed a Madman, and there- fore desired to be exscused from ye employment, but ye Apparition pressd him wth. much earnestness to undertake it, telling him that ye Circumstances and secret Discoveries which he should be able to make to ye Duke of such passages in ye course of his life which were known to none but himselfe, would make it appeare that ye message was not ye fancy of a Distempered Brayne, but a reahty, and so ye Apparition tooke his leave of him for that night and telling him that he would give him leave to consider till the next night, and then he would come to receave his answer wheather he would undertake to deliver his message or no.
" Mr. Towse past that day wth. much trouble and perplexity, debating and reasoning wth. him- selfe wether he should deliver his message or not to ye Duke but, in ye conclusion, he resolved to doe it, and ye next night when ye Apparition came he gave his answer accordingly, and then receaved his full instruction. After which Mr. Towse went and founde out Sr. Thomas Bludder and Sr. Ralph Free- man, by whom he was brought to ye Duke of Buckingham, and had sevarall private and lone audiences of him, I my selfe, by ye favoure of a freinde (Sr. Edward Savage) was once admitted to see him in private conference with ye Duke, where (although I heard not there discourses) I observed much earnestnessse in their actions and gestures. After wch. conference Mr. Towse tould me that
I
THE DUKE'S SECRET. I25
ye Duke would not follow ye advice that was given him, which was (as I remember) that he intimated ye casting of, and ye rejecting of some Men who had great interest in him, which was, and as I take it he named, Bp. Laud and that ye Duke was to doe some popular Acts in ye ensuing Parliament, of which Parliament ye Duke would have had Mr. Towse to have been a Burgesse, but he refused it, alleadging that unlesse ye Duke followed his direc- tions, he must doe him hurt if he were of ye Parliament. Mr. Towse then toalde that ye Duke of Buckingham confessed that he had toalde him those things wch. no Creature knew but himself, and that none but God or ye Divell could reveale to him. Ye Duke offered Mr. Towse to have ye King knight him, and to have given him preferment (as he tould me), but that he refused it, saying that vnless he would follow his advice he would receave nothing from him.
" Mr. Towse, when he made me this relation, he tolde me that ye Duke would inevitably be destroyed before such a time (wch. he then named) and accordingly ye Duke's death happened before that time. He likewise tolde that he had written downe all ye severall discourses that he had had wth. ye Apparition, and that at last his coming was so familiar that he was as litle troubled with it as if it had beene a friende or acquayntance that had come to visitt him. Mr. Towse told me further that ye Archbishop of Canterbury, then Bishop of London, Dr. Laud, should by his Councells be ye authoure of very great troubles to ye Kingdome, by
126 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
which it should be reduced to ye extremity of dis- order and confusion, and that it should seeme to be past all hope of recovery without a miracle, but when all people were in dispayre of seeing happy days agayne, ye Kingdome should suddenly be re- duced and resettled agayne in a most happy con- dition.
" At this tyme my father Pyne was in trouble and comitted to ye Gatehouse by ye Lords of ye Councell about a Quarrel betweene him and ye Lord Powlett, upon which one night I saide to my Cosin Towse, by way of jest, * I pray aske your Appairition what shall become of my father Pyne's business,' which he promised to doe, and ye next day he tolde me that my father Pyne's enemyes were ashamed of their malicious prosecution, and that he would be at liberty within a week or some few days, which happened according.
*' Mr. Towse, his wife, since his death tolde me that her husband and she living at Windsor Castle, where he had an office that Sumer that ye Duke of Buckingham was killed, tolde her that very day that the Duke was sett upon by ye mutinous Mari- ners att Portesmouth, saying then that ye next attempt agaynst him would be his Death, which accordingly happened. And att ye instant ye Duke was killed (as she vnderstood by ye relation after- wards) Mr. Towse was sitting in his chayre, out of which he suddenly started vp and sayd, * Wyfe, ye Duke of Buckingham is slayne ! '
" Mr. Towse lived not long after that himselfe, but tolde his wife ye tyme of his Death before itt
SIR HENRY WOTTON. I27
happened. I never saw him after I had seen some effects of his discourse, which before I valued not, and therefore was not curious to enquire after more than he voluntaryly tolde me, which I then enter- tayned not wth. these serious thoughts which I have synce reflected on in his discourse. This is as much as I can remember on this business which, according to youre desire, is written by " Sr. Yor., &c.,
" Edmund Windham. " Boulogne, $th August, 1652."
This version has, over all others, the merit of being written by an acquaintance of the seer, who was with him while the appearances were going on. The narrator was also present at an interview be- tween the seer and Buckingham. His mention of Sir Ralph Freeman tallies with Clarendon's, who had the story from Freeman. The ghost predicts the Restoration, and this is recorded before that happy event. Of course Mr. Towse may have been interested in Buckingham's career and may have invented the ghost (after discovering the secret token) ' as an excuse for warning him.
The reader can now take his choice among ver- sions of Sir George Villiers' ghost. He must remember that, in 1642, Sir Henry Wotton '* spent some inquiry whether the duke had any ominous
^ It may fairly be argued, granting the ghost, his advice and his knowledge of a secret known to the countess, that he was a hallu- cination unconsciously wired on to old Towse by the mind of the anxious countess herself 1
128 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
presagement before his end," but found no evidence. Sir Henry told Izaak Walton a story of a dream of an ancestor of his own, whereby some robbers of the University chest at Oxford were brought to justice. Anthony Wood consulted the records of the year mentioned, and found no trace of any such robbery.
We now approach a yet more famous ghost than Sir George's. This is Lord Lyttelton's. The ghost had a purpose, to warn that bad man of his death, but nobody knows whose ghost she was !
LORD LYTTELTON'S GHOST.
" Sir," said Dr. Johnson, " it is the most extra- ordinary thing that has happened in my day." The doctor's day included the rising of 1745 and of the Wesleyans, the seizure of Canada, the Seven Years' War, the American Rebellion, the Cock Lane ghost, and other singular occurrences, but "the most ex- traordinary thing" was — Lord Lyttelton's ghost! Famous as is that spectre, nobody knows what it was, nor even whether there was any spectre at all.
Thomas, Lord Lyttelton, was born in 1744. In 1768 he entered the House of Commons. In 1769 he was unseated for bribery. He then vanishes from public view, probably he was playing the prodigal at home and abroad, till February, 1772, when he returned to his father's house, and married. He then went abroad (with a barmaid) till 1773, when his father died. In January, 1774, he took his seat in the House of Lords. In November, 1779,
A VARIED GHOST. I29
Lyttelton went into Opposition. On Thursday, 25th November, he denounced Government in a magnifi- cent speech. As to a sinecure which he held, he said, '* Perhaps I shall not keep it long ! "
Something had Happened !
On the night before his speech, that of Wednes- day, 24th November, Lyttelton had seen the ghost, and had been told that he would die in three days. He mentioned this to Rowan Hamilton on the Friday.^ On the same day, or on Friday, he men- tioned it to Captain Ascough, who told a lady, who told Mrs. Thrale.^ On the Friday he went to Epsom with friends, and mentioned the ghost to them, among others to Mr. Fortescue.^ About midnight on 28th November, Lord Lyttelton died suddenly in bed, his valet having left him for a moment to fetch a spoon for stirring his medicine. The cause of death was not stated ; there was no in- quest.
This, literally, is all that is known about Lord Lyttelton's ghost. It is variously described as : (i) " a young woman and a robin " (Horace Walpole) ; (2) " a spirit " (Captain Ascough) ; (3) a bird in a dream, "which changed into a woman in white" CLord Westcote's narrative of 13th February, 1780, collected from Lord Lyttelton's guests and servants) ; (4) *' a bird turning into a woman " (Mrs. Delany,
1 Hamilton's Memoirs.
2 Mrs. Thrale's Diary, 28th November, 1779.
* Diary of Lady Mary Coke, 30th November, 1779.
9
130 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
gth December, 1779) ; (5) a dream of a bird, followed by a woman, Mrs. Amphlett, in white (Pitt Place archives after 1789) ; (6) " a fluttering noise, as of a bird, followed by the apparition of a woman who had committed suicide after being seduced by Lyttel- ton" (Lady Lyttelton, 1828); (7) a bird *' which vanished when a female spirit in white raiment pre- sented herself" (Scots Magazine, November-Decem- ber, 1779).
Out of seven versions, a bird, or a fluttering noise as of a bird (a common feature in ghost stories),^ with a woman following or accompanying, occurs in six. The phenomena are almost equally ascribed to dreaming and to waking hallucination, but the common-sense of the eighteenth century called all ghosts "dreams". In the Westcote narrative (1780) Lyttelton explains the dream by his having lately been in a room with a lady, Mrs. Dawson, when a robin flew in. Yet, in the same narrative, Lyttelton says on Saturday morning " that he was very well, and believed he should bilk the ghost". He was certainly in bed at the time of the experience, and probably could not be sure whether he was awake or asleep.^
1 See Phantasms, ii., 586.
2 The difficulty of knowing whether one is awake or asleep, just about the moment of entering or leaving sleep is notorious. The author, on awaking in a perfectly dark room, has occasionally seen it in a dim light, and has even been aware, or seemed to be aware, of the pattern of the wall paper. In a few moments this effect of light disappears, and all is darkness. This is the confused mental state technically styled " Borderland," a haunt of ghosts, who are really flitting dreams.
LYTTELTON'S HEALTH. I3I
Considering the remoteness of time, the story is very well recorded. It is chronicled by Mrs. Thrale before the news of Lyttelton's death reached her, and by Lady Mary Coke two days later, by Walpole on the day after the peer's decease, of which he had heard. Lord Lyttelton's health had for some time been bad ; he had made his will a few weeks before, and his nights were horror-haunted. A little boy, his nephew, to whom he was kind, used to find the wicked lord sitting by his bed at night, because he dared not be alone. So Lockhart writes to his daughter, Mrs. Hope Scott. ^ He had strange dreams of being in hell with the cruel murderess, Mrs. Brownrigg, who " whipped three female 'prentices to death and hid them in the coal-hole ". Such a man might have strange fancies, and a belief in approaching death might bring its own fulfilment. The hypothesis of a premeditated suicide, with the story of the ghost as a last practical joke, has no corroboration. It occurred to Horace Walpole at once, but he laid no stress on it.
Such is a plain, dry, statistical account of the most extraordinary event that happened in Dr. John- son's day.
However, the story does not end here. On the fatal night, 27th November, 1779, Mr. Andrews, M.P., a friend of Lyttelton's was awakened by finding Lord Lyttelton drawing his curtains. Sus- pecting a practical joke, he hunted for his lordship both in his house and in the garden. Of course
* Life of Lockhart,
132 DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
he never found him. The event v^as promptly recorded in the next number of the Scots Magazine^ December, 1779.^
1 The author has given authorities in Blackwood's Magazine, March, 1895. A Mr. Coulton (not Croker as erroneously stated) published in the Quarterly Review, No. 179, an article to prove that Lyttelton committed suicide, and was Junius. See also the author's Life of Lockhart,
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