CHAPTER V

A GHOSTLY VISITANT

There is scarcely a chapter in the story of the British Peerage more tragic and mysterious than that which chronicles the closing days of Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton, whose dissolute life had its fitting climax of horror at the exact moment foretold to him by a ghostly visitor. Various and somewhat conflicting accounts are given of this singular tragedy; but in them all the chief incidents stand out so clear and unassailable that even such a hard-headed sceptic as Dr Johnson declared, "I am so glad to have evidence of the spiritual world that I am willing to believe it."

Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton, son of the first Baron, the distinguished poet and historian, was the degenerate descendant of five centuries of Lyttelton ancestors, who had held their heads among the highest in the county of Worcester since the days of the third Henry. Unlike his clean-living forefathers, he was famous as a debauchee in a dissolute age.

William Coombe, who had been at Eton with Lyttelton, is said to have had his old schoolfellow in mind when he dedicated his Diaboliad "to the worst man in His Majesty's Dominions," and when he penned those terrible lines:—

From the days when he wore his Eton jacket the life of this perverse lord seems to have been one long record of profligacy; at least, until that day, but six years before its end, when, to quote his own words, "I awoke, and behold I was a lord!"

Indeed, even more remarkable than the viciousness of his life, was the brazen openness with which he flaunted it in the face of the world.

With this depravity were oddly allied gifts of mind and graces of person, which, but for the handicap of vice, should have made Lord Lyttelton one of the most eminent and useful men of his time. When he was at Eton Dr Barnard, the headmaster, predicted a great future for the boy, whose talents he declared were superior to those of young Fox. In literature and art his natural endowment was such that he might easily have won a leading place in either profession; while his gifts of statemanship and his eloquent tongue might with equal ease have won fame and high position in the arena of politics.

Shortly after he succeeded to his Barony he married the widow of Joseph Peach, Governor of Calcutta, and for a time seems to have made an effort to reform his ways; but the vice in his blood was quick to reassert itself; he abandoned his wife under the spell of a barmaid's eyes, and plunged again into the morass of depravity, in which alone he could find the pleasure he loved.

Such was Lord Lyttelton at the time this story opens, when, although still a young man (he was but thirty-five when he died), he was a nervous and physical wreck, draining the last dregs of the cup of pleasure.

And yet, how little he seems to have realised that he was near the end of his tether the following story proves. One day in the last month of his life a cousin and boon companion, Mr Fortescue, called on him at his London home.

How little could he have anticipated that within a few days he, too, would be lying among the "vulgar fellows" who die in their youth at five-and-thirty!

And, indeed, there seemed little evidence of such a tragic possibility; for the very next day he was charming the House of Lords with a speech of singular eloquence and statesmanlike grasp—the speech of a man in the prime of his powers. Such efforts as this, however, were but as the spasmodic flickerings of a candle that is burning to its end, and were followed by deeper plunges into the dissipations that were surely killing him.

It was towards the close of the month of November, in 1779, that Lord Lyttelton left London and its fatal allurements for a few days' peaceful life at his country seat, Pit Place, at Epsom (in those days a fashionable health resort), where he had invited a house-party, including several ladies, to join him. And, it should be said, no host could possibly be more charming and gracious; for, in spite of his depraved tastes, Lord Lyttelton was a man of remarkable fascination—a wit, a born raconteur, and a courtier to his finger-tips.

During the first day of his residence at Epsom the following incident—which may or may not have had a bearing on the strange events that followed—took place.

On the following morning his lordship appeared at the breakfast-table so pale and haggard that his guests, alarmed at his appearance, asked what was the matter. For a time he evaded their enquiries, and then made the following startling statement:—"Last night," he said, "after I had been lying in bed awake for some time, I heard what sounded like the tapping of a bird at my window, followed by a gentle fluttering of wings about my chamber. I raised myself on my arm to learn the meaning of these strange sounds, and was amazed at seeing a lovely female, dressed in white, with a small bird perched like a falcon on her hand. Walking towards me, the vision spoke, commanding me to prepare for death, for I had but a short time to live. When I was able to command my speech, I enquired how long I had to live. The vision then replied, 'Not three days; and you will depart at the hour of twelve.'"

Such was the remarkable story with which Lord Lyttelton startled his guests on the morning of 24th November 1779. In vain they tried to cheer him, and to laugh away his fears. They could make no impression on the despondency that had settled on him; they could not shake the conviction that he was a doomed man. "You will see," was all the answer he would vouchsafe, "I shall die at midnight on Saturday."

But in spite of this alarming experience and the gloomy forebodings to which, in his shattered state of nerves, it gave birth, Lord Lyttelton did not long allow it to interfere with the work he had in hand, the preparation of a speech on the disturbed condition in Ireland which he was to deliver in the House of Lords that very day—a speech which should enhance his great and rapidly growing reputation as an orator. He spent some hours absorbed in polishing and repolishing his sentences, and in verifying his facts; and, when he rose in the House, he was as full of confidence as of his subject.

Never, it was the common verdict, had his lordship spoken with more eloquence and lucidity or with more powerful grasp of his subject and his hearers.

It was the speech of a far-seeing statesman; and although it proved but the "voice of one crying in the wilderness," Lord Lyttelton felt that he had done his duty and had crowned his growing political fame with the laurels of the patriot and the orator.

On the following morning Fortescue met his cousin sauntering in St James's Park, as Mr Makower tells us, "with the idleness of one who has never known what occupation means."

"Is it because Hillsborough, the stupidest of your brother peers, paid you such fine compliments on your speech?" he asked.

Lyttelton smiled faintly. "No, it was not of that I was thinking," he answered. "Those are things of yesterday. Hillsborough was wrong; the majority who voted with him were wrong; and I was right with my minority. They don't know Ireland as I do. But a Government which can lose America can do anything. I have done with politics. I was thinking of something entirely different when you came upon me. I was thinking—of death."

Fortescue laughed. But, when he had heard the story of Lyttelton's dream, something in the manner of the narrator conveyed to him a feeling of uneasiness.

"No man has more thoroughly enjoyed doing wrong than I have," continued Lyttelton. "But I should not have enjoyed it so much if I believed in nothing. With me sin has been conscientious; and I enjoyed the wrong thing not only for itself but also because it was wrong. Suppose it be true that I have not more than three days to live—"

"You take the thing too seriously," interposed his cousin.

"Join me at Pit Place to-morrow," said Lyttelton. "Then you shall see if I take it too seriously."

During the intervening two days he fluctuated between profound gloom and boisterous hilarity. One hour he was plunged into the depths of despair, the next he was the soul of gaiety, laughing hysterically at his fears, and exclaiming, "I shall cheat the lady yet!"

During dinner on the third and fatal day he was the maddest and merriest at the table, convulsing all by his sallies of wit and his infectious high spirits; and, when the cloth was removed, he exclaimed jubilantly, "Ah, Richard is himself again!" But his gaiety was short-lived. As the hours wore on his spirits deserted him; he lapsed into gloom and silence, from which all the efforts of his friends could not rouse him.

As the night advanced he began to grow restless. He could not sit still, but paced to and fro, with terror-haunted eyes, muttering incoherently to himself, and taking out his watch every few moments to note the passage of time. At last, when his watch pointed to half-past eleven, he retired, without a word of farewell to his guests, to his bedroom, not knowing that not only his own watch, but every clock and watch in the house had been put forward half-an-hour by his anxious friends, "to deceive him into comfort."

Having undressed and gone to bed, he ordered his valet to draw the curtains at the foot, as if to screen him from a second sight of the mysterious lady, and, sitting up in bed, watch in hand, he awaited the fatal hour of midnight. As the minute hand slowly but surely drew near to twelve he asked to see his valet's watch, and was relieved to find that it marked the same time as his own. With beating heart and straining eyes he watched the hand draw nearer and nearer. A minute more to go—half a minute. Now it pointed to the fateful twelve—and nothing happened. It crept slowly past. The crisis was over. He put down the watch with a deep sigh of relief, and then broke into a peal of laughter—discordant, jubilant, defiant.

"This mysterious lady is not a true prophetess, I find," he said to his valet, after spending a few minutes in further mirthful waiting. "And now give me my medicine; I will wait no longer." The valet proceeded to mix his usual medicine, a dose of rhubarb, stirring it, as no spoon was at hand, with a tooth-brush lying on the table. "You dirty fellow!" his lordship exclaimed. "Go down and fetch a spoon."

When the servant returned a few minutes later he found, to his horror, his master lying back on the pillow, unconscious and breathing heavily. He ran downstairs again, shouting, "Help! Help! My lord is dying!" The alarmed guests rushed frantically to the chamber, only to find their host almost at his last gasp. A few moments later he was dead, with the watch still clutched in his hand, pointing to half-past twelve. He had died at the very stroke of midnight, as foretold by his ghostly visitant of three nights previously.

Thus strangely and dramatically died Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton, statesman, wit, and debauchee, precisely as he had been warned that he would die in a dream or vision of the night. How far his death was due to natural causes, to the effect of fear on a diseased heart, none can say with certainty. That his heart was diseased, that he had had many former seizures, during which his life seemed in danger, is beyond question; but if it was merely coincidence, it was surely the most remarkable coincidence on record, that his death should come at the exact moment foretold by the lady of his vision, as related by himself three days before the event.

Such a happening was strange and weird enough in all conscience; but it was no more inexplicable on natural grounds than what follows. Among Lord Lyttelton's boon companions was a Mr Andrews, with whom he had often discussed the possibilities of a future life. On one such occasion his lordship had said: "Well, if I die first, and am allowed, I will come and inform you."

The words were probably spoken more in jest than in earnest, and Mr Andrews no doubt little dreamt how the promise would be fulfilled. On the night of Lord Lyttelton's death Mr Andrews, who expected his lordship to pay him a visit on the following day, had retired to bed at his house at Dartford, in Kent.

When in bed, to quote from Mr Plumer Ward's "Illustrations of Human Life," he fell into a sound sleep, but was waked between eleven and twelve o'clock by somebody opening his curtains. It was Lord Lyttelton, in a nightgown and cap which Andrews recognised. He also spoke plainly to him, saying that he was come to tell him all was over. It seems that Lord Lyttelton was fond of horseplay; and, as he had often made Andrews the subject of it, the latter had threatened his lordship with physical chastisement the very next time that it should occur. On the present occasion, thinking that the annoyance was being renewed, he threw at Lord Lyttelton's head the first thing that he could find—his slippers. The figure retreated towards a dressing-room, which had no ingress or egress except through the bed-chamber; and Andrews, very angry, leaped out of bed in order to follow it into the dressing-room. It was not there, however.

Surprised and amazed, he returned at once to the bedroom, which he strictly searched. The door was locked on the inside , yet no Lord Lyttelton was to be found. In his perplexity, Mr Andrews rang for his servant, and asked if Lord Lyttelton had not arrived. The man answered: "No, sir." "You may depend upon it," said Mr Andrews, thoroughly mystified and out of humour, "that he is somewhere in the house. He was here just now, and he is playing some trick or other. However, you can tell him that he won't get a bed here; he can sleep in the stable or at the inn if he likes."

After a further vain search of the bed-chamber and the dressing-room, Mr Andrews returned to bed and to sleep, having no doubt whatever that his too jocular friend was in hiding somewhere near. On the afternoon of the following day news came to him that Lord Lyttelton had died the previous night at the very time that he (Mr Andrews) was searching for his midnight visitant, and abusing him roundly for what he considered his ill-timed practical joke. On hearing the news, we are told, Mr Andrews swooned away, and such was its effect on him that, to use his own words, "he was not himself or a man again for three years." 1p4dtydre2DrYlSpfrdKZmm5DKGs8koSay2qZ2DDV0zQdVExm/NhFXxoeZd9eLhq

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