The Valet's Tragedy, and Other StudiesLang, Andrew
History
The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies
Lang, Andrew
History; World history
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.
‘Lord Lyttelton,’ says the contemporary ‘Scots Magazine,’ ‘started
up from a midnight sleep on perceiving a bird fluttering near the
bed-curtains, which vanished suddenly when a female spirit in white
raiment presented herself’ and prophesied Lord Lyttelton’s death in
three days. His death is attributed to convulsions while undressing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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