Other sources of error in the judgment could be pointed out, and other causes of illusion and hallucination in the above tale, but we have written sufficient to show its worthlessness.
One of the most formidable objections to the majority of ghost-stories of this nature is the insufficiency of the authority upon which they are given. In many instances we cannot trace them satisfactorily to their origin; in others, we have received them after they have passed through the hands of several persons; and in still more (as in the tales we have just analysed) there is intrinsic evidence that no endeavour has been made to obviate or elicit the sources of fallacy to which the ghost-seer has been exposed, and diminish as much as possible the chances of error.
The story of the "Last Hours of Lord Lyttleton" is a singularly interesting example of a ghost-story, based upon insufficient authority, and probably also upon a trivial circumstance, receiving almost universal credence; and it shows, moreover, how readily the superstitious feelings of the listeners will lead them to receive without due examination, tales which in themselves may be utterly void of satisfactory foundation; and induce them to retail subsequently an account which has probably received its precision and colouring from their imaginations alone.
Oft as the story has been told, we are necessitated again to quote it in part, in order to show more fully the nature of the authority upon which it depends.
A gentleman, who was on a visit to Lord Lyttleton, writes:—
"I was at Pitt Place, Epsom, when Lord Lyttleton died; Lord Fortescue, Lady Flood, and the two Miss Amphletts, were also present. Lord Lyttleton had not long been returned from Ireland, and frequently had been seized with suffocating fits; he was attacked several times by them in the course of the preceding month, while he was at his house in Hill Street, Berkeley Square. It happened that he dreamt, three days before his death, that he saw a fluttering bird; and afterwards, that a woman appeared to him in white apparel, and said to him, 'Prepare to die, you will not exist three days.' His Lordship was much alarmed, and called to a servant from a closet adjoining, who found him much agitated, and in a profuse perspiration: the circumstance had a considerable effect all the next day on his Lordship's spirits. On the third day, while his Lordship was at breakfast with the above personages, he said, 'If I live over to-night, I shall have jockied the ghost, for this is the third day.' The whole party presently set off for Pitt Place, where they had not long arrived before his Lordship was visited by one of his accustomed fits; after a short interval, he recovered. He dined at five o'clock that day, and went to bed at eleven, when his servant was about to give him rhubarb and mint-water; but his Lordship perceiving him stir it with a tooth-pick, called him a slovenly dog, and bade him go and fetch a tea-spoon; but on the man's return, he found his master in a fit, and the pillow being placed high, his chin bore hard upon his neck, when the servant, instead of relieving his Lordship on the instant from his perilous situation, ran in his fright and called out for help, but on his return he found his Lordship dead."
The circumstances attending the apparition, as related by Lord Lyttleton, according to the statement of a relative of Lady Lyttleton's, were as follows:
"Two nights before, on his retiring to bed, after his servant was dismissed and his light extinguished, he had heard a noise resembling the fluttering of a dove at his chamber window. This attracted his attention to the spot; when, 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 of the chamber were distinctly visible; raising her head and pointing to a dial which stood on the mantel-piece of the chimney, the figure, with a severe solemnity of voice and manner, announced to the appalled and conscience-stricken man that, at that very hour, on the third day after the visitation, his life and his sins would be concluded, and nothing but their punishment remain, if he availed himself not of the warning to repentance which he had received. The eye of Lord Lyttleton glanced upon the dial, the hand was upon the stroke of twelve; again the apartment was involved in total darkness, the warning spirit disappeared, and bore away at her departure all the lightness of heart and buoyancy of spirit, ready flow of wit, and vivacity of manner, which had formerly been the pride and ornament of the unhappy being to whom she had delivered her tremendous summons."
From a passage in the Memoirs of Sir Nathanial Wraxall, it would seem that the sole authority for the above story was his Lordship's valet-de-chambre, for he writes:—
"Dining at Pitt Place, about four years after the death of Lord Lyttleton, in the year 1783, I had the curiosity to visit the bedchamber, where the casement-window, at which Lord Lyttleton asserted the dove appeared to flutter, was pointed out to me; and at his stepmother's, the Dowager Lady Lyttleton's, in Portugal Street, Grosvenor Square, I have frequently seen a painting, which she herself executed, in 1780, expressly to commemorate the event; it hung in a conspicuous part of her drawing-room. There the dove appears at the window, while a female figure, habited in white, stands at the foot of the bed, announcing to Lord Lyttleton his dissolution. Every part of the picture was faithfully designed, after the description given to her by the valet-de-chambre who attended him, to whom his master related all the circumstances."