Writing to Mason on Monday, November 29, Walpole avers that Lord Lyttelton was ‘attended only by four virgins, whom he had picked up in the Strand.’ Here Horace, though writing from Berkeley Square, within two days of the fatal 27th, is wrong. Lord Lyttelton had the Misses Amphlett, Captain Wolsley, Mr. Fortescue, and Mrs. Flood with him. According to Walpole, he felt unwell on Saturday night (the 27th), ‘went to bed, rung his bell in ten minutes, and in one minute after the arrival of his servant expired!’ ‘He had said on Thursday that he should die in three days, HAD DREAMT SO, and felt that it would be so. On Saturday he said, “If I outlive to-day, I shall go on;” but enough of him.’
Walpole speaks of a DREAM, but he soon has other, if not better, information. Writing to Mason on December 11, he says that ghost stories from the north will now be welcome. ‘Lord Lyttelton’s vision has revived the taste; though it seems a little odd that an APPARITION should despair of getting access to his Lordship’s bed, in the shape of a young woman, without being forced to use the disguise of a robin-redbreast.’ What was an apprehension or prophecy has become a dream, and the dream has become an apparition of a robin-redbreast and a young woman.
If this excite suspicion, let us hasten to add that we have undesigned evidence to Lord Lyttelton’s belief that he had beheld an APPARITION—evidence a day earlier than the day of his death. Mrs. Piozzi (then Mrs. Thrale), in her diary of Sunday, November 28, writes: ‘Yesterday a lady from Wales dropped in and said that she had been at Drury Lane on Friday night. “How,” I asked, “were you entertained?” “Very strangely indeed! Not with the play, though, but the discourse of a Captain Ascough, who averred that a friend of his, Lord Lyttelton, has SEEN A SPIRIT, who has warned him that he will die in three days. I have thought of nothing else since.”’
Next day, November 29, Mrs. Piozzi heard of Lord Lyttelton’s death.*
*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.’