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.