The Valet's Tragedy, and Other StudiesLang, Andrew
History
The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies
Lang, Andrew
History; World history
We now turn to a narrative nearly contemporary, that written out by Lord
Westcote on February 13, 1780. Lord Westcote examined the eldest Miss
Amphlett, Captain (later Admiral) Charles Wolsley, Mrs. Flood, Lord
Lyttelton’s valet, Faulkner, and Stuckey, the servant in whose arms, so
to speak, Lord Lyttelton died. Stuckey was questioned (note this) in
the presence of Captain Wolsley and of MR. FORTESCUE. The late Lord
Lyttelton permitted the Westcote narrative to be published in ‘Notes
and Queries’ (November 21, 1874). The story, which so much pleased Dr.
Johnson, runs thus:--On Thursday, November 25, Mrs. Flood and the three
Misses Amphlett were residing at Lord Lyttelton’s house in Hill Street,
Berkeley Square. Who IS this Mrs. Flood? Frederick Flood (1741-1824)
married LADY Julia Annesley in 1782. The wife of the more famous Flood
suits the case no better: his wife was LADY F. M. Flood; she was a
Beresford. (The ‘Dictionary of National Biography’ is responsible for
these facts.) At all events, on November 25, at breakfast, in Hill
Street, Lord Lyttelton told the young ladies and their chaperon that he
had had an extraordinary DREAM.
He seemed to be in a room which a bird flew into; the bird changed into
a woman in white, who told him he should die in three days.
He ‘did not much regard it, because he could in some measure account
for it; for that a few days before he had been with Mrs. Dawson, when a
robin-redbreast flew into her room.’ On the morning of Saturday he told
the same ladies that he was very well, and believed he should ‘BILK THE
GHOST.’ The dream has become an apparition! On that day--Saturday--he,
with the ladies, Fortescue, and Wolsley, went to Pitt Place; he went
to bed after eleven, ordered rolls for breakfast, and, in bed, ‘died
without a groan,’ as his servant was disengaging him from his waistcoat.
During dinner he had ‘a rising in his throat’ (a slight sickness),
‘a thing which had often happened to him before.’ His physician, Dr.
Fothergill, vaguely attributed his death to the rupture of some vessel
in his side, where he had felt a pain in summer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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