Many strange tales have been told of her; such as her power of transforming herself, after nightfall, into the shape of any she list; and of her odd pranks in her nightly rambles, her favourite character being that of the hare, in which personation she was unluckily shot by an unsuspecting poacher, who was almost terrified out of his senses by the awful screams which followed the sudden death of the Ling-bob witch.
In the year 1785, D——, of Sheffield, being at Leeds, had the curiosity to pay a visit to the noted Hannah Green. He first questioned her respecting the future fortunes of a near relative of his, who was then in circumstances of distress, and indeed in prison. She told him immediately that his friend's trouble would continue full three times three years, and he would then experience a great deliverance, which, in fact, was on the point of being literally verified, for he was then in the Court of King's Bench.
He then asked her if she possessed any foreknowledge of what was about to come to pass on the great stage of the world; to which she replied in the affirmative. She said, war would be threatened once, but would not happen; but the second time it would blaze out in all its horrors, and extend to all the neighbouring countries; and that the two countries [these appear to be France and Poland], at a great distance one from the other, would in consequence obtain their freedom, although after hard struggles. After the year 1790, she observed, many great persons, even kings and queens, would lose their lives, and that not by fair means. In 1794, a great warrior of high blood is to fall in the field of battle; and in 1795, a distant nation [thought to be negro slaves], who have been dragged from their own country, will rise as one man, and deliver themselves from their oppressors.
Hannah appears to have been one of a somewhat numerous class, many of whom were resident in Yorkshire. Very few of them went beyond the attempt to foretell the future events in the lives of individuals; they did not work with such high ambition as drawing the horoscopes of nations. Their predictions were always vague, and so framed as to cover a number of the most probable events in the life of every individual.
Hannah really died on the 12th of May, 1810, after having practised her art about forty years; and Ling-bob became a haunted and dreaded place. The house remained some years untenanted and ruinous, but was afterwards repaired and occupied. Her daughter and successor, Hannah Spence, laid claim to the same prescience, but it need hardly be added, without the same success.[18]
[Oddities of Lady Hester Stanhope.]
This eccentric lady, grand-daughter of the great Lord Chatham, held implicit faith in the influence of the stars on the destiny of men, a notion from which every crowned head in Europe is not, at this day, exempt.
Lady Hester brought her theories into a striking though rather ridiculous system. She had a remarkable talent for divining characters by the conformation of men. This every traveller could testify who had visited her in Syria; for it was after she went to live in solitude that her penetration became so extraordinary. It was founded both on the features of the face and on the shape of the head, body, and limbs. Some indications she went by were taken from a resemblance to animals; and wherever such indications existed, she inferred that the dispositions peculiar to those animals were to be found in the person. But, independent of all this, her doctrine was that every creature is governed by the star under whose influence it was born.
"Animal magnetism," said Lady Hester, "is nothing but the sympathy of our stars. Those fools who go about magnetizing indifferently one person and another, why do they sometimes succeed and sometimes fail? Because if they meet with those of the same star with themselves, their results will be satisfactory; but with opposite stars they can do nothing."
"What Lady Hester's own star was," says her physician, "may be gathered from what she said one day, when, having dwelt a long time on this her favourite subject, she got up from the sofa, and approaching the window, she called me. 'Look,' said she, 'at the pupil of my eyes; there! my star is the sun—all sun—it is in my eyes: when the sun is a person's star it attracts everything.' I looked, and I replied that I saw a rim of yellow round the pupil. 'A rim!' cried she; 'it isn't a rim—it's a sun; there's a disk, and from it go rays all around: 'tis no more of a rim than you are. Nobody has got eyes like mine.'"