I now come to what may be either the basis or a variant of the main tradition, unless, as may well be the case, it is an entirely independent narrative—namely, a circumstantial relation quoted in the Treatise of the Soul of Man, which edifying composition was published in 1685. It is, word for word, as follows:—
“Much to the same purpose is that so famous and well-attested story of the apparition of Major George Sydenham to Captain William Dyke, both of Somersetshire, attested by the worthy and learned Dr Thomas Dyke, a near kinsman of the captain’s, and by Mr Douch, to whom both the major and captain were intimately known. The sum is this:—The major and captain had many disputes about the Being of a God and the immortailty of the Soul, on which points they could never be resolved, though they much sought and desired it, and therefore it was at last fully agreed betwixt them, that he who died first should on the third night after his funeral, come betwixt the hours of twelve and one, to the little house at Dulverton in Somersetshire; and the captain happened to lie that very night which was appointed in the same chamber and bed with Dr Dyke. He acquainted the doctor with the appointment, and his resolution to attend the place and hour that night, for which purpose he got the key of the garden. The doctor could by no means divert his purpose, but when the hour came he was upon the place, where he waited two hours and a half, neither seeing nor hearing anything more than usual.
“About six weeks after, the doctor and captain went to Eaton, and lay again at the same inn, but not the same chamber as before. The morning before they went thence the captain stayed longer than was usual in his chamber, and at length came into the doctor’s chamber, but in a visage and form much differing from himself, with his hair and eyes staring and his whole body shaking and trembling. Whereat the doctor, wondering, demanded, ‘What is the matter, cousin captain?’ The captain replies, ‘I have seen my major.’ At which the doctor seeming to smile, the captain said, ‘If ever I saw him in my life, I saw him but now,’ adding as followeth. ‘This morning (said he) after it was light, someone came to my bedside, and suddenly drawing back the curtains, calls, ‘Cap, cap,’ (which was the term of familiarity that the major used to call the captain by), to whom I replied, ‘What, my major.’ To which he returns, ‘I could not come at the time appointed, but I am come now to tell you that there is a God, and a very just and terrible one, and if you do not turn over a new leaf, you will find it so.’ This stuck close to him. Little meat would go down with him at dinner, though a handsome treat was provided. These words were sounding in his ears frequently during the remainder of his life, he was never shy or scrupulous to relate it to any that asked him concerning it, nor ever mentioned it but with horror and trepidation. They were both men of a brisk humour and jolly conversation, of very quick and keen parts, having been both University and Inns of Court gentlemen.”
The intimacy to which this narrative bears witness, though easily accounted for in officers of the same regiment, is further explained by the fact they were near neighbours at home. The Sydenhams, as has been shown, dwelt at Combe, and the Dykes, I may now add, at Pixton, the former residence of the Sydenhams, whilst the salutation “Cap, cap” indicates much friendliness. The Dyke dynasty came to an end when Sir Thomas Acland (seventh baronet) married Elizabeth Dyke, and joined her estates at Dulverton and elsewhere to his own vast patrimony. With them I am not concerned, more than to state that they were the grandparents of John Dyke Acland, who wedded in 1771 the Lady Christian Harriet Caroline Fox-Strangways, sister of Stephen, first Earl of Ilchester.
In the commonplace book of Thomas Sayer, parish clerk and schoolmaster of Dulverton, I find the following entries relating to the family:—
“Jno Dyke Acland, Esq., married Jany 7, 1771. The above Jno Dyke Acland born Feb. 18, 1746, and died Nov. 15, 1778. The old Sir Thos. Dyke Acland, Father of above Jno Dyke Acland, born Aug. 12, 1722, and died Feby 20, 1785.”
The same manuscript includes particulars regarding Pixton House, which prove the existing structure, the “frozen music” of which is superbly classical, to be differently laid out from its predecessor, which we may conjecture to have been of some type of English domestic architecture, and, according to Saver’s measurements, contained some fine rooms. The old house was pulled down in February 1803, and the new, built by Hassell, of Exeter, was finished in November 1805. This work was carried out on the initiative of Lady Harriet Acland, after whom the private road through the serried woods of the sequestered Haddeo valley is named “Lady Harriet’s Drive”—doubtless, because she ordered its construction.
Two or three years ago Mr Broomfield, of Dulverton, showed me an old picture, dim, dirty, and discoloured, yet significant. Through the crust of time one could discern a man, a woman, and a boat; and the attitudes and certain of the details convinced me that the faded, and not very valuable, heirloom represented a scene in the life of the great lady of Pixton, to which she must have looked back with horror, and her posterity will ever refer with pride. I will try to interpret that picture, and conjure up the scene it so feebly portrays.
It was the year 1777, and Major Acland’s grenadiers, forming the advanced guard of General Fraser’s brigade, were advancing against the American insurgents. Lady Harriet had already endured cruel privations, and in the course of the previous year had nursed her husband through a dangerous bout of sickness, contracted in the campaign. Now it had begun again. Only a short time before, the tent they were sleeping in had caught fire, and most of their clothing had been burnt. It was winter, and bitter cold.
Now, however brave a woman may be, unless she is a professed Amazon, she is not expected to fight, and, as an action was about to take place, Acland requested his wife to remain with the baggage. In a small log-hut with three other ladies—the Baroness Ruysdael, Mrs Ramage, and Mrs Reynell—Lady Harriet spent hours of agonising suspense, the high notes of the incessant musketry fire mingling with the diapason of the artillery, to be varied erelong by the groans of the wounded borne into their place of shelter, and littering the ground around.