书城公版The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories
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第39章

There is something rather plausible in this narrative, corresponding, as it does, with the Pitt Place document, in which the valet, finding his master in a fit, leaves him and seeks assistance, instead of lowering his head that he might breathe more easily. Like the other, this tale makes suicide a most improbable explanation of Lord Lyttelton's death. The affair of the watches is dramatic, but not improbable in itself. A correspondent of 'The Gentleman's Magazine' (in 1815) only cites 'a London paper' as his authority. The writer of 'Past Feelings Renovated' (1828) adds that Mr. Andrews could never again be induced to sleep at Pitt Place, but, when visiting there, always lay at the Spread Eagle, in Epsom.

Let us now tabulate our results.

At Pitt Place, Epsom, or Hill Street, Berkeley Square, On November 24, Lord Lyttelton Dreamed of, or saw, A young woman and a robin.

A bird which became a woman.

A dove and a woman.

Mrs. Amphlett (without a dove or robin).

Some one else unknown.

In one variant, a clock and a preternatural light are thrown in, with a sermon which it were superfluous to quote. In another we have the derangement of clocks and watches. Lord Lyttelton's stepmother believed in the dove. Lady Lyttelton did without a dove, but admitted a fluttering sound.

For causes of death we have--heart disease (a newspaper), breaking of a blood-vessel (Mason), suicide (Coulton), and 'a suffocating fit' (Pitt Place document). The balance is in favour of a suffocating fit, and is against suicide. On the whole, if we follow the Pitt Place Anonymous (writing some time after the event, for he calls Mr. Fortescue 'Lord Fortescue'), we may conclude that Lord Lyttelton had been ill for some time. The making of his will suggests a natural apprehension on his part, rather than a purpose of suicide. There was a lively impression of coming death on his mind, but how it was made--whether by a dream, an hallucination, or what not--there is no good evidence to show.

There is every reason to believe, on the Pitt Place evidence, combined with the making of his will, that Lord Lyttelton had really, for some time, suffered from alarming attacks of breathlessness, due to what cause physicians may conjecture. Any one of these fits, probably, might cause death, if the obvious precaution of freeing the head and throat from encumbrances were neglected; and the Pitt Place document asserts that the frightened valet DID neglect it. Again, that persons under the strong conviction of approaching death will actually die is proved by many examples. Even Dr. Hibbert says that 'no reasonable doubt can be placed on the authenticity of the narrative' of Miss Lee's death, 'as it was drawn up by the Bishop of Gloucester' (Dr. William Nicholson) 'from the recital of the young lady's father,' Sir Charles Lee. Every one knows the tale. In a preternatural light, in a midnight chamber, Miss Lee saw a woman, who proclaimed herself Miss Lee's dead mother, 'and that by twelve o'clock of the day she should be with her.' So Miss Lee died in her chair next day, on the stroke of noon, and Dr. Hibbert rather heartlessly calls this 'a fortunate circumstance.'

The Rev. Mr. Fison, in 'Kamilaroi and Kurnai,' gives, from his own experience, similar tales of death following alleged ghostly warnings, among Fijians and Australian blacks. Lord Lyttelton's uneasiness and apprehension are conspicuous in all versions; his dreams had long been troubled, his health had caused him anxiety, the 'warning' (whatever it may have been) clinched the matter, and he died a perfectly natural death.

Mr. Coulton, omitting Walpole's statement that he 'looked ill,' and never alluding to the Pitt Place description of his very alarming symptoms, but clinging fondly to his theory of Junius, perorates thus: 'Not Dante, or Milton, or Shakespeare himself, could have struck forth a finer conception than Junius, in the pride of rank, wealth, and dignities, raised to the Council table of the sovereign he had so foully slandered--yet sick at heart and deeply stained with every profligacy--terminating his career by deliberate self- murder, with every accompaniment of audacious charlatanry that could conceal the crime.'

It is magnificent, it is worthy of Dante, or Shakespeare himself-- but the conception is Mr. Coulton's.

We do not think that we have provided what Dr. Johnson 'liked,'

'evidence for the spiritual world.' Nor have we any evidence explanatory of the precise nature of Lord Lyttelton's hallucination.

The problem of the authorship of the 'Junius Letters' is a malstrom into which we decline to be drawn.

But it is fair to observe that all the discrepancies in the story of the 'warning' are not more numerous, nor more at variance with each other, than remote hearsay reports of any ordinary occurrence are apt to be. And we think it is plain that, if Lord Lyttelton WAS Junius, Mr. Coulton had no right to allege that Junius went and hanged himself, or, in any other way, was guilty of self-murder.